Pleasure Image and the Peace of God 1975

From John 14, verse 27. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not of the world do I give to you.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. While the road that leads us to the city of God is lined with all kinds of wonderful samples of the glory that lies ahead. It's nevertheless true that the glory we now see is incomplete.

At this time we see through a glass dimly, we prophesy in part, we know only in part. And it's also true that as we travel toward our goal, we find ourselves going through all kinds of deserts and dry places and valleys of sorrow. And so it's not surprising that as we find ourselves going sometimes through hard times, that the enemy flashes across our mind's eye what might best be called a pleasure image of some kind that promises us a shortcut to satisfaction.

For instance, if we're living in a place where food is scarce, then what will happen is that we will find ourselves distracted by Satan's inspiration, by all kinds of marvelous visions of all kinds of beautiful food and ridiculously impossible ways of getting it. Or if we're sitting in a prison cell, we'll be dreaming about all kinds of ways that we're going to escape this and get away. Or if our life is lonely, and this often happens even with people who are surrounded by family and friends, then the enemy begins to paint for us a paradise of endless sexual pleasure.

And all you have to do is look at the billboards, the advertisements or your own imagination. Or if we're having trouble paying the bill, then the enemy comes along and gives us all kinds of beautiful thoughts about how we're going to strike it rich. We're going to be lucky, we're going to have fortune.

And this hope is inspired and maintained in us by, you know, TV giveaway shows and lottery tickets. If we're bored with where we are, then we begin to conjure up with the help of a thousand unreal ways that we're going to escape this hole that we're in and really get going and see things. Now, this pleasure image all the time, we know to be alive and we know where it leads.

We know what happened to the Israelites when they dreamed of meat and finally got it until they were sick. Or when they had that golden calf and had their orgies that followed it. And all around us are strewn the wrecks of lives that have pursued the pleasure image until they were destroyed.

And as we look back over our own past, each of us can see what has happened to us when we gave reign to the impulses which are in us. And yet, knowing all this, we still keep going back to the pleasure image that Satan throws up in front of our mind's eye. And we say to ourselves, how dull my life is.

If only my husband weren't such a blob. If only my wife had a little snack to it. If only I had a better job.

If only I could get away to that island and just sit under the palm tree and watch the waves. And the more we dwell on our pleasure image, whichever happens to be our own favor, the more dissatisfied we become, the more ungrateful we are for everything. And the more impatient we become with those around us.

And it's not going to help us to take a cold bath or go on a 21 day fast for this or to wear a hair shirt. And don't think that that we 20th century saints are the only ones who had this problem. This has been a problem for believers since the beginning of the faith.

Peter had it. He had to contend with that pleasure image, so did the apostles, so did the women. But there was one thing that saved them in the presence of Jesus and in his word and spirit.

They experienced, and we can experience too, a satisfaction which is not alive, which thrilled their bodies and souls and spirits and drew them on in God's will and caused all these pleasant images to shrivel up like punctured balloons in the presence of Jesus. These people experience the peace of God. And that's the only cure, the only cure.

His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. Now, the peace these people experienced in the presence of Jesus was unlike any kind of peace they've ever known before.

It was not the peace of tranquil circumstances, because everywhere Jesus went, there would be disruption. And in that sense, he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Yet as our Lord went around doing the will of his father, the peace of heaven rested upon him and spilled out over the lives of those who drew near to him.

And one taste of that peace is worth a million times any pleasure that you will ever find on this earth. In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Now, God alone knows who on this earth is able to appreciate his peace. But there are alcoholics who, when they get one whiff of that peace, a real whiff of it, will put the bottle away forever. That'll be the end of it.

And there are men and women whose lives have been warped beyond recognition by lust and whose minds are a madhouse of pervert fantasies who need only to taste that peace and they let go of all the other junk and begin to pursue this as the one thing. And there are Nicodemuses all over the place who are up to their ears in religion, who will turn their lives around immediately once they taste that peace. And there are Levites sitting surrounded by money who will gladly give up all their financial enterprises and all the riches that go with it if they can just move among people who dwell in that peace.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the most high, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, when the day shall dawn upon us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace. And when John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he was pointing to the one who will guide our feet into the way of peace. To know Jesus is peace.

To love him is peace. To follow him is peace. To obey him is peace.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. So when Jesus sent out his disciples, not just the twelve, but the seventy, two by two, he instructed them that whenever they entered into a house, they would say, peace be to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him.

If not, it will return to you. So they went out in peace. They came back in peace.

My peace I give to you. Peace that is able to settle a storm on Galilee as if it's a crying baby. Peace be still.

And at the same time, it's able to quiet a troubled conscience in the same way. Your sins are forgiven, your faith has saved you, go in peace. The first words our Lord spoke to his disciples when he returned from the dead, peace be with you.

And that room just filled with peace as if it were light and flooded and washed their minds like healing water. There are only two things in this world that promise us satisfaction. One is the pleasure image of Satan.

The other is the peace of God. And while we know that the pleasure image of Satan is a lie and we know that it leads to nothing but frustration and hunger and misery again and again, yet we return to it. We get taken in, we get sucked down by it time and again.

And we will continue to do this until we learn to open our heart. To the peace of God, to open our hearts to the peace of God involves, I believe, three things. First of all, means to receive it.

My peace I give to you, peace I leave with you, but unless we open our hearts to receive it and take it and welcome it. It stands at the door and waits. For instance, somebody can love you.

But it's up to you as to whether or not you're going to receive the love or reject it. In the same way, God sends forth his peace to us, but it's up to us whether we receive it or whether we reject it. We can look at the glass of water sitting on the table, but it's up to us to pick it up and drink it if we will.

We can let the words come into our ears, but whether they come down into our hearts depends on us. We have to get to the place where we say, Lord, I don't understand all this, but I want your peace. I take hold of it with my mind and heart.

Help me. Secondly, to open our hearts to God's peace means that we let it rule within. In Colossians, Paul says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Now, it's either going to be war or it's going to be peace in our hearts. And if it's going to be peace, this means that we turn away from those words, thoughts, deeds that drive God's peace right out of us. And very soon, if we really want to know, we can find out what are those things that cause God's peace to flee from us.

It's not worth having anything or doing anything that robs us of God's peace. Have you ever noticed how after you've got off a juicy piece of gossip, your peace is gone? Somebody asks for help and you find a good excuse and the room where you sit is quiet, but your heart is not. To do whatever we have to do to keep the peace of God, to get it back if we lost it, is what it means to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.

And finally, to open our hearts to God's peace means that we live it. Have salt in yourself and be at peace with one another. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Now, this may not mean compromise, but it does mean that we do everything within our power to bring about peace in our homes and in our fellowship and in the body all over the city. You know, if we have peace among ourselves, but we're criticizing and tearing apart the House of Prayer or the Warren Fellowship or the Northwest Side or people down river, how can we have peace? When you walk into a house where the people in that family are dwelling in peace, you sense the presence of God. And where they have this, this doesn't mean that they always agree, but it does mean that whenever they have tension and differences, they just can't stand it until they get it right.

You won't find God in a house of dissension. Striving, fighting, devouring, grumbling, criticizing will drive God's presence from our hearts, from our homes, from our fellowship. It isn't worth it.

As Paul says elsewhere, it's better for us to yield and to give and to deny ourselves in order that we can continue to live and to labor and to minister in God's peace. War, we have all around us and we will have more of it and it will continue until Jesus comes. But surely in the shadow of our Lord's cross, there has got to be a peace which is real, not somebody saying peace, peace when there is none, but a true peace of God that rolls down upon us like living water and flows out from us and touches and blesses other lives.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. What the world gives always turns out to be something other than it seems. What I give remains the same and I give you my peace.

Receive it, let it rule in you, live it, and you will be satisfied. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you know the many, many ways in which our hearts have been dissatisfied, discontented, at war within themselves, complaining, frustrated, and lusting after a thousand things.

And we pray, Lord God, that you give to your children and to those who seek you now before we leave this place a taste of your holy and living and healing peace and that dwelling in your peace, Heavenly Father, we may be men and women of peace in every place where you put us and where you send us. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.