Worhip Call 0694 Peace Peace where there is no Peace
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Worship Call 0694
Friday July 22, 2022
Robert, you are chosen in the furnace of affliction!
Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
The great evangelist and teacher Charles Spurgeon had a plaque on his bedroom with the words written on it, "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."
Spurgeon, writing about the trials and afflictions that the saints endure, said, "It is no mean thing to be chosen of God." He continued, "God's choice makes chosen men choice men … we are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; yet here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice."
In the midst of trials and tribulations comes the burning question: "Why do the righteous suffer?" Some answer with theology, others with platitudes; C.S. Lewis offers a rhetorical, "Why not? They're the only ones who can take it!"
One friend suggests, "Suffering was the personal choice of God at the beginning of creation. [Revelation 13:8] If I want to know Him personally and intimately how can I not embrace it?"
Robert, embrace your trial and the suffering involved, but only if you want a deeper relationship with your personal savior.
Your family in the Lord with much agape love,
George, Baht Rivka, Elianna & Obadiah
Baltimore, Maryland
The Peacemakers
40.5 εἰρηνοποιός, οῦ m: (derivative of εἰρηνοποιέω ‘to make peace,’ 40.4) a person who restores peace between people—‘peacemaker, one who works for peace.’ μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί ‘happy are those who work for peace among people’ Mt 5:9. Though in Mt 5:9 the cessation of war is by no means excluded, the focus of meaning of εἰρηνοποιός is reconciliation between persons and not primarily to cause wars to cease.[1]
ποιέω poieō
εἰρηvn = Peace
It is one who is working to establish peace. A Reconciliation between two parties and that two parties is God and man.
So, what is peace? What is the peace that is in view here?
It can mean abstaining from war. And there has been many who have succumbed to the false teaching, the doctrine of demons, the teaching of and from the world even from the pulpits and have found themselves in slavery and onward to their own deaths as it is socialistic and communistic way.
It is evil saying do what we want, pay heed to your miss America and universe contestant say and join her in the movement of world peace give up your bible and all that is sacred to you which is your relationship with God, then we can have world peace between our fellow man. But the bible tells us something different about the teachings that come from this world.
Jeremiah 6:14 (NASB95) — 14 “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.
What is true peace?
[8934] שָׁלוֹם šālôm 237× peace, safety, prosperity, well-being; intactness, wholeness; peace can have a focus of security, safety which can bring feelings of satisfaction, well-being, and contentment [7965] See completeness; health; peace; prosperity; safety; well-being.[2]
22.42 εἰρήνηa, ης f: a set of favorable circumstances involving peace and tranquility—‘peace, tranquility.’ εἰ ἔγνως ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ταύτῃ καὶ σὺ τὰ πρὸς εἰρήνην ‘if you knew in this day those things related to peace’ Lk 19:42; προπέμψατε δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν εἰρήνῃ ‘send him on his way in peace’ 1 Cor 16:11. The meaning of ‘peace’ or ‘tranquility’ may be expressed in some languages in a negative form, for example, ‘to be without trouble’ or ‘to have no worries’ or ‘to sit down in one’s heart.’[3]
For our contextual meaning the word peace is
PEACE (שָׁלוֹם, shalom; εἰρήνη, eirēnē). A pervasive concept in the Bible that most commonly relates to a relationship of love and loyalty with God and one another.
This is the restoration of a right harmonious relationship between the creator and his creation.
This is the rub between the world peace movement and the biblical understanding of Peace.
What caused the absence of peace in the world as it is?
A disharmony between God and man.
The world seeks peace apart from harmony with the creator. The Christian should take heed of the example that is right before us in how the world is dealing with the nation Israel. Give up land and give to your enemies for the sake of peace. A good will gesture. The world is saying that there can be peace on the world’s terms. And that will not be the case.
Many accusations is leveled also at the Christian and it is the world seeks the church to give up its stand and to yield to world’s demands and then there will be peace. And that will not be the case.
The only true harmony that every was in its completeness was when man once lived and walked and worked in the garden of God in perfect harmony with his creator. There was peace in the environment between the creation and the dominion ruler man and that was reflected in the relationship between the dominion ruler and His God. this is the meaning behind the closing chapter of Genesis 2
Genesis 2:25 (NASB95) — 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
They might have been bodily naked, but that is not the emphasis, it is that their soul lay bare before God and in their perfection there was no offense that grieved God and would be the cause of disharmony with Him.
Man could stand before God without the need of atonement.
This peace however was broken by the actions of man when he himself broke the Law of God and violated the only Law that was given by God.
“You are not to take from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil for in the day that eat there of you will surely die.”
And when man did take from that tree the peace that was between the creature and his creator was broken.
It was man who broke the trust. It was man who disrupted the peace.
Someone might say that it was God’s fault. Why was it that God placed the tree right there in the middle of the garden that man would be tempted to take from it?
God is God. He is sovereign. It is God who sets the boundaries to a relationship with Himself. The boundary was not just between right and wrong, but it was also a boundary where Harmony and love existed between God and the creature man.
When man stepped beyond that boundary and violated the law of God now there is disharmony where the Righteous of God calls upon the justice of God to execute punishment upon the Law breaker.
This must be for God who is Love is also perfect justice and as a peacekeeper the Justice of God would have to eliminate the rebellion through capitol punishment putting the instigator of the rebellion to death.
But no.
God did not put the instigator to death. He let him live. And not only did God let him live (physically for a time) he allowed him to make more in the image of man who was born into the rebellion. So as man multiples and fills the earth the rebellion spreads.
As goes man so goes his environment.
God also provided the means of redemption. The restoration of a right relationship between God and his rebellious creature. That redemption would be first realized with the sacrifices that the Lord used to cover the nakedness of the two.
While God provided the means of restoration of a relationship the rebellion would continue to spread with those of Adam’s progeny who would reject that salvation message.
Man was not longer compatible with perfect environment and was exiled from the garden of God.
And man was still charged with multiplying and filling the earth.
Satan on the other hand would now be in charge over the fallen earth. Those born of Adam would be the son’s of disobedience, the sons of the rebellion.
And because there will be the children of light that who would gladly choose the way of reconciliation this would cause a riff and conflict in the world.
Genesis 3:15 (NASB95) — 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Man will seek peace on his terms. It was the Law that got man in trouble to begin with and ushered in the chaos that we have in the world today, so the Antinomian believes that if there was no law and man was free to do what his heart which he says is good than man can decide on his own terms what is right and what is wrong establishing his own standard of right.
But while there is light in the world there is conflict. The God who is light causes his righteousness to reflect those who would call upon his name, and there is the conflict. Where there is a contrast between light and darkness there will be conflict. And it is that sons of that darkness that will stop at nothing to kill the light.
John 3:19–21 (NASB95) — 19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
There is no fellowship between light and while the two exists in the same world there is no earthly peace and so the enmity continues.
[1]Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). In Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., Vol. 1, p. 502). United Bible Societies.
[2]Mounce, W. D. (2006). In Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (p. 1055). Zondervan.
[3]Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). In Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., Vol. 1, p. 246). United Bible Societies.