Jesus Our Prince of Peace
Down deep inside all of us long to have a great desire to be at peace, within ourselves, within our families and all those we interact with.
Humanity’s quest for peace is illustrated by the architecture constructed in symbolic fashion in many countries.
If the Statue of Liberty means anything, it means we are offering a gesture of peace to those who come to live within this country.
In Israel there is a statue called the Statue of Shalom, the Statue of Peace, which looks over out over the harbor of Haifa.
In Tokyo in front of the Tokyo station stands a robust statue with arms outstretched toward heaven. Underneath the statue in Greek and Japanese is the word agape, love, a testimony to the desire of the Japanese people for there to be peace between their country and others.
In most every part of the world there is some symbolic representation of humanity’s quest after peace.
Some countries have even gone further than statues. A man from Santo Domingo was so burdened about world peace he allowed himself to be nailed to a cross as a sacrifice for world peace. This man, Patrice Tomao, had planned to remain on the cross for 48 hours, but he had to cut it short after 20 hours because of an infection that developed in his foot. The newspaper read the next day, “Crucifixion for Peace Falls Short.”
That headline could summarize everything that has been done in our world to find peace. All of it seems to fall short. None of it ever seems to reach its desired end.
The problem is not a problem with nations. It’s a problem with human nature.
The nature of a humanity which is separated from God. As long as that nature remains untouched and unchanged, the outer trappings of peace will always mock us by their inability to accomplish the goal. Not until a person knows what it means to be at peace with himself in his own heart, in his relationship with his Creator, and then with those who are the creatures of the Creator, can a person know what it means to have peace in a true sense.
There is a peace in our culture today that is brought on by tranquilizers, liquor and other drugs. There is a kind of peace in a mental institution. There’s a kind of peace that comes from being brainwashed. Sometimes we think we are at peace when we are just controlling our panic.
True peace gives not only a calm exterior, but a very quiet inside as well.
The peace God talks about is first of all an individual, a personal peace. It has to start there. We all want to start on the outside trying to get nations or communities together. But God doesn’t start on the outside. He starts at the core, and the core of peace is the individual.
The peace of Christmas guides our hearts
In more than a few past wars, the warring nations would call a cease-fire for Christmas Day. They would agree that on Christmas Day they wouldn’t shoot at each other, drop bombs on each other, or try to destroy one another. Then, of course, the day after Christmas they would start killing each other again.
“Christmas Truce,”
This story has been told in a variety of ways, but this is the researched version that appeared in newspapers nationwide on December 25, 1994 from the Associated Press, dateline London.
Eighty years ago, on the first Christmas Day of World War I, British and German troops put down their guns and celebrated peacefully together in the no-man’s land between the trenches. The war, briefly, came to a halt.
In some places, festivities began when German troops lit candles on Christmas trees on their parapets so the British sentries a few hundred yards away could see them.
Elsewhere, the British acted first, starting bonfires and letting off rockets.
Pvt. Oswald Tilley of the London Rifle Brigade wrote to his parents: “Just you think that while you were eating your turkey etc. I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before! It was astounding.”
Both armies had received lots of comforts from home and felt generous and well-disposed toward their enemies in the first winter of the war, before the vast battles of attrition began in 1915, eventually claiming ten million lives.
All along the line that Christmas Day, soldiers found their enemies were much like them and began asking why they should be trying to kill each other.
The generals were shocked. High Command diaries and statements express anxiety that if that sort of thing spread it could sap the troops’ will to fight.
The soldiers in khaki and gray sang carols to each other, exchanged gifts of tobacco, jam, sausage, chocolate and liquor, traded names and addresses and played soccer between the shell holes and barbed wire. They even paid mutual trench visits.
This day is called “the most famous truce in military history” by British television producer Malcolm Brown and researcher Shirley Seaton in their book “Christmas Truce,” published in 1984.
Isa 9:6-7 NIV
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
Christ came—to bring peace. Wasn’t that the message that the angels proclaimed in Luke 2:8–14?
Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Today, there are many places in our world where peace is not a word in anyone’s vocabulary.
Yet every Christian knows that there is coming a time when peace will reign on this earth. Each Christmas season, a kind of new hope is born in our hearts—that though the outlook may be dark, and the only darkness we may see is out there, we may not feel it here.
The Prince of Peace has come, and with Him the faith that someday men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and we shall be at peace.
Who first saw he prince of Peace, Those who need him the most
The Scriptures tell us that those who gathered to worship Him first were shepherds. In our culture, that loses some of its meaning, and therefore some of its wonder.
In that time and culture, however, shepherds would be the last and least to expect the Prince of Peace to come to them. They were shepherds. They were ceremonially unclean. They were not allowed to go into the temple area to worship. They were unaccepted. They were nobodies. They could not be called as witnesses in court, for somebody had written that no one could believe the testimony of a shepherd. They were despised. They were looked down upon and often hated. The Jewish Talmud says of them, “Give no help to a heathen or to a shepherd.” That’s how they were appreciated. What a wonder, that God would choose them to witness the birth of His Son, to be there first to worship the coming of the Messiah. The shepherds!
Out of the whole of Jewish society, He chose shepherds. Out of the entire population of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, these outcasts were the only ones who came to see the Messiah and to spread the news of His coming.
Jesus brings us Peace with God
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God....” What does that mean? God provided Jesus Christ that we might have peace with God.
I see that picture so beautifully illustrated by the cross itself. Pointing up to heaven it pictures that Jesus Christ, the God/Man, reached up and took the hand of the Father. Pointing down toward earth, it pictures Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, reached down and took hold of fallen human beings. With one hand in the hand of God and the other hand in the hand of man, the only unique personality who was God and man brought the two together and made peace between God and man. When I see the cross stretched out, it’s as if there’s an invitation to all people to come and participate in the peace won at Calvary by Jesus Christ our Lord.
There’s only one way to get peace with God. That’s to come and accept by faith what Jesus Christ did when He died on that cross. The fact that He died doesn’t bring you and God the Father together. It is only when you come and put your trust in what He did and in Him alone that you participate in the peace that comes into the heart of every person who comes to Jesus.
The word for peace in the Greek language is iranay. It means, “to join together.” It’s a picture of two opposing forces that have been separated, that now have been reconciled.
He is our peace. That’s why when Jesus was brought into the world as our Savior, the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace...”(Luke 2:14). He is the Prince of Peace because He is the One who solved the enmity between us and God. Accept Him and you have peace with God.
Jesus Gives us the Peace of God
There are a lot of Christians who don’t seem to have the outward qualities of peace. The bestsellers on the Christian bookstore shelves seem to be about anxiety, fear, frustration and depression. It’s possible to have peace with God and not enjoy the peace of God.
In John 14:27, as Jesus was speaking to His disciples and trying to calm their fears about His impending death, He said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Jesus was talking about a quality He wanted to give to His disciples who were already Christians in their generation. He was saying, “I want to give you something you don’t have even as believers. I want to give you My peace, the peace of God.”
The inner calmness, that quiet assurance that all is well, even though outward circumstances may be dictating chaos. The place where you know, like the psalmist said, “I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8).
Are you a thermometer or a thermostat?
A thermometer reacts to the condition. A thermostat controls the condition.
If you are a thermometer, you are in trouble because it’s going to get hot.
If you are a thermostat, you can be in control. If you’ve have the peace of God in your heart, that can be the thermostat of your life, to keep you always at the right temperature spiritually.
No matter what’s going on outside, you can be stable if you’ve got the peace of God. It’s the only thing I know that will do it.
Jesus is the Author of Peace
He created it. He made it. He knows how it works. All true peace is centered in Him.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace
When we center our thoughts on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and we let Him fill our lives, He becomes big in our lives. Then we know peace because He is the Prince of Peace.
In Isaiah 26:3 where we are told, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on him.”
Jesus also sends us the Spirit of Peace
The Comforter, the One who comes to bring peace in our lives. When Jesus had finished His instruction about the Spirit, He told the disciples that He had spoken of these things so they would have peace (see John 16:33).
The Holy Spirit lives peace out in our lives every day as we commit ourselves to be controlled by the Spirit of God.
You cannot be controlled by the Spirit of God and not have peace, because the Spirit of God is the Spirit of peace. When He comes to control your life, He takes over, and part of that is the implementation of peace in your life.
Jesus brings peach through the Word of Peace
The Spirit of peace implements peace in your life through the Word of peace as you read the Word of God.
You cannot be filled with the Spirit of God without the Word of God which is the Bible. Psalm 119:165 says, “Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.”
Dr. Smile Blanton, who was the head of the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, answered when asked if he read the Bible, “Not only do I read it, but I study it, because it is the greatest textbook on human behavior that has ever been put together. When I have a need that I can’t solve through my books, I usually go to the Scripture and sooner or later I find the need solved there.”
Of course, we’ve known that all along. We just don’t practice it. The Word of God is the source of peace. It develops within us an understanding of the problems of life that puts us at peace when we get God’s perspective.
The Peace of Jesus is not the absence of trouble, it the presence of God in the midst of trouble
1. The vision of Isaiah is not simply a kind of justice that is imposed upon us. It rather fills the soul of each person and emanates out. There is justice socially because each person is filled with compassion and meets the needs of those around them. The simple prayer attributed to St. Francis describes the spiritual disposition.
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred . . . let me sow love
Where there is injury . . . pardon
Where there is doubt . . . faith
Where there is despair . . .hope
Where there is darkness . . . light
Where there is sadness . . .joy
Divine Master,
grant that i may not so much seek
To be consoled . . .as to console
To be understood . . .as to understand,
To be loved . . . as to love
For it is in giving . . .that we receive,
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,
It is in dying . . .that we are born to eternal life
2. God tells us in the book of Colossians that we are to measure our lives by the rule of peace. One of the great texts in discovering the will of God says, “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts” (Colossians 3:15).
God has placed within us a deep sense of peace which becomes the arbitrator in our lives between the options which are presented to us every day. Many correct choices are clearly expressed in the Word of God.
3. Sometimes you have to rest upon the Spirit of peace who is living within you to be the umpire of your soul, and give you the direction you need. Then the peace of God will rule in your heart.
We develop it, we practice it, and in the little things that come our way each day, we let the peace of God rule. I don’t believe you can do that in the big things unless you get involved in doing it in the little things. We develop our character little by little.
THE PRICE OF PEACE
Jesus between two thieves. Exactly the place he wants to be.
Three men on three crosses, a well-known scene. Even casual students of Christ are acquainted with the trio on Skull’s Hill. We’ve pondered their sufferings and sketched their faces and analyzed their words.
But let’s imagine this scene from another perspective. Rather than stand on ground level and look up, let’s stand at the throne of God and look down. What does God see? What is the perspective of heaven? Does God see the timber and nails? Does God witness the torn flesh and spilt blood? Can heaven hear the mallet slam and the voices cry?
Certainly. But God sees much more. He sees his Son surrounded by sin and two thieves covered with sin. A shadow hangs over their spirits.
From God’s angle the tragedy of these men was not that they were about to die, but that they were dying with unresolved sin. They were leaving this earth hostile to God, defiant of his truth, and resistant to his call.
“When people’s thinking is controlled by the sinful self, they are against God” (Rom. 8:7). Sin is not an unfortunate slip or a regrettable act; it is a posture of defiance against a holy God.
Such is what heaven sees.
The figure on the center cross, however, has no such shadow of sin. “When he lived on earth, he was tempted in every way that we are, but he did not sin” (Heb. 4:15). Stainless. Selfless. Even on a sinner’s cross Jesus’ holiness illuminates heaven.
The first criminal reads the sign that announces Jesus as the king of the Jews. He hears Jesus pray for those who kill him. Something about the presence of the carpenter convinces him he’s in the presence of a king.
The other crook has a different opinion. “Aren’t you the Christ? Then save yourself and us” (Luke 23:39). You’d think a man near death would use his energy for something other than slander. Not this one. The shadow over his heart is so thick, even in pain he mocks.
Suddenly someone tells him, “You should fear God!” It’s the voice of the first criminal. “We are … getting what we deserve for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41).
Finally someone is defending Jesus. Peter fled. The disciples hid. The Jews accused. Pilate washed his hands. Many could have spoken on behalf of Jesus, but none did. Until now. Kind words from the lips of a thief. He makes his request. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
The Savior turns his heavy head toward the prodigal child and promises, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
At the same instant, the purity of Jesus lifts and covers the dying thief. A sheet of radiance is wrapped around his soul. As the father robed the prodigal, so now Christ robes the thief. Not just with a clean coat but with Jesus himself!
Paul explained it like this: “Christ took away the curse the law put on us. He changed places with us and put himself under that curse” (Gal. 3:13).
On the cross “God was in Christ, making peace between the world and himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
You will really appreciate the peace of God in your life only after you understand the cost at which it was purchased.
Jesus Christ died on the cross to provide peace for you with God, but it is that same death that is the payment for your peace which is described as the peace that passes understanding, the peace of God.
He took the pain so we could have the peace.
We need to claim by faith what He has done for us and begin immediately to operate on the principles of peace and walk worthy of His death.
