Sunday Sermon

 God of Peace

Isaiah 52:7
How beautiful is the person who comes over the mountains to bring good news, who announces peace and brings good news, who announces salvation and says to Jerusalem, “Your God is King.”
    Yesterday we had a refrigerator clean out day.  Over Christmas we had so much food and that created leftovers that were then put in containers and then placed in a refrigerator to be eaten later.  The eating later came yesterday and it was a good time.  It did create an issue for us, we had to wash and put away all those containers and that got me thinking about boxes and plastic bowls and all kinds of things that hold stuff and how useful they are.  Without some form of containment the world does not work.  Some of the first things humans created were baskets and boxes to hold things.  That kind of thinking then moved into the idea that we as humans are actually containers.  The idea of humans being vessels goes back a long time and the imagery really does help us understand who we are and it teaches us about the God who loves us.    God made us to be containers of His righteousness, love and glory.  It is God’s desire to pour out into us all He is because God loves us and wants us to be all we were meant to be.  I love the idea that we are meant to hold the glory of God in us.  We as humans are not just some random thing that happened but we were made with a special purpose and knowing that changes every thing about how we think of ourselves.  God made us to hold His glory and we should feel the wonder of that and the burden that comes with such a purpose.  Knowing what we are should cause us to step up and take on the character God calls to us to be.  As the Church we should be communicating to the world how important and valuable every human is.  It also means that we as humans need to be careful about the choices of things we hold.  We should think about what we put in our vessels because what is in our vessels will determine what comes out of us.  Just as those leftovers tasted good because we put good things into those containers we can also put terrible things in our containers and getting rid of those awful things can take considerable effort.  God made us to hold His glory and we should be embarrassed it we allow other less worthy thing to fill our lives.  Humans were made for greater things and we need to look to God to fill us.  What is interesting is that we sense that we were made for this purpose and we long for it but instead of letting God fill us we choose to fill our lives with things of lesser meaning.  God is calling to us because he knows what we were meant for but we as humans have to make that choice and it is sad when we choose something below what God wants for us.  It is important to know how valuable we are to God and what God wants to do in our lives because that will help us over come the calls of other things that want to fill our lives that are not ever going to satisfy us.
    If we are called to a higher purpose and we are meant to be filled with the glory of God we need to think about what our lives look like and what choices we should be making.  What is a real blessing is that God does not leave us stranded trying to figure out what we should fill our lives with.  We have a God who pours out wisdom to us and wants to teach us everything we need to know about life and how to live it.  Thinking about what we fill ourselves with is the starting point.  So often we as people just do what we need to do to get by each day and we don’t consider what principles and concepts should guide us so it is no wonder that our lives end up filled with ugly things instead of the beauty and wonder God wants to fill our lives with.  The starting point for all of this then means that we have to understand we are vessels meant to be filled and consider carefully what we put in our lives.  God has something to say about that which helps us to develop that knowledge we need about our lives.  Our God wants to fill our lives with wisdom about how to live.  One of the things God talks about is sin not because God wants us to feel bad for our sin but when we fill our lives with sinful things we end up with the destruction that results.  We cannot spend time in sin and then think our lives are going to turn out okay.  Sin destroys us and God knows it and so God wants us not to fill our lives with it.  We live by the wisdom of God because it is good for us and it makes our lives better.  Best of all is that we learn about a God who loves us and wants to best for us.  Instead of ugly sin God wants to fill us with Himself and all of His glory and righteousness.  The idea here is that God seeks healing and peace in our lives and we should want this loving God to pour Himself into us.  Seek God with all of our heart because God loves us like no one else and wants to give us lives of meaning and purpose like nothing else we can imagine.
    One of the things that changed my faith is understanding the love God has for me and all my fellow human beings.  It was so easy to be afraid of God and to worry about God condemning me for what I have done.  As I began to see God’s love for me I began to find that God’s hate for my sin was because He loved me.  That God wanted to teach me and to explain to me how the world works so I would avoid sin and choose to do right was such an eye opening thing.  My sin was killing me and God hated that and wanted it to stop.  The message God has for us is that He loves us so much and hates sin so vehemently that He is willing to deal with sin by having Jesus come and die for us.  Our verse puts things in such a wonderful way.  God is seeking peace with us and does not want to fight with us but wants to save us from our sin.  We find the full beauty of God and we understand how spectacular God is when we stand and observe Jesus on the cross because it is God telling us how much He loves us and how far He is wiling to God to make peace with us.  We are not rejected by God it is in fact the opposite.  Instead of living lives filled with the glory of God we have chosen to reject God and to ignore His warnings and we have invited death and destruction to fill our lives.  The beauty of Jesus tells us about our God and what He wants for us.  It needs to be made clear that the beauty of God and the peace He offers is based on submitting ourselves to the authority of God and we need to admit that can be hard.  Submitting to God is such a struggle for us humans and so we often choose to be at war with God instead of finding the peace we need in God.  Here is the problem though, we are not fit to be kings of our lives.  Humans were made by God to serve Him and to find peace and joy in that.  God needs to be king of our lives because He is the one who should be.  In all of our rejection of God and war with Him we should be dead but God wants to give us life and so He gives us grace and offers mercy and forgiveness.  Think about that, we are at war with God and it is God who offers peace to us.  This is a God who we need to know and who is worth serving.  Let us find beauty in Jesus and grab hold of the peace God holds out to us because it is the answer to the worry and fear we have in life.
    We cannot leave this verse unless we speak about the person who brings peace and good news.  At the center of this is Jesus but we also play a part in this and I want us to think about spreading the hope that this verse expresses.  When Jesus is born an important phrase is used and it speaks to what Jesus has been born to do.  In Luke chapter two verse fourteen we have these words that speak of God’s glory and God’s desire that there be peace among men.  We humans have been at war with God because we reject His authority over us and instead of letting us be destroyed by our sin Jesus shows up to make peace with us.  God has no obligation to make peace with us because we have rejected Him and yet it is God who makes Himself man not to come and punish us but to set us free from the death we should have.  The level of love God has for us astounds me and makes me want to seek this God with all of my might.  Jesus dying at the cross is good news to us because the cost of our sin has been paid for.  Now that we know this good news we need to tell the world about this God who saves us from our own sin.  When we speak about telling the good news people freak out because they think of going house to house and telling people about their faith but that is the smallest way of spreading the good news.  Being people who admit we are sinners but we are learning to be better is the best way to tell people the good news.  Living our lives as people who are humble and who seek to live by what God calls us to do is what has power.  People want to see what we believe not what we say we believe.  The most important part of Jesus ministry was not the miracles but the teaching He did and then living that teaching.  We will have so much more influence when people see how we live with peace and hope and joy.  Yes, at some point we need to tell our story and explain our faith but that is the end point not the starting point.
      The peace God wants to give us is based on the idea that God is King and that has implications that reach deep into our lives and our culture.  In the book of Romans the writer Paul tells us that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord and this idea is at the center of our faith so we should consider what it means very carefully.  Of course the idea of a king is that He rules absolutely without question.  Lets’ understand this because we have some real issues here.  God is absolutely in control but we should be grateful about that.  Our God is righteous and loving and giving and more then we can mention but most of all God is true and God is the center of what is real.  To take commands from God is not like taking commands from some other king.  When God says something that is what is right and true and nothing else has to be said.  Submitting ourselves to the authority of God and making peace with Him is the greatest thing we can do if we want our lives and the world to be a better place.