Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Luke Chapter 2 includes the song of the angels, sung to shepherds in the fields...

[pray]

I. Peace on Earth

As I was contemplating the birth of Jesus Christ and the reason that he came to earth, I began to think about the coming new year.

The coming of a new year fills people with trepidation in times where we’ve experienced worldwide pandemics, supply chain failures, wars and rumors of war, as well as runaway inflation.

People are afraid because they don’t know how 2023 will challenge them.

However, we still have a living hope when Christmas time rolls around...

At least most of us do.

Some of us struggle more at this time of year than any other because of lost loved ones, irrevocable changes, and general upheaval in our comfortable way of living.

As I contemplated this verse I couldn’t help but think how we fail to live up to the sentiment of this passage...

…peace on earth...

...the incongruity struck me.

We don’t live in a world that seems to have learned anything at all about peace.

NASB: And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.

CSB: …and peace on earth to people he favors!

KJV: on earth peace, good-will toward man - how many of us grew up hearing it.

We have the same problem with tranlations in the Spanish language.

There is some difficulty here in the way this verse is translated… That’s because the words of this heavenly song are somewhat difficult to translate into modern day English.

I’ll get to that, but my mind started contemplating the idea of peace on earth.

We don’t seem to have found this peace that the angels sang about on that night so long ago.

For all the talk about peace and love at Christmas, our world suffers from a lack of peace that Christmas just cannot seem to heal.

When we think of Luke 2:14 our collective culture points our mind to think of worldwide peace.

This is why we see presidents seeking to bring peace in the Middle East.

But we also see in the Bible that there will be no worldwide peace until Jesus’ return.

Peace is not what the baby lying in the manger brought into the world on that silent night so long ago.

Faith in God brings us peace during difficult times.

I am reminded of the most tragic events in my own life and in the lives of others who are close to me.

Those who have faith in God turn to Him in the time of their deepest distress.

We all go through tragedies in life.

This is part of living in a fallen world.

We lose loved ones.

We experience death.

We (some of us) have experienced the loss of love or gone through the divorce of parents or spouses.

I have an aunt who within the space of a year lost her husband to cancer, lost a son-in-law to cancer, lost his daughter to heart attack leaving her spouse and 2 young children behind.

Finally my aunt and her daughter survived the total loss of her home to fire.

But my aunt and her family have great faith in God and turned to Him for comfort and peace.

When we look to the Greek manuscripts for Luke 2:14, the original phrase is a bit cryptic and cannot be translated literally into English or Spanish...

Greek: “And on earth peace among men pleased”

Many Bible scholars take the word “peace” as a reference to the Prince of Peace, the baby born, the Christ, the long awaited Messiah of Israel...

New Testament theologian, John Noland, speaks of this moment as a beginning place for peace.

Noland translates this phrase “on earth there is peace among the people whom God has favored.”

[Nolland, John (1989).

Luke 1:1–9:20 (Vol.

35A, p. 97).

Dallas: Word, Incorporated.]

That phrase in the NASB is translated as “among men with whom He is pleased” ... I take issue with that translation.

While it is certainly one possible meaning, I don’t think by any stretch can we determine that God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live on earth as a human and die on a cross because He was pleased with us or even because He was pleased with Israel.

On the contrary, He sent Jesus because we were in dire straits and we needed a redeemer more than ever.

God sent the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) as an act of goodwill toward man.

He sent His son to save us because we could not save ourselves and were completely beyond hope.

That baby born on earth so long ago was not born to overturn governments during his lifetime.

However, he was a seed of peace planted on the earth and in the hearts of men.

For in that baby, we place our hope of heaven and our hope for a new earth.

In Jesus peace was born.

But not necessarily peace as in a cessation of war and conflict… at least not yet.

The peace that Jesus brings is a beginning to peace with God.

It’s a “starting point.”

We know from scripture that God desires an intimate relationship with His creation.

But that intimacy has been rejected and scorned by man ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin.

God sent Jesus to earth in order to provide a way to set that relationship right with mankind.

By sending Jesus, God is offering the olive branch of peace to mankind and it is up to mankind to accept it or reject the offer of peace.

Christ is the only thing that can reconcile our sin before God.

However, even those of us who call ourselves Christian can find that we sometimes lack peace in our lives.

II.

Keys to Personal Peace

When I think of personal peace, I go immediately to Philippians 4:4-9.

Philippians is a letter, written by Paul to the early church at Philippi.

This church was suffering in the midst of great persecution and suffering.

Earlier in the letter, Paul warns the Christians of Philippi to remain firm in their faith.

The image he invokes is that they are like a herd of wild horses, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

Paul gives his final counsel in this letter in chapter 4...

I look at this section as Paul’s personal advice to the Christians in Philippi for how to maintain their peace in the Lord while they continue in their struggle.

And I think that modern day Christians can learn from it and apply it to their own lives, as they struggle with living in this difficult world.

1. Rejoice in the Lord - v 4

Paul’s letter to the Philippians beats a rhythm of rejoicing.

He talks of it again and again throughout the letter.

What is Joy?

There’s that word “Joy” again!

We talked about this back at the beginning of our series on the Fruit of the Spirit.

rejoice - xαίρετε - chairete

Rejoicing here carries with it a feeling of joy, cheerfulness, and happiness.

Rejoicing is something that you may feel internally but is also apparent to others.

By rejoicing “in the Lord” one can say that we choose to have joy because of the Lord and because we are in the Lord (and the Lord dwells in us).

Paul repeats his command to rejoice (16 times) as a way to reinforce and emphasize its importance.

Paul had many reasons to give up rejoicing.

He was most likely under house arrest during the time that this epistle was written.

He certainly was restricted in his travel and unable to join the church at Philippi in person.

Yet, Paul had come to the conclusion that there is no life situation that is out of God’s reach.

He believed that God was in control and directly involved in the life of the saints.

That’s where most of us fail in keeping our joy in the Lord.

We just can’t be really sure inside that God’s got our back.

So we let joy slip out of our grasp.

Joy is a characteristic of the Christian life (Fruit of the Spirit-Gal 5:22): Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Self-Control

TRUTH If you don’t have joy in your life then something is wrong that needs to be addressed.

2. Be Gentle - v 5

This word translated “graciousness” here (or “gentleness” in other translations) is ἐπιεικὲς - epi-ay-kays - there’s no good English translation for this word, but we can get the sense of it.

Our best sense of the word is: gentle, moderate, lenient, reasonable, tolerant, considerate, yielding, patient, fair, kind, suitable, accommodating, generous.

[whew]

If you used all of these together to describe one person, you'd have an understanding of what it means to “Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.”