And yet sometimes we find people
in our lives who have the faith to rest in every circumstance
and we look at them and we think, why can't I have that? The answer
is we do have that. We do have that peace. The problem is not that it's
not ours. The problem is that we're not
looking at it. Now keep in mind this letter
that Paul wrote to Timothy is written to the elder of the church
of Ephesus, the gatherings of Ephesus, Elder Timothy here overseeing
these gatherings and installing other men to be elders to put
in order that which remains in the city there. And so the letter
in and of itself is written to the pastors of the church, to
a particular pastor who then will teach other pastors, as
we'll see in 2 Timothy, Entrust this good deposit this teaching
this understanding rightly divide the word of truth preach it in
season out season for the Word of God is sufficient To make
the man of God successful in all things for the Word of God
is the breath of God breathed out and spoken by God The scripture
is written for the people of God and written to the people
of God. And this letter, when we see these instructions, when
we see this realization, this reminder of the peace of Christ
that comes from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord, we
are not looking at this letter from a position of evangelism. We're not looking, Paul did not
write this letter that one may come to see the faith. He wrote
this letter to those who are in the faith. We do not need
to conflate. What does that mean? We do not
need to take two terms or two ideas or two separate things
and try to merge them into one. We don't need to find an overlap.
We don't need to confuse, if you will, the understanding of
maturing in the faith and being in the faith. Because not everyone
matures in the faith, who is in the faith. Some people do
not mature in the faith as others mature in the faith. And so it's
easy for us to see the mature person who, in the circumstance
that would cause us great grief, who says, it's okay, the Lord
has it. His hand is at work and I'm at peace. When we would go
home and pull out our eyes. Why can't I have, and then we
would add to that angst, right? Why can't I have that kind of
faith? Now I've got the problem and faithlessness. Wow, you know
that is the whole essence of it. It's discontentment. It's
wanting what we don't have in a way of covetousness. See, covetousness
is not always about, I wish I had the better car, or the better
suit, or the better house, or the bigger bank account. I mean,
few Christians, when they've matured to a certain level, look
at their neighbor and wish they had what their neighbor had. Most Christians wish they could
be what someone else was. And in being so, and having that
mindset, they want to, we want to, at times, tear ourselves
apart as though we're not even in the faith. And this is the
lie of the devil. From the very beginning, he will
say, did God really say that your peace is from Christ alone? Does the word of God, does God
say that the gospel, the good report of the one who is set
apart, anointed of God to save his people from their sins by
substituting himself for them and the righteousness of God
being upheld and fulfilled in justice. How? By the wrath of
God. Is enough. See, it fights against
the natural inclination of our bodies and our minds to let that
be effectual. And if God is sovereign, we read
out of Isaiah 46 this morning before we sang, and that is one
of those places where God says He will put salvation in Zion.
God will cause it. His counsel will stand. No one
will stay His hand. No one will change His outcomes.
And God is not just a God of power, of all power, but in all
His power, as I said earlier, He is always purposeful. And
that purpose is to show Himself for who He really is. The word
for that is to glorify, to see who He really is. And who God
really is, is someone, something, a being, that never began and
who is the highest of all things, above all things. That's what
the word God means. The word God is not His name. It means above and highest of
all things. So there is no God but the one
and only God. And because He is the highest
above all things, because He is set apart beyond all things,
He is not like in any way, He is not like anything but Himself. And that's what God says to the
prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 46. You try to compare me to things.
You try to make me like something else that you could call this
like me. Isn't that the lie of the enemy in the garden? In Genesis
chapter 3, did God really say you would die? Is that really
what God said? See, God knows something if you
eat of this fruit, oh, you're gonna be like Him. So then the
idea of being like God is pretty amazing, right? It's pretty amazing. The idea
of knowing something that God knows that maybe someone else
doesn't is pretty amazing. Oh, you're talking about hubris.
Beloved, when you have information that someone else might not have,
you have power. That's why spies are powerful, right? That's why
heads of state are powerful. Imagine being inaugurated as
a president and then the very next day sitting in the debriefing
and learning all the nasty noise and all the evil things under
the rug and hidden in the closets. That's why they age overnight,
I swear. And then they're gray-headed
the next day. 35, 65, just one day because
of the stress of it all. But imagine, that knowledge is
something that man desires. But beloved, the knowledge of
God is he revealing himself to his people. Not figuring him
out in our own wisdom. As a matter of fact, Paul would
say to the Corinthians, who were known as a Greek people, who
were known as wise people, who were known as extremely intelligent.
As a matter of fact, for fun, they didn't go to the movies,
they didn't go to sporting events, they went to hear a person speak
about philosophy and smart things. And children would sit and listen
to someone opine about what is life. What is, is. Je pense, donc je suis. All throughout
the world, in every segment of human history, there is someone
who is thinking in a greater way than someone else is thinking.
And in that thinking, there is power among men. But God, the
Lord, the creator of it all, he sits far above all these things. As a father, There have been
many times in my life where my children have told me what they
were going to do. And I just smile and somewhat
maniacally laugh. You think so. You know, why?
I'm not worried about what they dictate to me. And they can say
all they want to say, just keep talking, add up the stripes,
you know. Add it up. There's nothing you
can do because I am the dad, you see. And children, you know
what I'm talking about. Y'all tested those waters. I'm
not going to bed. Okay. That's fine. I will not eat it. I am going
to the moon. Sooner than you think. And that's
what we do with God. We take and we tell God what
we are and what we're going to do. And we stand and say, this
is what I know. You are God. And we tell God
who he is. And we think that that's gonna
bring us peace. by commanding the Father when God is above
it all. What's the word for separate
from all things? What's the word for that? The
word is holy. And see, with holy comes a whole
lot of understanding as we grow and mature in our reading of
the scripture. We don't just wake up and we
understand everybody who's in America church in any cult or
iteration It doesn't matter who they are, if they're in a Christian
cult whatsoever and have the Bible in any form as a part of
their liturgy, they understand the word holy applies to God. But they don't understand what
it means. God is apart from all things. That's what it means. So He's
not like the creation. He created it. He's not like man. Man is His
creation. Henry Ford was not a car. He
created the car. God is not a snake. He's not
like a snake. He's not like a tree. Does this
sound familiar for some of us who have gone to college? God
is in all things. No, God is above all things.
There's a big difference. And then the scripture would
say that those who are in Christ, Christ is in them. Now there's
an incredible reality. But everybody knows what holy
means. But if God is above all things and apart from all things
and separate from all things because He created all things,
then that means that everything He is is completely different
than everything He's made. Even though everything He's made
as we went through those 17-18 weeks in Genesis 1, 2, 3, and
4, everything He's made in some way will show something about
him, the things that he has made does not reveal him fully, does
not show his glory in its fullness. What shows the glory of God in
all that he is? What reveals him perfectly? His son, Jesus, the Christ. What does the Christ mean? It's
the English word of the Greek word Christos, which is the Greek
word of the Hebrew word Meshach. which translated into English
is Messiah, which means the one who is set apart from God. The
one who comes from God who is set apart. So here, the essence
of God becomes human and is still God. And in that human God-man, we
can see all that God ever will ever want to or will reveal to
us. Everything that makes him separate
and awesome and majestic and glorious is seen in Jesus Christ. This is the Apostle John and
his writing. This is the Apostle Paul and
his writing to the Colossians and to the Hebrews. All the fullness
of God dwelled bodily We have seen the glory of God in the
Son of God. No one has ever seen God, but
the one and only God who is at the God's side has made God known. And so when we see Christ, what
does Christ say? What is the message? What is
the report that Christ, that Jesus, the one who is set apart
and anointed from God, that's what Christ means, Messiah means.
What is the report that Christ comes to preach? He comes to
preach peace. I mean, this is the centerpiece
of His preaching. He comes to preach peace. I mean,
before His baptism and wilderness experience, we see in the Gospels
where He goes into the tabernacle and they hand Him the scroll
of Isaiah. And he reads from the scroll about the day of Jubilee,
and the day of celebration, and the day of thanksgiving, and
the time when God would restore joy to His people by giving them
peace in their land, and in their hearts, and in their souls. And
the scripture says in all the accounts that the people were
in awe and they loved Him. Why did they love Him? Because
He gave them good news. And in their heart of hearts,
they thought, and we know this by reading the scripture, the
Old Testament and the New Testament, we understand what the prophets
and the apostles agree. And we know that the people of
God in that day, in the day of Christ, when he came preaching,
they had one understanding of peace. And that was, we gotta
get Rome out of our hair. It wasn't, we are sinners before
our Father. As a matter of fact, they in
their own minds were not sinners before the Father because most
of the religious of that day followed the precepts of Moses
very, according to their own standard, as Paul would confess,
perfectly. They did the right things. Yet,
that did not bring peace with God. I mean, think about it for a second.
What's peaceful about the liturgy of sacrifice? I mean, we can
come here and we can pray. We can sing music that teaches
us about Christ. We can worship together through
the hearing of the word and the reading of the word and the preaching,
the exposition of the word. We can learn by being told what
we should do now because of scripture. And we can go and minister to
one another, meeting needs in every situation as we're able. And we can leave here and we
can feel, let me emphasize this word, we can feel at peace a
lot of times, can't we? Oh, that was such a peaceful
service. That was such a peaceful message. That was such a peaceful
time. I really am at peace with that truth. And that's part of
what it's for. I've always shuddered when I
get through with the preaching. especially as a visiting pastor.
You know, I haven't done that in a long time because of the
pandemic, but where I used to visit other congregations by
appointment or invitation or visit conferences or whatever
and teach. And it always made me sort of shudder. At the end
of the teaching, someone would come up to me and go, Oh, you
really kicked me in the gut that this time you stomped all over
me. And the first thing that I think is that I missed the
gospel. The word of God stomps all over sometimes, doesn't it?
It steps on our toes, as we say in our culture. It does bring
conviction of sin, but that's not the point of the gospel.
The gospel is not to bring conviction of sin. The gospel is to bring
peace. The gospel is a message and a report of God making peace
with himself. Because God is holy, that means
He's apart and separate. That means the scripture teaches
that because He is not like creatures, that He and all that He does
is a display of goodness and righteousness and perfection. And so that what God demands
of us, when we are not that, we are evil. And this is an unpopular
teaching. It's an unpopular truth found
in scripture. Don't tell people that they're evil. Okay? But why not? Because when God
saves us, it might not be that moment, but it's assumed thereafter
we will see that we are not God. And we will see that we are not
Christ. And we will see that the peace of self-made religion
and the peace of striving and the peace that comes from obedience
is no peace at all. Because, beloved, when it comes
to standing before the holy, righteous judge of the cosmos, There is nothing that we bring
but guilt. And worship in the first century
and before with Israel was not a peaceful celebration. Yes,
they sang. Yes, they had meals. But every
one of those meals focused on the blood of something and the
death of something and the body of something being burned and
destroyed as an appeasement to God. As an appeasement to God. So
the Christian faith, while it is a faith of peace, began its
days, according to the truth of God's revelation, as a religion
of death. Because God, as He teaches us
in the Old Testament, to teach His people to sacrifice things
that are perfect and pure, to give up things that they actually
need in order for them to understand the cost, something of value,
And that thing must be bled out alive and then the blood must
be poured over the what? The mercy seat where God meets
man. And the body of that creature
must be burned and then part of it consumed. I mean, that's
not a peaceful situation. I learned to cut meat when I
was 13 years old, butcher animals, and I enjoyed it. There's an
art to it. And I was trained by an extremely
talented person. But at the end of the day, when
that meat room was done after a 10-hour shift, it was nasty. It was bloody. It was terrible.
It was an awful place. It smelled to the person who
wasn't used to the smell. Even though it was like 45 degrees
in there, it was awful. And then you would start to clean
with 150 degree water and bleach. You look like, you know, E.T. or something like that. You know,
you're going in there with all these covers and things because
it's a nasty place. And that's called a sterile environment,
according to the FDA. There was no sterile environment
in the temple, yet it was sterile, according to the law. It was
not a time of peace. Hey, kids, let's go to church.
Bring Lambie. I mean, can you imagine? I remember back in my youth when
some family decided to get together and go in and harvest, not harvest,
but be rabbit farmers. We started out with five and
a couple of days we had 30. And, you know, two or three times
after midnight, they turned to monsters and all sorts of things
happened. But we named them and loved them and petted them. And
when they got big enough, we ate them. That was horrifying.
This is brownie. Yeah, he's going to look good
in the stew. That's not peaceful. Shut up
and eat your pet. Or go to bed hungry. That's not
peaceful. Imagine worshiping. teaching your children that God
demands death. Because he does. Why? Because
he's holy. In his righteousness, the law, according to his righteousness,
says that when one sins, he must die. Mercy cannot be good if
it doesn't satisfy that. The gospel is the report of peace.
God making peace with his people. But most importantly, God making
peace with himself. Let me make that a little bit
clearer, for himself. I could argue either way, but
for himself is a little more clearer. The idea of propitiation,
to satisfy wrath. God is propitiating himself in
the death of Jesus. God is satisfying his own justice
in the death of Jesus. As a matter of fact, when we
see the text, and if you are a language geek or what have
you, when you look at some of the writings of the New Testament,
and you see Jesus talking about the publican and the Pharisee,
and that story about how the Pharisee praised God that he
was not like other men, and praised God that God himself had caused
him to be such a pious worshiper. And the publican, the tax collector
who robbed his own mother in order to buy his goods, was convicted
of his guilt by the Spirit of God and went off far away. He didn't come into the area
of worship. He was unworthy to be in the presence of God. And
he tore his clothes, and he would not even look to heaven, which
was the posture of prayer, eyes open, hands up, praying like
this. It was a spectacle, you know. Now it's like this. Depends
on the culture. It's no biblical way of doing
it. But he didn't want to look to heaven, yet he beat his chest
and he said, Oh, God. And what he actually says is
propitiate for me. Satisfy your wrath for me. What does that show us? That
the only way to peace is for God himself to make peace. Because there's no way to make
peace once the offense has come. And as we've already seen, God
intended in his purposes, listen to what I'm saying, God intended
in his purposes that man would fall, that he would be revealed
as a savior of his people. And Adam and Eve of their own
desire sinned against God. Yet it was the plan of God. It
wasn't plan B for Christ, it was the point that God created
the world to begin with. And so we have peace from God
the Father, from Jesus Christ our Lord, and this peace, beloved,
I believe is something that we don't understand. I just don't
think it's why I want to spend more weeks on it. We can get
our theology clear. We can get our language clear.
We can put all sorts of technical analysis on the text and come
out with all sorts of systematized ways of expressing ourselves,
which is what we do. It's the only way we know how
to communicate. Nothing wrong with it. It's how
God has ordained our communication. But we all say peace, but we
don't get it. And if we were to take a poll
today, many of us don't have it. We may be at peace with God
in the gospel, But we're not resting in that. We're not at
rest at all. We're in turmoil. Well, the 2021 was worse than
2020 in the context of turmoil for me. And I've spent half the
year with no peace of mind, with no peace of body, with no peace
of handle of things. What's the
word? Of having a handle on things. No peace of knowing what I should
do. That's wisdom. No peace at all. Except fleeting
moments when I focus on the Word of God by His call and command
because I have to encourage you in the peace that the scripture
teaches even when I don't have it myself. Isn't that crazy? And so if I have experienced
these things, this roller coaster of nightmares, then many of you
have probably experienced it. And it's not about transforming
your life in such a way that everything is at peace. It's
about understanding the one who is our peace. And beloved, there's a lot to
be said. And as I said last week, when
we get down to the nitty gritty of why the letter has been written,
it's been written so that we can see some really bad things
that have been taking place in the church. And I'll be honest
with you. If you're not holding fast to
the peace of Christ, the instructions of the Bible upset you. The teachings of the apostles
on what we should do and how we should respond are going to
upset us because then we're going to have fear and anxiety. Then
we're going to have frustration. Then we're going to have self-sufficiency.
And beloved, the pulpit is for instruction. It's for correction. It's for application. The pulpit
is for us as a family to have a little meeting every week to
celebrate the gospel of peace. and to worship the God of peace
and then to live out that peace through much pain and suffering.
And I promise you, there is nothing that I can do nor you can do
in all of our wisdom that can accomplish what God can do in
an instant with His Spirit and with His Word, through His Word.
And we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. And because of
that we have peace within. So next week I want to really
talk about our assurance. Because I think that's the second portion
of what the piece of peace that's missing from most of our hearts
is assurance. The old cliche, and it makes
me gag, but the fact that you can know that you have been born
again. That you know that you know that you know that you have
eternal life. You know that old adage, right? It's not even an
adage, it's a byline. And it usually comes before a
false gospel. Do you want to know that you
know that you know that you have eternal life? Look at Christ. Hear the peace
that comes that's beyond all understanding, as Paul would
teach the Philippians. And because we have peace with God, we can
have peace within in our assurance. We can rest in the knowledge
of God's work for us. We can also have peace with our
fellow brothers and sisters And we can strive for peace with
fellow man, with the government. But most importantly, we have
peace and rest, faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week,
we looked at Matthew 11, 25, where Jesus says, take my yoke
upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and
my burden is light." How is it, as a way of reminder, that the
burden of Christ is light? Because when we are sitting in
His hands, He has already taken the burden of wrath. He substituted
Himself for His people. And their sins are atoned for.
The word atoned is an English word. come throughout the centuries
from several different ideas. And the idea of atonement is
that here is God, high and above all things, and here are we,
lost, dead in our sins and trespasses, enemies with God, haters of righteousness,
self-righteous, haughty, full of strife and malice and murder
and envy and lust and disease and wretchedness. We are not
like Him. Not only are we not like Him,
He cannot be with us, nor can He look upon us. And so this
is the reality here of the division between God and humanity. And so for God to reach down
into the cesspool of darkness and say, oh, look, I'm going
to bring this into the light, would expose him as a liar and
would drag the disease of wickedness and sinfulness into his presence. And then as he reached into darkness
and embraced wickedness, he himself would become wicked and no longer
be holy, no longer be God and so on and so forth. Beloved,
he couldn't do that. So what did he do? He substituted himself in place
of his people. Substituted himself. And when we were separated, then
Christ brought us together, and now we are at one with God, and
that idea, in English, at one, became atone, to be brought together
at one. So your third grade theology,
you can understand atonement as at one minute. Peace has been
brought near and peace has been put in. Our status as guilty
people has not changed in its reality, but our status as saints
now forgiven. Now we share the righteousness
that is not our own, but it's an alien righteousness, the perfection
of God himself in his humanity. has been credited to us, and
our guilt has been credited to Christ. I remember the first time I thought,
oh, this great exchange. I'm like, I'm going to write
a book about that. Already been done. There's nothing new under the
sun. There's no new way of expressing the same message that never changes
about the same God who eternally has never changed about the hope
that we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who was sent by the
Father to bring peace and to effect peace for his people once
and for all. And so, beloved, we've got to
rest in this. Paul would teach the Philippians
in Philippians 4, rejoice in the Lord. I believe that being
settled with a true faith that is maturing and at rest is what
brings out true rejoicing. That as a shepherd, one of my
greatest calls is to watch over the people. And one of the greatest
warning lights that I look for is a lack of joy. Because when that joy light starts
to dim, I know that there's something wrong with our focus. And it
may be anecdotal, it may be just me. Maybe all of you are going,
what are you talking about? You don't have a clue. Oops. You're
not in that boat at all. There's nothing. It's not you.
But I would be willing to bet, if I were a gambler, that we've
all been there and probably are there in some sense today. Rejoicing. So the command to
rejoice in the Lord is always, and again Paul would say, I say
rejoice, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord
is at hand. Therefore do not be anxious about
anything. Do you know anxiousness is sinfulness. Now here's the
incredible thing. We don't get up one day and go,
I'm just going to be anxious. We might decide what pair of
socks to wear, or which pair of boots to put on, or which
way to comb our hair, but we don't decide to be anxious, or
do we? It's just there. But beloved, we do choose to
continue to look at it when the scripture says, the Lord is at
hand. What are we looking at? Everything,
all the spiders on the floor. all the floods outside, all the
hurricanes in the coast, the thunderstorms. Did y'all get
that tornado warning thing? That scared the man. And the
second one was a false alarm. I'm like, don't do this to me.
This is not okay. I'm going, there's not even a
lot of birds are tweeting. There's no tornado. That's anxiousness. But anxiety is when we focus
on these things that we can't resolve. Focus on the powerlessness
of our lives, on things that are outside our control, but
nothing is outside the control of our Savior. Nothing is outside
the control of our sovereign Creator. He is in charge of it
all, and even in the midst of some incredible anxieties, He
is at work on purpose to show Himself faithful and to bring
us to a place of rejoicing. What does Paul prescribe for
the people of Philippi? He says, do not be anxious, the
Lord is at hand, but pray. Not just for yourself, but for
others. Supplicate. Pray for others. And do so with
thanksgiving. And tell the Lord what you need. Well, I think some of the greatest
places of deceit is when we pray. Let me say this and make it clear.
I think we lie more when we pray than we realize. Because we don't
want to say exactly what we feel. We formalize some expression
in our hearts or even with our mouths for those of us who pray
out loud. We formalize some way in which we approach the Lord
in our requests as if He doesn't know. It's like when your teenagers
are running late and they call you and say, I'm almost home,
but they're just leaving. And you're not dumb. You've got
their little app on there. You see where they are. OK, be
safe. And they get here. Yeah, it was
a lot of traffic. 11 o'clock at night in Daisy.
I mean, you know what I'm saying? Sure there was. Bambi and all
his brothers have to pass over. We see. The Lord sees us. Just
like we see our children, we see right through it. We don't
have to pretend with God. We can be open with God. Years
and years ago, a long time ago, before my son was even born,
I had a mentor in the faith that told me that David was wrong
and got it all wrong because he was a whiner. He wasn't a
man. He should have stood up and stopped
whining and complaining and fussing and scared of everything. And
I'm like, I don't think that's right. I don't like that David's
a whiner. And then as I grew up and began
to think, that would pop into my mind every now and then when
I would read the Psalms. And then I realized he was right. But that was God's
intention. That David would be a whiny pot,
scared of everything. Oh, everybody's out to get me.
Where we could see the greatness of God's power at work. David
wasn't a great king. He wasn't a great servant. He
was a lying, adulterating murderer. And God says, man, after my own
heart, not in who David was, but in who God is. And the anxiety of all those
consequences, we'll talk about that, too. But we need to make our requests
known to God. Why? Because we're at peace with
him. I have people come to me once after a sermon where I called
God dad. And they said, that just doesn't
set well with my soul, my heart, my ears. You know, you said,
our dad. You didn't go in there and say,
hey pops, that's just irreverent. But isn't that what the word
Abba means? It's exactly what it means. It's an intimate, informal,
familial term that the Hebrew people called God, pops, papa. I've had a papa in my life, my
great-grandfather. And I didn't have to go in there
and call him Mr. Adams. We called him Papa. And he'd
make some crazy noise with his hands, and give us candy out
of his pocket, always butterscotch. Never failed. This man walks
around with candy. That's amazing. You know, when
you're a kid, candy out of his pockets. Well, I just don't settle. I
said, well, do we not see it in the scripture? But we have
become so ingrained, and rightly so, that God is above all things.
We ought to know that we have no right to approach Him in this
way. We have no right to bust into the courtrooms of glory
and say, hey pops. It's like when Grace, when she
was like two years old, come running down the side of a large
church when I was preaching when they just came out of a mistake
and everybody's laugh and I just picked up get preaching this
elder It was no big deal. It didn't
stop anything. It didn't hurt my feelings. And if anybody had
a problem with it, oops, it's my daughter. Don't you dare say
she disrupted service. She added to the flavor. If you
don't like it, I'll hold both children next week. It's not formalism. This isn't
formal, though it's technically clinical in my heart. It's clinical. So I've got to get through with
this and get down here and get together, you know. But it's just the way
we do it. This is our relationship with
the father is formally intimate. Through the person of Jesus Christ,
who is our peace, he is our Passover. He is our good report. He is the one who satisfied the
wrath of God, the father for us. It is finished. So we do
have the right and the privilege and the authority by the love
of God for us to walk into wherever he is and say, hey, hey, daddy. Regardless of what he's doing. And I don't know why that the
truth of the peace of God in the good report of Christ has
to be the antithesis of Him in His essence and glory and sovereignty
and justice. Because that does make us shudder,
doesn't it? But Paul writes to the Hebrew
people and he says, you have not come to the tempest. You
have not come to what? You have not come to the place
where the fire and the clouds and the thunder and the rolling
and the earthquake. You have not come to the instruction
that says if a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.
You have not come there, but you have come to Christ, the
mediator of a new and better and effectual covenant. You have
come to the blood of the Lamb of God who was slain. And so
we come in washed by the sacrifice of Christ who atoned for us,
who brought us near to God, and we have been taken out of darkness
and washed in the blood of Jesus, drenched in His righteousness,
clothed in His goodness, and sat before the presence of God
our Father who loves us and cares about whether the hair on our
head hits the ground as much as He does about the sun coming
up every day. Take your request to God. And beloved, by that teaching,
we are never alone. We are never forsaken. Christ
the son was forsaken that we would never be forsaken. The
gospel is not a good opportunity, it is a good report of a finished
work that cannot be undone. God said, let there be light
and there was light and the light was good and it was finished.
And the whole creation account is to show God is the only one
who can make everything from nothing, and the only one who
can separate it according to His will and to His purpose from
light and darkness. And that even in the darkness,
there is a light that rules. And we know who He is, and His
name is Jesus. So when our anxiety is darkness,
our fear is darkness, our relationships can often be darkness, our circumstances
can be darkness, Christ is the light of the rule. He rules over
this darkness. And beloved, I thought when all
my children were younger that it was like, oh goodness, then
teenagers, oh wow, and now adults in the school. I'm just trading
one set of fears for another. And now I can't shake them and
put them in timeout. Duct tape. You can't do that.
That's kidnapping. I mean, you know. Can't tell them what to do anymore.
I can offer, you know, this might work. That's stupid. Okay. Now,
they don't talk to me that way, but you know that's what they're
thinking. Dad's so dumb. Until something tears up, then
I'm a genius. Can you fix this? Nope. I'm dumb. Fear is the root of no peace,
beloved. Paul says to pray, and to tell
God what we need, and to rest in the knowledge of the finished
work of Jesus Christ, who atoned for our sins, and then he says,
and the peace of God. What peace? Jesus says in John
15, I think, or 14, 15, those two chapters, conversation, my
peace I leave with you. Not peace that the world knows,
My peace that the world cannot know. I leave with you. And where were they? They were
just given the reality that Jesus was leaving. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no. You don't have to leave. Don't leave. What are we going
to do now? Fear, anxiety. Oh, no. Hopelessness, stress. What are we going to do? We've
given our whole lives up. Our whole world is upside down and
you're leaving. And Jesus says, but I'm leaving
my peace. They couldn't get that. They had to learn that. They
had to be taught by the Spirit of God. And then they wrote about
it. And Paul does a great job of
telling the church of Philippi about what this peace is. He's
like, you know what? The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. What does that mean? That means
you can't put your finger on it. I mean, you can't outline
it. You can't prescribe it. You can
say, oh, this is what you need to do. You know, those guys.
What you need to do is X, Y, Z. Well, not too bad. There is
no, this is what you need to do. Paul has said, rejoice, be reasonable,
pray, ask God your Father for everything that you need and
the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, what does
it do? It guards your hearts and minds. How? In Christ Jesus. So there's
the focus. See, there's the focus. It guards
our hearts and minds in Christ, the mind that we've been given,
which is Christ. What is the mind of Christ? Though
He is and always has been God, even in the incarnation, He did
not take His essence and status as the highest of all things,
something to be made much of in the world, because that's
not why He came, yet He became obedient as a slave unto death
on a cross, innocent, yet He took a criminal's death. Why? Because that's what He came to
do. to make peace through His death. He made peace. So it surpasses all understanding.
You have this mind. You have this mind. We have this
mind. It's in Christ Jesus. So where is the discipline then
to keep us in the right state of mind? It's to focus and learn
and to guard our hearts and minds by not diving into the world
and its worries, but digesting the truth of who
Christ is as often as we can, that the Spirit of God may give
us the peace of God that is beyond understanding. If I could logically
express it, in a way of propositions to be adhered to or applications
to be followed, then it wouldn't be the peace of God. It would
be the peace of James, or the peace of you, or the peace of
man, or the peace of the church, or the peace of the bishops,
or the peace of the hierarchy, or the peace of the denomination,
or the peace of Christianity. But it's not. It's Christ. He
is our peace. And He guards our hearts and
our minds. And the final instructions that
Paul gives there to the Philippians in Philippians 4 is he says,
then, therefore, finally, that's what he goes, finally, brothers,
whatever is. And he's starting to give a list
of adjectives about things that are. Whatever is, and this is
the list he gives. True, honorable, just, pure,
lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise. See that? Now what do you know that fits
into all those categories? Who do you know that fits into
all those categories? Jesus alone, right? The person of God in the
flesh. The one, as we've already said
today, who makes God known in all of His fullness. That's the
glory. We have seen the glory of God. We've known Him for all
that He is. And we do not need to know anything else about him.
We just need to continually focus on these things that we have
been taught, that we may understand them deeply. And most importantly,
rejoice and worship in him, not in the things that he is, but
in who he is. It's a big disconnect, and I
won't get into that today. We'll get into that when we get
through with the peace portion. So if there's anything worthy
of praise, think about these things. There's the discipline. Think about these things. Beloved, I used to have a discipline
where I wrote things down all day long, little cards, stuff
like that. I'd transfer those things, and
on a sunny afternoon, I'd do a brain dump on several pieces
of paper, handwritten, and then I would divide that list of things,
everything on my mind, whether it be, oh, I've got to take out
the trash. If it was on my mind, I'd put it down. And then I'm
gonna divide those things into tasks that I could do, ridiculous
things I should not even think about. And I threw that list
in the trash. I literally wrote it down and threw it in the trash. And then I would make sure that
the list of things that I could accomplish were things that I needed to
accomplish. And if I needed to accomplish them, I would schedule
them. And if I didn't need the accomplishment, I threw them
away too. Things outside of my control,
I threw in the trash. And the trash can in that sense being,
I just let the Lord handle it. And when I thought about those
things, there was something interesting about that physical activity
every week that helped me have a psychological picture of the
fact that that's not on my desk anymore. It's not my responsibility.
But in March of 2020, I stopped doing that. You know what? That little discipline
for me kept me in the Word and kept me focused on who Christ
was. and helped me stay focused on
praying for others and teaching others and loving others and
serving others rather than being worried about what was going
on with me. That's the mind of Christ. He
was God, but he served others in his death. That's the mind
of Christ with Paul. What does he say to the Philippians?
What you've learned from me, what you've received from me,
and what you've heard from me, and what you've seen me do in
my life, practice these things, and the God of peace will be
with you. It's a simple prescription. It's a simple application. It's
very practical, you see. In the field of study, we would
call this applied theology, which is the business of the elder. We know this. This is true. Let's
rejoice. Let's worship. This is good. We are all about
proclaiming Christ, but together we cannot just sit here for the
next 168 hours and proclaim Christ together. It would be great if
we had somebody serving us food. A couple of more toilets. But we have life to do. We have
life. We have needs to meet. We have things we have to accomplish
tomorrow. It's going to rain this afternoon,
tonight. I have things I need to do today to prepare for the
rain. Things I have to get out of the weather. Simple things
like that. If your clothes are dirty, you
have to go home and wash a few things if you need those clothes
for tomorrow. There are practical things in living as God's people.
And the centerpiece of that living is the cross of Christ that surpasses
all understanding when it comes to our peace in the midst of
our daily doing. And more importantly, that we
do all these things to the name and the glory of Christ as we're
considering one another rather than our own selves. And a lot
of times, as we'll see, we'll get some instruction in the next
few months. The reason we are not at peace is because we are
so introspective. We are looking inside so much
about what we're dealing with, and it's not wrong, but schedule
it. And more importantly, ask a confident
friend, brother, sister in the faith to pray for you over it. And then let it go, and let the
Lord know, and let your brothers and sisters pray, and then sometimes
also meet your needs. practice these things, the God
of peace will be with you. The opposite of that is to stew and to worry and to fret and
to be at odds. Our beloved God has made peace.
Peter says it this way, he says, for Christ also suffered once
for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order that He
would bring us to God, atonement. How did He do that? Being put
to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the Spirit. So Christ, having been offered
once to bear the sins of many, will appear again, another time,
not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly awaiting
for him. Hebrews 9. And Paul would tell the Roman church
in Romans 6, for the death he died, he died to sin once for
all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. Beloved, Jesus
Christ has died. Jesus Christ has died and Jesus
Christ has been raised from the dead. The work has been finished. Jesus teaches in John 15 about
the vine and abiding in Him, hatred of the world and all these
things. Beloved, in the end of the day, Jesus has said we can be of good
cheer and we have peace with God the Father because of Him.
Now that doesn't eliminate our problems. But it doesn't allow our problems
to rob us of our joy. And I believe that each of us
and as a church and as a culture, the body of Christ, the true
body of Christ in our culture, we have lost sight of this prescription. And the word of God is going
to bring us back to these practices. The word of God is going to bring
us back to this place of peace. to understand that the Father
has loved Christ and Christ has loved us and we are at peace. We are at peace. And so, beloved,
be encouraged to know that you are at peace with God because
of the work of Christ. And share that good report as
often as you're able with those who do not see it or do not know
it. and with we who know it and see it, who need to be reminded
of it every moment of every day. Remind one another of the gospel
of grace, which is the peace of our soul. Let's pray. We thank
you, Father, for the teaching of your word, Lord, that you
would use sinful lips and sinful minds to teach your word. Father, that you call us friends
You call us children adopted into your family to share your
righteousness, to share your name, and it does not defame
you because you have satisfied your wrath in Jesus Christ. Father, help us not to bog down
in the theologies of these things, but Father, to see the theologies
as the truth that you've revealed to us that we might worship and
live as your people. And Lord, you know more than
I do about the things that I am fearful of and struggle with
and the practices and the disciplines that have often taken precedence
over what is good and true and lovely and wholesome, worthy
of praise. So, Father, teach us all how
to think on these things, to think on those things which are
good and to take not only out of our minds things that are
not fruitful or healthy or eternal, but Lord, take them out of our
mouths and our actions. Help us to remove these things
from our eyes and ears and to encourage one another to do the
same. Not as a way of gaining favor, but Father, as a way of
truly rejoicing and thanking You for Your peace. And we thank You, Lord, that
even when we fail, You are faithful and that we will not be lost
and that we will not fall away. And even when we feel like we
are not even yours, Lord, your spirit will remind us that we
are. And you have brought us to life through the death of
Jesus, through the blood of Jesus. And you have clothed us not with
figs and things made by our own hands. And Lord, you have clothed
us not by things that you have made that we have put on. But
you have clothed us with the righteousness of Jesus Christ
against our very will to bring us to the knowledge of that truth,
to bring us close to you without fail. You will have your way. And so, Lord, grow us in your
sovereignty and your power and for your purposes. In Christ's
name, we pray these things. Amen.