It almost goes without saying that the greatest gift most of us could have for our own hearts and our families, but especially in our country and the world, is peace. Real peace. Not just the absence of conflict, but genuine, full peace. Where does it come from?
How do you get it? That's today. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry helping Christians live like Christians.
I'm Dave Drew. And in this program, Chip wraps up his series called The Hope of Christmas. He's been looking at the promises about Jesus that give us real hope for today and amazing hope for the future. If you've missed any of these messages along the way, they're available on the Chip Ingram app or online anytime at livingontheedge.org.
Just click the broadcasts tab. After the teaching, Chip's got a great application that ties the whole series together, so be sure not to miss that. And if you can't stay with us, maybe catch it later on the Chip Ingram app or online at livingonttheedge.org. Okay, let's get going, shall we? If you have a Bible, open it now to 1 John, and it's right near the end of the Bible. And let's join Chip for his final message in the series, Prince of Peace.
I want to take a few moments and just make sure that we reflect and pause and think about, you know, what Christmas really is all about. And if you're a lady, you can raise your hand. And if you're a man, you probably don't want to. But how many of you ladies like those Hallmark movies? I'm married to one of those ladies. And let me just say, for the sake of marital alignment, I've watched a few. And early on, it would cause an argument because if you've ever seen a Hallmark movie, and most of you guys will not admit to this, the story is always the same, completely the same.
The characters are very good-looking, 25 to 40-year-olds. And within about the first 45 seconds, you'll see a guy and you'll see a girl, and I say, they're going to fall in love. And not only are they going to fall in love, but then they're going to have this really tension or this moment where it looks like they might not. But about an hour and 45 minutes later, they're going to be kissing and snow will be falling.
And rumor has it next year, they're going to say, Hallmark movies 100 days before Christmas because they're only doing 50 days or 30 or 25 or whatever it is. Now here's the confession, however, now that I've made fun of them just a little. I know the story. I know what's going to happen.
I know they're going to kiss. And yet, guys, I'm sorry about this. I kind of tear up toward the end. And I feel like, oh, that's so wonderful and it makes me feel so good. And I have my hallmark moment. And my wife turns to me and says, no, isn't that great?
I go, yeah, you know. And in my experience, probably it's me growing up, but Christmas Eve services for me were a hallmark moment. I didn't grow up believing in Christ personally. I'd never opened the Bible, but I did go to church on Christmas Eve and it was a lot like a little bit what you've experienced. I mean, there was greenery and there was candles and there were colors and there were banners and there just was something like, wow, this is awesome. And then, you know, no matter what was going on in our family, you know, we had some dysfunctional family issues and my dad was a good guy, but he was an alcoholic. But, boy, that night we all got along, you know.
It was great. And my concern is that our time together goes beyond just a hallmark moment. And that we really ask ourselves, so why are we really here?
In other words, the question I want to ask is who is this child really? I mean, the hallmark moment is great, but I can't base my hope on this good, warm, great feeling with Christmas music and a baby and Mary and shepherds and magi and opening presents and some good food. I'm living in a world where there's ISIS. I'm living in a world where there's poverty and disease and not talked about much, but it's a huge area, HIV positive. I'm living in a world where divorce happens. I'm living in a world where three of my closest friends have four stage cancer.
I'm living in a world where one of my very closest friends, his son in a really weak moment after being through horrendous things, great, great guy, killed himself. And so I think we got to pull back and say, yes, this is an amazing moment, but where's our hope? Is it more than just a hallmark moment? Is it a historical reality?
And what I want to suggest is that we have been teaching thus far that it's a historical reality. I want you to know that what we're celebrating isn't some person that came up with an idea, let's start another religion, 700 years before Jesus was born, a prophet named Isaiah would get a word from God and say in chapter seven, a day is coming when there would be a virgin, I mean, out of the blue prophecy that would be with child, and his name would be Emmanuel, God with us. Two chapters later, you've mostly got it on your Christmas cards, you've read this or you saw it earlier, for a child is born to us, right? A son is given, and the government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, literally Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace. And his government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor, David. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven's armies will make this happen.
And here's what I want you to get, what we've celebrated. Who is this child? He's Wonderful Counselor, prophesied, fulfilled 300 specific prophecies.
The probability is for even six or seven of those is one with about 30 zeros. This baby was fully man and fully God. He's called the Messiah or the Christ. He came to save his people and us from our sin. He saw the humanity and our brokenness and our hurt. And every one of us needs wisdom, and he's a Wonderful Counselor.
All of us need power, we need the power to live the way we want to, but can't. And so he's a Mighty God. And we need someone to carry us along to know that this life isn't all there is. He's the Father of Eternity.
We need hope. You can't live in this world the way you live it and not know there's got to be something more. And Jesus said, not only there is, but I came to die for the sins of all men of all time. And I'm preparing a place. And his last words to his disciples, I will not leave you as orphans.
I prepare a place for you. And then finally, he's the Prince of Peace. This word for Prince is literally it's chieftain or leader. It could be translated the Prince or the King of Peace. And the peace that he's talking about, it's something way bigger than you and I tend to think. That's who we're celebrating.
It was a historical event on a piece of land in Israel with real people in real space time with struggles and ups and downs at a time in the Roman Empire. That's who he really is. The second question, why did he come? Why did he come? We know from what Mary sang and what Joseph would say and what Zachariah would say as you read the New Testament documents, he came to save his people. He came to save. He came to rescue. He came to deliver.
But I'd like to focus on this one great thing. He came to be the Prince of Peace. Now when you and I think about peace and wanting peace, the English word basically means to be without conflict or turbulence.
So it could be external. In other words, there's not chaos at work or there's not turbulence out there in your circumstances or in a relationship. It's at peace. Another way we apply it in English is that there's not conflict in your soul. You're not uptight. You're not anxious. We say to one another, I'm not stressed out.
I'm at peace. But if our English word for being at peace has this much meaning, the word the Bible uses is this big. It's shalom. It's the Hebrew word and the Greek takes it with all full of its meaning. And the word shalom, literally, he's the prince of shalom in the Old Testament. It's what God calls himself. But the meaning of shalom is so much bigger than the absence of disturbance or conflict. It has four basic meanings. The first one, it literally means health. In other words, or wholeness, that you're whole.
You know, the world has fallen. There's disease. There's hurt.
There's difficulty. And for shalom, it means that things would be right, your body and mind and heart and soul. The second meaning of the word has to do with harmony. It means there's harmony between you and God, harmony between you and other people. It means there's no guilt.
There's no shame. There's no dissonance. There's no fear other than a reverential awe that you and God are aligned. There's shalom between you.
There's shalom in your marriage, shalom in your friendship, shalom at work. He came to be the prince of shalom. The third meaning of the word has to do with fulfillment.
In fact, it's translated prosperity or success. We're his handiwork. He made us. And for God, the prince of shalom is that you would be discovering your design, that you would be successful and fulfilled and do what only you could do. In fact, it's translated in parts of the Old Testament as prosperity, the shalom, the blessing of God, that he loves us, he's for us.
And the final use of the word is a victor over enemies, enemies like death, enemies like the evil one, enemies like at times our own selfishness and our sin. Why did he come? He came to give us shalom. So here's the next question. Where is this peace that he promised, right?
There's not a lot of shalom, is there? I got a text from a very, very close friend. His son in a really weak moment after being through horrendous things, he'd been in and out of drug rehab about three times but was clean for 10 years.
But it did some stuff to his brain and so he was bipolar and had some real struggles. This kid, 30, 32, his heart's this big awesome guy. I had a chance to baptize him over there about four months ago, radical change in his life but he so struggled with those dips of depression and in a moment of weakness, killed himself. Some of you this Christmas, it's your first Christmas, there's no shalom, you were married last Christmas, you're not this Christmas. For some, it's a father or a son or a daughter and you've experienced a death or your visits are to the cancer ward and there's no shalom and you say, God, if you came to bring peace, I'm not experiencing it. You see, that prophecy of wonderful counselor, mighty God, father of eternity and prince of peace, it's a double prophecy and if you could imagine a prophet looking at two mountain peaks and seeing how they align, the first part of that verse is about Jesus' first coming. He's coming and he is the wonderful counselor, he is the mighty God, he raised people from the dead, he brought peace, he would heal this person, he fed 5,000 people. He demonstrated, if you've seen me, you've seen the father, I am the peace of God, I'm the bridge, I will show you this is what life is all about.
But you notice it says in the government, the tense changes will rest upon his shoulders, it says he will be on David's throne, in other words, this isn't linked to some fairy tale, this is linked to a real person who was a king that God made promise to named David. And see, his first advent but the second mountain peak is when he returns. When Jesus came the first time, his last official act is he came into Jerusalem riding on a colt or a donkey.
In the Middle Eastern culture, when a king would come and ride on a colt or a donkey, he was coming in peace, looking for reconciliation with the group that he was visiting. He would go to a city and say, I don't want to attack, let's have a covenant of peace and Jesus came and was rejected and killed and beaten. When he returns, the fulfillment of all those other things, he will not come on a colt, he'll come on a stallion with a host of angels and he'll bring about what you want and what I want. No more wickedness, no more selfishness, no nations fighting against one another, he will bring absolute peace and death and sin and sorrow and pain and all of it will be swallowed up. But the distance between the first coming and the second, he's entrusted to us the message of peace.
In fact, he has this strange thing that he calls Christ followers, he says, you are my body, you're my hands, you're my feet. I want you to tell the world that when I died upon the cross, I paid for the sins of all people of all time. In fact, peace is a gift, you can't earn it, you can't get it, you can't be successful enough, you can't do enough, you can't be famous enough. Peace is something that God gives where you can actually be in right relationship with him and yourself and others and not have guilt and not have shame and not have to impress anyone or not have to get into this school or that school or your kids don't have to be that successful or this successful and you don't need to look a certain way, you can be loved for just who you are because you're at peace, it's a gift from God. That's why he came and the reason we don't have it yet is because genuine love never forces itself on anyone.
God says, I love you, I make the offer, he comes to us as a savior saying, if you want peace, I want to give it to you but I won't force it on you. I remember my old days at college, I would talk especially to young guys who'd have a crush on a girl and she wouldn't give them the time of day and she's so beautiful and I just want her and if there's any way I could make her love me and like me, it'd be great and we'd be talking about that in the relationship with the Lord and why is there so much evil in the world? I said, well, here's the price tag of genuine love. I said, you know what, if you could get that gal over in the student union to just sit down with you for coffee or a Coke or something and when she looked away, if you could get a little blue pill and put it in it and it had magical powers and then when she would drink that, she would go, I love you and she would just call you and want to do, I mean, you would be it and then you guys would get married, she'd get up and cook breakfast and she'd just look awesome all the time and I mean, you would just be, I mean, she would just love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you and they were thinking, yeah, where's the pill, you know? I said, it would be great for two weeks.
It might even be great for a couple of months actually. For some of us, we might be able to endure that for a year but there'd be a day when you'd wake up and you'd wonder, does she love me because she swallowed the blue pill or does she love me for me? And the high price of God saying, no blue pills allowed, the price of love is you can receive me or reject me but the price tag is a world where there's sin and there's selfishness and there's hatred and there's war and there's people who choose to reject his love and he's called us to share it. Final question is, what do you really need this Christmas? Not what do you want, what do you really need? I doubt maybe some of you will get that new Lexus with the bow on the top when you wake up or maybe you get the new tech toy or maybe a coupon for the awesome vacation or a new coat or some clothes or if grandma's in town, at least in our world, it means everybody gets underwear.
But what do you need? See, you know what I think has happened, especially for us Americans, is we think that what would really satisfy is if we were happy and happiness revolves around our circumstances changing. I don't have a person in my life if I had a person in my life. I don't have the good enough job if I had that kind of job.
I don't own a home but if I owned a home. If my kids get into school, if we could finally have kids or I'm single and if, when, if, when, if, when and then as soon as whatever it is, what do you know about fleeting happiness? It's then, it's the next thing and I don't know why but just in, in my line of work, I've just had the chance in the last 20 or 30 years to, to meet people that you all and I would think at least until I got to know them well that they're so pretty and they're so wealthy and they're so famous and the most lonely people I've ever met are people that have everything that they thought would make them happy but they don't have peace. And I would like to suggest that what I need and what you need more than any gift or fleeting happiness is a lasting peace and so my final little question is well how do you get that peace? Jesus told his disciples the last night I am leaving you with a gift. You can't buy gifts. You can't earn gifts.
They're free. Peace of mind and heart and the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. No wonderful relationship, no amount of money, no amount of fame, no new job. The world just can't give it so don't be troubled or afraid. I want you to know that I think God wants us to have a hallmark moment. I think it's great but I think he wants you to rest your hope in a historical reality where the God that made all that there is interrupted human history and took on human flesh to be for you personally a wonderful counselor, a powerful mighty God, a father of all eternity and if you would so choose to be your own prince of peace if you would say not my kingdom but yours and if you would turn from your control and yourself and say I need you to forgive me. I believe that when you died on the cross you paid for my sin and what gives us peace with God is not our morality. What gives us peace with God is God looking down on us through the atonement or the blood of Christ and we've received the gift and the scripture says that he that has the son has life and he that does not have the son of God does not have life. The scripture says God will keep him or her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him.
Before we go any further today I just want to repeat the last words of this message. It's taken from Holy Scripture. The Apostle John would say he that has the son has life and he that has not the son of God does not have life. Being good, going to church, morality, all those things have a place but if you want peace in your life that never changes, if you want the prince of peace to take up residence in your heart and your life to guide you, protect you, live inside of you then you need to have the son. The Bible is very clear and explained in this message that Christ died in your place to pay for your sin. It is a free gift from God and here's the offer.
As many as received him Jesus, to them he gave the right, literally the authority, the power to become children of God. Would you like to become a child of God today? Would you like to experience God's peace?
Would you like to know in this chaotic world that no matter what happens that he's prepared a place for you that will never leave you and that heaven is a reality? If so, can I encourage you to turn right now from anything or anyone that you're trusting in to make your life work and say to the God of heaven, Lord God Almighty, I have sinned. I'm not perfect.
I don't do the things I know I should do and there's things I know I ought to do that I've left undone. And so I ask you now to forgive me of all my sins. Come into my life. Make me your son.
Make me your daughter. Totally based on Christ payment for my sin and his resurrection to prove it. Lord save me right now.
I ask it in Jesus name. If you prayed that with me right now, this will be by far the best Christmas present you've ever received in your life. You've been given the gift of eternal life. And could I encourage you right now like never before to take just a moment, get on your phone or get on the web, go to livingontheedge.org and there, there's some information that's easy to find about the moment after you trust Christ. Here's some resources to help you understand your new life and begin to grow. Find a good Bible teaching church and call the greatest Christian you know today and tell them, I prayed to receive Christ and will you help me begin to grow?
God bless you and Merry Christmas. If you prayed with Chip, I hope you'll take a minute and call us at 888-333-6003. We'd love to hear your story and get a free resource in your hands that will help you understand the significance of your decision and then give you a couple of next steps on your journey. That same resource is available if you tap special offers on the app or go to the new believers tab on our website, livingontheedge.org.
We just want to help you get started and say welcome to the family. Chip, without question, 2020 has been one of the most difficult years in a long time. But you know, challenges birth innovation. And you did a brand new thing this year called Daily Discipleship with Chip, where you started meeting with people one-on-one, showing them how to get into Scripture for themselves. And the response has been pretty spectacular. Could you give us a little peek into how that has impacted people's lives?
Well, I'd love to Dave. In fact, I have stacks literally of emails of people and letters who've written to me about what it's meant to them and their personal life and growth of just meeting, you know, maybe 20 days in a row through the book of Ephesians or through the book of Philippians. This lady writes, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for providing the online discipleship series, Discovering Your True Self. What a blessing it's been to watch the videos, listen to the online book commentaries and fill out the online worksheets. I'm still reading through the book, but it's really good so far. I was able to complete all of the daily lessons and I'm now doing my best to apply those lessons to my daily life. I pray that each truth will sink deep into my heart. I realize that you provide all of these at no cost, which is phenomenal for someone such as myself who is permanently disabled due to an autoimmune issue. However, I'll try to send you a donation for the book in the future when I'm able. I just want to say, I wish you could read the email after email after email like that. We literally gave away almost 10,000 books when we did that.
You know why? Because what we know is that you can inspire people when they listen to people teach, but you help people grow and be transformed when they dig in to the Scripture for themselves. We want people to learn God's Word, to become self-feeders, to become disciples who then become disciple makers.
And what I can tell you, in this last year, despite all the COVID and all the challenges, we've exploded in our impact at Living on the Edge. That testimony represents thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of views of people that have met with me personally and are becoming like Christ and then passing it on. Here's my request. I would love to make more of these daily discipleship with chips. I would love to disciple more people in the years ahead, but it's going to require not just my teaching and our team.
It's going to require you to help us. Would you pray specifically for Living on the Edge? And this December, would you give specifically? Would you pray and say, Lord, what part of the money that you've entrusted to me do you want me to give to Living on the Edge?
And yes, I know it gets doubled. Yes, I know there's a lot of good reasons. But Lord, I want to do this to cause the ministry to happen in other people's lives, like that woman who wrote that email. Would you stand with us this December? Really powerful.
Thanks, Chip. Well, if that mission resonates with you, now would be a great time to join the team. During the month of December, every gift we receive will be doubled thanks to a small group of ministry partners. To send a gift and partner with us, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. And let me thank you in advance for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey for everyone here saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.
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