Peace

You and I live in a world of conflict. About a year ago, I gave a sermon and I talked about how we live in a world that seems to be becoming undone. It's unraveling. And after that sermon, I had many people come up and say, you know, my neighbor has said this, or the person who cut my hair says this. There was a lot of discussion about how people just feel like something's unraveling in our society. Well, it's a year later and it's not just unraveling. We live in a world that is becoming increasingly violent and increasingly divided so that people can't even get along.

They can't solve anything. And so whether it's, you know, we're looking at the world scene where there's constant threat now of war almost any place. I mean, Russia and Eastern Europe, China and all of its neighbors, North Korea, of course the Middle East, the United States could get involved in more wars. Even here in the United States, the divide between peoples is so great that it's becoming more and more violent.

I was talking about to Mark Smith this week at the Murphysboro Bible Study. And he was talking about how, of course, he teaches middle school. And he said something's happening at middle school he's never seen before. He said, you know, usually the kids come in, they're all talking, they're laughing, you know, kids are, you know, 12-year-olds are, and they're doing things.

But he said now, he said there's a certain part of his class that sit on one side and certain part that sit on the other side. And they will not talk to each other. They will not interact with each other. And it all comes down to these people's parents voted for President Trump, and these people voted for Hillary Clinton. And they won't even... I mean, 12-year-olds, that's not normal behavior, okay? It shows you the divide in this country. And we just live in all this violence.

And when we look at the Scripture, we see that when Christ comes, the Old Testament repeatedly talks about when the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah comes, He is the Prince of Peace. And here we are, followers of the Prince of Peace in a deteriorating, conflicted world. I say deteriorating. Anybody who studied history, the world has always been conflicted. It's always been at war. It's always been violent.

It's never not been violent. But you and I are watching it where the violence could begin to spill over and accumulate into a massive time of violence. Like, you know, we look at World War II and other times when the world literally began to fall apart. And the violence level reached proportions where tens of millions of people were dying. And we're looking at all this conflict, and then we break it down to our own lives.

I mean, all of us live in conflict, too. With our neighbors, inside our own families, parents and children, us and our wives, friends, sometimes even people in the church, we're in conflict. And it seems like unsolvable conflict.

You know, the great paradox of Christianity, or one of them—I say one of them because I read one time someone went through the Scripture and listed a whole bunch of paradoxes in the Scripture and said how anybody can believe this they didn't know. But here's one of the great paradoxes. People living in a violent, conflicted world are supposed to fight a spiritual warfare and be peacemakers at the same time. But that's exactly what the Scripture says. We live in a violent, conflicted world, and yet we're supposed to be peacemakers while fighting a spiritual warfare.

In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. If we want to be the children of God, we have to be peacemakers. Now, we've been going through the fruits of the Holy Spirit. As we go through these fruits, remember, human beings can achieve some of these things at certain levels, whether it be kindness or self-control as we've been going through these. But to achieve them at the level that the Scripture is talking about takes God's Spirit. This is not a fruit of just our effort.

It is a fruit of God's power in us. It is produced by God in us. So let's go back to Galatians 5, since we haven't looked at this for a couple of weeks, and just look at where we are in going through the fruits of the Spirit. It starts in verse 22, but we'll go to verse 23 because we've been working backwards through this list. And we've talked about self-control and gentleness, how important it is that God's Spirit gives us control over appetites, over desires, over anger, over things that we can't control ourselves. So God's Spirit can help us have this self-control and kindness, the way we treat other people, faithfulness, remaining faithful to God, goodness.

Remember we talked about how this concept of goodness, this word literally means being good even if you have to make a stand, being good even if you have to stand up against others, because you're going to stand up for the goodness. You're going to live the goodness. It's a fruit of God's Spirit. We should be making stands at times because that's what God's Spirit leads us to do.

Kindness again, gentleness before now, kindness, long suffering. We went through long suffering last time. How we're actually, through God's Spirit, supposed to develop the ability to bear suffering and actually have a positive result, which is the opposite of what human beings think. It's the opposite of what I think. I want no suffering. Okay, to be righteous, you have to have some suffering. Okay, I want a little suffering. That's all I want.

Five minutes at a time is all I want. That's all the suffering I want. And that's not what it says. God's Spirit gives us the ability to suffer long and have a positive outcome in the midst of that suffering. And then we get to the next one. Peace. Now, the peace of God's Spirit in us is more than the absence of conflict. In fact, as long as you and I live as human beings, we will be in conflict.

We have to learn this kind of peace. Just like all these other fruits, they are developed in us. And I've gone through a couple scriptures as we've gone through this series to show that these fruits are developed in us. It's an agricultural analogy. And fruit just doesn't pop up. You plant a seed the next day. I plant an apple seed, and the next day I have a full-grown tree filled with apples. That's not how it works. Fruit is a process. And sometimes it's a difficult process. So the fruit of peace doesn't mean you don't have conflict, because we'll all have conflict as long as we're human. It means that we are learning to have peace the way God has peace. The spiritual fruit of peace is a spiritual and emotional state of mind that guides how we react to external situations. I'm going to read that again. The spiritual fruit of peace is a spiritual and emotional state of mind that guides how we react to external situations. The conflict is around us. We feel conflict. But God's peace helps us be able to deal with that conflict in a peaceful manner, especially inside ourselves. We're going to get into some of the most difficult aspects of what it really means to be a Christian. As we've gone through all these fruits of the Spirit, as I've shown, we are to keep the Ten Commandments. We are to tithe. We are not to eat unclean foods. That's all commanded. But those aren't just ends in themselves. God's law, God's teaching, is to help us become like Him, to literally become His children, which means that as we grow in obedience and faith, the fruits of God's Spirit must be manifested in our lives, must be developed in our lives.

And it takes a lifetime for this to happen. It doesn't happen overnight. In fact, I know every one of us. Unless you're an exception, I know myself as I go through the fruits of the Spirit, and each one I get to, I think, ooh, I'm not too good at that one.

Because we're growing in this, but we must be. To not steal is not enough to be a child of God. It is part of it. To not lie is not enough. It's part of it. But we're into the harder parts. It's a whole lot easier for me to give a sermon on doctrine, as I mentioned before, than it is this. Okay, let me prove to you the resurrections. I'll give you 45 minutes, and I'll go through the Bible and prove the resurrections.

But here we're talking about not just the mind, conversion of the mind. We're talking about what the Bible means by the conversion of the heart. And when we go through the fruits, we're talking about the way we think, but we're also talking about our motivations and our emotions. We're talking about the heart here. And peace is very, very important. And we're talking about spiritual peace. We're talking about a peace that can only come from God. You and I can't manufacture this kind of peace. Most human beings experience peace for short periods of time because they do something else. You're involved in a hobby. Maybe you go out and you do some gardening and you find some peace. And those are good things to do. But sometimes, five minutes is all you get. Then the rest of the time, you have no peace. If we're going to really have peace, it has to come from God. And it's going to be harder and harder to find peace in the world than we live in. Look at John 14.

It's interesting what Jesus says here to His disciples on the Passover night before He was killed.

So He's about to go through terrible violence. John 14, verse 27.

He says to them, peace, I leave with you. He says, I want to leave you some peace. See, we can read through these things and go through these things and miss the power of what is being said here. Jesus Christ says, I'm going to leave you some peace that you don't have. He says, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Jesus says, the peace I'm going to give you is going to help you deal with worry, trouble, and fear. All of us still struggle with anxiety, worry, and fear. And this peace is to help us deal with it. And He says, I'm going to leave it for you. I'm going to give it to you. It's not something you and I just have. It's not something that's part of the world.

Now you think as human beings to hear, okay, I want to receive peace from God. Oh, that's good. You know, I'm filled with anxiety all the time. I don't have any peace. I just feel stressed out. I feel in conflict. I feel mad at everybody. I just feel this way all the time. And so I just would like some peace. Then why don't we respond to God more? The truth is, because of our corrupt human nature, we actually resist the way of peace. Because of our corrupted human nature, we resist the way of peace. So if we're really going to have peace from God, we're going to have to analyze how we are resisting the peace of God.

It would take me two sermons just to go through how we receive peace from God. And I'll touch on it in a minute, but I can only touch on it. This sermon is just going to... We're going to go through a couple of practical things we can do, and then we're going to open up the concept. It's a concept you're familiar with, but the depth of it I don't think any of us really know. I know I don't know entirely. I keep trying to understand it.

This idea of peace and how God gives us peace and how peace comes about. How does God make peace with you and me? How is that internalized? How do we make peace with others? Here's why we resist this. Let's go to James 4. This is one of those passages we read over and over again, probably most of you have at least some of these verses memorized. Let's look at this in terms of peace and our peace with God.

James 4, verse 1. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Remember, he's writing to the church. James is not a specific letter like Paul would write to Colossae or Ephesus or Corinth. It is one of the what's called general epistles, general letters. It was sent throughout the world to all the churches. So he's dealing with issues that are happening all over the church at the time. They're the same issues we deal with today. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desire for pleasure that war in your members? Inside ourselves is the conflict. We deal with the conflict inside ourselves first. We have to deal with conflict inside ourselves first. And we're in conflict because our basic corrupted human nature what's what we want and we want it now. Let's face it. I would have no conflict if everyone would just let me be king. And let me rule over them. Everybody will obey me. The rest of you would have conflict, all kinds of conflict. You'd be unhappy. Sooner or later, you just have to overthrow me as king and put up somebody else's king, and then you'd have to overthrow them. Isn't that what history is? One person finally saying, I have no conflict. Like what is from the leader of North Korea? Almost said North Carolina. No, that's not not North Korea. Different guy.

But North Korea, he just killed his half-brother. He killed his uncle a couple years ago. Why? To him, they'll be conflict. They're a threat. I got to kill everybody. Eventually, he's got to kill everybody. And probably someday, somebody will kill him. And the conflict goes on and on and on. There's never an end to it, because it's part of us. He says, you lust and you do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight in war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. He says, the first thing is you don't go to God. You just grab and fight and everybody's trying to get their edge or get what they want or make sure their feelings aren't hurt. Make sure they have their rights. No one's concerned with the other person. Verse 3, you ask and you do not receive. This is from God. Because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasure. So he says, even when you go to God, he doesn't answer you. Because our motivation is totally selfish. So we're constantly in conflict with everybody. We're in conflict with God all the time. By God, aren't you answering my prayers? Why aren't you doing the things the way I want them? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? Verse 4, this is very important because this has to do with peace. Adulters and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. We have a really hard time with this. The value system of this world, and I don't care which society you've lived in throughout history, the basic value system of this world is made up of people who are enemies of God. We have to understand that. The whole world, everybody, is an enemy of God. And you and I, at one time, were an enemy of God, too. So we're talking about peace between us and God.

And God considered every one of us an enemy. Now we get into how complicated this gets. Because we really need, at this point, to spend the next hour talking about, while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. Why is Paul making that point? Because the greatest conflict is between you and me and God. And we're fighting among ourselves. And we're in conflict with each other. And in reality, the core of the conflict, every conflict, is between me and God and you and God. It's between us and God. And he said, you're my enemy. Understand that. Oh, God wouldn't say that. Yes, He does. It's His way of creating peace that's amazing. The way of making peace with His enemies. And we'll talk about that in a minute, too. Here's what's to remember about this problem we have, or inside, we're filled with conflict. And anger. And we're always in some kind of debate and problem with somebody. Right? Why? Well, for this to be remedies, we have to come into peace with God. And something has to happen to us. Look at Isaiah 57. Isaiah 57. This is a remarkable statement here. It's God's talking to Israel, ancient Israel, about how they keep disobeying Him, and they keep going away from Him, and they end up His enemies.

And He makes a remarkable statement. We'll start in verse 19. So this is the middle of this thought, but these are the words of God here. Isaiah 57, verse 19. God says, I create the fruit of the lips. Peace. Peace. God's crying out, I want peace. I want this war between Him and His people to stop. God wants the war between Him and all of humanity to stop. We still wrestle with the idea that humanity is basically good. It is not. Humanity is a mixture of good and evil, and anything that's a mixture of good and evil becomes evil. Every human being is an enemy of God.

So we have to see this from his viewpoint. That doesn't mean he doesn't love them. That's not the issue here. It's in relationship. Every human being is his enemy. They are against him, and they are in conflict with him. But notice what he says. Peace. Peace to him is a far off, and to him who is near says the Lord. Notice, and I will heal him. See, this is the problem between you and I and God. There cannot be, okay, God, let's sit down and make peace, because inside we're too dysfunctional. God has to heal every one of us spiritually and emotionally for peace to take place between us and God. This is what the Passover is all about. The Passover is about how God makes peace possible with corrupted enemies. And I want to drive home the harshness of that word, and I'm not the one using it. It is God that uses it. How does he bring peace to corrupted enemies? Boy, that's tough. He says, I will heal you. That's how it happens. But notice verse 20. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up the mire and dirt. If you've ever been along the coast, where there's a big storm out at sea. It's amazing how it'll churn that water up. And you go down close and you look at the water, and it's not blue or green anymore. It's brown. It's like mud, you know, as the waves churn it up. And he says, you know, this is what a wicked person is like. Inside, they're like a sea, just stirring up mud. No rest, no peace. Verse 21, there is no peace, says my God, for the wicked. Not this kind of peace. Oh, they might find a little peace from, you know, a triple shot of bourbon. But that's not peace, is it? That's not peace.

So where does this peace come from? See, you and I will never really understand the peace God wants to give us until we understand where we are with God and how He has to heal us.

Let me talk about some things we need to do here to have this peace of God's Spirit really begin to be developed in us. The first concept, the first thing we're going to go through is very simple, very practical. And in a minute, we're going to get into something that's very complicated and no way I can explain it in a short period of time. But we have to open the discussion if we're going to understand peace. First thing we have to do is we have to seek God's peace. We can seek peace through, you know, maybe you have a hobby. I have a hobby. And every once in a while, I go to my hobby, and for a little bit, I have a little peace because I forget everything else. And that's good. As human beings, we need to do that. That's not what God wants in our lives. I mean, that's good that we can do that. But He wants a peace that goes down to the core of who we are that's part of a healing that He's given to us. It's part of our relationship with Him. And that means you and I have to do something every day. We know we should do. We talk about it. You've heard it a thousand times in sermons and sermanettes, and that's not even probably an exaggeration. And that is every day you and I have to take some time, and we have to turn off the TV and turn off the radio. And we have to seek God's peace through prayer and through His Word. We have to seek God's peace. Not my peace, not your peace, but God's peace. This healing is God's... the fruits of the Spirit is God doing something through us. We're submitting to something that you and I can't do on our own. We have to remember that. We can't do it on our own. We have to submit to what He's doing. Look at what Paul says in Philippians 4. Philippians 4. These couple of verses have been very important in my life because there's been a couple times in my life where I have to say these two verses saved me. They brought me someplace I could not go myself.

Maybe you've been there. Verse 6. He says, Be anxious for nothing. So basically what we're going to get here is a... Steve and my Paul says, you know, we've got to deal with anxiety, so here's how to do it.

Because anxiety is part of life. He says, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication. Supplication is just crying out to God. You're bringing these things to God. So in prayer, we come to God with our anxieties and our fears and our worries. We bring these things to God. But what's interesting here is this... it's a very long sentence in Greek. It's a long sentence in English. He says, everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving... Wait a minute. You come to God with your anxiety, and the first thing we're supposed to do is say, I'm really, really worried here. I'm upset here. I'm scared. I'm whatever. And then say, oh, but thank you for... and thank you for some things.

But there are some good things in life. You know, we're so overwhelmed with the negative, sometimes we forget the good. I guess, oh, there's some good things in life. I know it's somebody here. There's a good thing here and a good thing there. Think about those for a second. So we come with this anxiety, and I'm thankful it's part of what we have to do. So we thank God. And then it says, let your requests be known to God. So we pour out these anxious thoughts. We pour out the things we're going through. We pour out the trials, the conflicts that we don't have peace. I can't have peace, God, because my husband did this, or I can't have peace because my kids did this, or I can't have peace because my best friend yelled at me, or I can't have peace because, you know, all these conflicts. My boss is driving me crazy. My employees are driving me crazy. And we can't have peace. And this is something that the world does not have, and it's something all too often you and I do not have. This is a fruit of God's Spirit.

All of our conflicts, so we're at war. We're at war inside ourselves. And the peace of God isn't going to solve all the conflicts that you and I have with other people. We'll talk about that in a minute. Not in this life.

So it has to deal with an internal peace that guides us on how we deal with what's happening to us.

And the last part of this sentence is what I have found so fascinating. Let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What is going to guard your mind and your heart in conflict? What is going to keep you thinking the right way, feeling the right way, being motivated by the right motivations, even though you may be in stress, even though you may be hurt, even though you may be angry? What guards your minds and hearts in conflict and anxiety? The peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

Have you ever had this? I know many of you have, and some of you haven't because you haven't lived long enough. That's all. You don't have it. At some point in your life where the issue is so serious, you cannot work it through.

You cannot work it through, and you cannot find peace. And you finally go to God and say, I can't do this. I can't. And maybe you pray. Maybe you're awake, off and on, all night, long, struggling with something. And then you say, you have to help me. And then there's a peace that comes upon you that surpasses all understanding.

The problem didn't go away. You've got to face it the next day. God didn't fix everything. But your mind and your hearts are guarded when you reach the point where I cannot go any farther. Maybe you're going to sin. Maybe we're going to do sin. And all of a sudden, there's a peace there. Where did the peace come from? Paul says, I don't know, it surpasses understanding. I mean, you know, I counsel people about stress and anxiety and conflict. You know, there's certain things we can do to help have a more peaceful and less stressful outlook on life. And we should do those things. But you know, anything we do physically, anything we do mentally, only goes so far. Because we're not just fighting our physical issues. We're fighting against a spiritual enemy who wants to destroy us. That means there are times it takes a spiritual battle, a spiritual fight, and it takes the peace of God to take us where we cannot go.

It's God's peace that does it.

So we have to have God do it in us. This is through prayer. He's telling people how to pray. It's also through the Scripture. Look at Hebrews 13. It's in the same context here. Hebrews 13.

Verse 20. And we begin to understand through this little passage how as we pray and we study the Scripture, we begin to understand how God made peace with us. You and I did not go to God and make peace. We were His enemy. You see, I grew up in God's church. I'm not His enemy. All corrupted sinners are the enemy of God. We just don't know it. And you have a special privilege of having a relationship with God, even though you grow up in the church. You do. Anyone who grows up in the church has a special relationship with God. They have a special open door. But isn't it amazing you're still required to go through repentance and baptism? Why? Because your relationship with God is still messed up. And He requires you to make peace with Him.

But He has to make peace with you first. Look what it says. Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. You and I, no matter how good we think we are, you and I are worthy of death. By our own corrupt human nature, we're enemies of God. How did God make peace with us? He sent Jesus Christ to die for us, resurrected Him, and then said, you now can have peace with me because I have paid the penalty for your sins. Now that's remarkable. If I'm going to make peace with an enemy, I wouldn't think, okay, what I'm going to go do is I'm going to take His punishment so that I can have peace with my enemy, and that's how God thinks. Like I've used this example before. You ever, you know, we honor men and you hear these cases of a man in battle, a hand grenade comes in, and he jumps on a hand grenade to save his buddies? That's amazing, isn't it? Well, here's what Jesus Christ did. We were the ones who beat him. We were the ones who were killing him, and a hand grenade came in, and he jumped on a hand grenade to save his torturers. That's the love of God. He died for us while we were his enemies. Paul says that.

So we can have peace, the peace of God. And we don't have enough of that in our lives. And we try to cover it. We try to cover it up with entertainment or video games or, you know, half a pack of bud.

And we continue to try to cover up the lack of peace. Because we have not come to grips with, God makes peace with us if we are willing to follow. And he paid a terrible price to do it. So we have to seek the peace of God. We'll talk more about that as we get closer to the Passover. The second thing, and this is another simple thing. Okay, first thing is we need to be clear our minds and spend time every day in prayer and study, having God talk to us and us talk to God. There's no other way to do this. But secondly, then, a simple thing. Then a second simple thing we can do is we can learn to walk away from unnecessary conflict. Much of the conflict we go through is not that important. Pick the hills you're going to die on.

Most conflict is not that important. Or the consequences of the battle are too horrible. How many times have you won the battle but destroyed a relationship? Why show that person? And he hasn't talked to me now for five years. But I showed him, I won that battle. I won that conflict.

You know, it's amazing how many times I talk to people who are with a relative, especially who's dying. And they want to go back and somehow reconcile. Somehow give forgiveness or receive forgiveness for things that weren't that important.

There's an interesting story in Genesis 26. Isaac had some wells that belonged to his family. Now remember, Isaac was the leader of a tribe. Abraham had hundreds of servants that were armed servants, plus their families. We think of Abraham as a couple people, you know, with some donkeys going, you know, a few camels going through the desert. This was a tribe. It was a nomadic tribe at a time when much of the Middle East was nomadic tribes. But there were also towns and groups of people, some nations informed, like Egypt. Isaac had wells that were dug by Abraham, and they would use them. And some of the other nomadic tribes said, no, those are our wells. We're claiming them for ourselves. Now Isaac could have gone to God and said, slay my enemies, armed his tribe, and gone out and fought a war. And I'm sure God would have given him the victory. I mean, he was in the right. They were his wells. But, you know, Isaac considered it and said, no, this isn't worth the price. Remember, if you, you know, one thing about the Middle East, once some blood is shed, it becomes a blood feud, and they fight for, well, the sons of Abraham have been fighting for 4,000 years. It's a blood feud. And, of course, the sons of Jacob and Esau are in there. I mean, they're all, they've been fighting. That's why they can't solve it.

He walked away from the wells and dug some more wells, and water came up. And some other tribes said, whoa, you know, this is our land. Those are our wells.

Once again, Isaac said, this isn't worth it. This conflict is not worth it. And he walked away. Third time, these wells that were great, and he said, God's blessed us. And he and his people had wells, and he lived in peace with their neighbors. Now, there's a time to make a stand, but you know, how much conflict do we have in our lives? Because, well, I'm never going to back down from anything. Why? What are the repercussions? How many people get damaged?

How many people get damaged? You know, collateral damage, husband and wives, the collateral damage on the children sometimes lasts a lifetime.

But it seems so important that you'll get back down at the time, right? I just can't. And the collateral damage of that conflict can be horrible. You learn to walk away from the unnecessary conflict. There's going to be enough necessary conflict. There's no shame in walking away from unnecessary conflict.

The third point, and this is the one that's so difficult, and we don't have time to really go in depth, but you and I have to learn to forgive. I know I, in my life, have been trying to do this the last few years, and I have been going back and forgiving people who did things against me years and years ago. And I sure hope that people who I have hurt or mistreated are forgiving me. Now, we don't understand always forgiveness. We think forgiveness and reconciliation are the same thing. They are not. Forgiveness is something I do towards somebody. Reconciliation is a restoration of a relationship. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Forgiveness. God forgave us. Is everybody reconciled with God? No. What does reconciliation take place? What does it need? You and I have to do something. God can forgive somebody and have no relationship with them. There is a lake of fire, and yet Jesus died for those people. Reconciliation requires that the people on the other end respond back into a relationship. If someone doesn't repent before God, Christ's sacrifice means nothing to them. You understand? But He died for all humanity.

God is standing there offering forgiveness. The question is, who wants it? Who accepts it? So, reconciliation, returning into a relationship, and forgiveness are two different things, but you and I are required to forgive. We are required to give up the hatred, the anger, the angst. Now, even if you forgive somebody, if they've really done damage to you, years later you still may feel hurt. You may still feel anger. The question is, what do I do with it when it comes along? Because all too much of the time we are consumed with anger and angst and a desire for revenge against people who did something to us 10 years ago or last week. Instead of letting go of it. Or yesterday. We don't let go of it. And if we don't let go of it, what if the person did repent? What if somebody who really mistreated you five years ago and, you know, your boss fired you, lied about you, did something horrible to you. Just, I mean, it was sin. It was wrong. And you just can't wait until God punishes him. Next week he shows up at church. And you have all this anger and all this desire to have him punished. What are you going to do? Walk up to him and say, get out. You're not welcome here. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

Look at Colossians 3. Now this is difficult. This is real hard. This makes, you know, we think that tithing is hard. The fruits of the Spirit make tithing look like, you know, the easy stuff. We really get into the fruits of the Spirit. This makes, wow, yeah. Okay. So I'm not going to worship a statue. First we get into the Spirit of the law. It gets a lot harder, right? I'm not going to covet. Now I'm going to get into these things. This has to do with our very being. Colossians 3. And let's go to verse 12. Let's see. Colossians 3.12. Now I read part of this as we're going through one of the fruits of the Spirit, but I want to read a little farther. I'm going to read what we read and then read the next couple of verses because it fills in some gaps here. Therefore, as the elect of God, that's the members of the church, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

So if Christ died for me so that I could no longer be the enemy of God, so forgiveness could take place, then I must forgive my enemy just in case he repents. It's more than that. We must forgive our enemies so that we don't become angry, bitter people. We forgive our enemies for our sake as much as anything. If I forgive somebody, they no longer control my life. They no longer control my emotions. Oh, I might get upset every once in a while when I think about the memory of it. Of course, the more crucial, the more debilitating, the abuse, the worse it is. I mean, most of the time, we're talking about, oh, I got an argument with somebody, or somebody said something mean to me, or somebody lied about me. This really gets hard when this thing is, well, somebody raped me.

Right? It gets a lot harder. I invite all of you to go online and watch the Beyond Today program we did about forgiveness. It's just a remarkable story. It's a man in the United Church of God whose daughter was brutally murdered. And when the man was convicted, which was obviously had done it, and he didn't receive the death penalty, he basically went up to him and said, God's given you a second chance. I hope you use this to repent. Now, he didn't make him his best friend, okay? It was not possible to reconcile with the man, right? But he did forgive him enough to say, I hope you turn to God. Now that, because what are you going to do? He comes up in the resurrection and God, and he repents. He says, oh, no, God, you can't forgive that man. What are you going to do then? Sorry. If you're going to make that man repent, if you're going to give him eternal life, throw me in the lake of fire. He said to me, what are you going to do? What if the person repents and God forgives him? Man, I don't know. If someone killed my daughter, could I do that? You know, when we put that program together, all of us kept saying, you know, the crew, the cameraman, everybody said, could I do this? I mean, we talked about it. Are we really that converted? He didn't reconcile with the man, but he did forgive him. Does that mean he feels great love towards the man? No. I'm talking about feelings here. I'm not talking about feeling. We're talking about the peace that can come from God that allows us to do something extraordinary. That's what this does. It allows us. It helps us to do something extraordinary. He says, verse 14, but above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And, okay, we're going to do these things, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Not affect us, be a nice idea. Something we think about once in a while, we must let God rule over us. We talk about that all the time, right? Let God rule over you to control your bad habits. Let God rule over you so that you keep the Sabbath. Let God rule over you so that you have peace. This is part of submitting to God. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. You were called. God has made peace between you and Him at an enormous price.

He wants to give you that peace. We read it in Isaiah. He says, I'll have to heal you for this to happen. You're too emotionally dysfunctional, but I want to heal you so you can have this peace, so you can be peaceful. I read a story recently that I thought was very interesting about the difference between the concept of forgiveness and reconciliation. I'll pass this on, maybe help a little bit in it. A man was in South America someplace, and he was...

somebody lied about him, about a crime, and he ended up being convicted and put in jail. And it was like a life sentence. And yet he was totally innocent. And he was only served a couple years and they let him out, which was a miracle. During that time period, he had prayed and asked God to help him. And he studied the Bible, and he believed there was a miracle that he got out. So he decided, well, if God did this miracle, I'm going to have to go to the man who lied about me and tell him I forgive him. Well, he found out the man was now some kind of drug lord. He was a criminal. So he went to the village. Of course, he said as he walked down the street, everybody in the village thought, uh-oh, you know, probably thinks there's going to be a gun battle, right? He walked up to the guy's house, knocked at the door. The guy opened the door, and just was shocked to see him there. And he said, they let me out of jail. So, you know, he's probably looking for him to pull out a gun and kill him. And he said, I just came to tell you, I spent the time, I studied the Bible, reading about God, and I am here to tell you, I forgive you. He said, the man said, oh, why don't you come in the house? We'll have a drink. We'll sit and talk. And he said, no thanks. And he walked away. He said, I wasn't ready to reconcile with a drug dealer. How do you reconcile with a drug dealer? But I was willing to tell him, I forgive you, my life's going on, and you're not part of my life anymore. Hope God calls you someday. See how reconciliation and forgiveness are doing? He was okay because he forgave. And who knows, when you forgive somebody, then God won't use that to bring them to him. You don't know. Sometimes He does. It's our attitude that leads people sometimes to turn to God. So forgiveness is a tough thing. If I ever figure it all out, I'll let you know.

I just know I'm learning in life to look at people very quickly and say, I was wrong, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? So they can heal. They can't heal if I damage them. And they don't forgive me. I don't want anyone going through life filled with anxiety and hurt and anger because I did something wrong. So I do that a lot. I'm sorry, forgive me. I hope they do. And I'm trying to learn to forgive others. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3. Think about this forgiveness. Think about peace. Peace is not a passive experience. Peace is an active experience.

Let's pick up here in verse 8 of 1 Peter 3 because actually there's a quote of an Old Testament here, an Old Testament passage. But I want to put it in the New Testament context so you can see why He uses this passage the way He does, why Peter does this. Verse 8, Finally all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love his brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Somebody has evil to me, and I don't respond with evil. Now remember we went through one of the fruits of the Spirit, that sometimes you stand up against evil. But He's talking here on that personal level. You stand up for God, but when somebody else punches you in the nose, it's not a good idea to punch him in the nose back.

He says, knowing that you were called to this, oh, I thought I was just called to not lie or steal or not worship idols. Well, yeah, you were called to that, but you were called to this also. You were called to this that you may inherit a blessing. He quotes from the Old Testament, He who would love life and seek good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. He didn't say, seek peace and sit by the river and wait for it to come. To seek the peace of God, you and I have to go after it. We have to seek God. So the peace comes from Him. Then we have to seek ways to make peace with others. We actually seek ways to make peace with others. We pursue ways to make peace with others. Boy, when you think of that and you start going through all the teachings of Jesus Christ, things like, if you think somebody has something against you, leave your offering that you're going to give to God, go deal with that and then come back. He's telling us to pursue peace. Go run after peace here. Go run after it.

So this is a very complex concept, but we have to at least talk about it. If we're going to have peace, we have to learn to forgive and to reconcile when possible. But really, that brings us to another point that I have to mention. It is not always possible to reconcile, because that takes the other person's involvement. It really does. You know, and just dealing with this, once again, in certain situations, like someone was raped or something like that, that doesn't mean you have to seek a relationship, a friendship with the person who did it. Reconciliation at that point is just an acceptance. If that person repents, that they'll be in the Kingdom of God, and that's okay. Actually, at that point, if the two of you are changed into the Kingdom of God, you will have a friendship. Now, that's beyond our comprehension right now, isn't it? But you can at that point, because of the change that takes place. But if we harbor hatred, even if the other person was wrong, that hatred can destroy us.

You hate the sin. You don't want anything to do with the person, maybe. You can't always reconcile, not in this life, but reconciliation can take place in the next life. But that's very hard for us to grasp. But we can't hold on to the hatred. We can't hold on to the anger. We can't hold on to that, because it eats us up like a cancer, and it becomes part of us. It becomes who we are. And that's why what Paul says in Romans 12 here is so fascinating. When Paul writes, sometimes he's very logical, going point by point. And then I really like, sometimes, at the end of some of his books, it's almost like, oh yeah, let me write this down. Oh, here's another thought. Let me write this down. And he's just like writing down random thoughts, you know? And they're all really good points. I mean, each sentence sometimes is like, wow, what a great sentence. But the next sentence has nothing to do with that subject. You know, it's almost like he's random thoughts. He's writing it down. He's trying to get all this stuff in before he forgets it. In Romans 12, 18 says, if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. That's not just people in the church, it's with everybody.

If it is possible. In other words, sometimes it is not possible. And as much as depends on you, some things depend on the other person. Right? Some things depend on the other person. Any other person won't allow peace.

Then all you can do is forgive and walk away. Not have a relationship with them. Not be involved with them. Sometimes you have to do that. But he says you try, if possible, and as much as it depends on you, find peace with everybody. When it's not possible and it doesn't depend on you, then you have to disengage.

You and I can't solve all the problems. Until Christ comes back, humanity's problems don't get solved. You and I can't even solve all the problems in our lives. I'm the type of personality that wants to solve everything. And I've at times driven myself almost crazy trying to solve everything, only to realize I'm not God and I can't solve everything. It's not possible.

In fact, sometimes if you just have peace, that's as good as it's going to get. You have peace. We can't solve this mess. It's Satan's world, and you and I still are fighting with our own corrupted human nature. God can solve it. What we do sometimes is we think appeasement is peacemaking, and they are not the same. That is very important. I just appease everybody. I'm just going to be a doormat and appease everybody, and that will be peacemaking. That's not peacemaking. That's abuse. How many of you have read Esauf's Fables? Remember Esauf's Fables? I love Esauf's Fables. And there's one in there that I've always found really amusing. It's about a man who married two women, and they both loved him. And one was an older woman, and one was a younger woman. And he just wanted to do anything to make them happy. So he would appease both of them. Well, the older woman started to notice she got more gray hair. And she started looking at him and saying, you know what? You have a little gray hair, but not... you have a lot of dark hair, too. And look at me. I'm getting gray. So every morning she got up, she pulled out one of his dark hairs. Well, the younger woman started to notice, well, wait a minute. I'm seeing more and more gray hair. You're starting to look too old for me. So she got up every morning and said, go ahead, pulled out one of the white hairs, gray hairs. And one day he woke up and he looked in the mirror and he was totally bald. And neither woman wanted him then. They both said, oh, we don't want to bald, man. So he ended up alone. And of course, the moral of the story is, he who tries to please everybody pleases nobody.

Being a peacemaker isn't appeasing everybody. We have to be making our decisions on what is morally right. And yes, there's times to take wrong for a good purpose. The Bible talks about that. You and I at times are to take the wrong for a good reason. So yeah, but that's not appeasement. Appeasement is nothing but more than abuse. Usually you're appeasing people for your own emotional needs and everybody's taking advantage of them. Sacrifices something different. We sacrifice for other people because we willingly sacrifice for their good. When you're appeasing people, usually you're appeasing it for your good. I want peace. I'll do anything. It's a sacrifice and appeasement are two different things too. They may appear to be the same, but they're not. You know, there's a time for conflict. We learned that when we went through the fruit of the Spirit, goodness. There's a time for confrontation. There's even a time for proper anger, although we generally don't have proper anger when we are angry. And all these experiences, God wants us to learn peace. God wants us to learn peace. He wants to change your nature. He's already made peace with you. He sacrificed Jesus Christ and resurrected him so that the barrier between us and God is God. And we're no longer His enemies. He now calls us before Him as His children. We're not His enemies, we're His children. That's a totally different relationship, and you already have that. And by the way, those who aren't baptized, He already calls you His child, even though this process isn't complete yet. You already are able to come before Him, not as an enemy, even though you still haven't gone through the entire process.

He still sees you as a child. You and I have God's Spirit dwelling at this, who have His Spirit, so these changes can take place. So we must develop peace of mind as a way of life, as God has peace of mind. Only then can we actually become peacemakers.

You know, the strange truth is that peace isn't going to be brought upon the world until it's forced upon them by violence. I find that so strange. Only after the Prince of Peace comes back and there's violence, when He has to fight humanity, will be able to bring peace. But that's the way human beings are. It all comes down to who has the greatest force. And they will fight the Prince of Peace. They don't have to. He doesn't want to do that. He will bring peace. But I want to leave you with an interesting thought as you go through your daily conflicts and your struggles. And you think, why is it that my life can be so hard? Why is it that I have so many struggles as I learn to deal with, you know, whether it's your kids or your uncles or your aunts or your brothers or your sisters or the people in the church or the people you work with or your neighbors or fellow drivers on the freeway, you know, or you go to the local council meeting, you know, of your little neighborhood and everybody's fighting. And it's like, why is there conflict every place? You and I are learning at all this conflict the way of peace. We are learning the way of peace. And there's a reason for that. When Jesus Christ comes back, He's going to bring peace to the earth. That's not going to happen in 30 seconds. Why is it going to take to teach Israelis and Palestinians not to fight anymore? Why is it going to take to get—North and South Koreans not to fight anymore. What is it going to take to get Americans not to fight each other anymore? Why is it going to take to get people to have families that are functional? What's that going to take? Well, Christ is going to teach that. But He also is going to have resurrected brothers and sisters who are there who have learned. They have dealt with conflicts. They have failed. They've learned from it. They see what works. But they will also have the peace of God in them. They will have learned the way of peace. They will have learned what it is to have God's peace that surpasses all understanding in them. You and I haven't just been called to learn peace so we can have better lives. You and I have been called to learn peace because when Jesus Christ returns, we are going to be required to teach the whole world the way of peace.