The Power Of His Liberating Peace

Intro:

Liberator - a person who liberates a person or place from imprisonment or oppression.

Ex. Gen. Douglas McArthur the liberator of the Filipinos and other ASEAN countries in WW2.

Jesus is our ultimate liberator when He said in Luke 4:18

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free”

And since He said that it is only through the Spirit of God that it is on Him that He is able to set the captives free, it is the same Spirit that He mentioned in John 14:26-27 when He assured His disciples about the coming of the same Spirit to them allowing them to experience the liberating power of God through the word “peace”.

Jesus has the power to liberate us through His peace!

26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

So how God showed His liberating power through peace? In Luke 8 beginning verse 22 up to 55 we can see different instances where our Lord Jesus showed His liberating power. In these many situations we can see that through His liberating peace power His disciples and many involved people were all astonished about this kind of power our world needs.

The Liberating Peace of God is available for His people because:

1. He Demanded it – v24b “He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm.”

Read: Luke 8:22-25

While the disciples were afraid of drowning even if most of them are fishermen yet they were being overtaken with fear v.24 “..Master, Master were going to drown!” The first enemy of peace is worry, just like on this scenario where we found the disciples were all afraid of drowning. The disciples can say master the boat may sink and we can die through drowning. But the disciples jumped into conclusion that the situation they had may lead to death by all of them.

Most of the time we worry too much to the point that we use our practical reasoning to justify our situation why we opted to use our own strength instead of using God’s strength. Remember what Zechariah says in 4:6 “not by might nor by power but by His Spirit says the Lord” the word Spirit signifies Peace of God that will liberate us from all kinds of worries.

Jesus got up and rebuked the source of waves which is the wind. He demanded to have peace at that very moment. They need peace to overcome all their fears yet what God needs from them is not fear but faith! In v.25 Jesus asked them “where is your faith?” In order to activate His liberating peace we need our faith to God.

Do we demand/need peace today? Ask God to activate our faith in Him. It is only the power that can make Jesus got up from His rest as we bless Him by our faith on His liberating peace His liberating power!

The Liberating Peace of God brings calmness to our hearts

Are we in the middle of a storms of life? Then we surely need Jesus and demand His peace towards us.

2. He Delivered it – v29a “For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man.”

Read: Luke 8:26-35

Again after the storm experience, Jesus and His disciples had another liberating power experience through a Gadarene man possessed with evil spirit. And according to verses 27 he has not worn clothes for a long time and has been living in the tomb. And in verse 29 we see that even though he was chained because of the evil spirit in him he was able to escape and went to solitary places and in some other versions of the Gospel in Mark and Matthew he was able to hurt himself. Such a pitiful person is this man and we see a lot of manifestation of a person who needs to be delivered and to have a peaceful life.

Manifestations of a disturbed person:

a. He has not worn clothes – we are naked in truth if we are not peaceful

b. He lives in a tomb – we are a living dead in our faith to God

c. He is chained yet he escapes in solitary places – we are chained to sin and can temporarily escape its sufferings through our physical and material things of this world yet we don’t have permanent peace