What Else Peace Is

 Peace 2

     

        Last week, we began an exploration of peace with four biblical definitions of peace. Peace is organization and order. Peace is the absence of armed conflict. Peace is calm. Peace is the absence of worry. In today’s post, I want to offer you four more definitions of peace. As before, we will draw these from the Word of God.

          Fifth, peace is harmony in our personal relationships. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace (Ephesians 2.15).

          In context, Paul is dealing with the roots of the religious/ethnic strife that dominated so many early churches. Christianity has its roots in Judaism, and the more observant the Jew the more racist he was. Paul’s method of starting churches was to enter a synagogue, reason with the Jews from the Old Testament that Jesus was their Messiah, persuade them to believe in Christ, and then take the resulting group of believers out of the synagogue and form a church. So far so good, but when Paul began to preach the same message to the Gentiles, and to bring believing Gentiles into the church all sorts of mayhem broke loose. Paul offers us a scriptural solution to ethnic/religious racism in Ephesians 2 by showing us that in Christ we are no longer separated; we are one. There was no longer Jew and Gentile, God’s people and the unclean. Now there was the church, God’s people, period.

          Though Paul has the ethnic squabbles of the early church in mind here the application is much broader. There can and ought to be harmony in every personal relationship we have. God and I ought to live in harmony. Parents and children ought to live in harmony (yes, even teenage children.) Husbands and wives ought to live in harmony. Brothers and sisters ought to live in harmony. Friends ought to live in harmony. Employees and employers ought to live in harmony. Neighbors ought to live in harmony. Church members and their pastor ought to live in harmony. Teachers and their students. The list could go on and on.

          Life is not what you do, where you live, how much you have, or what others think of you. Life is a matter of relationships. The Word of God is first and foremost the revelation of God, but that revelation of what God expects of us does teach us how to live in harmony one with another. And what peace there is in such harmonious relationships.

          Sixth, peace is freedom from unsettling thoughts or emotions.

          Have you ever lain awake at night, troubled by what to do? Have you ever been frustrated by the course of events? Have you ever been upset by the circumstances in which you found yourself? Then what you need is God’s peace.
          Sometimes, God brings that peace by taking away what is troubling you. In Luke 8 we find the story of a confrontation between Jesus and the woman with an issue of blood. For twelve years she had dealt with it, moving from doctor to doctor in an increasingly desperate attempt to solve an intractable physical problem. Having heard of Jesus, and of His ability to heal, she reasoned that if she could get close enough to touch Him perhaps the touch of Christ might heal her. And it did. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace (Luke 8.48). Twelve years of emotional stress, frantic effort, and physical weakness were gone in a moment when she threw herself in simple faith at the feet of Jesus. She was freed from it all. She was at peace.

          Most of the time, however, God does not calm the storm rather He calms the child in the storm. Paul tells us we ought to let the peace of God rule in our hearts (Colossians 3.15). Where do these unsettling thoughts and emotions arise? In my heart. Then there must be a solution in my heart, not just in or even if there never is a solution in my circumstances. So often, external things contribute to my lack of peace but they are not the cause of it. The cause of it is that I have failed to learn how to let the peace of God rule in my heart. So I worry instead. I fret. I gnaw obsessively over my concerns like a dog with an old bone. In such situations I have no peace and neither does anyone else around me.

          Seventh, peace is the quiet confidence that God will take care of you. He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me (Psalm 55.18). When the Syrian army surrounded Elisha at Dothan his servant panicked. Elisha, though, was perfectly calm. Why? Elisha saw what the servant did not see, the protective angelic host encircling the city (II Kings 6.15-17). Martyn Lloyd-Jones, England’s last great preacher, defined faith as a refusal to panic. Not coincidentally, peace is the same thing or perhaps I should say the result of the same thing. It looks bad but I am at peace. Why? Because I know God will take care of me.

          Several times in my life God has granted me such peace in unusual circumstances. At nineteen, while soul winning in a particularly violent neighborhood in Chicago, a young man high on drugs pulled a gun on me. Staring at me glassy eyed over that wavering barrel, he accused me of all kinds of things. God’s peace flooded my heart and greatly enabled me to defuse the situation. At twenty-five, poor as a church mouse I was striving to get an infant church off the ground. One day, out on visitation, I wrecked my car, totaling it. I had no money. I had no credit. I had no friends. GoFundMe did not exist. I knew I needed a car to serve the Lord with, but had zero prospects to obtain one. Once again, God’s peace flooded my heart. I knew not just that He could take care of it but that He would take care of it. And He did.

          Lastly, peace is our final rest in Heaven. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age (Genesis 15.15). Rest in peace has become a graveyard cliché, but like most cliches it has its origin in truth. Someday, if the Lord tarry His coming, I will rest in peace. It will not be because I pick precisely the right spot under the shade tree in the Garden of Consolation. It will be because death is the door that opens for me on my long Home. I will lay down with finality the burdens I have carried, burdens of pastoring, parenting, mentoring, witnessing, studying, writing, encouraging, pursuing. Most of all, I will lay down the burden of my flesh. In that long Home there will be no world, no flesh, and no devil. Sin will never again rear its ugly head in my mind, my heart, my tongue, and my life. I will be with Him. I will be like Him. And I will be at peace.

          Is that what you want? You can have it, if you like. The peace of God can rule in your heart no matter your circumstances. Such a peace does not come by way of the world. It only comes by way of Christ. Peace begins with Christ, continues with Christ, and finds its ultimate expression in our lives when we are finally at Home with Christ.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see?

There’s light for a look at the Saviour,

And life more abundant and free!

 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

-Helen Howarth Lemmel

Peace: An Introduction

Peace 1

 

          Peace. My soul craves it. Peace of mind. Peace of heart. Peace of conscience. Peace with God. Peace with man. Peace at home. Peace with my neighbors. Peace with my enemies. Peace and quiet.

          When I made the decision to come to Dubuque a year and a half ago, I set out to build a peaceful life. My sixteen years in Chicago were many things but peaceful was not one of them. So I created peaceful working spaces in the office. I bought a home in a peaceful neighborhood, and named it Saints Rest, of all things. I have sought to build a peaceful relationship with my deacons, and with my leaders and teachers and workers. I have tried to promote a peaceful relationship between our church and the community. I want to be a man of peace living a life of peace. That way lies contentment. That way lies purposeful production. That way lies quiet contemplation. That way lies soul health and spiritual growth. That way lies knowing God.

          I am quite sure I am not alone in this desire. All over the world, people are desperately searching for peace. The United Nations and the American Secretary of State pursue it ardently. The Brexit negotiators have tried to obtain it. Arbiters and life coaches, television personalities and New Age gurus of all sorts promise to bring it. Pharmaceutical companies sell it. Television commercials for cars sell it. Real estate agents sell it. False prophets sell it. Or perhaps I should say a version of it.

          I am most interested in peace, but I am not interested in the world’s version of it. I want to know what God says it is. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Ellen, Sigmund Freud, Maya Angelou, Henry David Thoreau, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all clamor to offer us their perspective. It interests me not at all. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2.13).

Let us, instead, begin with God. What does God say peace is? In today’s post, I will give you four answers to that question, and chase that with another four answers next week.

First, peace is organization and order. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of  the saints (I Corinthians 14.33). The context here is directly related to the church service. God’s house is to be a peaceful place, organized, smoothly functioning. Personality conflicts ought be kept to a bare minimum. Throwing your weight around should be unheard of. Chaos is an exemplar of the devil’s realm, not our Father’s. Schedules should be known and kept. Kindness and forgiveness should rule. As our forefathers would say, a place for everything and everything in its place. Peace and anarchy cannot cohabit.

Second, peace is the absence of armed conflict. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land (Leviticus 26.6).

Augustus Closing the Temple of Janus
Louis de Silvestre, 1757

On the Roman Forum, near the Basilica Aemilia, stood the Temple of Janus, the two-facing god. For hundreds of years, the temple was the public mark of a republic/empire at peace or at war. Inside the temple lived Discord and Fury. When Rome was at peace, the doors were shut. When Rome was at war, the doors were opened. Needless to say, the doors were almost always open, at one point for four consecutive centuries.

I have never lived through war. I have pastored men who have endured it in Afghanistan and Iraq. It haunts them, and probably will for the rest of their lives. War brings famine, disease, misery, and death on a wide scale. Let us thank God it has not come to our lives.

Third, peace is the absence of noise. It is the active presence of stillness and quiet. Peace is calm. And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm (Mark 4.39).

This kind of peace can often be found in God’s creation. Over the years, He has shown Himself to me in some beautiful places. The Blue Ridge Parkway. The Outer Banks. A desolate spot on the sand dunes of the Lake Michigan shoreline. The bluegrass horse farms of Kentucky. The rolling hills of upper New York. The long, green bayous of Louisiana. The Smokies. The aching blue of the Pacific off Malibu. The high desert of California. The pine-scented air of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Where the Rockies meet the ocean in Vancouver. The jungle waterfalls in Puerto Rico’s interior. The vast sweep of the Mississippi mere blocks from my home.

Again and again, in Scripture, we find the Lord pointing people toward His creation. Yes, He intends it to be a source of praise, but also a source of peace. When God created the world He put man in a garden. When man created the world he put man in a city. Make no mistake, there is a difference, and that difference is not just a reflection but also a driver of the presence or absence of peace.

Fourth, peace is the absence of worry. And he said, Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto them (Genesis 43.23).

How much time and mental energy do we waste worrying about money? Will we make it to the next paycheck? The end of the month? Will we have what we need for the next phase of life? Can we afford children? Will we ever be able to buy a house? What about retirement? We forget so easy God’s manifold promises of bodily provision.

I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety (Psalm 4.8). How much time and mental energy do we waste worrying about our physical safety? We have locks and chains and bolts and bats and knives and guns and security systems and panic rooms and disaster plans. What we do not have is peace. I am not advocating being imprudent, foolish, or unprepared, but I am advocating trusting the Lord for your physical safety.

Peace. It is such a wonderful word. Let it roll around in your mind today. Let it marinate in your heart today. God’s peace. ‘Tis a glorious, priceless thing, and it is available to you. For the next four months on this blog we are going to explore it. We will define it, as we have done today and will do further next week. We will discuss its relationship to God’s sovereignty. We will see what will ensure we can never have it. We will look at eight specific scriptural ways to obtain it. We will find there is peace with God, great peace.

Join me each Monday, won’t you? And may the Lord give us a richer appreciation for and apprehension of His peace along the way.