“Advent: Peace” (John 14:15-27) | 12/15/19
John 14:15-27 | 12/15/19 | Will DuVal
But TODAY, let’s talk about PEACE. ☺ Does it strike anyone else as IRONIC that we celebrating PEACE this morning? Not just in light of the current news cycle – the impeachment hearings, North Korea threatening to send us a “gift” – how about just the Christmas season in general?! Certainly of the 4 traditional Advent themes we’re examining in our series – “Tis the Season” – peace HAS GOT to be the most debatable, right? Sure, it “tis the season” for HOPE. We remember with HOPEFUL anticipation the birth of our Savior, Jesus. “Tis the Season” for JOY. Even the secular world recognizes “it’s most wonderful time of the year... the hap-happiest season of all”; Even the Scrooges out there can’t argue with a week off work and presents under the tree – Christmas is a time of JOY. And most of all, “Tis the Season” for LOVE. 1 John 3:16 says “By this we know love, that Jesus laid down his life for us”. And that all STARTED with His loving CHOICE to lay down his perfect life in HEAVEN to come be with us – GOD with us, Immanuel – on that blessed Christmas day 2,000 years ago. Christmas is ALL about LOVE.
But PEACE?! Be honest: who here, if we played a game of “Word Association” and I said “Christmas”, the first thing that comes to your mind is “PEACE”?! I don’t know about y’all, but I checked our family calendar and we literally have something scheduled ELEVEN of the fourteen days leading up to Christmas. It’s lots of FUN. Plenty of JOY. But PEACE?!
Some of us would KILL for just a little peace, wouldn’t we? ☺ John MacArthur quips: “People talk about trying to find peace and quiet, or trying to make peace, or law enforcement trying to keep the peace, or global arbitrators trying to establish peace, until we finally rest in peace.” (“Supernatural Peace”, sermon on May 10, 2015) We stress ourselves out... in pursuit of PEACE, and often in vain. Peace seems to allude us.
And as the video explained, TRUE peace, biblical peace, isn’t just “the absence of war and hostility”, as Webster defines it. Scripture’s bar is set much higher. SHALOM means “wholeness”. Completeness. Things are right, they are just as they should be. And this concept of shalom is SUCH a dominant biblical theme, that we could really use it tell the entire STORY of the Bible. See, for all its complexities and “tough texts”, the Bible is really just a story. God’s story. Told in 5 chapters. We might title them:
-Chapter 1: “Shalom Created”
-Chapter 2: “Shalom Destroyed”
-Chapter 3: “Shalom Recovered”
-Chapter 4: “Shalom Perfected”
-and Chapter 5: “Shalom Secured”
-
And the Bible’s not just God’s story; it is OUR story as well. Each of us has 4 basic relationships that define our life:
-There’s your relationship with YOURSELF.
-Your relationship with OTHERS.
-Your relationship to the WORLD.
-And most importantly, your relationship with GOD.
-Self, others, world, God
We’re gonna study the Book of Genesis together in 2020, but let’s just briefly examine how each of those 4 relationships is depicted in the opening chapters of the human story:
“In the beginning, God CREATED.” And He created ORDERLY, intentionally, completely, things just as they should be. Shalom. God says it was: “Good”. “towb”. And on the SIXTH day, his culminating masterpiece: humankind, is “meod towb” - “VERY good”. And shalom characterized all 4 of our relationships:
-Our relationship with Self: “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (2:25) Oh to get back THERE! That’s the most beautiful verse in the Bible. THAT is shalom! THAT’S what we’re all after, isn’t it? To be fully known, laid BARE before the world, and yet, NO shame. NOTHING to hide. Fully loved and accepted.
-How about our relationship with One Another: “the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh... Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (2:23-24) Perfect unity. 2 halves that complete one another. Wholeness. Shalom.
-Relationship to the World?: “God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over... the earth.”” (1:28) They have dominion. The created order ANSWERS to them. There is order, shalom. And finally,
-with God?: “the Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool[c] of the day” (3:8) – Picture that, God used to just come take strolls with Adam and Eve through this perfect Garden. Talk about PEACE! Could life get any better?!
But in just one verse, one decision, one bite, ALL that shalom came crashing down around them; ch3 v6: “the woman took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” They disobeyed God’s 1 rule.
And thus opens Chapter 2: “Shalom Destroyed”.
-Self: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” (3:7) Hiding. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Insecurity.
-Others: What happens to the perfect, harmonious, 2-become-1 relationship between Adam & Eve as soon as sin enters the picture? vv12-13: “The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” ...The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”” Finger-pointing. Blame-shifting. Division. Resentment. v16: “[A woman’s] desire shall be contrary to[f] your husband, but he shall rule over you.”” Conflict. Animosity. The birth of BOTH feminist discontentment and masculine chauvinism.
-World: “cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread” (vv17-19) Now instead of working FOR Adam, the created order is pitted AGAINST him. Man VERSUS Wild. “Naked and Afraid” – ALL the survival shows on TV were based on Genesis 3! ☺
-God: Finally, and most tragically, the loss of shalom with GOD. v23: “the Lord God sent them out from the garden of Eden”. Shalom... LOST.
But not forever. Because in Chapter 3 of God’s story – Shalom RECOVERED, and throughout the REST of the Old Testament – God raises up a remnant of faithful followers - Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets... - through whom He will bless and ultimately RESCUE all nations. And God promised that this mission to RESTORE shalom to all the earth would CLIMAX in chapter FOUR, with His sending a Messiah. Literally, the “Chosen One”. The One who would one day right EVERY wrong, straighten EVERY crooked path. He would be called the “prince of shalom” (Isa 9:6), and he would restore shalom to all FOUR relationships:
-Self: Through him, a once-ashamed people would now have “no condemnation” (Rom 8:1). No guilt. A once-enslaved people would be “set free from [our bondage in] sin” (Rom 6:18). No more shackles.
-Others: Through him, “you who once were far off [would be] brought near by the blood of the Chosen One. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both [in context, that’s Jew AND Gentile; what had formerly served as the central DIVIDING line between humanity: insider vs. outsider; clean vs. corrupt; chosen BY God vs. estranged from Him; NOW, the Messiah has made us both...] one... so making peace.” (Eph 2:13-15) And from a 1st c. Jewish perspective, if this Messiah can reconcile Jews and Gentiles, he can restore shalom to ANY relationship: “There is now neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all now one.” (Galatians 3:28)
-World: He would restore shalom not just to humanity, but to the whole WORLD: Romans 8:21 - “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption”; because Colossians 1: “For in him [this Messiah] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace [HOW? reconciled HOW?] by the blood of his cross.”” (vv19-20)
-God: Which leads us to our fourth and most important relationship: with God. This promised Messiah would “reconcile us to God [HOW?] in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. [See, there was “hostility”, a LACK of peace and shalom, that characterized not only our interpersonal relationships with one another, Jew and Gentile, male and female... but more importantly, between a perfect, holy God and sinful, fallen humans. HOSTILITY. Romans 1 speaks of God’s WRATH against sin. Romans 8 says “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God”. So there was HOSTILITY running in BOTH directions: In our sin, we hated God, and GOD hated our sin. And YET, v17...] 17 And he [the Messiah] came and preached peace... For through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.”” (Eph 2:16-18) Reconciliation. Relationship with God REPAIRED. Shalom with God RESTORED.
Romans 5:1 says “we[a] [now] have peace with God [...through WHOM? Who could ACCOMPLISH such a thing?!] through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I’ve got TWO main points this morning, and that’s the first. Last week we observed from Romans 15 that we have HOPE in Christ; this week our first central truth is that:
We have PEACE through Christ.
And let me go ahead and give you the SECOND key takeaway while we’re at it. #1 – We have peace through Christ; and #2 – We experience peace from the Holy Spirit. #1 - We have peace through Christ; #2 - we experience peace from the Holy Spirit. MacArthur calls this objective vs. subjective peace. We have objective, unchanging peace with God through Christ’s atoning, reconciling death on the cross. If you’ve truly repented and trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you now have ETERNAL peace with God. It’s an objective reality in your life; nothing can change that. Because you cannot lose your salvation, you cannot lose the peace with God that is yours through Christ Jesus your Lord. That is good news, brothers and sisters!
And YET, some of you are sitting there rightly wondering, “then why don’t I FEEL a lot of peace in my life?” Because we EXPERIENCE peace... subjectively, from the Holy Spirit.
See, Jesus makes a STAGGERING statement in v27 of our passage for this morning, from John 14. He says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you... Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” He says: “Stop WORRYING. Stop FEARING. Stop being stressed out, and anxious.” Friends, did you know anxiety is a SIN? Philippians 4:6 plainly says “do not be anxious about anything”. Don’t shoot the messenger; I’m just reading the text. We have a lot of SYMPATHY for those who suffer from anxiety these days, we diagnose it as an official emotional disorder... and listen: I’m not standing up here saying medication and therapy don’t have their place, within God’s common grace gifts of healing for his people. But God’s WORD prescribes the ultimate cure:
1 John 4:18 “perfect love casts OUT fear”,
1 Peter 5:7 “cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you”
God wants worry, fear, stress, anxiety to be NO part of your day-to-day reality. He loves you too much for that. God wants a life of perfect PEACE for you, SHALOM. And in John 14:27, Jesus makes the RADICAL claim, that he can actually accomplish that FOR you... IN you. But for Jesus to SAY that - “Stop worrying! Stop SINNING in your anxiety” - without actually giving us the necessary POWER OVER worry and fear, would amount to emotional abuse. It’d be like me commanding my 3-year old daughter to go change the transmission in my car. She can’t DO that. In her own power. She doesn’t have the strength, or the tools required.
Jesus is saying, I love you SO much, I don’t want fear and worry to play ANY part in your life, but because in your sin you’re SO broken, left on your own, you cannot help but experience anything OTHER than constant anxiety, here’s what I’m going to do for you: I’m going to give you peace. Not just ANY peace; MY peace. JESUS’ peace. The PRINCE of Peace’s peace. ☺ Supernatural peace.
Friends: Do you want to FEEL that kind of PEACE in your heart? Do you want to EXPERIENCE a life FREE of worries, fear, and anxiety?
Then let’s find out how we get it. Would you stand with me as you’re able, for the reading of God’s word; John 14:15-27:
SCRIPTURE:
““If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,[f] to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be[g] in you.
18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.
25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” This is the word of the Lord... Let’s pray...
Okay, this is my understanding, from John 14, of how this PEACE PIPELINE works; let me give you an orientation to the peace flow-chart you’ll find in your bulletins there: we experience peace from the Holy Spirit (v27), who was sent by JESUS (v16), who was sent by God the Father (v24). Or to trace it back in the OTHER direction, and pull in lots of OTHER Scripture: God the Father describes Himself over and over again in His word as “the God of peace” (Rom 15:33; Rom 16:20; 2 Cor 13:11; Phil 4:9; Heb 13:20; 2 Ths 3:16). We hear in Judges 6:24 that “The Lord is peace”. Not just peace-FUL. God IS peace. He is the very ESSENCE of peace. His nature and character set the STANDARD for, give DEFINITION to, the very concept of peace. James 1:17 says “Every good gift... is from above, coming down from the Father”, peace included. So peace originates with God the Father. He is the SOURCE of all peace.
But peace finds its greatest incarnatation, its embodied fulfillment, in the person of JESUS. The prince of peace. Can you imagine what it would have been like to hang out with Jesus? No wonder he drew such crowds! We ALL know people who are just HIGH STRESS, right? NO peace, at all... Just constantly FREAKING out. If you CAN’T think of someone, YOU’RE the person. That’s why everyone avoids you; cuz you stress THEM out, with all your stress. ☺
Now imagine the exact OPPOSITE. Perfect peace. I’m not talking about some half-baked, Bob Marley-esque stoner. That’s not REAL peace. I’m not talking about some detached from all reality Buddhist conception of nirvana, enlightenment – this notion that the way to peace is through disassociating from the world. This physical, material world is bad so you’ve got to achieve spiritual transcendence and rise above it. No, Jesus did the exact OPPOSITE. He took ON a physical body, condescended and entered INTO the physical world. DIED a physical death, in our place, on the cross, and resurrected BODILY as well, to prove that the God of Christianity CARES about the physical world. OUR God doesn’t just shout down from Heaven, “Try harder for peace; MEDITATE more!” Our God entered into the THICK of it, the very WORST that this world could throw at a person, in order to bring us TRUE peace.
But then he told his disciples – the ones who had given up EVERYTHING to follow him, to be him, to vicariously experience his peace – “Hey, I’m about to die, but don’t worry; it is BETTER that I depart from you.”
Now, imagine for a moment you are one of the 12 disciples. And Jesus tries to CONVINCE you, that “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7)
You think: What could be better than living WITH Jesus, walking beside him every single day?
Answer: Having Jesus live IN you!
The God of all peace, sent the PRINCE of all peace, to bring us to OBJECTIVE peace through his atoning, reconciling, shalom-restoring death on the cross, but then as if that weren’t enough, Jesus as a PARTING gift, leaves us his peace, in the form of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, Romans 15:13, in order to FILL US with all peace, such that we can actually EXPERIENCE, subjectively, the peace of Christ for ourselves. Friends: This. Is. ASTOUNDING. Gospel. Truth.
But we still haven’t quite FULLY resolved one all-important question: if those of us who have been born again BY the Holy Spirit, and have thus been given access through the Holy Spirit, to peace, CHRIST’S perfect peace, that comes ultimately from the God the Father, the source of ALL peace, then why do most of us... dare I say ALL of us?... STILL experience worries? stress... fear... anxiety? Does that mean we’re not truly SAVED? Or perhaps asked more positively, “HOW CAN I EXPERIENCE EVEN MORE OF THE PEACE THAT JESUS PROMISED HE HAS LEFT FOR ME?”
And Jesus’ CLEAR answer, here in John 14, is that you and I will experience, subjectively, the perfect, supernatural peace of God from Christ through the Holy Spirit TO THE EXTENT THAT we live according to the Spirit, by walking in love for God and obedience to His word. Friends, that’s what it means to live “by the Spirit”. It’s simply to love and obey God. We Baptists sometimes get a little antsy when we hear folks talk about being “moved by the Spirit”; we envision the Pentecostals across the highway, convulsing in the aisles and handling snakes or something. Do you know what it means, BIBLICALLY, to live by the Spirit? It means having your affections stirred for God in such a way that you are motivated to walk in step with His word more faithfully in your daily life. Jesus SAYS as much, OVER and over again in John 14; just look:
v.15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
v21: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.”
Or phrased negatively, v24: “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.”
I elaborated on this in our podcast this past week, quick shout out for the podcast... subscribe, like it, listen to it... Destinee asked a great question about “Which is more important: loving God or obeying Him?” And the answer is LOVE. But part of the reason that’s the answer is because if we truly love we WILL NECESSARILY obey him.
You can obey without loving; plenty of religions out there prescribe that. Here’s a long list of “to dos”; maybe if you’re obedient enough God will eventually want a relationship with you. That’s not Christianity, friends. If you wait til you’re “good enough”, you will NEVER come to Jesus. Cuz He’s perfect. So the conditional, “if-then” statement HAS to run in the OPPOSITE direction. We’ve got to love and BE loved by Jesus first, in order for our obedience to come from a pure heart, and not a misguided attempt to self-justify or self-atone for our sins.
But don’t miss the weight of the absolute statement Jesus makes here: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Period. There is no room in Christianity for antinomianism. “Anti” = against. “Nomos” = law. Antinomianism is the heresy that Jesus came to do away with the law. Jesus himself said “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Jesus wouldn’t tell us in v21 that we PROVE our love for him by keeping His commandments... if there WERE no commandments! And how did Jesus summarize the commandments? The 613 laws of the OT that He came to fulfill? Thad unpacked that for us a few weeks ago in our study through Mark’s Gospel: “Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”” (Mark 12:29-31) So we PROVE our love by obeying His commandments... and His commandment IS to LOVE! Love and obedience are 2 sides of the same coin. Jesus says: If you love, you WILL obey. Ellery can TELL me she loves me, but we’ll know for SURE when I ask her to make her bed: does she melt down, or joyfully obey?
But Jesus continues in v16... If you DO love, and therefore DO keep my commandments, then “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,[f] to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth” The Holy Spirit is not just the Spirit of PEACE; He’s the Spirit of TRUTH as well. Jesus says later in ch.16, v8: “when [the Helper] comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” v13: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” So here are two ADDITIONAL benefits of, roles that the Holy Spirit plays in our lives: conviction of sin, and guidance in righteousness. Are you starting to see the connection between PEACE and RIGHTEOUSNESS take shape here? Nothing will cause you, OUGHT to cause you, more sleepless nights than a guilty conscience. You want PEACE? Allow the Spirit of Truth to convict you of your sin, and lead you to repentance and renewed obedience to the Lord.
v18: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more [because I will die physically...], but you will see me [because I’ll be raised to NEW life, spiritually; and only those who have been GIVEN spiritual eyes of faith will be able to see. Like Judy the Elf said so poignantly in The Santa Clause we watched here on Friday night: “Adults think seeing is believing. Kids can see Santa because BELIEVING is seeing.” That’s why Jesus says you’ve got to have faith like a child to enter the kingdom. The difference, of course, between the resurrected Jesus and Santa is that ONE of them is REAL. ☺
And end of v18, NOT ONLY will you see me, but “Because I live, you also will live”. He’s not just the Spirit of PEACE... the Spirit of TRUTH... he’s the Spirit of POWER, as well. And the same HOLY SPIRIT power that raised Jesus from the dead, will one day raise you and I to new life IN Christ as well, if Ephesians 1:13, we have been SEALED with the Spirit, through faith in Christ.
Jesus says, v20: “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” What a BEAUTIFUL promise! Jesus effectively just invited us, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, into the bond of love and unity that He HIMSELF shares with God the Father and with the Spirit – the TRINITY. He will say in the very next chapter, John 15: “Abide in me”, SEVEN times. v9: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” And how DO we abide in Christ’s love? v10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.” Love and obedience; 2 sides of the same coin. And collectively they answer that question – “How do I experience more peace?”. Answer: By living according to the Spirit, in love and obedience. More peace... And more JOY, by the way; we get a bonus fruit of the Spirit: in John 15:11; Jesus says “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” And we’ll cover JOY all next week.
But here’s where I want to leave us this morning. We’ve marveled that we can have peace, objective, unchanging peace, with God through Christ. And #2 – We’ve explored what it means for Jesus to promise that we can experience peace, subjectively, in the here and now, SUPERNATURAL peace from the Holy Spirit, that actually has the power to keep our hearts from being troubled and afraid, and by the way, let’s keep this in context: this is the last sermon ever preached by a guy who’s about to go get hung on a cross. And it’s all about peace. And he’s preaching it to a bunch of guys who are about to go get beheaded, beaten to death, ripped to shreds by lions in the Roman Coliseum... all for preaching PEACE in a hostile world. They will die in AGONY but rest in peace... all for their desire to SHARE the peace of Christ, the reconciliation with God that Jesus PURCHASED for us with his own BLOOD, with a lost and broken world.
And we will EXPERIENCE peace to the degree that we live according to the Spirit, in love and obedience, right? I’m trusting that y’all are gonna fill in the practical applications for yourself as you leave today. Some of you aren’t experiencing PEACE in your marriages because you’re not OBEYING God’s design for marriage. Ephesians 5. Wives: you don’t have peace because you aren’t submitting to your husbands. Husbands: you don’t have peace because you aren’t sacrificially loving your wives as Christ loved the church. You’re not experiencing PEACE at your job because you aren’t submitting to your boss. Or you’ve turned work into an idol and look to it to give you the identity and worth and hope and PEACE that can only be found in Christ. There are any NUMBER of practical application points: just ask yourself as you leave today – “Where am I NOT currently experiencing PEACE in my life?” And then ask, “How might I be FAILING to love and obey God in that area of my life?”
But if you get NOTHING else from this message, friends, please hear this: you want to obey the command of God, in order to experience PEACE in your life? You know where that STARTS? The very first command you’ve got to obey, before you have a PRAYER of truly loving God and loving others? It’s 1 John 3:23 – “this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ.” And if you have not yet trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, don’t be surprised if you’re not experiencing a lot of PEACE in your life right now. But conversely, hear the PROMISE of Jesus for you this morning: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I will give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. [the best the world can offer is a temporary CEASE FIRE while both sides reload. I died to give you PERFECT peace. So you can...] Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” But you ONLY get His peace, by trusting in Him.
Let’s pray.