Peace
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
According to wisevoter.com there are currently 35 countries at war.
Around the world people are killing and being killed all the time. Besides war countless numbers of men and women and children are murdered, or comit suicide all the time.
There are more slaves in the world now than ever, and people are kidnapping and abusing children at a terrible rate.
73 million unborn children are aborted around the world every year according to the World Health Organization, making heart diseases’ 9 million deaths a very distant second.
Families fight and break up, people are in constant conflict all around us. The internet is aflame with conflict all the time and it seems to be getting worse as the years go on, especially since 2020.
We are more than ever aware of just how much anger and hatred there is in the world, and the more connected the world becomes the more true this becomes.
It’s facts like these that inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Poem “Christmas Bells” that was eventually set to music as the song “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Longfellow had lost his wife in a fire and his son had been severely injured in the American Civil War when he penned these verses, some of which didn’t make it into the Christmas Carol we often sing:
Then from each black, accursed mouth, The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned, Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent, The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn, The households born, Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song, Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
What response do we have to those words knowing what we know about the evil and the violence in the world? How can we every advent light a candle called peace and claim that Jesus Christ was born to bring peace to the earth when 2000 years have come and gone and there is no peace?
For that answer we as disciples of Jesus turn to God’s word for an answer. What does the Bible have to say about peace? Key to understanding what the Bible says about peace is understanding the Hebrew Word Shalom. When the Bible talks about peace most of the time it’s referring to this Hebrew concept of Shalom. This is even in the background when the writers of the New Testament use the Greek word for peace. What is Shalom?
Well Shalom like the english word peace does include the idea of an absence of conflict, but it’s more than that. It’s also everything that you gain when there’s no conflict: inner serenity, calm, rest, abundance, wholeness.
This is what a Jewish person was wishing on others when they greeted them with the word Shalom, as many still do today. So why don’t we see shalom in our world today? Well let’s take a look in Dickens style at the history and future of peace on earth, and discuss:
The peace that Was
The peace that Is
The peach that’s Yet to Come
The Peace That Was
The Peace That Was
The world was not always this way. When God created the world He created a world of Shalom. Try to picture it with me, the world that God created and called very good. It had plants and animals of various kinds and it even had human beings, but God gave to those first human beings a beautiful Garden called Eden. Everything was in harmony and there was no sin and death. Food was abundantly available without any toil.
How would you like to live a life of peace in a beautiful lush garden where you never have to work, and where no one treats you wrong and your kids are perfectly well behaved? Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Sadly it was not to last. Of all the trees in the garden God told the first humans, Adam and Eve, that they were not supposed to eat the fruit from a tree called “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” But the crafty serpent talked Eve into eating that fruit and suddenly things were not the way they once were. The human couple knew evil now, but sadly they knew it by experience. They broke and cursed mankind and the whole world, and for it they were cast out of the garden and made to toil both to reproduce and to eat. Not long after the first muderer Cain slew his brother Abel. A long history of war and death began to unfold. Until things got so bad that we read in Genesis 6:5-7
When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.”
But even after the flood wickedness was the way of most men. So God chose Abram and founded a nation to whom He gifted an abundant land, and promised that if they kept their part of the covenant that they would experience Shalom in the land He was giving to them.
I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to frighten you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.
So Israel was given a chance to experience Shalom, and from time to time especially under King David, King Solomon, and King Hezekiah, the people of Israel got to experience tastes of God’s Shalom peace. This peace is what inspired David to write Psalm 23
A psalm of David.
The Lord is my shepherd;
I have what I need.
He lets me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside quiet waters.
He renews my life;
he leads me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even when I go through the darkest valley,
I fear no danger,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
as long as I live.
But it wasn’t to last. The Israelites like all of us were prone to wander, and failed to keep God’s commands that He gave them in the law. So the Just and Holy God brought on them the consequences they had agreed to and the land was taken away from them in war. Peace was gone and the people lived in exile and in slavery to other nations.
Where was there any hope for peace and a future for Israel? Throughout this troubling time God sent His prophets to announce that His Shalom peace was coming back. Isaiah 9:6
For a child will be born for us,
a son will be given to us,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
He will be named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
And in Zechariah 9:10
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the horse from Jerusalem.
The bow of war will be removed,
and he will proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion will extend from sea to sea,
from the Euphrates River
to the ends of the earth.
So the peace that was was lost, and the world lived with small isolated moments of Gods peace, and a hope that one day God would send His chosen King they called the Messiah to bring about real peace for the nation of Israel. The coming of that “Prince of Peace” is what we celebrate every year when we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ on Christmas day. We now live in the Messianic age, which brings us to:
The Peace That Is
The Peace That Is
Imagine you’re a shepherd. You work out in the fields with a bunch of smelly but obedient animals. For whatever reason society treats you like an outcast and a nobody, and few people want to be seen with you let alone celebrate you.
That’s the backdrop of this Bible passage that we read every Christmas: Luke 2:8-20
In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and peace on earth to people he favors!
When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.
The prince of peace has been born! And when you look closely you start to see the answer to the question we started with in this sermon. If Jesus came to bring peace than why is there so much war and pain still in the world? Consider carefully the words of the angels in their song:
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and peace on earth to people he favors!
It’s not unconditional peace that the angels sing about. They bless those whom God favors with peace. The peace that Jesus came to bring when He was born as a baby is a selective peace, and not at all the sort of peace that many of the Israelites were expecting. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 10:34-39
Don’t assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to turn
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and a man’s enemies will be
the members of his household.
The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; the one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.
So we shouldn’t think that Jesus has come to bring peace, but instead a sword? What are we to make of this? Well what He goes on to describe is the breakdown of relationships and increase of conflict that He will bring as a result of His teachings and His death and resurrection.
Not that the point was to turn people against each other, but the nature of the gospel is such that some accept and some do not, and we have seen throughout history that many who come to Christ in turn are rejected by their friends and family. In fact Jesus’ closest disciples were tortured and killed for spreading the gospel.
So what kind of peace DOES Jesus bring? Well to those of us who accept His atoning death and follow Him He brings us the most important kind of peace we could possibly have. Paul describes this in his letter to the Romans. He describes with an Old Testment quote the dire state of mankind before Jesus and how Jesus saved us from our sins:
What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, as it is written:
There is no one righteous, not even one.
There is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away;
all alike have become worthless.
There is no one who does what is good,
not even one.
Their throat is an open grave;
they deceive with their tongues.
Vipers’ venom is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and wretchedness are in their paths,
and the path of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgment. For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.
But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Then after discussing the importance of salvation being by faith alone and giving Abraham as an example of someone made righteous by faith, we get this key verse to understanding how it is that Jesus brought us God’s Shalom:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The peace that we have in Jesus is peace with God. While we still live in a fallen broken world that is marred by war and violence, those of us who come to know Jesus can know the most important kind of peace that we can have. And this produces in us an inner serenity that Paul describes as “peace that passes all understanding.” And this is why Paul more than once calls the gospel, “the gospel of peace.”
And true Shalom it is. We aren’t talking about a pollyanna attitude that ignores the problems and conflict in the world, but a deep profound inner peace that we can have through Jesus even despite the storms that come our way. This is the peace we see in the words of the Hymn “It Is Well.”
When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot you have taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul.
Yet as beautiful as the peace we have now through Jesus is, there is a sense that the picture of peace that the prophets of the Old Testament gave us is still not here. So when will we see a peace that isn’t just within us but that covers the whole world? For that we turn to:
The Peace That’s Yet To Come
The Peace That’s Yet To Come
Jumping back in history a bit, in the time between the Messianic prophecies and the arrival of Jesus the Israelites had quite a puzzle on their hands. On the one hand they had prophecies like this one about the coming Messiah:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem!
Look, your King is coming to you;
he is righteous and victorious,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the horse from Jerusalem.
The bow of war will be removed,
and he will proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion will extend from sea to sea,
from the Euphrates River
to the ends of the earth.
This shows clearly that the Messiah will come as a king and defeat all the enemies of God and rule over the whole earth. But then there are also prophecies like this about the Messiah:
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.
He was like someone people turned away from;
he was despised, and we didn’t value him.
Yet he himself bore our sicknesses,
and he carried our pains;
but we in turn regarded him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced because of our rebellion,
crushed because of our iniquities;
punishment for our peace was on him,
and we are healed by his wounds.
We all went astray like sheep;
we all have turned to our own way;
and the Lord has punished him
for the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
He was taken away because of oppression and judgment,
and who considered his fate?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
he was struck because of my people’s rebellion.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
but he was with a rich man at his death,
because he had done no violence
and had not spoken deceitfully.
This seems to describe a Messiah who would suffer and die on behalf of His fellow Israelites. So which is it? This was the question many Jewish students of the Scriptures were trying to answer. Here are a couple of their theories. Some thought that there were actually two Messiahs. One who they called Messiah son of Joseph who would come and suffer and die for their sins and another names Messiah son of David who would come as a King and take over the world. Another theory was that these were conditional prophecies like the blessings and the curses written in the law. That when Messiah came Israel would be put to the test and they would either reject Messiah and lose the Kingdom or embrace Messiah and inherit an eternal kingdom.
So when Jesus came and proved Himself to be Messiah, how did He resolve this tension? Was He one of two Messiahs? Did He only fulfill half the prophecies because they rejected Him? No instead we learned that there weren’t two Messiah’s but there were two comings of the same Messiah. Jesus was born in the flesh for the first coming and ascended to the right hand of the Father, from there He will come again to judge the world.
In fact traditionally the season of Advent isn’t just about Jesus’ birth, but about the coming Advent of Jesus’ return. We are waiting in patient anticipation for our King to return and fulfill the prophecies about coming as a ruling King. A ruling king who will finally establish a peace that covers the whole world and everyone in it. The peace described in Isaiah 60:17-18
I will bring gold instead of bronze;
I will bring silver instead of iron,
bronze instead of wood,
and iron instead of stones.
I will appoint peace as your government
and righteousness as your overseers.
Violence will never again be heard of in your land;
devastation and destruction
will be gone from your borders.
You will call your walls Salvation
and your city gates Praise.
And in Isaiah 66:12
For this is what the Lord says:
I will make peace flow to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flood;
you will nurse and be carried on her hip
and bounced on her lap.
So we can be assured that though we have peace with God now, we will have complete and total Shalom in the future. Jesus is not content to leave the world as it is but will one day return to set all things right and return us to a world that is even better than the one that we lost in the fall. The entire world will be our new Eden paradise.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So let’s return for a moment to the Christmas Carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Remember the climax of those verses that Longfellow wrote about the tension between the Christmas message and our world of Conflict?
And in despair I bowed my head, “There is no peace on earth” I said, “For hate is strong, And mocks the song, Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
If the song ended there I don’t think it would be a Christmas classic. No, thankfully the song continues and crescendos on this hopeful promise:
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, “God is not dead, nor does He sleep, The wrong shall fail, The right prevail, With peace on earth, Good-will to men!”
The promise of those pealing bells is the promise of peace to come, a restoration of the peace we lost which we can experience now in our hearts in eager anticipation.
So this Christmas season I would encourage you that no matter what your circumstances that there is peace for you. You can have peace now through Jesus Christ our peace maker and the bringer of the gospel of peace. If you ask God for it you can receive the peace that passes all understanding.
And you can join the cry of believers all around the world saying “Maranatha” which means, Lord, come! As we wait for the day described in Revelation 21:1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.