Peace

Therefore, being justified by faith, Paul declares, you have peace. You do not grow into peace with God. You don't take a few Bible studies and get a little bit more each time.

It's not a continuous process. It is something that you are given as a gift of God on the heels of that moment when you said to him something like, God, I am the sinner and I must be saved. Save me at that moment. And it is never taken away. You are given the gift of peace. The enmity is done away.

Christ has solved the problem. Welcome to this broadcast of Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today we begin a series entitled, Unwrapping the Perfect Gifts. We all enjoy getting and receiving gifts.

It's one of the special ways that we demonstrate our love for each other. This series is about six special gifts that God and God alone can give. Today, we're looking at the gift of peace. Mankind has consistently failed to achieve peace. But with God, the stakes are much higher.

But he offers it. And we're going to learn about that right now. Webster defined the word peace as the condition that exists when nations are no longer at war. He said, peace is the ending of a state of war. That's a good definition.

In fact, that definition has never been fully experienced on planet Earth. One author wrote that the only time mankind has any peace is when both sides stop and reload. Following World War I, the world was so shocked, this modern world of the carnage and the bloodshed that they formed in 1919, the League of Nations determined that this would not happen again. They failed and they could not contain Adolf Hitler. And he brought the world to war again. And after World War II, during the 30s, the United Nations was established to keep this thing from happening again.

But it has been unable to maintain international peace as well. Even today, if you look at the headlines, as I did yesterday, you hear the rumblings of war. You hear the intimidation of North Korea and its buildup of nuclear weapons.

You hear the rumbling of tanks as they depart even North Carolina, as it were, to fight again with Iraq. Was it any different in the Apostle Paul's day? Would it be easier for him to say or speak of peace than for us? No, his world longed for peace too. In fact, their hearts had soared with hope when Caesar Augustus had instituted the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome.

In fact, when Paul was writing the letter to the Roman believers living in Italy, the Pax Romana was about 90 years old. But it too would end in bloodshed as one emperor after another would kill off their rivals and battles would fight within their borders. You go all the way back to God speaking through Jeremiah and before him and up to this day and beyond this day, and it's true, as he said, man may say peace, peace, but there is no peace. I think it is incredibly ironic that the same emperor, the same Caesar who created the Pax Romana was the same Caesar who demanded a worldwide census that forced a young couple named Joseph and married a Bethlehem to register. And there, under the orders of Augustus, who had earlier instituted the altar of peace and the sacrifices of peace for the peace of Rome there, Mary would deliver the true prince of peace.

And the very first song related to that birth when he was born were the angels who sang glory to God in the highest and on earth peace. But that peace would come to those with whom God is pleased, Luke 2 14. The world has never been able to achieve it and God just announced it.

The world can't get it. Only God can give it. Those who believe in the prince of peace are given the perfect gift of peace. In fact, there are several gifts that are given by the father to those who trust in his son. We have arrived in Romans chapter five and the very first gift that Paul will reveal to us as we begin to study this great chapter is the gift of peace.

Would you notice in your Bibles? Let's begin in chapter five, Romans chapter five, verse one. Therefore, stop. I promise we're going to cover more than one word today, but by now you remember that whenever you see the word therefore, you should stop and know why or what it is there for. This is the fifth therefore in Paul's letter. Each time he has used it to summarize all of the great truth up to that point and he is now moving to another logical step in his great inspired declaration of man's ruin and God's remedy.

And he builds on these things. And you know, he's about to start a new layer when he uses the word therefore. In chapters one through three, explain mankind's sinful heart. You remember in chapter four, he illustrated salvation as a matter of grace.

But Paul is not finished. He doesn't want to just explain the background of justification. He doesn't just want to explore some biography of justification in Abraham. He wants us to examine the blessings of justification. So in chapter five, he begins by writing, therefore, in other words, on the basis of what I've just explained, on the basis of what we've just explored, there is now something for us to experience. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We could say a lot about this subject. In fact, I thought of having another point to my sermon on the fact that peace is friendship, and I didn't put it in, but yet we've just been singing about it. And it has been completely expounded in the lyrics of what we've sung. So I can move to points two and three.

I only had two. First, peace is absolutely free. And secondly, peace is an absolute fact. Therefore, having been justified by faith, and that is the key expression by faith. You remember in chapter three, verse twenty three, he wrote for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God being justified, however, as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. He would write in three twenty eight for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. In chapter four, verse five, he again clarifies the point when he said, But to the one who does not work but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited. It is reckoned as righteousness.

The gift of peace is free. Frankly, the reason mankind wants to earn his way into heaven is because he believes he can. It isn't that he just doesn't want anything for free.

It's just that he doesn't think he needs it for free. He believes that he should be able to earn enough points so that one day he stands before God and God would say, man, I've been waiting for you. You know, heaven has just not been quite what it could be.

But now that you're here, it's really going to be something special. Mankind doesn't believe he's all that bad. And they certainly don't want to be told or have it implied to them that they are actually at enmity with God. They're enemies of God. That isn't a very popular thought that there is actually a literal state of war between the heart of man toward the heart of God.

But that's what Paul made very clear. Every sin in an unbeliever's life on earth is a missile fired against the holiness of heaven. Every evil thought is another round of ammunition aimed at the righteousness of God. Every perversion and immorality is an offensive maneuver against the purity of Christ. That's why Jesus came and he didn't come to condemn the world. He said the world is condemned already.

There is a state of war, the absence of peace. There's enmity between man and God. Paul wrote in Romans eight, verse five, the mind that is set on the flesh, that is the fleshly, the natural, the unbelieving mind is death. But the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.

Why? Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. Ekthra could be translated, it is hateful toward God. In other words, the mind and the heart of those who reject the sun are hateful and hostile toward God. It was the message of Paul as he stunned the Athenian crowd, introducing them to the unknown God.

This is one they'd never come up with. He told them that God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world. In other words, there's no such thing as neutrality. You are either the friend of God or the enemy of God. That's the message of the gospel. But wait a second, you'd say, ask the average guy on the street, are you the enemy of God?

And they'd say, what? I'm not the enemy of God. Yes, the average person on the street. Do you hate God?

Why? I don't hate God. But then described to them the God of the Bible as a holy and a righteous judge who will one day send the unbeliever to hell and he will hate that God. You talk about God in general, and you might get quoted. You talk specifically about God incarnate Jesus Christ before whom the world will one day stand and give an account and you will be ridiculed as an intolerant, closed minded Bible thumper or something less flattering than that. Mankind would like to think that they are the friend of God, but the God they are friends with is one they've invented in their own speculations and out of their own imaginations, one they're comfortable with. Described to them the God who was revealed in the Bible and they will inwardly hate that kind of God and maybe outwardly speak of their hatred.

They may inwardly hate you too. Jesus said that you would dare to deliver such a message. In their hostility toward God, the unbelieving world forfeits tragically the privilege, the blessing, they never get to open the gift of peace. They are at odds with him.

They ultimately have their say against God. You remember Saul when he was galloping along? He was going to find those Christians and the resurrected Christ appeared in the heavens.

He would talk about that. That would qualify him to be an apostle. An apostle had to have seen the Lord and the Lord said to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the Christians? Why are you persecuting me?

Interesting. I thought his problem was with the Christians. Ultimately, the problem with the unbeliever rests with God.

I recently read the testimony of Jacob Koshi who grew up in Singapore. His one driving ambition was to make as much money as he could, be as successful as he could and get as much as he could. That led him eventually to violate character and conviction and he had heard the gospel and rejected it. He ended up in a world of drugs. In fact, he himself became addicted and involved in gambling eventually became the Lord of an international smuggling network, they called him. In 1980, he was caught.

He was arrested and he was placed in a government drug rehabilitation prison in Singapore. Today, he's a missionary. But at this point, he was angry with God for the way that his life was going and he was filled with emptiness. He wanted to smoke but cigarettes weren't allowed in the rehabilitation prison and so his friends smuggled in tobacco and he rolled it in the pages of a Gideon Bible that was there in the prison cell. One day, he fell asleep while smoking. He awakened to find that the cigarette had burned out but all that remained was a scrap of that little onion paper and he unrolled it and that charred paper simply read, why do you persecute me? He thought he ought to get a Bible and find out the rest of the story and why God would say that to him. He found the story of Saul and there in his cell, he knelt recognizing and admitting that his argument was with God and he gave his life to him. He's a missionary now in the Far East. In fact, he tells people wherever he goes, who would have believed that I could find the truth of God by smoking the word of God?

That's an interesting testimony. We're not endorsing that particular way to find the Lord, by the way. An enemy of God who became a friend of God at peace with God, therefore being justified by faith, faith in God, we would all be condemned to hell if God does not interfere and God has interfered and those who trust his son are free. There's more peace with God is not only absolutely free but it's an absolute fact. Look carefully at the text, therefore having been justified by faith, we have. What a wonderful tense.

It indicates this is an established fact. You do not grow into peace with God. You don't take a few Bible studies and get a little bit more each time.

It's not a continuous process. It is something that you are given as a gift of God on the heels of that moment when you said to him something like, God, I am the sinner and I must be saved. Save me at that moment. And it is never taken away. You are given the gift of peace. The enmity is done away. Christ has solved the problem and you are justified. Therefore, being justified by faith, Paul declares you have peace with God. Now, don't confuse this kind of peace with other kinds of peace.

There are a number of them and it would probably be interesting for you to study them in the Word of God. Don't confuse peace with God, though, with peace of God. The peace of God is that peaceful state of mind and heart that comes at those periods of time when you commit your anxieties to the will of God. Paul wrote about it in Philippians chapter 4 where he said, listen, don't be anxious about anything but take everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to God.

Let it be known to him. And the peace of God will overrule your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. The peace of God is that internal sense, that feeling of peacefulness, and that can come and that can go. I'm speaking to Christians today, some are not peaceful in their heart and mind. And it will ultimately get back to the surrender of your anxieties to the sovereignty of God. But that comes and goes. This is not something that comes and goes, ebbs and flows.

This has to do with our standing. There is the foundation of peace with God. The peace of God might be an internal feeling, but the peace with God is a fact. It's objective peace. And the reason, by the way, I want to stress this point is the fact that you might talk to an unbeliever who might say to you, well, I have peace. I'm actually very much at peace with my life.

And you might scratch your head and think, now, wait a second. How can he say that when I don't really feel that peaceful anyway? In fact, standing on his front porch doesn't make me feel at rest at all. But he's got peace and I don't. How do you respond to that?

Well, this person has some things subjective. In fact, there's the deception and that kind of peace. They might get peace sitting out by a lake. They might get peace reading a little bit of the Dalai Lama. They might get a little bit of peace in yoga or transcendental meditation or gazing at a crystal or whatever. But it's deceptive peace. It's temporary. It will ultimately go away forever.

Alva J. MacLean illustrated it for me and I'll share it with you. It helped when he wrote this. If a man breaks the law and then flees to another country, there exists now a state of enmity between that man and the American government. It does not matter how tranquil or peaceful this man may feel in this foreign refuge. He does not have peace with America. And if he should ever come back to the United States, the government will immediately initiate action against him.

That's the point here. The unbeliever may say he experiences tranquility and peace on earth, but when he arrives on that eternal shore, the law of God's holy justice will immediately initiate action against him. He will discover he has been deceived by those feelings of tranquility. Peace with God is not temporary. It is an eternal fact because Jesus Christ, Colossians 1.20 says, made peace for us by the blood of his cross. Have you ever heard anybody say, well, I wonder if that man made peace with God. You don't make peace with God. God makes peace for you. And it's in the person of his son, the Lord Jesus. So peace with God is absolutely free. Peace with God is an absolute fact. And that leaves us with really only one of two responses. And everyone in this auditorium will have one of two responses, one of the two. If you're an unbeliever, you can accept it.

It's as simple as that. I'm not here to sell it. I'm not here to convince you. The Spirit of God, if he is interfering in your life, brings you to the point where you say, okay, I accept that.

It's one response. You accept the gospel. I will tell you that that foundation that we have of peace with God is the only thing that ever gives the believer that sense daily, though it ebbs and flows of peace that comes from God and the peace of God.

I don't know how people do it without that foundation. H.G. Wells once summed up his own frustration. An unbeliever who once wrote, the time has come for me to reorganize my life. Ever felt that way?

I cry out, he said, though. I cannot seem to adjust my life to secure a fruitful peace. Here I am at 64 years of age, still seeking peace. I believe it is a hopeless dream.

My friend, for him it would be. And for those who do not believe in Christ, it would be because you cannot have peace with God until you accept the Son of God. You cannot ignore the Prince of Peace and ever hope to unwrap the gift of peace. You can't do it.

Why? In his commentary on Romans, John MacArthur repeated in an illustration of Donald Gray Barnhouse about the truth of why you can't ever hope to have peace without accepting the Son or the Prince of Peace. A story about the famous missionary David Livingston. After spending several years working with the Zulu in South Africa, David went with his wife and child further into the interior to minister. After spending some time there, they returned back and discovered that an enemy tribe had attacked the Zulu and killed many of them. And they had taken the son of the chief captive. The tribal chief of the Zulu was an unbeliever. And yet he asked David Livingston this very perceptive question, and you'll immediately see the application. He asked David Livingston, how can I be at peace?

I don't want a war with them, but how can I be at peace with them while they treat my son this way? MacArthur goes on to comment, if this attitude is true in the heart of an unbelieving tribal chief, how much more is it true of God the Father toward those who trample underfoot his son, who count the blood of the covenant an unholy or an unwanted thing and despise the spirit of grace? It's true. You cannot reject God the Son and have peace with God the Father.

I've had people tell me that. I don't really care about Jesus, but I'm right with God. You cannot be right with God the Father unless you are first right with God the Son. So if you're an unbeliever in the Son, if you want the gift of peace, accept it.

If you're a believer, you've already accepted the gospel, well, your role is to simply announce it. Did you know that the word gospel originally came out of the context of war and peace? It was originally the word used for the message of victory in battle that was given to a messenger who would go and spread the news across the countryside. So the people living in the land would know that their side won.

There would be peace in the land. You and I have been given the incredible privilege of simply taking the message that God is victorious and we share it with the people living in the land that he is the victor. There's actually another nuance that we tend to forget. Paul told the Corinthian believers in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 20 that they were ambassadors of Christ.

One of the things we miss is the fact that we don't understand the context of his word. We think of an ambassador as somebody who has an office downtown in some capital city in some foreign country and that office just represents goodwill. They don't necessarily do a lot to establish peace. They're just there and they represent the countries and get involved in a lot of diplomatic issues and affairs.

But this isn't the concept Paul had in mind. This wasn't the ambassador of his culture. In Rome, an ambassador was a messenger sent from the victorious army to the army that was defeated and the ambassador delivered the terms of surrender and the conditions for peace. And if the defeated army accepted those conditions of peace, the victorious army would grant them peace and allow them to live.

Something like this happened a few years ago with Colin Powell in 1994. He was sent over to speak with a Haitian dictator of the impending destruction that was going to come. He informed the dictator that if he did not agree with the terms of peace laid out in the United States, granted them an invasion was going to immediately take place.

As a matter of fact, he told the Haitian dictator that the invasion force was already in place and at the word of the president, utter destruction could occur and it hinged upon what that man did with those terms of peace, those conditions for surrender. This is what it means to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ. We have, as it were, the message that destruction forever is just around the corner, but God is offering terms of peace and we know what the conditions are and we share them with our world. And we, as he said there in second Corinthians 5, 20, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to him. He is the victorious one. He will allow you to live forever, but there are conditions. There are terms to your surrender. Today, all I'm doing is standing in this public setting as an ambassador of his, begging you on behalf of Christ to in effect lay down your arms, accept the conditions of surrender and receive the gift of peace.

If you receive the son and as you announce the news of the son as believers, some may believe and you can tell them with great confidence that if they believe, they will be justified and having been justified by faith, they have peace with God. That's just the beginning of a number of perfect gifts from our wonderful Lord. That is just the beginning of our series on God's perfect gifts. To hear the rest, I hope you'll keep listening in the days ahead. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today's lesson was the first in a six-part series called Unwrapping God's Perfect Gifts.

Stephen's lesson today is simply called Peace. Have you ever taken the time to call us? If not, I encourage you to call today and introduce yourself to us.

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