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GALATIANS 5:22c
(Reading: Psalm 56; Galatians 5:19-26)
The Fruit of the Spirit is … Peace
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
The harvest of the Spirit is also peace. This is yet another aspect which grows from the inner life of the Christian community. The many-sided character of virtuous life also comes in this quality of peace.
And, still, doesn’t it seem that ‘peace’ seems so far away? If anything, weren’t some of those acts of the sinful nature more relevant to our situation? How can we imagine living in ‘peace’ when all around its “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy” which so much dominate our lives?
They do! No one can stand up and say they have been completely open with all those around them. Everyone has misunderstandings with others. We’ve all got our own shells of self-righteousness, much as we might cleverly disguise them!
Congregation, to drive this home even more, who has the perfect understanding of God himself? Even if you think you’re honest with the people around, you know you haven’t been fair with God. And since you cannot be fair with him it must mean you’ve got it wrong with those others, too.
It’s not nice to start on a negative note. And yet we must. Just as the apostle Paul did in picturing those acts of the sinful nature in the verses before the text.
You see, we must be fully awake to the devastating fact that we cannot gain peace. No matter how hard we try, mankind is always doomed to more “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy.” That’s the framework this world is in. We are programmed for disaster. And we are due for much, much more of the same medicine.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is peace.” So it’s just as well it’s from God. And isn’t that the most tremendous fact about where we stand with God? For it may have seemed once that we chose for God. You know, as though it were our choice. But in hindsight it was all his doing, wasn’t it? Even that situation happening when you thought you made the right decision showed it was actually the Lord’s working after all.
The great Church Father Augustine, after years of tossing to-and-fro, found peace with God by hearing a little child say, “Take up and read.” It seems the child was singing to himself, and probably hardly knew what it was saying when he was saying to himself the two words - “Tolle, lege; tolle, lege; tolle, lege.” This is Latin for, “Take up and read.”
That voice Augustine knew wasn’t from himself. He, the perplexed thinker, knew it could only be God. So he picked up the Scripture, and he read the Scripture, and soon he had met Christ. That’s when he had peace. That was when the Lord found him.
You see, peace reflects on that new standing with God, through Jesus Christ. And so we consider now the divine fruit shown in peace. For, in the first place ... PEACE IS BEING RIGHT WITH GOD.
Now, this is something straight-forward. We firmly believe in ‘justification by faith’ don’t we? Aren’t we a church of the Reformation?
Yet, how is this amazing fact a part of your life? That’s what ‘peace’ is all about. It’s about what it is to be right with God.
Here we must be careful not to become confused. It is what we are that determines where we are! True peace comes with seeing our condition before God, not where our situation is right now!
Psalm 56 spoke strongly of this. David’s situation there was one of utter despair. He has been captured by cruel and despised enemies.
It is there, in verse 4, he says, “What can flesh” – mortal men – “do to me?” Well, in his situation, quite a lot we’d say. His life was hanging on such a fine thread of treachery. And, yet, strangely enough, he concludes, in the verses 12 and 13, “I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.”
What kind of peace was this? In fact, how could he speak of deliverance when he was physically captured? For sure, this is nothing like worldly peace!
And the New Testament picture is no different. The Lord Jesus says in Matthew 10 verse 34, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Now, hang on a moment! Isn’t this the same Jesus whose birth God’s angel heralded with the proclamation of peace on earth? And isn’t he the same One who told Peter to put away his sword? What kind of peace is this? How can it ever be that it comes from being right with God?
My friends, it all goes to show exactly how powerful this peace is. It demands a complete and utter separation from anything apart from the fact of our salvation. For haven’t we seen the great price it cost? After all, what was Christ’s doing and dying and rising all about?
If peace is that we are right with God, it also most certainly means that we are at odds with this world. And that brings us the kind of conflicts that our earthly idea of peace just wouldn’t accept. There’s a fierce and uncompromising difference between God’s righteousness and sinful behaviour and values. So our true peace is a hard thing. It calls us to keep our distance from what God hates. And yet it’s such an enriching thing. You see, if we are right with God, we know the foundation for this peace. Personally we can speak of what a gracious heavenly Father has done for us in Jesus Christ.
But even saying this is assuming, isn’t it? I mean, where are we exactly at with the Lord? That’s why we must see now the next part to peace. In the words of the second aspect to this text ... PEACE IS TAKING IN HOW WE ARE RIGHT WITH GOD.
Looking around us here, this is something which may be quite different for each one of us. Even Paul recognised this as he extended the Lord’s blessing at the end of his letter to the Romans. For in chapter 15, verse 13, he writes, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
It is a blessing the Lord desires for each one of us. And yet it’s one we might not have. Or maybe we have it ever so slightly. So slightly that the smallness we do possess shows up the huge gap of what we don’t have! Then sin shows up big in our lives!
Take the example of a hostile husband-wife situation. What peace they might have shared in the Lord has become so quickly eroded by their turning into themselves. Rather than that openness to the Spirit, they have got caught up in that deadly vortex of self. That’s why the husband threatens and even commits violence. And that’s why the wife becomes that awful picture of the dripping tap in Proverbs. And most sad of all is that it shows up most clearly in how the kids turn out! That’s the reflection of what that marriage is like that is much clearer than any mirror!
But it shouldn’t be that way. In the words of Paul in Romans 5, verses 1 and 2, “since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we gain access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”
Charles Spurgeon compared this with the compass on board an iron steam boat. That compass is placed in a high spot on the ship so that it won’t be influenced by the metal of the boat. So while in a way it is surrounded by the material which could distract it, it is set above misleading factors. And that’s how it should be with us because of God’s peace. You are lifted beyond the power of what’s around us. Instead of wallowing in this world’s misery we live in a whole different environment.
Now, that might seem the furtherest thing away from your life. But, in Paul’s words, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are enabled to take for ourselves God’s forgiveness in Christ. That forgiveness which literally let’s go all those obstacles we’ve been busy putting between ourselves and God. PEACE IS TAKING IN HOW WE ARE RIGHT WITH GOD.
So, because the way is cleared for us to God, through Jesus, we receive a peace far from our own. As Philippians 4, the verses 6 and 7, says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Prayer is the key. Through our opening up to the Lord, he can give so richly of his grace. Then we can be open to his Word. Then we come expectantly to worship, anticipating eagerly that he will further guard our hearts and minds in Christ.
Brothers and sisters, young people, how is your prayer life? Husbands and wives, is there a praying together? Out of your opening God’s Word you will have the way opened for you into God’s presence. Then you’re talking to God – one of the hardest lessons for us. Because many of us have been brought up to accept circumstances very stoically. That means we have the stiff upper-lip. Something like “big boys don’t cry.”
And we assumed that also with God. Actually, didn’t we especially think that with God? “Well, what’s the use of praying - He knows it anyway!”
It’s much the same way we’ve loved our children. They’ve been fed, clothed, and educated. Of course they’re loved!
But did you tell them that? Have we really communicated to them what it’s all about? Does your child get told that - by you? Because if they aren’t told that, and told it often, they don’t have what they need.
That convicts us. There was a blockage there. Just as have with God. So prayer is vitally important, for that is exactly the way we have God’s peace. It is by coming to God through Christ that we see again and again where we stand. And it’s seeing that that helps us to live that.
In security there is peace. And so what could be more peaceful than the ultimate of all securities? And having experienced that strength would you be the one to stop it?
You see, you know you shouldn’t be blocking it but you do. And that’s why, in the third place, we also have to see that ... PEACE IS LIVING OUT WHAT WE ARE IN GOD.
Dear believer, you know that this is the only true peace. You believe that it is through this peace that our world really does have peace. Because this is all about the Prince of Peace!
You can look back at all the attempts at peace that man has ever made. Who can forget those photos showing the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, coming back from Germany in 1938. “Peace in our time!” he shouted, holding aloft the agreement he’d just signed with Adolf Hitler. And within months Czechoslovakia was Germany’s and Poland was next.
Three thousand years before the Psalmist had sung about this in Psalm 146. There verse 3 sang, “Don’t put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.” But we have peace forever! The battle has been won! The war is ever so nearly done. And already now we can live in that peace of the victory.
Once a minister was able to go and spend New Years’ Eve with his mother. She had been frail and lonely since his father died, but she had remained a faithful witness to her faith. As he sat in the little room where she lay, their thoughts roamed back over the years. Memory after memory was recalled. It came to the point where he couldn’t go any further.
She stretched out her hand to reach the watch, which she kept on the table beside her. ‘It’s a quarter to twelve,’ she said, which, being interpreted, meant, ‘Let us be quiet a little, now…’ He said it became very still in that room, as still as he thought it must be at the gate of heaven. He didn’t notice the minutes ticking away.
He then looked at her face. A miracle had happened. He had never seen her like that before, though he thought his father would have. She was seventy years old, yet he saw her as though she was only seventeen. He was in her little room, but she was, as the Scots say, ‘far ben’ in the secret place with God. Presently her thin hand reached out again, though there was no need for the watch. ‘It’s twelve o’clock, my boy,’ she said. ‘A New Year has begun. God bless you.’
As he stooped towards that shining face he knew the Master had spoken truth when he said in Matthew 5, verse 8, ‘Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ She did not end that year on earth. Why should she? She had begun it in heaven.
This is a little word-picture of true peace. This is an example of what Paul wrote in Romans 14. There we read in verse 17, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.”
Congregation, there are many in the world who desperately want that peace we so graciously have. They are so dissatisfied with the tension and frustration that tears their lives to pieces. They need to see Christ in us! They have to know for themselves there’s a message of tranquillity in this broken world.
How about it? Are you living out of true peace? You know, when we do live like that then heaven has come down. And it’s going all around!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Lord God, please make each of us instruments of your peace. By your Spirit inside us may we shine you on the outside. Work in us to live as those being ruled by the Prince of Peace.
In his saving name, the precious name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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