My name's Ben.
How's everybody doing?
Hopefully good.
The worship leader here at Village.
Today's scripture reading is from Romans 5, 1 through 11.
That's gonna be page 971 in the Bibles
that are in the back of the pews.
So if you'd like to follow along.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have also obtained access through him by faith
into this grace in which we stand.
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions.
Because we know that affliction produces endurance.
Endurance produces proven character
and proven character produces hope.
This hope will not disappoint us
because God's love has been poured out in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has given to us.
For while we were still helpless at the right time,
Christ died for the ungodly.
For rarely will someone die for a just person.
Though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die.
But God proves his own love for us
and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
How much more then,
since we have now been justified by his blood,
will we be saved through him from wrath?
For if while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his son,
then how much more, having been reconciled,
will we be saved by his life?
And not only that, but we also boast in God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
This is God's word.
You know it's a good time in worship
when the worship team also sings songs
that basically capture the essence
of what you're about to preach on.
So you all may be like, have I heard this before?
Yeah, just a little few minutes ago.
Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse 11 says,
he has put eternity in their hearts.
He has put eternity in their hearts.
Something happens around this time of the year.
It shows up in our arts, in our creation,
in our movies and messages.
The holiday season seems to tug at some deep seeded hope,
fear, longing.
It's as if each year our hibernating hearts
reach a tipping point and then we gorge ourselves
on the themes of eternity.
For a short little while.
Maybe some of you remember these.
After cursing his family and wishing them away,
eight year old Kevin McAllister
realizes how special it is to even have a family.
As he helps old man Marley,
the falsely rumored South Bend shovel slayer,
reconcile with his son, his estranged son.
Or Buddy the elf goes out to discover his true identity,
leading him to his human father
and helping his human father discover his true identity
and self all while saving Christmas together.
Or as I am so familiar with,
army buddies Bob Wallace and Phil Davis
partner up with a young man named John McAllister.
Bob Wallace and Phil Davis partner up with a sister act
to save the failing Vermont Inn
of their former commanding officer, General Waverly,
who has lost his sense of purpose and identity
since he left the army in White Christmas.
And who could forget Ebeneezer Scrooge's transformation
from that miserly bitter old man
to a generous and kind hearted individual
caring for Mr. Cratchit and his family
and the poor and outcast.
The themes of redemption, reconciliation,
compassion, hope, joy, peace, purpose and identity
are replete in this season of Christmas.
And this morning we're going to spend a little bit of time
exploring the theme of peace.
So if you are a note taker,
I would invite you to write down the first point
which is the pursuit of peace.
If our movies and commercials and messaging
are any indication we live in a world
that is pricked to the heart around the theme of peace.
Peace is the absence of conflict.
It is the state we long to be in mind, body and spirit.
Whether you're a mother of young children
or a daily commuter or in the golden years of your age
you regularly find yourself longing for peace.
Maybe you find glimpses of that peace you're looking for
camped out next to a lake in the mountains.
Or maybe it's seaside listening to the waves
break on the shore.
Or maybe it's curled up with a hot drink and a good book.
It's even possible, though rare,
to find a moment of peace and harmony
when you're out on family vacation,
when no one is fighting,
when no one is yelling and no one is thinking
only of themselves.
And in those moments, wherever it is that you find it,
there's always that moment when you think to yourself
right here, right here and nowhere else.
What can I do to capture this moment
and repeat it for infinity?
But we all know you can't.
Because you are experiencing something
that is transient or passing,
because you are experiencing something
that is a shadow and a whisper of a greater reality,
one which is not fully realized yet.
It's kind of like a clear TV channel
that's breaking through the static
and the white noise ever so often.
And you get the clear picture, it catches us up into it
for just a few moments, and it lifts us to a place
that almost feels otherworldly.
Why is it only sometimes, though, that it breaks through?
Why is life, the chaotic static,
more often than not?
Number two, the problem of peace.
The problem is conflict.
All around us is conflict.
We pursue peace, and I mean, look at the 60s, right?
The 60s were all about peace, harmony.
We hear of peace talks going on all around the world.
I listened to a pastor this week
who was preaching a sermon 10 years ago.
I was listening to a sermon that he preached 10 years ago,
and for an illustration, he opened up
the Wall Street Journal, and he was reading the front page,
summary of the news, and then it struck me
because one of the items that was on there,
it said that the peace talks between Israel and Palestine
were going very well.
10 years ago.
Where are they now?
There is no peace between man.
We hear of wars, and we hear of rumors of wars.
We hear of exploitation of the poor and the helpless.
We see the devastating effects of homelessness.
We see the statistics of the killing of the unborn.
We even see conflict, not just among man,
between humans, between persons,
but we see it, that conflict in nature as well.
The earthquakes, tornadoes rip through the Tennessee area
and through communities.
The winds and the waves are like an angry torrent,
and we, at least where I live, about an hour from here,
live in fear of wild animals.
I tiptoe to my car every Sunday morning
because I leave around four in the morning.
I'm looking around, I'm listening.
I'm on high alerts, like I'm gonna get
sideswiped by a mountain lion.
Nature is subject to decay.
Did you know that 99% of all species of animals
that ever existed are extinct?
They're gone.
We see it in our, we see that same decay
at work in our own bodies.
Whether you're in healthcare or you spend a lot of time
with healthcare workers, you know.
Nature knows no peace.
And even if it did, even if we could find a place
where mankind was getting along
and where nature was at peace, what about within yourself?
What about within yourself?
Crippling anxiety, overwhelming guilt,
frustration over unrealized hopes and dreams,
shame and regret, confusion, debilitating depression.
The soul is like a turbulent ocean
teeming with internal strife.
Something is wrong with me.
Something is wrong with you.
And we know it.
What is the problem of peace?
Well, the problem of peace is that there is no lasting peace.
As wishful as we may be, there is no lasting peace.
John Lennon could write a song themed around
what the world could be like if we could just live at peace.
John Lennon was a crackpot.
He didn't know what he was talking about.
Or he was talking beyond his rank.
It's not possible.
I mean, for him, he wanted to dispense with God.
He thought that would do it.
There's no peace.
The problem of peace isn't something that can be fixed
between people in conflict, nor is nature
on a path of self-correction.
No amount of counseling or miracle drugs
as helpful as the power of the mind
or miracle drugs as helpful as they are
will calm that inner sea of conflict that's going on
within your own heart and mind.
Why?
Because the problem is so much deeper.
The biblical narrative tells us exactly why
our experience is this way related to peace.
It tells us of a time when humanity,
nature and God were all at peace,
where harmony and wholeness of mind, body and spirit
were the reality.
But something happened.
A serpent deceived.
Mankind took the baits and rebelled against God.
Adam and Eve, who once were completely satisfied in God,
completely satisfied in their relationship to God,
turned away from his good wisdom
and they instead preferred their own.
And instead of peace with God, they chose conflict with God.
They chose to be at odds with their creator.
And that right there is ground zero
for the problem of peace.
They ruined everything.
From henceforth relationships,
there's conflict between men and women,
exploitation, stealing and even murder
that follow from that point on.
With nature, cursed to produce thorns and thistles,
hard packed earth that resists,
yielding its good fruit,
wild and untamed, groaning,
groaning for a freedom and an existence it once knew.
Our bodies turn against themselves.
Cells attack cells.
Sickness and death,
with death as the ultimate conflict between man and man.
The ultimate conflict between man and nature.
And what of the inner life?
Was it preserved through all of that falling of humankind?
No, it was destroyed.
Created by God for God,
our first parents exchanged that life for a life
that was so turned inward
that they immediately realized
that they were no longer who they ought to be.
Immediately, they had so turned inward,
taking the fruit, the forbidden fruit
and doing what was right in their own eyes,
they immediately realized and became aware
that they were not who they ought to be.
They were so free and so glorious in their innocence
and the innocent peace that they existed in
with God and nature before
that they didn't even recognize they were naked.
They had no need to, no shame.
But now in that moment, shame
crept inside to the inner parts.
And their nakedness led them to hiddenness
and turned them ever inward.
It's broken and it cannot be fixed by looking inward.
That's what broken or that's what broke it
in the first place.
Conflict with God has literally driven us mad.
We no longer know what we are supposed to be.
We have no grounding because we are made
to be grounded in God.
Man was created to co-rule good creation with God
and to have authority over creation
and therefore when man fell,
all of creation was subject to that fall.
Under its authority and its co-rulership,
no peace with God means there will be conflict.
Everywhere, always.
Until enmity with God is dealt with,
we cannot know peace.
This is truly the problem with the world.
It's not that we haven't yet discovered
the perfect form of government.
It's not that we haven't yet found
the perfect leader to lead us somewhere.
We don't have to worry about the elections
to try to bring about world peace
or free us from this turmoil
that we find between man and man and man and nature
and inside of our own self because they can't do it.
They can't do it, they never could and they never will.
It's not that we need peace between warring parties
in order to experience wholesale peace.
No, these are all broken because something
far more fundamental is broken.
But we, humanity, are mad, we're crazy.
We're unable to broker a peace deal.
More so, we are rebels, just like our first parents.
And Isaiah 48, 22 says, there's no peace for the wicked.
No peace.
So how will this mess be made right?
We need a mediator.
We need point number three, the prince of peace.
Isaiah chapter nine, beginning in verse two.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.
A light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness
and the people who are living in darkness.
A light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.
You have enlarged the nation and increased its joy.
The people have rejoiced before you as they rejoice
at harvest time and as they rejoice when dividing spoils.
For you have shattered their oppressive yoke
and the rod on their shoulders.
The staff of their oppressor, just as you did
on the day of Midian.
For every trampling boot of battle
and the bloodied garments of war will be burned
for the fire, for a child will be born to us.
A son will be given to us
and the government will be on his shoulders
and he will be named wonderful counselor,
mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace.
The dominion will be vast
and its prosperity will never end.
He will reign on the throne of David
over his kingdom to establish and sustain it
with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.
The glory of the gospel is that rebels were given
the gift of the child that bears four names.
Rebels were given the gift of the child
that bears four names, wonderful counselor
and wonderful might be also translated miraculous.
His counsel works wonders.
It was his counsel in the beginning
that would have kept and preserved
the unity and peace of the garden
had the first parents obeyed it.
But it is his counsel and his plan
and his wisdom today that will bring us back to peace.
He is our wonderful miraculous counsel.
His counsel works.
And he is the mighty God.
He is the enemy crusher.
He is the warrior God.
Psalm 24 says, who is the king of glory?
Who is the king of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
Mighty God is not just a, hey, my dad is strong and mighty.
This is war terms.
This is about my God can defeat all other gods.
My God can triumph over any enemy.
He's an enemy crusher.
He's a warrior God.
Who is the king of glory?
He's mighty in battle.
Eternal Father, when does his covering and watchfulness end?
What can go beyond his gaze?
What can find its way to a shadow
where he can't see or cover?
When is he no longer Abba Father?
Never.
He is the unchanging family head.
And finally, Prince of Peace.
We're told his kingdom is vast
or another way of thinking of his ever-expanding,
ever-expanding kingdom.
His peace is never-ending.
More are falling into his rule.
He is our peace and he will broker our peace.
He brings us back to a kingdom
where there is peace and flourishing.
He gives us his perfect peace.
But how?
How will he broker our peace?
What is the plan that the warrior God
and the miraculous counselor
without of this world wisdom,
what plan has he prepared?
How will he win us when we can never gain,
what we can never gain for ourselves?
What's the big plan?
Well, the big plan is found
in a fairly lengthy scripture I'm gonna read right now.
Isaiah 53.
Who has believed what we have heard
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a young plant
and like a root out of dry ground.
He didn't have an impressive form or majesty
that we should look at him,
no appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.
He was like someone who turned away from.
He was despised and we didn't value him.
Yet he himself bore our sicknesses
and he carried our pains.
But we in turn regarded him stricken,
struck by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced because of our rebellion,
crushed because of our iniquity.
Punishment for our peace was on him
and we are healed by his wounds.
We all win astray like sheep.
We all have turned to our own ways
and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before her sheers,
he did not open his mouth.
He was taken away because of oppression in judgment
and who considered his fate?
For he was cut off from the land of the living.
He was struck because of my people's rebellion.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
but he was with a rich man at his death
because he had done no violence
and had not spoken deceitfully.
Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely.
When you make him a guilt offering,
he will see his seed, he will prolong his days
and by his hand the Lord's pleasure will be accomplished.
After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied.
By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many
and he will carry their iniquities.
Therefore, I will give him the many as a portion
and he will receive the mightiest spoil
because he willingly submitted to death
and was counted among the rebels,
yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
God will send God to pay the just penalty
for the rebels' rebellion
so that no conflict will exist between God and the rebels
who will be free and clear, reconciled back to God.
That's his miraculous plan.
What a plan.
He will take on all the rebels
and he will take on all the rebels
and he will take on all the rebels.
He will take on all the conflict.
He will bear all the sin.
He will bear all the sickness and all the weird weariness
and waywardness and hopelessness and oppression
and judgment and guilt.
He will take it on.
He will snap the neck of the serpent deceiver.
He will crush the enemy and be victorious over evil and death.
a cosmic laughing stock.
He will do what the madness of humanity loss could never do.
He will give himself in order to redeem and restore
all that was lost.
I don't have a war with other humans
because God in Christ is ruling and reigning
with justice and righteousness.
I don't have to fear the decay of creation,
even my own body, because God in Christ
is making everything new.
I don't have to interpret reality through the turmoil
of that inner raging sea within my own heart and mind.
There wasn't a plan B either.
This wasn't a last minute, last ditch rescue effort
on the Lord's part.
This was hidden in the wisdom of God for all times.
He was going to do this, to show the glory of who he is.
What kind of God would do this?
He wanted to put it on display for all of us to glory in.
And he wasn't half-hearted about it either.
He didn't go begrudgingly or grumbling under his breath.
Isaiah nine told us that the zeal of the Lord,
the passion, it's the same word that's used
in Song of Solomon for the passion that man and woman
have for one another.
The passion, the deep-seated zeal of the Lord
will accomplish this.
He's all about it.
God's zeal to reclaim what was stolen.
God is zealous to have what is rightfully his.
God is all about bringing cosmic peace.
God did not let you or I or anyone sit
in their despair and hopeless chaos.
He did something.
God sent God to pay the just penalty for the rebels' rebellion
so that no conflict will exist between God and the rebels.
And the rebels will be free and clear,
reconciled back to God.
Is your life a mess?
Are you ravaged by that never-ending inner dialogue
of rage, anger, despair, hopelessness, and conflict?
Have you accepted a truce in your life
that isn't really peace, it's just
keeping an illusion of peace?
Are you at an impasse in a relationship or in your marriage?
Have you accepted a marriage of conflict and pain?
The fates have just spoken.
Are you tired of being beat down in every direction?
There is no kingdom peace.
There is no kingdom peace without the king.
You cannot have peace unless you first have
the lordship of the Prince of Peace.
It is only in his realm and under his reign
that you can have peace.
It is only in his realm and under his reign that we access
the benefits of the kingdom, the kingdom of everlasting peace.
And so Romans tells us that since we have been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our lord,
Jesus Christ.
How are we brought into peace with God?
By faith.
You cannot do anything except one pastor, Roy Ortland,
was preaching a message and he said, he put it this way,
all you can do is fall forward.
In all your unrighteousness, in all your failings
and frailty, in all your sin, fall forward into Christ.
Fall forward into Christ.
Roy went on to talk about, Roy Ortland went on to talk about
when he sees Jesus for the first time, he has this image
that he repeats in his mind.
He imagines that moment of meeting Christ,
entering into heaven and running,
running full speed as he sees Christ.
Christ saying, you wanna hug?
Opening his arms and Roy hitting Christ so hard
that they fall down on the ground.
And in that embrace, they spend a couple years there.
As Roy said, he feels humanity restored to him
from his feet, slowly all the way to his head.
And then he breathes and they get up
and they just start running, running through the kingdom
of peace.
To access the realm of the King,
you must be under the rule of the King.
Fall forward in all your unrighteousness
into the grace that awaits you in Christ.
This is faith, fall in the direction of Christ
and fall under his Lordship.
It is there and only there that you can experience
a greater measure of peace today
and the fullness of peace to come.
Let's pray.