Paul is the author of this letter. Timothy, of course, being a young
mentee or protege of Paul, is an elder in the church of Ephesus. These letters are important for
the church, first and foremost, because it undergirds our faith.
It teaches the elders who they are and what they're supposed
to be doing and how the church is supposed to respond to the
authority of the apostles, as well as it corrects us and teaches
us and disciplines us to be the people God has called us to be.
This is old news, because for everyone who has known me for
any length of time, and very repetitive. I don't change what
I say, I don't change how I say it unless it's necessary, and
sometimes it is necessary. But I'll tell you this, beloved,
the church is not something we do. The church is not a place
we go. Those two little things to say
I go to church and I do this or what have you are two of the
most demonic things that have ever taken place in the context
of Christianity when it comes to the assembly of God. We gather
together as the body of Christ and in doing so we gather together
by the command of Christ and we gather together by the blood
of Christ and we are together by the power of Christ. To say that we just go to church
is to say, well, I'm just gonna see if I can find me a girlfriend
on the side. It's an abomination. But our
culture has created not just false gospels, not just false
Christs, not just all sorts of false iterations and watered
down iterations of theology, but most importantly, and let
me say that again, most importantly, Our culture has established a
false narrative as to who the body of Christ is. Not according
to the scripture, but according to the reasons of man. Beloved, we are a family of faith. Our byline, if you will, 10 years
ago in September, was that we would be a people for His glory,
by His grace. What does that mean? That means,
number one, we are a collective of people, a people of all nations,
tongues and tribes, maturities, economics. A people who some are pretty
and some are not so pretty. A people who are going to be
mature and a people who are going to be infantile, a people who
are going to be walking a manner worthy of Christ and a people
who are going to really mess it up. But we come together. because
we are in covenant with one another. We are in a contract. And that contract is that God
himself called us to be part of a people, of a family, not
an ambiguous invisible. There's no such thing as the
invisible church. in the context of America. Now, theologically,
yes, we know that there is the celestial things that are talked
about in scripture, there's the universal church, and that it
can be known as, in a way, all believers of all time, throughout
all history, forever. However, the very definition
of being a people, an assembly, is that we are locally, collectively,
right now, connected. We're connected. We're together.
That's the point. I don't have an invisible marriage,
you know. I don't have an invisible family.
Man, I got family out there. I got children out there somewhere.
I mean, that's not a positive thing to say. I don't remember where all they
are or who they are. I've not met most of them. I
mean, that's not okay. But yet we've bought the lie
of the enemy. It's a subtle. See, the enemy
doesn't lie boldly. It isn't coming in, there's a
wrong, that's obvious. The obvious that we're not intelligent people.
We're not an intelligent being when it comes to theological
things. We're easily snookered, we're easily snookered, and we're
mostly snookered in trying to spiritualize certain ways of
living and doing things as if they are the very thing that
God wants from us when the scripture says the exact opposite. Paul
writes to Timothy in that regard to make sure that we don't listen
to things that are taught to us that are not according to
Christ. And 80% of what Paul writes is
about how we live and act and speak and think and do and treat
others. There's an assumption in the
context of the apostolic teaching that everybody understands the
simple gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus expresses it in such a
small manner that He says children are the epitome and poster children,
as you will, of what faith should look like. And children who submit
to their daddies and mommies are the poster children, pun
intended, of what the church should look like submitting to
the Lord Jesus. It's simple. It is so simple,
it fights against the grain of our flesh, because our flesh
loves to say, sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty. Oh, but aren't we
little workers behind the scene? Aren't we the ones, like the
men behind the curtain, for those of you who are old enough to
understand the, well, it's not the original, but the one that
we all know is the original Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the
man behind the curtain. You see all this tempest stuff,
and there's this little old ball-headed man back there, oh, pulling levers
and all. We literally live like that as
Christians. We think God is sovereign, but
we know that what we're doing back there in our little sewing
closet is really helping things along. What we're doing back
there in our little keyboards is helping things along. What
we're doing back there in, you know, We're pitting our business
elsewhere. We're not helping God along at
all. And the cool thing about that is because we can't help
God along at all, we can't hinder God at all. So Paul is not writing to Timothy
so that Timothy can work himself to the bone and be exhausted
and stressed out as an elder thinking he's got to manage everything
and everybody to get them to do everything that they're commanded
to do. No, it's very simple. Now why is that the introduction
to this message? Because that's how I have felt
for the last year and a half. Like I'm the little man behind
the curtain making sure that the tempest of God is smoking
and burning and the love of God is expressing. It's not my business. See, some people thought I was
talking about them, right? I'm talking about you talking about
me. I ever, never, ever talk about anybody but me in this
pulpit. And people who charge me that are liars. Or they're
God. Because only God knows my true
heart. So to say what someone else is meaning when they say
the opposite is to be a false witness. And beloved, we lie
all the time. We lie to ourselves, we lie in
our prayers, we lie, we act like, oh God, you've got it. What is
the burden of the believer to rest in the Lord Jesus? So let's go here to this text. We're gonna be in this introduction
chapter, verse two, chapter one, verse two, for the next three
weeks after today. We're gonna still be here because
I want us to rest before we move on. Why? Because we are bent. We are bent in our flesh to get
to these things and when we get to the very nature of Paul's
first commandment to Timothy and to the church that he shepherds,
the churches that he shepherds, we're gonna have a problem if
we're not at peace. Because there's nothing more
American than presenting a problem and then opening up a volunteer
line. We all want to be Isaiah, right?
Send me. You know what? In all my years
of ministry, I have seen many, and I've worked with many different
types of denominations and theological bents. I've seen, I've met people
I didn't even know existed in the cosmos. And now I'm learning
some of their terminology, Things that you would never know, you'd
never know. But almost everybody that I know in the context of
Protestant evangelism, Protestant evangelical type churches, they're
always on mission, and they're always sending somebody or something,
or some money. And that has boiled down the
evangelical life. But yet the New Testament wasn't
written to send people. The New Testament letters were
written to settle a people. To settle you, to sit you still,
to make you stay, and to satisfy your heart in Christ. Now some
of you may not believe that, and that's okay, you don't believe
the Bible. Isn't that dogmatic? But that's true. I'm reading
from what the scriptures teach, I'm showing you. If you just
read the New Testament letters over and over again, you will
see that the instruction to the church as a whole, by and large,
is nearly always sit still and be settled and serve. There's a three-point sermon.
Somebody take that and go get an A. I mean, that's what it's
about. What should you be doing? What
should we be? But yet, the world at large,
we don't even hear about the settled saints who are sitting
still, satisfied in their souls. Look at all those S's. Boy, it's
just coming off like poetry. I need to cut an album. This
is silly, pun intended. We don't hear about that, though,
do we? No, we hear about those radical Christians. Those over-the-top
guys, busting down walls like the Incredible Hulk, or Bobby
the Brain Kenan, or whoever it might be from your wrestling
generation. Coming in like Superman, laser beams flying across the
nations, blowing away hurricanes for the cause of Christ. Who
are those people? It wasn't Paul. 90% of Paul's ministry was done from
prison. Sick. And if it weren't for Luke, God
would have never written. You see what I just did? No. God was going to write those
letters, no matter who it was. And the amazing thing to me is,
I believe historically, according to the writing to Timothy, I
believe that John Mark was the one who actually sat down and
helped get all this stuff done. Finish up these apostolic writings
and get them into the hands of the churches across Asia Minor,
Palestine. Palestine. That's where all this
took place. So here we have this text, we
have this teaching, we have God speaking. And if we don't have
peace at the center of it, if we don't understand peace, I
mean, how many times do we say it? This season, it's become
so cliche, as brother and I were talking through text yesterday
and the day before, it's become so cliche in the Christmas season
that I'm cynical over it sometimes. Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Give me the Grinch, take all
the trees down, burn down the gift packages. You know? Because
it's become cliché. Peace, peace. You want peace? You think it was peaceful for
Mary to be a virgin? A child? A 13-year-old child? You think it was peaceful for
her to be out of wedlock, pregnant? No? You think it was peaceful
for her to go into an unknown territory, ready to give birth,
to be under the commands of God? You think it was peaceful for
Mary to give birth in a basically animal park shelter? You think
it was peaceful that the very fact that she gave birth made
the king want to kill all the children? And that they had to
run and live in Egypt to escape death? Peace on earth? No way. And then all of a sudden, who
were the first evangelists? Gritty, old, nasty, low-life,
thugs, scumbags called shepherds. Now, I've got friends who are
shepherds, and they're not thugs and scumbags. But in the first
century, that's what they were. Hey, y'all, angels told us there
was coming the Messiah. Get away from me. You stink.
These were unclean people, socially unclean. They were not proper. They weren't
the ones to send. They would not have been NAM
approved missionaries. They didn't fit the profile.
Certainly wouldn't have come from Utah. I mean, wouldn't have
happened. No, there was no peace there.
But yet the scripture says there was peace on earth. Why? Because God came to earth in
human flesh. There was not peace in the life
of Jesus, in the ministry of Jesus. There was not peace when
He began to preach. There was not peace at His baptism.
There was not peace at John the Baptist's birth, John the Baptist's
promise. There was no peace there. The
world was not at peace. Israel was enslaved under the
rule of Rome. There was no peace. And yet,
even those who had the oracles of God, who knew the promises
of Meshaic, Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God, to come
to save His people from what? Their sins, not their oppressors,
even though we read that out of Psalm 130 and then Psalm 119
last week. Without the Spirit of God teaching
us the simplistic gospel of grace, we always think fleshly, don't
we? Oh, there's our Messiah. I'm
gonna join his army. I'm gonna be his soldier. What does it mean to be a soldier?
Rest in his power. What did the soldiers of the
exodus look like? It was a tornado of fire. There's a tornado of
smoke. We're hungry. Oh, bread on the
ground. What were the farmers of the exodus? You want some
bread? But what does the flesh do? Comply.
Complains and complains and complains and fusses and bickers and fights
and strife and envy. That's the exact opposite of
peace. The word peace has a lot of different meanings. It's got one focus. It's got
one focus. In Matthew chapter, well, let's
read there. It says, to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace,
mercy, and peace from God the Father and from the anointed
one of God, Jesus, who is our Lord. So the first thing we need
to understand about true peace is that there is no such thing
as peace except that which God ordains. except that which the gospel
guarantees, not provides, guarantees. I have to be careful. See, we
have to be careful with our words. Peace. In Matthew 11, it's a lot in
there. Matthew 11, maybe I'll preach
out of Matthew sometime in the next few years, the whole thing.
Starting in verse 25, Jesus is praying to the Father. He says,
I thank you, Father, the Lord of heaven and the Lord of earth.
You know, Jesus is our Lord. He is our God. He is from heaven,
okay? There's theological things there.
Jesus is God in all ways, at all times, eternally. He prays, the Lord of heaven
and earth, I thank you, Father, that you have hidden these things. Now, what is he hidden? The understanding that is taught very simply in
a toddler-like expression of Jesus' parables. A toddler-like. I grew up with
a book, I've still got it somewhere, but it's Aesop's Fables. and
we found a reprint and bought it for my youngest daughter,
and some of those things scare her. But she gets the point,
you see. And when Jesus taught in parables,
children could get the point of the teaching. But adults sometimes
don't get the point of child stories, do they? So unless we
are born again as a child by the Spirit, we won't get the
point of the teaching of the gospel. We'll apply it and apprehend
it in a way that manifests our ability to apply it. And then we'll mess it up. So
Jesus says, I thank you that you have hidden these things
from the wise and from the understanding and have revealed these truths
of who I am and what I came to accomplish to them, to the little
children. Because then he says in verse
26 of Matthew 11, yes, father, for such was your gracious will. I want you to think about that
for a second. To have the peace of the Lord,
does not mean that you have put together propositions to the
place that you're at, you're okay with it. And that you have
a sodded list of supplies, theological supplies, that will establish
some hope in you. The gospel, peace, is a supernatural
work. And when our flesh is opposing
the simple gospel, As believers, as converted, as regenerate children
of God, our flesh opposes the God. You know that, right? Sometimes
I say that. I'm not lost. Nobody said you
were, but if I said you were, all you have to do is proclaim
the finished work of Christ and say, this is what I trust in.
Well, praise God, me too. We're all together. Just share
your testimony. Share the testimony of Christ,
you see. But no, the gospel that We oppose
sometimes is our only salvation, but our flesh wants to rise against
it. That is the point of the church together in a settled
way. We are supposed to come together and the overseers are
supposed to take care of making sure that the sheep follow the
instructions of the commands of God found in the scripture
and obey it so that we don't go off the cliff trying to make
things work out in our own power. That's what it's about. That's all that church is. That's
all the assembly is. And then as we're going along,
keeping the peace together, obeying the commands of God's word, then
we meet each other's needs along the way. And quite honestly,
we create some real intimate friendships. Until something
we don't like steps up underneath our toes. I was eating some salmon
the other day. I've never in my life had a piece
of good salmon that had had a bone in it. But there was a bone in
one of the things of salmon. I'm just eating. And I eat salmon
very slowly. I just love it. Well, that little,
teeny, tiny, little flexible bone went right up my gum line. And that disrupted my meal, y'all.
I got like a self-induced root canal all of a sudden. And it
didn't matter how the flavor of that meat tasted, how awesome
the meal was, and how what a wonderful cook my wife is, and all these
things, all these things that I was thinking about, how, you
know, this is awesome, and she loves me so much. All that went
out the window. I didn't care. I didn't taste
it anymore. The pleasantries were gone, you
know. And I've got enough cooth to
not throw the food in the... Move it over, and then I'm like,
I gotta dismiss myself. And I mean, it was painful. That's
what happens. When things are good, you know,
we act like children, we live like children, we're getting
together, but if somebody says something we don't like, or does
something we don't like, or snatches our toy from us, sometimes we
get upset. And the sweetness and the savoriness of the unity
we have in Christ sometimes wanes and it becomes sour and then
we got bones in our gums. And we in our flesh then try
to say, well, we going to fix this. And then we hire geneticists
to try to debone salmon from birth. I want an egg. I want something
I want to I want to sell. that salmon will come from from
now on, and I want them to be like jellyfish. I mean, could
you imagine? That's what we do. That's what
we do. And we're not resting in the sufficiency of what God
has given us, and we're not at peace. We're not at peace, beloved.
And when we're not at peace, listen to me, when we're not
at peace, Scripture says we're in sin. Now, what is it like to sin willfully? It's horrible. And we all do
it. What is it like to discover we
have sinned willfully but unbeknownst to us until we get through with
the little fit? You know? That's me. That's why I try to
stay quiet. That's my M.O. Don't say nothing. Because what's in my mouth that
comes out is going to hurt. You see? I'm a murderer at heart. I've told you all that for years.
I'm not lying, I'm not joking. I'd just as soon cut somebody
down and make them cry in the corner and walk off smiling.
And you think, oh Lord, is he even born again? You better believe
it. And some of us would walk around,
you know, I would never treat anybody that way. You know, I would get
to heaven by not doing it either. The only way we have eternal life
is in the finished work of Christ, you see. And there's going to
be a lot of fits, and there's going to be a lot of errors,
and there's going to be a lot of problems. Through the years, there's going to be
a lot of bones in our gums. But beloved, the peace that we're looking
for is not found in deboning. It's not found in getting along. It's not found in anywhere but
Christ, who died on the cross to save us from our sins by substituting
himself under the righteous, justice, wrath of God. That is
the good report. Let's stop calling it the gospel,
because that too has become cliche. So as a people, we are to be
about keeping the peace at all costs. And when we get people
who don't want to keep the peace, what have we talked about? What
is the scripture talked about? We set them at arm's length and
we have nothing else to do with them until they learn to stop
making noise. Peace. The word peace, if you
look, if you do a word study of the word peace in any translation,
Hebrew, Greek, I don't do a lot of Hebrew stuff because Jesus'
Bible was Greek, it's good enough for me. And you know, sorry, the Hebrew scholar in
the room, sorry. But you know, I mean, it's one
of those things that, You can learn a lot just by looking at
the different definitions of the words, but I'll tell you,
when you look at the definitions of the Hebrew and the Greek usage
of the word peace in the Bible, you find it's all about the same. There's one that I like the most,
it says to be quiet. Peace defined as quietness. Another
one is be still. This is about children's ministry
examples, right? Be quiet, be still, the peace
of God, right? Is that not the peace of God
when the kids go to bed? Is that not the peace of God when the
relatives leave? Is it not the peace of God when everybody,
you know what I'm saying? I mean, noise, noise, noise, noise, noise.
Shh. Oh. You love it, but you love it
also when it goes away, right? Harmony, being in tune, being
at one, being free from disputes, peace, to be satisfied, to be
complete, to know joy, to be well, to be
settled, tranquility. And most of all, I can point
every one of these things to the picture of Sabbath, rest. And that's what peace is, rest. I'm not talking about tired,
I'm talking about rest. about not waking up after 10
hours, if you could ever sleep that long, and go, I'm exhausted. I'm talking about rest. I'm talking
about all things are well. We sing the song sometimes in
here, right, in our worship. It is well with our soul. I don't care anything about who
the man is. I know his story. It doesn't
matter who he is. What matters is is that that
song, if understood according to the gospel, is true. When
we are at peace, when the gospel is working in our hearts, I'm
not talking about unto regeneration, we believe. No letter in the
New Testament is taught to unconverted people so that they can live
like Jesus wants us to. It's people who are in the faith,
and who are in the faith, the burdens and the commands of God
are not a burden. We've already been through that
in John's epistles. So those who refuse the instruction of
the simple, living, peaceable teaching of the letters are to
be considered unbelievers in our relationship with them. But the very fact that all the
letters are written because of discord and things not being
well and people not resting, it stands to reason that there's
going to be that same kind of stuff with us. It just compounds. The poor straw
that breaks the camel's back, it's not its fault. It's all
the other thousand straws on top of it, underneath it. That's
it. I can't do another. I can't take
another thing. So we take it all out on that
one. But beloved, I'll be honest with you. I think a lot of times
when our faith is waning and we are sitting in a place of
unrest and we are distraught and we are in strife in our own
spirit is because we aren't looking at the root, but we're looking
at the very top of the cherry on top of the look at the stem
on top of that Sunday. But the problem is the floor
that the table sitting on is weak. And the whole thing is collapsing,
not because of this issue or that person or this idea or this
politic or this disease or whatever it may be or whatever. It doesn't
matter. The reason that it happens is
because we aren't looking at Christ. And we aren't resting
in him. We're looking to try to find
Jesus as a housekeeper who will set our bed straight rather than
being the very place we lay. The opposite of peace is discord,
war, strife, worry, anger. And I think there's one specific
thing that is the root of all these things, and that is fear.
I think anger and hate and worry and anxiety, I think it all roots
from fear. What is it that the messengers
of God told the angels, told the shepherds on the day of Christ's
birth? Peace. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. You have nothing
to fear. See, beloved, we have been given
to Christ. We have nothing to fear. We cannot be separated
from the love of God. We cannot be separated from His
power. We cannot be separated from His promises. We cannot
separate ourselves from God's love. We cannot separate ourselves
from Christ. We can act like the devil and live like the devil
and hate like the devil and kill like the devil, but we cannot
escape His mercy. And the Word of God, by the Spirit,
instructs us and we rest. And it's a daily thing. How much pondering do we do in
our own heads? How many conversations do we
have? Remember, I talk about myself almost every time I talk
about these things. This is my self-therapy. I can't
read your minds as much as many of you think I can. You been
listening to my conversation? I mean, no, I haven't. I don't
have time to listen to my own head, much less yours. What we
do, we talk to ourselves, we ponder, we think about things.
Or we escape from them by finding something else to entertain us
to take our mind off of those things when what we really should
be doing is praying instead of pondering. Worshipping instead
of worrying. Being satisfied in Christ and
being settled so that we can rejoice instead of looking for
something that God has not promised. God has not promised. Because
as much as we want to talk about peace, and we'll talk about this
over the next few weeks, Jesus even says out of his own mouth,
and I quote, I did not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword.
What does he mean by that? Did Jesus come to cause strife
against the believers and the unbelievers? but those who are believers will
listen to his command and follow his prescription on how strife
is dealt with, and then you'll be at peace in the midst of the
strife. It's the craziest thing. It's insanity. I'll be honest
with you guys. People who are unconverted, especially experts
in the field of psychology, they hear me say these things. They
hear believers say this type of stuff, and they go, this is
wacko. You gotta remove yourself from the toxin. You got to suck
it out, spit it on the ground. You got to get away. And that's
not a bad prescription. Does the scripture not say that?
Warn the man once, warning twice, and then have nothing else to
do with it. When people refuse to stop and
rest and trust, they can't play. And that's what Paul's letter
is about. That's what this letter is about.
There were people teaching some trash to the church of Ephesus. Settling their peace. There were
people, like when James wrote his letter, there were people
who were very egotistical. And in that particular occasion,
wealthy people who hated poor people. Sound familiar? Politicians. They don't deserve to eat. I
don't get my job as CEO, because there's only a few of those around. Not everybody can be CEO. But the scripture's written,
and the church listens. The assembly listens. The assembly
loves. What if these persons aren't
my brothers or sisters? Well, you've got to love them anyway. It doesn't
exclude you from serving the very ones who are. in the context
of the assembly that God has commanded you by divine command
to be a part of. Of course, we believe the right gospel.
As a church, as a congregation, as the elders of the church here
at Grace Truth, we hold to the truth of Christ. Peace is also understood as Doing
what aligns with the senses of resting and tranquility and quietness
and calmness and unity and harmony. Doing what this requires. And knowing what is true of these
things. Back to Matthew 11. I lost my
train of thought there. Here we go. Back to Matthew 11.
I thank you that you have shown these, as it is your will, these
children, not to the wise, not to the intelligent, not to the
understanding, but reveal them to little children for such was
your gracious will. See, the grace of God is to give
the truth of his sovereignty and his sufficiency and his power
to those who aren't looking to figure it out on their own. Now what does that mean? That
means to be born again is to be granted faith. Gifted faith. How is that? Through the granting
of repentance. Repentance, nine times out of
ten, does not come with a list of things that are obvious. To say someone must know they
are deeply a sinner is ridiculous. Because that means that that's
the magic witchery. and the wizardry and the devilish stuff that they
must speak with their mouths in order to be born again. So
that our words and our comprehension or God putting a thought in our
head, that's the magic beans that we get to the giant up there
and get the gold, the geese, the gaze, the golden egg, which
is Jesus. It's all on us. It's all just Arminianism repackaged. Baloney. Those same people that
would think that don't think a child can be converted so that
every child that dies is under condemnation. And the Bible doesn't
say that either. The Bible also doesn't say every
child that dies is not under condemnation. It's nonsense. Repentance is
a change of disposition. A change of mind, that's all
it means. It has nothing to do with stopping
sin or knowing that what you used to do is wrong and now what
you're going to do is right. That's man's work. That's a devilish
humanism that comes straight out of the mouth of all the false
prophets. Repentance is God's power causing you to receive
faith in His promises. That's it. Just that simple,
beloved. How can I be born again? You
can't. You say, you can't. God must birth you in him. But that repentance grows and
understands. Billy Bob at the gas station
that you've always got your hot dog from in the mornings when
you were in high school has been telling you the last few days
when you talked to him about being born again and knowing
that Christ is your hope for eternal life and that He saved
you from your sins by dying in your place and that your righteousness
is His righteousness only. All these little things, those
words are hardly ever in the mouth of a new believer because
they haven't learned them. And then Billy Bob says, hey,
yeah, man, Jesus this and Jesus that. And the Bible says this
and the Bible says that. And on the way to school, you
might think, wow, I never thought about that. And then the Spirit
of God, through the word, when the occasion fits, as God has
deemed necessary, will teach you differently. And you'll go,
oh, no, the Bible's correct. Billy Bob's crazy. Wolves love to eat sheep. You know what that taste is?
You know what the taste of sheep blood is? Discord. Because in order to taste the
blood, you gotta sever the skin. In order to get to the one, you
gotta take them away from the flock. And beloved, that's what
they do. That's the purpose of this letter.
I'm telling you, this is what it's about. Peace is resting in every situation,
in every circumstance, in the power of Christ and His purposes
and His command and His Word, knowing that even though it seems
really ridiculous that we're flying at 700 miles an hour over
toward a cliff with dragons and fire and everything else on the
end of it. It's not like on a boat that we might survive in the
water. No, we're going to die when we go over that cliff and
we're going 700 miles an hour. And the Bible says, just sit
still, take your hand off the steering wheel and just rest.
I got this. Just rest. Here's what I told you you should
do. Do these things and rest. It's counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive. And we
see this illustration even in the life of Jesus and the apostles
when he appeared to them in the boat. And he teleported the boat
three and a half miles to Capernaum in John chapter 6. He stepped
into the boat and immediately they were on dry land. They were
halfway there, immediately on dry land. Boom! There you go. Teleportation. That is not a Star Trek invention.
That's a Jesus thing. And they were at peace. Or when
Jesus was asleep in the boat, and the tempest and the storm and
everything was about to devour them, and they're scared to death,
and they're doing what they should do as good sailors, making sure
that they do all that is required to keep them afloat, and the
only thing that's gonna keep them afloat is the peace of God,
who is asleep at peace, at rest, in the bottom of the boat. And
I guarantee you, if we were able to sit down and talk with the
disciples, they would honestly have to admit, we were livid
with Jesus. He wasn't helping us keep this
boat afloat. We're up here trying to save
everybody, and he's sleeping. What a lazy guy, you know? Of course, this is just funny
conjecture, but I guarantee you the flesh of man 2,000 years
ago is no different than today. It's just now we've got the internet instead of the camel net. And Jesus wakes up and says,
oh my goodness, you don't even have a little teeny faith. You
got no little faith? Where's your faith? And Jesus
goes, shh. Be quiet. That's what he said.
To the what? To the sea. Shh. That's what I would have done.
Shh. I'd have snapped. And everything would have went,
I even made the sun come up. I'm going back to bed. Do y'all
think I can handle it from here? I've had it the whole time. You think
you can handle it from here? I mean, we can't handle it. We can't
handle it from here, we can't handle it from there, we can't
handle it from anywhere. Dr. Seuss, here we go. We can't handle it. Somebody
write that book. That'd be a good children's book.
That'd be a good theological primer. You can't handle it here,
you can't handle it there, you can't handle it anywhere. God
has to handle it. Or green eggs and hams are gonna be your least
of your problems. You can't handle it. God has
it. He has it. He has your salvation.
He has your redemption. He has your faith. He has your
repentance. He has your growth. He has your maturity. And when
he is going to work these things in you. It is when you will be
willing to submit to his word. By his spirit, and he will cause
all things to work together, you know, you can be frustrated
with somebody in the church, but you can't be frustrated with
everybody in the church. And I've heard it happen. I've
seen people get upset with a teenage child in a house of ten and divorce
their spouse because of the child. Doesn't make any sense. That's
what Christians do. Because they're not at peace. And they're trying hard to get
everybody on their side to pull that steering wheel away from
that cliff when what they don't realize is that What we don't
see is what God has promised. We're not in a boat. We're not
in a car. We're not in a plane. We're just
going to fly right over to the other side. We're just going
to go higher. We're going to be okay. But if
it is God's will that we are destroyed in the end, then we
get eternal life for to live as Christ, but to die is far
much better, Paul says. All things have been handed over
to me by the Father, Jesus says, Matthew 11, 26, 27. And no one knows the Son except
the Father. And no one knows the Father except
the Son. And no one knows the Father except
to those the Son chooses to reveal Him. I want you to see that. So there's two possibilities
when we as Christians are in a swivet, as the great grands
used to always say. You're in a swivet. I don't even
know what that means. It's what they used to say. What's
a swivet? I don't know. Let's make them. Is that we don't know the gospel. We don't know the good report
of Christ. We don't understand His sovereignty. Because we've
never been shown or we're immature. We're immature. And while we may be mature in
a lot of ways, all my children, they have maturity in a lot of
ways. I mean, a lot of things. And
some of them, none of them all in everything equally, but some
of them make good choices about money, some of them make good
choices about what they do with their studies. Some of them make
good choices about what they do here or there. But then all
of them have horrible choices and very little maturity in other
areas, just like me. You see? And it's funny, you
know, now as a grandfather, I'm going, I have so much to say. Oh, but I'll just be at peace. You know? That's my mom laughing
out loud over there. Told you so. Go ahead and say
it. Yeah. That's right. When your children leave the
house and they grow up, they become adults, and yay, you're
going to do exactly what I want, right? No. You're going to do everything right,
right? You know? And one of my children had the wisdom to go,
did you? I'm like, touche. I'll take the mark. I don't want to go, you know.
No, you're right. We're going to mature at different
times, in different ways, in different places. But ego and
fear and all this stuff, it just drives us to the level of insanity
to where we actually forget what we're looking at. So the other
part of that is that we're just not mature in certain things.
How do we grow in certain areas of life when we experience them
for the first time? I mean, I remember being five years married, a pastor,
counseling people of 20 years in marriage. You know how stupid
that is? If any of you ever find yourself
in that position, call a friend for help. Someone who's been
there. That's why the plurality of elders
is so important. Generationally different. Experientially
different. Giftedness difference. Because I'm pretty solid on like
half percent of the things that I am and know, but the other
99.5% of the things I'm just figuring out. And if I don't
have you helping me, we're all going off the cliff. And we're not at peace. How can
I have peace? I practice the discipline of
peace by the mercies of God because I have been through pardon, hell,
many times over. I've been through a lot of pain.
And I look at it and I go, I wasn't that bad. And the Lord said,
just wait. And we think we know what we're
going to do in this circumstance because we've been through this
circumstance, but until we go here, until we have this pop
up against us, we're not going to see just how immature we may
be in this circumstance. And I'll tell you, when it comes
to your children, you'll lose your ever-loving mind. I don't
even know what that ever-loving means either. That's just an
old thing that's always been said. Country folks, we're probably
cursing the wind, but don't even know it. You have no idea? I mean, I'll
get a free prison ministry if somebody hurts my kids from the
inside, you know? And I know that. I know that.
But by the mercy of God, maybe he'll give me the grace to stay
humble and at peace. What is it that we're going through
this morning? The elder's job is to help shepherd
the church in times of conflict, in times of peace. We're always
supposed to be looking to try to make sure that your joy is
complete. How is your joy going to be complete, beloved? It's
to rest in the sufficiency of the gospel, of the good report
of Jesus Christ and the power of God and His promises so that
we are at one with Him, not only redemptively through what He's
done and accomplished, but also relationally in our hearts and
minds so that we can look at others and say, wow, okay, this
is not my burden. But yet we're taught, I've preached
from this very pulpit many times, you gotta bear one another's
burden, bear one another's burden, bear one another's burden. Well,
beloved, to me, and I've been going through this, to me, burden
and peace are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Are they not? But they shouldn't
be. God commands me to be in joy. God commands me to be at rest.
God commands me by His authority and His promises to be okay. It is well in my soul. But He
also commands me to carry your burdens. Here's the problem.
The Old Hymn tells us how to do it. We carry the burdens in
prayer to the Father. We carry the burdens then to
the scripture and go, I can't help you, but listen to what
the joy of the Lord says according to his promises. He's not going to take these
circumstances away from you probably, but he will cause you to rest
in the midst of them. See, that's the burden. And beloved,
I've sinned many times over in many circumstances thinking that
I had to not carry them to the Lord, but counsel them to resolution? The Bible says do this, I did
that. Why isn't it resolved? The Bible says say this, I said
that. Why isn't it fixed? I must do more. The Lord's out
here and I'm looking for that curtain. Steamroller, tight,
tight, you know? It's just back to the nonsense.
It's back to the insanity. It's not peace. Christ has revealed
the Father to us so we are at peace with God. We're at peace
with Him. And Jesus says, and this is the
whole point of this sermon, verse 28 of Matthew 11, 28. For those
to whom the Father has been revealed by the Son, the Son is known. And Jesus says something. He
says, come to me. Now, is this an invitation for
salvation? No. This is to his sheep, these are
to those who know he is their shepherd, to know that, no, he
is their savior, that no, he has borne them anew and bought
them in his blood. We are the body of Christ. He
says to his body, to his sheep. to the children of God, he says,
come to me, all who labor, work hard and
heavy, and are heavy laden, who have
burdens on their backs that they're carrying, come to me, and I will give you rest. Now,
is that evangelistic? You better believe it, it's a
good report. Should we share that with the lost? Absolutely.
But we need to help them understand it's not their work of getting
to Christ that causes the rest. It is Christ's work that came
to us. And if they believe it, then
God has established faith in them, that God the Father has
permitted them and granted them by the Spirit to see and to rest.
And then we grow and to teach these people. And yes, a majority
of people who profess to believe this end up falling away and
finding another way that seems suitable to their flesh. But
beloved, for the sheep of Christ, they will not fall away, even
though they may step in a lot of holes along the way. And we
have to trust in that. It's not in our timing, it's
in God's timing. He will bring His people back around in His
way. And then verse 29, 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." What is it Jesus is saying without
having to go into another hour? Jesus is saying, listen, I'll
carry you where you're going. Because on my back and in my
body I have bore your sins and the wrath of the Father, and
I am carrying it for you." What is that we learn from him?
How do we learn? The mind of Christ in Philippians
4. Though he was God, in all ways equal with God, he did not
take his divine self, something to be bragged upon. As the old King James said, thought
it not robbery. He did not brag upon the fact
he was God. He always pointed to the Father.
But he gave himself up as a slave, obedient to death on a cross.
Why? To satisfy the wrath of righteousness,
the wrath of justice, the wrath of God for his people. So he took the great burden And
now we rest in Him. So in the midst of all these
circumstances, first and foremost, even when we have a lot of work
ahead of us, and we do have a lot of burdens to carry, and we do
have a lot of angst and stress and stuff that we're going to
have to be confronted with, beloved, the worst thing we could do is
to pretend as though Christ hasn't carried the greater burden. and to forget that He has carried
this burden and that the consequences of sin in and of itself is death,
we will not answer that because He answered that. He paid for
that. But this world we live in and
the flesh that we are in, it will die because of sin. Relationships will die because
of sin. Churches will fall apart because
of sin. But even in the midst of it all,
Christ carries it. He carries it. We learned in Genesis 3 about
enmity. It's the opposite of peace. We
learned in John 1, as John the Baptist would proclaim when he
saw Jesus walking, he says, Behold, the Lamb of God. that takes away
the sins of the world. That's not a message of peace
to unconverted ears. There's nothing peaceful about
slaughter. I want you to get it. Christmas is too fluffy as
a holiday. From the cradle to the cross,
he didn't come for the cradle, he came for the cross. He came to be a bloody sacrifice,
an object of wrath, yet righteous in all ways. He came to be crushed
and pummeled and destroyed and executed for the sake of our
sins and our debt to the righteous Father. And the unconverted mind
goes, that's awful. The Lamb of God takes away the
sins of the world. In John 3, Jesus alludes to Moses
in Genesis 11, I believe. When he's talking to Nicodemus,
and Nicodemus is zealous, and he loves the Father, and he loves
the promise of Messiah, and he's teaching, but he's not born again. He loves the doctrine of Scripture,
but not the object of Scripture. And there's a huge difference,
because only God, the Spirit, can cause us to sit and settle
and rest. Moses, as Jesus would say, Nicodemus,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. So the son
of man must be lifted up. That whoever believes in him
may have eternal life, for God loved the world in this way,
that he gave his son the only one that he had. that whoever
is believing in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world that it may be
condemned, but in order that the world might be saved through
Him. Whoever is believing in Him is not condemned, but whoever
is not believing in Him is condemned already because he is not believing
in the name of the only Son of God. Beloved, the only true peace
that we'll ever have that will ever overcome all these
other things is the peace of Christ. And Paul would teach the Philippians,
he said, that peace that surpasses all understanding, all understanding. What does that mean? That means
you can't put your finger on it and academically express it
in such a way to cause other people to see the point. But
do we just proclaim it over and over again? Imagine this now,
Paul's writing to Timothy and all he says there is grace, mercy
and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. And that was sufficient for Timothy
to be settled in his spirit. And Timothy was not in a peaceful
situation. There was a lot of strife. We,
a lot of us have been in churches, congregations, have been gathered
together with people. We've seen some dark evils and
some hatred and some things that never would resolve because people
refuse it. We ain't seen nothing. And we've
had our fair share of sins amongst us in the last decade, but we've
seen nothing. We've seen nothing compared to
what other people have seen. We've seen nothing compared to
what Timothy had to deal with. Can you imagine a barrage of
false teachers coming in every week from outside and hundreds
of people walking around and purveying heresies? Going into
people's homes and calling them on the phone and getting online
and start talking about other people. Could you imagine that?
Every day? For years and years and years
to the point when to be a Christian, the word Christian was a pejorative
term that means it was a mockery. Christ follower. It was a joke. That's where the
term came from. It was a stab at the people who
believed. Could you imagine? Could you imagine your livelihood
being threatened because of wickedness in the world? Could you imagine
relationships deteriorating because people just cannot leave well
enough alone and they want to be God's warriors and in their
own minds they're doing exactly what God wants them to do, yet
it is exactly the opposite of what the scriptures told them
to do. And it upsets people. And yes, we've experienced tastes
of that. And some of us more so than others. And we can say,
oh yeah, I've been there. But nothing like they had in
the first century. Nothing like they've had in other
cultures and other countries. Yet in all the turmoil that was
going on in the midst of Ephesus and Timothy, this boy, who's
not qualified to even build a house probably, is now one of the chief
elders of a large city. And it wasn't this church and
that church. All the believers in the city were his to see,
oversee. Within the population of the
borders of that governance, he's the pastor, one of many. And yet that phrase was enough
to settle Timothy's heart. But then Paul did say, you can
try some wine. It's OK to try some wine because you've got
an ulcer. It might help you. It's medicine. Peace from God, the father and
Jesus Christ, our Lord, peace, peace, we have peace. With righteousness, because forgiveness
is finished. We have peace within our own
hearts and minds because our souls are satisfied in Christ.
And as long as we keep with the teaching of our Lord in the Word
of God, we will be able to be settled in the midst of the good
report of the gospel, no matter how bad it is. And we also have
peace amongst friends. The gospel unifies. And if possible,
as long as it is up to us, we can call for peace amongst enemies.
amongst the government, amongst those who hate the gospel. And
there's a lot to be taught there. But, beloved, we are satisfied
and well because of the blood of Christ. And that is our hope. That is what the world's been
singing for the last, well, since Halloween, since All Saints'
Eve, All Holy Night. That's what the world's been
singing, peace on earth, goodwill toward men. But yet much of the
world does not know it. But we know it because God has
revealed it to us through His Word and by His Spirit we have
come to a place of rest. Now we must grow and learn and
discern, not just the doctrines of Christ and the things that
we know to be true and to affirm them, but to expose in our own
hearts and our own households things that oppose them so that
we as a body, as we come together, are purified in our relationships,
in our understanding, in our knowledge. And we mature and
we grow into an understanding of what it is that is required
of us and we do so and we gather together all on the same plane
because we are reminded of the blood of Christ that purchased
us out of death. And that's why we take this little
tiny reminder every single week about the Lord's blood and body
being destroyed for us. So let's prepare our hearts to,
as a body, remember the peace of God that comes through Jesus
Christ. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for this
wonderful time of worship. I thank you, Lord, for your mercy
in my life and in my heart and mind. And father, I pray that
all of us as a family are experiencing that same grace. Or by your grace, we have been
saved and by grace you keep us and by grace you comfort us and
by grace. You grow us. And father, we are humbled. And we do not know what you have
for us tomorrow. We don't know what other things may come along
to disrupt our peace. But we know that nothing can
disrupt the peace that you've established in the body of Christ
for us. Nothing can separate us from you. So, Father, in the simple way
that you've instructed us in your word, Lord, I pray that
by your power, Lord, that you would cause us, that you would
cause us supernaturally, powerfully, to remember the good report.
to remember who Christ is and what he accomplished, to remember
that we are yours and nothing can change that. And Father, no matter what heresy,
Father, no matter what enemy, no matter what emotion may invade
that peace, Father, we pray that you would keep us focused on
this. that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. And Father, we are unworthy to
be counted in the number of saints. But yet, that's what your love
is all about. To love us because of who you
are, not because of who we are. But in that, we also rejoice
because we are your beloved. And while we were enemies, you
bought us. And in your time, you will secure us by faith in
the true gospel. And the true doctrine of Jesus
Christ, our Lord. In his name, we pray. Amen. Let's
prepare our hearts.