Advent 2023: Peace

This is going to be week four in our um Advent series.

We're um talking about awaiting the king.

And this morning we're going to cover the idea of peace.

You may have noticed that it's um it's almost unavoidable to sing a Christmas carol without singing about the peace that God brings to bear through his son Jesus.

One of the things that we are learning as we have gone through the book of Matthew together is that the values that compose the kingdom, things like love, peace, hope, joy, the things that compose the kingdom are associated with the presence of the king.

You don't get to have peace, true peace, without having the king.

We live um in a unique time culturally where um many of the values in our culture align with values in God's kingdom.

There's a desire for justice and equality.

Uh there's a desire for peace in the world.

We we don't um we're not living in a culture that just um prizes war, at least here in the United States.

We're uh hopefully lovers of peace.

Um there's these values that we have kind of as pillars within society, but the unique unique thing is that our culture wants the kingdom without the king.

And what we're seeing as we go through the book of Matthew, and what we're gonna see again this morning, is that you cannot have these values without having, in a true sense, in the way that our life and our hearts long for, we cannot have these things without the presence of the king.

You don't get perfect love without the king of love being present.

You don't get true justice without the just judge of the whole earth being involved.

So last week we talked about how there's this sense of anticipation that comes with Advent.

Um for us, we have this reality where we have arrived and the first coming has arrived, but now we're waiting for the second advent.

We call it the second coming of Christ.

We're living in this place of tension between a first coming that was very much historic and real, and there's realities that we inherit because of the first coming of Christ, but then there are things that we are living into, hoping for with the second advent of Christ.

That's very important as uh you live as a Christian, that you understand that you're between two way markers on a map, that there is a historic event that has happened uh in the past, and yet there are things that are yet in your reality that are unresolved because there is still a future coming of Christ.

And so did you ever in when you were in like first, second grade in art class, make a fan by folding the paper back and forth?

Yeah.

I think as I was thinking about that this this week, I think that that the corrugation of those um the folded paper is the idea that I've been communicating a lot over the last couple years on Sundays in the text, in that the Bible just kind of it maps onto itself.

If you were to take that fan and to just collapse it down, you'd be able to drive a pin through it and it would touch all these different segments of that same piece of paper if you were to pierce it through.

And that is, in a sense, how scripture is.

So as we are in this place of tension, we are reenacting what the Jews lived in as they heard all these prophecies from the from you know from Genesis 3 on through their history, there's this anticipation that a person is going to make it all better.

A person is going to change reality, a kingdom is going to come through a king.

This morning we're going to zero in on the promise of peace.

The promise of peace.

Let me set the stage for this a bit and just talk about the absence of peace on a global stage.

There are currently at least 23 major armed conflicts that are occurring in the world right now.

One of the leading universities that studies global conflict is a university out of Sweden named Uppsala University.

And they defined conflict.

One of their definitions is this an armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is a government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year.

So they have, remember the COVID charts tracking cases?

Well, at this university, they have a similar dashboard where they're tracking global conflicts.

Um this is one of their charts.

This is state-based conflict by level of intensity since um the end of World War II.

And you see the rise in minor conflicts and this kind of the level uh degree of war.

There's also, uh they also have this map of current, this is at the end of 2022, current geographic areas that are experiencing conflict.

It is the absence, the absence of peace.

Many of these countries, people in these countries, have lived with in a with constant turmoil.

It's an experience completely different from our own, where um the uh the instability, you live with instability, whether or not your government will be able to defend you, or maybe the government is not even the government that you chose or would have chosen to be underneath.

And so there is this sense of global unrest that exists, but there is also internal turmoil, uh, there is internal um anxiety.

There is a uh, there is uh again another entity, I forget the uh the body that tracks this, but um their name will be on the next slide here.

But they're they're looking at anxiety disorders, panic, generalized anxiety, agrophobia, specific phobias, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, uh, separation anxiety disorder.

You take these things, you put them on a chart, and you match it up against GDP, and you have this interesting kind of J curve where some of the lowest um experiences of anxiety are in countries with low GDP.

You also have some countries with high GDP with low levels of anxiety, but it's interesting how you have this curve that goes up as GDP increases.

There is this um turmoil that is not resolved with money, and it is a um epidemic that is uh the anxiety epidemic is ever increasing.

Just a few quotes from characters.

Prince Harry says, I've been in to the very darkest of places, but I'm here now.

I'm here because I've learned that life is about finding peace within yourself, and then you can truly share that peace with others.

Amanda Gorham, who shared a poem at the presidential inauguration, she said in 2022, there is so much noise in the world, it can be hard to find your own inner peace, but it's there and it's worth searching for.

Lynn Wanwell Miranda says, I am constantly striving for peace, but I don't always achieve it.

It's a journey, not a destination.

And Emma Watson, I've had times in my life where I've felt very lost and very uncertain, but I've learned that those are often the times when we grow the most.

We live, our human experience is an experience of external conflict and internal conflict.

Our world longs to be at peace, to have its internal and internal conflicts resolved.

We long to have peace within and with the rest of the world.

This morning we're gonna look at a text from Isaiah chapter nine, verses six through seven.

This is a very famous text that is oftentimes quoted at Christmas time because it prophesies of his son.

So if you have the book of Isaiah in front of you, we're gonna be in chapter nine, Isaiah chapter nine, verses six and seven.

It says this for a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders.

He will be named wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace.

The dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.

Let's pray, let's ask the Lord to speak to us through this text.

Lord, this is a famous prophecy from Isaiah, and you said through Isaiah that the son who's born, one of his titles, would be the Prince of Peace, and that he would reign and be present.

We just thank you, God, that you came and that you were present, and that your presence remains with us by the Spirit, and you want to bring about peace in our life, that this is a real thing that we can experience as followers of Jesus.

So teach us this morning about peace.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

So Isaiah chapter nine.

This promise of a son.

Again, just to review, there are a few names here, titles that Jesus has given.

Notice this expanse of the names that are given.

That we have wonderful counselor, right?

Your therapist, he's the wonderful therapist, but then he's also the mighty God.

He's the eternal father.

So this family identity, the ongoing, never-ending eternal father.

And then a royal term, the prince of peace.

And then he says a couple of things about what he's going to accomplish.

He's going to have this vast domain, comprehensive authority.

It says in verse 7.

In verse 7, it says that he will have this endless, he will bring in endless prosperity.

I know that there is a bad teaching, a heretical teaching in the church.

Um that we we call it the prosperity gospel, that that um or the health and wealth gospel.

It's easy in the critique of that heresy to think or to take that and think God's opposed to prosperity.

But no, God's Jesus' reign, when he comes in with his second coming, he's present.

He's going to bring about eternal, everlasting prosperity.

An ambition, a personal ambition to be prosperous is not something that God is opposed to.

What is he opposed to?

He's opposed to greed, the misuse of money, the uh process of getting means in a manipulative uh the the means uh would be manipulative to gain wealth using dishonesty, unbalanced scales.

But yet the presence of Jesus is going to bring endless prosperity.

There's going to be a revived Davidic throne, right?

Again, here's our our little you know second-grade fan that's folded up.

It's like we had the we had the throne back there of David, and David's coming back, but as Jesus, right?

And Jesus is royal, like just expanding all of Israel's borders to the greatest expanse that they ever had geographically.

Like Jesus is gonna like come and embody that.

But it's gonna be Jesus doing it from that throne.

And then there's gonna be justice and righteousness.

The people that have been wronged, all of the wrongs done to you will be righted.

There will not be an imbalanced justice.

There will be a righteousness.

At the time that Isaiah wrote this, Israel's peace was fleeting.

So Isaiah, who writes, who's the writer of this prophecy, God spoke through him, they're under Assyrian threat.

The prophecy likely arose during the reign of King Ahaz of Judah.

We talked about him last week.

He was the king from 742 to 727, and at this time the powerful Assyrian Empire posed a significant threat to Judah.

Maybe if you're here last week, you remember that map.

And so Ahaz is terrified, right?

And God raises up this man who is filled with God's Spirit, speaking on God's behalf, speaking into, speaking this reality about this future.

700 years down the road, this son being given.

It's beautiful how, like, you think of just the turmoil that Ahaz was experiencing, and how the promise that's matched up with that from God, even though it's not for that moment, it is this government.

He's like, Isaiah's like, I gotta tell you about this government that's gonna happen through Jesus.

This this reign, this prince of peace that's gonna come in, and he's just gonna be like so good when he comes.

So there's this exterior threat from Assyria, but then there's also these internal divisions that Israel and Judah was experiencing.

Judah itself was experiencing internal divisions with some that were advocating for submission.

Hey, let's just submit to Assyria.

And others were seeking alliance with other powers.

Maybe we should go down to Egypt.

Maybe we should just defend ourselves and just repent and turn back to God.

This division weakened Judah's position and further fueled the fear and uncertainty.

Isaiah comes along and he talks about the Prince of Peace.

There would be this anticipation that the Jewish people would have if they were listening to their scriptures.

But then you fast forward 750 years, Israel had been repopulated.

Israel had gone into captivity, then been delivered and been living back in the land.

They had repopulated the land, but the land was under Roman occupation.

So there were still open-ended promises from God that were not yet fulfilled.

It was like, God, you made these promises.

You said this was going to happen, but the promises were not yet fulfilled.

And yet one of the promises hanging out there is that a virgin would conceive and give birth to a baby.

And then this promise of that there's going to be this reign and this rule.

So if you're a Jew at the time, you're just wondering how does this all go together?

Again, setting the stage for this scene in Luke.

This idea of peace, the Prince of Peace, it comes up on the night of Jesus' birth.

So we have these shepherds.

The shepherds are in the same region, this is Luke 2.

In the same regions, shepherds were staying in the fields, and they're keeping a watch at night over their flock.

Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people.

So angels talking to shepherds, the night of Jesus' birth, and they say, Today in the city of David, a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah the Lord.

This will be the sign for you.

You're going to find the baby wrapped tightly in cloth, laying in a manger or the feeding trough of animals.

Suddenly there was a multitude of heavenly hosts with angels praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heavens.

And do you see it there?

When the angels came, angels, God's messengers, right?

Angels come to shepherds and say, This baby's born.

And a part of the message is peace on earth.

Peace on earth.

Again, do you see here the thing that is longed for being peace?

It comes with a person.

Now, I don't know your relationship with anxiety.

I know I felt anxious about different things this week.

It seems like it's a human condition, some more debilitating than others.

And yet here is the Bible, which is God's revelation to us, saying, I'm about peace.

I'm about your peace.

I'm invested.

The thing you long for of having peace, that's what I want for you.

But you need to understand that it comes through a person.

Now, you can go to therapy.

I'm there's nothing wrong with therapy.

You can change your circumstances, you can have your prescriptions.

These things are not bad.

Those things are graces that God provides for us, but you need to at the same time understand that when the Bible talks about peace, the Bible hitches that solution to a person.

You cannot have the solution without a person.

You can adapt, you can cope.

Medication is awesome.

It oftentimes helps you get your head above water if you're like in that debilitating place of anxiety.

All that stuff is great.

But you need to understand that Jesus came to give you this peace.

That is, well, it says in the Bible that it passes understanding.

A lot of therapy is here's what you understand.

Here, let's get into like why is your peace disturbed?

Why are you feeling anxious?

And the Bible is not opposed to that, but it says that God can provide a peace that goes beyond our understanding.

But you have to understand you don't get to have it without Jesus.

Later on in Jesus' ministry, he talked to his disciples who dealt with a lot of anxiety in their life.

These guys were a panicky mess.

And you would be a panicky mess if you had seen John the Baptist get beheaded.

There's these, you know, he's this outsider, he's causing problems, and the guy doesn't seem to want to avoid problems.

Like he's happily turning over tables in the temple, right?

And raising Lazarus from the dead and rebuking the spiritual leaders of the day.

Like Jesus is not avoiding scary situations, and yet you're following him.

And it's like, yeah, that would kind of be an anxious setting.

And so in John 14, here's one of the things that Jesus says.

He says, Don't let your heart be troubled.

Believe in God, believe also in me.

Later on in that same chapter, he says, Peace I leave with you.

Because remember, this is the night, this whole part of the Bible is when Jesus is his, he's the night before he's crucified.

So he's giving final instructions to his disciples, and he's talking to them about peace right before he's arrested and then crucified.

And he's saying, Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give to you.

I do not give you as the world gives.

Don't let your heart be troubled or fearful.

A little bit later, same same setting.

Jesus is having that Last Supper with his disciples.

Here's another thing that he says.

He says, I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace.

Where is the peace located?

In me.

You may have peace in me.

You will have suffering in this world.

Be courageous.

I have conquered the world.

Isn't that interesting that the peace Jesus is talking about is not absent from a promised suffering?

You're gonna have suffering.

But you're gonna have peace in me.

Peace in me.

The follower of Jesus, the citizen of the kingdom, they can experience peace because Jesus resolves the conflicts.

Jesus resolves the conflicts.

Jesus brings with him peace and he accomplishes, he accomplishes a reconciling work so that peace can be experienced.

Can you just do a mental exercise with me for a second?

Tune back in here for just a second.

Genesis 3, okay?

Go with me back to the beginning, right?

God creates the heavens and the earth.

Adam and Eve, they're in perfect relationship with God.

They're at peace.

God loves them.

Like they're they're best friends with God.

They would walk together with God in the cool of the day.

They're in this beautiful garden.

They're completely naked and they're stoked about it.

They don't even know anything's wrong.

Nothing is wrong.

They're completely naked and they're happy, right?

But they disobey God, and all of a sudden, peace gets sucked out.

All of a sudden, what does it say?

They start, they they see that they are naked and they start taking fig leaves.

Have you ever read a fig tree?

I had a fig tree in in uh California.

There are these giant, giant leaves, but they're not very strong.

Can you imagine trying to sew a fig leaf together to cover up your nakedness?

That is not a sustainable outfit at all.

Like they must have been freaking out, right?

It's like, oh, here's some big leaves.

Let's cover up, you know?

So they're covering their nakedness.

Then they're hiding, it says.

The humans hid from the Lord when they hear God approaching.

Like the normal time to walk with God, they hear God coming and they go and hide.

They're not at peace with God.

Their relationship, that beautiful, like, God's okay with me, I'm okay with God, no sense of guilt, no shame.

Like, all that's gone.

They're running away from God's presence.

And then you see a little bit later, as God's talking to them, what have you done?

Why have you done this?

God's inviting them to confess their sins.

And they confess a little bit, but then they start blaming each other.

Well, it's you know, Adam's like, well, you know, this is the fault of the woman you gave me.

She's the one that told me to take the fruit, right?

And then she's like, Well, it's the serpent.

Like, he tricked me, and and I ate the fruit.

There's just this, it's just conflict.

It's a mess.

You go one chapter later, you have two brothers, like Adam and Eve, they have two boys, and they get into a conflict, and one kills the other.

Like, can you get a clearer picture of like peace is gone out of the picture?

Like, it's it's a mess because there's no peace, and yet there is in every human this longing, like Emma Watson is saying, and like Lynn Manuel is saying, and like Prince Harry is saying, is like, I want inner peace.

And the Bible over and over again is saying there is peace that's available.

And Jesus is telling his disciples the night before he's killed, peace, my peace I'm gonna give you, my peace I'm gonna leave with you, peace, I have it for you, but you need me.

I have to be your king.

You have to be willing to see that the peace that you long for is hitched to me.

Again, Jesus brings with him peace.

He accomplishes a reconciling work so that peace can be experienced.

Peace can be experienced.

Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah as the Prince of Peace, bringing not just an absence of conflict, but a deep reconciling peace between you and God, and between humanity and the people that they are around.

There is this now and not yet that we live in.

I spoke about this at the beginning, and again, we live in this tension between the present reality of Jesus' peace in our lives, and yet a future hope of complete peace in his second coming, the already of Christians' first advent and the not yet of his return.

Let me give you four pieces just of practical application in how you can experience God's peace in your life.

The first is this you need to be at peace in your relationship with God.

You are designed to be a friend of God.

Like you are you are designed to receive God's love.

And so I would invite you to embrace the peace that comes from a reconciled relationship with God.

How do you do that?

Well, it's through Jesus.

You trust that Jesus paid for the junk that you've done.

That stuff that has broken your relationship with God, Jesus paid for it.

And so you're just invited into a relationship with God by leaning on Jesus, leaning into what Jesus has done for you, accepting what he has done on your behalf.

It's a step of faith that God, I'm ready to trust in you.

It says literally that at that point you're reconciled with God.

Think of these warring nations, Russia against Ukraine, Hamas against Israel.

What's lacking there is reconciliation.

They are killing each other.

There is animosity that exists there.

And the Bible says that you are an enemy of God through your actions.

You may wish that your actions didn't make you an enemy of God, but they do.

And God's love overcomes your and my disobedience.

Your and my disobedience has been absolved through the work of Jesus on the cross.

So be reconciled to God.

Let Jesus' work be effective on your behalf.

Don't let Jesus just hang out there on the cross and then be resurrected, not to your own benefit.

Like he did it for you.

Like benefit.

Let it be meaningful and purposeful because you just open up your life and say, I receive that.

I surrender to that awesome reality.

The second thing, though, is having done that, cultivate this inner peace.

Daily spiritual disciplines like prayer.

Have a conversation with God through prayer.

Like talk to God.

He loves like the things you want to talk to him about.

You can be so honest with him.

Read the Bible, meditate on the Bible, take a little section of the Bible.

You don't have to understand the whole thing.

Yeah, it's daunting.

But just read a little bit of Bible.

And quiet time.

Cultivate that inner peace where you're letting God be present through his spirit in your life.

And then the third thing is peace in the midst of trials.

Recognize there are some things in your life where they're trials.

Like there are some people that disrupt your peace regularly.

And it might be something where it's self-inflicted, and you need to step out of that relationship, but there's some stuff that's unavoidable, right?

Money just causes anxiety sometimes, right?

Sickness can cause anxiety.

Work, the future, all these things can just disrupt peace.

And in a sense, that's a trial.

And I want to encourage you to find peace.

Walk with Jesus in the midst of those personal struggles and those uncertainties.

Draw strength from his promise.

This is John 16, 3, is like, I give you peace.

You're gonna have, you're gonna suffer.

John 16, 33, you will suffer, but I have peace for you.

Access it, lean into that promise that he wants to give you peace.

And the final thing here is as God is authoring peace in your life, become an agent of peace to the people around you.

Help people be reconciled.

Be reconciled to others.

Walk in forgiveness, understanding in conflicts and situations.

This isn't sloppy forgiveness where people wrong you and you're just like, oh yeah, it's no big deal.

It means that you say, just like a judge who's kind of close to a case and they they say, I'm going to recuse myself from the case.

I'm gonna pass it off to another courtroom.

We're called as Christians to not be the courtroom for the world.

We can recuse ourselves from all cases and say, I'm not a I'm not designed, my heart is not designed to be a good judge.

I'm gonna let you be judged by God.

And God, it says in Romans chapter 12 that He takes vengeance sometimes.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And he needs space to take vengeance.

And if you're gonna be the one taking vengeance, you're not leaving space for God to deal with other people.

And so the call of Scripture is to be a person of peace.

Sometimes there's just broken relationships, and you can stand in the middle there and you can just help people get along, help people see each other's perspective, right?

Help, help, help mend relationships.

The Bible says that if you're a peacemaker, you're a son of God.

Like you're just you're just being like God by stepping into a setting.

It's an art form to be a peacemaker.

There's sometimes there's these ambassadors that aren't just like ambassadors because they donate a lot of money to the president, but they're ambassadors because they're just like gifted at making peace.

Like they're really good at knowing all these moving pieces, these geo geopolitical pieces.

They're not like emotionally driven.

They can just kind of step into the space and they can help warring factions be at peace.

That's like bearing, that's bearing out the image of God in your human space.

So let me encourage you in those four ways to experience God's presence, this peace of God, the Prince of Peace, bearing his image or bearing upon you his um his kingdom, his reign, and his experience.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we thank you uh for your word and thank you for sending your son Jesus into the world as the Prince of Peace.

And God, we just bring before you our anxiety, and um we wish that we could just flip a switch and turn off those feelings.

And so many times we can't even outthink the anxiety.

But yet, Lord, when when we read the Bible here, it seems like you're about peace.

And that like you, you're it's a part of like one of your names.

It's your title that you're like the prince of peace.

You don't just stop wars, but like you give internal peace.

And I pray for everyone here that you would do that, that you would give us peace in our life.

That you would that this would become a living experience.

It's this kind of invading peace that just comes in from the outside and uh just takes a hold of our hearts as you're there and as as we're in relationship with you.

Help us, God, to be peacemakers as well.

We want to honor you as we do life this week.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.