Growing in Peace

Well, why don't you grab your message notes. Miracle Grow is our fall sermon series in The Fruit of the Spirit. As a tie-in, we're studying this book Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit. You can pick up a copy in the lobby at the info desk. Plus, we have small groups all over the county studying it. You can pick up a list of open groups at the info desk too or online. We want to grow in this. As a church, we want to grow in what the Bible describes in Galatians 5:22. It calls it the Fruit of the Spirit, what God wants our character to become. So since this is the theme verse for all fall, all 10 weeks of this fall series, let's read this verse out loud together. All right, here we go. But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Amen.

Every week we've been looking at a different aspect of the Fruit of the Spirit. We talked about love, we've talked about joy. Right now let's look at peace. Not a lot of peace in our world right now at any level. Interesting Smithsonian magazine said this will become known to historians as the Age of Anxiety because everybody is just freaked out right now about everything. GQ, another magazine, had an interview with Harrison Ford. Yes, GQ, your pastor reads GQ. In case you're curious, it was Adrian Moreno's copy, but still it was an interesting article. The interviewer said, "Your movies have made over eight billion dollars." And Harrison Ford answered, "Yeah, but there's one thing I don't have, peace." That's honest. That's honest.

And it's not just about personal peace; there's so much tension in our nation right now. Every day new headlines. A nation divided, civility gone, lawmakers yelling at each other. Raise your hand if you ever feel like, "What is going on here? Have I fallen down the rabbit hole?" Right? It just seems like it's all going crazy. In contrast, Jesus said to his disciples, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Say that out loud with me. "Blessed are the peacemakers." Do you believe that? The peacemakers are blessed? How many of you want to be a better peacemaker? How many of you would like to be a peacemaker? How many of you agree that our world needs more peacemakers? Well, let's figure out how to develop peacemaking skills from a heart that has peace this morning.

Look at your notes. The Bible says there's three kinds of peace that God wants you to know and wants me to know. First, there's peace with God. Peace with God. What does this mean? Well, the Bible says that there is, in the natural state, a division. There's enmity. There's tension between a holy God and us because of our sin. But the good news is God took care of that problem. He came down as Jesus Christ. He, in some mystical way that we don't fully understand, took all of our sins and paid for the guilt of all of them on the cross so that now, thanks to his free gift to us, we can live in a state of peace with him.

Look at Romans 5:1: "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God." Say that with me. "Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Excuse me. And let me just pause here to say you got to cling to this truth because there will be times that you will doubt this. You will be attacked on this in your mind. You will feel guilt and condemnation, and you will hear the accusing voice. Do you mean to tell me that you actually believe God accepts a sinner like you after the things you said today? And you know better after the things you did yesterday, after the things you thought this afternoon. And you're going to feel unsure. Does God really look at me with that kind of love and total forgiveness? And you have to know Scripture well enough to speak back to those voices of doubt and say, "Yes, I have peace with God because he initiated it and all I did is have to receive it as a gift." Raise your hand if you are glad that you have peace with God today. Are you glad to be able to be confident of that?

And then once you know you have peace with God, then you can move into the peace of God. The peace of God, Philippians 4:9 says, "And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." And this is the experience of daily peace because you know God's got you. He's got your back. He's got you firmly in his hand, and what happens is you slowly learn not to panic all the time when unexpected stuff happens because just by sheer experience you learn to trust him and to relax. That's the peace of God.

And then once I know I have peace with God and I begin to live in the peace of God, then the Bible talks about peace with others. Peace with others. Now this may surprise you, but I looked up all 229 Bible verses about peace, and pretty much when it talks about the peace with God and the kind of peace God wants us to have, all 229 verses fall into these three categories. But this is the thing that surprised me. By far the largest group of verses falls into this third category. Like it's not even close. The dominant emphasis in the Bible when it talks about peace isn't just your personal bliss. It's about living in peace with other people.

Verses like Romans 12:18: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." Say that word again: everyone. Look at 2nd Peter 3:14: "Be at peace with who? Everyone." Jesus said in Mark 9:50: "Live in peace with each other." There are so many more verses. Major emphasis. This is the major emphasis when it talks about peace. Why? Frankly, this is the hardest kind of peace to develop right here because honestly, I can be on sort of a high about my peace with God. Yes, and I can be personally blissed out about the peace of God. I'm at peace, man. I've got serenity, and then I got to deal with the humans who are going to kill my God buzz again, right? I mean honestly, you don't—I would advise not raising your hand on this one—but just honestly, do you ever come into church and look around and go, "I sincerely love Jesus, but the people around here drive me crazy?" Yeah, me too. I feel like that too. About you sometimes.

So the question, here's the question. What kind of peace is Paul talking about when he talks about the peace when he talks about the fruit of the spirit? Which one of these three? Well, whenever we want to understand a Bible verse, the key question to ask is always what's the context, right? This verse Galatians 5:22 comes right after Galatians 5:21. Yes. And Galatians 5:20 comes before that, and these verses are about the works of the flesh, and Paul's contrasting the fruit of the spirit with the works of the flesh. Notice over half of them are about lack of peace with others; they're about just chaos and relationships. Look at these words: hostility, quarreling. Try to picture this in your mind. Jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy.

Many people don't know this; this is actually a prophecy about the United States Senate. No, just kidding, that's not true. Probably shouldn't have said that, but my point is that when Paul has just described this, right, and then he says, "But the fruit of the spirit is peace," he's probably talking about peace with others. And all kidding aside, I don't think there's anything more important for Christians to learn right now than this because in our world, all of us—I mean lawmakers and neighbors and Christians—we all seem to have forgotten how to be peacemakers. And Jesus said, "Blessed are"—say it with me again—"blessed are the peacemakers."

There's an interesting passage in the Bible that talks about how to be peacemakers: James 3:15–18 because it has characteristics of peacemakers. This is almost a parallel passage to Galatians 5, so I want to spend the rest of our time in this and look at some supporting Scripture today. Look at these verses. He starts out: jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. Wow, James, tell us how you really feel. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you're going to find disorder and evil of every kind. But the wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure—that's talking about your motivation—it's pure. And then he describes characteristics, and we're going to spend the rest of our time in these last two verses.

It is also peace-loving, gentle at all times, willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

Our family a few years ago went to Uganda to visit some relatives of my wife Lori who live in Uganda, and one night we went to a restaurant right on the beach of Lake Victoria in the capital city, Entebbe. Fantastic wood-fired pizza restaurant, and it's owned by a Rwandan woman who is married to a Dutch diplomat. I thought to myself, that is classic because it's an Italian restaurant run by a Rwandan woman in Uganda who's married to a Dutch guy. That is like the world that I love that right now. But let me show you a picture of this Rwandan woman. This is her. Her name is Goretti, G-O-R-E-T-T-I. Lori's relatives introduced us to her; they know her. So we got into a little conversation. She talked to us about how she and her Dutch husband were living over in Europe when the horrific genocide began in her home country of Rwanda. Members of one tribe were killing off members of another tribe, and then there were recriminations, and it was just a horrible slaughter.

Goretti returned to Rwanda—get this—to find 63 members of her family had been killed. Sixty-three. Basically, she was the only survivor. So we're talking about this, and I asked her how in the world could you go on after that kind of a tragedy? And she told me this: "Well, you must forgive or your life is over." Let that just soak in for a second. Now, that's not to say that she didn't want the leaders of the genocide to face justice; of course she did and supported those efforts. But she saw hatred and tribalism, this us versus them-ism, inflamed everybody's passions, and she watched as hatred spread like a virus. Hatred and tribalism are contagious. Have you ever noticed that? Hatred is contagious like a virus. And so she told me she saw her role in Africa as not just to be a pizza maker but a peacemaker because she said maybe that's contagious too.

Well, I want to be like Goretti because in our society, in our world right now, tribalism, us versus them-ism, is being stoked by so many, and I want to live counter-culturally as a peacemaker. That's what we are called to be as Christians. Now, that doesn't mean being a doormat, and it doesn't mean overlooking wrongs. It doesn't mean being weak. It does not mean that you never take a political stand on an issue that's important to you. But let's talk about what it does mean: five characteristics of a peacemaker in this passage, and they all add up to something very important. This is like we're going to be adding up a sum. See if you can see where this is headed.

James says peacemakers, first of all, are peace-loving. Peace-loving, not fight-loving. In other words, peacemakers refuse to pour fuel on the fire. They refuse to pour more fuel on some fire. Would you agree with us? We are living in an era where people love to pour fuel on fires. They're not lovers of peace; they're lovers of the fight. Lovers of the spat. Exhibit A: go to almost any post online, and if you dare—whatever the news stories, whatever blog post it is—if you dare scroll down to the comments section, and no matter what the original post is about, it almost instantly seems to erupt into some crazy argument.

I'll give you just one example: our next-door neighbors' blog site. How many of you are on Nextdoor? That's kind of taken over, right? Most people here probably are. So it's this little site that little neighborhoods can get on, and somebody posted this: "Hey neighbors, just want you to know I saw a coyote on the street this morning. Be careful with your pets." How innocuous can a post be, right? Who could possibly take offense to that? It's not provocative in any way. Instantly devolves into a slugfest. I don't want to go into all the details, but basically, it shaped up like this: somebody commented, "I'm offended at your implication that coyotes are bad. They have just as much right to be here as your cat does." Next person comments, "Well, I'm offended at the phrase you just used, your cat, implying we own animals. Animals are not our slaves." Now, I think what happens at this point is some of the neighbors with kind of a weird sense of humor start just pushing these people's buttons because the next person posts, "I think all coyotes should be shot." The next person posts, "Coyotes are people too." And sure enough, they get somebody's goat because somebody else posts in all caps with lots of exclamation marks, "Shut up, you animal rights freaks!" Welcome to Nextdoor.

What is happening to us? We live in a cultural moment right now where people are not lovers of peace; they are lovers of the fights. They're just like going out either for fun or out of serious—there's just walk seriousness to walk around loaded for bear like this, like just trying to offend me, just trying to offend me, just trying to find me out, right? Look what the Bible says: Proverbs 20:3: "Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling." Proverbs 19:11 says, "A person's wisdom makes him slow to anger; it is his glory to overlook an offense." It doesn't say to overlook it when somebody accidentally says something that's a little bit insensitive. This is an offense; this is somebody who's deliberately offending you. They are being offensive, and it's an offense to you, but to overlook it is what? Glory. They're saying you are living as a glorious being when you overlook an offense. That's glorious to live like that. Why? Because your glory is God overlooks your offenses. That's why. Look at Proverbs 14:29: "A wise man controls his temper; he knows that anger causes mistakes." Just raise your hand if you have ever experienced the truth of that phrase.

Write that anger causes mistakes. This week I googled the phrase "apologizes for angry tweets" just because I was just kind of curious how many matches I got. Look at this: I got two million six hundred and forty thousand results, and it was people from every actor, sports star, CEOs on the left, on the right, right? They tweeted something out of anger, and now, love, sorry, right? That's easy to criticize them, but we all do this in our relationships face to face all the time, right? We see things in the heat of the moment that we wish we could take back. And by the way, why is it the hardest sometimes to live in peace with the people we love the most? Why is that so hard? This week, I apologized to my mother-in-law, who was sitting right there, because we got into some discussion, and I just gave it too much horsepower, and I told her yesterday, "I'm so sorry. I kind of went to, you know, kind of attack dog on that issue." Why is that so hard? You know why? Because when you live with anybody for any length of time, you know exactly what their buttons are. You know where their buttons are; you know how hard to push. And so when some conversation is going somewhere that you don't really like where that conversation is going, you go, "We're going to push the button," and you successfully introduce a distraction, and now the conversation is going some other direction that you wanted it to go.

But look, if you want to be a peacemaker, then you're not—if I want to be a peacemaker, I'm not going to push your buttons, even if you have already pushed mine. I'm going to be the wiser person, like incidentally, my mother-in-law June was in that instance. I'm trying to push her buttons immaturally, and she just kind of like chills and doesn't push mine. That's what a peacemaker does. Second, James says peacemakers are gentle at all times and willing to yield to others. I put these together because they're similar. The word gentle, I looked it up in the original Greek, and in other translations, it's translated as courteous, considerate. And the phrase willing to yield to others is translated open to reason, allows discussion. So put this together: you could say peacemakers are considerate and open to reason. Peacemakers are considerate and open to reason. Again, totally countercultural way to be right now.

Philippians 4:5 says this: "Let everyone see—watch this—that you are unselfish and considerate in most of the things you do." It doesn't say that, does it? What's it say? "In all." I don't like that word all. I looked it up in the original Greek; you know what it means? Oh, unfortunately, you mean I have to be considerate when other people are being inconsiderate to me? Yes, we don't have to be considerate, you know, clerks who are jerks and people who cut me off in traffic. Yes, you mean I can't be rude back to you when you're being rude to me? Not if I want to be a peacemaker. In fact, check this out: Romans 15 is a chapter all about getting along with people in the church that you disagree with. And in that book, Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit, Chris Wright has a great discussion. He spends most of his chapter on Romans 15; it's really good. So I'm not going to recap what he says, but I want to point out one thing.

Verse two of Romans 15: Romans 15 is written to Roman Christians, and remember, in the first century, Christianity is Jewish; it's a Jewish movement. So the first people are all Jewish people, and for them, it's very important to eat kosher, eat a kosher diet, to keep the Sabbath, to keep all the Jewish high holy days, and so on. Now, these Roman Christians, they don't think that's that important. And Paul, the Apostle Paul, writes them and says, "Actually, you're right in that you're not justified before God by whether or not you eat kosher. You're justified before God by faith." That's not wrong to have that diet, but that doesn't establish your position with God. So now he's addressing these people who are actually right. They're right. Paul is saying you're right, but we must bear the burden of being considerate of the doubts and fears of others, of those who feel these things are wrong, and thus build them up in the Lord.

What Paul is saying is you guys are right, but you can't just tell other people to shut up and sit down. He's telling you can't go around thinking, "I'm right, so I'm going to just win every argument with people because I have the right opinion." You got to be considerate of the relationship that's more important. This is so hard for me. Talking to me, talking is a competitive sport. That's how I view it. When I was a little kid, I knew I'd never be great at sports. I wanted to be great at something, so I thought I'll be like a sportscaster. I'll be the broadcaster. And so I'm little, I'm thinking about that, playing that, and then when I get into high school, I get into the speech and debate team, and I learn how to win in how to talk and win. I was so excited about that. I learned how to reason and how to out-volume people and how to cut them off with the past, and that was great, and I did great in high school speech and debate. The only problem is after high school, I wasn't in speech and debate anymore, and I was in relationships. And one thing I learned after I was married was that speech and debate tips are not the same as relationship tips.

I thought they were, you know, and I just stopped following my poor wife from room to room just talking, talking. Let me just talk. Perhaps I need to use higher volume until you'll say those three words I love to hear: "You are right." You know, here's what I learned. Have you learned this yet? You can win an argument but lose a heart. And the corollary: you can lose an argument but win a heart. You can win an argument but lose a heart, and you can lose an argument but win a heart. Paul's advice in Romans 15 is actually not about the rightness or wrongness of your position; it's about manner. It's about valuing the relationship over the debate, and this has never been more relevant in the church than right now when so many people—so many people in this room probably disagree on so many things. We need to take Paul's advice here in Romans 15, and of course, it's very relevant here in Santa Cruz.

I don't know if you notice this, but being a believer in Santa Cruz, unless you isolate yourself, that means you're going to be around people that you disagree with. If you go around and mix it up at school or in the business community or the art community or the Chamber of Commerce or something, you're going to be around people who occasionally tell you what you probably think are like the most off-the-wall kind of crazy ideas. So what are you going to do if you're a peacemaker? You listen, and you look at them in the eye, and you're respectful and you're considerate, and you let them say their entire piece because you know what I've discovered? If you let somebody say their entire piece, they'll let you say your entire piece because you have been considerate and open to new ideas.

Look at this next verse: Proverbs 18:15: "Intelligent people are always ready to learn." Always. We live in a culture where, "Don't confuse me with facts; my mind is made up." Intelligent people don't act like that. Their ears are what? Open for knowledge. Have you discovered that even if you're right, you don't know everything? You don't know somebody's story, and you can develop empathy for someone's struggle even if you are never convinced of their opinion. Peacemakers are courteous and open always. And then it says peacemakers are full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. Mercy is when you pardon people when they mess up and they sin, when they fail. You show grace and not just mercy—full of mercy and good deeds toward these people who have fallen. Peacemakers, in other words, are lavishly forgiving. Lavishly. And this doesn't mean they're weak. Think of it this way: who is the most powerful being in the universe? Thank you, this is not a trick question. Who is the most powerful being in the universe? God. Who's the most merciful being in the universe? God. When you're being merciful, you're being powerful; you're being like God.

Proverbs 17:9: "Love forgets mistakes; nagging about them parts the best of friends." Do you forget the mistakes of others, or do you constantly remind yourself so you kind of stay at a low level of angry? This verse says that's a good way to slowly shrink your circle of friends. And listen, if Goretti could forgive what she forgave, you can forgive. Fourth, James says it shows no favoritism; it's always sincere. Check this out; I found this fascinating. It's hard to see the connection between these two words in English, but these two words in the Greek are the words adio Kritos and anipo Kritos. They rhyme; they're similar words. The first word means without prejudice, without any prejudice, and the second word comes from the Greek word for mask. The idea is that in Greek plays, actors would play several parts. They'd come out, they'd wear a mask playing some character, then they'd go back behind stage and they put that mask down, they'd bring another mask out, and they'd stride back onto stage and play a completely different character—lots of different roles, right? This verse is saying don't do that in real life. Don't wear a nice mask around somebody when they're around, and then when they're not around, take that nice mask off and be a backstabber. This means peacemakers treat others equally and sincerely, equally and sincerely.

James talks about this a lot, like in James 2:8–9: "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right. They're your neighbor. But if you show favoritism, you sin." It's not just a bad habit. So do a little fearless searching moral inventory here. Do you show favoritism or prejudice toward any group of people? And I'm not saying do you want to; nobody probably here wants to be prejudiced. But honestly, you kind of have a knee-jerk prejudiced reaction sometimes against some people: people of a certain age, ethnic group, race, language group, country of origin, political party, economic class, any other distinction. The Bible says that's sin. Why? Because God doesn't show favoritism. To God, we're all the same. We are on the kind of the plus side; we are all beings made in the image of God, every single person you ever see. That's someone made in God's image, and we're all sinners in need of a loving Savior, every single person you see. God sees everybody that way, and peacemakers see everybody that way.

And then finally, and this ties it all together, James says peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest—a harvest of righteousness. This is saying peacemakers plant for the next season. Peacemakers plant for the next season. Listen, every day in every relationship, you are planting seeds. You are planting what you are going to harvest later on. You're planting either seeds of trust or distrust. You're planting either seeds of anger or of peace, planting seeds of love or harmony. You are actually already doing this. You're already planting seeds of some kind in every relationship you have at work, at home, in your neighborhood, every single day of your life. The only question is what kind of seeds?

The Bible says a troublemaker plants seeds of strife. Are you planting seeds of strife? You say, "Not me." Are you always being critical, always being negative, always pushing those buttons? Those seeds may not sprout now, but they will. On the other hand, the Bible says after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't get discouraged and give up. That's saying you also, if you plant blessing, you're going to reap a harvest of blessing. You need to see the long game, see the long strategy. Some of you are in relationships right now where maybe you don't see eye-to-eye with somebody on some issue or something that happened in the past. Can you plant seeds now for the reconciling conversation that you hope to have one day? It might be next year; it might be 10 years, 20 years from now. But a peacemaker is wise and plants seeds of peace now for the beautiful reconciliation that you hope to harvest later.

And more than just personal reconciliation, because this is what this all adds up to. How many—watch this. I want you to watch how one of the people, Cindy, who was baptized last weekend, described this, her conversion. Look at the screen. "Christianity was never on my radar. I had no thoughts; nothing was wrong; nothing was broken. I wasn't looking for anything. And then we welcomed Hannah into our home. For four years, we were her foster parents, and today she's here while I'm getting baptized. But just every, you know, just the light in her eyes when she talked about Christianity and Jesus, and it just kind of, you know, wiggled its way into my heart. And every time we go somewhere, all the parents of the kids were just so happy and joyful, and things didn't bother them like things bothered people where I worked and different people in my life. It was just so really just a really—it just really attracted me." Isn't that intriguing?

I saw something in the eyes of my foster daughter and the parents when I would go to take her to church or take her to her Christian school. There was just something different. What? Things didn't seem to bother them like they bothered other people. She's talking about peace. She's talking about she saw the peace of God in people, and eventually, Cindy says it just kind of wiggled its way into my heart. This is what this all adds up to, and this is what we miss so often when we let anger take over. Being a peacemaker is about more than just you feeling peace. It's even about more than just you being peaceful with your neighbors or your family. Being a peacemaker is important because it produces that harvest because when you're a peacemaker, people are drawn to an eternal, soul-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ, and that is far, far, far, far, far more important than winning whatever debate is current in your circles.

That's what it all adds up to. That's why we're called to being peacemakers, because we get to be some of the agents that help bring peace with God and the peace of God that changes people's lives forever. That's part of the promise, and that's part of the privilege that we have when we are Christians. Now look at these five points. Some of you are thinking, "René, this is depressing because frankly I'm just so far from this right. I'd love to be a person of peace, but I let people irritate me. I get grumpy; I get testy." Yeah, me too sometimes. But remember our key verse for this series: the fruit of the spirit is peace, and so on. It's the fruit of what? Your own effort? It's the fruit of what? The Spirit's. It's not a matter of, "I'm going to try. I'm going to try real hard. I'm going to go out. René gave a great talk about peacemaking. I'm going to go out, and I'm going to try real hard not to get mad." Try real hard not to get mad, and somebody cuts you off in the church parking lot on your way out, and you go, "Stop! Serenity now!" and you lay on the horn, right? How many of you have discovered that's—you know, just yelling "serenity now" does not work? Not for long. It's not about willpower; it's about the Spirit's power, the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, we play our part, but we're even empowered to do that by God's Spirit, and that's good news. So I just want to challenge you this week to do something very simple: pray, "Holy Spirit, produce peace in me and through me," and it will incrementally begin to happen. Now, I'm not talking about perfection. Spirit-filled people can be as unkind and insensitive as anybody else, but they apologize, and they learn, and they have mercy on themselves, and they refocus on Jesus. So let's refocus on Jesus and ask God to produce peace in us right now through prayer. Would you bow your heads in your hearts with me? In your heart right now, just quietly pray, "Holy Spirit, produce peace in me and through me." And just in your mind's eye, think of those three types of peace that we talked about, those bullets on page one. You may want to pray, "I need that first peace: peace with God," and so I place my faith in Jesus right now. Some of you may need to pray the second peace: "I need the peace of God. I get freaked out all the time. I need an infusion of supernatural peace of mind." And the third one: we all need peace with others, especially in a provocative, hostile world right now. So in your heart, quietly pray, "Lord, grow me as a peacemaker. That's the most powerful person I can be because it draws people to the eternal God." Lord, as St. Francis said, "Where there is war, where there's hatred, where there's conflict, let me sow seeds of peace." In Jesus' name, amen.