Wholeness and Peace

Isaiah 9:6-7

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

Pray

Name, good morning. To begin today, I want to remind you of the series of Sermons that we are doing during Advent this year. This season, we are considering Jesus by structuring our focus around four words: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Last week, Phil opened up our series by preaching on Hope from Isaiah 40. In that passage, we saw that we have every reason to Hope and trust in our all-powerful, capable, and comfort-giving God.

This morning, we will be considering what the Bible says about Peace. I want to warn you that I will be taking a bit of a non-standard approach to this sermon, in that I intend to use multiple portions of scripture from Genesis to Revelation to explore the topic of Peace. So with that said, hopefully you are ready to follow along with me on this crazy journey.

When you think of the word Peace, how do you define it? What do you imagine in your mind? I had a teacher tell me when I was growing up that peace could only exist if there was conflict present - he said that a perfect picture of peace would be like a bird, cozy, warm, and dry inside a birdhouse during a harsh winter storm. In his mind, peace only existed as a contrast to dischord.

Do you think peace is like this? When I think about peace, my mind goes quickly to a lack of conflict, like when two nations make a peace treaty to end a war, or when a husband and wife resolve an argument and are able to agree again. Or perhaps, if you are a parent (or perhaps a teacher) in the room, peace seems the most like that moment when all the kids around finally are gone, and you discover for the first time that sounds other than shouting really do exist. For many of us, we sense peace when an internal conflict - something like depression, or self hatred, guilt, or regret - has passed on, and we are finally at rest with ourselves.

As you can see, a simple definition of peace is pretty hard to nail down - it seems to hold many different meanings the more you consider it. When you turn to scripture, it is no different. The word that is translated in our English bibles today as Peace comes primarily from two words; in the Old Testament, the word translated as Peace is the Hebrew word, Shalom. In the New Testament, the word is Eirene, which basically carries the same meaning as the Hebrew Shalom. Shalom carries a lot of meaning with it; for example, in Genesis 15:15, God tells Abram,

“As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.”

Here, peace is used as a contrast to the affliction that God has just told Abram that his offspring will have in Egypt during the time of Moses. So, Shalom at least points to a state of welfare or absence of conflict. Another example is Exodus 4:18, where Moses asks his father-in-law Jethro to let him go to Egypt, and Jethro says,

“Go in peace.”

Here peace is used to denote a state of friendship or health. In Ps. 147:14, God is described this way:

“He makes peace in your borders; he fills you with the finest of the wheat.”

There’s a sense here that peace includes prosperity or provision. The more you look at references across the Old Testament, you will find that shalom or peace covers a wide range of meanings, which include prosperity, success, welfare, a state of health, friendliness, and even deliverance or salvation.

Right here, I would like to change our approach so that we can get a deeper sense of clarity. Sometimes when defining a word, it is helpful to think about what it is not. Think with me for a moment about this. If peace brings a connotation of prosperity or success, then a lack of peace would mean poverty or failure. If peace is welfare or a state of health, then a lack of peace would mean suffering, unsoundness, misery, sickness, or death would be present. If peace is deliverance from conflict, then strife, capture, prison, damnation, and destruction would represent a lack of peace.

Two things come to my mind as I think about the implications of all of this. One is that there is a startling lack of peace in our world! When we think of the Christmas story and the angels’ announcement of “peace on earth good will toward men”, it seems as though it didn’t take! We have an abundance of un-peace, of poverty, of suffering, of sickness and death, of conflict. Even those who seem to have peace can’t hang on to it for long.

The other thought that comes to my mind is that Peace is versatile and needs a good parallel word to help us understand it. The folks at the Bible Project have done a great job of this. In their Advent Word Study series, they define peace as, “Wholeness.” I love this definition. Here’s what they say:

“Shalom refers to something that is complex with lots of pieces that is in a state of completeness, wholeness. It is like Job who says his tents are in a state of shalom because he counted his flock and no animals are missing (Job 5:24). The core idea is that life is complex, full of moving parts and relationships and situations, and when any of these is out of alignment or missing, your shalom breaks down.”

Isn’t that helpful? This also helps us to understand what peace means when it is used as a verb - to bring peace would mean to bring all the parts of your life, relationships, and situations into perfect alignment - to bring wholeness.

I often find myself longing for this kind of wholeness, completeness, or peace. When was the last time you experienced this kind of wholeness? How does one get the peace that is described best as Wholeness? Let’s consider the scriptures, and we will see that peace is wholeness that comes from being in God’s presence. So, that first blank on your notes sheet is the word, “presence.”

When we open the pages of scripture, surprisingly enough, the very first couple of chapters paint a picture of a place where this kind of peace was present. In the garden of Eden, our first ancestors Adam and Eve found themselves at peace with God, with each other, and with nature. There was perfect unity between them and God, no conflict at all between husband and wife, and all their needs were perfectly met in the creation around them. Death had not even been introduced into the world. The harmony and wholeness was rich. Of course, we all know what happened next: Adam and Eve introduced the first act of brokenness by taking steps to determine their own destiny. Desiring to know good and evil, they broke God’s command, fracturing their relationship with God and receiving His punishment: they were forced to leave the garden and go away from God’s presence.

It’s at this point that I want to pause in my sermon and call your attention to something very important. In the scriptures, the only places where you find peace or wholeness showing up is when people are in God’s presence; and, as a rule, when human beings exit God’s presence, all the opposites of peace that we have discussed previously result. God is our source of life, the very One Whose image we bear, and when are distant from Him, we lose our most important and critical relationship.

This pattern certainly plays out in the chapters of scripture that follow the Garden of Eden story. Adam and Eve’s son Cain murders his younger brother, their great-grandson Lamech is the first polygamist, and the human race spirals down into greater and greater brokenness from then on. If you haven’t noticed yet, the world is still in this condition. Our best efforts at good systems of government, our greatest inventions, and our heartiest attempts at peace still have not brought the wholeness that we desire. And all of this points to this fact that the human race needs to be reunited with God. If you find that your life is empty of peace, the thing you need the most is to be in the presence of God!

Well, in the story of the Bible, God doesn’t just stop there and watch humanity implode. He selects a people - the family of Abraham - to become His people. His promise to Abraham goes like this (see Gen. 12:1-3):

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Over hundreds of years and through many mighty works, God preserves this people group and causes them to flourish. In the time of Moses, recorded in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, God desires to draw near to His people and dwell among them. This is great news for God’s people! However, there is a big obstacle in the way of this, because no man can ever be in God’s presence and live. We see this in Exodus 19. God is going to come down on top of Mount Sinai, and He commands that Moses set strict limits around the mountain to protect the people from His glory. We see this dynamic again in Exodus 33, where God allows Moses to glimpse His glory, but God will not allow him to see His face, saying “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

If God’s people need to be in His presence to have shalom, but being in His presence will destroy them, what are they to do? It is as if, in His holiness, God is like the sun - warm, providing warmth and growth and life, but if you get too close, you get burned up. The gathering of sinners into God’s holy presence seems like an insurmountable obstacle - but, all things are possible with God. In His mercy, God provides a way for Moses and His people to draw near.

First, He gives them His law - a system of sacrifices, feasts, purity laws, and priests that enable God’s people to be holy like God. As they follow God’s law, they are able to be in His presence without being destroyed. Now, I don’t want to go in depth on the laws, but I must give you some insight to what they were about. The sacrifices provide ways for Israel to have their sins paid for and for them to request God’s friendship and alliance with them. The feasts were used to draw Israel’s remembrance to times when God saved them and did amazing things among them so that their hearts would be in love with God. The purity laws - essentially, laws that defined when you were too dirty to be in God’s presence - were intended to remind the Israelites of their inherent closeness to death and keep them from coming into God’s presence with the stench of death on them. And finally, the priests were put in place so that there would be a mediator between God and the common people. All of these things enabled the Israelites to be holy and therefore live within God’s holy presence.

Second, God gives them instructions for a special tent, called a tabernacle - a place where He can come be among them and dwell in the middle of their camp.

We often read the rules contained in the book of Leviticus and are totally turned off by the weirdness and extensive nature of the laws there, but it is important to see that for God’s people in that time, these laws were groundbreaking! For the first time since the Garden of Eden, God was going to come and live with His people, and through them all the nations on earth would see His glory! God would be so near them that they would be able to wake up in the morning, step out of their tents, and actually see the tent where God was dwelling right there in their midst! And God makes the following promises in Leviticus chapter 26:

““If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. 6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. 7 You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. 9 I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. 10 You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. 11 I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. 12 And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.”

We should sit with the implications of God’s law for the Israelites for a moment and ponder. Those of you who have read the books of Old Testament law know just how extensive and impossible to keep this law was; and yet, this is what would be required for people to be in the presence of God if it were not for Jesus. Every one of us in this room, outside of this prescribed law or outside of Jesus, will immediately perish if we were to step into the presence of our Holy God. Our sin renders us completely incapable of drawing near to the only One who can give us peace, the only One who is our source of life, the only One who can make us whole.

But also, consider the lengths that God has gone to in order to draw near to the people that He loves! He has made promises to them and kept His promises even though Israel broke theirs over and over again. If He must, He is even willing to live in a shabby desert tent if it means He can give His people peace!

Sadly, if we are to continue our journey through the Old Testament, we will see that Israel, God’s favored people who have dwelt with Him and seen all His mighty acts, cannot keep it together. They reject God’s rule and authority and follow their own desires. They prefer a human king to God’s leadership. Their kings do not make peace in their nation and consistently oppress the people that God loves. The nation as a whole rejects God and whores after false idols. If we were to read the Old Testament histories this morning, we would see our loving God remain faithful to His people in the face of hundreds of years of their rebellion against Him. As this happens, God begins to send prophets like Amos, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Isaiah who proclaim that the loss of shalom is coming - God is going to take away the peace of His people if they do not quit their persistent disobedience. And yet, despite repeated warnings, God’s people will not relent of their rebellion, and God disciplines them severely. God uses the nations of Assyria and Babylon to destroy His people and take a remnant into captivity.

In this time, God begins to give His prophets words for His people that hint about a time when shalom would again return. Often this expectation of the return of peace was associated with a savior figure like the one we read about at the beginning of my sermon in Isaiah 9. Here is the prophecy again:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

With what we know about peace being wholeness brought by the presence of God, for this savior Figure to be called the Prince of Peace, He must somehow be making it so that God’s people can dwell in God’s presence. For Him to provide a condition in which there is ever-increasing, never-ending peace, He must somehow be enabling God’s people to keep God’s laws such that they never get it wrong. Otherwise, how would peace and wholeness be increasing? And finally, why is this Figure referred to as “Mighty God” when He is supposedly coming on the scene through childbirth? Only men are born…right?

Well…wrong. For thousands of years at Christmas, Christians around the world have joined to celebrate the birth of this messianic Figure, this Mighty God, this Prince of Peace that we know as Jesus. He is God in human flesh. In perfect fulfillment of all of His prophecies and satisfying the original intent of the tabernacle, God has come to dwell with us in a new tent - the person of Jesus. And so, the second point in our notes today is that Jesus brings wholeness with God and Man.

It says this about Jesus in John 1:14:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus has dwelt among us in human flesh, just as He did in the tabernacle so long ago. But it gets even more exciting! God doesn’t only come and dwell among us in Jesus. In Jesus, He also fulfills all the legal requirements of the law for us so that we can dwell in holiness in His presence!

Remember the sacrificial system we talked about earlier that was used to pay for the sins of the people? Jesus, through His suffering, crucifixion, and death, has paid for our sins! This payment was famously prophesied in Isaiah 53:5, where the messianic Figure is referred to as God’s servant who will be pierced for our sins and crushed for our iniquities. Isaiah says that the punishment that will bring us peace will be upon Him and that we will all be healed by His wounds. This suffering servant of God is none other than Jesus Christ, who has made us holy once and for all through the offering of His own body on our behalf.

Now that the payment for our sins is paid and we are in right status with God, we can have peace and companionship with God through Christ. We can be in His presence! In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul writes that Jesus Himself IS our peace, because He has fulfilled the requirement of the Israelite law so completely that now it isn’t just a select group of people who can dwell in God’s presence, but now every person on earth can draw near to God! Do you all realize how significant this is?? If it weren’t for Christ, everyone here would have to fulfill all the requirements of God’s law in Leviticus in order to draw near to Him; but as it is, now we have free access to God’s presence through Jesus. Peace is ours for the taking! Perfect wholeness is at your fingertips!

Let’s keep going. God’s Levitical law contained rules about keeping feasts so that the people’s hearts would never forget their God and their love for Him. But in Jesus, we have a new meal. No longer do we have to remember complicated Jewish calendar events. We now simply take bread and wine and remember that Jesus’s body was broken for us. We remember that God has made a new covenant with us: one that He has kept in every way on our behalf, even to the shedding of His own blood.

And we no longer need priests. As the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 9, “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” Believers, when you pray to Jesus, He is in the presence of God mediating mercy to you.

And we no longer need the ritual purity laws of Leviticus. Jesus has washed us clean forever and ever with His blood.

In every possible way, Jesus makes us holy so that we can enter God’s presence and experience wholeness and true, ever-expanding, never-ending peace. It is an all the time condition, not one that has to be re-upped according to human practice. We can live permanently in God’s presence in a state of holiness. And so you can see that Jesus has brought wholeness with God and Man

And this leads to my third point, that Perfect Wholeness is Ours Now and Forever.

When Jesus went back to heaven, He didn’t just say, “Well, I’m done dwelling among you. Immanuel out!” No! In John 14, Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to send the Holy Spirit to dwell with them. Here is how Jesus describes this in John 14:27:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

You see, because of Jesus, God didn’t stop dwelling among us. God still has a holy place within which to dwell - the hearts of His redeemed children. When Jesus ascended, God sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of all who believe in Him. He is still dwelling among us - like right now. This is why Jesus can say He left His peace with us - because God’s presence, the Holy Spirit, would be dwelling as close to His people as He could get - right within their hearts.

This means that we ourselves, right now, are the dwelling place of God with man. We believers, together, have become the tabernacle! Ephesians 2:22 says,

“In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

As the church is built up, God’s dwelling place expands. Jesus is building His church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against its growth. There really will not be any end to the increase of His government and of peace. And because of the shalom peace and wholeness that we have with God, we can now have peace and unity in our church.

However, there is one last chapter to this story. While we have peace with God and with each other in the church, our peace is not yet complete. We still experience poverty, failure, misery, sickness, destruction, and death. Jesus did not do all this work so that we could just have peace in our souls but death in our bodies. As the good news of Jesus spreads across the globe, the time of Jesus’s return is coming nearer and nearer. And one day - He is going to be here. In Revelation 21, the apostle John paints a picture of what this will be like:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

This making of all things new is Jesus making perfect peace for those of us who believe. No longer will it be just the condition of our souls, but our bodies too will be resurrected to a type of life that is far more whole than anything we have ever experienced or imagined. All the remnants of pain and death that have ruined our lives will be removed, and we will have perfect, ever-expanding, never-ending wholeness.

As I look out at you all this morning, my wish for you from the bottom of my heart is that you would experience perfect wholeness in Jesus Christ. In Him, God has made a way for you to be holy and to be filled with His presence. His presence IS peace. If you are in this room and you long for peace - for wholeness, prosperity, health, and friendship with God - in your soul now, and in your body in eternity, look to your savior Jesus Christ this Christmas. He himself is our peace.

For those of us with broken hearts, broken marriages, broken friendships - Jesus can begin to mend your broken heart and put the pieces back together today, and one day He will make it all right again.

For those who have lost loved ones and have a deep pit that no thought or comfort can fill, Jesus will restore you one day. Remember, death isn’t insurmountable for Him. He is an expert life-giver. He’s done it before, and He will do it again.

For those in love and those who are lonely: Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother; His Spirit lives within us. He is with you! Set your affections on Him and make Him your closest friend. He has gone to the greatest lengths imaginable to be close to you.

For those who are sick and long, long for a healthy body: Jesus is a world-class healer. He has never had a patient that didn’t get well! Remember that Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” It’s a promise: He is going to make your body right again. Keep trusting and waiting for Him.

For those who are addicted to porn, or substances, or the comforts of wealth and job security - Jesus is more satisfying. These things do not give you any peace or wholeness, but Jesus does. Fill your mind and heart with thoughts of Jesus, and make your body do His work. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, He promises to satisfy you.

For those who struggle with mental health issues, who can’t seem to control their thoughts and actions, who don’t experience joy, who just wish they could be normal: Trust in Jesus. He created your mind, and He can make it right again.

And if you are in this room today and you know that you want to be saved and receive this peace, I invite you right now to believe in Jesus. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. It is really that simple. Everyone who believes in Jesus and tells others that He is Lord receives salvation, and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell within them. So, believe in Jesus!

This morning we have examined what the Bible says about peace, and we have seen that peace is wholeness that comes from being in God’s presence, that Jesus brings wholeness with God and man, and that perfect wholeness is ours now and forever. So let’s look to Jesus this Christmas: He himself is our peace. Let’s pray.