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Feb 17, 2019

Family Business

Family Business

Passage: Matthew 5:9

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: The Highest Good

Every relationship is liable to rupture. Yet our own physical bodies do better in their efforts to rush healing to ruptures than our souls do? Why? How can the peace wrought by Jesus lead us to seek true peace when we’d prefer rupture--or a false peace?

Order of Worship

Pre-Service Text: Isaiah 52:7
Call To Worship: from Psalm 29
Old Testament Reading: Various passages from the Psalms (29:11, 34:14, 85:8-10, 4:8)
Sermon Title: Family Business
Central Text: Matthew 5:9
Confession of Sin / Assurance of Pardon (See below)
Assurance of Pardon: Psalm 103:12
Response: Communion
Benediction: Ephesians 2:14-17
Post-Service Text: John 20:21

02.17.19 Sermon Notes

Illustration

Joyeux Noel

Scriptures & Readings

Pre-Service Text: Isaiah 52:7
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Call To Worship: from Psalm 29
LEADER: Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

ALL: The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters.

LEADER: The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.

ALL: May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace!


Old Testament Reading: Various passages from the Psalms
May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace! (29:11)

Turn away from evil and do good;
seek peace and pursue it. (34:14)

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints;
but let them not turn back to folly.
Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other. (85:8-10)

In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. (4:8)

Central Text: Matthew 5:9
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Confession of Sin / Assurance of Pardon...
We confess before you Father our blindness of heart, our poverty of life, our littleness, our meanness, and our sin. We have not followed after Christ. We have not given love to the loveless and the lost. We have not eased the burdens of those around us who are weighed down in guilt and shame. Forgive us, Lord. Change our lives. Uphold us when the temptations of the world press upon us. Strengthen us when our hearts grow weak, and hope flickers and fails within us. Guide us home by your light, O Christ, where shadows are no more. Amen.

Assurance of Pardon: Psalm 103:12

as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

Benediction: Ephesians 2:14-17
ALL: 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

LEADER: 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

Post-Service Text: John 20:21
21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Related Scriptures

Psalm 4:8, 34.14
Psalm 29:11
Psalm 85:8-10
Isaiah 26:3
Isaiah 52:7
Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11
Luke 2:14
Luke 10:5f
Luke 19:42
John 14:27, 16:33
John 20:21
Romans 5:1
Romans 8:14
Romans 14:17, 19
Romans 16:20
Ephesians 2:14-17
Philippians 4:6-9
Colossians 1:19-20
Colossians 3:15
1 Thessalonians 5:23-
2 Thessalonians 3:16
Hebrews 12:14
James 3:18
1 Peter 3:10-11

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. Worst fight you’ve ever had--with a friend, spouse, or someone else? “Best” fight you’ve ever had? Why?
  2. What are all the alternatives to making peace between parties at odds? Why do they seem preferable? What’s hard about seeking to make peace--either between you and another or between two parties?
  3. What are several reasons that it is good news that Jesus has made peace between us and God by His blood?
  4. How does this beatitude fit with Jesus’s claim that He came not to “bring peace, but a sword”?
  5. Why does His making that peace motivate our walking in His way as a fellow son of God through peacemaking?
  6. Where and why might this call to peacemaking apply in your life right now? What’s keeping you from it? Why? What help do you need?

Quotes:

  • It is an act of profound faith to entrust one's most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously. Walter Brueggemann
  • After you've both decided
    You were missing something that you need
    The ways that you were too short-sighted
    Get easier for you to see
    After all the expectations
    Shatter on the kitchen floor
    You just see another human suffering
    And wonder what the war was for - from David Wilcox’s “Start With the Ending”
  • There has never been a good war and never a bad peace. - Michael Jürgs, The Small Peace in the Great War
  • History and experience teaches us that there can be no reconciliation without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. And there can be no confession without truth.- Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise
  • He who learns to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation. - Robert Estabrook
  • Be a reconciler and a mediator between your neighbors. Carry the best to both sides; but keep quiet about the bad, which the devil has inspired, or explain it the best way you can. But if you must talk about an evil deed, do as Christ said: go straight to the party and admonish. - Martin Luther
  • . . .man is unable to rule over the lower things unless he in turn submits to the rule of a higher being. And this is the peace promised on earth to men of good will. - Augustine
  • I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
    and the war horse from Jerusalem;
    and the battle bow shall be cut off,
    and he shall speak peace to the nations;
    his rule shall be from sea to sea,
    and from the River to the ends of the earth. - Zechariah 9:10

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