Christmas is an amazing time – because it’s God’s declaration of peace.  Peace and goodwill available to us all for the taking.  But what does that mean?

The Human Dilemma

Here we are, Christmas is almost upon us – can’t believe it but there you go – another year, just a few weeks to go and on the program, we are talking about peace. We have been talking about peace the last couple of weeks because there’s so much turmoil in people’s lives. We get a lot of feedback – people write and ring and send us emails who have listened to this program and for so many people, what they consistently say is that as they’ve let God’s Word, through this program Christianityworks, come into their lives and into their hearts, it’s given them peace in the midst of their turmoil and that’s what God does. That’s what God’s Word does, God’s heart is for us to have peace.

But what is peace? What does it look like? Over the last few weeks we have been looking in the Book of Ezekiel, which talks about Israel’s rebellion against God. God blessed them greatly and God started a covenant with them – a promise; a relationship – that we can read about. We won’t go there now, but you can read about it in Leviticus chapter 26. Oh, we will go there now, let’s go. Grab a Bible – can’t help myself – let’s go and have a look at Leviticus chapter 26 and this covenant talks about God’s blessing. It begins by saying:

If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you the rains in their due season and your land shall yield it’s produce and the trees of the field will yield their fruit and your threshing floor will overtake the vintage and you’ll be blessed - I’ll bless your socks off, if you keep my commandments.

And in the middle of it He says:

And I will make my dwelling place in your midst and I won’t abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you will be my people.

That is the heart of God; it’s the heart of God then and it’s the heart of God now. God’s heart is to be our God and for us to be His people but right after that He says:

But if you will not obey me and do not observe all these commandments - if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances, so that you do not observe all my commandments and you break the covenant (this promise), I in turn will do this to you. I will bring terror on you, consumption and fever that wastes the eyes and cause your life to pine away.

And then He goes and lists all the curses that will befall Israel if they don’t keep the commandment. And that’s the dilemma of humanity. You read through the whole Old Testament and Israel could never uphold their end of this covenant and nor can you and nor can I. We can’t keep our end of that covenant and like a marriage, when we fail, we reject God. It’s like adultery in a marriage and God out of His great love, lets His anger roll forth. That’s what this punishment is about.

We saw last week on the program, and if you weren’t with us you can listen to the program again at our website, "Christianityworks.com". Go and have a listen – that God’s anger is kindled out of His love because He wants His people to come back again and you can read about that in Ezekiel chapter 14.

So that’s the dilemma of the Old Testament covenant that we just read in Leviticus chapter 26. On the one hand God wants to bless us, on the other hand, if we don’t obey Him, He will curse us and He will bring His punishment and judgement and anger upon us but sandwiched right in the middle of those two, in Leviticus chapter 26, from verse 11 through to 13, is this heartbeat of God:

I will place my dwelling place in your midst and I shall not abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you shall be my people.

And because we can’t hold up our end of that bargain, God had a choice. Either to keep punishing us or to come up with a new plan; a new covenant and He did that. We looked at that last week on the program. He came up with a road map for peace and it was never a plan "B"– it was always His plan "A" because as I said the Old Testament is a story about how we struggle with God and clearly, over a thousand years, it tells us that Israel could never uphold its end of the bargain through its own works.

So God can either punish us or God can come up with a new plan and God came up with a new plan that we read about in Ezekiel chapter 37, where He said:

I will make a covenant; a new covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them and I will bless them and multiply them and I will set my sanctuary amongst them for ever. My dwelling place shall be with them and I will be their God and they shall be my people and then the nations around them shall know that I am the Lord God who sanctifies Israel, where my sanctuary is among them for ever more.

And that new covenant; that new sanctuary; that new presence of God in our midst, is Jesus Christ and that is what Christmas was about. If you flick forward to John chapter 1, the fourth book in the New Testament and it says:

And the Word became flesh.

God became flesh and tabernacle amongst us. In other words the very presence of God came into our midst. That is awesome! That’s what Christmas is about because God steps into our dilemma. God puts on flesh; God wraps Himself in our flesh and puts Himself in your life and my life, here and now and that’s the Christmas present. God Himself, wrapped in our flesh, one of us, stepping into our dung heap; into our circumstances, into our sickness, into our pain, into our lost-ness and saying, “I’m here, now let me bring you peace.”

Christmas is God’s declaration of peace with humanity and that’s what we are going to look at during the course of this program.

 

Prince of Peace

Well, we are talking about this central human dilemma which is our rejection of God and you know, when we rejected God – we all have, none of us have lived up to the glory of God. We have all fallen short and sinned, when we rejected God; we declared war on God and the reason so many people in this world don’t have peace in their lives, peace in their hearts, peace in their spirits, is because they haven’t accepted God’s peace plan.

When Jesus was born He was taken to the temple - if you’ve got a Bible grab it and open it at Luke chapter 2, beginning at verse 25:

When Jesus was born He was taken to the temple and they presented Him at the temple and there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon and this man was a righteous and devout man looking forward to the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit rested on him.

It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came up into the temple and when the parents brought the child, Jesus in, to do for Him what was customary under the law.

Simeon took Him in his arms and praised God saying: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant, (wait for it!), in peace, according to your Word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all the peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.

See, this old man, Simeon, in his spirit, knew that God was sending His Saviour, Jesus Christ and he said, “I can now go, in what? "In peace" – "in Shalom" – because Jesus brings peace. Now some people won’t accept Jesus and it goes on to talk about that in this chapter and Jesus Himself later said: "You know, I’m going to bring division, because some people will reject Jesus and some people will accept Jesus."

And it’s funny, you know, when I talk on different radio stations, some radio stations don’t want me to talk about Jesus. They’re happy for me to talk about God but not about Jesus because Jesus is a stumbling block to a lot of people. But those who accept Jesus, to them He brings shalom; peace, wholeness, blessing, prosperity, that assurance that God is with us.

There’s a beautiful picture of that, just a few chapters on in Luke. Let’s go and have a look. It’s just this wonderful picture of this woman in Luke chapter 7 verses 36 to 50. Let’s have a read because here this woman is so low; she’s so desperate and Jesus brings her peace. This is what it says:

One of the Pharisees who were religious leaders, ask Jesus to come and have dinner with him, so Jesus went to the Pharisee’s house and took His place at the table. And a woman in the city who was known to be a sinner, having learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, bought an alabaster jar of ointment. (Now that was worth a fortune!)

She stood behind Jesus at His feet, weeping, and began to bathe His feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing His feet and anointing them with this ointment. Now when the Pharisee, this religious leader, who had invited Jesus, saw her, he said to himself, “Well, if this Jesus were a prophet, He would have known who and what kind of woman this is and who’s touching Him and she’s a sinner.

Well Jesus knew what he was thinking and spoke up and said: “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” said Simon, “speak.” “A certain creditor,” said Jesus, “had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty. When they couldn’t pay he cancelled the debts for both of them, now which one of them would love him more?” and Simon answered, “Well I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt?” And Jesus said to him: “You have judged rightly.”

Then turning towards this woman, He said to Simon: “You see this woman? I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet but she bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet and you didn’t anoint my head with oil but she anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore, I tell you, her sins which were so many, have been forgiven. Hence she has shown great love but the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then He said to her: “Your sins are forgiven,” but those who were at the table with Him began to say amongst themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you, go in peace."

We don’t know what sort of sin this woman had but you can bet your life, that she was either a prostitute or an adulteress. She must have had quite a bit of money because this jar of alabaster was very expensive indeed. In contrast you have the Pharisees; the religious leaders; these fanatics who went to endless lengths to obey God’s law.

And this Pharisee; Simon, invites Jesus over for dinner and they do all the right things but, you know, they never gave Jesus any water to wash His feet, which was customary. They never greeted Him with a kiss, which was customary. They never anointed Him with oil, which was customary. So they were going through the motions; their heart wasn’t in it, and this prostitute or adulteress – I don’t know how she got into the house but she did – and she does all these things.

This lowliest of the low, takes this jar of alabaster, worth a fortune, and she cries tears onto His feet and washes it off with her hair and kisses His feet. I mean, you know, it pretty inappropriate, lurid behaviour, isn’t it? But that’s who she is and Jesus touched her heart and what she was doing was expressing her love and her acceptance and her faith in Jesus, the only way she knew how. She gave her heart to Jesus and Jesus said:

Your faith has saved you, go in peace; go in shalom.

We often compare ourselves to other people. You know, we look around and we think, "Oh, how they dress, what they do." We look on the outside, but God looks on the heart, at our rejection of God – is a massive thing. I look back on my life and still today, I make mistakes and when we do that it is an offence to God and God calls it sin and He sees our heart. We judge ourselves on the outside, the way the Pharisee judged the woman and we think, "well, I’m not good enough." The Jesus that I know, the Jesus of Christmas, the one that I don’t deserve, brought His mercy and brings His peace when you and I give our hearts to Him.

No, we don’t deserve it – that’s the whole point! Under the old covenant that we talked about before, you know, if we honour God with everything we are all the time, we get blessing, if we don’t we get cursing. I deserve cursing; I deserve punishment, you probably do too, and we look at other people and think, "they are so much better than me and I don’t deserve this." You know what Jesus does? He turns around the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 and He says:

Blessed are the poor in spirit (the people who know that don’t deserve it) for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Jesus came for that woman – Jesus came for you – Jesus came for me. That’s THE Christmas present and when we acknowledge our poverty; when we acknowledge our weakness; when we acknowledge our inability to do all the things that we need to do to be perfect and we acknowledge that there’s only way, and we believe in Jesus, then by faith we are saved. Not of our own doing, it’s a gift from God.

It’s not the result of our own works so we can’t boast. It’s a free gift – I’m not good enough for God – that’s why He sent Jesus. That’s why, on that clear, cool, starry night in Bethlehem, that child was born so He could come to this earth and pay for my sin – ugly word ‘sin’ – and yours.

I just pray that the Holy Spirit would breathe this Christmas gift into your heart.

 

Drinking in that Peace

Well, we are talking about the wonderful peace that comes at Christmas time. Christmas is God’s declaration of peace. Just flicking back to Isaiah chapter 37. We were talking about that earlier in the program where God acknowledges the problem of Israel.

The problem of Israel was they could never keep up their end of the promise between them and God – the covenant, it was called, where God said:

If you honour me first, if you do all these things, I’ll bless your socks off and if you don’t, I’ll punish you with my anger because I want you to know that I am the Lord your God.

God’s heart is always to be our God and for us to be His people, but we can’t hold up our end of that bargain, and so, when we rejected God, there was a war between us and Him and at Christmas time God declares peace. His peace-plan is set out in Ezekiel chapter 37, beginning at verse 26:

I will make a covenant of ‘peace’ with my people. It will be an everlasting covenant with them and I’ll bless them and I’ll multiply them, I’ll set my presence among them for ever and my dwelling place shall be with them and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

That’s us! And many years later, the Apostle Paul after the birth and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ – the Apostle Paul writes this in Romans chapter 5. He say:

We are justified.

That means, we are set right – by faith and we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus, when He was born at Christmas time, is God’s declaration of peace. You need peace in your life – we all need peace in our life and the main reason we don’t have peace is we reject God. Well, Jesus is God’s peace offering for us. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand and we boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God.

Ok, we’re going to go through suffering, knowing suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and that hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God is now present with us. So what Paul is saying, first and foremost is, we’re justified; we’re set right through Jesus.

Peace has broken out through Jesus with God. And we have access to that because we are standing in His grace. If you and I place our faith in Jesus Christ, we are set free and we have access to God’s peace. And Paul’s realistic, he says, "ok, life can still be tough", but the Holy Spirit has been poured into our heart and He’s been poured into us and that’s a hope that never disappoints.

You see what’s happening here – God started off in a tent, in the exodus, in the desert, then He moved into a building, called the temple. And then He moved into a man, called Jesus and when we place our faith in this Jesus God puts His Spirit in us. See there’s God’s dream; there’s God’s heart, “I will be your God and you will be my people and I will tabernacle amongst you. I will live with you.”

All of that is possible through Jesus. Now, this peace is not some theoretical thing – it’s real; it’s being able to live a life in the knowledge that God is in control - that God has forgiven us – that we have peace with God. You see, God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now, what Paul writes is this:

Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by His blood, that is, set right with God by Jesus, we will be saved through Him; through Jesus, from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by His life. But more than that, we even boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.

See, it’s not just a past thing – it’s not just. Ok, we were set right with God, we’ve got a life to live; you have a life to live and God’s plan for your life is peace – not theoretical, not theological – in life, here and now.

I was talking with a man recently who has been through a lot in his life – a couple of marriages, into this third relationship, he knows about God but he hasn’t ever given his heart over, every single bit of him, the way that woman did in that story. That’s a tragedy, because until we do, there can be no peace, no completeness, no safety and soundness and prosperity and peace and quiet and tranquility and contentment and knowledge of God. What about you?

Heading into Christmas, have you given every part of your life over to Jesus? Are you living in the peace that He came to give you? Like that woman, your faith has saved you, go in peace.

I’m going to pray for you right now. If you want God’s peace, we are going to pray for God’s peace.

Father, I pray for everybody who is listening right now. You know where each one of us is at and Lord, you have this passion to be our God and for us to be your people and Lord we believe that you sent your Son, Jesus at Christmas time to be your peace offering. Father, we just want to accept Him, maybe for the first time or afresh or anew, wherever we are, Lord we lay our lives – every part, every compartment, every thing that we would hold on to – we lay down at your feet and we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Father I pray in the mighty name of Jesus, that you would pour your Spirit out into each one of us and you would fill us with a joy and a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Lord I just pray that you will bless our socks off with your presence and your grace and your love and your Spirit and your Son and your peace. Father we ask that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.