(Read text)
I could be wrong, but I think that the most commonly misused and misapplied word in the language of man, is ‘love’. If my supposition is accurate, then surely the second most misused and misapplied word is, ‘peace’.
Mankind has never known peace. Peace is not the absence of war, like darkness is the absence of light.
Peace is not refraining from shooting your neighbor when his dog digs a hole in your new lawn.
Peace is not avoiding a fight with your spouse by avoiding the hot topic.
Peace is not found in the stillness of a mountain meadow, or the steam of a Calgon bath, or the disjointed tinkling of New Age music with your tea.
Our municipalities have laws against disturbing the peace.
Nations that have long been at odds with one another, have also long talked about peace. When can they have peace? How can they have peace? But still they don’t find peace.
No peace treaty that man has ever devised has been kept. In man there is no peace; and here is why.
It is because man has never been at peace with God, and if there is not peace with God, then there can be no peace in the soul. Man was made to worship his Creator, and when he rejects his Creator and goes his way, then he also rejects peace, and his path is one of turmoil from within, that affects everything without.
Now our text says something that seems to completely contradict the facts that we see all around us; that keep us in a state of anxiety over our own personal lack of peace. It says;
“And suddenly there appeared with the angel a
multitude of the heavenly host praising God,
and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth, peace among men with whom
He is pleased’”.
Epictetus, a philosopher of the first century, wrote in reference to the Pax Romania - the Roman peace that existed in the civilized world at the time and about which the Caesar boasted - “While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief and envy. He cannot give peace of heart, for which man yearns more than even for outward peace”.
The philosopher struck right at the heart of the problem. So how do we reconcile this angel’s announcement of peace, with the evidence before us - strife and turmoil between governments, between people, and in men’s own personal lives and hearts from Eden until now?
I think the starting place, is to reconcile this announcement with the rest of scripture itself, and have an understanding of what is really being said here in Luke 2:14.
How can the angel pronounce peace among men with whom He (God) is pleased, when we know full well that God has had no cause or reason to be pleased with men from the very beginning?
Well, perhaps our first clue in our search, is found back in verse 12.
“And this will be a sign for you;
you will find a baby wrapped in cloths
and lying in a manger”.
Immediately following these words, the multitude of angels appear with the herald angel, and begin to sing God’s praises and His blessing.
Our first clue then, is that God’s glory and man’s peace rests in that manger.
The angels are saying that through the birth of Christ, true peace will come to the earth. His coming means peace with God, and peace given by God through Christ.
One writer has said, “It is the work of Christ to bring peace into all human relations - in man’s relation to God, to himself (his own feelings, desires, etc), to his life’s circumstances (calamities and trials), and to his fellow-men.”
The angel is not wishing us peace in the way we might say to each other in a Christmas card, “may you have peace in this season”.
It is not said with the same shallow intent of the “Peace” signs and slogans of the 1960’s in our own country; when the hippies held up their fingers in the shape of a ‘v’ and smiled through their clouds of incense and their drug-fogged minds and said, ‘peace, man...’
It is an announcement that true and lasting peace will come on earth to the hearts of those who are redeemed in Christ...who through faith become the sons of God.
For those who remain outside of Him, the earth and their own lives remain in a state of disorder and strife.
Now who are the men “with whom God is pleased”?
Here we have a bit of a mystery. If the message is only to a certain group, then the message of salvation is not for all. Was it to the Jews? No. God was not pleased with the Jews. It could not have been for any Gentile group, or it would have been to the Gentiles that He came.
Yet, because the message is for all men everywhere, and we know that God is not pleased with all men everywhere, this tells us we have to look deeper into this phrase and reconcile it with basic Christian doctrine.
Norval Geldenhuys, in his Commentary on Luke, indicates that the various renderings in the existing translations all fall short. KJ - “good will toward men” RV - “among men with whom he is well pleased” (also the NASB) and some modern versions read, “among men of good will”.
Geldenhuys feels that a most accurate rendering would be, “on earth peace, among men who are the objects of His pleasure”.
I tend to agree with him, because this phrase would line up best with Biblical doctrine.
We’ll look at that doctrine, but first let’s talk about the phrase, “the objects of His pleasure”.
Who or what is the object of someone’s pleasure? Well, the object of your pleasure, is the one or the thing that it gives you pleasure to serve.
If you love someone with an unselfish love, they are the object of your pleasure.
I love my wife. It gives me great pleasure to do for her; to provide for her; to protect her.
Nothing angers me deeper or faster, than when I learn that someone has disparaged her character, treated her wrongly, accused her wrongly. I am quick to jump to the defense of her honor and her person.
That quickness to defend and protect comes entirely from the source of my love for her. It is not at all dependent on how I feel about her at the moment.
We may have just had a disagreement. It is conceivable, though not probable, that she has just done something to displease me, and for the moment I am irritated with her. Yet in that very moment if I saw her in sudden danger, or if some third party was saying or doing something to hurt her or insult her, my love for her would issue in acts of defense.
True, sacrificial love issues in nobility. I would not call myself ‘noble’; nor would I go about bragging that I act nobly at all times.
But nobility flows naturally from love’s reservoir.
When a man loves his country, nobility manifests itself in his willingness to serve his country; in war and in other duties.
When a person loves another person, that love is expressed in noble acts of servitude and sacrifice. Love takes pleasure in that service, and even in that sacrifice.
Now I am an evil man. I have a sin nature. I am saved only by God’s grace, and any good thing in or coming from me is by His Spirit.
So if you take these same principles discussed above and attribute them to the pure, perfect love and knowledge of God, then you begin to see that inspite of our evil, our darkness, our rebellion, it is God’s love for us as His creation that is expressed in His pleasure to pour out blessings upon us. We are not deserving, but His pleasure is not in our worthiness, but the fulfilling of His desire toward us.
Now as we look at the doctrinal truths I mentioned before, we’ll see what His pleasure was, toward us, the objects of that pleasure.
First, it pleased the Father to send His Son.
John 3:16,17 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.”
The 53rd chapter of Isaiah describes the suffering of the Messiah and also the pearls that He purchased with that suffering. His piercing paid for our transgressions. His crushing was for our iniquities. His scourging was for our healing, and His divine shoulders bore the weight of our chastening (or purifying).
Then in verse 10 the prophet says;
“But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand”.
This passage is a difficult one for our puny minds to reconcile, with thoughts of a merciful and just and gracious God.
But you see, those attributes are the very reasons that it pleased the Lord to crush Him. His mercy toward us, His justice against sin, and His grace which, flowing out from His love, says, “I love you enough to make the greatest sacrifice of all for your sakes”
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom 5:8
Secondly, it pleased Christ to take our sins upon Him.
“...who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Heb 12:2
Was the cross the joy that was set before Him? NO!
The joy set before Him was the prospect of bringing many sons to glory through the sufferings of that cross.
Speaking of both the Father’s and the Son’s parts in our salvation, the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 2 verse 10 says,
“For it was fitting for Him (the Father), for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to PERFECT THE AUTHOR (JESUS) OF THEIR SALVATION THROUGH SUFFERINGS.”
Remember what I said about nobility flowing from love’s reservoir?
If I was to make the greatest sacrifice of all for my wife or my children; if I were, in a time of immediate peril, to throw myself into the path of danger for them, or in a time of crisis, give some organ of my body, the taking of which would kill me but save them, I would take great pleasure in making that sacrifice. But that would be nothing, compared to the sacrifice He made for us.
The King of glory, for His great and pure love, left His throne, lay aside His crown, and became an infant in a feeding trough. From that moment on He began to bear the sin of the world.
Here was perfect, divine sinlessness, walking through a sin darkened world, surrounded by sin-enslaved men, seeing the manifestation and the effects of sin around Him daily. If we could understand how abominable sin is to God, we may get an inkling of the trial He endured every day of His earthly life.
In addition to its presence, He constantly felt its onslaught. In sin, men called Him a liar, a deceiver, a devil, a glutton, a wine-bibber; they called Him illegitimate, demented,...and then they finally subjected Him to all the physical tortures that we reiterate so often when talking about the day of His arrest, trials and crucifixion.
He knew what was coming, being the eternal, omniscient God, from eternity past. Yet it was His joy and His pleasure to make that sacrifice for us, the objects of His love, therefore the objects of His pleasure.
Now let’s go back and refresh ourselves of the wording of our text.
“...and on earth peace among men”
(and if you’ll allow me)
“...who are the objects of His pleasure”.
If you accept this wording and can see that the angel was not saying that we were pleasing to God, but that we are simply the recipients of the sacrifice that it gave Him pleasure to make, then that must shed an entire new light on that phrase, “peace among men”.
To paraphrase the entire verse, the angel would be saying, “Give Glory to God in the highest, Whose pleasure has been to provide for men on earth the availability of peace with God, and to live in the peace of God, by sending His Son; the One I’ve just told you that you would find wrapped in cloths and laying in a manger”.
The angel could not have been announcing that peace had come to the earth. We only need to read of Herod’s slaughter of baby boys, the flight of Jesus and His parents into Egypt, the arrest and beheading of John the Baptist, and the numerous confrontations that Jesus had with the Pharisees, to know that peace did not come to the earth that night.
But the angel was also not predicting some future, millennial peace, when the Lord would return to set up His kingdom. No, the angel was talking about something that happened that very night; something that became available to all mankind on that special night in Bethlehem.
Not earthly peace, but peace with God, for the men of earth.
Remember that I said we have to line this announcement up with other scripture to understand its full meaning.
Turn to Romans chapter 5.
Verse one says it all: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST”.
Not by any merit of our own, but entirely by God’s grace;
Not by any effort of our own, but inspite of our sinful efforts; Not by any desire of ours, but according to His pleasure; God sent His Son, and in so doing and through the completed life and death and resurrection of Christ, made peace with us.
Now I want to ask you who are listening to this sermon today; If you understand that through the sending of His Son God made peace with us, even as we were warring against Him; if you understand that He loved us so much even when we were helpless, sinful, enemies, that Divine grace and nobility flowed out of the unfathomable reservoir of His love and provided for our salvation; if you understand that, even in your mind, if not your heart, then how can you presume upon that love by continuing in conscious sin?
How can you spit in the face of that kind of love by continuing to follow your own will and not His?
How can you continue to trample under foot the Son of God, by living as though you don’t believe He can fully forgive you, or make you new, or lead you in paths of righteousness?
Let me read to you a couple of excerpts from Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ commentary on Philippians, in reference to holy living. He says,
“The gospel is not something which we add to our lives, it is rather, something which should entirely dominate them...
The Christian life, therefore, is not merely a modification of the natural life, it is a new life, and Christians do not merely add something to their lives, they are people who have been changed at the center, they are entirely different.”
Then later in the same chapter he writes:
“...we must realize that there is no need to denounce people who are not living the holy life. The New Testament seems to be sorry for them. There is no need to denounce Christians who are not doing their utmost to live the Christian life, because, poor things, they are suffering enough as it is. They are missing the greatest thing the gospel has to give”. He was referring there, to the peace that comes from God.
On that first Christmas night, God made the way for you to have peace WITH Him, through faith in the One He sent to save you. That’s what Paul was talking about in Romans 5.
In addition, God made the way for you to enjoy the peace OF God in your daily walk, as you walk in obedience to the One Who sacrificed all for you...and did so with pleasure.
On that holy night in Bethlehem, God gave us peace with Himself, and through Him, peace with ourselves and our fellows. Peace with God...the peace of God.
Having peace WITH God is so simple that many miss it. It has been provided. The work has been done and done perfectly. It comes all from God and none from us. It comes simply by faith in the shed blood of Christ and His resurrection. That is what Paul called Justification. Right standing. Peace with God.
Having the peace OF God is a little harder for us because it depends to a degree on our continued realization that we do have peace WITH Him, and responding to His love with love, and walking in obedience.
Would you please run now, like the shepherds did on that night? Run to the manger and see for yourselves, that according to His great pleasure, God has made peace with you and now sends you out to be heralds and examples of that peace. If you do those things, the “...God of peace shall be with you”.
AMEN
