The Gift of Peace - Part B

I love what J. Oswald Sanders said. He said, Peace is not the absence of trouble, it's the presence of God. Sure, you're going to have trouble. It's going to be all around you. It's going to be around you nationally, internationally, even in your neighborhood, among your family, but he promises you his presence. He promises you peace. Peace with God is what you have when you give your life to Jesus. The peace of God is something you must actively grab hold of. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how you can truly embrace the peace that Christ gives you. But before we begin, we want to invite you to see the very places Jesus walked, taught, and performed miracles. Lenya and I are taking a group to Israel in 2022, and we want to invite you to join us. We'll 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 fly-by look at the itinerary.

Find out more about the trip at inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. Thanks, Skip. Now, we're in John chapter 14 today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. Now, when Jesus says, my peace I leave with you, keep in mind, he knew what he was about to encounter because he predicted it.

So they're going to arrest me, they're going to beat me up, and they're going to kill me. So he knew in a few hours he would be betrayed, arrested, he would be beaten. He knew that he would have a crown of thorns pushed in his scalp, and he knew that he was going to a cross, and he is peaceful. So he says, that's the peace, the peace that I have, the peace that I enjoy, the peace that governs my internal processing is what I am giving to you. So, I want you to just think about this, that the effect that Jesus Christ should have on a person's life is this, right? It's this peace. It is the stamp we bear. It's called the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness.

I love what J. Oswald Sanders said. He said, peace is not the absence of trouble, it's the presence of God. Sure, you're going to have trouble. It's going to be all around you. It's going to be around you nationally, internationally, even in your neighborhood, among your family, but he promises you his presence. He promises you peace. I don't know how you picture God, but I've been around enough Christians who sort of picture God with a frown, not a smile. They don't think of God like this at them, but he's just like, he's just miffed at me a little bit.

He's never really pleased with me. He's sort of like folding his arms over his celestial robe, kind of looking at me like this. If you picture God that way, you need a new picture. You got the wrong picture, because God said even to his sinning people, the children of Israel, about to go into captivity, he said, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

You know that verse, Jeremiah 29, 11. Now, at this point, it's good to divide peace up into two different categories. We enjoy two kinds of peace. We enjoy the peace that comes with God.

I'll explain that. And then we enjoy, subsequent to that, the peace of God. The first kind of peace, peace with God, is objective. The second piece, the peace of God, is subjective.

In other words, the first objective means it's outside of us. You may feel it. You might not feel it.

Irregardless, it's there. It's a transactional peace, whereas the peace of God is something that is subjective. You feel it.

It's experiential. So, peace with God comes when you come to Christ. You come to Jesus Christ.

You ask him into your heart, into your life as Lord and Savior. Your sins are forgiven. In effect, you raise the white flag of surrender. And you say, I give up.

I give up. And when you do that, the hostility is turned into peace. You have peace with God. That's Romans chapter 5.

It begins like this. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You come to God in his terms.

His terms are the cross. You come and receive what Jesus did for you on your behalf. And God says, good. We are at peace, you and I. You're right before me. You are righteous before me.

You are justified before me. So now you have peace with God. That's what Isaiah meant when he said, he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. That's the first, peace with God. After you have peace with God comes the experience part. That's the peace of God. That's the feeling of well-being. That's the feeling of tranquility. That's experiencing what Jesus promises here in this chapter. It's what Paul meant when he said, and here's a verse you know. I know you know it because watch this. Paul said in Philippians 4, be anxious for nothing. See, I knew you knew it.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds. So now you are feeling it. Now you're experiencing it. You're feeling tranquil and peaceful.

That's why I love the song that we just sang. It is well with my soul. That's being in the midst of turmoil, still having the feeling of tranquility.

If it helps, I'm going to boil it down even further and say this. Jesus Christ as Savior gives you peace with God. Jesus Christ as Lord gives you the peace of God. You make Jesus your Savior. You're at peace with God whether you feel like it or not. But when you walk with Him and trust Him and apply what you know to be true, you experience the peace of God. Either way, both of the kinds of peace that I just described come through the person and the personality of Jesus Christ. If you've never read this book, you should. It's called Peace Child by Don Richardson.

It came out in the 70s. Don Richardson was a missionary to the Sahwi tribe down in Indonesia in Irian Jaya, and he felt called by God. He and his wife went there. He wanted to preach the gospel. He lived there for months and then years.

He even developed a language, a written language for them so he could translate some of the gospel in their language. And he just loved them. Well, the problem with loving them is that the Sahwi tribes were cannibals. How do you love your next-door neighborhood cannibal?

Headhunters. And so he was there trying to share the gospel with them without any success at all. He was about ready to give up because he discovered that the Sahwi villages, the tribes were always warring with each other.

They had no peace. And they extolled things like revenge and murder. Those were noble traits in those cultures.

If you murder somebody, if you exact revenge, that's good. Whereas acts of kindness were seen with suspicion. So good luck trying to love on them and be kind to them because they don't respect kindness, but give me a head on a plate and you're a good guy.

So that's tough. So he didn't quite know how he was going to share the gospel with them until he discovered the key. Though they viewed acts of kindness with suspicion, there was only one act of kindness that they really respected. And that is when one village, one tribe, gave a baby boy of theirs to the other village. When they gave that baby boy to the other village, as long as that child was alive, there was peace between the tribes. It was called the peace child.

He goes, that's it, that's my key. So he told them about God's peace child, how God gave his son to our tribe and that he is still alive because he rose from the dead. And that transformed their understanding.

And to this day there are vibrant, vibrant Christians and churches in that area. The point is, God makes peace through his peace child, the Lord Jesus Christ. So this peace is needful and this peace is relational.

Let me give you a third aspect of this promise. This peace is incomparable. For, notice verse 27, when Jesus said, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.

The next phrase is, not as the world gives, do I give to you. In other words, this is an other worldly peace. You'll never find this kind of peace in the world.

Or you might say, the peace that I promise is out of this world. And in the truest sense, there is no real peace to be found in this world. The Bible says that we in our natural state are at enmity with God, that there is hostility from the moment we are born with God. You may not feel that, that's irrelevant.

It is a fact. There is a hostility, we are at enmity with God. Now people might try to play that down, like the false prophets in the Old Testament, who came along during Jeremiah's time and said, peace, peace. Jeremiah shot back at them and said, you are healing the hurt of my people slightly by saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Jeremiah said, there's no peace.

God's going to judge this nation and bring them into captivity. But these false prophets are saying, oh no, it's peace. Now the world may offer a momentary experience of a peaceful feeling.

You, apart from Christ, might have fleeting feelings of tranquility. You might find it in a romantic relationship. You might find it on a good vacation.

You might find it in a new purchase of a car or something you've saved up for. Hey, you might find it in a good cup of coffee. I find a lot of peace in a really well-roasted cup of brew. But it is momentary.

And all of those things are substitutes. It's a pseudo-peace. It's what one author calls the bliss of ignorance. That's worldly peace, the bliss of ignorance. Because if an unbeliever understood what awaits them, they would not enjoy a single moment of peace.

All that they have to offer is something momentary and transitory. Jesus offers something that is long-lasting, that is everlasting. Many years ago, over a century ago, you've heard me talk about D.L. Moody, Dwight Lyman Moody, the evangelist and pastor from Chicago. He was on an evangelistic kind of a tour. He was preaching with another evangelist in a town. People from the town were coming to hear them speak and hear the gospel. One man was coming every night, but he was under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He was so angry and wrestling with what he heard, he finally wrote one of the evangelists who was with Moody this letter.

Look at it. He said, I wish you and Moody had never come to this city. Before you came, I wasn't troubled about my sins. You talk of peace and joy, but you have turned my soul into a living hell.

I can't stay away from the meetings, and to come to them only makes me worse. You promised salvation, but all I find is torment. I wish you'd leave. Then I'd get back my old peace.

Listen to that. I want my old peace. I want that dumb little substitute feeling that I had before you guys came to town and told me about your Savior. Give me my old peace. Listen, sir, you don't need your old peace. You need His peace. And His peace comes from receiving the Savior who promises you His own personal sense of calm and peace. So this peace is incomparable.

You won't get it anywhere else. Fourth and finally, the fourth aspect, this peace is responsible. Now this is interesting because look at verse 27 again. It says, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Now I want you to really get this because you have one verse, but there's two sentences in one verse. The first sentence is a promise. The second sentence is a command.

Right? So He says, peace I leave. My peace I give to you. Then He gives us a command. He says, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

You say, well, wait a minute. What is this about? It's called responsibility. What do you mean responsibility? I thought you said it was a deposit. I thought you said He gives it to you. It's free.

He's leaving it with us. Well, sure, but any promise you have to appropriate. I mean, that's the way it is in all of life. If you could have a million dollars in the bank, but if you don't take money out of the bank, it does you no good.

Right? You have to use what you have. If you have a cabinet full of tools and you need to get something done, well, you got to go get those tools.

You might have all the equipment you need, but you have to appropriate that. Same with this. Same with peace. So He gives a promise. Then He gives a command. Now listen to the command. It is an imperative, and it is a present passive imperative, which means He is saying stop an action that you're already doing.

Stop an ongoing action. So it's like saying you guys are stressed out. You are feeling anything but peaceful. You're filled with turmoil and so much worry. Stop it.

I know what's going on. Stop it. Literally, it's let not your heart continue to be agitated. You say, no, wait a minute. Here, Jesus has given His beautiful promise to a bunch of worried disciples, and He tells them who are worried, stop it. It's like saying your kid's got in an accident. Don't worry.

No, here's the difference. Whenever Jesus gives you a command, He gives you the ability to obey the command. He gives you the power to do it. So with a command always comes capacity.

When Jesus gives a command, He also gives capacity, capability to fulfill the command. So what this shows us is that you and I have the power to stop freaking out. Yeah, but the world's a pandemic. Stop freaking out.

Yeah, but the economy. Stop freaking out. Stop the ongoing action of being overwhelmed by it. Let not your heart be troubled. As Christians, we have a responsibility to enact the promise that He gives. So Jesus gives them a promise of peace. They have to appropriate the promise. That's the responsibility. How do you do that? 2 Corinthians 10, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

So your thoughts are taking you in a direction? Lasso them. Chain them. Bring them to Christ.

Drop them off there. And if you have to do it 10 times a day, 20 times a day, do it. Romans chapter 12, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Renew your mind with God's promises. Refresh your mind with what you know to be true. 1 Peter chapter 1, Gird up the loins of your mind. It's an old-fashioned way of saying think clearly and exercise self-control.

So it has a lot to do with what you allow your mind to do. So the peace promise has to be guarded. You might say, we have to keep the peace.

You know, I've discovered it's better to keep the peace than to make peace every time you lose it. Just keep it. Just guard it. Just maintain it. Now, how do you do that?

Well, I'm going to be showing you how to do that in the next few weeks. But I want to leave with you as we close two basics. Two basics.

Here's our responsibility. These two things, if you do them, will help you stay peaceful as a believer. Number one, stay connected vertically. Number two, stay connected horizontally.

It's pretty basic, right? Life is like two planes, vertical, horizontal. So stay connected vertically. That's your relationship with God. Jesus said in John 15, abide in me. Abide means stick close to me.

Just like a branch sticks close to the vine to get all the nutrition flowing in. Stick close to me. Abide in me.

Maintain a constant living communion with me. Go over to John 16 for just a moment. Look at one verse. John 16, 33.

Just flip a couple pages to the right. It's the same evening. It's the same talk.

It's the same place. He's closing out his upper room discourse. Chapter 16, verse 33. These things I have spoken to you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. You stick close to me. I've overcome the world. You maintain a constant living communion with me and you're going to experience, in the midst of tribulation and turmoil, a very peaceful, tranquil feeling.

Wouldn't we all love that? You know, sailors talk about this place in the ocean called the cushion of the sea. And the cushion of the sea is a place below the surface of the ocean so deep that it's undisturbed.

It doesn't matter what's going on atop the ocean. You could have a typhoon. You could have a storm event going on. But underneath, you go down to a place where it's so calm, it's cushioned. So God wants to place you in His little cushion of the sea. In the world you're going to have tribulation. The storms are out there, but be of good cheer.

I've overcome the world. That's the cushion. So stay connected vertically. And second, stay connected horizontally.

That's right. You need people. And people need you. One thing we have looked at in the last year when everybody said, lock yourself away and stay put, we found the truth of what it says in Genesis.

What did God say? One of the first things, it is not good, the man should be what? Alone. Alone. And yet we're told, be alone.

And the anxiety and the suicide and the depression is off the chart. You need people. And you can do that safely, but you still need connections horizontally.

So do me a favor, if you know anybody in the church, anybody in the community who is locked away, has pre-existing conditions, is feeling isolated and lonely, if you can get to them and encourage them, give them food, give them love, pray with them, please do that. Help them stay connected, horizontally. If you ever go to San Francisco, California, there's one major icon of architecture that everybody sees, and it's called the, yeah, I heard it, bridge, Golden Gate Bridge.

So if you've never seen it, it's worth a trip just to check it out. So when they built the Golden Gate Bridge, the architects basically designed it based on three criteria. One is called dead load, two is live load, and three is wind load. So the dead load is just the weight of the bridge itself. It's a suspension bridge, so they take the weight of the unit itself. That's dead load. Live load is the traffic that travels across it, so think peak traffic, trucks going back and forth. That adds weight and stress. Third is wind load.

It's on the coast, so you get prevailing winds, and you get storms. So they take all of those into consideration, and to keep it strong, they built special bracing for that. All of that to say you and I need special bracing. We have God's promises, and we should stay connected this way, but we need special bracings this way to stand the storms of life. You need friends, you need mentors, you need family members, you need the church.

That's staying connected horizontally. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message for you from the series Give Peace a Chance. Right now, here's a great resource that introduces you to the key players in Israel and the Middle East and shares why their decisions are significant for you. The beating heart of Bible prophecy is the land of Israel and the Middle East. Joel Rosenberg has his finger on the pulse of the world-shaking changes happening right now, and he unveils them in his new nonfiction book, Enemies and Allies. This is the first book of its kind that takes you inside the Oval Office, inside the palaces of the kings and crown princes, the presidents and the prime ministers, in Israel and in the Arab world as we ask them, what do you think about religious freedom, about making peace with Israel, about the threat from Iran, about U.S.-Arab relations, U.S.-Israel relations? Enemies and Allies, from multiple New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg, takes you on an unforgettable journey inside the turbulent Middle East. You'll go behind closed doors to hear from the very kings and crown princes, presidents and prime ministers who are leading the charge. Enemies and Allies includes exclusive, never-before-published quotes, insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the world's most controversial leaders.

Your hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies is our thanks for your generous gift of $35 or more today. To give, call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskipp.com. As believers, we are earthly and heavenly citizens, and our lives can lead many more people to become citizens of heaven.

That's why we make these Bible teachings available, to help you live for Jesus so you can lead others into His kingdom. And you can help many others do the same when you give a gift today. Just call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskipp.com slash donate. That's connectwithskipp.com slash donate. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow, we hear from Skip's son Nate Heitzig as he shares the only way society can truly change, and you can be a part of it. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast all burdens on His Word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.