Do Not Think I Came to Bring Peace, But a Sword

 

Christ's 27th Command:

By Brother R. Michel Lankford

 
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. Matthew 10:34 (NKJV)

Please Read: Matthew 10:24-39, (Which is the full context of the command)

 

Understanding the Command

This is not the first time that the Whole Testament challenges us to direct our thinking correctly:
· Deuteronomy 6:4-9 tells us how often we are to think and speak God's Words (cf. Joshua 1:7-8; Psalm 1).
· Isaiah 26:3 tells us to fix and stabilize our minds on Almighty God, and He will keep us in perfect peace when we Trust in Him (cf. John 14:27).
· Isaiah 55:1-9 tells us that redirecting our thinking is part of the repentance which will bring God's abundant forgiveness into our lives.
· The whole gospel account according to Matthew describes to us how to think according to the kingdom of Almighty God.
· Romans 12:1-2 clearly tells us that if we want to know and do the will of God successfully, we must let God renew our minds, so that our thinking patterns and our behaviors will not conform to the sinful and ungodly world (cf. Romans 8:5-8).
· The whole book of Philippians tells us how to keep ourselves encouraged by developing a God and Christ centered mindset.
So as you can see, developing a God centered and Christ centered mindset is a key to living as a successful disciple. Those are just a few examples on how the idea transcends the Whole Testament of Scripture.
The only imperative or command in Matthew 10:34 is, "Do not think..." Once again, Messiah is pointing out that in order to obey God and persevere in obeying God through difficult times, we are going to have to learn to think correctly.

 

Understanding the Principle behind the Command

When Messiah is saying, "Do not think...," He is not seeking or desiring to exercise some mystical form of mind control. He is trying to prepare us for the reality of living in a sinful world. Messiah's trying to prepare us to survive, to overcome, and even help us to thrive in the midst of difficult times. An essential part of doing that is that we must learn to think correctly.
Proverbs 13:12 specifically tells us that, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life." In Biblical language, to hope literally means to place "a confident expectation" in a specific result. According to the proverb we just read, having our confident expectations not be fulfilled, when what we hope for does not come to pass, then we become heartsick. That is why it becomes vital for us to put our hope and our confident expectations in the right place, so that our hopes have a better chance of being fulfilled and less chance of being deferred.
In about 20 years of service to our Lord and Master, I've seen many would-be disciples become utterly crushed because their expectations and hopes were not fulfilled. Without fail, some diligent investigation has always proved that they were expecting God to do something or to prevent something, and the outcome did not occur as they hoped or expected that it would.
Without fully conceiving or admitting it in their conscious mind, many believers believe that God failed them or let them down in some way. The belief that God let them down because their confident hope was deferred and they became heartsick is not accurate of course. Those that correctly place their hope in the Lord will not be disappointed (see Romans 5:1-5; Romans 9:33; Romans 10:11; 1 Peter 2:6).
In my experience, investigation has always proved that the problem was that the disciple actually places their hope in the wrong place. That is to say, they placed their confident expectation towards a result that either God did not actually promise, or if God did indeed promise what they were expecting, the promise was made with conditions attached which the believer clearly did not rightly fulfill, and that is why they did not receive the result they were expecting. The reason that God and Jesus Christ gives us very specific instructions about how we are supposed to think is because God does not want us to put our hopes and expectations in the wrong place, and as a result we would make ourselves heartsick needlessly.
This is why such false teachings and worldly philosophies such as the Roman Catholic's ecumenical movement for example, (which tries to artificially produce unity and peace on earth through control and political means) is so dangerous, because it produces a false representation of what it means to be Christian, and a false expectation at the same time. The Roman Catholic Church is not alone in trying to sell this pipe dream to the body of Christ. Both the seeker sensitive movement and the emerging church movement so prevalent in the Protestant churches have also attempted to push the doctrine of peace and unity on earth at virtually any cost, even if it means abandoning sound biblical doctrine and truth to do it. There are many who will call themselves Christians in our present day who incorrectly believe that the primary goal of the church is to unify the world into a universal lack of conflict. This is a misconception. The primary function of the church is to preach and demonstrate true repentance and how to be disciples who function according to the decrees of the kingdom of God, so that sinners will repent and escape the judgment that is sure to come. That's the primary function of the church.
Beloved, I dislike conflict, confrontation, war and devastation as much, if not more than the average person.
Yes, it would be nice if every heart, if every mind, if every person's will and every soul were correctly aligned and agreeable to Almighty God, to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit. It would be awesome if every human being's goal was to actively overcome their garbage, to correctly obey and apply God's principles, and each one treated their neighbor as they themselves would want to be treated (Matthew 7:12). If all we have to do is make nice and shake hands, it would be great. Wouldn't it be lovely if all we had to do was hold hands with our neighbor swaying back and forth, (in unison of course), and sing Kum ba yah, my lord, Kum ba yah. That would be great. It would also be called the garden of Eden before humankind fell into sin, or the kingdom of God.
As a result of the misconceptions and misplaced expectations such as the ones described above, many people have even taken up the dangerous practice of judging God. Think about it. How many of us have heard the old-line, 'Well, if God was for real, then how come there is so much pain, sorrow, suffering and death in the world?'
The answer is simple. It's called SIN. When God gave us the world, it was in perfect order. When God first gave us the world, there was no evil. At that time, there was no sorrow, no disease and no death (Genesis chapters 1-2). Almighty God gave humanity (Adam and Eve, and we their descendants) were given the stewardship and guardianship of the perfect world He created. In Genesis 3, we see that humankind started listening to and then obeying the devil instead of obeying God.
Each successive generation has since followed the exact same pattern of devastation. The answer to the skeptical question, "Well, if God is for real then why is the world in such a mess?" When God gave it to us it wasn't a mess. We are in the mess we're in because each successive generation disobeys God and listens to the devil, and satan then takes unfair advantage of the mileage that we give him. We sin, and we are the ones who bring devastation into the world. Beloved, we need to quit blaming God for our sins and the wreckage it creates.
The truth is that right now, we don't live in the garden of Eden anymore, nor do we live in the kingdom of God yet. There will be a time when God renews all things. At that time there will be no more sin or sorrow, no more pain and no more death for the people of God (Daniel 9:24; Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1-9). Until that time arrives, our job is to repent and turn away from evil, persevere and grow in knowing and obeying Almighty God and Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can overcome the evil that is in the world through our faith (1 John 5:1-5; Revelation 21:7).
In the meantime we can seek for peace, we can pursue peace, (Psalm 34:14; Romans 12:18), but we should by no means set our hopes and expectations there, because our hopes will be deferred if we place our hope and peace on earth while we are in our present age (Jeremiah 6:14). Until the great day of the ultimate Restoration finally arrives, Messiah tells us that He did not come to bring peace. He specifically tells us not to put our expectations there, lest our hopes be deferred and we would lose heart. God's people have a lot to persevere through and overcome before we finally see The Great Day of Restoration, and we need to be prepared. That's why Messiah tells us exactly what we should expect in the meantime:
· If you love Almighty God and Jesus Christ and your goal is to do right in His eyes, then we should expect that both the sinful world, and those in the religious world who are hypocrites will hate and revile us for it, just as they did the Messiah (Matthew 10:24-25; John 3:16-21; Matthew 5:12).
· If you love Almighty God and Jesus Christ and your goal is to do right in His eyes, then we should expect persecution and not applause, at least not yet (Matthew 5:11; John 16:1-4; James 1:2-4; 2 Timothy 3:13).
When God's word instructs us to direct our thinking a particular way, He does so for a particular reason. He does it for our protection. God knows the future and we do not. When God tells us to think or not to think in a certain manner, it is because He does not want us to put our hope and expectation in the wrong place. He does not want us to get our hope deferred and to make ourselves heartsick when our misplaced expectations are not fulfilled.

 

Successfully Obeying the Command

As with every Biblical command, the most important discussion to have is, "How do I obey this command successfully?" This is a particularly tough question to ask whenever the commands and promises of God we encounter lean contrary to our preferences are comforts, but that is when it is most particularly important to ask this question and take steps in agreement with God's direction because it will take more than just the usual effort. So how can we strengthen ourselves to persevere in the midst of difficult times and overcome them? This is by no means an exhaustive scriptural list, but here are the basic instructions:
1. Acknowledge and admit your present difficulties. Bring them to the Lord. Admit them, do not deny them, but commit both yourself and your present difficulties to the Lord. Ask God to help you to be especially careful so that you will continue to apply His Words and Principles correctly in the midst of your present challenge (Psalm 37:1-9).
2. Reframe your situation within your mind. This is one of the hardest things to do, but it is an absolute must if we are to overcome successfully. We have to remember that in this world we will have tribulation (John 16:33). We will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12). We should not be surprised when it occurs, (1 Peter 4:12). What we have to remember is to reframe them in our mind. That is to say, we have to attach the correct meaning behind our suffering.
a). Our sufferings and challenges are known to God. He is not unaware of them, and yes He does care about us in the midst of them (Matthew 10:29).
b). We must remember that God intends to use our weaknesses challenges and difficulties for our ultimate well-being, in order to refine and transform us into the nature and character of His Son Jesus Christ. Remember that our pains and challenges are intended to transform and restore us, and never to destroy us (Psalm 106:1; Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:28; James 1:2-4; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Romans 5:1-5; Revelation 21:7). The key; the difficult part is to persevere in trusting and obeying God and continuing to do what pleases Him until our victories are manifest. That's the tough part, but it makes the difference between restoration or ruin. The scariest part is that the choice is in our own hands (Galatians 6:7-10).
c). The last thing we have to remember when we are trying to reframe our challenging situations in our mind is to remember to turn the tables. Think about it. If the persecutions, the trials, the tribulations and the challenges are happening just as Messiah forewarned us they would, then in one sense this too should serve to actually increase our hope in our minds. That's because, if the difficult times which Christ's forewarned are happening just as He said they would, then that means that the promises and benefits of persevering in obeying God and keeping faith in Jesus Christ are also equally true, and therefore, this should serve as an encouragement to us to persevere until we successfully overcome.
3. Abide in the Words of God and Jesus Christ (John 15:1-11): We hear that word a lot in church, but very often we get so busy that we don't take time to really digest what it truly means to "Abide." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) actually describes the word abide quite well. To abide means to endure and wait for without yielding. In the biblical sense, to abide literally means that we take up residence and establish our lives in a particular location. In this case, we are to take up residence, establish our lives, practice doing God's word repeatedly, endure and wait in the words of God and Jesus Christ without yielding that position. If we learn to do that we will eventually win and overcome through whatever difficulties we encounter.
Prayer: Almighty God, Lord Jesus Messiah, and gracious Lord Holy Spirit, have mercy on us. We do not relish difficult times, but your word makes it very clear that we will have them. Resenting it, resisting it, whining complaining, grumbling, and fretting about it only wastes valuable energy that we need in order to overcome, so please help us not to do that. Help us to think correctly so that we will not be deceived or disillusioned. By your grace and mercy, help us to respond correctly to our difficulties. Help us to abide in Your Word. Help us to correctly do Your Word, and help us to persevere in doing Your Word until we thoroughly overcome. In Christ's name, amen.