“Christian Resolutions _2020, Part 21” by Romans
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We are continuing in our Series, “Christian Resolutions_2020,” and our fine-tuned focus on the Fruit of the Spirit which are, at once, both Foundational to, and manifestations of, Christian Resolutions. This is part 21 of this Series. We have so far reviewed and examined Love and Joy, the first two Fruit. Today we continue in our review and examination of the third named Fruit: Peace, as the word “Peace” appears in its most significant and teaching occurrences in Scripture.
The first occurrence of the word "Peace" that I want to cite, tonight, is of a circumstances which, at once, is one that we we might be tempted to think that have never personally experienced. It happened almost 4,000 years ago in a very different place than where we live, and under very different circumastances. The children on Israel had just been miraculously released from centuries of cruel bondage. Their captors repented of that release, and went after them to bring them back.
The escape route they took, at God's direction, led them straight into what anyone would incorrectly conclude was a trap. There was no way out. Moutains were on wither side of them, the advancing Egyptian Army was behind them, and The Red Sea made any forward escape impossible. Yet, Moses was able to speak about peace under these incredible and impossible circumstances. I ask you all to keep in mind, that we, as New Testament believers, experience our own traps from which there appear to be no possible remedy. God is as real and as powerful and as available to us as He was to Moses and the Israelites.
We read in Exodus 14:13-14, "And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”
Of this Matthew Henry writes, “We have here, I. The fright that the children of Israel were in when they perceived that Pharaoh pursued them. They knew very well the strength and rage of the enemy, and their own weakness; numerous indeed they were, but all on foot, unarmed, undisciplined, disquieted by long servitude, and (which was worst of all) now penned up by the situation of their camp, so that they could not make their escape.
On the one hand was Pi-hahiroth, a range of impassable craggy rocks; on the other hand were Migdol and Baalzephon, which, some think were forts and garrisons upon the frontiers of Egypt; before them was the sea; behind them were the Egyptians: so that there was no way open for them but upwards, and thence their deliverance came. Note, We may be in the way of our duty, following God... and yet may be in great straits, troubled on every side, (as we read in 2 Corinthians 4:8).
In this distress, no marvel that the children of Israel were sorely afraid; their father Jacob was so in a like case (Genesis 32:7); when without are fightings, it cannot be otherwise but that within are fears: what therefore was the fruit of this fear? According as that was, the fear was good or evil. 1. Some of them cried out unto the Lord; their fear set them a praying, and that was a good effect of it. God brings us into straits that he may bring us to our knees.
2. Others of them cried out against Moses; their fear set them a murmuring. They give up themselves for lost; and as if God's arm were shortened all of a sudden, and he were not as able to work miracles today as he was yesterday, they despair of deliverance, and can count upon nothing but dying in the wilderness. How inexcusable was their distrust! Did they not see themselves under the guidance and protection of a pillar from heaven?
And can almighty power fail them, or infinite goodness be false to them? Yet this was not the worst; they quarrel with Moses for bringing them out of Egypt, and, in quarrelling with him, fly in the face of God himself, and provoke him to wrath whose favour was now the only succour they had to flee to. As the Egyptians were angry with themselves for the best deed they ever did, so the Israelites were angry with God for the greatest kindness that was ever done them; so gross are the absurdities of unbelief.
They here express, (1.) A sordid contempt of liberty, preferring servitude before it, only because it was attended with some difficulties. A generous spirit would have said, “If the worst come to the worst,” as we say, “It is better to die in the field of honour than to live in the chains of slavery;” nay, under God's conduct, they could not miscarry, and therefore they might say, “Better live God's freemen in the open air of a wilderness than the Egyptians' bondmen in the smoke of the brick-kilns.” But because, for the present, they are a little embarrassed, they are angry that they were not left buried alive in their house of bondage.
(2). Base ingratitude to Moses, who had been the faithful instrument of their deliverance. They condemn him, as if he had dealt hardly and unkindly with them, whereas it was evident, beyond dispute, that whatever he did, and however it issued, it was by direction from their God, and with design for their good. What they had said in a former ferment (when they hearkened not to Moses for anguish of spirit), they repeat and justify in this:
We said in Egypt, Let us alone; and it was ill-said, yet more excusable, because then they had not had so much experience as they had now of God's wonderful appearances in their favour. But they had as soon forgotten the miracles of mercy as the Egyptians had forgotten the miracles of wrath; and they, as well as the Egyptians, hardened their hearts, at last, to their own ruin; as Egypt after ten plagues, so Israel after ten provocations, of which this was the first (Num_14:22), were sentenced to die in the wilderness.
II. The seasonable encouragement that Moses gave them in this distress, (Exodus 14:13-14). He answered not these fools according to their folly. God bore with the provocation they gave to him, and did not (as he might justly have done) chose their delusions, and bring their fears upon them; and therefore Moses might well afford to pass by the affront they put upon him. Instead of chiding them, he comforts them, and with an admirable presence and composure of mind, not disheartened either by the threatenings of Egypt or the tremblings of Israel, stills their murmuring, with the assurance of a speedy and complete deliverance: Fear you not. Note, It is our duty and interest, when we cannot get out of our troubles, yet to get above our fears, so that they may only serve to quicken our prayers and endeavours, but may not prevail to silence our faith and hope.
1. He assures them that God would deliver them, that he would undertake their deliverance, and that he would effect it in the utter ruin of their pursuers: The Lord shall fight for you. This Moses was confident of himself, and would have them to be so, though as yet he knew not how or which way it would be brought to pass. God had assured him that Pharaoh and his host should be ruined, and he comforts them with the same comforts wherewith he had been comforted.
2. He directs them to leave it to God, in a silent expectation of the event: “Stand still, and think not to save yourselves either by fighting or flying; wait God's orders, and observe them; be not contriving what course to take, but follow your leader; wait God's appearances, and take notice of them, that you may see how foolish you are to distrust them. Compose yourselves, by an entire confidence in God, into a peaceful prospect of the great salvation God is now about to work for you. Hold your peace; you need not so much as give a shout against the enemy.
The work shall be done without any concurrence of yours.” Note, (1.) If God himself bring his people into straits, he will himself discover a way to bring them out again. (2.) In times of great difficulty and great expectation, it is our wisdom to keep our spirits calm, quiet, and sedate; for then we are in the best frame both to do our own work and to consider the work of God. Your strength is to sit still, for the Egyptians shall help in vain, and threaten to hurt in vain.”
Out next “hit” is found in Psalm 37:37: “Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
Of this, Albert Barnes writes, “Mark the perfect man - In contrast with what happens to the wicked. The word “perfect” here is used to designate a righteous man, or a man who serves and obeys God. See the notes at Job 1:1. The word “mark” here means “observe, take notice of.” The argument is, “Look upon that man in the end, in contrast with the prosperous wicked man. See how the close of life, in his case, differs from that of a wicked man, though the one may have been poor and humble, and the other rich and honored.” The point of the psalmist’s remark turns on the end, or the “termination” of their course; and the idea is, that the end of the two is such as to show that there is an advantage in religion, and that God is the friend of the righteous. Of course this is to be understood in accordance with the main thought in the psalm, as affirming what is of general occurrence.
And behold the upright - Another term for a pious man. Religion makes a man upright; and if a man is not upright in his dealings with his fellow-man, or if what he professes does not make him do “right,” it is the fullest proof that he has no true piety.” There is at this point in the Commentary a cross-reference to 1 John 3:7-8 which says, “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”
Back to the original Commentary we read: “For the end of that man is peace - DeWette renders this, “For a future has the man of peace.” So it is rendered by the Latin Vulgate. The word rendered “end” means properly the last or extreme part; then, the end or issue of anything - that which comes after it; then, the after time, the future, the hereafter. It may, therefore, refer to anything future; and would be well expressed by the word “hereafter;” the “hereafter” of such a man.
So it is rendered “my last end.” It “might,” therefore, refer to all the future. The connection - the contrast with what happens to the wicked would seem to imply that it is used here particularly and especially with reference to the close of life. The contrast is between the course of the one and that of the other, and between the “termination” of the one course and of the other. In the one case, it is ultimate disaster and ruin; in the other, it is ultimate peace and prosperity.
The one “issues in,” or is “followed by” death and ruin; the other is succeeded by peace and salvation. Hence, the word may be extended without impropriety to all the future - the whole hereafter. The word “peace” is often employed in the Scriptures to denote the effect of true religion: (a) as implying reconciliation with God, and (b) as denoting the calmness, the tranquility, and the happiness which results from such reconciliation, from his friendship, and from the hope of heaven.
The meaning here, according to the interpretation suggested above, is, that the future of the righteous man - the whole future - would be peace; (a) as a general rule, peace or calmness in death as the result of religion; and (b) in the coming world, where there will be perfect and eternal peace. As a usual fact religious men die calmly and peacefully, sustained by hope and by the presence of God; as a universal fact, they are made happy forever beyond the grave.”
Our next “hit” for the word, “peace” is also found in the Book of Psalms where we read, “I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly” (Psalm 85:8).
The Sermon Bible says of this: “I. The death of sin is mostly a gradual process, a thing going on for a long time, and not beginning or ending in one sharp, single struggle. Yet neither is it true that it goes on quite evenly. On the contrary, it has its sharper seasons and its gentler ones. It has times when it destroys much of the principle of sin within us; it has times also when it does little more than hold its ground, and the struggle seems suspended.
II. The process of the death of sin has in it nothing horrible, nothing exciting; the imagination may not be struck by it: and yet it is of an interest really far deeper than the death of the body, and an interest which we may all presently realise. It works quietly and invisibly to the eyes of others, but most perceptibly and most truly to him who is undergoing it.
III. Many struggle successfully against one marked fault, but fly back from the prospect of having to overcome a whole sinful nature and having to become made anew after God’s image. So it is but too often, but so it is not always. Let us suppose that we bear the sight of our general sinfulness not with a cowardly despair, but with a Christian resolution; then indeed begins the struggle which may be truly called the death of sin. Then our old nature begins to die sensibly, in no part without pain.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 139.
It is not too much to say that whoever will resolve to listen as David listened will hear what David heard. Only determine, "I will hear what God the Lord will speak," and "He will speak peace." God never disappoints a really attentive hearer. I. God has always something to say to us. We only miss it either because we do not believe that He is going to speak, or because we are not quiet enough. This is frequently the reason of a sickness or a deep sorrow. God has something to say to us. He makes a calm, He settles the rush of life, that He may speak. The Shepherd draws the hurdles closer that His sheep, being nearer to Him, may the better hear the Shepherd’s voice.
II. There are few of us who do not know what these times are when God has come very near. They are very critical times; great issues hang upon them: they will weigh heavily in the balances of "the great account of life." From these high-wrought feelings there will be a reaction. The moment you become earnest for good, Satan will become earnest to stop you. He who had read life better than almost any man who ever lived saw the need of the caution, "He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints: but let them not turn again to folly."
III. The expression, "turn again to folly," may mean one of three things. Either all sin is folly, or you may understand by it the particular sin of those who return to the vanities of the world, or you may take it to imply that a relapse into what is wrong has such a distorting influence on the mind, and so perverts the judgment and darkens the intellect, that both by natural consequence and judicial retribution the condition of a person who goes on in sin after the strivings of the Holy Ghost and after the manifestations of God’s peace becomes emphatically "folly."
IV. Peace, the peace of Christ, is a delicate plant. Do not expose it. Do not trifle with it, but lay it up in your heart’s closest affections. Watch it. Deal tenderly with it. It is your life.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 210.
Reference: Psa_85:8.—R. Lee, Sermons, p. 57.”
Still in the Book of Psalms, we read in Psalm 85:10: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”
John Gill writes of this: “Mercy and truth are met together,.... Or "grace and truth" (p), which are in Christ, and come by him; and so may be said to meet in him, the glorious Person, the Author of salvation, before mentioned, these may be considered as perfections in God, displayed in salvation by Christ: "mercy" is the original of it; it is owing to that that the dayspring from on high visited us, or glory dwelt in our land, or Christ was sent and came to work salvation for us;
it was pity to the lost human race which moved God to send him, and him to come, who is the merciful as well as faithful High Priest, and who in his love and pity redeemed us; and though there was no mercy shown to him, he not being spared in the least, yet there was to us; and which appears in the whole of our salvation, and in every part of it, in our regeneration, pardon, and eternal life; (see Luke 1:72, 1 Peter 1:3) or "grace", the exceeding riches of which are shown forth in the kindness of God to us, through Christ; and to which our salvation, in whole and in part, is to be attributed, (in Ephesians 2:7), "truth" may signify the veracity and faithfulness of God, in his promises and threatenings: his promises have their true and full accomplishment in Christ, so have his threatenings of death to sinful men, he being the surety for them,
Gen_2:17 and so mercy is shown to man, and God is true to his word: righteousness and peace have kissed each other; as friends at meeting used to do: "righteousness" may intend the essential justice of God, which will not admit of the pardon and justification of a sinner, without a satisfaction; wherefore Christ was set forth to be the propitiation for sin, to declare and manifest the righteousness of God, his strict justice; that he might be just, and appear to be so, when he is the justifier of him that believes in Jesus;
and Christ's blood being shed, and his sacrifice offered up, he is just and faithful to forgive sin, and cleanse from all unrighteousness, and thus the law being magnified, and made honourable by the obedience and sufferings of Christ, an everlasting righteousness being brought in, and justice entirely satisfied, there is "peace" on earth, and good will to men: peace with God is made by Christ the peacemaker, and so the glory of divine justice is secured and peace with God for men obtained, in a way consistent with it, and Christ's righteousness being imputed and applied to men, and received by faith, produces a conscience peace, an inward peace of mind, which passeth all understanding, (see Romans 5:1).
(p) חסד ואמת "gratia et veritas", Cocceius, Gejerus, Michaelis.”
Our last “hit” for the word, “peace” for tonight, and still in the Book of Psalms we read in Psalm 119:165: “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.”
Of this, Alexander MacClaren comments, “SUBMISSION AND PEACE: The marginal note says ‘they shall have no stumbling block.’ We do great injustice to this psalm - so exuberant in its praises of ‘the law of the Lord’ - if we suppose that that expression means nothing more than the Mosaic or Jewish revelation. It does mean that, of course, but the psalm itself shows that the writer uses the expression and its various synonyms as including a great deal more than any one method by which God’s will is made known to man. For he speaks, for instance, in one part of the psalm of God’s ‘word,’ as being settled for ever in the heavens, and of the heavens and earth as continuing to this day, ‘according to Thine ordinances.’
So we are warranted in giving to the thought of our text the wider extension of taking the divine ‘law’ to include not only that directory of conduct contained in Scripture, but the expressed will of God, involving duties for us, in whatever way it is made known. The love of that uttered will, the Psalmist declares, will always bring peace. Such an understanding of the text does not exclude the narrower reference, which is often taken to be the only thought in the Psalmist’s mind, nor does it obliterate the distinction between the written law of God and the disclosures of His will which we collect by the exercise of our faculties on events around and facts within us. But it widens the horizon of our contemplations, and bases the promised peace on
its true foundation, the submission of the human to the divine will.
Let us then consider how true love to the will of God, however it is made known to us, either in the Book or in our consciousness, or in daily providences, or by other people’s hints, is the talisman that brings to us, in all circumstances, and in every part of our nature, a tranquillity which nothing can disturb.
Of course, by ‘love’ here is meant, not only delight in the expression of, but the submission of the whole being to, God’s will; and we love the law only when, and because, we love the Lawgiver. I. Thus loving the law of God, not only with delight in the vehicle of its expression, but with inward submission to its behests, we shall have, first of all, the peacefulness of a restful heart.
Such a heart has found an adequate and worthy object for the outgoings of its affections. Base things loved always disturb. Noble things loved always soothe. And he to whom his judgment declares that the best of all things is God’s manifested will, and whose affections and emotions and actions follow the dictate of his judgment, has a love which grasps whatsoever things are noble and fair and of good report, and is lifted to a level corresponding with the loftiness of its objects.
For our hearts are like the creatures in some river, of which they tell us that they change their colour according to the hue of the bed of the stream in which they float and of the food of which they partake. The heart that lives on the will of God will be calm and steadfast, and ennobled into reposeful tranquillity like that which it grasps and grapples.
II. Then again, such love brings the calm of a submitted will. Brethren! it is not sorrow that troubles us so much as resistance to sorrow. It is not pain that lacerates; it cuts, and cuts clean when we keep ourselves still and let it do its merciful ministry upon us. But it is the plunging and struggling under the knife that makes the wounds jagged and hard to heal. The man who bows his will to the Supreme, in quiet acceptance of that which He sends, is never disturbed.
Resistance distracts and agitates; acquiescence brings a great calm. Submission is peace. And when we have learned to bend our wills, and let God break them, if that be His will, in order to bend them, then ‘nothing shall by any means hurt us’; and nothing shall by any means trouble us.
It is God’s great intention, in all that befalls us in this life, to bring our wills into conformity with His. Blessed is the ministry of sorrow and of pain and of loss, if it does that for us, and disastrous and accursed is the ministry of joy and success if it does not. There is no joy but calm, and there is no calm but in-not the annihilation, but -the intensest activity of will, in the act of submitting to that higher will, which is discerned to be ‘good,’ and is gratefully taken as ‘acceptable,’ and will one day be seen to have been ‘perfect.’ The joy and peace of a submitted will are the secret of all true tranquillity.
III. Then again, there comes by such a love the peace of an obedient life. When once we have taken it (and faithfully adhere to the choice) as our supreme desire to do God’s will, we are delivered from almost all the things that distract and disturb us. Away go all the storms of passion, and we are no more at the mercy of vagrant inclinations. We are no longer agitated by having to consult our own desires, and seeking to find in them compass and guide for our lives-a hopeless attempt! All these sources of agitation are dried up, and the man who has only this desire, to do his duty because God has made it such, has an ever powerful charm, which makes him tranquil whatever befalls.
And as thus we may be delivered from all the agitations and cross-currents of conflicting wishes, inclinations, aims, which otherwise would make a jumble and a chaos of our lives, so, on the other hand, if for us the supreme desire is to obey God, then we are delivered from the other great enemy to tranquillity-namely, anxious forecasting of possible consequences of our actions, which robs so many of us of so many quiet days. ‘I do the little I can do,’ said Faber, ‘and leave the rest with Thee,’ and that will bring peace... I have to do with this end of my actions-their motive; and I will make that right, and then it is Thy business to make the rest right.’ And so, ‘great peace have they which love Thy law.’
An obedient life not only delivers us from the distractions of miscellaneous desires, and from the anxiety of unforeseen results, but it contributes to tranquillity in another way. The thing that makes us most uneasy is either sin done or duty neglected. Either of these, however small it may appear, is like a horse-hair upon the sheets of a bed, or a little wrinkle in that on which a man lies, disturbing all his repose. No man is really at rest unless his conscience is clear. ‘The wicked is like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.’ But if the uttered will of the Lord is our supreme object, then in this direction, too, tranquillity is ours.
IV. Lastly, such a love gives the peace of freedom from temptations. ‘Nothing shall offend them.’ ‘There shall be no stumbling-block to them.’ ‘There shall be no occasion of stumbling in him,’ as the Apostle John varies the expression of my text. Within, there will be no traitors to surrender the camp to the enemy without. So Paul in the letter to the Philippians attributes to ‘the peace of God which passeth understanding’ a military function, and says that it will ‘garrison the heart and mind,’ and keep them ‘in Christ Jesus,’ which is but the Christian way of saying, ‘Great peace have they which love Thy law; and there is no occasion of stumbling in them.’”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Christian Resolutions_2020, Part 21.”
I fully plan at least one more Installment in which to review and examine Peace, the third Fruit of the Spirit. God willing I will bring you that to you next week. I hope as many of you as are hearing my voice, or reading my words will join me for that.
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on May 27th, 2020.
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