Still prayin'! Still prayin'! Gettin' right with Jesus!

My sermon yesterday at Providence Church was on Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

(click to listen)

Peacemaking is a characteristic of those who have been born again and are children of God, with all the rights, privileges thereunto from "sonship." I broke our peacemaking obligation up into two varieties, the vertical and the horizontal.

Yesterday we focused on making peace between people and God (i.e., vertically):

• positionally (e.g., Rom 5:1) - through proclaiming the peacemaking power of the cross in evangelism (Is 53:5; Col 1:20)
• experientially (e.g., 2 Thes 3:16) - through repentance, prayer (Phil 4:6-7), restorative church discipline (Matt 18:15-20), and church involvement (Heb 10:24-25)

Next week we'll focus on making peace between people (i.e., horizontally).

The following are a few quotes I shared in yesterday's sermon:

"It's been said that peace is that glorious brief moment in history when everyone stops to reload."
-John F. MacArthur, Jr.

"My pappy was a pistol; I'm a son of a gun. Dang me. Dang me. They oughta take a rope and hang me. High, from the highest tree. Woman would you weep for me?"
-Roger Miller, “Dang Me”

"even though by nature we are rebels against God and have committed high treason and are worthy to be eternally court-marshaled and hanged by the neck until dead, nevertheless God has sacrificed his own Son and now declares amnesty free and clear to any who will lay down their arms of independence and come home to faith."
-John Piper