Mat 5:9; Peace Is the Well-being and Harmony of People.

Class Outline:

Tuesday April 30, 2024

 

Idea: Biblical peace is the harmony, well-being, and wholeness of people together.

 

MAT 5:9

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

 

Definition of peace:

Communal wholeness, well-being, health, satisfaction, a group enjoying prosperity, relationship of friendly alliance, covenant relationship, initiation of a covenant relationship, and salvation (gospel of peace). A state of concord, peace, harmony (between nations, in personal relationships, good order).

 

Peace is from God to person; person to person; wholeness of self.

 

Mankind was always meant to live together in love and brotherhood in the peaceful presence of God with God providing abundant prosperity. 

 

The Hebrew word is shalom. Shalom is the way things ought to be.

 

Shalom is of God’s making and not our own:

Peace comes between people and groups as it does between us and God - His way.

       

The ruining of Shalom is sin. God defines sin and only God can solve it. The concept of peace (shalom) helps us therefore to enlarge our understanding of sin.

 

Sin offends God’s righteousness, but it also offends and assaults what God has made: shalom (the way things are supposed to be). Sin is vandalism of peace.

 

What peace is not: It is not created by us. Peacemakers are bringing Christ to the situation. 

 

We cannot bring the kingdom of God to earth. We can make peace (the concord of the kingdom) in our kitchens, 1CO 10:31. 

 

Peace is not made with our own preferences. 

 

Scriptural examples of peace. OT: EZE 37:24-28; ISA 32:14-20 [comment vs. 19]; 60:17-22; 65:17; 66:10-17; PRO 3:17; 12:20; 16:7. 

 

NT: ACT 9:31 (communal love of early church); ROM 8:6; 14:19-20 (pursue peace and don’t let non-essentials be a cause for war); EPH 2:14; 4:3; 6:23; 1TH 5:13; 2TI 2:22; HEB 12:14; JAM 3:18. 

 

Application: The valuable things God has given you cannot be stolen and were designed to be shared.

 

Reach out. Do not let individualism interfere (ROM 12:9-10). 

 

Bible Concordance: “One another.”  

 

Shalom is made, not just in the moment of confrontation with a person or group, but long before in thinking and behavior. 

 

Obey the Lord in all things and you will establish peace long before it flowers into visibility.