When you see these symbols, what do you think of? [Show circle peace symbol, two fingers V peace sign, and an image of a dove with an olive branch.]
These three images are very different, but they all are very recognizable as signs of peace. But what all three bear in common is that they were actually developed in the midst of a lack of peace.
Although many people are mistakenly under the impression that the peace sign on the left has occultic or Satanic roots, it was actually first developed by a British activist named Gerald Holtom in 1958. The emblem was based on flag semaphore movements for two letters: N (two flags pointed down at angles) and D (one flag straight up, the other straight down). The letters stood for Nuclear Disarmament. The symbol was used in Britain to protest the making of nuclear weapons. It later made its way to America, where it was used for broader purposes in the civil rights movement and later as an antiwar symbol by those who opposed the Vietnam War.
And what about the two fingers raised in a V shape in the middle? This symbol actually started as a sign of victory, not peace. Resistance fighters in German-occupied territories used it as a symbol of strength during World War II. The British prime minister Winston Churchill adopted it to stand for the English victory, and it eventually came to stand for the end of the conflict. Later, in the 1960s, it was adopted as an antiwar symbol by Americans who opposed war.
As for the dove and the olive branch on the right? This image was used in many traditions throughout history, but it originated from the Old Testament account of Noah, who sent a dove in search of land after the great flood. The dove returned holding an olive branch, indicating that the waters were receding and land was near. It became a sign of the promise of peace after the storm of God’s judgment.
While today we immediately recognize each of these three images as symbols of peace, all three originated in times of great chaos, conflict and unrest.
This morning, we will discover that the gift of peace that came to us that very first Christmas over 2,000 years ago, also came during a time of both external and internal conflict and struggle.
It’s hard to believe but this morning marks our fourth week of our observance of Advent. If you’ve been with us all four weeks, you will hopefully remember that the word Advent means “coming” or “arrival” and it’s my prayer that that for you and your family this has been a time to reflect on the gifts that came with Jesus during His first arrival here on earth and to look forward to His second coming in the future.
We began with the gift of hope. [Light hope candle]. We learned that Biblical hope is not merely wishful thinking, but rather the confident expectation that the birth of Jesus makes it possible to deal with my past sins, live a godly life in the present and overcome my fears about the future.
The second gift we looked at was the gift of love. [Light love candle]. We saw how God demonstrated His love for us in the incarnation. We learned that genuine love is more than just a feeling – it is an act that benefits others, even when they don’t deserve it and even though they might reject it.
Last week we focused on the gift of joy. [Light joy candle]. We found that joy is not just an emotional feeling that comes from comfortable circumstances. It is not something that we can generate on our own, but rather it flows out of having the joy of Jesus within us as we stay closely connected to Him.
This morning, we’ll open the gift of peace a gift that was promised by the angel army who spoke to the shepherds in the field the night Jesus was born:
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
(Luke 2:13-14 ESV)
Like the conflict and tumult that produced the peace symbols we looked at earlier, the gift of peace that came in the person of Jesus arrived here on earth during a time when the world definitely wasn’t at peace – especially for the Jews. They were under oppression from the Romans and from the evil King Herod who reigned in Judea. But their lack of peace didn’t just come from that external conflict. There was also a divide between God and His people, who hadn’t heard directly from God since the ministry of the prophet Malachi 400 years earlier. So the people were definitely needing the gift of peace that the angels proclaimed.
But there is already a hint here that not everyone was going to receive that gift of peace. Only those with whom God is pleased get to experience peace on earth. In order to understand more about what that kind of Biblical peace is like and how to receive it, we’re once again going to look at a passage that we don’t normally associate with Christmas. So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1.
He[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
(Colossians 1:15-23 ESV)
In reading and studying this passage for the last couple of weeks, the thing that kept coming to mind is a slogan that many of you have probably seen on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. There is even book by this title:
No Jesus, No Peace
Know Jesus, Know Peace
You see, Jesus is not just a symbol of peace, like the ones we looked at a few minutes ago. He is peace, which is why the prophet Isaiah revealed that He would be called the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
WHY I NEED TO KNOW JESUS IF I WANT TO KNOW PEACE
1. Without Jesus, I am at war with God (v. 21)
In verse 21, Paul describes the condition of every person ever born apart from Jesus. All of us in this room this morning were once alienated from God and hostile to Him and therefore engaged in evil deeds.
That is exactly the same thing that we saw just a few weeks ago in Romans chapter 8, where Paul wrote that the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. As we pointed out when we looked at that passage, even though someone without Jesus might not appear to be outwardly hostile to God, the fact that they have rejected Jesus because they want to live life on their own terms does indeed mean that they at war with God.
And, as Paul pointed out in that passage, when the mind is set on the things of the flesh, that leads to a life that is lived according to the flesh which produces evil deeds. Once again, most of us probably know some unbelievers and we look at their lives and consider them to be pretty good people who don’t outwardly commit what we would consider to be evil deeds. But the word translated “evil” here also conveys the idea of acts that are “worthless”. So even when people carry out what look to be good actions on the surface because they are intended to earn favor with God, God considers them to be evil in the sense that they are worthless as a means of earning favor with God.
This idea is not merely a New Testament principle. The prophet Isaiah had revealed this same concept hundreds of years earlier:
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
(Isaiah 64:6 ESV)
Again, as we have stressed frequently throughout this series as well as in our study of Romans, there are only two kinds of people in this world – those who know Jesus and thus have peace with God and those who do not know Jesus and therefore are still at war with God. So that means that every single person ever born is in need of the gift of peace that Jesus offers.
2. Jesus is the only way I can be reconciled to God
Since we’re going to be using the word “reconcile” a lot this morning, let’s take a moment to define it. The root word means “to change” or “to exchange”. It is a word that describes what a lot of you will be doing in a couple weeks with some of your Christmas presents that are unacceptable for some reason. Maybe they don’t fit or you already have one or you just won’t use whatever you receive, so you’ll take that item back to the store and exchange it for something that is more useful.
As it is used in the New Testament, it expresses the idea that God exchanges our hostility with Him for friendship with Him. But the word that Paul uses here is an emphatic form of that word which conveys the idea of “being reconciled fully or completely”. It is the idea that in Jesus, God completely removes all enmity and leaves no impediment to being united with Him.
And in this passage, Paul gives us a number of reasons why the only way that is possible is through Jesus.
• His nature is to hold things together (vv. 15-17)
In verses 15-17, Paul describes how Jesus created all things, both this physical world and the spiritual world that operates behind the scenes. That creation was perfect and operated exactly as He intended when Jesus first brought it into existence.
But then sin entered into both realms. In the spiritual realm, Satan, a created angel, rebelled against God and one third of the angels chose to rebel along with him. In the physical realm, Adam and Eve sinned against God and that brought chaos and disorder to God’s creation.
Paul describes that current state of affairs in Romans 8:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
(Romans 8:19-22 ESV)
At the present, because of sin, God’s creation does not function the way that God created it to operate perfectly in the first place. But the good news, as we see in verse 17, is that all things hold together in Jesus because that is His nature. He is consistently in the business of bringing together in Himself those things that have been separated. That is what it means in verse 20 when Paul describes how Jesus has reconciled all things, both in heaven and on earth, to Himself, thus making peace.
This is the aspect of reconciliation that is unique to the Scriptures. Not only is reconciliation an exchange of my hostility toward God for an intimate relationship with Him, it is also the reestablishment of God’s authority and reign which existed before sin corrupted God’s perfect creation.
But a careful look at the verb tenses in this passage certainly raise some questions about that aspect of reconciliation, however. Most of the verbs that describe who Jesus is are in the present tense:
o He is the image of God…
o He is before all things…
o He is the head of the body…
o He is the beginning…
But most of the verbs that described what Jesus has done are in the past tense:
o All things were created…
o In Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…
o He reconciled to himself all things…
o He made peace…
o He has now reconciled…
So Paul writes that Jesus has already made peace by reconciling all things to Himself by the blood of the cross. But let’s face it, we look around and we don’t see that kind of reconciliation and peace in the world, do we? So how do we reconcile what we observe to be true with what Paul writes here?
I think those ideas are brought together in the concept of firstfruits which we see in both verse 15 and especially in verse 18, where Jesus is described as “the firstborn from the dead”. In Hebrew thought the firstfruits always represented the whole. When the first of the harvest was offered to God, the rest of the harvest was also considered to be sanctified, for example. So when Jesus overcame the final enemy, death, He secured peace not only for Himself, but for all who would follow Him in faith. And even though we have not yet experienced the full extent of the reconciliation which will restore the creation to its original perfection, Jesus insured that will one day be the case through His death and resurrection.
So first of all, peace is only possible by being reconciled to God through Jesus because it is Jesus nature to hold things together. That would probably be reason enough, but there are two more important things we learn about Jesus in this passage.
• He is 100% God (vv. 15, 19)
In addition to the fact we have already seen that Jesus is the creator of all things, there are a couple other things in this passage that clearly show us that Jesus is 100% God.
First, in verse 15, we see that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”. The word “image” there is a word from which we get our English word “icon”. It describes something that is an exact copy of the original. That means that when Jesus came to earth and took on a body of flesh, that people could see what God the Father was like by observing the life of Jesus. That is why when Philip asked Jesus to show God the Father to the disciples, Jesus replied:
“Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
(John 14:9 ESV)
Then in verse 19, Paul writes “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” In other words, Jesus is 100% God because in every way His character and nature and attributes are exactly the same as those of God the Father.
So Jesus is 100% God. But at the same time…
• He is 100% man (vv. 20, 22)
The fact that Jesus died on the cross is certainly a proof of His humanity. He bled, because He had a physical body. And, as Paul emphasizes in verse 22, the way that He reconciled us to God was “in his body of flesh by his death.”
This is why the gift of peace just wouldn’t be possible without Christmas. Think about it. If the problem is that there is a separation between God and man, who better to bridge that divide than someone who is both 100% God and 100% man at the same time?
When Jesus became a man, He did not, as some erroneously claim, give up or empty Himself of His deity. He continued to be 100% God although He did voluntarily lay aside the glory that He deserved as God as well as some of the powers He possessed as God.
But He did chose to be born in in the flesh in the humblest of circumstances and to live in this sin ravaged world for about 33 years. But unlike every other person ever born Jesus did that without ever sinning even once Himself so that He could be that perfect, unblemished sacrifice for our sins.
Hopefully you now see why we said earlier:
No Jesus, No Peace
Know Jesus, Know Peace
And in the context of this passage, that means knowing Jesus both as God and as man. To do that I must put my faith in Him, trusting that His death on the cross put to an end the war between God and me and that by His sacrifice my hostility toward God has been exchanged for an intimate loving relationship with Him.
If you’ve never done that, you can never have real peace in your life until you have first ended your war with God and been reconciled to Him through faith in Jesus. It is my earnest prayer that no one here this morning would leave this building without being 100% confident that you are at peace with God. If you don’t have that confidence we’d love to help you get to that place in your life and at the end of the service, I’ll explain further how we can help you do that.
But I know that most of us have already taken that initial step to unwrap and receive the gift of peace. For us, I want to close by thinking about…
HOW DO I ENJOY THE GIFT OF PEACE?
1. Stay connected to Jesus (v.23)
If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same exact point we made last week. But that is also the point Paul is making in verse 23. But before we dive into the meat of that verse, let me first address a possible misconception. Because verse 23 begins with the connecting word “if”, it would be easy to conclude that Paul is teaching that our reconciliation with God is dependent on our works, specifically “continuing in the faith”. But just as we saw in Romans a few weeks ago, the word “if” here assumes that this is true, so it carries the sense of “since”. Kenneth Wuest, a noted Greek scholar translates that phrase like this:
Assuming indeed, that you are adhering to your faith…
So Paul is not in any way suggesting that it is possible to undo our reconciliation with God if we don’t live out our faith perfectly. But what he is doing, I think, is to show us how to continue to enjoy the gift of peace. And if we want to do that, the key word here is the verb “continue” That is actually just an emphatic form of the verb “abide” that we focused on last week in John 15.
For purposes of this sermon series we’ve focused separately on the four gifts of hope, love, joy, and peace, but as we see here it’s really not possible to receive and enjoy them separately because they are so intertwined and they come from the same gift giver – Jesus. So just like we saw last week with the gift of joy, the way I continue to enjoy peace is to stay connected to the one who has allowed me to be at peace at God through what he did for me on the cross. And as we found last week, we do that through His Word, prayer and being pruned.
But since done of us can do that perfectly, we also need to…
2. Keep short accounts with God
While my overall peace with God is not dependent on my works, the fact is that every time I sin, it does create some degree of separation from God that needs to be addressed.
Jesus spoke about this in two different ways with His disciples on the night before He went to the cross. The first time was when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Remember that after Peter asked Jesus to wash his hands and head in addition to his feet, Jesus said this to Peter:
Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”
(John 13:10 ESV)
And then Jesus said something similar in His discourse about the vine that we looked at last week:
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
(John 15:2-3 ESV)
Jesus told Peter and later told all eleven disciples that they were “clean”. In both places, Jesus was telling them that because of their faith in Him, they were at peace with God. So they didn’t have to keep being cleansed in that sense over and over. But as they walked through life and got their feet dirty as a result of their occasional sin, they did need to periodically wash their feet by confessing their sins to God and seeking His forgiveness. That also seems to be at least part of the pruning that God does in our lives. As He reveals sin in our lives, we have to confess it and remove it. That is how we make sure that we don’t let the separation that comes between us and God as a result of our sin doesn’t get so wide that it robs us of our peace.
When Jesus was born into this world over 2,000 years ago, that was much more than just a symbol of peace, like the ones we looked at the beginning of this message. Jesus is the Prince of Peace and He is our peace. But like every other gift of Christmas, although that gift is available to all, it only benefits those who receive it. Remember…
No Jesus, No Peace
Know Jesus, Know Peace
[Prayer]
For further help…
