Luke 2:8-14 Peace Rising

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

Well, good morning, everybody,.

And welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Felsick. I'm the lead pastor here, and here we are the week of Christmas. How many of you feel like it snuck up on you this year? Any of you? I don't know about you, but I recognize that it's December 25th every year, and I still have a tendency to be surprised when it's the week of Christmas.

So hopefully you've got your shopping done and are geared up and ready to celebrate, and welcome to those of you who are joining us by livestream. I recognize that there's a bunch of people tuning in right now, so glad that you guys are with us, too.

And my hope and prayer is that for the next three weeks of messages, they're gonna lead us through Christmas and into the new year, including the first Sunday of the new year. I hope that these messages will help focus our attention on the ways that the arrival of Jesus in the past has changed us in the present and gives us an offer of a much better future.

And so over the next three Sundays, we're gonna look at three words that are common. You see them all around at Christmastime. Peace, joy, and hope. How many of you have seen those, sung those, seen them on ornaments, seen them on decorations on Christmas cards all over the place?

Peace, joy, and hope. So this morning we're gonna be looking at peace, but it's good for us to reflect on these, what I would call common Christmas words, since they get to the heart of what Jesus came here to provide for us.

He came with a purpose, he came with an intention, and he came to give us something that we could not obtain on our own. And so when we think about the word peace this morning, we need to identify that as a core need.

All of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, we all need peace. We were created in peace, we had peace with God in the garden, which was shown by how he came down into the garden and walked with Adam regularly.

We had peace with each other, which was demonstrated in Adam and Eve's common purpose, to be fruitful and multiply, and their common design for one another. We have had a peaceful relationship in the past with Adam and Eve in regard to creation, in which they cultivated and they worked the garden without toil or hardship.

The food came easy there. The produce was easy. But all of that was broken, and it was broken, shattered, crushed by our behavior, by what we did in rebellion against God. Our relationship with God was sundered and crushed by our sin.

Our relationship with each other soured, and there developed a power struggle between the man and the woman, which comes all the way down to where we live in 2020 today, and our relationship with creation was broken, and now work has transformed into toil and burden and hardship, and by the sweat of our brow, and the produce doesn't come easy.

And so the story arc of Scripture is about a peace that was lost, and the plot line, all that you see in Scripture is a plot line moving towards the restoration of that lost peace. How many of you recognize that you live in a time, you live in an era of lost peace?

Do you recognize that?

That's reality for all of us. That's where we live, and so we're gonna read a short introductory passage, and I'm gonna focus my attention during the sermon on the last two verses, but we're gonna read more for context.

So I want you to turn in your Bibles over to Luke chapter two, verses eight through 14. A common passage, a passage you may have already heard read this holiday season, Luke chapter two, and particularly this part, if you've watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special, you hear this passage read there, you hear it all over the place.

But I want you to try your best to read it and listen to it with fresh eyes, because recast, this is a word that wants to change us. The fact that it's familiar can sometimes get in the way of our understanding, we're like, oh, blah, blah, blah, I've heard this before.

But at the end of the day, I want us to think about it, to really reflect on it, and to let this word transform and change us as we think about what's happening here. This is a pivotal text about the movement of God in relationship to humanity.

And so, let's listen in together, Luke chapter two, verses eight through 14. And in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear, and the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you.

You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have, even now, this morning, and over the next several days, to reflect on the glory of the peace that you have given to us in Christ, and the reality of that breaking into our history.

I thank you for this season, and that we have an opportunity, even in our culture, to annually draw our attention back to the incarnation, to the birth of Christ, and the significance of that for our salvation.

Father, I pray that you would press that truth on our hearts here at the end of 2020, what's proven to be a difficult year, I think, for all of us, but a year that, nonetheless, it is so great in this cadence of life to come back to the reality of your great love, your great peace, your great joy, and your great hope offered to us in your son.

And I pray that you would be with us as we reflect on that this morning, as we dig into your word and contemplate and consider what this peace means for us, and that it would be a real peace, not just some theoretical thoughts that we have and study this academically, but that at the end, this peace would strike us in our hearts in terms of our role in it now and our hope for it in the future.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

The Meaning of Peace and the Story of Lost Peace

Hey, Recast, I'm Jason, also known as Buddy the Elf,.

And I'm David, also known as David, yeah.

We're so excited to have you guys here,.

But before we keep going with the service, we've got some announcements for you.

On your chair, you should have found a worship folder. Inside has different information of what's going on here at Recast.

Inside that worship folder, you're also going to find a connection card. If you're new or newer to Recast and want to get connected, fill this out and drop it off up front at the welcome table. And finally, we have a, is that, one sec.

David, if you'd like to give to Recast, feel free to use this envelope and drop it off in the giving slot. What is the first step in app development? It's asking what you need an app for. We need an app, and it's getting developed at Recast.

It's gonna be the Recast app, name pending. But we're getting an app, and it's gonna be usable for things pertaining to Recast.

We will not be having Recast kids for K through fifth grade throughout January,.

But we will still be providing childcare for our infants and toddlers and preschoolers.

If you don't mind, take out your phone right now and go to recastchurch .com slash survey. It's a super quick survey, one question, just to figure out where you get your information here at Recast. That's not all going on here at Recast.

If you're interested for more information, go to recastchurch .com.

And if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to hit the bell for notifications as well as subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching. Merry Christmas. Yeah, woo, Merry Christmas.

Silly guys.

All right, if I look out and I see you looking down at your phone during the, I'm just gonna assume that you're doing the survey. So that's gonna be my go-to place in my heart.

Believe in the best here.

So no, I do encourage you to take that. By the way, that's a one question survey. It's really, at the end of the day, it's a really quick survey, and the purpose of it is to really just figure out whether or not we're hitting the mark in terms of communication.

So just a simple, straightforward communication survey. For the remainder of our time, before we get to our worship set and singing some songs and praise, I wanna keep our focus and attention on Luke chapter two, verses eight through 14, and then we're gonna turn over to a couple of other passages in here.

But get your Bible up in front of you, whether that's on your device or in a paper copy of the Bible that you brought with you and have your Bible open to that. And we're gonna be talking about the word peace.

Peace, in English, obviously. Shalom is the Hebrew word for that. Shalom being the Old Testament term for peace. And then the lesser-known New Testament Greek word, the New Testament was first revealed to us in Greek, and the word is arene there, a word that you probably haven't heard before, but that's the Greek word that kind of mirrors the idea of shalom.

Now, I would suggest to you, and it's potentially going out on a limb to say, I think we all know that we want peace. How many of you would raise your hand and say, yeah, I really kinda do. I want peace.

I want good relationships. I want things that are healthy. But I would suggest to you that even in raising your hand, you're defining peace very internally and very selfishly to some degree. But what most of us mean by peace is we kinda want things to go our way.

I mean, how many of you recognize that there's more peace in your life if everybody just agrees with you? You guys know what I'm talking about. And so there's a reality in which we want peace, but we're willing to go to war with somebody who gets in the way of our peace, right?

As a reality, there's a very self-centeredness to the way that we think about the word peace. And that's not all good.

But I think that really deep down,.

We all have some notion planted in our heart where we want things to be restored. We want things to be right in relationship to God, in relationship to others, and even in relationship to the world around us.

But I think I wanna point out to you this morning, I know I wanna point out to you this morning, it is not the natural state in which we find the world today. We do not find, how many of you know you don't live in a world of peace?

Did you already know that? It's a reality, and we all know it. We want it, but we have never quite lived in it. I would say some of us are even, at the end of the day, a little bit cautious about peace.

If things seem to be going too peaceful, oh man, when's the hammer gonna fall? And so I love the Hebrew definition of peace, of shalom, rather, it is the idea, the concept of a rightly ordered and structured life.

Now I'm giving you this definition up front so that you can think about it. Whenever I use the word peace, I'm talking about that overarching big picture of a properly ordered and structured life. In other words, peace is not merely the absence of war, not just merely the absence of hostility, it's not the synonym for unity, there's more to it.

It's more like, some of you maybe have heard the Eastern phrase feng shui. Have you heard of feng shui? It's kind of the art of decor and ordering your surroundings and your world in a very copacetic, kind of peaceful manner.

It's more like that, it's a state of being where things are the way that they were meant to be. Not too cluttered and not too sparse. Nothing broken, nothing frustrating.

And I like to think of it,.

I think this is a good definition that you could have in your mind during the remainder of our time and be, and I think it would draw your mind in the right direction. It's a context in a situation where there are no lost socks in the laundry.

They all have a match at the end of the load. Where do those things go, right?

Anybody besides me struggle with that? It's like, come on, where are the socks going?

What is eating my socks? There's a sock elf or something. So I think that that's a good,.

And I say that tongue in cheek, but that's a good definition to have in your mind.

Because it pulls you mildly away from just merely relational or merely war. My socks, I'm not going to war over my socks. I mean, that's not really the issue, it's just that they just disappear. It's where things line up well.

Not merely the absence of war, but think of it another way, the presence of love, the presence of rightness. And with that definition of peace, let's consider our text now in Luke 2, verses 13 and 14.

We find in this first passage, we're going to look at two other passages that give us two other points. This first point is the arrival of peace in the past. So if you're taking notes, that's this first point, the arrival of peace in the past.

The angel came with the announcement to the shepherds that a baby had been born. And the son of God had been born in Bethlehem, and they would find him laying in a manger. And he was suddenly joined by a multitude of angels, that dark sky lit up, and we know the story, and a multitude of angels singing and praising God.

And keep in mind that the story of the Bible, which starts in peace, records for us the loss of peace, and then predicts one who would come to restore peace. And he would be sent to restore peace with God, sent to restore peace with each other, and he would restore peace even with the created order.

And so look at what these angels sang at the announcement of the birth of the Prince of Peace. They sang glory to God in the highest of heavens. This opening line in Latin is called the Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

It's sung in Latin in many Christmas cantatas, and we just translate, we don't even translate it, we bring it right over into English. How many of you have sung that at least once this year? We sang it at our two Christmas parties, Christmas worship services that we had on Friday and Saturday.

Sang songs that included that Latin phrase. But who really knows what it means? It becomes, it's very, we're people of habit, and so it's very easy for us to sing something, you know, and it just kind of becomes a cycle, and you sing that phrase, and do you really know what it means?

The angels, really, what they're saying by that glory in the highest, or glory to God in the highest, they're declaring that the glory of God fills the creation to the highest heavens. In other words, the glory of God knows no bounds, is what these angels who have been in his presence declare for us.

And in praise and worship, these angels declare this to be the truth. The glory of God, you can't put your arms around it. You can't grasp the height or the depth or the width of this thing. And they sing it, and so should we.

We should be a people who are ready to say, at a moment's notice, the glory of God is unfathomable. We cannot wrap our minds around it. We cannot grasp in any way the intensity and majesty of our God.

But they have a specific event that they're considering as they offer this praise in context. This is not an ordinary night of praise for this angelic choir. Now, my hunch is that the angels spend a lot of time glorifying God.

They spend a lot of time praising God, but this is a different night. This is a unique night. The Messiah has been born in Bethlehem. And this is the context of this praise. We know it well. God be praised to the utmost, because the Messiah has been born, these angels are declaring.

But what they say next in this offering of praise is a first indication that this one born is the one who will restore humanity to peace. The event that has occurred just a few miles from the shepherds echoes the glory of God to the highest heaven.

In the heavens, all of his glory declared to the utmost. But on earth, this event means something else. It means the breaking in of peace, peace on earth. Among those, it says, and it's restricted, it's qualified.

Peace among those with whom God is pleased. The peace is restricted to those who have the favor of God on them. But peace, nonetheless, is breaking in. The promise of a restored peace has started with the birth of our Savior here in this text.

And the angels know it. And so the angels sing praises to God while they declare that peace is rising. Peace is dawning, church. The coming of Christ initiated the restoration of the peace that was lost there in the garden.

But consider where that leaves us now. Is there now peace on earth? The angels get it right or do they get it wrong? Just for a second, have you ever thought that as you sang songs saying peace on earth, good will to men?

Is that just kind of like for a night? Or maybe there was no war that night as Jesus was born. Just for a moment, everybody laid down their swords for one moment and there was peace on earth just as the angels declared it and then back to business.

What do they mean in this declaration?

The angels said there is now peace on earth.

Did they get it wrong or was it a trick? And the restriction is so narrow that nobody really gets peace. What I mean by that is, think about it. The angels restrict it. When the angels declared peace among those with whom he is pleased, maybe he just really isn't pleased with any of us.

And that's why we lack peace. Maybe that's why we experience such a paltry amount of peace as he looks down and he says, oh, the angels declared peace to those with whom I'm pleased. Don't like many of you very much.

No peace for you. That's not it at all. What we need is we need an explanation about explanation on the side about who God is pleased with. You see, without faith it is impossible, the book of Hebrews tells us.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, meaning the converse is accurate. If you have faith in God, he is pleased. Who is God pleased with? You wanna please God? Put your faith in his son, Jesus Christ, and he will be pleased with you.

Trust in this one born of a virgin who came to bring us peace, reconciling us to God through his sacrifice, his eventual sacrifice on the cross. This peace is released to us by faith in this one that the angels are declaring to the shepherds on that cold, dark night.

Faith in him releases peace to us. But let's consider then where the peace is right now, like here in our midst. Why does it seem elusive even to those of us who are people of faith? Even those who are here by, you know, you're putting your trust in Jesus Christ.

You are a person of faith, so is he pleased with you? Then where is the peace? And I hope that you experience a different level of peace.

Than the world around you.

The Arrival of Peace in the Past

But let's turn over, and I don't do this very often, but I'm gonna ask you to turn to just two passages, so we're not gonna be going all over the place, but turn over to Romans 14, 17, and we're gonna catch a glimpse of the present state of peace in the church.

And this is our second point, and here we're gonna find, this second point, if you're taking notes, the expectation of peace in the present. The expectation of peace in the present. So let's read this passage together.

Romans 14, 17, it's gonna require some context. Well, I'll explain it, but let's read it together. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Now, as I said, this passage needs some explanation and context to make sense of it. I mean, what has eating and drinking got to do with anything? And I just wanna clarify, I'm not a big fan of just taking a verse out of context and just plastering it on a poster, on a mug, or anything like that.

Like, at the end of the day, you need to understand what the flow and the logic and the argumentation is in this. So in context, I wanna make sure you understand, I preached a message on the larger chunk of this text back in 2019.

I went through the entire book of Romans. I've studied this passage. And I would even encourage you, this would be a great season of your life, especially with all the divisions that are going on in our culture, all the potential possibility.

I'm grateful that we have not experienced divisions here, but within the church, things can get pretty ugly over gray area issues. Romans 14 is the chapter that I would commend to you to go back to to understand how do we work together in a church with a variety of different opinions,.

A variety of different thoughts.

And those seem to be multiplying in 2020. Do you agree with me on that? A lot of different people with a lot of different opinions and a lot of different thoughts, and everybody wants to share it on Facebook or on Instagram or wherever.

Social media is full of it. And so I encourage you to go back, and you can find any of those messages on the website under the Teaching tab if you go back into 2019 there. But the context of our text is Paul addressing arguments and disagreements within a church.

A lack of peace ensued there. A lack of peace was the problem in the Roman church, and that's what he's addressing in chapter 14 of Romans. And a lot of the controversy, what you need to understand is a lot of the controversy swirled around a really obscure issue that we don't deal with today.

We deal with our own issues, but ours isn't particularly this. It's around eating meat that was sacrificed to a pagan idol. So there, the priest of Zeus or Athena or whatever, they would, I don't even know if I got Greek or Roman gods in there, somebody can correct me later.

But whatever gods they worshiped, the priest or the guy would sacrifice this goat or this lamb and then they didn't just waste the meat. Then the meat would be sold in the marketplace, but it was a blood sacrifice to their little G gods.

And the question really swirling around the church during that time was could a good Christian in good conscience eat meat that was the result of a pagan sacrifice? Now, that meat would be placed in the marketplace for anybody to come and sell, but it would say probably over that meat market dedicated to Athena or dedicated to this goddess or this god or whatever.

And so the question was could a Christian in good conscience go buy that meat, prepare it, and eat it? And some would say, listen, there's no hex over this meat. It's just meat. And in some contexts, maybe it's good meat.

So some Christians were like, we're free on this.

We can eat it.

While others said, yeah, it's not just meat. It's pagan meat. And you can see right there on the placard that it's dedicated to Athena. Of course, we can't eat that. There's no way. So you can see how the controversy would swirl in the lack of peace, the lack of unity, lack of connection in that church was, the whole church was at risk because of this controversy.

And so that was in the way of shalom or that kind of peace within the church. And what Paul says in this one verse here in verse 17 can be taken as a summarizing statement for why the church should seek to get along and to be peaceful in these days around these gray area type of issues.

He starts by talking about the kingdom of God. And I recommend, by the way, when you see the word kingdom of God, don't brush over that. Don't go over that lightly. When you see kingdom of God, whenever you hear it, first of all, let it impact your heart with the reality that you have a king.

You have a king. There is a government above your government. There is one who is over you, one who has authority in your life. You have a king. If you are in the kingdom of God, then you are acknowledging his given king.

But then also, when you hear it, you need to also think the realm, the realm of the king. That's what you're often hearing in scripture when you're kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God. You're thinking about the place that he has jurisdiction, where his jurisdiction and his kingship is recognized.

And the church is certainly within the kingdom of God. We are those who recognize that we live under a real and legitimate king, and his name is Jesus. He is our master. He is our king. He is our Lord, he calls the shots.

And the realm of the reign of King Jesus, who we profess with our mouth to follow, he says, is not about eating and drinking. It's not about your preferences. It's not about your desires or filling your belly or drinking what you want.

One ought not to demand that they get to eat and drink whatever they want in this kingdom. But instead, and here's the overarching principle that I want us to see, church, this morning, the overarching principle is that instead of it being about eating, drinking, our preferences, our desires, the kingdom of God is the priorities of his kingship, the priority of his subjects, those who are legitimately under this king, these are the priorities, righteousness, peace, and joy.

These are the hallmarks of one who is within his kingdom. And these three, he says, are all mediated to us through the Holy Spirit. Now, the reason I bring us to this passage is that we find in it an expectation in the here and now about where we live today.

Where this Bethlehem baby grows up and is acknowledged as king and followed as Lord, wherever his reign falls, righteousness, peace, and joy become a directive in the power of the Holy Spirit. They become an imperative.

They become something that defines his kingship, something that defines those who are under his rule and reign. The angels declared, by the way, what we saw in the first passage, they declared the arrival of the Prince of Peace in Luke.

But now, here in Romans, Paul gives us the expectation of peace in the present. The arrival and the inbreaking of peace in the past, but now, the expectation of peace among his people in the present. And yet, we know it full well, it is still a striving.

The peace is not fully restored. It must be commanded in the text. It must be worked after in the church. It is not yet a natural peace that we live in. But there is hope found in the final four words of verse 17.

In the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit. Righteousness, peace, and joy, how can we have those? How could we have any of that in 2020? And we're hoping for some of that in 2021, right? But have you had any of that?

Have you had any taste of righteousness? Have you had a taste of peace?

Have you had any taste of joy? If you're living under the realm of King Jesus, then I would contend that you have, and I'm guessing that you could share stories of peace and righteousness and joy in this last year because of his spirit alive in you.

We don't work toward peace in the church alone. Where do we find the strength to strive after righteousness, peace, and joy? And the text tells us we find these things in the Holy Spirit, who indwells his people with power.

The promise the angels gave on that night to those shepherds, it's growing. And it is growing among those with whom God is pleased, those people of faith. And he is pleased with his people of faith, and he is increasing our peace in his Holy Spirit.

And that's not the end.

Praise God that it's not just this striving, and that's what we have all the rest, that's the end of peace, is just a constant and continual striving after it, a command to try to keep it, a command to lean on his spirit to provide it.

That's not the extent, and that's not the end of the story of peace. This seed planted in the world of peace, this seed planted in the world of restoration will not stop growing until he overtakes the whole of creation.

Peace will not stop marching until the whole earth is restored to the shalom for which he created it. It will not stop until all those under his favor have peace with God, peace with each other, and even eventually peace with his creation.

And so we turn over to our last passage that gives us that glimpse of the future of peace. Where is all of this going? 2 Peter 3, 13 through 14. Again, 2 Peter 3, 13 through 14. I encourage you to turn over there or navigate over there in your device.

And this is the third point where we will find the final peace restored. This is where it's all going, and so let's read it together. 2 Peter 3, 13 through 14. I think most of you are there now. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace. 2 Peter 3, 13 through 14. Again, a passage that needs context explained. I studied it and I worked through the context of this this week, trying to figure out the argumentation and the flow of what Peter is getting at here in his last letter near the end of the Bible.

And in context, Peter is explaining to the church that all this current world order, all of this brokenness, all of this crud, and this devastation and this lack of peace that we see around us will be done away with.

And God will bring about his promise of a full restoration with the new heavens and the new earth. Luke showed us the angels announcing the arrival of peace. Paul explained the expectation of peace among his people in the present.

And now Peter turns our attention toward an ultimate peace, a final restoration of all peace that will happen in the future. The promise of peace hasn't been fulfilled, but it is in process.

It's in process.

Anybody glad for that? And for us, it's good to remember this Christmas season where it's all going. I think it's good for us at the end of 2020 to remember where all of this is going. It's got a trajectory.

It's got a flow. It's got a story arc. It's got a plot line. And it's got a culmination at the end of this story. Glorious, beautiful thing. In verse 13, according to his promise, according to his promises, and church, he is the most trustworthy of promise keepers.

He always keeps his promise. And according to his promises, we are waiting.

We're waiting.

Do you feel that in your life? Are you waiting for something to be healed? Are you waiting for something to be restored? Are you waiting for something to be done away with in your own heart?

You're looking forward to that day?

I am. We are waiting for the restoration of all things, the remaking of things into the way that they were meant to be, the final restoration of bringing this flow, the story arc of history back to shalom, back to where all the socks match.

It's where it's all going. Back to where our hearts are restored and right again. Back to where we can worship God in truth. So we wait for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will dwell.

And I long for that place where we will be perfected in holiness, where our sinful thoughts and our hurtful words will be no more, amen? And here's our application regarding the word peace as we kind of wrap things up here.

Here's what we ought to do in light of this peace that arrived, a peace that is now an expectation of the church while we wait with an ultimate focus toward hope for a future peace coming. Look with me at verse 14.

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for this restoration,.

Therefore, beloved,.

Since you are waiting for this restoration, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace, and at peace. Now, we're worried about this waiting. We're not supposed to be waiting like we wait at the secretary of state's office mindlessly churning through levels of our whatever video game we're playing.