Not Peace but a Sword

Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church, Pinetop, Arizona

Rev. Michael “Mick” Mathews

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – June 28, 2026

Sermon: “Not Peace but a Sword”     Matthew 10:34–42

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The reading from Matthew’s Gospel for today is a continuation of what we’ve heard the previous two Sundays. It’s all part of what Jesus said to His twelve apostles as He sent them out to preach that “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:3). As part of that teaching, Jesus said something that still sounds shocking to us today. Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).

The idea that Jesus did not come to bring peace on earth but rather a sword – to bring violence and even death – seems to fly in the face of what the angels said about Him at His birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). And a little earlier in His instructions to the twelve, Jesus had spoken about them bringing peace to the houses and people who received them and their words (Matthew 10:13). So I think we need to understand that Jesus here is not talking about what He intends to do – what His purpose is. Instead, He is talking about what will often be the result. Jesus intends to bring a message of peace with God that comes from His payment for our sins at the cross. But Jesus knows that many will reject that message – sometimes violently – so He gets His apostles (and us) ready for that reaction.

In a similar way, Paul in Romans chapter 7 talks about another bad reaction that sometimes results from hearing God’s Word. Sometimes when sinners hear God’s Law, God’s commandments, they don’t react by correcting their behavior to get in line with God’s command. Sometimes sinners end up wanting to do even more of what God’s Law says not to do. Paul says, “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness’ (Romans 7:7–8). Being told not to do something will often cause us to want to do the very thing we were told not to do.

Think of what might happen if a mother goes to her children who are playing outside and tells them, “Don’t eat the cookies I just baked. Leave them on the kitchen counter until after dinner.” The kids may not have even realized that mom was baking cookies. But now that they know they are there, they can’t stop thinking about eating a cookie – or two or three – even before dinner. The temptation to eat a cookie now may even lead them to scheme how they could sneak a cookie without mom noticing – and they may even try to do it. But none of that would have happened if mom hadn’t said, “Don’t eat the cookies.”

Does that mean the command itself was bad? No, the problem isn’t in the command. It’s in the heart and mind of the one who hears the command. As Paul says, “the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). But the sin that lives within each of us is often aroused by the commandments to do the very things that are forbidden. That shows us just how sinful we really are: “sinful beyond measure” (Romans 7:13). Even when God’s Word points us the right way to go and warns us of the dangers of doing the wrong thing, we sinners too often want to run for the things that are wrong and jump into them.

The love that sinners have for doing what is wrong is what leads them to react violently against Jesus’ message. Jesus calls us to turn away from sin so that we might have peace with God through Him. But there are many who don’t want to give up their sin, and who will react violently against anyone who calls them to give it up.

Jesus warns us that speaking His message could even set us against the closest members of our earthly families: son against father, daughter against mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. When the members of your own household reject Jesus’ message, will you stand firm with Jesus, or will you give up on Jesus to stand with those close to you?

This was not just an issue in Jesus’ time. It’s a real question for today. For example, how many people have declared God’s truth that homosexual behavior is sinful – until their son or daughter reveals that they are in a same-sex relationship and invites them to come to their same-sex wedding? How will you respond if your son or grandson or nephew tells you that he is more comfortable living as a woman and wants you to call him by a female name rather than his given name? What if it’s a daughter or granddaughter or niece who thinks that she should live as a man? Will you give in and call them by their new name, and thereby give support to their wrong thinking and wrong behavior? Or will you be firm in using their given name, refusing to go along with what you know to be wrong? And will you do that even if they threaten to cut you out of their life if you don’t go along?

It’s heart wrenching to think about, and even more heart wrenching to go through – and some of you may have already gone through those things or something similar. But Jesus tells us, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). Family members may ask us to choose between Jesus and them. Choose Jesus, even knowing that the resulting separation from family members will drive a sword through your heart. Jesus tells us that “whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). Giving up on Jesus for the sake of family will result in you losing everything in the end. At God’s final judgment, your family will be lost and so will you. But those who continue to trust in Jesus, even if they lose everything now, will find eternal life with Him.

Jesus knows that following Him will not be an easy path, and He wants us to know it too. The path that Jesus took led Him to the suffering and death of the cross. But He still went there willingly, because God does not want anyone to perish but for everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Jesus knew that His death was the only way to rescue us sinners. We can’t pay for our own sins. We can’t stop our sinful hearts from wanting to do the things that God’s commandments tell us not to do. So Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He followed all of God’s commands perfectly. Even though He was tempted in all that ways that we are, He remained without sin. And He offered up His perfect life on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve.

So Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow Him (Matthew 10:38). It’s a call to die to our own way of living, to die to sin that we might live for Him, just as He died for us and now lives again for us. Jesus uses our Baptism to join us to Himself in His death and resurrection. We die to sin and the law through the body of Christ (Romans 7:14). Along with Christ, we die to what previously held us captive. Now we are free to live a new life in Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit (Romans 7:6).

That life in Christ will be shaped by the cross. It will often bring us not peace but a sword, not comfort but conflict. But though there are some things that are lost to us in following Christ, there is much more to be gained, as Paul says in Philippians: 8 … I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8–11).

The world may give you no peace from following Jesus, but the peace of God which passes understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Jeremiah 28:5 Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Hananiah the prophet in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD, 6 and the prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD make the words that you have prophesied come true, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the LORD, and all the exiles. 7 Yet hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. 8 The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. 9 As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet.”

Romans 7:1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Romans 7:4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Romans 7:7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Romans 7:13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:40 “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. 41 The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 42 And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”

Deuteronomy 13:6-8 “If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him.