Hebrews Lesson 206
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those
who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up
with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and
not faint.
A couple of
weeks ago in our study in Hebrews 12 we came to the passage in verse 14 to the
command to:
NKJ Hebrews
Now that second clause there (“without which no one will see
the Lord”) is not talking about having an eternal destiny in heaven. In fact as we’ve studied in Revelation 21,
our eternal destiny isn’t actually going to be in heaven. It's going to be in the New Earth, in the New
Jerusalem. We will be in heaven when we
are taken to be with the Lord at the rapture; and we will be with Him during
that period of time including the Judgment Seat of Christ and the period of the
Tribulation. Then we return to the earth
with Him to rule and reign with Him during the Messianic Kingdom, during that
1,000 thousand year kingdom, the
After that the present heavens and earth are destroyed by
fire. The New Heavens and the New Earth
will be created and the New Jerusalem will come out of heaven and descend to
the earth. That is where the saints will
dwell. So we really don't spend eternity
in heaven. We spend eternity in the New
Jerusalem.
Now there are
those who are going to be excluded from the New Jerusalem; and those within the
New Jerusalem that are going to have as we’ve studied in various passages
different levels of access to God.
That's what this describes is that believers who are described in
Revelation as overcomers. That is what
we saw in Revelation 2:7 Tuesday night.
At the end of each of those letters there are specific promises to
overcomers that those who overcome - for
example there are those who will have access to the Tree of Life; and they will
live in the Paradise of God. So this
seems to indicate a special area within the New Jerusalem.
There are other
passages that indicate that those overcomers will be given a white stone and
their name will be written on it, a name which nobody else knows. This alludes to a custom in the ancient world
where the name inscribed on a white stone became a ticket or an invitation to
special events that were for certain individuals. So that's the idea. So there are going to be distinctions among
believers in heaven.
That's what this
describes. It’s related to
sanctification. Those who grow and
mature spiritually are overcomers.
Overcoming in Scripture as we have seen is related to what Jesus said
the night before He went to the cross – that He had already overcome the world. That was accomplished before He went to the
cross when He paid the penalty for sin.
So those are two
separate issues. Overcoming the world is
a sanctification or spiritual growth issue; the belief in Christ at the cross
is our justification-salvation issue. So
this is talking about sanctification or holiness. Part of that is that we are to pursue
peace. It's a command that is to
characterize the believer’s life - a present active indicative. It's not stated simply here. It’s also stated in other passengers that
we’ve seen such as I Thessalonians 5:15 that we are to always seek after that
which is good for one another and for all people.
Now I went to
about 8 points related to pursuing peace.
I think this is very important and usually when you start talking about
this kind of topic people – it doesn’t take people long to realize that you're
talking about personal relationships and conflict resolution. In many cases people have some extremely
difficult personal conflicts in their lives.
The most difficult of course are those that involve loved ones, those
that involve family members. They may be
conflicts between a husband and wife; they may be conflicts between parents and
children; they may be conflicts between siblings. There are all kinds of situations and
circumstances that can generate some pretty profound anger, hostility,
resentment and vindictiveness among family members. It always seems like we can be our very worst
with someone that we're very close to.
So we talk about
the immediate circle of loved ones that we have in terms of our family. But then secondly we also have problems with
those who are close associates or more intimate friends. Many of us have had circumstances where
we’ve had close friends who have in some way or fashion broken their word to
us, broken a contract with us, betrayed us in some way, stabbed us in the back
– however you want to put it. Then we
have to deal with this conflict resolution.
Then it can extend. The further
out you go in the circle you have lesser degrees of intimacy. You have people
you work with, people in your business with, people you may be entered into a
legal or contractual relationships with.
Then you go beyond that to people who are just more or less casual
acquaintances - people you have done some form of business interaction; but
it's been less personal. You don’t
really know the individual. Then you can
go on out to somebody you hardly even know, somebody you meet perhaps at the
grocery store or some other situation.
So we have to
remember that this command to pursue peace with all is a mandate. It’s part of the Christian way of life; and
it is a mandate to every believer. It
doesn't say pursue peace with everyone who deserves it. It doesn't say pursue peace with everyone
because they're such wonderful people.
It doesn't say pursue peace with everyone who has reacted to the
circumstances and changed the way you think they ought to change and
react. It's very difficult. Some of these circumstances are very, very
hard and can lead to some real fractures within families that unfortunately sometimes
can go on for years if not decades. This
is just blight on the cross of Christ because it runs counter to everything
that the Christian life stands for.
Now
unfortunately we all know of situations and some of us were involved in
situations where the person that has caused (created) the conflict, caused the
breach, done the betrayal is someone who really doesn't care about the
Christian life that is not under anybody’s authority, doesn't really care what
anybody else is saying. They're just on the
high road of arrogance; and there is absolutely nothing you or I or anyone else
can do that would ever impact them. I
mean it's their decision to go that way; and we just have to wait on the Lord;
and we have to put them in the Lord's hands.
Sometimes that takes the rest of your life - maybe even longer before
there is a resolution.
The other thing
just has a point of observation that I've seen over the years is that even when
there is a desire to reconcile on the part of two Christians over something
that has happened - often the feelings are involved, the emotions have gotten
involved and people have become hurt emotionally. Their feelings have been hurt, and it takes
time. Sometimes you want to rush
things.
“This is the
right thing to do. Hurry up and do it.”
You can't do
that. That's like talking to somebody
whose husband or best friend or child has just died and two days later you’re
saying, “Hey! Straighten up. Quit crying.
Jesus died for them. They’re in
heaven. What’s the matter?”
You know you
can’t command emotions like that. It
takes time and reconciliation in pursuing peace with somebody isn't something
that just happens overnight. It may take
some years and decades even to go through the process because of the
circumstances that might be involved.
So we have to
understand what the basis for this is.
You can’t just
tell somebody, “Go makeup. Go be
friends. Go forgive them.”
There has to be
from a biblical and Christian background – there has to be a really solid
understanding of how we do that.
You and I can't
do that in the flesh. When our sin
natures get involved, that's what causes the conflict. That’s what caused the conflict between man
and God - was man’s disobedience to God's authority. When sin gets in the way in any form whether
it's arrogance or any other mental attitude sin or sins of the tongue - that
just immediately shuts down the whole process.
There cannot be real genuine reconciliation and forgiveness with people
apart from the doctrine and apart from the Spirit. Apart from the Word of God and the Spirit of
God, it's just wood, hay and straw. It’s
works of the flesh. It's trying to do
the right thing the wrong way; and it just can’t happen.
Even when I read
books on this subject or papers on this subject - you what really bothers me is
that you’ll read and they’ll give very good principles.
Then they’ll
say, “Now if it gets to this point, what really needs to happen is they need to
go see a counselor,.” as if somehow the Word of God… and they didn’t intend it
this way. They may not have consciously
realized what they were saying. But, you
know what they just said was that the Word of God, the Spirit of God isn’t
sufficient. You've got to go to a
counselor and counseling then takes the place of the authority of the Word of
God; and the real problem is still not that they need a counselor - is that somebody or both of the parties are
still operating on arrogance. They’re still
operating on their sin nature; and the timing just not right yet.
So I want to
talk about some of those things, but I want to review since it's been two weeks
because I took some vacation time last week to just take us through these first
7 points very rapidly.
This is what is
set forth in the Scriptures. Romans 5, Colossians 1:19-20 indicate that God's
provision in terms of He's the one who provides reconciliation. The one that was betrayed, the one that’s
wronged, the one that is maltreated, the one whose grace is just thrown back in
his face - he is the one who takes the initiative (takes the steps) to create
the environment whereby peace can be restored and reconciliation can be
affected.
The way we act
based on the sin nature is the guy who screwed up is a guy who’s got to
initiate. But that's not how the plan of
God works. Also Colossian 1:21-22.
Then we closed
with this section in Colossian 2:13-14 with forgiveness and understanding that
forgiveness comes first because the price is paid and that peace with God is
accomplished only because the sin problem is dealt with. So if we're going to understand peace, we
have to start with understanding how peace is established in the greatest
conflict that ever occurred in history.
How did God go about conflict resolution with the human race?
And it didn't
happen right away did it? Like so many
people come away with their superficial, shallow view of the Christian life and
sin and all the things that go with it - we just have such a silly superficial
way of thinking about problems; and when people get all twisted up against each
other - it didn't happen overnight. It
often took a lot of time. Sometimes one
person is hardheaded and stubborn more than the other person. Sometimes it is not going to ever be
resolvable in the devil’s world. It
doesn't matter how much ofa Christian
they are. We all have areas in our sin
nature where we really don’t want God to go there in terms of our own life and
our own mental attitude. You may be in a
circumstance like that, and it may not be resolvable for a long time.
There are
circumstances and situations we see with the sin problem and conflict
resolution sin that it took 4,000 years before God could get the conflict
resolution established at the cross.
Some of these things just can’t be it can be taken care of
overnight. The issues are far too
complex.
So we looked at
Colossians 2:13-14 and we saw a couple of principles there to emphasize that it
was at the cross because the penalty was paid that the conflict resolution could
be established. The resolution takes
place because the handwriting against us - that decree that sets forth the sin
problem was nailed to the cross so that we should translate that last part of
13 and 14 that “He was able to make us alive and together with Him” (That is at
the time of our faith in Christ.) because He has already forgiven us all our
trespasses.” That's the first category
of forgiveness we studied in the past that was a legal transaction that took place
at the cross where the debt was paid – fully, actually and totally. That’s what this verse says.
He already
forgave us our trespasses. How did He forgive?
The word that translated forgiveness here is the Greek word charizomai. Two Greek words are used. We’ve studied these before - charizomai and apheimi. Both of these words
are used in context of the debt payment where the monetary debt is
eradicated. Somebody owes a debt and
somebody completely erases or eradicates that debt; and it’s wiped out. That’s the idea of forgiveness. So that’s what’s described here a little more
dramatically in Colossians 2:14.
NKJ Colossians
That is the certificate of debt.
out of the way, having nailed
it to the cross.
…or because He nailed it to the cross. It happened at the cross. It didn’t happen when you believed in 1959 or
1963 or 1985 or whenever it was that you trusted in Christ. The sins were paid for at the cross when they
were nailed to the cross. That’s why sin
isn't the issue anymore.
Now that lays the legal foundation and framework for
salvation. It doesn't save anybody, and
it doesn't forgive anybody in the experiential aspect of it. Only the legal foundation and the legal
realities in terms of God’s Supreme Court are resolved, sins taken care
of.
So if we’re going to go forward with peace we have to
understand two basic elements. These two
basic elements are grace and love. It
always comes back to that. We can't
escape it. It runs counter to our nature
180 degrees. We are gracious and kind to
those who are gracious and kind in return; and we have a real difficult time
being gracious and kind to those who aren’t.
We love those who we like; we love those are attractive to us; we love
those who do the things we want them to do, believe the things we want them to
believe, vote the way we want them to believe – shall I go on or am I stepping
on enough toes already?
But God loved people who were just the opposite - who hated
Him, that despised Him and that rejected him, and that betrayed Him. That's what we have to understand. If you are ever going to understand the love
that the Bible talks about for the Christian life, that’s this kind of
love. It doesn't happen because you just
simply want it to happen. It can only be
developed by God the Holy Spirit.
That's why when you get into Galatians 5:20-21 “the fruit of
the Spirit” is first all love. That's
not in terms of order. That’s in terms
of priority or significance or quality; and love is the most significant. It’s the topic that Paul had introduced
earlier in about Galatians 5:12 or 13 that we are to love our neighbor as
ourselves quoting from Leviticus 18 in the Old Testament. So grace and love are the keys.
Now what is grace? I
know you all know this definition. I
ought to call on people. Grace is
unmerited favor. That means nobody does
anything to merit it. Nobody does
anything to qualify for your love. In
fact the more they disqualify themselves the more we ought to love them. That’s getting too convicting. Let's move on. It's undeserved kindness. That means they don't deserve it. They don't deserve for us to get out of bed
at
Over the years I have heard - and I remember back when I was
in seminary I would make these remarks.
Others were a little snide, spiritually superior remarks like “Well, if
you're a Baptist you never get out of the Gospels. And if you’re Pentecostal you never get out
of Acts and if you’re in a Bible church you never get out of the Epistles. Aren’t we superior?”
And often you would have in a lot of Baptist churches you’d
often hear people say, “Well, I moved to some little small town. All I can do is go to a Baptist church. I just get tired of hearing the pastor going
through his little book 567 Ways to
Preach the Gospel.”
The sadness there is that’s true not just in Baptist
churches but in many churches is that the pastors are not well trained and they
don't know how to get beyond the basics of the gospel. We just thank God that they get the gospel
right if and when they do. But there is
a value to hearing the Gospel again and again.
This is something I try to drill into younger pastors and new pastors is
that you never know who's listening to you out there who finally is going to
hear you say it a certain way and go, “You know that's the phrase I need to use
when I’m witnessing to so-and-so. Maybe
I can say it that way or this way.”
You never know who's out there looking through that live
streaming lens who’s going to end up getting a DVD, who’s going to end up
reading a transcript, who’s going to end up listening to the MP3 file off of
the Internet. I mean anything that goes
out on the Internet is alive and well and eternal until the New Heavens and the
New Earth. It will always be there. Be careful what you send in emails. It’s always there. It's alive and well and never ending on
planet Earth. So we never know who's
going to hear it. So people need to hear
the gospel. There's always that
opportunity to make it clear every time you speak. Try to get the gospel in there to some degree
so people understand it.
But there's something even more important and that is how
many times do we come in the Scriptures to these commands like at the end of
Ephesians 4 where we get a command that we are to forgive one another just as
God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us?
Then the next verse says:
NKJ Ephesians
5:1
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
Wait a minute. That
means we really have to think a lot about what went on at the cross. Once again we're back to teaching
gospel-cross oriented messages again and again because it's so hard for us to
understand the kind of love that God demonstrated at the cross. He demonstrated it to us as enemies - not as
friends. We were obnoxious; we were
repulsive; we were unclean, filthy, and loathsome to God because of our
sin. There wasn't anything about us that
was attractive to God; and yet He demonstrated love for us. Now to understand love you have to spend a
lot of time thinking about that the cross.
And if you don't spend a lot of time thinking about the cross, you’ll
never understand love. And you’re not
going to understand it 25, 30, 35, or 40 – trust me. At 50 whatever I am now (58) I still don’t in
many ways because this is beyond our basic abilities and comprehensions in the
flesh. We have to think about this and
think about this; and it just blows our mind every time we do.
So we look at these passages like Romans 5:8 and we need to
stop and think about this because when we - especially if you're someone who is
dealing with somebody out there who has offended you, somebody whose very name
who makes you vibrate at the bottom of your gut with vindictiveness or hate or
whatever or if you are somebody who is in the presence of a family quarrel or a
family conflict and you don't know how to resolve that or get passed some of
these issues; then it's easy for us to let the sin nature get its claws into
the circumstances and situation. We
start thinking and we get involved in self justification and self deception and
self denial and all these other aspects of arrogance. We forget that there's not one thing that
that person who’s offended us has done that we didn't do a thousand times more
intensely to God - at least five times in the last year.
We come along we say, “Okay.
I John 1:9 – I’ll confess my sin and God forgives me and moves on.”
And He does!
But then when somebody says, “Well, you know you take
so-and-so and forgive them the same way God just forgave you,” and you go,
“Wait a minute. I just can't do
that. You don’t understand what they
have done.”
You don't understand what you've done in relationship to
God! That's the problem. Start dealing with that in terms of
understanding God's love and forgiveness for you. Then all of this is going to take on a new
dimension.
Now whenever we get into talking about this, everybody
starts to get a little uncomfortable, shifting around in seats, thinking about
different things and trying to figure out – “Wait a minute. There’s got to be a hole here
somewhere.” No! There’s not.
And it’s as much a problem for me as for anybody else
because that just cuts across the grain of our old sin nature. Now part of the problem we have is we don’t’
understand love. We come out of such a
narcissistic culture; and it doesn't exclude anybody. But if your baby boomer, you are the
personification of narcissism. And if
you are younger than a baby boomer, then you are the personification of
narcissism cubed. And if you're a
millennial (you know what that means), you’re even worse. So you know the poster child of narcissism is
the
That's why we have so many problems that we have; and it's
very hard to think objectively when we are up to our jaws in self absorption.
We’re so subjective that we can’t get out of our own experience to think in
terms of what God has done and what real love is. We have a culture based on narcissism defines
love no matter how you get at it - it ultimately always comes back to some kind
of self love. But it's emotion. It's a feeling. It’s a number of other things that just can’t
be held up in light of how the Bible uses the word love.
Love is first and foremost – it’s not an emotion. Emotion may accompany it, and there may be
very rich emotion with love at times.
That doesn't negate the love or the emotion. They’re just two different things. Don't confuse one with the other – that real
love, the kind of love that is demonstrated at the cross is primarily a
volitional act and a mental attitude.
It’s those two things together.
It is a volitional act, and it is a mental attitude.
Why do we know it's a volitional act? Because, it’s a command. You cannot command emotion. I can sit here all day long and tell you to
be angry and if you just won the lottery that’s not going to happen. You can’t get angry. You’re not going to get
angry. If your three year old child or
grandchild just got ran over him by a truck in the street and is lying there
dead and I tell you to be happy and joyful and feel good; you can't do it. Our emotions do not respond to commands. But volition and mental attitude are the
result of commands, and we can respond in that area. It may not change our emotions right away;
but it will eventually.
So Matthew 5:44 – in fact there are several passages we have
the New Testament where agape (the
Greek word agape) for love which is
the broader word that is used of God's love for man. There are two Greek words used for love,
agape and phileo. God only has a phileo type love which is a more intimate form of love for
believers. Unbelievers are never the
object of a God-phileo
statement. You never have God loving
with the verb phileo
unbelievers. There’s no intimacy; there
is no family relationship there. They’re
not in the family. But God has agape love
for the world, for all in the world. So
there are distinctions there. Phileo is the more intimate kind of love
that we sometimes associate with – I’ll say sometimes, on occasion is
associated with emotion.
So in Matthew 5:44 Jesus says:
NKJ Matthew
5:44 "But
I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those
who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
Now if you want to get personal with this when you’re at
home (by yourself) and you’re looking at the Scriptures, then you can
substitute somebody’s named for your enemies and those who curse you and those
who hate you and those who spitefully use you, persecute you. Just plug somebody’s name in there and that’s
going to get real personal; but that's what the command is. There aren’t exceptions. There’s no asterisk in the text there that
says, “Look at the footnote and the footnote your favorite person to hate is excluded.” It’s not there.
This is not easy material.
This is an imperative (present active imperative) indicating that this
is a standard operating procedure God commands of every believer all the
time. So if it's commanded, it’s
volitional act. That means you have to
decide to do it. You can't wait till it
feels right to do it because that’s probably not going to happen. Those feelings are going to be generated by
your sin nature; and you have to make a mental decision.
Other passages like Luke 6, Jesus said:
NKJ Luke
NKJ Luke
What's the big deal if you love a nice attractive friendly
positive encouraging person who's never done anything bad to you? Anybody can do that. That's no big deal. Everybody loves nice attractive people. Even sinners love people love that Jesus
said.
But He says:
NKJ Luke 6:35 "But
love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your
reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to
the unthankful and evil.
Even Luke, he’s been influenced by Paul. What's he's done? He’s gone right back to God that God is kind
to the ungrateful and the evil. So we're
not going to be kind because somehow we’re better than God?
John
NKJ John
So this sets the fact that forgiveness and grace are the
foundation. That necessitates what I
usually refer to as either impersonal love or unconditional love. It's impersonal because you don't have to
have a personal relationship with the individual. You may not know them. They may be somebody who you have just met,
run into. You have some sort of business
interaction with. You don't have to
necessarily be inviting them home on some Sunday after church for a fried
chicken dinner. You just have to have an
interaction with them. So in that sense
it’s impersonal.
But it is personal in the fact that you're dealing with
another person who's created in the image and likeness of God and is a rotten
sinner just like you are. You’ve been
forgiven of sin by God not because you've done anything good or great or
wonderful or attractive to God because you can't do it and neither has this
person. That's where the comparison
comes. So we have to understand that
love and grace are the foundation for forgiveness and peace.
Now this then results in unity. We see the extended
passage. I want you to turn there with
me now with me – Ephesians 2:11-18.
It’s foreshadowed in Psalm 133:1.
NKJ Psalm 133:1 …Behold,
how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity
So this isn’t simply talking about the kind of unity and
oneness we have with God because of what Christ did on the cross. But that vertical unity is to change our
horizontal unity.
Now in Ephesians 2 the first 7 verses deal with the gospel
and understanding grace. That’s
foundational. That's basically what
I've been talking about most of the time this evening - is understanding grace
and love.
NKJ Ephesians
2:8
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it
is the gift of God,
NKJ Ephesians
2:9
not of works, lest anyone should boast.
But the next verse goes on to say that it doesn’t means that
good works aren’t important. The next
verse says:
NKJ Ephesians
That has to do with divine good, walking by the Spirit,
producing the fruit of the Spirit in us.
which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them.
That involves our volition that we have to walk in those
good works; one of those of which is pursuing peace with all men. Now Paul then takes this and applies in terms
of a circumstance where there has been a breach, a horizontal breach between
the Gentiles and the Jews.
In verse 11 he says:
NKJ Ephesians
…talking to primarily Gentile audience in
-- who are called
Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands --
So this had become an aspect of pride by the Jews. They looked down upon the Gentiles because
they were circumcised.
“If you guys don't have a covenant with God; we've got a
covenant with God. We're God's chosen
people. You’re not; so you’re
worthless.”
So that is what he is criticizing here.
He says:
NKJ Ephesians
That is prior to the cross.
being aliens from the
…basically spiritually second class citizens.
and strangers from the
covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
NKJ Ephesians
That’s the Gentiles who were far off.
have been brought near by the
blood of Christ.
…because the death of Christ applies to all people.
NKJ Ephesians
There's our word. He
is our peace. Now this peace isn't just
relating it to peace with God. It's
relating it to the peace and the breakdown of the division between Jew and
Gentile. It's true in both cases.
He says:
who has made both one,
Who are the both there? Jew and Gentile This isn't talking about the barrier between
God and man. It’s talking about the
barrier between Jew and Gentile.
and has broken down the middle
wall of separation,
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
2:15
having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of
commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new
man from the two, thus making peace,
Galatians 3 dealing with the baptism by the Holy
Spirit.
NKJ Galatians
Does that mean He wipes out the Jews? No. He
wipes out physical distinctions?
No. Jews are still Jews; Gentiles
are still Gentiles. Asians are Asians. Chinese are Chinese. Africans are Africans. Slavs are Slavs. But spiritually there's not going to be a
racial distinction anymore as there was under the Old Testament economy. So
Jesus dies to tear down this division so that in Him there is now no
distinction. Now that's not making a
negative statement about Jews and Jews and their culture any more that it’s
making a negative statement about Gentiles and their culture in so far as it’s
not influenced by paganism.
So their wall of separation (the enmity between the two) has
been removed thus making peace. Now that
peace is between Jew and Gentile, not between man and God. That's what made it possible.
NKJ Ephesians
Now that’s the vertical aspect.
in one body through the cross,
thereby putting to death the enmity.
NKJ Ephesians
That is the Gentiles.
and to those who were near.
That is the Jews.
NKJ Ephesians
So Ephesians 2:11-18 lays this down that the vertical peace
with God is what lays that foundation for a horizontal relationship of peace
where the enmity has been completely removed.
Now let's talk about some elements of this peace. First of all the peace that we have and that
we should have as it applies to others should come out of an inner peace. Now when I put out the ten problem solving
devices and we deal with a sort of progression of maturity this often is seen
later. But it's developed in bits and
pieces and different stages as everybody grows in the Christian life. A baby believer has a baby believer’s measure
of peace. An adolescent believer has an
adolescent believer’s measure of peace and happiness. A mature believer has a mature believer’s
measure of peace and happiness. Just
because peace and joy are a more mature type aspect doesn’t mean that an infant
or baby believer can’t have peace and joy at that level for his stage.
Anyone has this. You
have passages like Isaiah 26:3. Isaiah
says to God:
NKJ Isaiah 26:3 You will
keep him in perfect peace,
That is stability, tranquility - the Hebrew word Shalom -
also relates to health and happiness.
Whose mind is stayed
on You, Because he trusts in You.
The Hebrew word there for trust is the Hebrew word batach which we studied before and has
the idea of emphasizing the source of confidence and stability in the
believer’s mindset. Why do we have
confidence? Because, our focal point is
on Him. So this takes us back to what I
said about love.
It’s a mental focus. Our mental focus is on God who shapes
our application. So then we have peace
(tranquility) because our confidence rests in God - not in people, not in what
people do, haven’t done, how they react, how they respond or any of those
things.
Another passage from the Old Testament is Isaiah 32:17.
NKJ Isaiah
32:17
The work of righteousness will be peace, …
See there is a level of integrity here shaped by the Hebrew
word here for righteousness. The work of
righteousness is peace. You can't have
peace by compromising away everything.
A classic example was Munich when Chamberlain, the prime
minister of England, compromised everything away - just got rid of all of his
integrity - just flushed it down the commode and entered into a peace at all
costs, compromised away all of his values, all of his integrity by entering
into a compromise with Hitler. That is not
how you achieve peace was somebody who is at odds with you. Peace is a priority; but it's not a priority
at the expense of righteousness and justice and integrity.
The reason I get a little upset about this is every time you
start saying you have to forgive everybody somebody comes along and says,
“Well, I know this person is of absolute zero dud loser. You mean I have to forgive him?”
Well, that zero dud losers - have they ever asked you to
forgive them? Have they ever admitted
that what they did was wrong? No? Well then we're not there yet.
You know, you don't have to compromise your integrity and
righteousness and have a pseudo peace.
That’s just pseudo humility that’s just going to make things worse, not
better. That is not biblical peace or
biblical humility. That is just the
reverse. It is pseudo arrogance - is
what it is.
So the work of righteousness will be peace. It can only come when there's integrity.
And the effect of
righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.
Now we have the word quietness and assurance forever. That first word in the New King James that’s
translated quietness - the Hebrew word sahqat
which means to be quiet, to be tranquil, to be at peace, to be undisturbed by
anxiety. So when you think about that
person, you’re not going to start getting all riled up emotionally with your
stomach churning.
The second word there translated assurance is actually our
friend batach from the previous
verse. It means confident trust in
God. So let’s retranslate this a little
bit more to get its sense. The work of
righteousness will result in peace.
There's a connection between righteousness and peace. You cannot have peace when there is
unrighteousness. The effect of
righteousness is quietness. That is
undisturbed tranquility and confidence forever.
That's when there's peace.
Another passage, Isaiah 48:18.
NKJ Isaiah
48:18
Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a
river,
You can’t get this kind of peace and create it artificially. It got to come from God and again it's
located in connection with obedience to God which is where you get the idea of
righteousness. It’s in accord with the
standard of God and so righteousness has to be there. That comes from obeying the commandments.
Then your peace would have
been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
So there's a
connection between integrity and peace.
Then one last verse to close on. Jesus said:
NKJ John
Notice to contrast to peace is not nonviolence. It is inner tranquility and stability. The word translated troubled is the Greek word
tarasso which means to shake
together, to stir up, to stir, to unsettle things, to throw things in disorder,
to stick your emotions in your emotional blender and get everything all churned
up. So when you have the peace which
comes from the Word of God, the Spirit of God.
Also a fruit of the Spirit is the opposite. That is - don’t let your thinking get upset
and all churned up by focusing on the wrong things and letting your sin nature
get in control.
neither let it be afraid.
This is not phobos or
- phobeo
is the verb – phobos the noun for
fear. This is the Greek word deilaio which also has that idea of
fear. But it also to worry and anxiety
and brings in that whole measure of meaning there.
So Jesus contrasts the peace that we have from the Holy
Spirit which He gives us to that which gets us all stirred up and all out of
focus and all shaken up inside emotionally because we’re just like Peter. We just get our focus on those blasted waves
all the time and start sinking rather than putting our focus on the Lord and
the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
So we’ll come back next time to start looking at the path to
peace in terms of how do we really implement this in terms of other people
around us and also addressing the question - how do we deal with those who just
don't care and they're not going respond?
So we'll do that next week.