The Gift of Peace - Part A

He's not called the Prince of Hope, He's not called the Prince of Joy, though He could be called all those things, but He is first and foremost to be regarded as the Prince of Peace. Because you really don't have joy until you have peace. You really don't experience true love without that peace. You really don't have hope until you have peace.

In today's world, inner peace and peace among people might seem so far out of reach. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip explores the supernatural peace that Jesus promised to you. But before we begin, we want to let you know about an opportunity you have to visit the sites where the prophets and kings in the Bible heard from God. Skip and his wife Lenya are taking a group to Israel in 2022 and you're invited on the journey. Visit places like Nazareth, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Garden Tomb. And that's just a quick look at the trip.

Find out more about the trip at inspirationcruises.com slash CABQ. Now we want to let you know about a resource that will give you critical insight into what exactly is going on there in Israel and in the Middle East and why it's important for you to know. New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg is now based in Jerusalem, and he's releasing the new nonfiction book Enemies and Allies.

I've traveled with Joel to Middle East cities to meet with kings and crown princes. We sat together on the East Lawn of the White House for the signing of the historic Abraham Accords, and I previewed his new book Enemies and Allies. I can tell you it contains never before published quotes from behind closed door meetings with some of the most powerful and mysterious leaders in the Middle East. You will want to read this book. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world.

This is the first book of its kind. Almost nobody's ever had that chance to not just meet one of these major leaders, but to meet almost all of them. And then to get to tell the story in first person language, come with me into the palace, into the motorcade, and come meet the most interesting, consequential, and controversial leaders in the entire Middle East. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world. We'll send you a hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies as thanks for your gift of $35 or more.

To give, visit connectwithskip.com or call 800-922-1888. Now, we're in John Chapter 14 as Skip Heitzig gets into today's message. Back in the 1990s, there was a very popular bumper sticker. Do you remember this one? Remember that on cars, Visualize World Peace? So, I remember when people started putting that on their car and I was thinking, like, really? That's all you got to do?

Just think about it? Kind of picture it, visualize it, that's going to bring world peace? And, of course, that was sort of the standard response that most people had. They kind of mocked that and they did alternate bumper stickers like this one, Visualize World Peace, right? You probably saw that as well. I think my favorite one is Visualize Using Your Turn Signal. That's a very important one, especially for Albuquerque drivers. You know, people have been talking about peace and singing about peace and protesting for peace and giving out peace prizes to one another for generations.

We've been talking about it and singing about it and marching for it, but we haven't been experiencing much of it. So, there was a journalist that was assigned to the Jerusalem Bureau for her news outlet. And there she was living in Jerusalem and she got an apartment overlooking the Western Wall complex. So, the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, is the most iconic part of old Jerusalem. It's the remnant, the remains of the old temple complex.

So, it's like the best view in the city. So, she has an apartment looking over the place where Jews still come to pray, a very sacred spot. And so, she would notice that every day this same man, an older gentleman with a beard and the hat and the side curls, an Orthodox man would come to the wall every day and pray. And she thought, wow, he would be a great interview.

I want to find out who that is and talk to him. So, she went down to the wall, to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, and she found him after he was done praying. And she introduced herself as a journalist. Could I have an interview with you?

And he said, sure. So, she said, well, how long have you been doing this and what is it you pray for? He said, I've been doing this every day for 25 years.

I come every day. When these guys pray at the wall, they just don't stand there and pray. They move when they pray. They pray with such intensity.

They shake and rock back and forth. So, he said, I've been doing this every day for 25 years and I pray for world peace. I pray for the brotherhood of all mankind and I pray for, especially, peace in the Middle East. She was greatly impressed by his answer and she said, so, how does it make you feel to come here every day for 25 years and pray? And he threw up his arms and he said, like talking to a wall. When it comes to peace, I think a lot of people feel just like that.

It's like talking to a wall. We talk about it, we sing about it, we march for it, but we just don't have it. Where do we get it? So, I did a search this week in Google. It's something I like to do from time to time just to see what kind of results and I typed in the word peace. And it came back with one billion, 390 million results.

You think it's on people's minds? Then I typed in the two words, world peace. Got a similar number, one billion, 70 million hits. Then I typed in personal peace and got one billion, 60 million hits. Then I typed in the words inner peace and spiritual peace and both of those got a similar amount, 215 million results. I found a group of researchers and they call this the Global Peace Index.

I didn't even know such a thing existed. So it's a group of people who research this topic and they came up with an index called the Global Peace Index. And their statement on their website was, the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the last decade. Now it's been a bad decade, but right now they're saying it's the worst in the last decade.

Now that doesn't surprise us. We've been through a pandemic. We have been through a lot of loss, a lot of death, a lot of bad times in our economy. So it doesn't surprise us when the Global Peace Index says the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the past decade. There's another metric though that you probably have heard of. It's an economic number, an index called the Misery Index.

It's even been made into a popular television series, the Misery Index. It is an economic measuring tool. It came about in the 1960s by an economist named Arthur Okun. He was an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson. And he came up with this idea of the Misery Index.

And he calculates it this way. It is the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate. So it's a combination of rising inflation and people out of work. The best time for the Misery Index was 2019. It was at its lowest. Our misery was at its lowest economically. So September of 2019, which seems like a long time ago, but it was, if you can think back, a really good time for our country and the world economically.

A lot of economic prosperity and it was getting better and better. So September of 2019, the Misery Index was at 5%. It peaked at its worst, guess when? 2020.

The year of the pandemic. Up from 5% to 15%. It's been the highest. So our Misery Index is high. Our Peace Index is low.

This is another reason why church is essential. Because you're not going to get any good news anywhere except here. You're not going to get good news in the newspapers.

You're not going to get good news on social media. If you want to be robbed of peace, go there. If you want good news, go to a place where you hear the truths and the promises of God's Word. So we just sort of felt that after a year of all this, and it's still not over, we needed to be refreshed with a series on peace. And be reminded of the promises of God's peace. And we're going to look at John chapter 14 in one particular verse, verse 27. It's a great promise.

You know, years ago there was a school teacher from Canada. He read through the Bible 27 times. And he decided he wanted to find out how many promises God made to us. So he spent a year and a half, after reading through the Bible 27 times, he decided, now I'm going to go through it and tally up all of the promises.

It took him a year and a half. And the number he came up with was, there are 7,487 promises that God has made to us. Peter calls them great and precious promises. But, of all the promises God has given to us, perhaps the most elusive of them is this promise of peace. So, the next few weeks we're going to look at peace with God, peace with each other, peace within ourselves. And I want to take you to this verse, verse 27 of John 14, where I'm going to begin a couple of verses in advance. Look back at verse 25. Jesus speaking, These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. Now let me remind you that what he is referring to, these things, is chapter 13, 14, 15, and 16.

It's called the Upper Room Discourse. It is the last meeting Jesus has with his disciples before he is arrested and crucified. He knows what's coming. He has announced to them what is coming. But with those announcements come all of these promises in these chapters. It's filled with incredible promises, the power of the Holy Spirit, the promise of peace, and many others.

So, these things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Now, our verse, verse 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

That's the verse we're going to camp on. It is such a monumental promise that I want to give you out of that single verse, a fourfold description of the peace that Jesus promised his followers. Four aspects of this peace. The first aspect is that this peace is needful. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. We need God's peace. I think everybody here would vote for that and say, yep, I agree with that.

We need it. But if anyone really needed peace that night that Jesus spoke these words, it would have been his disciples. Here's what you have to understand. At this point in the Last Supper meal, the disciples are stressed out. They had given up their careers. They had been following Jesus for three and a half years. They anticipated he's going to come and build a kingdom on earth.

That clearly is not going to happen. All their hopes during this meal come crashing down. Why? Because Jesus announces to them his expiration and his exit. He says to them, I'm going to die and I'm going to leave. I'm going to depart.

And where I'm coming, you can't follow. So in the midst of that, when their turmoil might even have been out of control, he says, peace. Peace, I leave with you. I'm going to just venture a guess that when he said these words, a few of the disciples may have rolled their eyes at him. He just said, he's leaving. He's dying. You can't come where I'm going.

I'm not building the kingdom you thought. Peace. Like, peace it out.

See ya. And they roll their eyes like, oh, really? Like, whatever.

You know, it might be sort of like this. Somebody comes up to you and says, hey, I just want you to know that your son or your daughter just got in a traffic accident. But don't worry. Don't worry?

You just lay that news on me and then you say, don't worry? I'll just tell you a personal story. Years ago, I was in junior high school. I was on a vacation with my parents. I was in the back seat. My dad was driving. Mom was in the passenger seat.

We are going from our home in Southern California up to Oregon. Going out of Reno, Nevada early in the morning. We're on a highway. And we didn't know that there was a driver who had been drinking and had fallen asleep at the wheel and was in our lane coming around a curve on a mountain highway. It was a head-on collision. It was a 120 mile an hour impact of two vehicles.

It instantly killed that man. It put my mom and dad in the hospital. I guess they didn't know what to do with me. I was in the hospital for a little bit getting checked out. Then they stuck me in a hotel room alone. I'm a junior high school kid, so I turn on the TV that evening and the evening news talks about the collision. It shows our vehicle that had been in the collision. And the news anchor announced that my father and mother had died. Now it wasn't true, but I didn't know that at the time.

So all of the wind gets sucked out of the room. I'm freaking out. So I started getting calls from my brothers and other people in town saying, don't worry, it's going to be okay. I'm going, it's going to be okay.

They didn't really die, but how do you know? It's like you're at a moment of heightened emotion and you're processing through the information. And in the midst of that, Jesus says, peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you.

I just want you to get that impact for a moment. Now let's look at the word. The word that he uses here for peace is the Greek word Irenae, which is where we get the feminine name Irene. Irene means peaceful one or peace. It is defined as an internal state of tranquility.

It is when you are quiet and you have a restful mind. That's the idea of this word Irenae. It became a greeting, a common greeting to say to somebody, to say peace to you, Irenae. Paul uses that in his letters. He says grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that practice of extending peace actually goes farther back than the Greeks. It goes back to the Hebrews. The Hebrews to this day use the ancient greeting when they meet one another on the street and they say, what do they say? Shalom. You go to Israel and they say Shalom. And Shalom is to extend peace to somebody or to wish them well. So here's Jesus saying, peace, Shalom. Irenae, I leave with you my peace. I give to you.

Now notice what he says. Peace, I leave with you. It's a deposit. It's a gift. You don't work your way into a feeling of peace.

I'm just laying it on you. In fact, the New Living Translation says, I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart. Let those words sink in. If you're a businessman or a businesswoman and maybe you're losing your business because of all these lockdowns and regulations and restrictions, Jesus Christ is promising you his peace. If you're a worker and you don't know if you're going to have a job this coming week or next month, he is promising you peace. If you're a student and you are struggling with Zoom classes and you don't know if you're going to be able to graduate because of this crazy system, he is telling you peace.

If you are a parent and you have to work and have your children at home and homeschool them because of this not being able to go to school, hear these words. Jesus is promising you peace in the midst of that. Okay, that's good, Jesus. Thank you for that nice sentiment. Thank you for saying peace. But, you know, it's nice to talk about peace and it's great to promise peace, but the question still remains, where is peace to be found? Because the truth of the matter is, world history shows that there's never been a time of peace. There's never been a time where we haven't, as a human race, experienced war. I read an article in the New York Times that was quoting Will Durant, the famous historian, who said, in 3,400 years of recorded history, the world has only been at peace about 8% of the time. So out of 3,400 years of recorded history, the world, according to the article, has been at peace 268 years. And people say, well, you know how many peace treaties have been broken in that time? All of them.

All of them. So, somebody said, peace is actually that brief moment in history where everyone stands around reloading, getting ready for the next conflict. According to the Daily Mail, the Daily Mail is a news outlet in London, the Daily Mail said, there are more than 40 active conflicts around the world at this moment.

This is today, this is now. Some of the countries currently at war, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Mexico, Turkey, Somalia, Iraq, Libya. And it goes on to say, the number of people affected by humanitarian crises has almost doubled over the past decade. So you've got war, you've got humanitarian problems, add to that COVID-19, add to that worldwide recession. And you have the absence of peace.

You have national peace, you have international peace and because of that you have, or excuse me, the absence, you don't have, you have conflict, you don't have international peace and you don't have because of that interpersonal peace. Anxiety levels are at an all time high. Here's something I found from Mental Health America, that's a group of mental health experts that study this. They said, as the pandemic relentlessly persists, we are seeing the highest levels of anxiety and depression reported since the pandemic hit the U.S. in March of 2020. So it's been about a year almost. This whole year, right now, depression and anxiety are at their highest.

The article says, this troubling trend is fueled by loneliness and isolation. So once again, it's great to have a promise, great to sing about it, great to talk about it. But where is it?

Ah, that's where we have to keep reading. Because it says, peace I leave with you, but here it is, my peace I give to you. The peace that Jesus is speaking of is tied to him personally. The promise of peace is linked to the Prince of Peace. So you know, that's a title that is given to Jesus by Isaiah the prophet, right? He's the one that wrote about the Prince of Peace. You know the text well, we talk about it just about every Christmas. Isaiah 9 6, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

It's a very interesting title. He's not called the Prince of Love. He's not called the Prince of Hope.

He's not called the Prince of Joy, though he could be called all those things. But he is first and foremost to be regarded as the Prince of Peace. Because you really don't have joy until you have peace. You really don't experience true love without that peace.

You really don't have hope until you have peace. So he goes by that title, the Prince of Peace. Now he says, my peace.

I need you to understand what this means. It's literally my personal peace. The peace that I own, the peace that governs my internal life. That peace is what I give to you.

So he is the manufacturer of this peace and he is the distributor of it. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from his series, Give Peace a Chance. Now, here's Skip with an important message for you. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being a faithful listener to connect with Skip. It's thanks to the grace of God and generous folks like yourself that we're able to expand the reach of this radio program far and beyond what we would be able to achieve on our own.

And I want to invite you to help us reach even further so you and many more people can hear these Bible-based teachings and experience the transforming power of God's Word. Here's how to give a gift. Give us a call at 800-922-1888 to give a gift today.

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Now, before we go, did you know you can watch Skip's messages from the comfort of your home with your Roku device or Apple TV? Just search for his channel and watch thousands of powerful Bible teachings and live services. Find more information on the broadcast page at connectwithskip.com. Join us next Monday as Skip Heitzig shares how you can truly embrace the peace that Christ gives you. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.