What Jesus Left Behind — Jim Cymbala

Jesus Left Behind His Peace

The name of this message is, What Jesus Left Behind. He left behind his disciples. He left behind a message, the gospel, correct? But there's a very powerful little passage that tells us about something else that he left behind.

Let's look at it. It's in John, one of the passages that we've been reading. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the advocate or the helper, the word for the Holy Spirit, that word that is called the comforter in the King James, advocate, that's a legal term, helper, it actually means someone who comes alongside a person, i .e. to help them.

But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. And now here comes our text. Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Notice there, peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. So when you read the scripture, you got to read it over and meditate. So let's read it over and meditate. So notice, maybe it's a double peace that he's talking about.

Notice, peace I leave with you. Then my peace, not just peace, my peace, what does that mean? My peace I give you. Notice, I'm not wanting you to earn it, I want to give it to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

So the world has some kind of peace it gives, but Jesus is saying what I give you is not like what the world gives. And then do not, and here's a command, the same God that says love one another, the same God that says don't kill and don't lie, here's another command from Jesus.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid ever under any circumstance. So the thing that Jesus left behind that we want to talk about is peace. Now there's a double peace that I believe is being referenced here because Jesus provided two kinds of peace for us.

And unless you understand the first one and experience it, you'll never experience the second one. The second peace, my peace I give to you, you cannot have until you first understand, peace I leave with you.

So the Bible throughout the New Testament talks about this double peace provided by Jesus Christ. One, while he was here on earth, another one he sent through the Spirit after he left, which he referenced here in that passage.

Peace With God Through Christ

Let's talk about the first peace. The first peace is peace with God. Now peace, shalom, was the greeting of the Jewish people and it meant more than what we call let's pray for peace. Let's hope there'll be peace on the earth.

This greeting that they had, the word shalom, meant not only peace and absence of acrimony and turmoil inside of you, but it meant blessing and prosperity and success, peace. That's how they would greet and that's how the Jewish people would say goodbye, shalom.

Jesus, before he was born, had an announcement of his birth and the angels said, what on earth? Peace on earth. So now Jesus is fulfilling this double peace and the first part being peace with God. You can't have peace, you can't have serenity, you can't have calm if you don't have peace with your creator.

If you are at loggerheads with God, if you are uncomfortable in God's presence, you can't have peace. You can have pleasure, you can have drugs, you can have a lot of things, you can get a new car or a new boat or whatever, but you can't have the peace that's most important and must come first.

You can't have the second peace until you have the first peace and the first peace is peace with God. Therefore, having peace with God, it says in the book of Romans. How do we get peace with God? He's holy, I'm sinful.

How in the world can I have fellowship and have peace with God? How can I be on the same page with God when he's there and I'm who I am? And that's why Jesus came and died on the cross. The only way to have peace with God is the putting away of our sins.

As long as you and I are conscious of sin, we cannot have peace with God. It's like when you offend somebody and you really hurt them, and they know you did it, and then it's very hard to just sit down and say, let's have a meal and have a great time together.

No, there's a wedge, there's a wall. The only way the wall can be removed from all of us, and all of us need it removed, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's not one righteous person, not only in this building, there's not only that, there's not even one righteous person in the world.

The Bible tells us that. All have sinned. You might look good compared to your neighbor, you might look good compared to the guy in the street or the girl in the street, but that's not who you're going to be compared with.

You're going to stand before God. He's not going to judge you compared to someone else. He's going to judge you according to his word, and we've all violated his word, in thought, in word, in deed. And Jesus came because God loves us so much.

He wants to have fellowship with us, but you can't have fellowship with someone who's afraid of you. And sin makes us afraid of God. Why do you think so many people are afraid of dying? Why can't you talk in social circles about death?

It's considered impolite. Why? Because no one wants to think about dying. Why? Because even though they deny there is a God, in the back of their mind, there might be a God. And now I got to face him.

But when you and I put our faith in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross, the fact that when he hung on that cross, all of your sin and my sin was put on him, and God punished him for my sin. I mean, that's insane.

When you think of it, that's incredible. That is just that kind of love. Who can imagine that kind of love? That to have fellowship with me, God punishes his own son for my sins and your sins. And when you and I put our faith in Christ, we confess our sins and put our faith in Christ, we now have peace with God.

God welcomes us into his presence. You don't have to come afraid. And oh, I hope he doesn't see what I've done. No, in the past, we can walk right into his presence through the blood of Jesus Christ. Come on, let's put our hands together and affirm it and say amen.

Are there battles with that? Yes, Satan will whisper to you, you're not worthy. He knows what you did. No one else knows, but he knows, and on and on. And the only way you overcome the enemy when he accuses you is by pleading the blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is my righteousness. I know God is holy and I'm not, but I'm in Christ. I belong to Christ and he makes a way into the very presence of God. We have peace with God. If you're here today and you don't have peace with God, oh my goodness, please don't walk out the building without getting peace with God.

You can have peace with God. You know, Martin Luther, the reformer, he was a monk, but he started to hate God because all he saw was his sins and God as an angry judge. And he said, the Bible says, love God, how can you love someone you're afraid of?

How can you love someone who's so holy and you feel so sinful? And then it dawned on him as he was reading through Galatians and Romans, the just shall live by faith. It's faith in Christ that brings us into relationship with God.

Not by trying harder and trying to live a good life and going to church more, it's faith in Christ. The blood has washed away all of our sins. And now God, instead of calling us enemies or rebels, he calls us sons and daughters.

We are in the family of God through Jesus Christ. How many are so happy to be in God's family, right? And now he puts his spirit in us and that spirit, listen, bears witness to that fact and it makes us say, Abba Father, which is Father, Father, I love you, Father.

I'm not afraid of you anymore. I know what I've done, but because of Jesus, I can call you Father. Oh, praise God. That's peace with God. But the second piece is what a lot of Christians should be having, but aren't experiencing.

The Holy Spirit’s Supernatural Peace

You can't have this second piece until you experience the first piece. A lot of people go to church, Catholic, Protestant, and because they're in turmoil and they want, pray for me, pray for me that I can have peace.

But you can't have the peace I'm talking about unless and until you experience peace with God. Until you're born again, you put your faith in Christ, you become a Christian. Now you are qualified and you are ready to receive this other piece.

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. So what peace is this? Just because you're a Christian and a pastor doesn't mean you have that peace. This peace is available to everyone, just like salvation is, but not everyone appropriates it.

Not everyone takes advantage of it. No, no, listen, I'll tell you about this lonesome little guy and his battles not having peace. This peace is ministered not through the blood of Jesus, that's peace with God.

This peace comes through the Holy Spirit living and dwelling and controlling and imparting supernatural peace to your heart, which conquers all the turmoil and vicissitudes and ups and downs of life and people letting you down and the temptation to be afraid about tomorrow and the economy and ISIS and this and that and this outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in the Bronx and this and who do I shake hands with and what could happen?

So you could be a Christian and be a bundle of nerves and have no peace that brings serenity. No, your heart and your mind, my heart, my mind, it's churning like the waters. Haven't you ever met Christians who are like that?

They love the Lord. They've gotten peace with God. They know that their sins are gone, but peace in their lives. Are you kidding? They're just tripping. They're just up and down turmoil. They get irritable.

They're afraid of everything. Can't sleep at night, anxiety attacks, every kind of thing. And obviously Jesus doesn't want that for us. How would God want that for his children? Do you think I would wish that on any of my children or my grandchildren?

So Jesus is now talking about another kind of peace also. It's the peace that the Holy Spirit gives us so that we don't go up and down like a yo-yo and that we don't break down under the strain of all the pressures of life.

Yeah, you try raising children in New York City. Just try raising children, not even in New York City. Just try to make ends meet and pay all the bills sometimes. It can put great pressure on you. If you're a pastor, try to step out and go to a new building or a new campus or a new project or a new anything.

The pressures that are associated with that can just break you down. Just because you're a Christian rubber band doesn't mean if you get stretched too much, you don't feel it. So this is another kind of peace.

Notice whose peace it is. It's totally supernatural because Jesus said, my peace I give you. Please listen to me as I draw to a close. My peace I give you. Now that could mean two things. It happens to mean both.

Not only my peace that I have the ability to give you through the Spirit, but it's my peace. It's the peace that kept me steady through everything I went through on earth. You ever notice when you read the gospel, Jesus never loses his peace.

They're plotting to kill him, he has peace. They're shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. A good moment, he has his peace. They pick up stones to kill him, but he just walks and nothing happens, and he has his peace.

He stands before Herod, and they're spitting on him and beating him, and he has his peace. They haul him before Pilate, and Pilate says, don't you know I have the power to kill you or let you go? And Jesus has peace.

It's Pilate who doesn't have peace. Jesus never loses his peace. So think of this. Think how far below you and I live, below our privileges. Jesus says, my peace, the very peace that I had that you saw.

You know, the Bible says let's be conformed to the image of Christ. Being more like Jesus also means having his peace, not just being pure and kind and loving, but he wants us to have his peace. How few people you meet, no matter how they talk about how deep they were in God and what meetings they were in or how much of the Bible they know, how few people have God's peace.

The peace that Jesus had. Well, because it's the peace of Jesus, we know a couple things about it as we sum it up. We know that this peace that he wants us all to have through the Spirit, through his presence, dwelling, controlling our lives.

We know, first of all, that it has nothing to do with what people are doing around you to you. The circumstances of life have nothing to do with this peace. You know, the peace that the world gives is not only very fragile.

Your friends will tell you, have a great day today, but they're not going to do anything to help you have a great day. They're just going to say, hey, have a great day. But Jesus not only says, have a peaceful day, he's going to help you have that peace.

He's going to be that peace. So we know that, number one, this peace has nothing to do with how people are treating you. Because when they were applauding Jesus, he had peace. When he was with his disciples, he had peace.

And when they were crucifying him, he had peace. When they were rejecting him, he had peace. So what most of us operate in, things are good, we have peace. People are patting us on the back, we have peace.

Things go south, we lose our peace. We're ready to pull our hair out. Things didn't work out the way we wanted. What's going on? This didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out. And we have no peace.

And Jesus is just looking and saying, why don't you take advantage of my promise? My peace I give you. Do you see me fluctuating up and down anywhere? So this is not a logical peace. This can be proven by Philippians chapter four, verse six, which says, be anxious for nothing, listen, but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving and petitions, make your needs known to God and the peace of God which passes.

In other words, you cannot figure it out. You can be peaceful in the middle of a storm. And if you don't have God's peace, everything can be perfect around you and you're a miserable, nervous little critter.

Am I right or wrong? Oh yes, for all of us. You can just come into a lot of money. Someone could meet you and tell you what a great person you are, but if there's that churning inside, you have no peace.

So Jesus doesn't want us to live like that. He said, my peace I give you. It will have nothing to do with circumstances around you and the world knows nothing of what we're talking about. The world justifies people going off.

If things go bad, oh, she went off. She went Brooklyn on that guy because it's just, I couldn't take it anymore. But Jesus is just, no, you hate me, you love me. It will hurt me, but I have my peace. Nobody can touch my peace because it's the peace of God.

It's supernatural peace. Lastly, it has nothing to do with a life of leisure. Most people think, you know, if I could just get out of the rat race, if I could just either retire or just move, I got to get out of the Big Apple.

I got to move to Zimbabwe. I got to move to Germany or someplace where it's calm. No, I got to go to Pennsylvania. We had a bunch of people many years ago who left our church and they moved to Pennsylvania.

When Carol and I would ask them, why'd you move to Pennsylvania? They said, there's grass. Of course, there's a lot of grass in New York, just coming to think of it, but it's another kind of grass. And they're selling it, unfortunately.

As if grass could give you peace. Well, why do you think so many people are drawn to smoking weed? You think if you have peace inside, you need weed to take you down? Of course not. Drugs are a great testimony that without God, there is no peace.

And wealthy people take it, use it, abuse it. Alcohol, why? It's I want to escape the lack of peace I have in my life. Why else would people do it? If you have peace, you don't need any stimulants, you don't need any uppers, downers, sideways, or anything.

Can we all say amen to that? A life of leisure, this is what was the cause of the monastic movement. Monasticism, getting away from the world and living in convents and cloisters, and sometimes even having a vow of silence where you didn't talk to anyone.

There's still people who do that. Just I can't make it in this world. You can't ride the A train and have peace. I gotta get out. So monasteries, convents were built where people would escape, and one of the reasons was I want to have peace.

The only way I can have peace is to not be busy running around doing so much. It's that rat race and working and riding and paying bills. I can't have peace. I gotta get away from it all, right? This is disproved by Jesus.

Jesus was so busy ministering at times, he had no time to eat. Am I right or wrong? His own family came and said he's lost his mind. So many people are around him, but all through that busyness, he had perfect peace.

In fact, you can go on a vacation and churn even more. I've had that happen to me. You want to get away to rest and relax. You know, I hear people say, smell the roses. You only go around once and all of that.

When you have the peace of God, it doesn't matter if you're working or resting, reading a book or ministering or riding a subway or digging a ditch, you have peace because his peace is not logical peace.

It's supernatural peace. It gives serenity, quietness. You know what it cures? Irritability. You know why most people who are Christians, we're talking now Christians, Christians are irritable because they have peace with God.

They know their sins are gone, but they're so lacking in peace through the Holy Spirit that the world has gotten the best of them. And now they had disappointment. That one let him down. That guy walked out on him.

That one broke their promise. That boss didn't do what's right. That job opening was filled by someone else. So now they're irritable because life isn't working out. Like, what's up with this? And the only cure for that is the peace of God.

The peace of God also cures all kinds of worry. Worry, biting your nails and worrying. You know what worry changes? Not quite right. It changes nothing objectively, but it changes you negatively. I just saw the results of yet another new study where doctors are linking anxiety and worry to all kinds of actual specific diseases where the body is weakened because God never made us to worry, and when you worry, your body's defenses go down.

Is that not a trip? Think of that. Worry brings it on. And fear, outright fear. Fear of the future. Fear of what people could do to you. Remember year 2K and all that frenzy? People were stocking up cans of beans for, you know, everything's gonna break down.

The whole society is gonna go down. I had a relative visit me. They were warning me, you and Carol need at least 100 gallons of water close to you, and all of that and all of that, and it all came to nothing and all that worry and fretting.

We should be wise and do practical things in the face of potential danger, but worry and fear is not on the menu that God gives us. He wants us to eat good food, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.

Experiencing God’s Peace Through Prayer

Peace. Now, his presence is his peace. If you need peace today, remember, he doesn't dole it out like here. You need some peace, let me give it to you. And he gives it separate from himself. No, no, no.

If you want peace, you gotta have him. He is our peace. His presence controlling us. More of Jesus in your life. He brings peace with him through the Spirit. Do you get it? Say amen. Amen. Those of you in the top of the balcony, you wanna keep living this way?

Just rattled, just all nervy and, you know what else his peace takes away is that hectic, rushed feeling, just, I gotta do it. You can go about your business, but you don't get hyper. God's gonna take care of me.

I'm gonna do what I have to do today, but God's gonna watch out for me. Oh, it's such a wonderful thing to have his peace. So one day, some years ago, about five, six years ago, it's happened many times, but five or six years ago, I had no peace.

Some pressures here, financial pressures, disappointments, emotional hurt, whatever it is, I had no peace. And when you don't have peace, and you still keep trying to do for God and carry out your duties for the Lord, as for me, it really was stretching the rubber band.

And emotionally and nerve-wise, I was not in a good place. This happened a few times in my life, but this one comes to my mind. I actually got in a room, sat in a chair with a large print Bible on my lap, and just told God, you gotta come and help me.

Pastor Simba, you're the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and you got that low, you got that stretched, you had so little peace, yep, yep. Oh, I'm surprised at you. Don't be, because you've been there too.

We're all just human. So I didn't know what I needed, I just knew I needed God. I was in that room for six, seven hours. This made up my mind, I'm not coming out. I told God, I'm not leaving this little room.

Carol was in another place working on a project. I'm not leaving this room, because how can I go on without you helping me? So after a while, I begin to worship and just pray and wait on him. And the Lord came in that tiny little room where I was, in the attic floor of where I was living then.

Oh my good, it was so real. But then something started happening inside of me. To use New Testament terminology, I was filled in a new way with the Holy Spirit. On this occasion, I didn't speak in tongues, I didn't prophesy, I didn't do any of those verbal things.

But oh my goodness, I didn't know what was happening and it's God, Holy God is my witness. It was so real and tangible in the spirit that I said out loud in the room to God, what is that? Like what is happening to me?

Because God does surgery. How many believe God still does operations? He can still come. And the best I could feel was, that's my peace. Oh, but my brothers and sisters, I preached about the peace of God, peace with God, the peace of God, which is what I'm referring to now.

I had preached that. I know something about peace, but then I realized I've been just scratching the surface of his peace. Did you know you and I don't even understand how deep this is? Well, that's why the Bible says it passes all.

Oh, did it steady me? Did I come out of that room a different person? Now responsibilities were like a toy that I could just play with. Demands to preach, to travel, people needing counseling, it was just, yes, peace.

But we need $150 ,000 within a day or half a million or whatever the numbers were. Praise God, he'll bring it. Peace of God changes everything. So here's what Jesus said. Peace I leave with you, my peace, my peace.

The Call to Receive Peace With God

Close your eyes with me. If you're here today, we have a little time now where you can just wait before God and just tell God, God, what Pastor Cimbala mentioned and from your word and the way he preached it and his own sharing of his own battles.

I need your peace. You know what I'm going through? It could be a family problem that's robbed you of your peace, financial pressure, but you can't have it unless you have peace first with God. So you have to be a Christian.

What I'm talking about now is not given out to unbelievers. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, you need peace with God to start with. You've just got to say, I'm a sinner. God, forgive me.

I believe that Jesus died for my sins. He shed his blood as an offering, as an atonement to cover the stuff I've done. So wrong, so rebellious. My conscience told me it was wrong, still did it. Then once that's settled, now you can plug into the peace of God.

So that those believers or the first group too, but to the believers that are here like I was that day in that little room and you just need, pastor, I need like 20 cc's of the peace of God. I need, you could be in the choir.

You think singing in the choir gives you peace? No, it's a blessing, it's a privilege, but you can be agitated. You can be lacking serenity and calmness inside. You could be a visiting pastor or missionary or youth pastor and just in desperate need of a fresh baptism of God's peace.

You have to humble yourself because God resists the proud that justify themselves. He gives grace to the humble, those that say, have mercy, help me, Lord. And the helper will come. I promise you on the authority of God's word, the invisible helper, the Holy Spirit will begin to dispense, disperse peace in your mind, in your heart.

Your thoughts will change. There'll be peaceful thoughts. You can't do it. Haven't you tried to change your thoughts before? And they still just keep agitating inside of you? No, God says, my peace, my peace, the very peace Jesus had.

If you're here today in the balcony or downstairs, come quickly, just get up out of your seat. I'm not gonna have you stand and then call you. I want you to just get up out of your seat and come. And if two of you come, I'll pray with two.

If 200 of you come, I'll pray with 200. This choir members or visitors, pastors, pastor, I need God's peace. Pressure's getting to me. Come on, wait. Isn't this why God said my house shall be called a house of prayer?

Never a house of preaching. It's not supposed to end with preaching. It's supposed to end with prayer. Preaching just is an arrow. It shows you the way to go, but then you gotta go to the throne of grace to receive what God has promised.

Free of charge. Don't have to join a church. Don't have to pay an offering. Pastor, if I get up and go up there, some people might know me and might say, what's wrong with him? What's wrong with her? Look, some of the choir members are up here.

They don't care. They need peace. Father God, for the people that might be, have come forward because they don't have peace with you. Oh, no, we gotta have peace with God. Can't go out in the street without peace with God.

Can't be separated from our maker. So we believe that you so love the world that you gave your only begotten son, Jesus, that whoever would believe in Jesus would have their sins forgiven and not perish, but they would have everlasting life.

They would never have punishment for their sin because by faith in Jesus, he becomes their atoning sacrifice. So I pray with them, Lord, forgive us our sins. Have mercy upon us. We have no excuse, no story, and no promise.

Just have mercy on us, Lord, and give us peace. And now for we that are believers, Lord, we ask you for the peace that passes all understanding. We pray that you'll come with billows of love and grace.

Steady our hearts, Lord. Steady our minds. Help this man, Lord, whatever's going on, help him in Jesus' name. Help him in Jesus' name, Lord. Let him come through to peace, Lord. Peace through Jesus. So we pray, God, now that we're not gonna be going up and down based on what's happening around us because we're gonna have your peace.

And we can be busy and active, raising children, spreading the gospel, working on jobs, surrounded by lots of responsibility, and we'll still have your peace. We don't have to run away on a vacation every two weeks because you are my peace.

What you did for me and have done so many times, please, Jesus, do it for my brothers and sisters. I pray in the name of the living Christ that you will open the windows of heaven and you will pour out your peace, diffuse it through our hearts and our minds so that when we leave this building, we're gonna be different men and different women, Lord, because we're gonna have something the world cannot give us and we cannot manufacture.

It's a gift. My peace I give you and we claim it. I wanna talk to you down here now. If you're a Christian just praying and asking God for peace, then we've prayed. He's giving you peace, even as I'm talking now.

Can I get an amen? He's giving you peace. If you have never had asked Christ to come into your life, if you've never prayed like I just prayed and you wanna start your Christian life in a new way, not church-going, but your Christian life now that you put your faith in Christ, we wanna get your name and give you a New Testament that will help you.

Let the peace of God now that passes all understanding be with us all day. Thank you for everything you've done today. We pray this in Jesus' name. And everyone said. Amen.