Matthew 10:34-42 Pentecost 5 Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
July 2, 2023
Families are great…sometimes. Hopefully, most of the time! But you know how things can get. One family member knows just how to get at another to provoke them. Or someone says something offensive and the sparks fly! Some of you have experienced this, and it’s not good. There are brothers and sisters and parents who don’t speak to each other anymore. Even the closest of families can experience divisions because of words that are spoken. It’s painful—and I may have dredged up some of that hurt for you just now. I want you to think about that division, that separation, that loss and how it feels. And think about the role God’s Word has played in all that difficulty and division—if it has. Jesus talks about that today as he teaches us that A Christian Loves God Above All This Brings Earthly Opposition Jesus expected opposition—and he got it. What do you think about the way he talked about that? “Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. You might find that surprising. It might be confusing. At the birth of Jesus, angels descended to earth with this announcement: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind” (Luke 2:14). At the time of Jesus, the disciples and many others were looking for a Savior for Israel who would bring national independence and peace for the Lord’s people. And yet, Jesus says that this is not why he came. A sword—a thing that damages and divides and destroys—that’s what he came to bring! What?! That does not sound like the gentle, loving Jesus I have pictured in my mind. At issue is the kind of peace that Jesus came to bring and the way people react to that, which results in the need for a “sword,” which we’ll talk about in a minute. Jesus was born on that Bethlehem night to bring, not a worldly peace of any kind, but a spiritual peace. He came to live in a way that makes up for the sinful way everyone in the world is and lives. He came to offer that life as a sacrifice that God would accept and which would pay for all people’s sin. This would bring a spiritual peace to the people of this world. That’s what the angels were excited about and what caused the shepherds to run from the newborn Savior’s side and tell everyone about his birth! Jesus came to show himself as the Savior who had been promised to come. He came to tell people to trust in him for forgiveness and salvation—for spiritual peace with God. But you know how people are. You know how you are. We are often most concerned with what we experience in our day-to-day life instead of prioritizing our eternal life. So, we do dumb things that God tells us not to do in order to try to manufacture peace in our lives.