Christmas is Coming: Peace
Christmas is Coming: Peace
Pastor Charlie Weir
Generally, the word peace is used to describe the absence of something: the absence of hard, the absence of busy, the absence of anxiety, the absence of animosity. However, there is a Hebrew word for peace which is much more demonstrative of what we really need – wholeness, completeness, it’s SHALOM.
Have you lost your peace, your sense of wholeness? When was the last time you knew you had it? Have you ever had it? A sense of wholeness is when the things around you are falling apart but you aren’t. Not like an IGBOK bumper sticker but a true sense of peace that you aren’t alone and this isn’t over.
Isaiah 9:6,7 (NIV) “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
When we insist on our own way, God lets us have our own way and we end up getting in our own way. Reacting and Responding are different approaches to the same problem – one is sourced out of the flesh the other is sourced from the Spirit.
NEVERTHELESS is a Hope-Filled Word
NEVERTHELESS is a “comma” word that puts the present condition in a future frame.
This baby will be called:
Wonderful counselor: Wise and Engaged
Mighty God: Powerful, God’s Mighty Hero
Everlasting Father: No beginning & no end to His protective and providing position
Prince of Peace: Ruler of shalom. Ruler of wholeness and prosperity!
In order to find your wholeness, you have to know from where your original brokenness comes. (grammar?)
God’s peace wouldn’t and doesn’t follow that same worn out “forceful” patterns of leadership. His Peace would come and does comes quietly with a gentle invitation.
Isaiah 53 (NIV) Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 11 After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Sin isn’t a benign action, it is a cancerous condition. Without Christ, what might look whole from the outside is filled with holes on the inside. But with Christ, what is riddled with holes from the inside is renewed whole day by day with a future secured in Christ. It took the cross to provide for our wholeness. His brokenness for our wholeness.
Isaiah 9:1-5 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan— 2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. 3 You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. 4 For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. 5 Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
Wholeness comes with a lot of benefits!
No more gloom from distress
Enemy of God exchanged for Honored by God
Darkness exchanged for Light
Reduction exchanged for Expansion
Sadness exchanged for Joy
Captivity exchanged for Freedom
Isaiah 9:6-7 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
John 3:16-21 (NIV) 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Our Way to Shalom
Repent of your sin and turn away from your ways.
Receive the gift of salvation purchased by the blood of Christ.
Breath the fresh air of adoption. Live by faith in your new-found wholeness.
Begin the systematic replacement of dead attitudes and actions with living ones – aided by the Holy Spirit.
Romans 8:10-17 (NIV) 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. 12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. 14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.