Peace on earth

This morning's scripture reading is going to come from Isaiah chapter 11. Isaiah chapter 11. And I'm going to be reading the first nine verses this morning. There shall come forth a chute from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with his rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion, and the fattened calf together, and little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the wean child shall put his hand in the add's den. It shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is God's word. Let's pray. Lord, we just come before you this morning and I pray Lord that you would give us ears to hear your word. I pray that by the power of your spirit, Father, you would make clear to us, Lord, what you have for us today. Father, give me um eloquence of speech and the ability to articulate what I believe you've shown me through your word. But I pray ultimately, God, that I would decrease and that you would increase and that you would have your way in our midst today. But speak to us, oh Lord, through your word in Jesus name. Amen. One of the things that we really see pretty quickly here in this passage is just the fact that God has this plan to bring peace. Peace on earth. This is something that scripture talks about repeatedly. And and here in this case, it's going to be peace that comes via the Messiah or through the Messiah. And so God is sending his chosen servant into the world. Now, what is peace? You know, a lot of times when we think about peace, we think about peace as just the absence of conflict. You know, when everything is right and everything's getting along and there's no wars and no arguing or or anything like that, right? And and there is an element where that is peace. But as you've heard me say before, peace in the Bible is much deeper than that. Peace in the Bible is when everything is working as it ought to be. There's this sense of fullness, this sense of completeness. Maybe maybe a word in the English to to to sort of grab that together might be like harmony when everything is as it is. Because see in our world you can have like peace in our world like the peace of of like the the our borders are secure. We dwell in safety and yet there could be all sorts of turmoil going on in the inside. I mean why why do we need peace? Why do we why do we long for peace? You know, I mean, we live in a country where our our borders are pretty secure. The countries to the north and the south of us are smaller than us in a sense of military might, right? We have no threats around us. We live in affluence, you know, compared to the rest of the world. There's all of these reasons where we could be financially secure. Uh we could be, you know, secure in in our homes and in our dwelling, in our land. We have no invasion that's looming over us like some countries of the world do have. And yet within our own country and sometimes even within our own heart there isn't peace. I mean you know this look around in the world to us today there it's shaking and quaking and everything is in crisis right now. There's all sorts of crisis of of identity. There's crisis of loneliness. There's there's all sorts of crisis of of of values and agreed and shared upon morals in our in our society. And people are just shouting everywhere for what they think the truth is. into this ether of social media and we are just in different directions divided and there is no peace going on within the human heart and more and more I feel like there's a restlessness in our world but especially in the western American society that we live in today we have lost peace as a world lost peace as a society and we so need it but ultimate peace only comes comes from God. As we look at this passage today, we're going to look at three things. We're going to look at what true peace looks like, how it is achieved, and what that means for you and me. So, the first thing we look at here is what true peace looks like. And uh and Isaiah describes it for us in a way that sounds unreal. It just sounds like an exaggeration or, you know, like a hyperbole, you know, that that that he's sort of speaking in these extreme ways. Um but but what we see number one is verse 8. We look right here and we see this description of where it says the nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra and the wean child shall put his hands on the add's den. You know the the snake there. And there's this description of a child that can get near a cobra near a snake and not be harmed to put its hand in there almost like it was petting a dog or something like that and feel no sense of enmity. And you know very quickly you know we think about these metaphors and these illustrations in the Bible. When you think about humans and you think about snake you should think about Genesis. You should think about in the early days where God in Genesis 3 put enmity between who? Between humans and between a snake. There was this curse that took place. There was this loss of peace that was happening. And something about this is describing a day that will come when there will not be that enmity. And I'm not talking about Satan. I'm talking about just in the sense of like nature, creation, and the created order. You don't put your hand and go pet a snake generally. You know, you don't put your hand in the snake hole. It's dangerous. And yet, what is being described here is this renewal when enemies become friends. And this is something that gets described constantly in scripture where the peace of God will one day come and bring such restoration that bitter enemies are actually joined together, reunited. The the Bible even Isaiah talks about a time when Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south, bitter enemies of Israel and bitter enemies of one another will one day be united together with Israel. They will all worship God at his throne. And this remarkable description that Isaiah gives us. We also see this this recreation of of the order of of the world, you know, where animals, for example, live at peace. We see in verses 6 and 7 uh where it says, "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together. And the lion shall eat straw like that of an ox. That just there's like a reversal in the food chain. And this is not something new. This is something that even actually hearkens back to the very beginning all the way back to Genesis. We see in Genesis 1:30 there where it says, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. So the way that the world has changed through the fall, the way that our earth, our feelings, everything, not just inside of us, but just the created order has been altered in some way where we have lost the rhythm and the harmony and the peace that God designed for this world. And we have this beautiful description that seems unthinkable of God beginning to heal that where it says even in verse 9, "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, the end of all wars, the end of all conflict, the end of all even turmoil and hatred and animosity and judgment and all the things that are even within our own hearts are changed, are made whole. are made right. And God begins to do this in uh in in December 24th, 1914, World War I. It's been raging for about 6 months. And on the German and uh European front, the British uh forces are on one side, and you have the German forces on the other side, both in trench warfare, deeply entrenched uh in their their warfare. And it's cold. It's wintertime in Europe. It's miserable because trenches weren't a great place. And somewhere in the in the in the noise of the bullets and the shrapnel and everybody shooting back and forth and all of that during December 24th, things began to become quiet. And somewhere in the silence of that night, German soldiers were heard singing in German. You know the tune. And English soldiers heard it. And they also began to sing. And both sides in the midst of this conflict and this war began to sing this song about a savior. And eventually heads actually kind of popped up over the trench and began to wave at one another. And slowly in the midst of that, not only was there there this waving that took place, but they cautiously began to come out of the trench and meet in no man's land. I mean, this is a true story. and and and they began to like talk to one another and people exchanged chocolate and cigarettes and and like this this thing happened for a day where like these bitter enemies, these people that were killing one another all of a sudden just joined and played a soccer game that they've recorded. They they've got records of like a soccer game that was played. They buried some of their dead together. In the midst of all this brokenness, for a second, we just saw a glimpse of something about people recognizing their humanity. They were longing for something, some sort of peace. And unfortunately, obviously, we know how World War I will continue to to worsen and get worse. But just for a moment, we had a glimpse. And Isaiah here is giving us a glimpse. A glimpse of a promise of a coming day of what God has promised to do. something that our own heart longs for. And you know, depending on on where you're coming from or or where you live, what maybe I would just ask, why do we long for that? Why do we long for these deep eternal goods? Why do we long for peace? Why do we even expect it in some ways? Because when peace is not achieved, when the world is in turmoil, we would say it's not right. It's not as it ought to be. But who says it ought to be unless there is a God? And unless God has created a standard that we know somewhere deep down within our hearts, we've lost. And if you're not in Christ, I would begin to say to reflect on those feelings in your own heart, your own soul. Why do I feel a sense of ought? And perhaps maybe it is because that has been wired within us. The Bible says that he has written eternity in our hearts. These eternal longings of what life should look like. And that is only because God has wired us that way. And somewhere within our own hearts, we should long to see that happen in our world. That's why I believe that so many people are all of a sudden starting to come into the faith and come into church and to explore is because all the world out here doesn't feel like it has any sort of peace. And yet God's message right here in the message that we should proclaim as followers of Jesus should be that you can have peace. That you can have it now in one sense but in a full sense in a coming day that is to come that is promised right here. This is what true peace looks like. It begins with Jesus. It begins when we begin to give our hearts, surrender them, follow him, and then he becomes that peace in our own hearts and in our own lives. We don't come to church, just as an aside, just so that we can be nice to one another that we can sort of put on peace. We don't come honestly for a good message or to feel good about some Christmas carols that we sing together. We come here to experience the living God, to experience his hope, to experience his joy, to join together and to to proclaim to one another the peace of God, the joy of God, the hope of God, and to experience his glory in our midst. Now, how is that peace achieved? How do we get it? How does it come? And we see right here in scripture that it comes not by human means. It doesn't come by better programs. It doesn't come by better education. It doesn't come by better leaders. All those things can help. All those things can help establish parts of peace, but they will not perfect it because no matter how much education we have, no matter how much training we have, no matter how many times we're told to do right, something about this world and even our own hearts is broken. Something is is wired wrong. The created order around us, as it shows here, is not what it's described in Isaiah. It's different. We've lost something and we cannot get it back through any sort of human effort. And so the Bible tells us that God came at the fullness of time and that he would be a peace for us. He would bring and accomplish that peace for his people ultimately. That peace not just with one another in this world, but the ultimate peace that we have lost, the peace with God. where we walked with him, where we were in perfect harmony with him, where we were loved and we found our identity and worth and sense of security and sense of what it means to live rightly in this life from him. And when we lost that reverberated all through creation, everything changed in that moment, not just the human heart. Everything began to change when the presence of God and humanity began to separate and humanity sent the earth and all the world down a different trajectory that invoked honestly God's curse. It unplugged us from the source of life and truth and it changed everything in this world. And that peace can only be achieved by the one who created that peace by the author of peace. the one who who where all peace and all life and all fullness are found in God. And we see in verse one right there where it says, "There shall come forth a chute from the stump of Jesse and a branch from the roots shall bear fruit." Now, a couple things going on. So, we've known all the way back since uh since 2 Kings 7 that God is promising to David that he's going to raise up this eternal king. We know there's this messianic promise of someone coming. And so even here we have this description. There shall come forth a chute, a rod, a stem from Jesse himself. But then if you look at the second part, it says a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And so something underneath that, underneath Jesse and underneath Jesse's stump is something more fundamental. And Bible commentators point this out. They talk about it. They're like, there's something that like it's at the roots and it's curving through Jesse and then shooting out of this stump that fundamentally it's it's beneath and tethered more deeply. And that that's the work of God's Messiah coming from the very beginning from the source and the root, the depths of the earth that through that he's just working and he's going to come through Jesse, but he precedes Jesse. And so we see this picture of the Messiah, of God, not a human king, not human effort, but God himself coming and coming into the lineage of David to bring peace to creation, to bring peace into this world. And so we see that the spirit of God rests upon him and he will do what? How will he, God himself, begin to achieve this? We see in verse three and four this description. It says, "And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what he sees or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wickedness." So God is coming and he is going to apply his righteous standard and that comes when God comes and applies the law and judgment. He applies the standard of what it is to live right. See in our world we can try to accomplish peace through other means. We could now legalistically say the law and only the law first and say everybody follow it. Everybody get in line or you're going to pay for it. you're going to pay for it. And we come with this doineering. But what does that do? What does that do to the human heart? What does that do to people? It it may give you peace. People get in line for a time. Countries have done this. The pox romana of Israel's time established that kind of peace in the world, but that peace isn't lasting. That peace can be crushing because everybody just needs to get in line or get out. And ultimately that begins to to erode and people get bitter. People get resentful. The human heart isn't changed by that. It's just it's just force on the outside that does it. There needs to be a deeper change. So God's going to have to come with his standard, but in a way that changes more fundamentally than just external oppression and an external law on people that makes them get in line. The other way that creation I mean the other way that peace can come to us is just like let's just let everybody in. Let's just there is no standard. You just do what you want. Let's just all live in harmony. You know what you believe is you your truth and my truth. They can agree that's fine. And that's nonsense. That will never work. It it may work for a second, but the minute somebody comes in the room that has a different opinion, a different belief system than you, you're going to find that it's not going to work. We see it today in our society today. There's all sorts of conflicts that begin to come when you allow multiple people in the room to say multiple different things about what is true and how life should be lived. You see it I mean in for example one really great and famous one that's taking place right now is just in in in gender and the idea that that is a is a man a man and a woman a woman or is are gender just fluid is gender a social construct and you're actually finding not even amongst Christians amongst secular people this is a battle right now you know you so you have this claim and then you have JK Rowling who's not a believer who wrote the Harry Potter she's very famous she's having a she bitterly opposes this whole gender thing because it undermines undermines women's rights. It takes away from what it means to be a woman. And so even from a secular standpoint, she is very vocal about her opposition. Two truths, two truth claims not working. Opposition. And we would see that play out time and time again in our society. If somebody stands up all of a sudden and says, "I think we should sacrifice children in our religion." How's that going to go? Because some people are going to bitterly oppose that. Does everybody just need to belong? We know it can't work. And we see even in scripture in the land of Judges where it says, "Every man did what was right in his own own eyes." And there's anarchy and chaos that ensues throughout the story of that book. And so it is for a land that chooses to go its own way. We need a standard of measuring. And so Christ comes with his law with God's standard of what it means to live as he said to live. And I think we can understand this. If we don't have a standard, if we don't have a standard by which to live with, you cannot have peace. You cannot have peace without everyone submitting their own lives to some sort of standard. If I think that a foot is 12 in and another carpenter out there thinks that a foot is 13 in, it's not going to work. We're not going to build a very straight house. We need to agree upon what a foot is in terms of measurement. And so it is with life. God created us and God tells us what it is to live rightly and he's the only one who ultimately knows because it's found in him. And so everything should come from him for how we are to live. We learn and are and it's revealed to us. It's buried somewhere deep in our hearts. It's wired into creation around us. But ultimately Christ makes it revealed. He comes and he even came and he taught us what it is to live the spirit of God's law in our hearts and in our lives. He applies that to the world around and he judges what is right and what is wrong so that we can see the distinctions. And he calls us to let go of our own truths, of our own senses of what we think it means to live rightly, and to embrace his truth, to embrace his righteousness, to embrace his judgment. And judgment begins to show us very clearly that God's standard is revealed through his word. And so the Messiah will come and teach us that to teach us how to live rightly. And and I don't want you to hear this is not again external. Christ is going to come and do something that's going to change the human heart. is going to change something about us so that we rightly long and desire to let go of our own ways of doing things, what's right in our own eyes, and to ultimately embrace what God has for us and to yield to him so that we can have that standard of peace in our world. Jesus teaches a heart and a life that lives not by the law but by relationship. and he rightly applies the law and he calls us to live it. Calls us to live it. Um I'm trying to think about how to how to phrase this. So if God is going to create a standard for us, the way that I thought about it this week was really an orchestra and the ways that orchestras coordinate. Because we see here in verse three and four, I'm going to read it again. It says, "His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall judge by what he sees, not by what he sees or decide disputes by his ears, but with rightness, righteousness, he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. So Christ comes with judgment. And I don't want to belabor the point, but I think that sometimes we can feel like judgment just feels harsh. It feels like this external thing that comes. But judgment, God's law, God's way creates harmony. And the way that I thought about it this week was an orchestra. That even within an orchestra, there is a conductor. And the conductor begins to to tell people the rhythm and the flow and to to gather all these musicians together. And and and they have notes, but the conductor gives them rhythm and he gives them place. And even within the orchestra itself, there are certain hierarchies with first chairs and different instruments that follow one another. They're all following the conductor, but sometimes they're also follow following one another to harmonize. And so it is within life and within God's word that God is ultimately orchestrating this harmony by rules, by life, by calling, not not in an external way, but in a way that if we begin to submit ourselves to his way, we find the music, we find the harmony, we find what it is to live out that peace that he has for us. So there is a problem though and I think we see it here. There's judgment of the wicked as he's pointed out in verse four. And if you really think about it, judgment of the wicked is all those who have broken the law. All those who have chosen the path of no peace. All those who are at enmity with God. And that's all of us. We've all done that. And so in order to bring the peace in the world, God has to destroy what's evil and wicked and wrong and broken about the world. And that means us. And in order for God to even be just that. In order for God to to be one who enforces that peace and and gets rid of, he has to punish evil. God is not just unless he punishes that. But yet at the same time, that would mean all of us die. All of us would be destroyed. All of us would be at immity. And if God has come to establish peace, if God has come to restore something, how can he do both at the same time? How can he be merciful and gracious and lifegiving and renewing of his created order when he really just needs to destroy everything? And that's ultimately the beauty and the mystery of Christ, that God would come and he would live perfectly. He would be at peace with God and he would live the perfect life and yet at the same time he would surrender his life, take on the sins of the world and die for you, for me to pay that debt. And that ultimately is the payment of our debt to God. So when God does that, he's what? He's just, right? He's not just let the evil of the world go unchecked. He's not had something some sort of consequences for it. So legally, God is just and good and morally good by doing that. But at the same time, because Christ took it on, Christ can take that that righteousness, that perfect life, that credit if you will, and he can apply it to us. That righteousness is given to us. The Bible calls it this way. He says he is the just and the justifier. means that he is he is morally good because he paid the debt but he also gives and establishes and declares us innocent because of the righteousness that he gives to us because he says I died in your place and when that begins when we understand that when the gospel takes root in your own heart and in your own life when you begin to understand that God has given himself for me I deserve to die this peace I feel all the things that are going on I'm at fault with just as much as everybody else in this world. I'm part of the problem. And yet God died for me. He gave his son for me and he and he called me innocent. Are you kidding me? He called me not guilty. And when we begin to realize that there's some what happens in your heart, you begin to really understand the beauty of this exchange, the power of it, and you begin to turn to God, and you just, Lord, forgive me all this stuff. What can I do? And everything becomes not works, not law, because that won't save us. But what it's worship, it's response to God. We turn to him. And it says throughout scripture that that's how God establishes peace. Says in Romans 5:1, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." That God's work right there reunifies and connects us back to God himself and reunites us. That Jesus will come. And it says right here, sorry I missed this verse to to to anchor it down for us, but it says in verse five there, this is what this is what Christ does. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. God Jesus will come and live that perfect life. He is the righteousness, right? He dies on our behalf. He gives us his righteousness and he becomes the standard not just the moral standard for us to follow. He becomes the righteousness that is transferred to us that makes us right that reunites us just like his relationship with the father. We begin to get that relationship that reunification in our life. That peace which we've lost begins to be renewed in our hearts in our lives. So backing up, we've lost this peace. We see this beauty of this peace. We see how God is coming and has come and establish that peace through Christ. So that we are no longer condemned, but we are innocent before him. And if we begin to understand that, this in turn should impact the way that we live in this world. The way we live in this world. So, what does it mean for us? Well, first off, if this is what God will accomplish, if he's going to renew creation, if his promise is to like do this miraculous, unbelievable level of peace, where a lamb and a lion can lie down together, where there is no harm or danger, where there's just everything is recreated in this way that God intended it, that echoes back to the creation of earth, that echoes back into Eden. if he's going to do something about even our relationship with him and all of that's going to begin to be healed and renewed in a way that becomes perfect so that like I talked about last week that one day he will wipe away every tear then we ought to have peace ought to be able to rest in that truth that no matter what happens in this world the world can be shaken it can be on fire there can be all kind of things happening in the world around and people can be in turmoil I don't know who I am and I don't know what to do and there's a crisis of identity and there's a crisis of of manhood there's crisis of womanhood. There's a crisis in the family. There's a crisis of economics. There's a crisis of geopolitical things and all sorts of things going on in the world. And we are anchored to the peace that God has established. We are anchored to the truth that he has described here in Isaiah. And when the angels stand up and they fill the sky in the book of Luke and they say peace on earth, good will toward men. This is the coming of Christ and what he will establish. This is the beginning of that promise through the rule of Jesse that God will begin to give that kind of peace. And if you know that, it should anchor your soul and your heart. You should have something within you that the world should look on and see and want that for themselves. And the second thing is though is that if Christ has removed that hostility, if he's been that peace with us, if he's restored something, number one, we should have that vertical relationship. And that should be growing. We should be abiding in God. And whenever we feel like we've gone our own way, whenever we feel like we're losing that peace, we can just rest in the fact that he has paid the debt for us. And he calls us to be in relationship with him. He calls us to renew and receive that peace, that righteousness that calms our heart when it is weary or convicted or broken, when the world around ravages, that we can be restful and anchored in that. But by the same token, it ought to have a horizontal impact. Because if God has forgiven and he's been gracious to me, then in turn, I should turn to the world around me and I should be gracious people of God's grace. That if I have been forgiven, I should turn and practice that forgiveness to others. As a church and as the people of God, we should practice incredible unity. unity even in the diversity of the church and in different ways of life, different ages, different nationalities, all these different things that come about. And yet there's this beautiful unity of God joining us in one savior, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord that we are united in that. And so all of who we are and all of our relationships should begin to change as a result of the peace that God has brought. the peace that he has placed within our hearts. Do you have that peace? Are you abiding in that peace? And if you don't, you can. If you feel like you've lost it, if you feel like the fear in this world is causing it to shake and tremble, it can be renewed. can be restored again and again as you come back to the father as you remind yourselves the truths of the gospel. Martin Luther said preach the gospel to yourself every day. Remember remember remember what he has done and if you have that peace in yourself turn to the world around you and let them know about it. call a world that is aching and shaking and despondent. Step into the places of people's lives, see how they're doing, and offer the hope and the peace that is found in Christ our Lord. Let's pray.