Morning Sermon

December 23, 2007

Peace on earth

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I ordinarily take the occasion this time of year to interrupt my regular series of sermons in order to preach on the subject of Christmas. More specifically, the subject of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and the second person of the Trinity. This morning, the contrast of my Christmas sermon to our regular series will be particularly dramatic, in that we have been studying the judgments of God upon the wicked and unbelieving covenant breakers of Israel recorded in the book of Revelation. That contrast is made clear by the sermon titles last week and this week, if any of you actually pays attention to sermon titles.

Last week the title, and the subject of our study, was hell on earth. The fifth angel blowing the fifth trumpet. The first woe.

Rev. 9:1 "Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. 3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power."

The demons of hell were released upon the earth, commanded to harm all "those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads." Harm but not kill, such that, "In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them."

Surely, such hell on earth is a terrifying thing. And we know for sure that "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up."

But by way of great contrast, the subject this morning is not hell on earth, but peace. Peace on earth. That was the message announced by the angels on the night of Jesus' birth,

Luke 1:10 Then the angel said to [the shepherds], "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 14 "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!"

"Glory to God in the highest." "And peace on earth." That's the message of Christmas, isn't it? Peace on earth. But what does it mean? For some, perhaps, it means bringing the troops home from Iraq, ending the war. Peace on earth means the US military isn't engaged in hostile actions. Military peace.

Or maybe it means getting along with one another. Settling and resolving the interpersonal conflicts that so often abound among us. Family peace.

For many people, it simple means that you are supposed to feel good. Emotional peace. You are supposed to enjoy the feelings of peace and be happy and joyous. But let me ask you, if you ask the person behind you in line at the grocery store or the person you or strike up a conversation with someone you meet in the shopping mall, will they tell you about how peaceful this time of year is for them?

Not likely! Where is the peace, and the joy? Why, by the time Christmas comes, most people are just glad to have it over with.

The main question we ask one another these days is simply, "Are you ready for Christmas yet?" And what we mean by that is, "Have you got everything done?" Have you bought all the gifts, mailed all the cards, baked all the desserts, visited all your family? Are you ready? Have you finished everything you have to do for before Christmas? Are you ready for Christmas? Can't you just feel the stress?

Today, let's have none of that. None of that stress. But all of the peace. The question is, "How?" How can you achieve,

I. THE GOAL OF PEACE. Look at our text from 2 Peter 1, v.2

It is worth emphasizing that,

A. Peace is the outgrowth of grace. Peace comes to those who are the recipients of grace, and grace comes to those who have not earned anything but instead receive a free gift. That's the essence of grace, that it is freely given, not earned. That's the essence of a gift, though I must bring to mind the reality of our traditions that gifts are actually given under the sense of obligation. If I give you a gift, why you feel obligated to reciprocate, don't you? If you send me a Christmas card, I feel a duty to send you a card. After all, if people don't send you cards in return, you just take them off your list, don't you?

You all know what I mean. Someone gives you a Christmas present unexpectedly. You didn't anticipate it. So what do you do? Why, of course, you go out and look for another gift!

My point is, that's not really a gift. If it was given with any sense of duty or obligation at all, it looses it identity as a gift. Any obligation at all. There is no such thing as a part gift. Part obligation, part gift. But that's a contradiction. Any obligation at all means it is no gift at all.

God's grace is truly, and completely, a gift. There is absolutely nothing in us at all that caused him to give the gift of eternal life. There was no merit in us, anything we have done or would do, nothing deserved on our part.

Rom. 5: 7 "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

In other words, there was nothing good in us. We were still sinners when Christ died for us! And he died for us. That's grace.

Eph. 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."

And, Rom. 5:1 "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."

There is where peace comes from. "Having been justified by faith." But go back to our text. Peter doesn't just speak about peace, but that "grace and peace be multiplied." His introductory blessing is that there be an increase of grace and peace. Not merely that the people might experience those things, but that they might have them in every greater measure. He speaks of,

B. The increase of grace. That is as it should be for Christians. That is as it should be for those who have been justified by faith. Not simply an objective status of peace with God, not simply an identity as a member of the body of Christ, not just an entrance pass into heaven or a "get out of hell free" pass, but an increasing experience of living with what Paul describes as "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, [which] will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Again I return to the question, "How?" How can that peace be yours? Peter doesn't leave us guessing. Rather, with a clear and simple introduction to this letter, he gives to us,

II. THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE. The foundation upon which it is built.

Most people today would lay that foundation with external circumstances. When life is happy, you have peace. When things are going well, when you are able to enjoy a measure of prosperity and success, you have peace. When your job is going well, or your marriage is going well, when you don't have to worry about your monthly bills or about concerns to your health, you have peace.

But what a shaky foundation that is. No different than the man who build his house upon the sand, a foolish man, for when "the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house...,it fell. And great was its fall."

The reality is that you cannot establish a foundation for peace in anything that has to do with this world, for the reality is that, "In the world you will have tribulation." That's what Jesus said. But then he went on to say,

John 16:33 "...but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

There is our hope, isn't it? We can have peace because Jesus has overcome the world! And Jesus explains himself so personally, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace."

In me, you may have peace.

Peter is even more explicit, v.2

So this is my Christmas message to you, my encouragement from God's word as we go through this Christmas season. The foundation of peace begins with,

A. The knowledge of God the Father. Jesus doesn't live and exist apart from the Father, but rather as the second person of the Trinity. The Father is the first person of the Trinity. With regard to his incarnation, Jesus himself points us to the Father. Over and over Jesus speaks of "the Father who sent me." Thirty-four times, in fact, Jesus makes that reference in John's gospel. Thirty-four references like this one,

John 4:34 "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work."

John 12:44 "He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. 45 And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me...49 For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak."

And to those who refused to honor and worship the Father, Jesus said,

John 7:28 "You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. 29 But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me."

He sent me! That's God the Father. So the incarnation is not about a little baby born in a manger, but about God the Father sending Jesus. And he did so,

Eph. 3:11 "...according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So we are driven back to the eternal purpose of God. We are driven back to a realization of the counsel of his will which he determined before the foundation of the world. And it is was in that "good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the [Christ]."...In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will." (Eph. 1)

Why do I rehearse all that with you this morning? Because too much of our thinking at Christmas is misdirected upon the manger. Misdirected, in that we fail to acknowledge or sufficiently comprehend the will of God the Father who determined to bring all these things to pass. And that knowledge of the eternal plan of God the Father is at the heart of a stable and secure experience of peace.

We have peace because God the Father had a plan and a purpose, which he has carried out perfectly in the fullness of time. And so we understand that,

Gal. 4:4 "...when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."

Beloved, there is peace. The peace of adoption. The peace of one able to cry out, "Abba, Father." The peace of being redeemed from under the law, redeemed from the curse and the condemnation of the law. Peace founded upon the knowledge of God the Father.

And clearly, therefore, peace founded equally upon,

B. The knowledge of the Lord Jesus. v.2

The peace I proclaim to you is so utterly different than the shallow and false attempts at peace proclaimed by the world. It is not peace in the holiday season. It is not peace in the midst of family traditions or Christmas decorations. It is not peace in the accumulation of this world's good. It is the peace that comes with Jesus.

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

Did you catch that? "Not as the world gives..." The peace that Jesus offers is not at all the same thing as the peace the world offers. It is not the excitement of a lot of Christmas presents or the thrill of holiday decorations. It is not the subjective, emotional response to good things that have happened in your life this past year. It is so much more. So much more that your heart need not be troubled!

There's a good phrase to understand what peace is all about. A heart that is not troubled. Not agitated, restless, stirred up, anxious, distressed, perplexed, afraid. Peace is the absence of all those things.

The foundation of peace is the knowledge of God. The triune God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so as Jesus announces that peace in John 14, he begins by saying,

John 14:25 "These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. 26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you."

Don't miss it! Don't go through the Christmas season and miss it. Don't miss the peace that passes all understanding. Don't miss the opportunity to establish and reestablish that foundation upon which peace can really and truly be yours. Grace and peace will be yours, and yours increasingly abundantly, "in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Notice, then, how Peter describes,

III. THE RECIPIENTS OF PEACE. v.1

Those upon whom he pronounces the blessing of peace are,

A. Those who have obtained faith. That's a fascinating way of putting it, because usually we stress that faith is what we do. The evangelistic exhortation of Scripture is to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." The call of the gospel is to have faith. To believe. And that is true and appropriate, but here is the more theologically accurate explanation of that faith. It is obtained, by lot. The word implies a gift of favor, a gift of choice and sovereign determination. A gift of grace, as far as the recipient is concerned, for it is a gift that is obtained.

Faith is what we do, it is the exercise of our hearts and wills to trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation. According to our Shorter Catechism, "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel."

So we do it. But only as we are enabled by God, such that God gets all the credit and all the glory. And so the statement in our Confession that begins the chapter on Saving Faith is this: "The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts."

So you must obtain faith. Does that mean that God might not give it to you even though you really want it? That there are people wanting to enter the kingdom of heaven whom God simply won't let come in? No, a thousand times, no. It means that no one would enter if they were left to their own strength and ability.

1 Cor. 2:14 "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

So it is that God changes your heart, and then you believe. And thus faith is both the response to the call of the gospel for which you are responsible, but not a good work in which you have earned some measure of God's favor. And I say that with reference to peace because peace is not a matter of something you do, as if you ought to simply do more faith in order to have peace. Faith is not a good work you do which is rewarded by God with the blessing of peace. No, a thousand times no. Faith is apprehending what God offers to you in the gospel. Faith is believing what God offers to you in the gospel. Faith is accepting what God offers to you in the gospel. Faith is the willingness to accept the free gift as it really is-a free gift.

Eph. 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Let me tell you something about my home. We do have a Christmas tree set up. That's an enjoyable family tradition. We cut a fresh tree every year so it will last long past Christmas Day. And there are presents under the tree. Actually, we haven't put them out yet, because they would be a great distraction on the Lord's Day today. But we have them, and they'll be out tomorrow. And Tuesday, I will take those packages out from around the tree and, one by one, I will hand them out.

Now, let me explain to you what my children will do when they are offered a present. Maybe you could guess. Guess what they will do when I offer them a package all wrapped up in fancy Christmas paper. Can you guess? Why, they take the package and open it!

Beloved, that is a picture of faith. Taking the gift offered to you and opening it!

And will that faith bring peace? Oh, yea. In a worldly sense, if peace refers to a heart that is not troubled, someone who is not agitated, restless, stirred up, anxious, distressed, perplexed, or afraid, then just picture a child on Christmas morning! Why, they might be stirred up, but not in an agitated or distressed way, but in the fullness of childhood glory!

I use that illustration to emphasize this crucial idea, that peace, real peace, comes when you accept the gift God offers to you in the gospel with all the enthusiasm of a young child on Christmas morning.

And Peter goes on to define that gift of the gospel in a marvelous way. Those who have peace are the ones who have not only obtained faith, but also,

B. Those who have obtained the righteousness of Jesus. v.1 "To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ."

What does that mean? Very simply, you have peace with God because you are righteous before him. You have peace with God because you are accepted by him as being righteous. You have peace with God because God judges you to be righteous.

And that righteousness is a righteousness that is credited to you. It is received by faith. It is imputed to you. It is an alien righteousness, that is, the work of someone else. Namely Jesus. Peace means that the righteousness of Jesus has become yours.

We all have a problem. You know what it is. It is called sin.

Rom. 3:22 "...For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

That's all of us. Everyone. That's you. That's me. It is our children. And our parents. We don't have any righteousness of our own. In fact, the words of the prophet Isaiah say it best,

Is. 64:6 "But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away."

It is only at that point that the promise of the gospel makes at all,

Rom. 3:21 "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

The key phrase was at the beginning of that, "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed." That's what you must have if you will have peace. "The righteousness of God apart from the law." The righteousness of Jesus Christ.

2 Cor. 5:21 "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

Rom. 5:15 "But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. 16 And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. 17 For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) 18 Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. 19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous."

"By one Man's obedience many will be made righteous." And let me remind you once more how that chapter began,

Rom. 5:1 "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Beloved, peace is a matter of your soul. It is a matter of your standing with God. Therefore, it is not a matter that is established by or even related to your circumstances of life, be they good or bad. Oh, you may still have troubles. I'm quite sure that you will. But peace on earth is not a matter of being freed from your troubles. It is a matter of being reconciled to God. Peace means that with God, all is well. And if that is true, if you are indeed reconciled to God by faith in Jesus Christ, then all is well. No matter what your circumstances might be. And that is the peace I declare to you. That is the peace I wish for you this Christmas season.

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, [Jesus says,] My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

John 16:33 "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

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