Prince of Peace, Conquering King

There is an old story about a ship that wrecked in the midst of a terrible storm one night. All hands were lost, along with all the passengers, except for one little boy.

The boy was able to swim away from the sinking ship and finally found himself cast by the waves onto a rock near the shore where the ship had wrecked.

He spent the night clinging to that rock, until the next day, with the weather now clear, when he was found and rescued.

“Did you tremble while you were on that rock all night?” one of his rescuers asked the boy.

“Yes, sir, I did. I trembled all night,” the boy replied. “But the rock did not.”

This little boy had found the secret of peace, and today, as we talk about peace as the theme of the second Sunday of Advent, we’re going to see if we can discover that secret, too.

Now, the Bible has, as you might expect, quite a lot to say about peace. The Hebrew and Greek words for peace appear 367 times in Scripture. By my count, that’s one for every day, including leap year, plus one for good measure.

The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom,” and it carries a rich tapestry of meanings that go well beyond simply the absence of conflict.

Fundamentally, it speaks of welfare and prosperity, and it carries the idea of wholeness. It’s also used in the Hebrew language as a synonym for what is good.

So, for instance, when we see in the Book of Genesis that God created light, and it was good; and that God created land, and it was good; and that God created vegetation and the moon and stars, and fish and other animals, and man and woman in His own image — and then He looked out at all He has created and it was VERY good — what we see there is a picture of peace.

Everything and everyone in the Garden of Eden lived in perfect harmony. There was, at that point, no death or decay, because there was, at that point, no sin.

Everything lived and functioned according to God’s perfect design. Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with one another, with the rest of creation, and with the Creator Himself.

It was very good. Shalom existed throughout that garden.

In fact, the Bible begins AND ends in perfect shalom. The perfect peace — that idea of welfare and prosperity and wholeness, of everything living and functioning according to God’s perfect design — appears again in the Book of Revelation, where we read of the renewed heavens and renewed earth, where there is once again no sin and therefore no more death or decay, where mankind is once again in perfect fellowship with one another and with its creator.

But that’s not the world where we live right now.

“A former president of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and historians from England, Egypt, Germany, and India have come up with some startling information: Since 3600 B.C. the world has known only 292 years of peace!

“During this period, there have been 14,351 wars, large and small, in which 3.64 billion people have been killed. The value of the property destroyed would pay for a golden belt around the world 97.2 miles wide and 33 feet thick.

“Since 650 B.C. there have also been 1,656 arms races, only 16 of which have not ended in war. The remainder ended in the economic collapse of the countries involved.” [http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/p/peace.htm#:~:text=A%20former%20president,the%20countries%20involved.]

But it’s not just nations that fail to bring shalom to the world. Every day seems to bring new, horrifying headlines about murder, and terrorism, and hate crimes.

Neighbors take one another to court over property disputes, husbands and wives bicker and spat over the pettiest misunderstandings, families split over the distribution of a dead patriarch’s assets, friends stop talking because of politics.

Shalom has been well and truly broken in this world, and not just among the people who inhabit this world but also between them and the God who created them to be in fellowship with Him.

And it all traces back to sin.

When Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were essentially saying that they wanted to take for themselves the right to determine what was good and what was evil, instead of leaving that determination to God.]

They set themselves in God’s rightful place, and in doing so, they brought God’s promised curse of death into the world.

And we do the same thing when we sin. We decide in our selfishness and our arrogance that what we want is better than what God wants for us. And just as with Adam and Eve, our selfishness and arrogance do violence to the peace that God desires for His creation.

And so, not only did mankind create this problem with shalom, we continue to perpetuate it.

But God had a solution to this problem. The prophet Isaiah said this solution would be a child born to us, a son given to us, who would be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

This would be the child whose miraculous conception by a virgin was announced by an angel and whose humble birth in a stable was proclaimed to shepherds by a whole multitude of the heavenly host, who praised God and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

This Prince of Peace — the unique and eternal Son of God, who was with God in the beginning and WAS God, the one through whom all things were created, the one whom Scripture calls King of kings and Lord of lords — would be born in the most humble of circumstances.

Instead of being attended by the best doctors of Judea, He would be delivered by his mother’s betrothed husband. Instead of being laid into an ornate crib, he was placed in a manger, a feeding trough for the animals that watched His birth. Instead of being visited by kings and priests, he was visited by lowly shepherds.

He came into this life among mankind the same way that He would leave it, naked, covered in blood, and nearly alone.

He came so that all flesh could see the salvation of God, so that God could reconcile His rebellious creations to Himself.

He could have come as a conquering king — and, indeed, one day He will — but in the incarnation, God Himself stepped into the history of mankind in the person of His Son to bring a treaty of peace signed with the blood of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. And here’s how that treaty reads:

John 3:16 NASB95

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

He came offering eternal life — life in the everlasting presence of the Father and the Son, the way it was always meant to be — to those who would repent of their sins and put their faith in Him as God’s Son and as the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world by His own sacrifice on our behalf.

The innocent one — the sinless Son of God — would give Himself as a sacrifice on a cross at Calvary 33 years after His birth so that the guilty ones who believe in Him could have hope — the confident assurance that they will be raised from the dead to eternal life, just as He was three days after He died on that cross.

As the Apostle Paul put it:”In THIS hope we were saved!”

Hope for the resurrection of our bodies. But also hope for the restoration of shalom.

Shalom was the promise Jesus made to His disciples as He taught them at the Last Supper on the night before He died.

We see this in John, chapter 14, where Jesus, the Prince of Peace, talks about the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom God would send to them when the resurrected Jesus had ascended to heaven.

John 14:27 NASB95

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

The Holy Spirit would begin to restore peace to the hearts of those disciples, because He would be evidence in their lives that they who had followed Jesus in faith were no longer enemies of God and rebels against His righteous kingdom.

For every new believer in Jesus Christ since that time, the presence of the Spirit of Peace within them is the sign and seal attesting that they no longer belong to the kingdom of this world as rebels against God’s kingdom but that they now belong to God, not as subjects but as adopted sons and daughters.

Remember the beatitude? Blessed are the peacemakers — the bringers of shalom — for they shall be called sons of God.

In other words, they will exhibit the characteristic peace of their Father in heaven, the God of all peace.

This is why it’s so painful and heartbreaking to see Christians allowing themselves to become caught up in divisiveness and contempt and destruction. We who have put our faith in the Prince of Peace should be peace-makers, not peace-breakers.

The world is full of peace-breakers. It has been since that first sin in the Garden of Eden. And that sin brought death — first the death of Adam and Eve’s fellowship with God; then the [physical death of Abel, killed at the hand of his brother, Cain; then the death of every sinner born since that time.

The world is full of death, because the world is full of sin. It’s full of people whose only thoughts are for themselves, full of people whose minds are set on the flesh. And those who set their minds on the flesh are hostile to God. They are in open rebellion and war against Him.

But, as Paul puts is in Romans, chapter 8, to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

This world is full of troubles, and it will always be so until Jesus returns and makes all things new. But you can have the kind of peace that boy on the rock had after his shipwreck.

Even amidst the raging waves and blowing storms of this world, you can have the peace that passes all understanding if you cling to the solid rock of your salvation and set your mind on the Spirit of Peace you have been given as evidence of your salvation.

You can have this peace, because as God put it through the prophet Isaiah, He established salvation as a “covenant of peace [that] will not be shaken.”

God doesn’t promise to quiet the storms in a believer’s life, but He does promise peace to those who cling to the rock of Christ.

Here’s what Jesus said about that in John, chapter 16:

John 16:33 NASB95

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

“In the world, you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

And God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah is that, one day, His peace will reign across the earth. One day, shalom will be restored completely.

Isaiah 32:15–18 NASB95

Until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fertile field, And the fertile field is considered as a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness And righteousness will abide in the fertile field. And the work of righteousness will be peace, And the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever. Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation, And in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places;

The Spirit, who is life and peace, will bring justice that grows as a fertile field and righteousness that grows like a forest, and this righteousness — the righteousness of God Himself — will bring the quietness and confidence of shalom, and God’s people will finally have rest from the tribulations of this world, because the world will be filled with the Spirit of peace.

But these promises are only for those who set their minds on the Spirit, those who are in Christ, those who belong to Him.

As Paul puts it, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”

If you have never put your faith in Jesus as God’s perfect Son and your only hope for salvation, you do not belong to Him, and you do not have the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Peace.

Now, you might be going through life that way and still feeling as if you’re at peace. The psalmist Asaph lamented that he knew people in just those circumstances.

Psalm 73:2–5 NASB95

But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, My steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant As I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, And their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like mankind.

God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. The wicked can prosper and it can seem to them as peace.

But the peace that matters most eludes them, and that’s peace with God. Asaph wrote that:

Psalm 73:9 NASB95

They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth.

But Asaph considered these things, and he remembered the righteousness of God, and he concluded that God will not be mocked.

Psalm 73:16–20 NASB95

When I pondered to understand this, It was troublesome in my sight Until I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I perceived their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.

If you have not repented of your sins and placed your faith entirely in Jesus Christ, you are still at war with God, and whatever fleeting peace you find here on earth is all the peace you will have through eternity.

Your immortal soul will be swept away on that great day of vengeance, when He who came the first time as a vulnerable infant returns on the white horse of a conquering king to vanquish His enemies.

One day, Jesus will stand as the conquering king and righteous judge, “to execute judgment upon all, and to convict the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

But that great and terrible day has not yet come, because God “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Today, however, He stands before you as the Prince of Peace, and He holds in His hand the covenant of peace, the peace treaty signed in His own blood, shed for your on Calvary’s cross, and He offers to you the only peace that really matters, peace with God.

How will you respond to His gracious offer?