The Gift of Peace - Part B

Do you ever imagine Jesus to be worried? Is that how you picture it? Do you picture Jesus like biting his fingernails? Oh man, this is stressful.

It's out of control. Ever? He is the most calm, peaceful, unruffled personality ever. If you want to know what peace of mind and heart look like, just look at Jesus.

Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Pastor Skip shows you how Jesus is the greatest example ever of someone living with peace. But first, we want to tell you about a resource that will help the children in your life know and love God's Word and follow His truth. Attention moms, dads, and anyone who's looking to help children understand the message of the Bible. This month, we're offering the book Soaring Through the Bible for Kids.

God's Word can be a challenge to read and understand, even for adults. And this kid-friendly version of Pastor Skip Heitzig's popular book, The Bible from 30,000 Feet, gives young children and tweens a panoramic overview of all 66 books of the Bible, helping them see the context and significance of each. Soaring Through the Bible is a travel guide from Genesis through Revelation for kids. Each chapter provides a flight plan for exploring a portion of the Bible, along with a brief synopsis that shows what the chapters are about and language kids can understand. Creatively designed with kids in mind, Soaring Through the Bible also features fun illustrations and fascinating facts to keep young minds and hearts engaged and interested. Soaring Through the Bible for Kids will prepare a child for takeoff on a lifelong journey of learning and loving God's Word. We will send you a copy of this unique book along with a booklet for you by Skip titled Why Truth Matters. Simply make a donation to support and expand this radio program with a gift of $50 or more.

Call 1-800-922-1888 or order online at connectwithskip.com. Okay, we're going to be in John 14 today as Skip begins his lesson. 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 on His terms, His terms of the cross. You come and receive what Jesus did for you on your behalf.

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 Sawi tribe down in Indonesia in Irian Jaya. 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. He just loved them. Well, the problem with loving them is that the Sawi tribes were cannibals. How do you love your next-door neighborhood cannibal?

Headhunters. 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 Sawi 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. Right?

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 the 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, and 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. 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. Wait a minute. 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've 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, and 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 are filled with turmoil and so much worry. Stop it.

I know it'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 a 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 gonna 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 gonna 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. 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 that man should be what? 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 preexisting 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 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. Every year at Christmas, we celebrate peace. And we celebrate peace and we sing about peace. It's in most of the Christmas songs because the angels who spoke to the shepherds outside Bethlehem, remember what they said? They said, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.

It's one of the best promises ever. But just think about it based on where you're at, what you've seen and what you know. So you're standing around right now and an angel says, hey, peace on earth, goodwill toward men. You're thinking, Mr. Angel, have you not read the stats? Do you not know that only 8% of world history has seen peace? Do you not realize that there are conflicts right now going on everywhere in the world? Where do you come off saying, peace on earth?

Are you mocking us? Are you like some hippie angel? Peace, dude.

What's all that about? Well, that's an unfortunate translation, peace on earth, goodwill toward men. A more literal translation sounds like this, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men on whom God's favor rests.

It's a very different meaning, isn't it? Or glory to God in the highest, peace on earth to those that God is well pleased with. So you want peace? You can have it. It can be yours.

It can be a real experience. Will there be world peace? Someday, not now, not anytime soon. It will never happen until Jesus comes back.

I applaud those who are given awards for it and marching for it, but it ain't never gonna happen until Jesus comes. But you can experience peace personally. You can be connected to Him. You can experience His own sense of tranquility and calm by being connected to Him.

It can be yours. And it's something I not only preach on, I pray for you for. I pray you experience God's peace. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Give Peace a Chance. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip to tell you how you can connect others with the truth of God's word with a gift to keep these messages you love going around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Studying scripture is vital if you're gonna hold firmly to biblical truth.

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