The Promise of Peace

Daniel Norman

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Introduction

[Come up and light the candle and stay there while reading from the Bible ]

The reading is from Luke chapter 2 verses 8-14

Luke 2:8–14(ESV)

8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 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.

10 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. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Our theme for this week is The Promise of Peace. Please consider these thoughtful ideas from the screen above. Since they come at us quick, you can also find them typed out on the back of your notes page.

Video: The Promise of Peace

Tension

So I have a question for you all this morning: Have you ever wondered why it is that in every “Christmas Romantic Movie” the main character always seems to move from the big city to the sleepy little town and never the other way around? You know what I mean? In every one of them the main character is typically thriving in their busy life in the big city and then by some stoke of happenstance, ends up at a Christmas tree farm, cabin in the woods or the family owned Inn that is out in the middle of nowhere. And is there that they discover…or are reunited…with their true love and true meaning of Christmas in an hour and a half.

Why are they always moving in that direction and never the other way around?

My guess is because the writers don’t think that the hustle and bustle of the city is an adequate backdrop for the feeling of “peacefulness” that they are gong for in the Christmas special. Even if you are someone who enjoys spending time in big cities, it is typically because of the energy, excitement and diverse opportunities that draws you to spend time there - not a calming feeling that would you describe as “peaceful”.

Because that is how we typically think of the idea of “Peace”. It is calm. It is quiet. It is serene. It is…deep breath....haaaa... peaceful.

And we long to experience that every year, especially at Christmas time, and that is why the movie makers write those scripts as they do, to capture their audience with this feeling of hot chocolate, flannel blankets cozied up next to a crackling fire “peacefulness”. (Some of you are making your Sunday evening plans as I speak)

And that is a visual picture of “peacefulness” is for us. It is a feeling that we are trying to capture and recapture over and over again. But the feeling of peacefulness is not the full picture when it comes to how God talks about peace in His Word.

But the Bible doesn’t primarily talk about “Peace” as a feeling. Especially a feeling that you can capture simply by changing aspects of your environment. Throughout it’s pages we have different words used for peace, but they are not really about a “peaceful feeling” to go after.

The promise of peace is the promise of an “established reality” that we can rest in no matter what environment we find ourselves in.

And on the night of the first Advent, the first coming of Jesus, this was the message of Peace that the Angels were proclaiming to the Shepherds. We are not exactly sure what was going in that moment, but we often imagine that the Shepherds were already enjoying what we would call a peaceful evening.

I doubt there was hot cocoa, but they probably were bundled up around a crackling fire of some sort out in the hills around the city of Bethlehem. I imagine it as a quiet night where the only sounds were the gentle rustle of the sheep with an occasional bleat here and there. [deep breath] peaceful.

But then that peaceful scene was invaded by an army of heavenly messengers and the presence of the glory of the Lord and whatever peace was there was quickly replaced with fear. Still the message was not about condemnation or destruction, it was that The Promise of Peace has arrived:

Luke 2:14 (ESV)

14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Let’s stop for a moment and pray and then we will tackle this “peace” thing together.

Truth

The first aspect of Biblical Peace that we are going to look at this morning is the root of every other form of peace or peacefulness in the human experience. If you have ever experienced “peace” in any form then it is only in reflection of..

The Promise of Peace with God (Genesis 3, Romans 5:1)

Notice that I did not say “the peace of God”, that is something different that we will get to later, but the foundation of Biblical peace is our access to the “established reality” of Peace WITH God.

You see ever since our first parents Adam and Eve rejected God’s good Word and rebelled against His good ways in the Garden of Eden, all of humanity has been at odds with our Holy God. We have all inherited a position of enmity with God. In other words, we all stand as an enemy of God and every time we sin it is another declaration of war against Him and His righteous decrease.

We don’t like to talk about this. We don’t like to think about this…but it the most important reality for us to understand when it comes to Peace.

We often depict the fear that the Shepherds felt with their being blinded by a bright light, but it wasn’t the high lumen count that caused them to hide their faces. It was “the glory of the Lord [that] shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.” They thought they were going to die.

Because even though we were created to be with God, in our sinful state we cannot bear to be in God’s holy presence.

This is the rest of that story from Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve sinned...

Genesis 3:8a (ESV)

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,...

So far it seems like a scene that we would describe as peaceful? To walk in a garden in the cool of the day sounds like a peaceful scene and on every previous day it would have been...but not today. Everything changed on this day...

Genesis 3:8–10 (ESV)

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

It should break our hearts to read this verse. It breaks my heart every time I think about it. Here is God coming into the garden to once again spend time with His children who He loves and instead of them welcoming His presence like they did every previous day, for the first time ever they ran from Him.

And we have been running ever since.

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Adam and Eve had never hid from the presence of God before. They had never known this fear thing before. They had never known this feeling of shame. Everything in their life to this point only drew them toward their loving and good creator... and now they were running away from Him. The presence of God that was their source of joy and peace, now caused them to run and hide.

Like the shepherds generations later, “the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.”

In his book, Come Let Us Adore Him, Paul David Tripp describes this tension like this:

“The effects of sin are immediate and catastrophic. The bond between God and mankind has been broken. Fear has replaced love. Hiding has replaced communion. Adam and Eve have not only damaged their spirituality, but have lost a huge chunk of their humanity.

It is a tragedy of historic and universal proportion. Made to live in the center of God’s love, people hide from him. In the psyche of every human being since lives this weird and uncomfortable battle between hunger for God and a desire to hide from him.” - Paul David Tripp

This is the saddest day in all of history, because we now all wrestle in this tension of hunger for the presence of God that we were created to enjoy and our desire to hide from Him because our sin won’t allow us to be at peace there.

But against the backdrop of this dark reality, the Angles declared a new reality:

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

The good news of great joy that the angels declared to the Shepherds that night was that we no longer have to fear because the prince of peace has been born. This is Emmanuel, God with us one again…and for all who put their faith and trust in Him they will have peace WITH God again.

Romans 5:1 (ESV)

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So Advent brings us The promise of Peace WITH God which settles our most important issue, the vertical peace problem- but we are still in this material world dealing with our horizontal problems with peace. What promises of Peace are there in these relationships? First of all, we have...

The Promise of Peace with One Another (Ephesians 2, 2 Cor 13:11)

Understand that this “one another” is not in reference to all mankind. When the Bible uses the language “one another” it is talking about the Church, the Ekklesia, the gathering of God’s people. You see this we have been given the responsibility to show the world how living in peace WITH God works in our horizontal relationships. The “peace with God” that is a fixed reality in our lives is supposed to overflow in us in such a way that we live in a unique community of harmony and peace that will get the attention of the world around us.

And it probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that it doesn’t always work this way. While we are called into this community to display God’s peace, we do execute it imperfectly. Not only do we do this today, but the Christian Church has always struggled in this area.

Starting in the new year we are going to be studying the book of Ephesians together, so we will circle back to this passage later but since it contains such a strong teaching on the topic of how peace is supposed to work in an imperfect Church it is fitting that we take a quick look at it this morning.

We are going to look at chapter 2, beginning in verse 11 where the Apostle Paul addressing a particular division that was common in the early days of the Christian Church and that is the tension between those in the Church who were Jewish and those who were not Jewish, they would be the Gentiles. He says:

Ephesians 2:11–16 (ESV)

11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

So that does not sound like a hope-filled opening, it wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t “hope-filled” but it also wasn’t the opening. We are in the middle of the letter at this point and it was just a few verses earlier where Paul says that we all, all of mankind, including himself, were dead in our trespasses and sins.

Ephesians 2:4–5 (ESV)

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

And then inverse 8 and 9 he doubles down again on the gift of grace that saves us, so that no one -Jew or Gentile- has anything to boast about. So then why does he here want to emphasize their differences?

To show them how God is working through the promises that he gave the Jewish people to bring peace even to those who were not looking for a Messiah because they had no idea of the Promise of Advent.

But that is an essential part of the story, right? It better be, otherwise I would have no hope because I am not Jewish. But the messengers of God who visited the Shepherds said that the good news of great joy would be for all people.

So listen to how this works in the Church, He says:

13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 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, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

And of course this is not the easiest thing to directly apply because as far as I know, I am looking at a room full of Gentiles, and even if some of you do come up to me afterward to claim your 1/16 Jewish heritage or something we still don’t have a big problem in the western church between Jews and Gentiles.

What we do run into, is quarreling and diving between those who are very religious and those who are not. Those who maybe grew up in the Church so you know the “right” way do things and those who came to Jesus much later in life and you are just trying to read your Bible, love Jesus and love others. Often times these two groups can clash in their expectations of what Church should be.

You might remember that Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Law...but to fulfill it and Paul isn’t contradicting Jesus, he specifically says that Jesus abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. In other words the religious practices that the Jews had followed for many generations but the Gentiles had no idea what they were about.

Those ordinances were place holders, that were meant to point to the coming of the Messiah. They was no power in them by themselves, but they pointed to the power of the one who would come and fulfill them. That is what Jesus did, so that they were not longer needed like they were before.

So Jesus brought together those who were close to the promises of God and those who are far off…Just like today we have Churches full of people who grew up close to the message of the Gospel and others who were far off. And despite these very different backgrounds, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can experience peace with one another and we are called to demonstrate that peace to the world.

If you did a quick look through at all the letters in the New Testament that were written to various Churches, almost all of them begin and/or end with a call to live at peace with one another. I will just share one for time sake this morning and you can look up others on your own:

2 Corinthians 13:11 (ESV)

11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

As the Christian Church, we are uniquely equipped to demonstrate peace with one another because of the Peace that we have WITH God.

Lastly this morning, we have been given

The Promise of Peace in the Trouble of the World

I said at the start that we would get to “the peace OF God” and this is where find it…in the midst of trouble. Too many people today think that coming to Jesus means that everything will work out just the way you want it in this world but there is no promise of that from Jesus. And there are a lot of false teachers out there that are willing to sell you that message because, well it is an easy sell…but it is not the “peace” that Jesus taught us when He he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

He didn’t promise us easy lives on this side of heaven, quite the opposite actually. In John 16 we hear Jesus tell His disciples:

John 16:33 (ESV)

33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Becoming a follower of Jesus actually brings trouble with the world because whether they realize it or not, their sins are a declaration of war against their creator. Of course we were all in that position at one point, but when we put our faith and trust in Jesus we now stand with God which is on the other side of that line. And as much as we don’t like it, this will cause us trouble.

And it is in the midst of that trouble that God promises us His presence which brings us His peace:

Philippians 4:5b–7 (ESV)

The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, 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 your minds in Christ Jesus.

This is how our brothers and sisters around the world are able to continue in their faith under some of the worst circumstances. They take these words of Jesus to heart. They know tribulation like we have not yet seen here in the west and in the midst of their struggle they are able to declare that they still have the peace of God guarding their hearts.

Let me give you one example. The man sitting on the bed in Unga, A Christian man living in a region in India where Christians are hated and believed to be the source of every trouble because their presence upsets that gods. A mob came to Unga’s house and he was not home, but his teenage son Samaru was. That is his picture in the corner. The mob abducted Samaru instead. Days later the police found his son’s body deep in the jungle. His face was unrecognizably damaged.

Where is the peace for Unga?

He says “After the persecution we were quite worried, filled with fear and sadness, but now we are strengthened in the Lord.” And you might say, yeah time heals all wounds…really? A wound like this?

Understand, the men who took Unga’s son lived in his villiage. He knows them. He knows who it was who took his son. And this is how the peace of God works in times of trouble. Unga says,

“When I see them, I don’t get angry. I smile at them, love them and pray for them because they also have to know Jesus. It is better to live and face trouble for the Lord and go to heaven to be in eternity with the Lord than to live in this world with sin and go to hell. Don’t fear the people who destroy the body, but fear the Lord” p.5 VOM

This is the power of Advent, the Power of Jesus’ coming into our world, into our lives and coming back to bring us to to be with Him for all eternity. It is The Promise of Peace. Peace With God, Peace with one another and Peace despite trouble in this World.

Gospel Application

When Henry David Thoreau, the famed poet, philosopher and naturalist was close to death, he was visited by a very pious Christian aunt who asked him what every concerned Christian would ask in such a situation.

She said, “Henry, have you made your peace with God?”

Thoreau thought about it and responded “I didn’t know that we had ever quarreled.”

Landing

And his answer could be echoed by so many people today. With his many poems and essays Thoreau is famous for pointing people toward a feeling of peace in this world but it was purely enviromental. A quiet place next to a pond instead of a busy city.