God of Peace

Introduction

In a world where there is always controversy, there is always fighting, there always seems to be people doing wrong. In a world where we have to make hard decisions between two difficult options, where we struggle to stay connected with our friends and family because of different schedules, busy lives, and upside down years like this year. All these make it difficult to have peace doesn’t it? Today we talk about peace, where does out peace come from. How do we gain peace in our lives? Listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

1 Thessalonians 5:16–24 NRSV

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise the words of prophets, 21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil. 23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

If we look at verses 16-18, this is what we need to do. How do we rejoice always? How do we pray without ceasing? How do we give thanks in all circumstances? This is difficult isn’t it? Verse 18 ends this rejoice, pray, and give thanks command by saying this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

This is what is needed to lead us down to that path where we have peace in our lives. In other words, these dispositions or ways of living, lead us to following the will of God in our lives. This does not mean you are own your own but by the Holy Spirit’s help build us up.

Rejoice - bible scholars talked about this as two things - fruit of the Spirit for the individual and something shared amongst the gathered believers. This is being able to see God and being able to be glad with God’s grace in both our lives and others. This doesn’t come naturally but is a conscience effort of looking for and seeking God’s grace in your life and the life of the church. This is also God grace as gifted by the Spirit to have supernatural joy that empowers you to be joyous without circumstances determining your ability to do so.

In other words, we can find times in which we can be joyful and there are other times in which we can’t because we can’t seem to find a reason or because of something happening that is stealing our joy. This is where the Holy Spirit’s gift of joy overcomes or breaks through those obstacles and it becomes part of who you are, regardless of circumstances. Have you ever met someone who always is joyful? This is a gift from the Holy Spirit.

Turning to the phrase 17, “pray without ceasing”. I am sure you and many others often wonder what that means. We say amen at the end of every prayer, right? Doesn’t that mean the prayer ended? Actually it doesn’t. The word amen means “let it be so” and not prayer ends here. Jesus stayed in a prayerful state which is how he knew how to do the right thing and speak the right words. Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit as we witness in his earthly baptism, was keeping the communication line open with God, the Father. Without getting into an explanation of the Trinity, if it makes it easier, think of God in heaven keeping the line open to communicate with God on earth. Staying connected helped Jesus persevere in the mission and complete the work of the cross and resurrection.

The same is true for us. Always keep the line of communication open with God. Speak to God and listen to God all day long. This does not mean you have to have your eyes closed as we often do when praying. It also does not mean lose reverence for speaking with God either. If God is part of every conversation you have, would you change your words you speak or things you talk about? Staying in connection with God all day helps to persevere through difficult times. We are pouring out our worries, our sorrows, our fears, everything we are going through in order to help God walk us through the valley or mountain climbing we are in the middle of.

Keeping the communication line not only helps us to keep our feet on the right path and overcome the obstacles before us, but this also helps us to stay in tune with God and the people that come across our paths. Think of the way in which you probably have felt the need to do something out of the blue for someone you know or maybe a stranger. You don’t quite know why but you feel it is the right thing to do. Staying in constant communication with God helps us to keep our ears open to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to us and guiding us into acts of love.

The third command was to “give thanks in all circumstances”. This is another tough one isn’t it? We don’t find it too difficult to be thankful when things are going well, but we forget sometimes. We thank God for the good things in life. However, it is pretty hard to know how to be thankful for the rotten circumstances that happen or the pain and sorrow that happen to us and our loved ones or even seeing life being so unfair to strangers.

In these difficulties of life, we are not being thankful that they happen and I want to be clear about that. God is not saying be thankful that someone has cancer or someone as heart disease or someone lost their loved one. What it means is that in the midst of things difficulties, where is God at work where we can see grace operating in the midst of tragedy and hardships? In staying in constant communication with God, this is sometimes easier to see God’s grace working in both the good and the hardships of life. When we abandon God or try to distance ourselves from God, it is harder to see the grace at work.

The next three verses deal with avoiding things that will rob us of joy, make us feel distant from God, and be unable to be thankful. The first part was “Do not quench the Spirit”. This is a hard one to understand at first. How do we quench the Spirit? This is when we ignore God. When we are staying in constant prayer, keeping the communication lines open, but we are ignoring the message God is giving us. An easy way to understand this is that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to empower each of us for the continued mission of Christ in this world. When we hoard a gift or stop using the gift, we are quenching the Spirit. We are purposefully blocking or stopping the work the Spirit is trying to do through us. When you feel the need to pray for someone, then stop and pray for that person, do not ignore that feeling. When you feel the need to go and visit someone, let them know you want to visit with them and go visit them. Each day the Holy Spirit is working in you and when we ignore the Spirit of God, we quench the Spirit. When we choose to respond, we choose to continue with God.

The second part is “Do not despise the words of prophets.” This can be confusing for us today because we think of prophets as those in biblical times. However, this is not completely true. Prophets quite simply speak a word from God to the people. Sometimes we might be in a place in our lives where we cannot hear God or we do not keep that communication line of prayer open, or perhaps we are ignoring it. This means God may reach out to you through someone else. I can tell you that many times in my life, someone has spoken a word from God to me that reached me. Perhaps in the same way, do not ignore if the Holy Spirit is asking you to speak to another a word from God.

The third part is to “test everything ; hold fast to what is good”. This is the word of caution. Test what you are being told, test what you are hearing, test what you are acting upon. Does this line up with God as you know God? Is this the grace of God building up the body and spreading the gospel news? Is this God’s love pouring into another’s life? Or does this tear down the kingdom? Does this contradict the teaching you know of God? Always be mindful there is a constant battle going on where the Holy Spirit is working in you, training you and sharpening you to know what is true and what is not. There is also the devil and evil that is working to tear you down and deceive you. Do not become paralyzed but instead, by keeping that communication line open with God, you can test and work through understanding if it is from God or not.

The fourth part is “abstain from every form of evil.” This means what you think it means. When we keep those communication lines open, we can more clearly understand the different between what appears as good but is not and that which appears unclear but become clear as good. A reminder of what the bible says about the devil, he appears as angel of light. Too often we think of evil and the devil as the red guy with horns and a pitchfork doing blatantly evil things. However, the deceiver knows how to deceive so can appear as something good and work in us something evil. Again, staying in constant communication with God, being joyous, being thankful for the grace at work in all circumstances, we see more clearly what is good and what is evil.

In the final section of our passage we get to the God of peace who sanctifies us entirely, spirit, soul, and body. The God of peace helps preserve us to be blameless before the judgment of Christ coming. God is faithful to do this. In the midst of all of this empowering by the Holy Spirit to be joyful, thankful, and in constant communication with God, we are enabled to live differently. We are able to work with the Holy Spirit to serve others in love. We are able to hear from God directly and from others who speak on behalf of God a prophets. We also can hear more clearly God’s voice to know what is truly good and what is not so that we can continue doing good and removing the evil in our lives. This is where our peace comes from, the God of peace, working wonders in our lives by the love and grace present in our lives because the God of peace is present. This peace comes from God and is present in our lives. This is the peace as Paul says in Philippians is the peace that surpasses all understanding. This God of peace is why we celebrate this season of Advent. We celebrate the God of peace coming into our lives by Christ our savior.