Living by Faith: Peace

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. What's your idea of peace? Well, people have varying views of how things ought to be and on how to attain that place of peace. But God has laid out for us in His Word both the true nature of peace and how we can have it. Sadly, mankind has often turned aside from God's way.

C.S. Lewis points out that human history is the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God, which will make him happy. Proverbs 14, 12 reminds us that there is a way that seems right to a man, but that is actually the path to death. In today's message, Rich lays out for us God's gracious path to peace through a life of faith.

Let's listen in. I'm returning to copy the scriptures to Psalm 37. The title of this series is Living by Faith. Our text today is verses 35 to 38. It is faithfulness. Living by faith is trust. It produces quietness, meekness, satisfaction, generosity, goodness, and security. All of these things we've unpacked from the 37th Psalm. Today, it will become very clear to us that living by faith is peace.

I want to talk to you about peace today. In order to do that, I'm going to have you evaluate something about yourself. I'm going to call you to evaluate your HTOTB. That's a medical term? No, it's not.

Anybody know what HTOTB is? You say, Rich, I didn't know I had that. You do. Everyone does. How things ought to be. Everyone has their image and their idea of how things ought to be.

Now, it may be that your expectation and your experience are not in line with each other. And therein causes trouble. It causes a lack of peace. But every one of us has ideas and images of how things ought to be. The problem is, what we need to ask is, how accurate is that image or are those ideas?

And what is the reference for that? I wanted to offer you this morning three pictures of peace and why they failed. The three pictures of an attempted peace and why they failed. The first one is in the text right before us, Psalm 37.

Let me read to you Psalm 37 verse 35 and 36. I've seen a wicked and ruthless man spreading himself like a green laurel tree. But he passed away and behold, he was no more. Though I sought him, he could not be found. This is the ruthless man made an attempted peace.

What is that? He is a person who dehumanizes others in order to acquire peace. For such people, human history is full of them.

And oftentimes, they have been very powerful political rulers. But it can happen even at the personal level. It can happen at the corporate level.

It can happen at home. The idea of dehumanizing others in order to acquire peace. Consider this, for the past 100 years, almost exactly, for the past 100 years, all the wars and revolutions have been about what? Bringing in some kind of utopia, some kind of order that they think is the answer for all the world. World War II is about that. The totalitarianism of Nazism.

How about Marxism? Theirs was an ideology that could bring in the utopia, right? Or how about most lately here, the group ISIS?

They believed that Islamic rule would bring in what's needed on earth. And they were very, very brutal about it. And with all these ideologies about ostensibly bringing in peace to the world, hundreds of millions of people have paid for it with their lives. Why?

Because they dehumanized others in order to try to acquire peace. This is this ruthless man. And he's found no more.

He does not have a future. That's why that attempt at peace failed. Here's another one. The second one is this. It's Luke chapter 12. And we know this very well.

Luke chapter 12, Jesus gives the parable of the rich fool, right? And so he tore down his barns because he didn't have enough room. So he built bigger ones. And he said this.

He's talking to himself, right? Because what does he want? He wants peace. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

What is that? That's peace. I'm just going to sit back and relax because I am set. We know the rest of the story, don't we? This is the rich man. He did not consider his end. He had the wrong foundation for peace. He did not consider his end. He was like, as Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes, he was living vanity under the sun because he did not live with the end in view.

All he lived for was right now. There's no peace in that. We are a part of this Western culture.

It's a very prosperous culture. And our culture in particular has worked tirelessly, has worked very hard to make death, the subject of death taboo. We don't talk about it. And because of that, we don't live with the end in view. We're only living for here and now. That's myopic. And there's no peace in that. It's living in terror when crisis hits. And so we're distracted by our comforts and our conveniences.

And too many people are in that boat. See, that's an attempt at peace that fails because we don't consider our end and we have the wrong foundation for peace. The third one is in Luke Chapter 19. It's what Billy read earlier. And it's the account of the triumphal entry. Now, it's about a week before Jesus is crucified on the cross and he comes into Jerusalem in Luke Chapter 19 verses 37, 38, as he was drawing near the whole multitude of his disciples. That's not just the twelve, but the whole multitude of people began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. Jesus had done some marvelous things and they were saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. So this whole crowd, this huge crowd leading into Jerusalem is just welcoming Jesus.

And can you imagine a week later he's crucified on a cross? What happened there? Why did this peace fail? Because they thought, here he is, this man's coming.

He is going to establish for us a reign of prosperity. And they did not realize the means to peace. They did not realize the means to true, genuine, enduring peace.

What were they thinking? They thought the means to peace was political or military, or they thought the means to peace was economic, or they thought the means to peace was intellectual or educational. They thought all of these were the means to peace. They did not recognize that the means to peace was a person, capital P, this person who was writing into Jerusalem. Because here all Jerusalem is, you think this is a wonderful thing, right? And the crowds are just cheering, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And what was Jesus doing? When he saw Jerusalem, what did he do? He wept.

Why? Oh, Jerusalem, if you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace. You see, they didn't recognize it. They did not recognize the means to peace. And so it is with human history. So many attempts at peace.

And C.S. Lewis says it well, human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. That's human history. So as we talk about these different individuals, we see a picture developing here for us, is a lack of peace. These attempts at peace that continually fail. And all they produce is war, war within and war without.

And why is that? It's because of our desires. And that's why I asked you this morning to evaluate your HTOTB, how things ought to be, because you have an idea of how things ought to be. And it's your desires, your desires. And our desires are at war. They're at war within us and they're at war with each other.

Look, for example, in James Chapter four, I have it on the on the screen for you, James four. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

What's going on? I have an idea of how things ought to be and how to get there. This person has a different idea of how things ought to be or how to get there. And so we're going to squabble with each other because we have different ideas of how things ought to be.

Right. So that's the first thing, you know, that the ideas that we have, you know, first of all, kids. We have ideas of how our kids ought to be when they're at a certain age or in their behavior, in their obedience. We have ideas of how kids ought to be. I have a different idea of how a house ought to be. How a husband and wife might have a different idea. Right. One might be a hoarder and the other might be a minimalist.

What is that? That's war. Right. How about church? I have my idea about how church ought to be or you have your idea about how church ought to be.

And how many fights have been started because of that? How tragic that is. How about my idea or my image about how my life ought to be at this stage in my life? What are the images and the ideas that are informing my idea of what my life ought to be at this stage of my life?

And different people might have different ideas, images and ideas. And so what is feeding your mind? What is informing your mind with the images and the ideas of how things ought to be?

That is a very important question that you need to answer because it has a lot to do with how much peace you are experiencing in your life or lack thereof. Not only are we at odds with each other in terms of how things ought to be, but how do we achieve it? How do we achieve peace? This goal that we have, we may have the same goal, but we might be at odds in terms of how to achieve this goal. What steps do we take?

What obstacles are there? But the whole point comes down to this, is that peace is something that everybody wants, for themselves at least. And peace means justice and prosperity. We want justice and prosperity at least for ourselves. It may be that somebody else doesn't get it, but I want peace and justice and prosperity for myself. And even as verse 35 makes clear, there are those who will want to acquire justice and prosperity with others paying the price. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him, the One who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.