A world in which people cannot live in peace with one another
is a world
in which God’s name and the love that He stands for, and
Good character cannot truly be known nor developed.
Subject: Sermon on Peace and forgiving
We are commanded to PURSUE PEACE
Not WAR!
BUT: EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO RESTORE PEACE
IT TAKES “MORE” CHARACTER to eat crow and TO MAKE PEACE, rather than to make WAR.
And
the effort required to restore peace can seem disproportionate to the reward.
AND
It is easier to let a relationship stay broken, than to do the uncomfortable work of repairing it.
Attention: Donald Trump.
But God’s servant Aaron didn’t wait TO MAKE PEACE and he showed us to go humbly to people to MAKE= “CREATE” PEACE. Aaron pursued peace:
Editor’s Note:
Pursuing peace means that “YOU” yourself go about looking for it= looking to create peace.
And more importantly WORK AT IT. Aaron had learned, from God’s Bible:
That if even God Himself was willing to erase His own name for the sake of peace between a husband and wife.
Therefore no effort on Aaron’s part/or our part is too great.
A broken relationship, left unrepaired, may “not” recover so easily, or may NEVER recover!
And you will suffer loss.
Therefore “WORK” at creating PEACE
AND THAT WILL BENEFIT you, IN THE FUTURE.
There is a pile of papers sitting in my house that I cannot throw away. Prayerbooks with torn covers, printed Bible commentaries, pages from Sermons I have given — all of them waiting for burial because they contain the PRINTED name of God, and you simply do not put God’s Name in the trash. Every observant home has a pile like this.
Written in God’s Bible in Numbers 5:23 is the account of a man who thinks his wife is unfaithful to him:
The man has grown suspicious of his wife. But he has no witnesses, no proof — only suspicion, and the cloud it casts over their marriage, is wrecking love for his wife and will wreck his marriage.
BECAUSE: Left unresolved, that suspicion will poison everything.
An “interesting” Scenario is found in the Bible:
God’s Bible has a solution to this peace problem and the Bible prescribes an elaborate procedure:
The woman is brought before the minister privately at the Church Office, and a solemn oath is administered, and then:
The Minister writes:
Numbers 5:23 refers to the Sotah ritual (suspected adulteress) in the Bible. The minister writes specific curses on a scroll and then dissolves ("rubs off") the ink into the "water of bitterness" (a mixture of holy water and dust. The woman drinks it as part of an ordeal to determine her guilt or innocence regarding suspected adultery.
From Numbers 5:19-22 Here is the example of the Key Curses from the Procedure:
Sample Letter/Testimony for the Woman
Here is a sample letter written from the perspective of the woman in the Sotah ritual. This is a modern explanatory reconstruction to help you understand the emotional and ritual context. It is not a historical document but a way to personalize the verses:
This is My Testimony Before the Lord and the Priest:
To the Priest and to my husband, and before the God of Israel:
I stand here in the Tabernacle, my hair unbound as a sign of humility and openness before God. I hold the offering of jealousy in my hands. I come not in defiance but to clear my name and prove my faithfulness.
I swear by the name of the Lord: I have not gone astray. I have not defiled myself with another man while under my husband’s authority. No other man has known me.
If I have lied and betrayed my husband, may these curses written by the priest enter me through this bitter water:
But if I am innocent and have spoken truth, may these waters bring no harm. May they prove my purity, and may the Lord bless me to conceive and bear seed for my husband.
Amain, Amain.
I drink this water of bitterness willingly, trusting in the justice of the Almighty who knows the secrets of the heart. Let the truth be revealed in my body, for nothing is hidden from Him.
Signed in faith,
[Woman’s Name]
Daughter of_______ [Father’s Name],
Wife of ________[Husband’s Name]
This letter captures the spirit of the oath and self-malediction (self-curse) in the text. The woman actively consents by saying "Amain, Amain," even as the ritual is largely administered by the Priest. It highlights themes of truth-seeking, divine judgment, and public vindication or shame.
The priest first administers an oath, and the woman responds with "Amain, Amain" (affirming acceptance of the consequences). The main curses written and dissolved into the water include:
These effects serve as both proof (divine judgment) and punishment. The ritual combines oath, sympathetic physical action of words dissolved into the drink, and ordeal. It was designed for cases lacking witnesses, emphasizing divine discernment over human evidence.
1.) the curses written on the scroll are
2.) put into the water by washing the ink off into bitter water.
3.) The woman then drinks the water.
וְכָתַב אֶת־הָאָלֹת הָאֵלֶּה הַכֹּהֵן בַּסֵּפֶר וּמָחָה אֶל־מֵי הַמָּרִים׃
The Kohen shall put these curses down in writing and rub it off into the water of bitterness.
The Sages teach that the name of God was written into those curses — and therefore the name of God dissolves into the water that the woman drinks. The woman drinks the water, and the truth comes out.
But a conundrum arises:
The Sages confront the obvious question directly. How can the Torah command the erasure/washing off of God’s own name?
The answer it gives is terse and astonishing: For the sake of Peace between husband and wife.
That is the entire explanation. No lengthy qualification, no elaborate legal reasoning. God’s name is dissolved into water, and the reason given is simply that peace between two people matters enough to justify it.
The Sages understood this as a statement of God’s own priorities. He is not a distant sovereign indifferent to the lives of ordinary people struggling in their marriages and families. He is invested in their peace. And
God himself is willing to pay a price — measured in the sanctity of His own name — to help
restore PEACE.
The erasure of the Divine Name in this ritual became, for the Sages, the paradigmatic proof that peace — wholeness, harmony between people — sits at the very top of God’s hierarchy of values. Not because conflict doesn’t matter, not because truth is unimportant, but
because a world in which people cannot live in peace with one another is a world in which God’s name cannot truly be known.
All this is worth knowing — and it helps explain Aaron as one of the most beloved figures in the entire Torah.
Aaron, the High Priest and older brother of Moses, was famous throughout Israel not primarily for his priestly duties but for something more personal:
He pursued peace between people
with extraordinary dedication.
The Sages instruct: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace.” The Sages record that when Aaron heard of two people who had quarreled, he would go to each of them separately and tell them that the other had expressed regret and wanted to reconcile. —
By the time the two met again, the anger had dissolved, and peace was restored.
We live in a world that generates conflict with extraordinary efficiency.
Social media rewards outrage.
Political culture rewards division.
Even within families and communities, grievances accumulate,
suspicions harden.
Therefore:
EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO RESTORE PEACE and
the effort required to restore peace can seem disproportionate to the reward.
It is easier to let a relationship stay broken than to do the uncomfortable work of repairing it.
But Aaron didn’t wait for people to come to him. He pursued peace — He pursued peace — went looking for it, And more importantly worked for it, even going privately to both parties to achieve it. He had learned, it seems, from the Torah he served: that if God Himself was willing to erase His own name for the sake of peace between a husband and wife, no effort on Aaron’s part was too great.
BUT a broken relationship, left unrepaired, may “not” recover so easily, or ever.
And you will suffer loss.
Therefore “WORK” at creating PEACE
AND THAT WILL BENEFIT you,
IN “YOUR” FUTURE.
TO COG The Obedient Church of God
https://1stCenturyChristian.com/start.html