The Gift of Peace

 

Text: Isaiah 11:1-9

Focus: Peace

Function: Advent 2

11:¹A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
²The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
³His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see
    or decide by what his ears hear,
⁴but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor
    and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist
    and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

Good morning to the beloved children of the living and loving God!

May Christ’s peace fill you today as we look at the importance of peace in our lives.

I hope that by the end of the sermon, we will see better how the phrase from Philippians 4:7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

I believe the qualifying phrase from that verse is “as you live in Christ Jesus.” I preach a lot about the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And I keep that theme before us because more and more in my own life, I have learned to depend on the peace that Christ gives me when I take my frustrations to Christ Jesus in my prayer life.

“As we dwell in Christ,” I believe is a phrase about our lifestyle of living by faith in the fact that God loves us, cares for us and is with us in the midst of all of our trials and tribulations.

God brings us peace. The birth of Christ is where we celebrate the coming of God’s peace into our lives through the Spirit that Jesus sends us.

God is not some angry father who only thinks of himself and instead of helping us when we struggle, shames us for not getting it right.

God is the perfect father who loves us enough to take the time to lead us by the Spirit and sometimes, God even works miracles in our lives.

God does this in answer to our prayers. But at other times, most other times in my experience, God gives us the peace to endure during the trial and then works out the circumstances according to God’s will in our lives.

Living in Christ, I believe is living in surrender to the leading of the Holy Spirit deep inside of our hearts who will call us to love others as much as we love ourselves.

And, that same Holy Spirit will give us boldness to address injustice. And that is what our text is about. It is the Peace that Christ’s mission on earth is to bring about.

But Jesus’s kingdom is not spiritual where the Spirit reigns in our hearts and gives us peace. We celebrate the inner peace of Christ this morning and we anxiously look for the Peace that Christ promises to bring to the nations.

That inner peace in Christ can come when we follow Christ closely through prayer and forgiveness of others.

I learn by this that when I get afraid, I to go to God in prayer and let Christ’s peace assure me that God knows my pain and fears and cares.

I love Jesus at the grave of Lazarus and that simple verse in John 11:25: Jesus wept.

He knows our pain and walks with us through it.

We get that peace in prayer as we are brought to that place of trust in God.

But there is more to peace that just that feeling of comfort and lack of fear.

Our text for this morning is a prophecy about the way that when Jesus the Christ comes to earth, He will bring with him the kind of Political peace that delivers the oppressed from injustice.

He contrasts the righteous with the wicked. And the wicked are described as those who oppress the poor.

This reminds me of Jesus first sermon, Luke 4:18:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,

Jesus stands up in the crowd and reads this text from Isaiah 61 and describes as his mission as a mission to bring about justice for the poor and the oppressed. It is the same theme as the prophecy about him from earlier in Isaiah that is this morning’s text.

And it also speaks of a miraculous transformation.

The wolf shall lay down with the lamb, the calf and the lion feed together and the little child will not be harmed by nature’s predators.

There are those who take this passage literally and believe that in a new heaven and a new earth the carnivores will be transformed into herbivores.

I tend to believe that it is symbolic of what happens when the Holy Spirit gets into the hearts of people and gives them a desire to love their enemies instead of hate them. I see this as God’s design for all nations to live together in harmony. God’s plan is for humanity to give up the violence and predation of the weak and the poor and cease from war. I feel a calling to proclaim this peace.

And we keep hoping and striving for this outcome. That is why peace is a major theme of Advent.

We call it the Christmas Spirit and we are learning to let that Spirit that brings us peace and promises to bring peace to the world.

Let Peace reign in our hearts.