Sunday Worship Service Livestream


October 19, 2025
  • Welcome and Announcements
  • Your Grace is Enough
  • Prayer of Invocation
  • This Is Amazing Grace
  • Grace Greater Than Our Sin
  • Scripture Reading: Psalm 122
  • Only By Grace
  • Pastor's Message - Peacemaker
  • Grace Flows Down



Psalm 122

  • 1 I was glad when they said to me, "Let's go to the house of the Lord."
    2 Our feet are standing within your gates, Jerusalem,
    3 Jerusalem, that has been built as a city that is firmly joined together;
    4 To which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord - an ordinance for Israel- to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
    5 For thrones were set there for judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
    6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May they prosper who love you.
    7 May peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces."
    8 For the sake of my brothers and my friends, I will now say, "May peace be within you."
    9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.


SERMON NOTES - Peacemaker

INTRODUCTION
  • Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God
  • "Of all the Beatitudes, this is the one most likely to meet with the approval of almost everyone who reads it, regardless of whether the reader is a Christian. Nor is it difficult to see why this should be the case. Surely none but the most bitterly militant would object to peacemaking and none but the most blatantly atheistic refuse to be numbered among the 'sons of God'? Superficially, this would seem to be the least controversial and the least revolutionary of the Beatitudes. Any philosophy which advocates peace has emotional and universal appeal, and one of the main reasons why this appeal is so powerful is humanity's horrifying record of armed conflict." - John Blanchard

THE MEANING OF PEACE
  • In the Old Testament the best-known word for peace is the Hebrew shalom.
  • Shalom means much more than the absence of conflict or war. The root of the word "shalom" is related to the concept of being complete or sound, indicating that true peace involves a holistic state of flourishing. It means wholeness, completeness, or safety.

THE NEED FOR PEACE
  • What we have in common is that the lack of peace is because we human beings cannot get along. Our problem with one another goes to a deeper issue, a more serious conflict - our relationship with God.
  • "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." - Ephesians 2:1-3
  • "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." - John 3:16-19
  • There are two verbs in this verse in the present tense which indicates, present, continual, ongoing, habitual action. He who believes in the Son has eternal life. If you are a true believer in Jesus, if you have been born from above, you have and will continue to have eternal life.
  • But if a person does not believe in Jesus, then not only does he not have eternal life, but the wrath of God abides on him. There is no neutral ground in this verse. If you do not know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are already under the wrath of God.
  • This is where we all are when we enter this world. We do not have peace with God because we are all spiritually dead, separated from Him because of our sin.
  • The reason we don't have lasting peace is because of our sin.

THE PROVISION OF PEACE
  • "But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall." - Ephesians 2:13-14
  • The only way we can have peace and the only way we can be peacemakers is to be in a right relationship with God through Jesus, a relationship which give us peace with God.
  • "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." - Romans 5:1
  • Peacemakers are at peace with God and experience the peace of God. When that is true, peacemakers also have peace with others.
  • In terms of our relationship with one another, every Christian is to be a peacemaker. (Ephesians 4:1-3; Colossians 3:15)
  • Peacemakers are people who are committed to the ministry of reconciliation, people who bring a message of peace to people so that they might be brought into harmony with the God from whom they have been alienated. When you share the gospel with someone, when you tell people about Jesus and how they can have a relationship with Him as their Lord and Savior, you are the kind of peacemaker that this Beatitude means.
  • The reward of peacemakers is that they are recognized as true children of God.