Peace Where You Least Expect It - Part A

Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. We're glad you've joined us for today's program. Connecting you to the never-changing truth of God's Word through verse-by-verse teaching is what Connect with Skip Heitzig is all about.

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And be sure to subscribe to the channel so you never miss any new content. That's Connect with Skip Heitzig on YouTube. Now, let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. The misery index. Have you ever heard that phrase? They're telling us the misery index in our country is on the rise. That just jumped out at me when I heard the misery index.

So I did a little digging. Back in the 1960s, an economic advisor to President Lyndon Johnson named Arthur Oaken came up with the phrase the misery index. And what it is simply, it's the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate.

And those two become an economic indicator to how the nation is faring. So the idea is that as inflation is on the rise and people are more and more out of work, the misery index goes up. We're presently at 12.67 in the misery index. They say it's going up now.

12.67. The lowest our country has ever been is 1953. It was at 2.97. The highest it's ever been was June of 1980.

Right before the 1980 elections, it was 21.98. But they're telling us the misery index is going up. Now, there's another word. Besides misery that I got from the news, there's a word that jumped out at me when I read the good news, the text we're about to read this morning. It's a word that is used a few times by Jesus himself. It's a very different word from misery.

In fact, I would say it's the opposite word. It could even be considered the cure for misery. It's the word peace. Verse 27, Jesus speaking, he says, 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. You have heard me say to you I am going away and coming back to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it comes that when it does come to pass, you may believe.

I will no longer talk much with you. For the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do.

Arise, let us go from here. Peace is the most sought after experience, bar none. More than money, more than fame, more than power, more than status, people want peace. I googled peace this week. I just wrote in the word peace, and I was interested to find that I received 791 million results. Fascinated by that, I typed in the word world peace, 112 million results. I kept going.

I was having fun. I wrote in personal peace, 410 million results. I typed in spiritual peace, 84,100,000 results. We sing about peace. We talk about peace. We yearn for peace. We visualize it. We put it on bumper stickers. We want peace.

We want world peace. There's even something called the peace prize, the Nobel Peace Prize. Interestingly, invented by Alfred Nobel, the man who invented dynamite. Let me tell you the story.

It's fascinating. Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemical engineer. He was reading the paper one day, and he saw that he had died. He didn't know this. It was a misprint in the obituary column.

Alfred Nobel, and he was known as the one who invented dynamite. Well, that sort of shook him. He thought, that's not the legacy I want to leave.

I want to leave something better than that. So he embarked on peaceful things and developed the Nobel Peace Prize. But peace seems so elusive. Yeah, I know we talk about it, and we will negotiate for it, but how many people really experience peace?

Let's just get down to brass tacks. In the last 3,100 plus years of recorded history, there have been 286 years of peace. What that means is that in all of the recorded history we know of, 8% of world history has been peaceful.

That's all. In 3,100 years, 8,000 peace treaties have been formed, signed, and broken. Peace seems elusive because, well, peace is elusive, outwardly, but not inwardly.

You know, the Bible speaks about peace some 397 times as a real experience for those who trust God. I'm interested in the fact that Jesus is called, one of his titles in the book of Isaiah, chapter 9, he is the prince of what? The prince of peace. He's not called the prince of hope. He's not called the prince of love. He's not called the prince of joy, though all those titles would be befitting, but he is called the prince of peace. As if to indicate, if you want peace, get to know the prince.

And what is ironic is that so many people will talk about peace and search for peace and sing about peace, but never receive the prince of peace. It's sort of like Caesar Augustus who, when he was reigning in Rome, he had found out there was a man living on the other side of the city, who though he incurred a great debt he could never pay off, slept peacefully every night. And so Caesar Augustus wanted to buy that man's bed. You see, he thought, it's all about the bed, some ancient, posturpedic, Roman, perfect mattress.

No, it's all about the man, not about the bed. We have five verses in front of us, and I have to tell you, the only mistake I believe I made in preparing for this message is I bit off more than I can chew. I really should just take in smaller chunks. I have so much that I want to say. There's so much truth packed into these verses. I'm going to do my best to unpack it. And don't worry, I'll finish in time.

But there's just so much truth to be extracted. There's actually three experiences of peace that our Savior speaks about or alludes to. The first is in verse 27, peace in a troubled world, he speaks about. To his disciples, he says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Peace, he says to them, peace. The word in Greek, Irenae, we get the woman's name, Irene, from it, was a common greeting. In fact, these were Hebrews, and if you go to Jerusalem today, people still will say to you, Shalom, which is peace. Three times in John chapter 20, Jesus will use the word peace as a greeting. He will say to his disciples after the resurrection, when he appears to them, peace be with you.

First thing he says, a common greeting. Paul opened up his epistles, grace and peace. But here, in chapter 14, in this verse, this is not a greeting, this is not a salutation, this is a promise.

I'm going to paraphrase, but this is what I believe is the best way to translate it. Let me cause you to have a quiet, peaceful, restful, tranquil heart and mind. In fact, the New Living Translation renders, I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart. So there's God's promise to you, if you're a follower of his, peace. If you're a businessman struggling to stay afloat in this hard economy, God promises you peace. If you're a worker and you just want to keep your job, God promises you peace. If you're a parent and you're worried about all the dependent mouths that look toward you to feed them, God promises you peace. If you're a student and you just want to pass the test and make it to the next grade, God promises you peace. Peace is the promise. It must be said, however, that the Bible does differentiate between two kinds of peace.

Let me explain. There's peace with God, and then there's the peace of God, two very different things. The first is objective. The second is subjective. The first is not a feeling or may not accompany one. The second is definitely a feeling. But you can never experience the second, that is the peace of God, unless you've experienced the first, and that is peace with God.

Let me further explain. Peace with God is when you fly the white flag of spiritual surrender. You say, I give up. I come to God on God's terms, which is the cross of Christ. I receive Christ as my Savior into my life, into my heart. Then you have peace with God.

That's what Paul meant in Romans 5. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But then there's the second, and that's the peace of God.

That's the experience. That's the tranquility. That's the rest that Jesus is promising here, the feeling, the experience of tranquility. If you were to plug another verse into verse 27, it would be the one in Philippians 4.

Most of you know 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. The peace that passes all understanding will guard or will rule your hearts and your minds. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig, Weekend Edition. Before we return to Skip's teaching, in his Jesus Loves booklets, Pastor Skip Heitzig shows you God's radical love for all people and challenges you to love all people like Jesus did. And when you give a gift of $50 or more today, we'll send you four of these booklets in our Jesus Loves Them bundle. Our thanks for your support to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig. You'll fall more in love with your living Savior as you see just how much He loves all people and calls you to do the same.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your bundle when you give. Now, let's continue with today's teaching from Pastor Skip. So let me give it to you in a short statement that you can remember.

It's a bit simplistic perhaps, but it fits. When Jesus is Savior, that brings peace with God. When Jesus is Lord, that will bring the peace of God. Peace He promises.

Not only that, look at the very second part of that verse. He just doesn't say, peace I leave with you, He says, my peace I give to you, literally my own peace. He's the manufacturer of this kind of peace. He's the distributor of this kind of peace.

Again, let me paraphrase all of this together. Jesus is saying, I'm going to cause you to be restful, tranquil, quiet, peaceful inside your hearts and minds with the same kind of rest, tranquility, and peace that I have inside my heart and mind. Now, let that just settle in for a moment. Can you ever picture Jesus as being frantic, frenzied? You ever picture or ever read of Jesus saying, oh no, ever.

Never. And that's the legacy that He passes on to those who follow Him. That's the effect that Christ has upon a life.

Paul put it this way, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, goodness, kindness, etc. That's the effect of Christ on the human life. J. Oswald Sanders put it this way, peace is not the absence of trouble, peace is the presence of God. In fact, I would say to that, I would add to that, you can be at peace very deeply while the world seems to be falling apart around you. It's peace in a troubled world.

Now, you should have that, I should have that, peace. For the life of me, I don't quite know why some Christians still get the idea that God is frowning at them. But as I talk to so many, that's the idea that I get. They picture God as having a furrowed brow and His arms are folded across this celestial robe and He's just looking at you going, not good, I'm going to get you.

That couldn't be further from the truth. Jeremiah 29 declares, I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace. Thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. So He promises peace, He promises His peace, look at it further. He promises an otherworldly kind of peace. He says, not as the world gives, do I give to you. You see, you'll never find this kind of peace anywhere out there in the world.

It's not to be found. Now, I do have to say that worldly people, a lot of them, may seem very peaceful and will tell you, I'm at peace. And there are temporary experiences of tranquility that you can find in a beautiful morning, a romance, an experience where you go, listen, a good cup of coffee will get you that. But these are transient momentary experiences. In fact, I would even go so far as to say for unbelievers, any kind of peace like that is just the bliss of ignorance. What you don't know won't hurt you is the idea. It's the bliss of ignorance because if the unbeliever really understood how the wrath of God is poised against the unrepentant, they would never have an ounce of peace.

They would live in high anxiety. Isaiah put it this way, there is no peace says the Lord for the wicked. So it's the bliss of ignorance. It might be transient, it might be momentary, but this, this promise is something far deeper and something longer lasting. Look at the very last sentence of verse 27. It's divided into two sentences. Let not your heart be troubled.

Does that ring a bell? That's how the chapter begins, right? Verse 1, let not your heart be troubled. But then he adds this, neither let it be afraid.

Now the way that's written in the Greek vocabulary, it means to stop an action that's already going on. In other words, these boys were agitated in the upper room. They're distressed. They're filled with anxiety.

They're filled with fear. So he says to them, let not your heart be troubled. Now you know what that tells me? It tells me that there's a cooperation going on. There's God's part and then there's your part. Here, I'll promise you peace.

It's a very real experience. It can be yours. You can walk in it, but you have a part to play. You have to appropriate the promise. That make sense? You have to let not your heart be troubled.

You have to stop if you're filled with anxiety. Stop that and appropriate my peace. A lot of God's promises are that way. Jesus said the Holy Spirit was going to come. But Paul will later say, be being filled with the Spirit. That's a commandment.

So there's two parts of this. These disciples had every earthly reason to be fearful, to be agitated, to be troubled, to be afraid. Fear is the natural response to trouble. Peace is the supernatural response. And whenever I encounter that in a person's life, I'm humbled.

I was humbled this week. There's a family in our church. I don't think they'd mind if I brought them up in this context. A family that I've known since we started our first Bible study before we were even incorporated as an official church.

They've been with us a long time. I watched Jessica, their daughter, being raised in this church. Jessica grew up, got married, had kids. Six weeks ago, we buried her daughter. It was a very painful experience for this family. Two days ago, they called me. Jessica's house burned to the ground.

Yeah, you think, one blow, so deep, so blighting, so devastating, and then another one. So I called Jesse, who was the grandfather of that child that died, Jessica's dad. Not knowing what I was going to hear, but sort of suspecting what I would hear because I know him. The first thing he said, and I wrote it down and made such an impression, the first thing when he picked up the phone and he knew it was me, he said, Skip, we are so blessed to be called the children of God. I thought, how can I minister to him? He's ministering to me. He said, the peace of God, the lessons we've learned, what God is doing, what we have seen, wow.

He nailed it. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Why? Because in the storm that is coming your way, God will couch in that storm of blessing. Remember the story when Jesus sent his disciples out in the Sea of Galilee, and then a storm arose?

Remember that? And then Jesus starts walking to them on the water, and the Bible says they looked and they saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, and they didn't know it was Jesus, which always sort of amazed me. Well, who else could it be? And they were afraid. They didn't recognize him. Why didn't they recognize him? Here's my take on it. They weren't expecting Jesus to come in the storm.

And that's the beauty of it. Jesus came to them on the very thing they feared the most, the storm. You might be in one right now, or you might be facing one, don't know when. It could be a possible surgery. It could be the death of a loved one.

You could fill in the blank. But I'll guarantee you, if you look, you'll find that Jesus will come to you on the very thing you may fear the most. It might be his footpath to come to you. And you will say in it and through it and after it, the Lord has been so good and gracious and shown himself. Sailors tell us that in the ocean there's a section so deep beneath the surface of the water. They call it the cushion of the sea. No matter what's happening on the surface, no matter how big the waves are billowing or breaking ships, if you get down far enough, it's absolutely still the cushion of the sea.

I want to live in the cushion of God's sea. Peace, my peace, not as the world gives. Don't let your heart be troubled.

Don't let it be afraid. It's the first experience Jesus talks about in verse 27. Verse 28 and 29, there's a second kind of peace, and that is peace while you're waiting, in temporal waiting. You have heard me say to you, I'm going away and coming back to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said I'm going to the Father, for my Father is greater than all.

Thanks so much for being with us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you a copy of the Jesus Loves Them bundle to help you understand God's abounding love for all people. Request your copy when you call and give 800-922-1888.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast your 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.