In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Joshua Liebman, author of a best seller book, “Insights on Human Nature”, reflected that as a young man, full of exuberant dreams, he carefully drew up a catalogue of the things he most desired in life: health, love, beauty, talent, riches, respect and admiration. He proudly showed his list to his mentor, a wise elder. “An excellent list,” said the elder, “but the most important thing is missing.” “What is that?” he asked. “Peace of mind,” replied the elder. “The sum of all other possessions does not necessarily add up to peace of mind.” Perhaps the very word, Peace, is so appealing to me because I'm so often “tossin' and turnin'”, “sleepless in Birmingham” at 3:00 am. Maybe you can identify. I mean, you may be short of peace even as you sit here in the pew this morning, or as you listen to this on the radio. Maybe a little something happened on the way to church, a little something that irritated the fire out of you. Who knows what or when, but a disturbed mind can bring you down and it can bring people with whom you live.
Do you need some peace? What robes you of it? I ask you because during the last week of Jesus' earthly ministry he said, “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” Briefly I want to talk about this peace that Jesus wills to his people.
I begin
via negativa. I want to mention what this peace that Jesus gives is NOT. This peace is not the peace you get by going out into the woods, smelling the flowers. It's not the peace of fly-fishing in a mountain stream. It's not the peace of walking on the beach on a star-lit night. Nothing wrong with smelling flowers, fly-fishing or stargazing or yoga or meditation, and so forth. There are moments, albeit fleeting moments, of peace in all of these kinds of things, but the problem is it is not enduring; you have to return to reality. (Like my coffee cup says, the leading cause of stress is reality). We're talking about peace beneath the reality. Think of a man like St. Paul. Paul was a man in prison and awaited the executioners ax, yet peace absolutely radiated from his prison epistles.
I received an interesting piece of mail only last week, a brochure. Listen to this. On the front cover it says: “Would you like to experience the peace and bliss that the enlightened teachers talk about?” You turn the page, where the author continues, “I have found something that can make it easy for you to experience incredible peace and bliss WITHOUT moving to India and spending years in an ashram.” (An ashram is a religious hermitage, usually Hindu. There you spend time with a spiritual sage or guru.) Well, the man writing the brochure assures the reader he or she can find this same peace by buying a CD he has made ($39.95) called
Ocean Euphoric. Thousands of people all over the world, according to this, are meditating with Ocean Euphoric with huge success. You pop in an earpiece any place and time, even an airport or dentist's waiting room, and you can get this fantastic peace. Now I admit I almost pulled out my credit card, but I know better. Suffice it to say, this is not the kind of peace Jesus promised.
Let me now talk about what is the peace Jesus promised, because the peace Jesus leaves is the only enduring peace that there is. It has been said, and I believe rightly so, that the peace of God is a function of the past and the present. Which is to say, first of all, a lot of people don't have peace because of things in the past- regret, guilt. One of Walker Percy characters, Binx, in Moviegoer, said “At night the years come back and perch around my bed like ghosts!” I mean, everyone has at least a few things in their past (perhaps secret things) they wish weren't there, things they'd rather people not read about Saturday mornings in the Birmingham News. But what is the gospel if it does not reveal effectual and real forgiveness and reconciliation with God? On the evening of the resurrection, it was only when Jesus showed the disciples the nail prints in his hands and the deep wound on His side that he said, “Peace with you…”. Then the fearful, guilt-ridden disciples were glad. And Jesus told them again, “Peace be with you.” Peace with God is the treaty, sealed in Christ blood. Jesus didn't come into the world to give us some good advice and a new philosophy. He came to do something. “The guilty Christian mind cannot possibly contemplate a more blessed object than the wounds of Jesus.” To quote Charles Wesley, “With what rapture, with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.”
We just sang that old, old English hymn that says, “Perfect peace in this dark world of sin? The Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.” If you're right with God, your conscious can be free. This peace is profound and real. It's not delusional. The price has been paid. Have you experienced forgiveness? Then you know something about this aspect of peace.
This peace, then, is a function of the past, but also the future. Christians need to remember what Jesus accomplished on Calvary is not limited to things we've done yesterday. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Thanks be to God, past, present, future, “the blood of Jesus whispers peace within.”
Furthermore, I don't have to tell you that life itself can jerk you around unmercifully. I don't know what the future holds and you don't either. But He does. He didn't promise us an easy ride, but here's what he did promise: “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without my Father's will.” And He said, “All authority in heaven on earth have been give me, and lo, I am with you even to the close of the age.” Now, if Jesus was raised from the dead on that first Easter morning then you can book those words and take peace in the fact that despite all worldly evidence, the Lord is with you always and you are marked as Christ's own forever, “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven”, all the while carrying with you the title-deed of heaven. ((In an old 1860s edition of Pathway of Power, one of the contributing authors wrote, “With the Cross and resurrection of Jesus the title-deed of heaven was made your own.” I loved that phrase, “the title-deed of heaven is yours.”))
Are you afraid of that greatest enemy, death? It is written:” As in Adam all die so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Do you believe that? Then you know something of the peace that world cannot take away. The world says that at the end of the day what's unforgiven stays unforgiven and what's dead stays dead. But Jesus assures us that what happens in this world is not the final chapter. It is a peace that lives above circumstances. I spoke to a woman on Tuesday evening who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and I simply marveled at her peace.
O the marvelous peace of God! Can the world snatch it away? To quote the Apostle, Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).
Well, that's it. I'm sure I don't have to convince most of you that peace is a pearl of great price. The soul of humanity, whether it knows it or not, cries out for the real thing and that is a firm foundation of peace that is a function of a forgiven past and a confident future. Where are you with this peace?
If you DO have it, let us pray the Holy Spirit will give it to us more abundantly. You know, Christians have, in a real sense, a perfect right to the peace Jesus gives, but all Christians do have full possession. To put it bluntly, the “Liar from Hell”, to quote from Bunyan, puts doubts in our heads. That's why Jesus left us the Holy Spirit, to “bring to your remembrance all that I said and did.”
And if you do NOT have this peace, could it be possible that the Lord could be speaking to you today? Jesus bought it for you, he paid dearly for it and He intends for you to have it.
May God draw reluctant hearts, and now give doubting souls courage to believe this for Jesus' sake. Amen.
