Called to Peace

If I had to guess, I would say there’s probably one thing that’s true of each of us today. We’re all anticipating our lives getting very busy in the next few weeks.

Just think of all the things you have to get done before Christmas. If you’re a planner, you have your list.

And being here is just one thing on the list.

I mean, think about it. We cram 80 percent of all the parties we’re going to attend in a whole year into a three week period. If we plan it just right we can go to 2 or 3 in one night and not enjoy any of them.

Then we decide to redecorate our entire house inside and out in three weeks.

And since we have so much time, let’s buy something for everyone we’ve ever met.

Let’s bake every cookie we’ve ever heard of. And let’s consume three times the number of calories we would normally consume, every day for three weeks.

And just to make it even more fun, let’s think of everyone we’ve ever known in our life and send them a letter. And let’s not forget coordinating outfits for the family Christmas photo.

Then to top it off, for those of you who have kids, let’s let them out of school for two weeks. And let’s plan every great movie of the year to be released during that two week period so we have to take them to the movies every other night.

How many of you are tired just thinking about it?

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Well, there’s good news. And I want to begin today by asking all of us to just take a deep breath.

And let’s just lay aside our distractions and focus for a few minutes. Let’s focus on why we’re here today.

Listen for a moment as I read a passage in Luke 2.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Luke 2:10-14

You’ll hopefully hear or read that passage several times in the next three weeks.

Today I want to focus on one word in that passage.

Peace.

Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, Isaiah wrote these words:

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. (Isaiah 9:6)

Prince of Peace. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Jesus later said these words:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9)

Later Jesus would add these words:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27).

Jesus’ followers certainly got the message of peace from Jesus because they wrote about it later on in their lives.

Paul wrote to the Colossian church:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. (Colossians 3:15)

Called to peace and called to peacemaking.

The apostle Peter puts it in even stronger terms:

They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. (1 Peter 3:11)

Get intentional about it. Make it a priority in your life to be filled with the peace of Christ and to be a peacemaker in the name of Christ.

I could list another twenty Scriptures. It would just be piling on.

Few subjects stir the heart of God more than peace.

In fact, one of the biblical prophets put the dream of a peace-filled world into such poetic language that people of all faiths and people of no faith still quote him about it.

They will beat their swords into plowshares [weapons converted to farm implements] and their spears into pruning hooks. (Isaiah 2:4)

In today’s language we would probably say it this way:

Someday every fighter jet and military drone will be dropping food and water supplies to people displaced by natural disaster or war.

And all the aircraft carriers in the navies of the world will become floating hospitals, bringing healing and hope to the poor and to the refuges.

Someday the combined military budgets of every country on earth will be invested in improving life instead of multiplying death.

That’s the vision, Isaiah says. That’s the vision.

So let me just be absolutely clear on this idea from the writers of Scripture:

At the very center of the mission of Jesus, at the very center of the vision of his kingdom coming to this planet, is the idea of peace on earth. Peace all over the world. Peace everywhere. Peace among everyone.

Not a fragile peace that hangs precariously in the balance of how presidents with nuclear weapons behave, but a sturdy peace upheld and fortified by leaders and whole populations of people that believe to the core of their being that conflicts are better worked out at conference tables than on battlefields.

And when Jesus said Blessed are the peacemakers, he was formally commissioning each and every one of his followers to do absolutely everything in their power to contribute to the kingdom vision of peace on earth —

Including working daily for peace in our marriages.
Including working for peace in our families and extended families.
Including working for peace in our neighborhoods and cities.
Including working for peace in our workplaces.
And certainly working for peace in the world.

So the question I have to start with today is — how seriously am I taking this peacemaking mandate of Jesus?

How seriously are you taking your calling to be a peacemaker these days?

Do you think about it? Do you pray about it? Do you engage in peacemaking endeavors?

I was battling a kind of craziness in my mind this week—which comes as no surprise to some of you—but during my sermon preparation time this past week, I was reading lots about peacemaking.

And then I was also reading about war strategies.

And what struck me was — both peacemaking and war-making are strategy-intensive endeavors.

To win a war, leaders have to spend endless hours in strategy meetings, figuring out how to take advantage of the enemy’s weaknesses, and how to leverage their own troop strength.

If you think about it, the same is true of peacemaking.

Glen Stassen, who taught on peacemaking at Duke University, wrote this:

“Peace, like war, must be waged …” —it’s got to be waged—“courageously, persistently, creatively, with imagination, heart and wisdom.”

I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but this week more than ever before, I started asking myself these kinds of questions:

If we have war colleges in our country—which we do, five of them actually—why don’t we have peace colleges?

If we have military academies—which we do; great academies—why don’t we have peace academies?

Closer to home: Why do so few Christian colleges and universities offer graduate or undergraduate degrees in peacemaking? They offer degrees in every other conceivable area; why not peacemaking?

Closer to home still: Why do we as a church joyfully spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on compassion projects every year, and yet by comparison we spend very little on peacemaking projects?

We know that in the developing part of the world that nothing, absolutely nothing, is a more accurate predictor of the poor staying poor and suffering people continuing to suffer than an old-fashioned civil war or border conflict in one of these poor countries.

You get a border conflict going where there are poor people, a conflict that will slaughter all the young men and scar all the young women and savage the crops and livestock and level the manufacturing plants — that will keep poor people poor and suffering people suffering for generations.

If you want a mess to continue in any area in the world, just tolerate war. Just turn your back and leave the peacemaking to someone else, and those people will suffer generationally.

So how seriously are you taking your calling to be a peacemaker these days? How seriously am I? How seriously are we as a church?

You have no idea how much this question is haunting me these days.

Because Jesus said:

To whom much is given, much is required. (Luke 12:48)

Our church and so many of us in it have been given so much.

Much is required.

Are we properly leveraging the blessings God has given us?

Could God be doing all the extraordinary things we see him doing these days in our church in part because he wants to use us to be a greater force for peace in the world?

I don’t know.

I want to know though. And I’m committed to listening to God and I’m submitting to him.

And I’m ready to take steps whenever and wherever God leads me.

Alright, in the time that remains in this message, I want to talk about how we need peace, not just in our world because of all the war that’s happening, but in our individual lives. It’s one of the greatest needs we have this time of year.

God calls us to this:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. (Colossians 3:15)

God is calling us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. We are called to peace — to become a peace-filled people.

You wouldn’t be surprised to know that peace is a big business in America. Everyone wants you to believe they have the key to it.

Just for fun, I looked up books about Peace on Amazon. There are thousands of books about peace. A lot of them are self-help books that help you find peace in your inner life.

There were some interesting titles, like: Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time

One was called: Inner Peace for Busy People: 52 Strategies for Transforming Your Life.

Which is interesting. I’m looking for inner peace because I’m busy, and then I have to work through 52 more strategies to find it.

Everyone thinks they have the key to peace.

Dr Phil said, “The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you’ve started and never finished.”

I took his advise, and I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn’t finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

I’m feeling pretty good.

Alright, the truth is, very few people in this world are at peace. Most of us carry a high degree of stress, and anxiety, and tension in our lives.

And it’s because we don’t live in a world that promotes Christ’s peace reigning in our hearts. We don’t live in a world that produces peace-filled people.

There’s a great book called Margin by Richard Swenson.

He says that 4 out of 5 people in the United States described themselves as stressed out.

Here are some of the things he contributes to this:

He says people waste a lot of time doing things that are meaningless and that contributes to stress.

Did you know that the average person spends eight months of their lives opening junk mail.

The average person spends one year searching for misplaced objects. And the average misplaced object has been moved only ten inches from its original place.

More than 37 million Americans are on Prozac.

30 percent of them have misplaced their Prozac so they’re even more anxious. I’m kidding. I just made that one up.

In 1850, the average person slept nine and a half hours per night. That was the kind of rest people got. In 1942, thanks to electricity, it was 8 hours per night. Today, the figure is less than seven hours a night and declining.

There are 70 million people in the US with sleep disorders. We live in a society where exhaustion is an epidemic.

And we’re entering into this time of year, the Christmas season. This is the time when we’re trying to remember the coming of the Prince of Peace.

What word, more than any other word, do we find on Christmas cards? It’s the word “peace.”

But for the average person, this is the most frenzied, frantic, rushed, hurried, exhausted season of all.

How many of you here would affirm at least one of these categories? Either you don’t have all your Christmas shopping done yet or all of your decorations up or all of your holiday events planned or all of your presents wrapped. How many of you have at least one aspect of the holiday season unprepared and you’re feeling some pressure about it? Raise your hands, would you?

How many of you didn’t realize that in fact Thanksgiving is already over?

Now, for over two thousand years now, part of the rhythm of the life of the church has been the season of Advent, to remember the coming of the Prince of Peace.

It was a way to remember that salvation is not primarily about my frantic efforts. It’s primarily what God has done.

So I want to lay out a challenge for us today. I want to give us a goal during this Christmas season, that between now and Christmas, you and I will learn to allow the peace of Christ to reign in our hearts.

The word Paul uses is an interesting word. It was used of an umpire in athletic events in those days — one who made the final call in an athletic contest.

Once the umpire decided, that was it.

Paul says it ought to be that way in our hearts. The peace of Christ ought to have the final word. It ought to just reign in our hearts.

There are two questions I want to spend our time talking about. What is this peace of Christ? And how do I pursue it?

And I want to make it our goal that we allow the peace of Christ to reign in our hearts.

Alright, what is the peace of Christ? Here I want to paraphrase this statement by Dallas Willard:

The peace of Christ is the settled assurance that because of God’s care and God’s competence, this universe is a perfectly safe place for me to be.

Although it doesn’t look like it.

But I can just live in that, just as the writers of the New Testament did.

Paul said, “What can separate us from the love of God?” Then he lists all kinds of terrible things that seem to be peace-shattering in this world: danger, famine, sword, persecution, death itself. All of these things that seem to shatter peace.

Paul says, “No, I’m convinced that none of them, nothing can separate me from the love of God. I’m convinced that this universe is a perfectly safe place for me to be.”

And when you live in that subtle assurance, it changes your life.

You have to come to grips with this. Is the universe a safe place for you to be, in spite of all of the apparently peace-shattering things that go on?

This is the settled assurance that Jesus lived in.

There’s a story in Matthew 8 about Jesus and his disciples in a boat while there’s a big storm.

Of course, Jesus has to go through storms just as his friends did.

But in this story, the disciples are frantic. And what does Matthew say Jesus is doing on the boat during the storm?

He’s sleeping.

Now why does Matthew include the information that Jesus is sleeping? Why is that important enough to be recorded?

Because Matthew wants us to understand what Jesus knew about life in the hand of his Father — that given the care and the competence of his Father, Jesus is convinced that the universe was a perfectly safe place for him to be.

So there’s this tremendous storm going on, but he lives in this settled assurance so he sleeps right through it.

Now, the disciples went to Jesus — which was a good thing for them to do. They went to him. They trusted that Jesus could do something to help them. They had faith in Jesus, but they did not have the faith of Jesus. Do you see? They did not, as Jesus did, live in the settled assurance that they were safe in the hands of God.

They had some faith in him — that’s a good thing — but they did not have his faith yet. They did not have the faith of Jesus.

What would it look like for me to have that kind of peace, for the peace of Christ, the peace that characterized Jesus to reign in me?

Well, my level of worry would go way down. I would have the subtle trust that my life was safe in the hands of God.

I wouldn’t be tormented by my inadequacy. I’d be an unhurried person. I might be busy, I might have a lot of things to do, but I would have the inner calmness and poise that comes from living in the presence of God.

I wouldn’t say so many of the foolish things that I say because I wouldn’t speak without thinking.

I wouldn’t be defeated by guilt. I’d live in the confident assurance that God’s love is going to be with me forever.

I would trust God enough to give, I wouldn’t have to hoard.

This is one of the things that worry does. When the peace of Christ doesn’t reign, worry makes me focus on myself, worry makes people selfish and small. It robs me of joy, robs me of energy, robs me of compassion, robs me of life.

There’s a real strong relational component to peace. “If it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all,” Paul said to the church at Rome.

I don’t avoid confrontation. The peace of Christ is not placating people. But imagine how much less hostility there would be in your life if you didn’t need to compare or judge or compete with others.

A person in whom the peace of Christ reigns would be an oasis of sanity in a world of craziness and confusion.

A community in which the peace of Christ reigns would change the world.

And we’re called to let the peace of Christ reign in our hearts, yours and mine.

Now how do I pursue it? If it is such a life or death deal, how do I pursue it?

Well, one quick caveat before I get to how we pursue it; I want to say one way that is not an option for Christ-followers. I want to be real clear on this because it’s often confused.

One way that is not an option for Christ-followers is to try to make my primary goal in life living in peaceful, comfortable circumstances.

That’s not what letting the peace of Christ reign is about.

The peace of Christ is not an individualistic search for easy living conditions.

Why do I bring this up?

I don’t know how many of you have noticed this, but since the pandemic there has been a trend in America is to return to small towns.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong necessarily with moving to a small town, but the trend is about how people are fleeing the city, fleeing problems, fleeing away from the poor, trying to get away from the uneducated, trying to get away from places where life is dangerous or uncomfortable — to find a safe, quiet, comfortable place to live.

Well, that was not the way of Jesus. He did not look for a way to get away from troubled people or troubled areas.

Jesus knew a troubled heart. When the death of Lazarus occurred, “He was deeply moved and troubled. He shuddered,” it could be translated.

Or in John 13:21 writer says:

Jesus was deeply troubled in his heart and testified, “I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.”

Because Jesus loved Lazarus when he faced death — the enemy of human beings — he knew a troubled heart. Because he loved Judas, when he faced betrayal and Judas’ spiritual death, he knew a troubled heart.

Paul was the same way. 2 Corinthians 11:28, after he’s listed stonings, beatings, hunger, all kinds of problems that would make most people in our day look for more comfortable circumstances, Paul says:

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

The peace of Christ reigning in us is not about the search for comfortable circumstances.

Some of you here, you lead a small group, and you know when someone in that group starts to get off course your heart is troubled.

You raise children, and you hope desperately that they will live at home with God, with their Father. And you know that sometimes when they’re not, your heart will be troubled.

Some of you go to the city to care for the homeless and the poor, and when you’re there your heart is troubled.

We all pray for friends and family members who are hostile to God and resist him. If you do that for long, you’ll know a troubled heart.

So don’t think that the peace to which we’re called is something as small as just a search for comfortable circumstances. That’s not it.

We’re called not just to peace, but the peace of Christ, which is not so much about the external world — although it will have consequences for our circumstances — but it reigns in our hearts.

I want to give you two practices to become the kind of people in whose hearts the peace of Christ reigns.

Practice number one may come as a surprise. It comes right out of Colossians 3. It’s Singing.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. (Colossians 3:15-16)

Sometimes a song can bring peace in a way that nothing can.

I was at a graveside service recently. There’s just something about a group of people united and we sang together an old hymn: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot you have taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’”

I’ll tell you, in the face of the ultimate enemy of human beings — death — when you have a group of people stand and sing defiantly, trustingly, “It is well with my soul,” something happens.

It marks you. Christ’s people have always been a singing people.

I remember when we were in Israel standing at the Damascus Gate, the gate that Jesus most likely went through when he went into Jerusalem carrying his cross — he went through to die.

We were gathered with a little group of people, just us there, and we sang, “My Jesus, I love Thee. I know you are mine. For you all the folly of sin I resign.”

New Testament characters keep breaking into song. Mary, when she finds out the good news about the birth of Jesus, sings what has become known as the “Magnificat.”

Zechariah sings about the coming of John the Baptist.

The angels sing, “Glory to God and on earth, peace.”

The last thing Jesus and his disciples did after the Last Supper before he went out to die, it says in Matthew 26:30: “Together, they sang a hymn.”

Singing strengthens the soul somehow.

Acts 16:25, Paul and Silas had been unjustly tried, convicted, attacked by a crowd, stripped of their clothing, beaten by rods, thrown into a jail, placed in an jain cell and fastened in chains. Do you know what they did? They sang.

Singing forms us, and I’m so grateful for the people around Blue Oaks who lead us into singing: Christian and Michaela and Taylor and Nicole and Gianna and Riah and Breah and all of the musicians. Aren’t you just grateful for the way they teach our hearts to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?

Singing forms you, and it prepares your heart for the reign and the peace of Christ.

The second practice I want to talk about is Praying.

Practice what might be called “constant casting.”

This comes from 1 Peter 5:7. Peter says:

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Cast all your cares on him, and the key word there is that little word “all” because you’ll have a lot of them.

This world destroys peace. The world destroys spiritual life. This is real important. The world tends to destroy spiritual life by generating constant anxiety.

Just look at the people around you when you walk on the streets or watch them drive, and you’ll see a world of people just enslaved by it, weighted down by anxiety, crushed by it, that life just smothered out of them.

Well, this is the strategy of the evil one. We see this in the parable of the sower. Jesus says the seed of the Gospel begins to take root, but then it comes up and it’s choked and destroyed by thorns. Those thorns, he says, are the cares or anxieties of the world.

We, our society, is more chained and tethered to the world than any generation in the history of the human race.

What we have gotten really good at is being connected to the world 24 hours a day.

Think about it. Our phones, cars, tablets, computers, TVs, video game systems. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but some of us have become addicted to them and enslaved by them.

We’re connected in the wrong place. We need to be connected to God.

This is Paul’s idea in Philippians 4:

Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything. (Philippians 4:6)

There’s a real close connection between worry and prayer. We see it in Peter’s letter; we see it in Paul’s letter. And here’s the idea — this will make a huge difference in our lives if we do it — we need to allow worry to become a cue for us to pray.

Allow worry simply to function as a cue for our prayer life. Take it as a prompting from the Spirit to pray. Make it a conditioned response.

Some of you know that you worry too much. You know that you’re not supposed to worry, so you worry about how much you worry.

Well don’t worry about how much you worry. Just direct it towards God.

Now, when you do that your anxious feelings may subside. They may not. Don’t beat yourself up about it. That’s not your job. You can’t make that go away, so just give it up — you can practice “constant casting.”

You can become a singing person, and you can enter into a new way of praying – just constant casting. Anytime you have worry, you cast it to God. Say, “God, I want to give it to you.”

And we’re going to start right now.

I’d like you to think right now about the greatest burden on your mind.

Maybe it has to do with work. Maybe you have a meeting coming up or difficulty with your boss, and it’s just very heavy on you.

Maybe it’s a financial crisis, and you don’t know where you’re going to get the resources that you need.

Maybe you have an enormous difficulty for which you need wisdom, and you don’t know how to handle it.

Maybe you’re just crushed by some guilt or sin in your life, and it burdens you and it keeps burdening you and you feel anxious about that.

Maybe you have someone in your home that you need to care for, and you don’t know that you’ve got strength to continue doing that.

Maybe there’s a relational issue. Maybe there are marital problems, and you don’t know how you’re going to solve those.

God is just waiting.

So right now just say, “God, here it is. I just give it to you.”

“I know those feelings are going to come back. I can’t make them go away. So every time they do, as best I can, each time I remember, I’m just going to give them to you.”

And God just waits to take them. God just longs to take them.

So start singing, and start praying. Let’s let the peace of Christ reign in our hearts.

Alright, let’s pray together as Christian and the team come to lead us into singing.