Peace

Intro

John 14:27 ““Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”

What are some ways you hear about peace in our culture?

Peace sign, world peace, inner peace

So what is peace?

the opposite of war, enmity, hostility

When we pray for peace, or wish it upon a nation or individual, what are we asking for?

ceasing of wars, ending of strife between two parties

Cause of Wars

Why do we struggle to have peace both in the world and within ourselves?

James 4:1–4 “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Based on this passage, what is the source of conflict?

individual lust/desires

(maybe talk about are pleasures inherently evil, the source of evil is twisting /misuse of good God-given pleasures)

When we sin against our neighbor, who are we really warring against?

Send to small groups

Peace with God

John 9–14 I. So We Have Here, First, the Greeting, Which is a Gift

The first requisite for peace is consciousness of harmonious and loving relations between me and God. The deepest secret of Christ’s peace was His unbroken consciousness of unbroken communion with the Father, in which His will submitted and the whole being of the man hung in filial dependence upon God. And the centre and foundation of all the peace-giving power of Jesus Christ is this, that in His death, by His one offering for sin for ever, He has swept away the occasion of antagonism, and so made peace between the twain, the Father in the heavens and the child, rebellious and prodigal, here below.

John 9–14 (I. So We Have Here, First, the Greeting, Which is a Gift)

My brother, no man can be at rest down to the very roots of His being, in the absence of the consciousness that he is at peace with God. There may be tumults of gladness, there may be much of stormy brightness in the life, but there cannot be the calm, still, impregnable, all-pervading, and central tranquillity that our souls hunger for, unless we know and feel that we are right with God, and that there is nothing between us and Him. And it is because Jesus Christ, dying on the Cross, has made it possible for you and me to feel this, that He is our peace, and that He can say, ‘Peace I leave with you.’