Peace.

We are continuing in our Advent series today as we talk about peace, the peace that Jesus came to bring, the peace that is with us now because he's Emmanuel, God with us, and the peace that we are promised that is to come, that is found in the person of Jesus. But we are going to read today in Luke chapter 2, verses 1 through 21. And this is the birth of Jesus.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor in Syria. And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the house of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of heavenly hosts appeared with the angel praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen this, they spread the word concerning what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Luke 2:1-20

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the gift of your son, Jesus. We thank you that we get to spend this season of Advent waiting, anticipating the peace that is still to come. But we thank you, Lord, that you did send Jesus to be Emmanuel, God with us, and to give us the peace when we need it. The peace that surpasses all understanding. And so God, I just pray that over these next few moments that you would speak through your word. We love you, Lord. We ask this in your name. Amen.

What is peace?

So this is week two of our Advent series. And as we talk about peace, there's a lot that can come to mind. There's a lot of different ways that we talk about peace, different ways that we define it. But today what I want to talk about is this idea and the reality that peace comes in the midst of conflict, chaos, and uncertainty. Sometimes we can think of peace as being the absence of all of these things. But what Jesus is saying, or what the word is telling us, and what Jesus came to be, was the peace in the midst of everything else.

Peace can be described as this serenity, this harmony. When you look up what does peace mean, it talks about being calm and quiet, the absence of noise, stillness. Other words that you can find are words like reconciliation and unity and all these different things that can help us define what is peace.

Now, if you were to look and you were to start to name what is the opposite of peace, I'm sure we could all think of some things, right? We could turn on the TV or we could turn on social media. We could see the absence of peace in so much of that. The absence of peace would be conflict and war and turmoil, violence, hostility, disorder, dispute, disruption. All of these different things that would be the absence of peace or the opposite of peace.

But biblical peace. The word that is used primarily in the Old Testament to describe peace is "shalom." And this word "shalom," that Old Testament and new, would be the best representation of peace in our translation is less to do with just calmness. It's so much more than that. It's about wholeness. It's about all the pieces coming together and being complete. And so when Jesus came to be the peace and to bring peace, he came to make us whole and complete, to where we lack nothing. That is biblical peace.

We have here at the church, we talk about Jeremiah 29:7, which is kind of in our prayer room. It's up there with this idea that in Jeremiah 29:7, there's this word that says, "Go and seek the peace of the city that you've been sent into exile." And I love the context there of peace because you do see it in other translations as "seek the wholeness, seek the wellbeing of the city that you have been sent into exile."

Now I want you to think about that for a moment. God is telling the people that are in a place where they have been sent far from home, far from their comfort, that they are there now in a place where they are being oppressed, and they are told to pray and to seek the wholeness and the well-being of the place that they are in. So what does that tell us once again? That peace is not always going to be the absence of the conflict, the absence of the war or the chaos or the pain or the hard things that you're walking into. But it's the presence of God and the presence of Jesus that we get to usher in, in the midst, to come and to make things whole.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace

I want to read out of Isaiah chapter 9, which we often talk about around Christmas. I read this passage a couple of months ago in the fall, and I wanted to read it again today in the full context:

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. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. 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. 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 the oppressor. Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fueled for the fire. 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. 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.

Isaiah 9:1-7

That is Jesus. He came to be our Prince of Peace. When verse 7 says "the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end," we have a hope today that peace has come, that peace is with us, and that there is eternal peace that is coming.

What does this look like for us? When I think of peace and Christmas, I think of Silent Night, the song that many of us probably grew up singing around church and sing year to year where it says, "Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant, tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace."

But maybe this Christmas you're like me and there's moments where you're like, "I don't know, Silent Night, Holy Night. How about like the TV of my neighbors in my condo that's keeping me awake at night, or all the to-do list and all the things racing in my head?" And you think, "All is bright," and it's like, "Well, maybe for you. You're like, it's not looking so bright right now. It actually feels a little dim. It's actually a little dark. I don't know if I can see what's happening next."

Maybe you hear those words of sleep and heavenly peace and you're like, "Wow, that sounds really nice. I don't know the last time I've slept and felt that deep type of peace."

Peace today that we're talking about, it's not the absence of, and it's also not ignoring the things that are happening around us. I think so often we think that in order for us to fully embrace the things of God, in order for us to fully embrace peace, it means like we just have to ignore every hard thing that comes our way. We have to ignore the pain. We have to ignore the things coming up against us. But I don't think it's ignoring it. I think it's acknowledging it and then surrendering it to the one who can make it all complete and put it back together, which is Jesus.

If peace is shalom and shalom is wholeness, then that wholeness is found in Jesus. Peace is a person today and peace has come and is in our midst. So that means that we can both acknowledge the noise and submit to the Prince of Peace at the same time.

So if you feel unsure today of how you can be cheerful and merry and bright while also maybe still lying awake at night with anxieties and questions and tension, I want you to know today that there is a way for us to both acknowledge it and not ignore it and also accept and receive Jesus as our Prince of Peace. Because we have certainty that peace can be found in Jesus.

And someday, the pain that you're feeling, someday, the way that you feel like everything might be ready to fall apart, we're not going to feel that anymore. Because there is a promise and there is a day coming where wars will cease and where conflict will be no more, and you won't have those dim, dark nights. You won't have the moments where you are so anxious and overwhelmed. It will be gone when we are in heaven with Jesus for all of eternity. That is what we get to anticipate and wait for as we remember Advent today, is that there is more peace coming.

Peace in the midst of conflict

So what do we do in these moments now of the not yet, of the he came and he's here, but there's more to come? I want to talk about peace and the absence of conflict. Peace is not the absence of conflict, but it's God's comfort in the midst.

Contextually, what's happening here in this story where we read Mary and Joseph and going on this journey. I don't know that I ever played Mary or Joseph in a Christmas play, but I sat through many of them growing up, right? Where it'd be like, oh, this cute little scene, and they're coming in, and you know it just looks so calm and peaceful. But let's take a step back here. Let's think about what it was really like in this moment.

There was conflict going on, and I want to talk about two different types of conflict here. You see, there was. They were under Roman rule. That's what was happening. So Mary and Joseph were people who were oppressed. They were under the governance of the Roman rule. So they were going to have to pay taxes to Caesar, and they were going on this long journey.

So we have Mary and Joseph here where there were things that were happening to them that were completely out of their control. It wasn't like, "Oh, let's go to Bethlehem to visit the family over Christmas." That's not what's happening here. They were not in control of this situation. It was kind of like you come or you die. Like you need to go on this journey. This was not like this beautiful, magical, romantic vacation that they were going on. They had to go.

So something's happening to them that's out of their control. They didn't ask to be traveling. They didn't ask to be paying these taxes. They didn't ask to be in war and constantly fearing for their lives. They didn't ask for that. Things happened to them that were out of their control.

But I want to talk about now the oppressors here, the Roman rule. You see, sometimes I think we find ourselves in conflict, and it might not be the conflict that we're talking about of like the wars or what was happening here in this story. But we find ourselves in places where we're going, "Why is there so much conflict around me? Why is there so much chaos? Why do I feel like all of these things are happening?" And if we take a step back, we start to recognize that maybe we're responsible for some of the conflict that's taking place.

You see, I look at the Roman rule there and you think of the sin of greed and pride and control and trying to be their own God and to rule and have things go their own way and build their own kingdoms. That all of a sudden led them to being oppressors. So we might not identify fully with that, but there's moments in our life where it's the decisions that we have made that have led us to the consequences that we're facing. And I don't say this today to try and bring shame on us, but for us to acknowledge that the sooner that we can start to recognize the responsibility that we play in the conflicts that we might find ourselves in in life, the sooner that we can find freedom in Jesus from that.

See, sometimes we find ourselves in conflict and it's really just consequences of choices that we made. And sometimes we have to acknowledge those. We have to acknowledge the moments where we are in conflict and maybe it's in relationships or it's with people or you find yourselves in situations at work and it's like, "How did I find myself here?" Or maybe you found yourself just in a bad situation that you're like, "How did we get here? Why is this happening to me?" And sometimes, yes, there's things that happen to us that are completely out of our control. But sometimes there's things that they're consequences of the choices that we made that led us to this place. And so the sooner we can name it and acknowledge it, the sooner that we can step back into and under the rule of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

But either way, we see that peace can continue to come in our midst. I think of Joseph and Mary. How God provided for them every step of the way. How he made sure that they got to exactly where they needed to go, even if it wasn't where they wanted to go or where they wanted to be. But there was care and there was comfort. And we even think last week we talked about Joseph getting the news that the woman he was about to marry was pregnant. You think of the gift that he was to comfort Mary and to walk alongside her in that.

God continues to bring peace and comfort in the midst of conflict. And sometimes it's us receiving it. And sometimes it's us repenting from our responsibility in the conflict in order to go back to the place of peace.

Peace in the midst of chaos

Peace is not the absence of chaos, but his calming presence in the midst. Jesus was born and he enters in a time that was not convenient for Mary and Joseph. Man, I've never given birth to a child, so I do not know from experience, but I think we can all imagine that you wouldn't want to be in the middle of a place that you've probably never been, surrounded by a bunch of strangers that you've never met before. That's not where you would want to give birth. But here is where God's timing takes place and Jesus is born.

So what do you do? What do you do in these moments when it feels like you can't keep things calm, when it feels like you just cannot keep going and things are piling up? Colossians 3:15 says:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Since as members of one body, you were called to peace and be thankful.

Colossians 3:15

The key word here is "let." Let the peace of God rule. You see, when I try to put myself in this story and imagine what it would be like to be in this place where God has now told you that you were giving birth to the Messiah, the Savior of the world. He's told Mary. He's told Joseph. And so they know that this is what's happening.

But I can imagine the stress. She still had to endure the pain of labor. She still had to go on this journey pregnant. She still had to experience all of those things. It didn't just go away. Yet she was able to continue and to keep going.

What does it look like for us to let the peace of Christ rule? "Let," that is an active thing. It's another way to say "allow it." We need to allow it. And sometimes it's simply a choice of God saying, "I've already given you peace. I've already given you the presence of my Holy Spirit to draw near to you. But are you, do you even have space to receive it? Are you allowing it to be the voice that is loudest in your life?"

You see, sometimes we have to take a step back and we have to start to acknowledge what is ruling our life right now. And I even invite you today to think of what rules your life. Is it your schedule? Is it the voices of other people around you? Is it FOMO and all the invitations that you're getting to do things? Or is it people pleasing? Is it work? Is it anxiety? Is it stress? What are the loudest voices in your life? What are you letting rule and dictate and guide your decisions? What are you letting take your peace? And what does it look like for us to let and allow the peace of Christ to rule and to reign?

If you're taking notes today, one of the things that I have found so helpful in my life, and it was my screensaver for like two years, is this little acronym for peace: pause, exhale, acknowledge, center, and then enter into peace. And what I've found is so often in life, when we find ourselves faced with the stress and the anxiety and the chaos and everything in between, we just need to pause and say, "What is happening right now around me that I'm letting? And how can I pause? How can I take a moment? How can I exhale and just release it to the Lord? How can I let it go?"

Then what does it look like for me to take a moment to acknowledge it, to name those things so that I know what I'm letting go of? I know what I'm saying no to. "You don't have any authority or place in my life." And then what does it look like to center and recenter our heart and our lives around Jesus? And it's in those moments that we can exit that place of fear and anxiety and enter into peace again.

Peace in the midst of uncertainty

Peace is not the absence of uncertainty, but trusting God is in control in the midst. Sometimes one of the most trusting things that we can do is to continue to walk in obedience and move forward in faith when you don't feel like it.

What did Mary and Joseph do? They kept walking. And this goes back to this idea of active and passive waiting. What do you do when you're waiting? What do you do when you are expecting God to do something? Mary and Joseph continued to walk. They walked to Bethlehem to welcome Jesus. This shows us that guess what, even in moments of uncertainty when we're like, "I don't really know what's happening, I don't know what the future holds." Like the world around us does not stop. Unfortunately, sometimes it would be nice. Like when you have a big decision to make to be like, "Can we just pause everything else while I handle what's going on here, where I figure my life out, and then I'll come back?" But that's not what happens.

We see Mary and Joseph. They are called to go, and they're called to pay their taxes to Caesar, and they have to go to Bethlehem. They have to walk. They have to go on this journey. They continue to walk even when they probably did not feel like it. But they had no choice. So they kept on going. They walked into the unknown.

Now I want to be clear here that this isn't like my sister-in-law would call it a "pull up your bootstraps" type of moment. This isn't what my aunt would tell me of "put your lipstick on and keep going," right? This is "Lord. I don't know what to do, but I know this much. I know what you've told me. And so I'm going to go with what you've given me until you give me what's next." That's what's happening here. Mary and Joseph. They knew, "Okay, because of where we live and because of the circumstances, we have to walk and go to Bethlehem. We are not certain while everything's going to play out, but we know this much. This is what we have to do. So God, we're going to trust you as we walk. We're going to walk in faith and we're going to trust that you have it figured out and that's enough for us."

You see, as we pass through this life from eternity to eternity, we're going to be filled with moments of uncertainty, moments of pain, moments where we can't see what's happening ahead. And there's going to be moments where if we're honest, it's like, "I don't want to keep walking." I can only imagine what that was like for Mary and the moments of, "I don't know if I want to keep going." But we have to keep walking as we wait and trust that the wait is not wasted.

You see, while they were waiting for the baby to come, God continued to meet them along the way. And not always the way that they planned, but in a way that fulfilled the promises and the prophecies that would declare that the King has come. Every detail of the birth fulfilled the prophecies that the King had come. And we have to trust in that plan today. That in the same way that they walked in faith in the uncertainty, God may be inviting us to continue to walk even when we don't feel it and trust that he has a plan in place.

John 14:27 is another scripture that highlights peace where it says:

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give it to you as the world gives. Your heart must not be troubled or fearful.

John 14:27

We want sometimes this counterfeit peace and we fill our lives with this counterfeit peace. The peace that moments can offer us, the peace that self-help or self-care or just a moment of quiet can offer us. But what our souls are longing for is the peace that surpasses all understanding, that only Jesus can give us. And it may take us quieting the noise, surrendering the things that are so loud in our lives, and saying, "Jesus, I'm centering my life on you again. Will you come? Let it be your peace that fills me."

Be a person of peace

As we close today, I want to give us some questions to process. My now what today is: let peace fill you so it can flow from within you. Our world is in desperate need of the peace of Jesus. I am in desperate need of the peace that only Jesus can give. What does it look like for us to be people of peace so that we can continue? When we enter a room, it's peace that flows from within us.

So I want you to think. If you're honest today, what is it that you usher in when you walk into a room? What do you bring with you? Is it chaos? Are you the one that they're like, "Uh oh, conflict's gonna happen if they're here?" Is it uncertainty? Are you unpredictable? These are hard questions. Are you someone who people can count on as a comfort in the midst of conflict? Are you a person of calmness in the midst of chaos? Are you trustworthy, dependable? Can people count on you? When you walk in the room, do they know who's going to show up and you're reliable?

Jesus left his peace with us so that it can flow through us and that we can continue to bring the peace that he has to offer to the people around us. I want to talk about two things that can help us do this today. The first is to position yourself for peace.

Now a lot of this has to do with what's your input? What are the voices? What's the noise that you're allowing to fill your head and your mind and your heart? Because if you find yourself here today and you're like, "Yeah, I don't feel like I'm at peace. I feel like that's something that I don't know if I have." Think about what's your input? What are you putting inside of you? Because that's what's flowing from within you.

Be aware of the path that your thoughts are paving. Do you find yourself in these cycles of just allowing your thoughts to start to rule your life rather than Jesus, the Prince of Peace? What does that look like for you to position yourself, to make space, to quiet the noise, to receive the peace that only Jesus can give you so it can flow from within you?

And the next is to participate. We have to let it rule and reign. Peace requires participation. If you do nothing else today, remember that. Peace requires our participation.

I think back to when I was a camp counselor at the old, wise, mature age of 14. It was one of those situations where I got roped in last minute. One of my friends had been working at the camp all summer. And last minute, she's like, "Hey, they need someone just for this week. Can you come?" And there was a lot of things. She was 16, she just got her license. I was just, you know, at 14 where it's like "Mom, can I go away for a week?" And I was like okay.

So it's just the two of us in her car, which already felt like the coolest thing ever when you're 14 and your 16-year-old friend is driving you somewhere. But we get to the camp and remember everybody else. They've had like counselor training on like archery and all this stuff. And now I have this group. At 14 I have a group of 11 and 12-year-old girls that I was in charge of teaching them archery, which I had never done in my life.

And then it came to the day where we had the zipline activity. Now, I, let's just say I didn't really ever get much of a growth spurt in my life, but I didn't have it yet. So I still was shorter than I am now. And some of these girls are like twice the size of me. They're only two years younger than me. And there's this giant zipline over this huge, like, creek type thing. And they told me, they're like, "Oh, you'll be fine. You just go down there and you just catch them. That's all you do. You catch them. But if you don't catch them, then they get stuck in the middle. And then we have to call the fire department and then they all have to come. But like, no big deal. You'll be fine."

I was like okay. So I'm like bracing myself at the bottom of this. I'm like, "I have to catch them. I have to catch them." But the key to this was they also had to catch and wrap themselves around me. We had to have their participation or they were going to be stuck and stuck and stuck. Thankfully, nobody got stuck. I caught them all. But the point is this. Sometimes we're just waiting for peace to come and we're like, "Okay, come, come, come, come, come." And God's like, "Are you willing to participate? Because in the same way, like I want to wrap my peace around you. Will you hold on to it? Will you let peace have the final word? Will you let peace have the final say and be the loudest voice? Will you let peace rule and reign in your life?"

I think I'm on. Are we on? Okay. Will you let it rule and reign in your heart and in your life? We have to decide whether or not we will participate. In order for those girls to stay grounded, they had to participate. In order for us to stay grounded, it's the same. We have to participate.

Don't miss what God is doing in the calm, but don't miss what he's doing in the chaos. Don't miss what he's doing in the conflict. Don't miss the reality that peace is here. Emmanuel, God with us, is in our midst. So how do you position yourself and how do you need to participate today?

Closing prayer

I want to end by us just standing together and singing the chorus and the bridge a little bit of the songs that we sang earlier. Because I really believe that sometimes there is a choice where we just have to say, "Nope, I'm silencing all of the other voices, and it's you." But then there's other moments where we need to encounter the Prince of Peace. And maybe you're here today and you're like, "I know that I need to encounter the presence of Jesus and I need to ask him to come and to give me peace because nothing else is working in these moments."

And so I just want to end today with giving us a moment to just say, "Jesus, would you come? Would you give me the peace that surpasses all understanding? Would you come and would you calm every single storm that is around me? Would you give me the peace that only you have to offer? Because that's the only peace that will satisfy?"

And so I want to pray these scriptures over you and then we're going to worship for a few moments together. So if you're here today and you just want to take a moment and to just close your eyes and to just position yourself. And if you're comfortable and you're like, "I want to receive God's peace today. I want to invite the Holy Spirit to come," would you just put your arms out in a place of just surrender? Just stretch out your arms. And I want to just pray these scriptures over you.

2 Thessalonians 3:16 says:

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times, in every way. The Lord be with all of you.

2 Thessalonians 3:16

Psalm 29:11 says:

The Lord gives strength to his people. The Lord blesses his people with peace.

Psalm 29:11

So God, right now, I pray that you would bless your people with peace. Would you give the peace that surpasses all understanding? Would we be able to see the presence of you, Jesus, in the midst of everything else around us? Would your Holy Spirit come and fill us with peace so that peace can flow from within us?

So God, we just take these next few moments and we surrender to your rule and to your reign. And we fix all of our attention on you, Jesus, your presence, who you are, your names that are so great, that are so mighty. So would you come and fill us? Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen.