Finding Peace in Our Struggles
Notes
Transcript
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely, that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
On Christmas Day in 1963, in the midst of the Civil War. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem that was later put to music by various composers. The most familiar arrangement for most of us is the music composed by Johnny Marks in 1956 and recorded by Bing Crosby that year. You might recognize these excerpts from that poem:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
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!"
Each stanza of the poem ends with a refrain that comes from the passage that we’ll look at this morning:
Peace on earth, good-will to men
Today, even secularists who reject Biblical Christianity love to quote this phrase. You’ll see it on Christmas cards, bumper stickers, signs, and t-shirts - many produced by those who seek to profit from this positive and optimistic message.
But the more we ponder that phrase, the more we are likely to look around at the current state of affairs in this world and join Longfellow in concluding that there is no peace on earth.
Tension
But, as we’re going to see this morning, it is possible for us to experience peace even in the midst of a world full of conflict and struggles. But in order to do that, we have to be able to overcome two common misconceptions that lead us to believe that is not possible:
First, we need to adjust our understanding of the concept of peace to make sure it is consistent with how the Bible uses that term.
Second, we need to make sure that we consider this phrase within its Biblical context so that we don’t use it in a way that God never intended.
This morning we’ll address both of those issues.
Truth
But before we read our passage, some historical perspective is helpful.
Roughly 25 years before Jesus was born, a 200 year period known as the “Pax Romana” began during the reign of Emperor Augustine. Although the Roman Empire was largely at peace during this time, that peace came at a high price. It was a time of great national security for the Romans largely because is was enforced with military might that required everyone to do things the way the Roman government wanted. So the Pax Romana was yours only if you were a Roman citizen.
But even then, this period was often characterized by violence and uncertainty. Almost every emperor during this period was assassinated. That is largely because they were cruel tyrants.
So even though there was respite from war, there was no real peace in the land. It is into that culture that Jesus is born to bring peace. But as Jesus Himself points out later in His ministry, it is not the same kind of peace that the world is looking for:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Although I am going to read verses 8-20 in Luke chapter 2 this morning, I am primarily going to focus on verses 8-14:
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Here is the main idea we’re going to develop from that passage this morning:
Genuine, lasting peace comes only through faith in Jesus
Genuine, lasting peace comes only through faith in Jesus
Unfortunately, Longfellow seems to have missed out on that idea. In a way you can’t blame him. As he reads verse 14, he looks around at the Civil War that is raging all around him and naturally concludes that the Bible can’t possibly be right because there is certainly no peace on earth and goodwill to men as far as he can observe.
As I mentioned earlier there are two main reasons that we tend to miss out on the idea that peace is possible and I think perhaps Longfellow was impacted by both:
First, we can fail to understand the nature of peace that Jesus came to bring. Most dictionary definitions of peace are similar to this one:
freedom from war and violence, especially when people live and work together happily without disagreements
I think we’d all agree that there is not a lot of that kind of peace in our world today.
But Biblical peace is far different. One again this morning, we need to remember that the Jews of Jesus’ day, including the shepherds, would have had a Hebrew mindset so their concept of peace would have been based on the Hebrew word “shalom”. It is a word that is used over 250 times in the Old Testament and which describes a state of “wholeness or well-being”
One of my favorite commentators, Skip Moen, describes it like this:
Shalom is not simply the absence of conflict. It is rather the presence of perfect harmony between you, God, others and the world.
And, as I hope you’ll see this morning, that kind of peace is available to all of us, even when we are in the midst of our struggles.
The other reason that causes us to doubt what the angels claim here has to do with how we handle verse 14. Perhaps you will note that the way the ESV renders this verse is different than the KJV with which most of us are probably most familiar. That is the version that Longfellow uses in his poem.
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace,
Good will toward men.
While the first part of the verse is identical in both translations, there is a significant different in how the last phrase is translated. If you’d like some more detailed information on this, I’d be happy to talk to you after our gathering, but let me give you the Reader’s Digest explanation.
This is what is known as a textual variant. The original documents, like Luke’s copy of his gospel, no longer exist. So Bible translators have to rely on manuscripts which are copies of those original documents. There are often multiple different copies of the original and since they were all copied by hand, sometimes there are some minor differences among those manuscripts. In this case, the difference in translation comes down to the difference of one Greek letter.
Although there is not universal agreement on this, most scholars agree that the modern translations, including the ESV, NIV, and NASB, have used the underlying manuscripts that are most likely to be accurate. And, for what it’s worth I tend to agree. But what sways me even more is that the surrounding context and the Bible as a whole support the way that most modern translations have rendered this phrase.
The KJV translation - the one that we’re more familiar with - implies that Jesus came to this earth to bring peace to everyone. And I would agree that is true in the sense that He has made peace available to all. We see that in verse 10 when the angel proclaims that the birth of Jesus is good news for “all the people”. Again that makes it sound like everyone is going to experience the salvation that Jesus brings, but all the angel is pointing out is that peace isn’t just available to the Jews. It is, as we will see later, available to all who put their faith in Jesus regardless of their religious heritage.
But I think we would also agree, just based on our own observations, that not everyone in this world has the kind of Biblical peace that is promised here. So how can I make sure I have that kind of peace in my life? How can I have peace with myself, God and others even in the midst of my struggles?
HOW TO HAVE PEACE EVEN IN MY STRUGGLES
HOW TO HAVE PEACE EVEN IN MY STRUGGLES
Understand that peace is a person
If we think of peace as some kind of esoteric concept or the absence of problems or difficulties then we will be tempted to seek peace in one of two ways:
Through activities like positive thinking, meditation, or religion
By trying to change or extract ourselves from our current circumstances
I suppose those approaches might provide some temporary relief, but they can’t possibly develop the kind of Biblical peace that we’ve described this morning. That is because peace is a person - Jesus.
The angels proclaimed that peace was coming to earth in the form of a person, who they identified as “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”. Certainly Jesus didn’t arrive in the way that most people expected the Messiah to come on the scene. Instead of entering this world as a conquering warrior, He came as a baby, born in the most humble of settings. And when God chose to announce His arrival, He sent His messengers to a group of lowly shepherds, not to the prominent religious or political leaders of the day.
Why shepherds? It seems to me that it is because these shepherds pointed ahead to the way that Jesus was going to make His peace available to all.
In order to ensure a constant supply of sheep to be used in the sacrifices in the Temple, the Temple authorities had their own private flocks which were pastured near Bethlehem. So it may very well be that these shepherds were tending those flocks. And we know that Jesus was described by John as the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. So even at His birth, we get some clues about how Jesus is going to make His peace available through His sacrificial death on the cross.
The apostle Paul gives us some more insight into this idea that Jesus is our peace:
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 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, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
Notice here that it is the person of Jesus who is our peace. Paul is writing specifically here about how Jesus created peace between Jews and Gentiles. But even more importantly, we see here that Jesus is the one who makes it possible to have peace with God. And the way that Jesus made that possible was by being the Lamb of God who was slain on the cross to make it possible to for us to be reconciled with God and have peace with Him.
Put God and His glory first
Much of the time, our search for peace involves trying to change our circumstances in some way or even asking God to change those circumstances.
If I’m unhappy in my marriage, I just bail and go try to find a new relationship
If I don’t like my job, I search for a new one.
If I’m sick, I ask God to make me healthy
If I have financial problems, even of my own making, I ask God to bail me out.
Now there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with changing jobs or asking for God to heal us or help us out with our finances. But if that where we begin, it’s unlikely we’ll find genuine, lasting peace.
As I was studying the passage this week, I noticed something that had never occurred to me before. After the initial announcement of Jesus’ birth by a single angel, an entire angel army makes their proclamation. And notice that when they do that they begin with giving glory to God. And then only after they have done that, they proclaim that peace has come to the earth.
I think the order of their proclamation is instructive here. Peace only comes after praising. Unfortunately in our quest for peace, I think we often get the process backwards. But what if instead of starting by trying to change our circumstances or even asking God to do that, we begin by asking God to use our circumstances for His glory? When we do that, we are able to experience peace even if God chooses not to change our circumstances, knowing that He is using those circumstances to bring glory to Himself.
Put my trust in Jesus alone
In order to understand this idea, we need to go back to verse 14 and dig a little deeper:
...and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.
The obvious question here is what is meant by the words “those with whom he is pleased”? Or let’s make it even more personal and ask that question this way: “How do I become one of those people with whom God is pleased.
I’m going to use my relationship with Mary to help answer those questions. Because I love her, Mary is the object of my pleasure. You could say that she is “the one with whom I am pleased”. And because of that, my love for her is not dependent on how I feel about her at the moment. Even if we just had a disagreement or if I’m upset with her, if someone else attacks her in any way, I will immediately jump to her defense. That is because true love takes pleasure in serving and blessing the one who is loved, regardless of feelings and emotions.
So let’s apply that to the love God has for us. The fact is that I am an evil man with a sin nature. There is nothing in my life that would merit God’s favor. But because He loves me, God takes pleasure in serving and blessing me because that is His nature. Fortunately for us, His pleasure is not in our worthiness, but rather in fulfilling His love toward us in spite of our repeated rebellion and disobedience.
I think that is what Paul had in mind when he wrote these familiar words:
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Because God loves us so much, it gave Him pleasure to make the sacrifice that was required so that we could have genuine, lasting peace. The angels are not claiming in any way that it is possible for any man to be pleasing to God, but rather that we are merely the recipients of the peace that results from accepting the sacrifice that God was pleased to make on our behalf.
So let me make an attempt to paraphrase verse 14 in a way that I hope will make it more understandable:
Glory to God in the highest, whose pleasure it is to provide on earth the availability of genuine peace by sending His Son, the one you will find wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
Although Christmas does make peace available to all, not all receive that peace. Last week when we talked about hope, we used this verse as our benediction. But it is also relevant in helping us understand how to receive the kind of peace that we’ve been talking about today:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
I want to call your attention to the phrase “in believing”. That is how God fills us with joy and peace. You’ll notice that providing joy and peace is 100% God’s work - He is the one who fills. But He chooses to do that only for those who will put their faith in Jesus Christ alone. If you’re trying to obtain peace in any other way, you will come up short.
Action
We have seen this morning that...
Genuine, lasting peace comes only through faith in Jesus
Genuine, lasting peace comes only through faith in Jesus
As we close this morning I want to encourage all of you to make this practical in your lives by taking one of two actions:
Perhaps some of you have seen this saying before:
I know how cliched this is but one of the things about cliches is that they are often true, like this one.To those of you who have been trying to find peace through some other method other than putting your faith in Jesus, I can assure you that you will never find it. So if you have never made the decision to commit your life to Jesus and put your trust completely in Him, then I want to urge you to do that today. Don’t put that decision off.
If you’re joining us online on either the live streaming or Facebook Live, there is a host there that will be happy to talk to you more about how you can do that. And if you’re here in person, I’ll be available after the service and would love to talk to you more. Or after this message I’ll be sharing how you can contact us after this gathering is over and discuss this further.
I know that most of you joining us today have already made that decision. If you’re in that group, the I want to encourage you to develop a mindset in which you put God and His glory first in your thinking. Perhaps you’re in the midst of some trial or struggle right now and rather than asking God to get you out of that situation, I want to exhort you to begin with praise and ask God to use that situation for His glory. If you do that, then you can experience the peace of God even if He chooses not to change your circumstances.
Inspiration
I began this morning with the words from a poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that didn’t seem to have much hope for the kind of peace that we’ve been talking about this morning. But what I didn’t share with you was the end of that poem:
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
I’m still not sure if Longfellow ever did understand the kind of peace on earth that Jesus brought that first Christmas. But at least He did conclude that in the midst of the Civil War, God was not dead or sleeping. He was still sovereign over the affairs of men.
In that sovereignty, God has provided a way for you to have peace, even in the midst of your most difficult struggles. The most important gift you could receive this Christmas is to take hold of that peace by taking hold of Jesus.
As we close this morning, let me leave you with these words of Jesus:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.