Prince of Peace
Notes
Transcript
Intro
By the winter of 1914, World War I had been raging for several months.
Britain and Germany fought in trenches along the bitterly cold western front.
Estimates put the death toll of the first world war in the tens of millions, with a significant number coming from the conflict on that western front that ran through France.
But, during Christmas of 1914, there were a series of truces between these two nations.
They began, supposedly, as German soldiers put out Christmas trees, and rather than the normal shouts of insults across No Man’s Land between the trenches, there came the sound of carols.
British soldiers heard eventually heard Germans say “You no shoot, we no shoot.”
A ceasefire was called.
Men, like these pictured, shared Christmas with their enemies.
When I see this picture and hear a story like this, I don’t know about you, but I think
Maybe times were just simpler back then because I have a hard time picturing that happening in 2025.
Is that kind of peace even possible today?
I am no expert on the Russia and Ukraine war…
But I don’t see that happening in Kyiv.
How about Israel and Palestine…are they going to light menorahs and sing songs together in Gaza?
How can we speak about peace when deadly shootings happen all of the time?
The lines of division today seem more complicated than just trenches dug in the mud.
Here is Britain. Here is Germany. Let’s fight!
No, the new front goes through countries as we battle it out between political parties, ideologies, and views on sexuality and gender.
Peace feels just as difficult in our daily lives.
The strained relationships since COVID…
The family rifts…
The workplace warfare…
The internal peace we long for.
Is a Christmas Truce possible today?
Maybe times were just simpler back then.
And then we read Isaiah 9:6
His name will be called Prince of Peace.
How is peace possible today?
In a world fractured and broken, peace is possible because of Jesus.
But it’s more than that - we participate by being his peace-makers.
Peace is possible because of the prince and he brings it through us, his peace-makers.
But what does peace really mean? And how is Jesus the prince of peace? And how can we, the church, a group not always known at being peaceful be his peace-makers?
What is peace?
6 For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
This Advent we are focusing our attention on Jesus, which is no easy task.
Isaiah 9:6 gives us greater clarity and focus to help us see him as he really is.
He’s the wonderful counselor - he’s wise.
He’s the Mighty God. He’s powerful in our weakness.
He’s the Everlasting Father - as Fletcher pointed out he’s the King of kings and the beginning of a new creation.
And he’s the Prince of Peace.
What’s happening in Isaiah 9:6?
It’s a passage that comes 700 years before the birth of Jesus.
It comes at a time of looming destruction for God’s people.
Can we relate?
The Assyrian and Babylonian exiles are right around the corner.
Where is God when the world is getting ready to fall apart?
How will he respond when his people are the very ones who brought about the mess they’re in?
During the time of Isaiah 9:6, Ahaz is the king of Judah and he’s not a good dude.
That’s an understatement.
He’s incredibly evil. Read 2 Kings 16 and find out more.
And yet God is such a gracious and patient God that he comes to Ahaz and says - I know you’re at war and destructing feels imminent…but if you trust me, I will help you.
And Ahaz essentially says, “Thanks but no thanks.”
Ahaz searches for peace apart from God and only perpetuates and guarantees generation after generation of war.
So what’s happening in Isaiah 9:6?
In response to the sin of his people and failed leadership of their kings, God promises to send a better king.
How will God respond? By sending a prince of peace unto us.
What does that phrase prince of peace even mean?
A prince is more than just a dude with a pretty face who gets to marry the princess.
A prince was a ruler, a chief, and someone who represents the king.
What the prince says, the king says. What the prince does, the king would do.
And this prince is a prince of peace.
In our culture, when we think of peace,
We often picture a calm lake.
A person in the Buddha position, serene and quiet.
But the Bible sees a different picture.
Peace in Scripture is not the absence of something (like the absence of war or conflict) but the presence of something better.
Namely, wholeness, completeness or the word you’re familiar with shalom.
Here is an example of the word in 2 Chronicles.
16 Thus was accomplished all the work of Solomon from the day the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid until it was finished. So the house of the Lord was completed.
That word completed is the word for peace.
The house of the Lord was this intensely complex structure, but when everything was where it was supposed to be, there was peace.
Like when you put the final puzzle piece on a 1,000 piece puzzle…wholeness. Complete. Complex, and everything where it is supposed to be.
Here we have another example in Genesis.
27 And he inquired about their welfare and said, “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?”
For a person to have shalom, it’s to say they are complete and whole.
We would ask, “How’re you doing? Are you well?
To have my life be in shalom is to be complete and whole.
How can we get this kind of peace?
If you sat down this afternoon and had Chat GPT help you write a book called, “How to find peace” you could probably sell 1,000 copies before 5pm.
Our world craves peace. Inner peace, peace in the middle east.
But the question is…how?
The Bible says trying to find peace apart from God is like trying to rebuild a 1,000 piece puzzle when you’re missing 154 of the pieces and you don’t even have the box to tell you what it’s supposed to look like.
You’ll never finish the puzzle.
The story of the Bible is a story of peace.
In Genesis 1-2 there was peace. God and man and man and creation lived in wholeness.
In Genesis 3, peace was lost. We rebelled. We declared war.
But in Genesis 3 God promised to send someone who would crush evil and end warfare once by being crushed himself.
And as we read the rest of the story, we see a promise that peace will be restored once again and this time, forever.
A couple chapters later in Isaiah 11, we get this beautiful picture of what that peace will look like.
1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
9 They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
What a picture of peace.
This prince will come and bring a reconciliation so complete that you could let a boa constrictor babysit your toddler because in this new world there will be complete and total shalom.
Something greater than a Christmas Truce is coming.
And this morning we remember that our one true hope of peace is found in Jesus.
Not a peace that will be won in a battle, not a peace that we can create through the right regiment of diet and exercise and bible reading…it’s a coming day that Jesus will bring when he returns as the prince of peace.
TRANSITION - BUT HOW EXACTLY IS JESUS THIS PRINCE OF PEACE?
How is Jesus the Prince of Peace?
We can see that in his birth, life, and his death.
Jesus came and gave us peace because he gave us himself.
But isn’t our world significantly darker and more corrupt than when Jesus walked the earth?
Jesus was born into a world just as dark and chaotic as ours.
We easily forget that as we sing Silent Night and put the cute manger scene up on the counter.
The light of the world came into darkness.
Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome and when Jesus was born, he was actively working to subjugate the world so he could enslave mankind and tax them for his own benefit.
Herod was the puppet king of Israel, and he was so insecure in his leadership, that as soon as he heard the true king, the prince of peace was born, he had untold numbers of newborn baby boys and toddlers slaughtered to protect his crown.
“The manger scene on your living room table might be keeping you from understanding Christmas. Those Nativity sets are, after all, how most of us want this time of year to be—safe and warm and cheery, with lowing cattle and humming angels in the background. But the actual birth of Jesus shook up the snow globe of all our expectations. In the backdrop were not little drummer boys but Roman soldiers and a bloodthirsty dictator who could not afford to lose.” - Russell Moore, “The Anti-Christ Hides in Plain Sight at Christmas” Christianity Today
Jesus showed that he was the prince of peace in his life.
He preached peace.
17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
This was his message: peace!
God is for you! Be made right with him!
He was a preacher and he preached the peaceful kingdom of God which was available to anyone who turned from their sin and believed that God had come.
Think about his sermon on the mount - turn the other cheek. Have there ever been more powerful words for peace in our world?
He brought peace in how he lived.
He forgave guilty sinners.
He made bodies whole through healing people from diseases.
People broken from demonic possession were released and given peace.
He even said ‘peace’ to a storm and it listened.
But Jesus’ message of peace was rejected.
God’s people denied their need for peace and returned with a declaration of war.
Rather than receive his peace, they Prince of Shalom’s life was cut short.
Jesus said this in Luke 19…
42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
But, this was God’s plan.
The prince of peace came so that he could die.
Just as God promised in Genesis 3, peace would return as one man was crushed by sin and death.
Paul writes this in Ephesians 2…
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
The warfare that started in Genesis 3 that broke peace in the world was ended as Jesus took the final blow upon himself.
He brought sinners to God through taking on our sin and brokenness so that through faith in him we can receive his wholeness.
We don’t have to be at war with each other and with God anymore because Jesus’ death brought peace.
He is not just a man who died a martyr’s death, he was God in the flesh taking the sins of the world and bringing shalom.
Do we believe that?
Maybe we need to pray, Lord I believe, help my unbelief!
TRANSITION - The Prince of Peace is a representative of the king who brings completeness and wholeness and shalom. And Jesus was shown to be this promised prince through his birth, life and at the cross.
But where does that leave us as we still live in a world where peace feels so hard to find?
What does that mean for us?
As followers of the Prince of Peace, we are his peace-makers.
That kind of peace can feel impossibly big. So what does it look like when it shows up in ordinary, messy life?
We see an example of how to be people of peace in Philippians 4.
2 I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. 3 Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Euodia and Syntyche were arguing over who’s name was harder to say
It was clearly a close call because it caused this intense conflict.
What is it? We don’t know.
How severe was it? We don’t know, but it’s probably pretty serious because God chose to keep it in the Bible.
By the way - another reason it’s in the Bible is because even though we are the peace-makers of God, it is guaranteed that we will have conflict in the church.
Gateway, we will have conflict. It is unavoidable.
The question is not will we have conflict, but how will we? And we get some guidance on how to go about it and be people of peace in verses 4-9.
Much thanks for these thoughts to Bill Graybill and his book “Resolve Conflict God’s Way.”
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
To be peace-makers for the prince of peace we must always rejoice.
Doesn’t that seem a bit tone deaf?You’re fighting with your spouse over text! Praise the Lord!
Paul is writing from prison in this letter so if anyone is going to have a hard time being full of Christmas cheer it’s him! And yet he says twice - rejoice.
We always have reasons to rejoice.
Many reasons - but here are 3!
For one - because of our relationship with Jesus.
Through his death, we have peace with God. We can pray and say, Thank you Jesus for giving me everlasting peace with God. Even though I’m in this conflict and this hard situation, thank you that I have peace.
Second - because God is using conflict and difficulty to make us more like Jesus.
We can have full certainty that God uses suffering in our lives to make us more like the Prince of Peace. So we can rejoice in that!
Third - we know that whatever happens, God is using all things for our good.
So even if things go terribly wrong, we know that God will take that wrong and make it a right some day.
Rejoicing does not eliminate conflict but it changes it.
We can have gratitude while conflict remains unresolved.
We can have joy even while it hurts.
This is how we participate in the peace of Jesus.
5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;
Second - be gentle.
Phil 4:5 should flash on every screen before anyone says anything online.
You’re going to post this? Just a reminder.
Parents, when we’re frustrated with our kids - wouldn’t it be great if we paused and remembered this.
A times this feels impossible. Gentle? The blood is boiling too hot. Reasonable? Have you seen what they did? Even so, the prince of peace is with us through his Spirit and this is how we bring about his peace.
6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Third - replace anxiety with prayer.
If there’s anything that causes anxiety it is conflict.
Replace anxiousness with prayerfulness.
Ask God for help.
Notice, Paul hasn’t forgotten about rejoicing because he says “with thanksgiving” in verse 6.
Even in the trenches, we can be thankful, rejoice, and ask God to save us from the mess we’re in.
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Fourth - see things as they are
In the 2016 presidential debate, the last question asked by a member of the audience was this, “Mr. Trump and Senator Clinton, What is one thing about your opponent that you admire?”
The candidates were stumped and gave horrible answers.
That’s not the way of peace.
Think about these things - what is true? What’s honorable? What’s pure? What’s lovely?
9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Finally, put this to practice.
When it comes to things of faith sometimes we think we’ll just be zapped without having to practice.
Just like we practiced how to drive a car, we have to practice being people of peace.
We are made right with God, but we still have the old ways of conflict and war in us.
So let’s practice.
And being a part of a church will give us chances to practice. And that’s a good thing. Because Jesus has promised that even the gates of hell will not stand against his peace-making church.
How might you put this into practice today? This week? This Christmas?
Conclusion
Is this kind of Christmas Truce still possible?
It is.
We may not have mud on our heavy cloth military uniforms, but we are fighting for peace as we rejoice in the middle of conflict.
We may not be bitterly cold on the western front, but we are seeking to bring the warmth of the Prince of Peace in a cold world.
We are working for peace of a greater kingdom.
This Christmas Truce only lasted one day
Enemies sang carols and kicked a soccer ball for less than 24 hours.
Peace is so powerful that this tiny truce on the western front is a story that has lasted over 100 years.
How much better is the story that brings peace that lasts forever?
