Evening everyone. We're going to be, as Derek said, spending a bit of time just now thinking
about one of the fruit of the Spirit. So for if you're visiting the congregation, I've
been looking at this theme, this text over the last little while. We're slightly out
of kilter and then we're going to be looking at peace tonight, although it's the last of
our studies. So in Galatians we read about the fruit of the Spirit. We read, but the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control. Against such things there's no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So peace is what we're going
to be talking about tonight. How's your week looking? I wonder how you feel as you think
about the next few days, the week, the relationships you have and all that you've got going on.
You may have 13 urgent diary entries that you have to deal with by Tuesday and it brings
you out in a cold sweat even to think about it. You may have relational problems. You
may have a very unsympathetic boss you just cannot speak to. And you may have a lingering
pain in the back of your head that's been causing you for trouble for some time. And
you feel no peace. How do we get peace? What does peace even look like and what is the
peace that is being spoken of in this passage? So if peace, particularly the biblical peace
that's being spoken of here is the opposite of anxiety, which is partly what we've been
looking at so often. There was a conference and there's another conference next week.
What is the peace that is spoken of here and how do we get it? I want to look at two main
things. So first of all, what we're going to do is we're going to look at some ways
in which it's suggested to us that we may get peace in general terms, if you like, in
kind of out there. What are the ideas out there that you may receive where people will
say, well, this is how you could get some peace in your life. And the way that I want
to kind of bracket this is to say, I think many people understand peace as something
primarily attained and then experienced. So we go get it and then we can enjoy it. But
it's up to us. So a few things just to do with this. The first thing is I Googled how
do I get peace. It was moderately helpful, probably not very helpful at all. Most of
the things that came up initially to do with that search and particularly another search
I did to do with quotes about peace, most of them told me to look at me. I was the answer
to my need for peace. Give you a couple of examples. Marvin Gaye, believe it or not, says
if you cannot find peace within yourself, you'll never find it anywhere. And the woman
called Elizabeth Gilbert, she wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love. She said this, we
don't realize that somewhere within us all there does exist a supreme self who is eternally
at peace. Now that carries the idea a wee bit further, brings in some kind of eastern
ideas. But the point is this, you, you want peace? Well, you need to give it to yourself
or you need to find it for yourself. Now there's a lot in all of these things. We could spend
a long time talking about them all, but we don't have a long time. So second thing I
want to mention, just in this kind of bracket of peace being something that we achieve or
attain and then experience and enjoy, the second suggestion is change your circumstances.
Your circumstances make you uneasy, fretful, they take away your peace, change them, go
somewhere. That's a lot of, the kind of ideas that you'll see if you look into this, go
somewhere and look within. It made me think of a book I had to read, kind of a book I
had to read when I was at uni and it's this piece that's called Walden by a man called
Henry David Thoreau. Not an easy read, but what this man does is he, in his life, partly
for the search for peace, uproots. And he goes and lives in a very idyllic setting.
And he lives in harmony with nature. He infuses into his kind of processing everything, some
of the mystical ideas that were being mentioned just a minute ago. And there he says, in the
forest, with the bees and the lake, is peace. So that's another idea. In many ways, in many
ways, he is the original environmental ethicist. There's so many nowadays withhold that, attaining
that lifestyle as the gateway to peace. Look at what we've done with the world. How are
we going to make it right? Come back into harmony with the world and then we will attain
a measure of peace. So for him it was all about living one with himself and the one
with nature. Go somewhere, get out of your rubble, get out of your rubble, get out of
your rubble circumstances. All will be well. Third thing, final thing in this kind of bracket
that I'm talking about, eliminate the dissenting voices. So you don't feel peace because lots
of people are in your life who oppose you in different ways. They take away your peace.
They disagree with you. They make you feel that your life choices aren't valid. A lot
of people describe not always in very nice terms the generation that we live in nowadays
as a snowflake generation. In other words, a generation of people who are incredibly
precious about themselves because they've been taught all through their lives that self-expression
and being exactly who they feel they should be is the paramount virtue that they should
hold. And the thing with that is, as soon as people who may feel that way encounter a dissenting
voice, anybody who would challenge them at work or at university campus, whatever, it's
incredibly hard to handle that dissenting voice because if freedom of the self comes
with self-discovery and self-expression and that is my validation, then for somebody to
come and challenge me and tell me I'm wrong is catastrophic to who I am as a person. Maybe
you feel something of that. I think a lot of people feel something of that. And so the
answer, therefore, is to silence the people or to remove them from your life. You hear
stories from time to time about certain groups being shut down on university campuses, sometimes
arising from situations like this. So there's three things. There's lots more. And we could
say a lot more about these things. I realize this is quite general. Look within, primarily.
Change your circumstances. And silence the bad voices. And very briefly, what's the problem
with this? Because this doesn't help us attain lasting peace and it's not the kind of peace
that is being spoken of in the passage here that we're going to go on and have a little
bit of a look at in a minute. Well, to say that I will find peace for myself is really
stressful. It's very burdensome for me to be solely responsible for my sense of peace.
Change my circumstances. Good. It can be great to change your circumstances. We all need
a break sometimes. Sometimes a place you are in is an absolute nightmare. And for your
good, you need to leave it. However, to say the ultimate source of peace is to constantly
be changing circumstances so that conditions are always perfect. The problem with that
is you still have to live with yourself. You're still dealing with yourself. You still got
yourself as the ultimate source for your peace. Change of circumstances becomes the new normal.
And of course, the problem is we go somewhere. Usually, we just have to come home again after
a while and things are the same as they always were. And to eliminate dissenting voices always,
is that the answer? I think the problem with that in some ways is that actually fuels a
level of intolerance within us. It actually makes us unable to live at peace with those
who are different to us. So we literally can't tolerate the other. And I don't think that's
the answer either. Now, I've said these are brief ways of looking at these subjects. But
what I want to do is just now is move on to the biblical presentation of the kind of peace
that is being spoken about here. And in contrast to thinking about peace as something that
we have to first of all attain and then enjoy. I think this is what the Bible says about
peace, that it is something attained for us and declared over us. So that's crucial distinction.
The peace that the Bible speaks of is something that is declared by God and then experienced
by us. How so? Well, a final quote from my extensive Google search of peace quotes comes
from a woman called Linda Evans, who I believe starred in Dynasty. So we're going back a
few years, quite a lot of years. She said this, if there's no inner peace, people can't
give it to you. The husband can't give it to you. Your children can't give it to you.
You have to give it to yourself. I think she's partly right. I think to come to the point
where you understand that looking for others to ultimately fulfill us is perceptive because
for me to ask you, for you to ask me to fulfill you to the point where we're at peace is impossible.
But she then goes on, of course, to come back full circle to what we were looking at at
the start, which is to say only you can give peace to yourself. Here's where we would say
is the difference in biblical terms. Nobody can give peace to you but God. And that is
the essential proclamation that the Bible makes to us. The only place that we can find
the underlying peace that is spoken of in a letter like Galatians in Ephesians that
we read and we're going to come back to is God himself, in Christ himself. And there's
a rub for us. Maybe you yourself tonight hate hearing that because you don't want to have
to be before God as somebody who says God, I lack peace in my life. You need to help
me find it. And the other thing about that is that we hate the kind of peace that God
asks us to consider that he will give us. Let's look at some of our texts. So I'm going
to go through just a few different texts now. Here's the thing about God and why he is
the only one who is able to attain and declare peace. He's the only one who can accurately
discern our situation. Do I have the wisdom to discern every aspect of my life and to
pronounce a verdict on what I need in every part of who I am? God is the only one who
can accurately discern my situation, justly pronounce the verdict, powerfully rescue me
and keep me safe. And I want to say that we see this first of all in Ephesians passage.
I don't know if these are going to come up on the screen. They may do. If they don't,
I'm going to read them anyway. So in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, here are some of the things
that we hear biblically. This is what God would say to us that we need to see in first
case. He says, you were dead. There's his verdict, incredibly uncomfortable. You weren't
just needing a wee tweak. You were dead in your sins in which you once walked following
the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is
now at work. Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which
He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive. He's literally
saved us from death, spiritual death, and He will redeem the physical death that we
face. He's made us alive. Can't do that for ourselves. That's a game changer for life.
Let me just go on a little bit in this wonderful, wonderful chapter. So we read in verse 13,
but now, in Christ Jesus who makes all this possible, you who once were far off, alienated,
we thought that that gives us a lack of peace, doesn't it? To feel like outsiders, to feel
alone, to feel like we can't get something, we can't go to a place that we want to be.
He says, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Now you're
speaking in the context of those who were outside the covenant of Gentiles being brought
in because of the extent of the work of God in Jesus Christ, so that Jews and Gentiles
become recipients of God's mercy. He himself is our peace. Jesus himself is the one that
we go to for our peace. And then if I go down to verse 17, as we kind of scan through this
chapter, he says this, and he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to
those who were near. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father, something
we cannot do for ourselves, attain to God, to the presence of God, to come into the throne
room of God, and to be seen as children and welcomed as children with all of the burdens
that we face and the inabilities that we have and the sins that we carry. He says, I admit
you and I love you because of what I have done for you. I want to look at John. How is this
possible? We read about how Jesus is the one through whom we have access to this wonderful
new relationship, this complete change of situation and circumstance. Let me read a few
verses from John because I want you to see very clearly what Jesus very consciously did
and said in this regard. Jesus spoke about peace. So in John chapter 14, Jesus says these words
to his fearsome, fearful disciples as he's preparing to go to fulfill the work that he
was called to do. Jesus said, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do you see
what he says there? I leave my peace with you. How so? How? The disciples had to go through
all that happened to Jesus. They were fearful and quaking. But then he comes back, doesn't
he? Then he comes back and he's resurrected and we read in John 20. What does he say to
them when he appears to the disciples who are fearful, trembling, fearful of those who
come and even further destroy their peace? In John 20 verse 19, on the evening of that
day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of
the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. How can
he say that? Because of where he's just been. Because Jesus Christ just went to the place,
went side place, the terrible place with no peace where he cried out, my God, why have
you forsaken me? There is no peace for me here. And Jesus consciously and deliberately
and with joy for what was set before him went to that place so that he could return and
say to all his children, my peace I declare to you because I have purchased it for you.
And so Jesus speaks very, very clearly about the peace. In Romans 5 we read, therefore,
since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
An old minister said this, William Still said, commenting on that verse in Romans chapter
5, and hear this, this is again a crucial distinction to keep in mind when we think
about this, this is really just the starting point for our consideration of this. He said,
though we have peace with God of Romans 5, means that God is at peace with us. In the
first instance, peace is not something God gives us like a feeling, not primarily, that's
not the first thing he does. So it's not just to say that God kind of magically takes all
our traumas away and makes us feel serene. In the first instance, the peace of God, he
says we are here in the realm of God doing something. He attains it for us where we couldn't
and then he declares it to us, my peace I give to you. He was heralded by the angels
before his arrival, the one who will bring peace. Good news. So as a starting point where
we're asking ourselves the question, what will Jesus do for me? What peace will he
give to me? What do I make of Galatians 5? Love, joy, peace is the deepening knowledge
of the attainment of Jesus for us, declared to us by Jesus and then experienced with
thanksgiving and gratitudes. And that understanding is woven into every situation you face as the
bedrock of who you are as a person and as a person seen before the throne room of heaven.
One whom God says I am at peace with you because Jesus has paid the penalty that you so clearly
deserved. Let's finish and ask a couple of questions because we still may be saying,
well, I struggle with this. I struggle to understand that. How do I get this? How do I take hold
of this and experience this peace? A couple of verses from Philippians just as we finish.
Because of course we face in the first case still many, many genuine troubling circumstances
that breed anxiety and fear. First thing to say is don't look for the wrong thing from Jesus.
Sometimes as we've seen at the start of what I was saying, there's the idea that we have to first
of all sort our circumstances out. It's all up to us to get peace and the way we do that is by
fixing things. And sometimes what we can do when we become a Christian is we can think,
well, okay, I can't fix my circumstances. Jesus will do it for me. And we're still making the same
mistake where we're still looking for Jesus to just fix. Now, that's fine at one level to still ask
Jesus, please help me deal with this situation and take away this pain. We can ask him that.
But he may not. And so if we're relying first and foremost for Jesus to change our circumstances,
we may well, when we find he doesn't, say well. And that surely conclude that God doesn't love me
and I have no peace. So don't look for the wrong thing from Jesus. A verse in Philippians chapter 4.
I'm going to read from verse 4 where Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I'll say rejoice.
Let your reasonableness be known to everyone the Lord is at hand. Don't be anxious about anything.
But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Do you see what he says there? In your difficult circumstances, while you are bringing them to God,
be giving thanks. So in other words, knowing that he may not change our circumstances,
but because we are in his presence and because we're in the presence of the Lord of the universe
who has said to us, I give you my peace and I love you, then we give thanks even in that circumstance.
And we need to ask for grace to be able to do that. And finally, a couple of verses later,
beware the death of the attention span. That's the final thing I want to say.
Beware looking for the wrong things from Jesus or having the wrong emphasis.
Beware the death of the attention span. Many people say it in our culture nowadays,
nobody's got an attention span anymore. Maybe that's not quite fair.
But we're used to sound bites and being distracted by a million texts a day
and the computers is always being on and everything.
And listen to this verse in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 8.
Finally, brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure,
whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any excellence,
if there's anything worthy of praise, think about such things.
Now, think about what Jesus went to to gain you peace.
Think about it often. Make it something that you sit before you.
Now, that's hard because your day is busy.
But in some way, that is the business that we were in as disciples is saying,
I will set before me and I will pray and ask my friends to pray for me as we do it together.
Jesus, help me to see the peace that you have attained for me, which is of eternal significance.
And may it be the starting point for the change in me, the experience, the knowledge and the gratitude
and the wonder of that peace that he has achieved for us that becomes the experience.
And it also, should I say, becomes the starting point for the way in which we change in our behavior to others
because Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who have known the peace of God
and whose life is then about in difficult circumstances with people who contradict us
and who even hate us bringing peace because of our Lord Jesus.
Let's pray.
Lord, you are so great and wonderful. Your perfection is amazing for us to consider
and we maybe don't consider it nearly enough.
And we are so struggle with these things so often.
We've read and studied through the fruit of the Spirit now and it's so helpful for us to do so.
And we can feel so inadequate. And so we rejoice because this is the fruit of the Spirit.
And so we pray, Holy Spirit of God, would you be at work in us, counseling us, comforting us,
leading us and showing us Jesus, our wonderful Savior, and speaking to us of your grace to us
and enabling us to be people who are loving and joyful and have peace and are peacemakers
and all of these fruit that are to be at work in our lives.
Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.