Christmas Peace
14 Dec
Their shift was nearly over. They had been on duty for the length of time that their new machine would operate. Just as they were getting ready to turn it off, one of the operators looked on the screen and saw something that disturbed him. It was something that he had never seen before. He felt that it was important to report what he saw. So he called his supervisor. His supervisor listened to the report, then said “Don’t worry about it.” He turned to another person in the office and said, “Those two must have seen the B-17s coming in from California.” It was 7:00 a.m. in Honolulu, Hawaii. The operator was a soldier operating a new radar device which had picked up the flight of 360 Japanese bombers, torpedo bombers and Zero fighters making their way to Pearl Harbor. Had the supervisor, a second lieutenant, made the right call, there would have been enough time to scramble aircraft and alert ships in the harbor to prepare for battle. As it was, 50 minutes later peace was converted into war for the United States. When the attack was over 8 battleships had been sunk or otherwise seriously damaged and the anger of a great nation was ignited. Sixty nine years have passed and the US had been involved in a war of one kind or another in a majority of the time, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And that doesn’t include all of the conflicts of all of the rest of the world. Peace just doesn’t seem to be a possibility. So what could the angels mean as they proclaimed “Peace on earth, good will to all mankind?” Could it be a different kind of peace than we most often think about? What does it mean to think about Christmas peace?
I. Peace has a lot of definitions. In fact, it probably depends upon to whom you are talking what definition you would get.
A lot of people would define peace as an absence of problems. It is a time in life when things are going smoothly and I don’t have to worry about things. I don’t have any worries or difficulties in my day to day existence. Others might define peace along the lines of war. Peace is an absence of war in the world. We are at peace when we are not fighting another nation. Immanuel Kant takes it one step further, “Peace is not the absence of war. It is not even the absence of the threat of war. It is the absence of the possibility of war.” He is saying that only when we cannot ever have war will we have peace. John F. Kennedy said that being ready for war is the only way to keep the peace. “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.” Wow, with the plethora of definitions out there, how do you ever figure out what peace is? Well, I suggest that we look to the source of peace to understand it. Peace is a relationship. True peace comes from being in relationship with God. He is the source of genuine peace. God says, (I) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on (me), because he trusts in (me.) True peace comes when we are in fellowship with God. When our relationship is in positive mode then we are going to find a peace that as Paul says passes all understanding. It is ours because of who God is. Real peace comes from God. He is the only one who can bring peace to the world. It is not an absence of war. It is relationship.
II. So our relationship with God is what provides genuine peace to us. With that in mind why is it we struggle with our experience of peace? What robs us of our peace in life?
First, we are robbed of our peace because of sin. We cannot be in fellowship with God when sin remains unconfessed in our lives. Sin takes us out of the protection of God. He is not able to keep us from the attacks of Satan when we harbor sin in our hearts. Sin opens us to the spiritual warfare, thus robbing us of our peace. A lack of focus on God will rob us of our peace. When we face difficulties in life it is easy to focus on the problems and not on God. Remember what happened when Peter was called out of the boat into the sea. As long as he watched Christ he was OK, but when he started to look at the waves he sank. We find the same experience. We lose our peace as we focus on the waves and not God. He is the source of our peace, so we need to keep our focus on him. Keeping our eyes on him keeps the channel of his peace open to us.
III. The invitation of Christmas then is to find and maintain peace. We do this through relationship with God.
Providing a way for us to have and maintain relationship with God is why Jesus came in the first place. He is the way that God provides peace to us. We have peace as we move from death to life. We have peace as we move from the darkness to the light. As we receive the sacrifice Jesus gave on the cross as our own experience we find real genuine peace. We are in relationship with God through receiving Jesus as Savior.
We maintain our peace as we keep sin out of our lives. That relationship is kept as we pray. We are able to stay in fellowship as we keep our prayer life strong. The invitation is that we do more than just become Christians but that we walk as Christians. That is where peace is found for our day to day lives.
A young man working on the Limehouse Docks once heard a preacher named Henderson preach from the text: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The next day he sailed on a steamship which became a total wreck. Months passed and a sailor came to Henderson with a message. “I talked with a young man on ship who had heard you preach from the text, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He was in earnest, but he did not seem to get into the light until a few minutes before the wreck. He and I were told to launch one of the boats and help man her. While doing so, he said to me “Mate, if you get to shore, be sure to tell Mr. Henderson that it’s all right; being justified by faith, I have peace with God. By accident he failed to reach the boat when the rowers had to pull for their lives. The last thing is saw of that lad was he was in the rigging, waving his hat and shouting across the waters, “Being justified by faith, I have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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