Peace

Indiucky

Part 1

I worked in a rat race for over 30 years. That and other events is how I became curious about peace. What is it like to live a peaceful life? A totally peaceful life on earth might be unattainable, but what if I could cut my exposure to warring behaviors in half. What if I became a peace seeking person? What if I steered clear of situations and people that interrupt peace? What if I put some extreme value on peace? Then search for peace from its origin. That is my opening and here is the study journey.

You have heard this: All that is needed is the Bible. This is how God has chosen to reveal himself to us. Case in point: When God commanded the building of the temple in the Old Testament, He gave direction to the room where his presence was to be manifested - there was nothing in there. Interesting, in pagan cultures there would be some great monolithic image, but not for God. In God's temple it was just a cedar place, in it dwelt the ark, in the ark dwelt the tablets. What God is saying is, 'don't look for me in shrines, paintings or statues - I am not there. I am spirit, look for Me in my words, the words I have chosen to reveal myself to you.' Look for Me, your creator, in the Bible. And the reading today from his Word is from Isaiah chapter 9:1-7. You will want to have your bible open on your lap to this captivating passage.

I think that is important to study the Word in context. The historical context of the time can be found in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. All of the following can be found there. I have condensed it here for you as if it were newspaper headlines and lead-ins. The time is from 792 B.C. to about 720 BC.

  • Azariah, or Uzziah, a King with two names, was made king in Judah.
  • Uzziah subjugated the Philistines and the Arabians
  • The headline: Uzziah lifted up in pride. The storyline: Uzziah, assumed the right to officiate in the temple. His unauthorized acts brought the judgment of God against Uzziah, the judgememt - leprosy. His son Jotham ruled jointly with him.
  • Shallum is assassinated after one month rule in Israel.
  • Menahem's reign is of terror and wickedness in the Northern Kingdom.
  • Headline: The Northern Kingdom was attacked by the Assyrians. Storyline: Assyrians secured tribute from the king of Israel, who had exacted the money from the wealthy of his kingdom.
  • Pekahiah is assassinated by his successor after two years reign.
  • Pekah reigns over the Northern Kingdom. The king formed an alliance with the Syrians against the Assyrians. The coalition also threatened Judah
  • Ahaz did not reign in harmony with religious law but adopted idolatrous practices, including the human sacrifice of some of his own children.

So all of this terror, turmoil and disharmony with God is going on in the then known world; And Isaiah, God's prophet arrives on the scene somewhere around this point in time. So we look to His word to see what God had revealed to us. If you were a Jew and lived in the time of Isaiah or after, you would have been exposed to the events and these words of prophecy from God's prophet.

Isaiah 9

1 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan-
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
3 You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.
4 For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.
5 Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, [b] Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.

With all that was going on in Isaiah time, God's children really needed words of encouragement, a promise. In contrast and in today's context, have you ever noticed how The Wall Street Journal does an excellent job of summarizing the world news on the front page; as if you may not have time to read the whole paper. Check it out for yourself the next time you are in a bookstore. Now the ancient headlines and lead-ins that I read earlier are not much different from the troubles and darkness you can read on the front page of the Wall Street journal on any given day in our time.Things have not changed much have they?

Back to our reading: It is there in the 5th verse of the Isaiah's prophecy He says:

Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.

In the context of oppression, all the bits of pieces of war will eventually be rolled up and put away and then he tells us why. Isn't it amazing statement he says:

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,

The answer to everything that has happened and will ever occur is being tied to the birth of a baby. Not any baby but this baby; this baby that has four or five names depending upon your translation. I'm going with four names today. If you want to figure it out; is it four or five names, you can do so in your own study. You probably will not arrive at a certain conclusion but you will learn much from the curiosity.

The answer to everything that has happened and will ever happen is being tied to the birth of a baby. Not any baby, but a baby with four names: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and our name this morning Prince of Peace.

If we summarize what Isaiah gives in these verses, it is simply this: A child is born, that child is the Prince of Peace and if we are to have peace, then it is to that child we must go. A child is born, that child is the Prince of Peace and there is no peace except what is found in Him.

People on the border of Christianity, who are wondering about the Bible, and not sure about what it says, they may feel and say "Oh come on" about a claim like this. Is the Bible really saying that the answer of the dilemma of man, the issues of our enmity with God and one another are found in the birth of a baby? All be it in a baby who has been given four names?

The need for peace among nations is more than matched by a sincere need to live at peace with one another and sometimes it is matched with the need for inner peace. Enmity is ugly, it is not nice, it is not kind and it certainly is not enjoyable. We know the importance of harmony among one another. And we know the absolute necessity of peace within ourselves. Strife, disappointment, disharmony, futility and decay cannot be denied as part of the fabric of our lives. It is not nice to observe, but honest to observe.

On the topic of Inter-peace, you know, peace with one another: I don't think we do it on purpose but we can be in a bad mood or want something so badly for ourselves that we disrupt the peace of others. It is almost as if we are not aware of the plausibility for peace. That is the giving end to unrest. We must also consider the receiver of such strife. If you're driving in rush hour, look around, the cars are filled givers of unrest and the receivers of torment. Jesus gives us the source of this behavior in Luke 6:45:

45 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

How many of you have seen the face of a scow backed up by a shaking fist in your rearview mirror? Ugly isn't it.

Then the topic of Intra-peace, peace within ourselves: You know sometimes the unrest is all internal, a person who is not at peace with self: Feeling alone, mourning loss, self-punishment, rehashing the hurting past or just a troubled soul whose mind is stuck in a nose dive - lacking self control of thoughts and not realizing that peace has a value, when it's priceless. Maybe it is the lack of internal peace that triggers the disharmony among one another.

Far worse, the absence of peace with God, the source of peace, as we are going to find out, He is the remedy. Yet some of us are alien to God.

It is also accurate to say despite man's ability to accumulate stuff, despite the accumulations of knowledge both from His word and from academia, that sense of frustration and absence of peace, - which men and women are forced to acknowledge - is not answered in a book at Barns and Noble, it is not answered by a Masters Degree, it is not answered by anything we can do.

At times I have found my own spirit sagging under the burden of emptiness. I wondered am I alone, and I look around and I see others reaching out too because they are sagging under the same burden. And it is staggering to realize that this is not something that is only found in this century. It has been this way for a long time.

You see I don't have to look very far to find a topic for a sermon. I just look in the mirror.

The preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes struggled with the same. He lived with the American dream, big house, big bank account, and discovers it was a dead end street.

It appears that the living of our lives - is to make the best of bad situations, jobs, family situations. And if we look around the bend at the future it doesn't look any better down the road. As soon as you get one issue resolved, given time, another rises up to take its place. There has been no lasting peace since the Garden of Eden; glimpses of peace yes, but none lasting; So that is why the name Prince of Peace is staggering and appealing. Who is the Prince of Peace, someone who himself is peace, someone who has achieved peace, someone in knowing him becomes our very peace.

This peace of which we read is an eternal peace. Look at verse 7:

7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

There will be no end to this peace. You see, there is a remedy: Peace of loving fellowship, Peace of a quiet conscience and Peace with God is all found at it source - in God though his son the Prince of Peace. Verse 6 again:

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Part 2

You may meet people all the time who tell you that they are finding the answers, and all by looking within. In the beginning maybe they find peace. Then the value slides and then they begin to look somewhere else. And it becomes: help I need somebody, but not just any body. I have looked in and within myself yet no solution. I wonder if I look outside of myself - if I can find a person with the answers to my dilemma. Of course that is the message of the Bible isn't it.

Instead of man finding God, God has found man. God took the initiative. Unto us a child is born and his name is the Prince of Peace. This peace is more than just the absence of warfare. It is more than an inter-sense of tranquility or the enjoyment of harmony among those who were previously feuding. All of those things are limited in their duration. There has been no lasting peace since the Garden of Eden; glimpses of peace yes, but none lasting; So that is why the name Prince of Peace is staggering and appealing. Who is the Prince of Peace, someone who himself is peace, someone who has achieved peace, someone in knowing him becomes our very peace.

This peace of which we read is an eternal peace. Look at Isaiah verse 7:

7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

There will be no end. How is this significant for us? What kind of peace is that? We have never known a peace like that. If there is a peace that is eternal and if this peace is to be found in the Messiah, that Wonderful Counselor, how does all of that work? How do you get from a phrase the Prince of Peace to the experience of peace? If God has come in the person of this Prince of Peace we would expect that God has accomplished what he set out to do. That is exactly what the Bible tells us.

We are going to find that that eternal peace was bought. For that reason I want to begin to wrap this up by looking at another portion of God's scriptures. I would at this time like for us all to turn to Colossians Chapter 1. Three words from these verses work out for us what we have been considering. Beginning in verse 15, Paul is introducing us to Jesus. Notice that he begins with the image of the invisible God the first born over all creation and so on. Draw your eyes to verse 19.

19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

And the reason that this is significant verse 21:

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

Let's start at verse 21 and work back up. The first word is alienation; an alienation that touches our minds, our believing, an alienation that is represented in our lives, our behaving. We behave wrongly because of our minds. Our minds are wrong so we behave wrongly. And that predicament alienates us from God.

You will not find this anywhere else except for the Bible. You won't find this by looking within yourself. In America there is this attitude that I can believe pretty much what I create for myself. Nope, it doesn't work.

This is the true offerings of peace, this amazing story of God becoming man, dying for his enemies, and praying for their forgiveness. That is the story of Christianity. God take the initiative and comes to us. The Prince of Peace dies for those that are opposed to him. And as he is dying he prays for the forgiveness of his enemies.

And the reason for this is because of alienation. The reason that you know relational alienation and contention between you and another, the reason that you experience physiological alienation, you know the way you feel all messed up within yourself. If I left out an alienation, you can insert what troubles your mind and soul here. But all of the alienations are tied to verse 21 of Colossians 1; you are alienated from God and are enemies in your mind. You might think of it as resistance, nevertheless enemies.

If we are enemies of God then what hope do we have for peace? Unless of course - if the God to whom we are alienated takes the initiative. That is exactly the prophecy of Isaiah 9. God takes on human flesh and provides for us a man who will represent all men. He comes to deal with our alienation by, our second word, reconciliation. God was please to have all of himself in the man Jesus and through Himself reconcile all things.

In other words there is a barrier between God and man. It is describe in the Bible as sin. Because God is just he must punish sin. Because God is loving he provides a solution in the midst of the execution of his judgment. It is here that Paul is making sense of Isaiah chapter 9, He is the Prince of peace. And the Prince of peace moves towards Calvary and his crucifixion and on that cross he bares our sins. His blood reconciles our sins. On the cross Christ bares the penalty that we deserve.

The real question, are you reconciled with God? We look all around and say the world is really messed up. Yet somehow we cannot face up to what is messy, ugly and painful in our own little lives. You see Jesus is a sufficient savior. The issue for us is not achieving but acceptance. Our society remains completely unaware that the reconciliation has already been achieved. On the cross the answer to all our anxieties has been provided.

All of this leads to our final word transformation; the transformation on not only the individual, but the whole universe. Look at verse 20:

21 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Paul just points out the cosmic sweep of the reconciling work of Jesus. Nothing outside the universe lies outside the range of what Jesus has accomplished.

We do have something to say to people who are trapped in troubled hearts. People who are trapped by anger, depression, resentment. I would like to introduce you to a person, His name, the Prince of Peace. By his coming and death and resurrection the age to come that will be finished according to God's time table. But the age to come has dawned. Meanwhile little glimpses of peace are to be seen, but one day there will be eternal peace.

You might be saying to yourself now, you haven't told me enough about finding a glimpse of peace now. I need some help now. Turn with me to Phil 4:4-9:

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be anxious for nothing, 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 minds through Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things. 9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Verse 4: Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
Peace does not come and go with one's circumstances; rather it is predicated altogether on one's relationship with the Lord. It finds expression in "rejoicing," which is an imperative, not an option. It means to delight in the Lord, celebrate him, praise him.

Verse 5: Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
Let your peace be known to all men. Verse 5 is telling us not to irritate people. If you are provoking unrest, if you're the center of disruption, you are not displaying gentleness. Don't fool yourself by masking an agenda with the appearance of false gentleness; it is my experience that people see right through it.

In contrast it also means don't react to irritating behaviors. Don't let an irritator take you off your game. If situations take you off your game, avoid them. Don't lead with your chin. Put a value on your peace. If you need to take action pray on it first. Sometimes there is a God supported cause to go into action. Make sure it is supported.

Verse 6: Be anxious for nothing. If our anxiety flag is up we must put it away.
The imperative command: If it is on your mind give it to God in prayer. We are to plea to God with thanksgiving. Yes in spite of the current trouble there is much still to be thankful for, isn't there? Let God know your requests. We could end our request with: I have cast my cares to you God. And God, though Your great understanding, help me have a peaceful heart through your son Christ Jesus.

The end of verse 8: Spend your thinking time on these 7 things. Here are the things we are to mediate on - verse 8:

whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy

Number 1: Whatever things are true. We are to meditate on God's word. Maybe you take a passage along with you on a day and just really explore it in your mind. We are not just to read God word but we are to meditate on it.

Number 2: Whatever things are noble. I have a list of synonyms for the word noble. I'm going to slowly verbally list them. These are also things we are to mediate on whatever is: dignified, gracious, decent, righteous, good, and finally splendid.

Number 3: Whatever things are pure. Focus your thoughts on whatever is unadulterated, uncontaminated, clean, untainted, and wholesome.

Number 4: Whatever things are lovely. This should not be hard for anyone. We are surrounded by the divine, the charming and beauty. Look at the spring in bloom. Meditate on these things.

Number 5, 6 and 7: Whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on it. Think about the good things people have done, or their good qualities. Just as we are to weigh our words carefully we should weigh our thoughts carefully. Put a positive spin on actions and results. And meditate on those things in that manner. The result is in verse 9:

9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Do this, the next time you feel a warm breeze across your cheek, be reminded of this peace, I like to imagine that God is pouring his peace over me to settle my soul. Breathe out deeply; do that now take a big breath and breathe it out slowly. Feel it? Somehow when we have lost our peace we stop breathing. Ever notice that? Little short breaths are an outward signal to everyone, I lost my glimpse of peace. Breathe.

The next time you bite into the most wonderful tasting fruit. You know the one out of hundred, be it pear, a watermelon, an apple, a grape. Nibble it slowly and thank God for his creation. You know that you are swallowing his creation, He is the source of peace, be reminded of that with every vivid flavor. Use this time to think on these verses we studied today and the source of all peace.

Contributors: Matthew Henry: Alistair Begg; Indiucky