The World's Greatest Peace Treaty - Part A

Peace does not come by documentation. Real peace comes from action. Somebody acted in real time to establish it and in this case it was Jesus Christ who stepped onto the battlefield and by his singular action as the mediator of peace brought two warring parties together.

True peace began at the cross of Jesus and you can live in that peace today. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he shares about the incredible peace with God you have through Jesus. But before we begin we want to tell you about an opportunity for you to encounter the roots of your faith in the land of the Bible. Going to Israel is a unique experience but by far the most life-changing part of it is the spiritual aspect. That's why I'm excited to announce our next trip there in 2022. You'll have the opportunity to worship and study God's Word in some of the most significant biblical sites in the country. Find out more at inspirationcruises.com slash c-a-b-q. Thanks Skip.

Now we'll be in Colossians chapter 1 for today's study so let's join Skip Heitzig. Whenever two nations who are at war finally stop their hostilities they sign something called a peace treaty. A peace treaty has terms and conditions whereby the relationship between those two nations can continue. Included in a peace treaty are things like the designation of borders because land may have been won or lost depending on which nation is winning or has won.

There'll be the discussion of refugees or prisoners of war, even debts that one nation may owe to another monetarily. A few months ago I had a distinct privilege of being on the lawn of the White House to see a very historic event take place called the Abraham Accords. It was a formal peace agreement between the state of Israel and the United Arab Emirates and the nation of Bahrain. It was just so good to see parties who had been at odds with each other historically decide let's live in peace in the future. Now probably the earliest recorded peace treaty, at least that we have on record, is from 1350 BC. The Hittite Kingdom making peace with a confederacy of tribes who had fought against them. And the peace treaties back then weren't signed on paper they were signed on clay tablets. And we happen to have some copies of tablets like that in museums that speak of the treaty of peace between two warring nations. In more modern times some of the famous peace treaties would be the Treaty of Paris when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. A little more recently than that the Treaty of Versailles between Germany and the Allied powers which formally ended World War I. But my favorite is what took place on September 2, 1945 aboard the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. It was the formal end of World War II because on the deck of that battleship, and by the way you can visit that battleship today in Pearl Harbor over in Hawaii and they have a replica of what was called the Instrument of Surrender. And the Instrument of Surrender was a document that was signed by the Japanese Imperial Forces and the Allied powers headed by the American General Douglas MacArthur.

Let's just get a little snapshot of that. General MacArthur speaks. General MacArthur speaks. We are gathered here representatives of the major warring powers to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the Instrument of Surrender now before you. So what I really love about that little speech, that's just a little part of it, is he said the differences that we have have been settled on the battlegrounds of this world. So now we're going to put our names to it, we're going to sign the Instrument of Surrender, but we fought this out and we have come to terms. So I wanted to show you that because what we have before us is what could be called the Instrument of Surrender in Colossians chapter one. That is terms and conditions set before us to establish what Paul calls peace through the blood of his cross. Peace through the blood of his cross.

Because peace does not come by declaration, peace does not come by documentation, real peace comes from action. Somebody acted in real time to establish it and in this case it was Jesus Christ who stepped onto the battlefield and by his singular action as the mediator of peace brought two warring parties together. Let's look at verse 19 of Colossians chapter one and read down through this paragraph. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. And you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in His sight. If indeed you continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard which was preached to every creature under heaven of which I Paul became a minister. Now we have in this series called give peace a chance we have looked for several weeks at the topic of peace we considered in the very first message the personal promise Jesus made to His own followers for His own particular brand of peace to be given to them in our second study we look to what it is to be a peacemaker how people who are not getting along make peace with each other and steps to do that we are in our last study going to look at eventual peace world peace but what I want to do today is take you to the very reason that any of that peace is possible what you might call the fountainhead of all peace the source of all peace if you're really going to have peace in your heart and I just don't mean the cessation of hostility where you stand next to each other and like you you fold your arms and give each other the look like I'm really mad at you but I won't say anything because I want to keep the peace I'm talking about a an almost overwhelming sense of well-being that you have with God because of something God has done for you He has made peace with you therefore He gives a certain kind of peace to you I'm calling this message the world's greatest peace treaty and I want to show you four aspects to this treaty the mediator of peace the method of peace the magnitude of peace and the maintenance of peace you know it was a guy by the name of Thomas a campus who said all men desire peace but very few desire those things that make for peace I think that's true I think if you asked any individual what is the most important thing they could wish for they would say peace world peace peace on earth or personal peace peace of mind and then if you were to say okay so are you willing to accept God's terms and conditions and receive Christ as your Savior well no so everybody says they want peace but as Thomas a campus said very few desire those things that make for peace I want to show you four things that make for peace we begin with the mediator of peace and that is the 19th verse Paul said for it pleased the father that is God the father that in him referring to Christ that in Christ all the fullness should dwell let's just stop there and let me fill in the the gaps chapter one Paul is presenting to the Colossian church the person of Christ Christ in his fullness fully God fully man he wants them to know his his nature his character and so he says back in like verse 15 and 16 that he is the firstborn of all creation he created everything out of nothing he sustains the universe so Christ is the creator Christ is the sustainer of the world and he is the the preeminent one and then the summary verse of that glory of Christ is found in verse 19 it pleased the father that in him all the fullness should dwell let me tell you what's going on here when Paul is writing this letter he is writing to the church that is is facing problems it's a church that had some problems you know what every church has problems can I just say every single church has them but they really had some problems and and the problem they had was there was a group of weirdos in their church called Gnostics have you ever heard of Gnosticism anybody Gnostic so the word means Gnosis means to know and a Gnostic is somebody who's in the know or claim to be in the know so the Gnostic philosophy or Gnostic heresy was infiltrating the church at Colossi and let me tell you a little bit about Gnosticism so Gnostics believed in a dualistic universe sort of like a platonic world view that there was the material world there was the spirit world the spirit world was good material world is bad everything that is material is evil and only that which is spiritual is good so what did they do with the idea that God created the world because the world is evil how could a good God create an evil world so they're dealing with that question and here's how they solved the riddle God who is spirit did not create the material physical world because God is spirit spirit is good material is evil God didn't create it so what happened they said is several emanations went out from God sort of like sub gods left the true God and they went out eventually there were so many of them and one went out so far from God that he didn't even know the true God it was that God that created the material world that God who could handle that which is evil because he himself was evil and didn't even know the true God see a bunch of weirdos right then when it came to Jesus Christ they had interesting ideas as well because they said Jesus is the son of God and he's walking on the earth and he's saying things and doing things in a physical body they have to deal with that so they said Jesus didn't have a physical body but he looked like he did so it was sort of all like a phantom he was like a phantom he looked like he was a real human but he wasn't so it was like a really good trick and they had all sorts of fanciful stories that whenever Jesus walked on the beach he never left footprints in the sand and and all sorts of nonsense like this moreover they taught that Jesus was sort of a halfway house to God he was a link in the chain back to the true God but that there were better links ahead so the Gnostic would say to the Colossian Christian hey I'm glad that you're all into Jesus Jesus is great but but you need to keep going past Jesus and eventually you'll be like us we're in the know eventually you will come to a place listen to this a fullness that's their word fullness so in in thinking of that in verse 19 Paul said for it pleased the father that in him in Christ all the fullness should dwell you guys are out looking for fullness you just need to know Jesus is fullness it's all in him and by the way the word fullness is the word play Roma it means completeness and it means full and complete deity dwells in Jesus permanently he's going to say as much when he gets to chapter two we just don't have time to chase it down but chapter two verse nine it says the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus permanently so he's painting the picture that that Jesus Christ is fully God as opposed to the Gnostic heresy and it's interesting because I've had a lot of conversations with people about Jesus and sometimes I'll get a person who will say well Jesus never claimed personally to be God the idea that he was God came later on like by Paul and people perverted what Jesus really said but Jesus never claimed to be God every time I hear that I just want to ask them what version of the Bible are you reading is it the new I just made it up version because that's what you just did that's just not in there it's Jesus claiming to be God is like all over the place you can't miss it let me give you a few examples Jesus rose from the dead Thomas looked at him and said my Lord and my God now you say well Thomas said that to him yeah but did Jesus say no I'm not really I'm not because if he wasn't he would have said that because he was an orthodox Jew he wouldn't have allowed somebody to worship him as God unless he was Thomas said my Lord and my God here's another one oh one time there was a man who was paralyzed his friends let him down through the roof into a house Jesus looks at the man on the cot in front of him first thing he says is be of good cheer your sins are forgiven your sins are forgiven people who were in the crowd the religious people were right when they said did you hear what he just said he just said the guy's sins are forgiven and then they said nobody can forgive sins except God duh that's sort of the whole point of what I just said no one can forgive sins but God and he just said no one can forgive sins but God and he just said no one can forgive sins but God and he just said your sins are forgiven Jesus was the one who said I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me will never die Jesus was the one who said I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but by me Jesus was the one who said if you have seen me you have seen the father Jesus was the one who said before Abraham was I am and Jesus was the one who said the father and I are one and you know what happened when he said that when he said the father and I are one the Bible tells us the Jews picked up stones to kill him and Jesus said you know I've done a lot of good works in front of you guys for which for which good work are you going to stone me and they said not for a good work do we stone you but because you being a man are continually making yourself out to be God even they figured it out so Jesus never claimed to be God well everybody else thought he did because they were going to kill him for it you being a man claimed to be God so Paul wants the Colossians to know that Jesus is the perfect mediator of peace because on one hand he is fully God but on the other hand he is fully human that's verse 21 and you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works yet now he is reconciled now now get this verse 22 in the body of his flesh through death notice how precise he is how detailed he is that doesn't just say Jesus died he says in the body of his flesh through death see he's thinking of the Gnostics who said Jesus didn't have a real physical body it was a phantom no he actually physically died his body went through the process of physical death so because Jesus was God he can rescue and reconcile lost sinners because Jesus is man human he's able to suffer the consequences for our sin which is death the wages of sin is death so he's showing the need for Jesus to be both fully God and fully man because it makes him the perfect middle man the perfect mediator he's not just a good man he's God man so so here's an example maybe a lame example but it's an example nonetheless an example nonetheless I have a history of not being fond of ants I don't particularly like ants I have no I have no I don't think they're you know I don't look at them go that they're God's creatures and I'm going to protect them I don't do that they're I'm going to kill them um I have a long history with them I think I had an ant farm when I was a kid but I figured out that I could take ants outside and get a magnifying glass on a sunny day and burn ants okay so it's I was fallen I was an unbeliever you're some of you ladies are going to be shocked but how many guys have ever done that before raise your hand be honest right now be honest the rest of you are not honest okay so I did that um I'm a Christian now so I don't do that anymore but I do do this so when I see ants they come and they they're in my kitchen like today so here's what I'm gonna do right here see that I'm gonna take those ants and I'm gonna see them with a smile on my face I'm gonna spray this I have no compassion at all from just gonna kill them okay um so the wrath of Skip is destined to fall on those creatures now let's say I invite you over to my house for dinner you're a very different sort than I am you're much kinder nobler you have a very soft spot in your heart for ants and um so you see ants over there and you go I got some ants over there and I go yeah I'm I got I'm gonna take care of them so I pull this out and you go do that right now yeah okay that's what you do when you're at my house because you don't want me to kill them so you go over to the ants and you do this you bend down you go run away little ants the bad man is going to spray you go go go question would that help no it wouldn't help at all because you're you and they are them and they you don't speak ant and they don't speak english but okay now it's getting a little ridiculous here but let's just say let's say you could shrink down to become an ant get at their level so now you're not only their size but you speak ant I don't even know what that sounds like but you you can do that and so you at their level can warn them knowing what you know because you also have human nature somehow you can warn them of what is coming the spray is coming and so you can warn them to flee or or better yet while you warn them to flee because here I am I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to spray it at them and you're going to stand in the line of the spray and you're going to take the punishment while they're fleeing okay I'm going to end the analogy right there let me just say if you could do that you would be like the you'd be the ant savior you would be the perfect mediator between god between Skip and ants right so what Jesus did Paul said is he was God but he came down to our level and he stood right in the in front of the stream of God's wrath on the cross to absorb it all to take it all while we could escape that's what he did fully God fully men he's the mediator he is the mediator of this peace treaty it's his action that did that and that is why we preach Christ that is why we preach Christ not with a comma after his name as though leading to something else or a dash after his name as though waiting for something else we preach Christ period because there is nothing else there is no one else there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved that's Skip heitzing with a message from his series give peace a chance now here's a resource that will give you critical insight into what exactly is going on in Israel and in the Middle East today and why it's important for you to know New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg is now based in Jerusalem and he's releasing the new non-fiction 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 although nobody's ever had that chance to not just be one of these major leaders but to meet almost all of them and then they get to tell the story the 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 before we close we invite you to check out the connect with Skip mobile app you'll have access to a treasure trove of skips messages right at your fingertips find out more at connectwithskip.com slash app and be sure to come back again next week as Skip Heitzigs and shares why God's peace is so meaningful and how you can keep living in that peace make a connection make a connection at the foot of the cross connect with Skip Heitzigon is a presentation of connection communications connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times