All That Jesus Taught : Bible Study Part 13 | Zac Poonen

We turn once again to the gospel Matthew 28:20 to see the part of the great commission that’s been neglected, generally speaking by most Christians. That is when you go in to every nation, make disciples in every nation, those who follow Jesus totally and then teach them to do all that I commanded you. We’ve been studying all that Jesus commanded or all that Jesus taught which we are to first of all practice ourselves and then teach others. We were looking in Matthew 5 about the 9 right attitudes that Jesus spoke of, first of all. We looked at 6 of them in verses 3 to 8 and now we want to look from verses 9 to 12.

First of all verse 9, blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called sons of God. Do we have the right to call ourselves the sons of God? It’s not our calling ourselves. Here it says they shall be called sons of God. That means God’s going to call us his sons when we are peace makers. We must have a reputation as peace makers. The opposite of a peace maker is a trouble maker. What is your reputation in your church? Maybe you say “I’m not a trouble maker. I’m not a peace maker” you’re neutral. Well, then you can’t be called the son of God. It says here, blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called son of God, those who are always seeking for peace. You remember when Jesus was born the angels from heaven came saying, peace on earth, glory to God in the highest (Luke 2:14) and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased. God is pleased with those who pursue after peace. The world is a world full of all types of quarrels and fighting, and grumbling, and murmuring, and complaining. If we were to look at this earth from heaven standpoint, we see it filled with darkness because of murmuring, grumbling, complaining, etc. and in the midst of this darkness there are few spots of light. Those are the children of God, the sons of God and 1 mark of these sons of God is they are peace makers.

If you turn to Philippians 2, you find the same thing repeated there. Why does it say in Philippians 2 that we must do all things without grumbling, and disputing, and complaining? Philippians 2:14, every single thing in our life we must do without any grumbling, without any complaining, without any disputing. That’s a pretty high standard. But it says here Philippians 2:15, that is the only way we can prove ourselves to be blameless, innocent children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation and that is the only way as light in this dark world. How is that? What is the darkness? murmuring, grumbling, complaining. What is the light? People who make peace and do not grumble or complain. “Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called sons of God”. When Jesus sends out his disciples to the people of Israel he appointed 70 (Luke 10:1) to go 2 by 2 ahead of him to every place where he himself is going to come. He said “When you go to a town, look for a man of peace”. He said “Whenever you enter a house (Luke 10:5) say ‘Peace be to this house’ and if a man of peace is there your peace will rest upon him but if not, it will return to you.