Preaching on "Not peace, but division"

Artist unknown. Retrieved here.  

On August 18, I had the honor of preaching at Arusha Community Church, which is a non-denominational international church with English-language services. The text was Luke 12:49-56, where Jesus tells a crowd that he did not come to bring peace, but fire.

I really enjoyed diving into this, and I think the Holy Spirit put some things in my life to make this particular scripture not just relevant, but urgent.

Part of the text is about division within families that will affect believers. It feels like division is increasing and people are unwilling to look past differences in values. I think Jesus was warning the crowd that things won't be easy for followers of his, but he was not condoning conflict within families. I have a friend who is an elder who came from a polygamous family, and he told me a story. He said that when his father decided to become a Christian, he was made to choose which of his wives would be the 'official' wife. The other wife then was cast aside and came to hate Christianity, seeing it as an evil wind that divided her family. It was only decades later, soon before she died, that one of her co-wife's children (my friend) helped lead her toward reconciliation with the family and she even asked to be baptized.

Even though the coming of Christ brought division, it also made a path toward reconciliation – both between each other and between us and God.