Pastor Dan Eddy
2 Peter 3:8-14
“Be at peace”
12-4-11
Peace, grace, and mercy be
yours in abundance this day from God our Father and from our Advent King, Jesus
Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Before I begin with the
sermon meditation on peace from 2 Peter 3:14 I want to clarify some things I
said last week on hope. After evaluating last week’s sermon I was not happy
with some of the ways I explained hope.
Hope is trusting in Jesus
for what we can expect Him to give us based on His past actions. Hope is an
expectation. So if Christ died for you, you have the certain hope of
forgiveness of sin, the hope of power over death, the hope of eternal life,
given to you by faith at your baptism, strengthen in His proclaimed Word,
assured in His supper. That is a certain hope; a sure expectation.
However, you can hope to
God in your prayers that you will be healthy, financially solvent, that you are
loved by others, along with other earthly needs…but it may not play out the way
you expect or hope it to. That’s where the challenge of hope is for our daily
lives. It’s trusting in Hope that God loves you, and cares for you today, but you
don’t how that will look and sound…that’s the unexpected aspect of hope…the
veiled side of God, if you will. You hope it will go the way you expect. But, with
the real hope Christ gives you by faith you are prepared for things in life to
not always go as you expect. Yet even in the uncertainties in life, we still
have the certain hope of Christ.
Now the reason why this
clarification is important is Advent is a time for advancing our faith as we
journey with Him to the destination called Heaven. And that is what we are
doing with this sermon series.
Think of this gift box as
your faith in Christ. Hope, peace, love, and joy are all different ways to look
at and to live your faith. They are important benchmarks, perspectives, or
aspects in trusting God as we live our faith in Christ everday.
So that brings us to peace.
How would you describe
peace? Go ahead and share some answers.
Absence of conflict
Quiet surroundings
Feelings of pleasure
Lack of pain
Safety and security
Okay, so complete this
sentence: “I will have peace when_____”
My kids go off to college.
I have enough money in the
bank.
When I am president of the
company.
When my child gets married
to someone I like.
When our team wins the
championship.
When I get a new boss at
work.
When they fix the potholes
on highway 123.
When my property taxes go
down.
When I get an “A” in
Chemistry.
When I finally get over my
illness.
When I lose 20 pounds.
See the problem with peace
today is once a certain aspect of your life becomes peaceful…at least two or
three other areas become chaotic. Your ship in life has holes and they’re hard
to keep them all plugged up at once.
Let’s admit in this sinful
world, we will not have complete peace until we are in Heaven and Christ comes
back in the flesh to End time as our Epistle reading from 2 Peter 3 suggests.
So the question is how can
I be at peace while living with chaos?
Because that is what the
Apostle Peter in verse 14 of our text is suggesting: “Beloved (that’s you who believe in Christ) since you are waiting for
these (the life to come with Christ) be found by Him….at peace.”
And here the context of
these verses is not that this peace is an absence of conflict, because the most
vivid way to describe verses 8 to 13 is that all Hell is breaking lose on Earth
before Jesus Christ returns in the flesh to End time, to destroy all physical
reality as we know it, in order to recreate a perfect universe for His
believers to live in for eternity.
So through the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Peter is saying to you “Be in a state of peace today while living in chaos.”
Now the temptation may be
when we live with so much turmoil today (forget the ultimate turmoil at End)
that somehow God is disconnected with our lives. When we look around our world
and see economies failing, terrorism on the rise,
And yet Peter sharply
contrasts this perception with the truth that all this bad stuff is happening
to show the human race that God is patient, long-suffering with them and with
you and me to make sure that we don’t perish in Hell for eternity. So He lets
things get out of hand so that we will repent and so that others will receive
Him by faith.
I mean let’s be honest do
we pray more to God when things are going well or when they’re not? Are we most
likely to confess our sins to our Lord when we are humbled by the conflicts we
face in life or when everything is going hunky dory? True peace from Christ is
best lived in humility.
And when we are humbled in
faith we far more accepting of God’s forgiveness because we know we need it,
and we are far more likely to see the necessity of being at peace by living
like we are already in Heaven, because we know with a certain hope we will be
there one day.
In
this text, Peter uses a back and forth, Hell and Heaven, contrasting picture by
conveying what will happen at the End, and what will follow that. Destruction
leads to peace, which is described as holiness, godliness, and righteousness.
Isn’t
that the picture we have of Jesus at the Cross? Did not the Prince of Peace
experience Hell on the cross so you wouldn’t have to? Did not Christ act like a
thief to steal you away from Satan to be His loved possession? Didn’t Son of
God rise from the dead to show you and me His power over Hell? And did not
Jesus descend into Hell to show the Devil and those there that He has won the
victory…and won’t Jesus do the same for you with His second and final Advent to
Earth at the End?
It’s in the chaos of this sin-fallen,
iniquity infested world that God in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy
Spirit gives you peace at the Cross and from the grave.
In
verse 14, that peace is included with words like “without spot”, or in other
words, without stain. It’s the pure Jesus, without sin, who took on all our sins.
And because of that, Christ interceded as the peace negotiator to resolve the
conflicts you and your sins have with the Heavenly Father. That makes this
peace without blemish, in other words, blameless, because you have now been
forgiven by your Heavenly Father.
That’s
what faith in Christ gives you. Romans 5:1 ESV: “Therefore, since we have been
justified by faith, we have peace with God (the Father) through our
Lord Jesus Christ.”
It’s a shalom (the Old
Testament Hebrew word for peace) that brings you wholeness, a oneness with God.
Peace is ultimately reconciliation with the Lord.
How did the Angels sing to
the Shepherds on Christmas Eve in Luke 2:14 ESV? “Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"
If you have
faith in God, He is pleased with you. For without faith, it is impossible to
please God. (Hebrews 11:6). And, like with hope, this peace was originally
given to you at your baptism, renewed in the proclaimed Word and assured in
Christ’s body and blood. And it couldn’t have happened without Jesus being born
in a manger.
Now, having this peace by faith and
living it are two different things. One can possess peace without using it, but
why?
So this text from 2 Peter 3 offers
some guidance in this area.
Having peace in Christ and living it today means:
If getting ahead in life
means cheating on tests, lying to our loved ones, and/or ruining the reputation
of others to get make ourselves look good….we have the peace to know those
avenues are always wrong. And we know that helping others to do better in
school, having an active, honest relationship with friends and family, and
promoting the good aspect of others can help us experience today a little bit
of the peace to come.
Having peace in Christ and living it today means:
Years ago, when Berta and
I were on vacation at a family reunion, we were traveling in our vehicle to a
water part for the day. She and I were up front, and three of our nephews were
riding in the back. A moment of inattention on my part meant rear ending the
vehicle in front of me at 45 mph. Airbags went off, and no one, thank God, was injured,
except my wife. As debris was strewed all over the highway, cars were backed
up, people were coming up to our help, and the sound of sirens could be heard,
I will never forget my nephew crying for my wife, and asking me to pray for
Berta as they put her in the ambulance.
I remember it as a moment
of peace amidst an environment of chaos, and it taught me to pray in all
situations, and forced me to be a much better driver.
Finally, having peace in
Christ and living it today means:
Recently at our Confo Camp
on the 10 Commandments we talked about stealing and how illegally downloading
music is a form of stealing. One of the Confirmands had commented she couldn’t
see how it was stealing because the music was free. I said, “Yes but the artist you love to listen to
so much didn’t get paid because you didn’t buy their music. How would you feel
if that was your song you recorded?”
Living with peace in
Christ means we always have control over our own choices, and we may influence
someone else’s, but we can’t control them. When we make bad choices...we
confess our sins…to receive again reconciliation or peace with God. In peace we
live with the consequences of our actions, and we live with how others sinful
actions affect our lives, even if it appears that all Hell is breaking lose
around us. Because we know by faith we have peace with Christ, which compares
to nothing of value in this world. It’s the peace that Philippians 4:7
describes as surpassing all understanding.
God’s blessings as you
better see Christ’s peace in your life and better live it with your faith
journey as you head to the Day you will fully and perfectly experiencing peace for
your everlasting life. Amen.