Advent - 2 - Peace

Scripture: Psalm 72:1-7,18-19

Psalm 72:1–7 NIV

1 Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness. 2 May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice. 3 May the mountains bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness. 4 May he defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; may he crush the oppressor. 5 May he endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations. 6 May he be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. 7 In his days may the righteous flourish and prosperity abound till the moon is no more.

Psalm 72:18–19 NIV

18 Praise be to the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvelous deeds. 19 Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.

12/7/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Opening Prayer:

Merciful God, we confess that we are slow to prepare the way for your coming. Our hearts are tangled with sin, and our paths are cluttered with selfish distractions. Forgive us, we pray. Clear our hearts and minds to receive your grace and truth. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Peace

Christmas Poetry

Have you started playing Christmas music? Are you getting yourself ready for Christmas? There are new Christmas songs written every year, but this is the one time of year that almost everyone wants to hear really old songs. The melodies are important, and the words, because singing them helps prepare our hearts, minds, and souls for the season.

Many of those songs were first written as poems. And in the history of poetry, there are two large camps. Western poetry is designed to inspire our ears. Think of The Night Before Christmas, with its rhythm and rhyming pattern. Dr. Seuss loved that style so much that he used it to create How the Grinch Stole Christmas, filling his story with made-up words that don't mean anything real but sound so good they get buried in our memories. That's the poetry of the West.

The poetry of the East is made more for the eyes. Their poems don't rhyme. Instead, they say so much by saying so little. Consider this ancient Chinese poem about a man climbing the Stork Tower. The whole thing, translated into English, sounds like this: The white sun sets behind the mountains. The Yellow River flows into the sea. To see a thousand miles further, climb one more story higher.

The people of Israel wrote their poetry in this same style. That's why the Psalms don't rhyme. They were made to paint pictures in our minds.

Our psalm today, Psalm 72, does not sound like a Christmas carol. But as we focus on peace during this second week of Advent, this ancient poem shows us how we receive God's peace and share it with others. It points us toward the One who would come as the Prince of Peace.

King on the Mountain

So let's look at this ancient poem. Psalm 72 is unique because it was written by King Solomon, David's son, as a prayer for the king of Israel.

Solomon's life before becoming king was filled with strife. Enemy nations threatened from outside. Division existed within the tribes. His own family was torn apart by conflict. Solomon knew how valuable peace was because he had lived so many years without it.

When Solomon became king, God appeared to him and said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." He could have asked for anything. Instead, Solomon asked for wisdom, the ability to govern God's people and discern right from wrong. God was so pleased that He gave Solomon wisdom greater than anyone before or since, and added wealth and honor besides.

So this psalm is Solomon doing what he had always done: seeking God's help. And like David's psalms, this prayer was meant to be shared with the whole community, prayed by the people for their king.

The psalm asks God to give the king His sense of justice and righteousness. And then Solomon connects the king to the mountains. In ancient times, kings built their palaces on high places so they could look out and see everything under their care. The mountain was the seat of authority and protection. So when Solomon prays that the mountains would bring God's peace to the people, he's praying that the king, standing on that mountain, would be the one through whom God's shalom would flow.

Let's look at verse three. Most English translations say, "May the mountains bring prosperity to the people. The hills, the fruit of righteousness." But the Hebrew word isn't prosperity. It's shalom. We often translate shalom as "peace," but our English word is much smaller than the Hebrew one. Shalom means well-being, wholeness, fullness of life. When Jesus said, "I've come to give you life and life in abundance," that abundant life is shalom.

In 1873, a man named Horatio Spafford lost his four daughters in a shipwreck at sea. As he later crossed the ocean near where they died, he wrote the words to a hymn we still sing today: "It is well with my soul." That is shalom. Even in the depths of tremendous suffering and loss, he could say, "It is well with my soul."

You see, suffering doesn't have to steal our shalom. Instead, it can be an opportunity to invite God's peace into our lives more deeply. And when we hold onto that peace in the midst of our struggles, we become an example to others, passing along the peace of God to those watching and wondering how we made it through.

And how do we receive that shalom? We receive it by surrendering to God's authority and doing whatever He asks us to do. We will not find that peace serving anyone else, not even ourselves. It only comes when we let go and trust in Him.

That's why Solomon prayed for wisdom. He knew he couldn't generate shalom on his own. He had to receive it from God and let it flow through him. The shalom doesn't come from the king himself. It flows from God, through the king, to the people. Standing between heaven and earth, the king receives God's peace from above and allows it to flow down to everyone under his care. That's his sacred responsibility.

This is why Solomon prayed for God's justice and righteousness to fill the king. When the people don't have shalom, the fault lies at the top. Solomon knew he was in the hot seat, so he prayed for God to work through him and give his people shalom.

But Solomon's prayer doesn't stop at the mountain. He moves down a level, to the hills.

The Hills

The hills stand at the foot of the mountain, serving as the go-between for the people and their king. And Solomon says they are tasked with bringing "the fruit of righteousness."

Think about water in the natural world. Fresh water flows from high places to low places, bringing life wherever it touches. But what if the mountain hoarded all the rain? The land below would dry up and die. It would be the opposite of shalom.

So it's the mountain's responsibility to share that blessing generously. But the hills could try to hoard the water too. Yet water has a way of getting through, just as God's grace will work through us or go around us.

But hills aren't just middle management. They're supposed to take that shalom and produce the fruit of righteousness. Mountains are rocky, not good places to farm. But the hills have better soil. That's where trees bear fruit and life flourishes.

Jesus told the people, "Blessed are the peacemakers." We don't create peace out of nothing. True shalom comes from God. But we have a role. When He gives us His peace, it's an investment. He expects us to pass it along and let it grow. That peace multiplies the more it's shared.

But this Advent season, remember that shalom is bigger than financial giving. Passing on the peace of God means learning to look to Jesus, especially when life gets hard. When you see conflict or a lack of wholeness in someone's life, lift them up to the One who can bring shalom into their situation. And when you find yourself in trouble, turn to Jesus. He's your source.

And as you receive His peace and share it with others, something happens in you. The shalom doesn't just pass through unchanged. It transforms you. It takes root and produces fruit.

And that fruit is love and joy. Peace. Patience and kindness, and goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. And self-control. This is the harvest of righteousness.

And that harvest flows forth as praise to God. When people see love, joy, peace, and patience growing in us, they see what God can do. Our lives become a testimony, not just through our words or actions, but in the very way we live.

The Gospel

This is how God designed us from the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, we were meant to be His mountains and hills, receiving His shalom and passing it on to the rest of creation under our care.

But sin entered in. And it broke everything. When we stopped up the flow of God's shalom, we cut it off from everyone beneath us. We invited in sickness and death and brokenness, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of all those who depended on us. We are utterly broken, and there is no way we can fix this on our own. We cannot climb back up the mountain or restore what we have destroyed. For thousands of years, God had the perfect system, and we have been completely unable to live into it.

But God had a plan. In the fullness of time, He sent His Son, the King of kings, the mountain of all mountains, who received the fullness of God's shalom. But Jesus did not stay on the mountain. He came down. He was born in a lowly manger to bring the peace of God directly to the least, the last, and the lost.

He came to rescue and restore us from our brokenness, living as the perfect example of receiving from God and passing that peace to others. And He gave His life to free us forever, holding nothing back because He knew everything He had came from the Father, and the Father would fill Him again. Through His sacrifice, He opened the way for us to be reconnected to Him.

Now He reigns from heaven at the right hand of God, taking responsibility for us all. This is why we pray for those God has placed in authority over us, that they would receive His shalom and exercise the oversight He has called them to. And we do the same, leading by example, taking responsibility for those under our care. But our ultimate hope rests in Jesus. He is our source. And He will get His peace to us and work it through us, no matter what obstacles stand in His way.

But we have to receive it.

Brothers and sisters, there is a sense of true peace, of shalom, that you cannot find in possessions or security or relationships or thrills. You can spend your whole life chasing after the next best thing and never find it. Without it, we'll never know who we truly are.

How do you know if you're lacking that shalom? It's when we're not leaning on Jesus. It's when we try to satisfy our desires by our own work, trying to create our own peace and wholeness. That's a battle we were never meant to win on our own.

The only place we can find the peace of God is in Jesus. Have you received that peace, the peace He wants to breathe into you like the breath of life? Has it been planted in you, nourished by His word, and nurtured by your prayers? Is it cultivated in the fellowship you have with your brothers and sisters in Christ, so that the peace of God doesn't just stay in you but flows out of you to others?

Where do you stand in God's landscape? Are you receiving His shalom from above and letting it flow through you? Are you producing the fruit of righteousness, that harvest of love and joy and peace and patience that brings glory to God?

If you've not received the peace of God, the shalom He wants you to have, today is your day. Don't waste another moment. And if you have received that peace, how is He calling you to share it with others so that you can offer your life and theirs up as a harvest of righteousness?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace, we are incomplete without You. We pray that You fill us to overflowing. Teach us to put our trust and assurance in You, not the work of our own hands. We pray for those that You've put in authority over us. We pray that You put Your peace in their hearts so that their work would help keep us in right relationship with You and one another.

We pray that You would help us share generously with everyone You bring into our lives. Don't let us lose sight of You as the season gets busier, the noise gets louder, and the conflicts arise. Help us to say, with our words and our actions and with our very lives, that no matter what today brings, Your shalom, the peace of God, lives in us.

In Jesus' name. Amen.