Peace

Listen Now

Read the Sermon

Transcript

[Message] We’re turning again to the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John and continuing our study of the Upper Room Discourse. Tonight the subject is “Peace,” and will you listen as I read verses 25 through 31 for our Scripture reading and for the section that we will be attempting to expound?

“These things have I spoken unto you, being present with you. But the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. (Isn’t that an interesting statement? ‘My Father is greater than I.”) And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go from here.”

In this section of the upper room discourse our Lord gives us three promises. One is new, and two are old. As he closes his discussion around the table you can tell from the last clause of verse 31 that there is a movement on the part of the apostles at this point in the upper room discourse because he says to the eleven, “Arise, let us go from here.” So the preceding section has taken place in the upper room as they have observed the last Passover and the first Lord’s Supper, but now in chapter 15, following chapter 14, they will be on their way.

Among the things that our Lord says is a priceless last will and testament. Will you look at verse 27, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you?” Now the Lord was really the poorest of the poor. You’ll remember the Apostle Paul says something about this that, “Though he was rich with the riches of heaven became poor for your sakes that through his poverty we might become rich.” We know that, “The Son of man did not have where to lay his head,” as he put it. So as far as being poor was concerned the Lord Jesus was the poorest of the poor and yet he leaves us this priceless heritage of his peace.

Now everybody at one time or another has prayed in the same disposition as these words of John Greenleaf Whittier, “Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace.” Peace is something that everyone would like to have. I’m sure that if we were to sit down and talk with, individually, you with me and I with you, those of you who are in this auditorium tonight, basically, one of the things that you would really want would be peace. You would want to have the sense of peace, peace toward God and peace toward man and peace within yourself because men have burdens. Think of the burdens that we do have. There is the burden of unemployment, and there are people who are unemployed. There is the burden of poverty, and there is the burden of just being tired. There is the burden of one’s parents, if there are a lot of young people here, I’m sure they could say, “Amen,” at that. But even when we’re old we have the burden of our parents often. There is the burden of loneliness. There is the burden of illness. There is the burden, all of the burdens that go with growing old. So, it comes to all of us, the burdens of life. And peace, what a magnificent thing it has.

Now what we want is not the sheltered placidity that some people would like to have, a kind of placidity in which you’re not in touch with the world at all. We’re not thinking about the peace that a hermit might have when he lives by himself. Nor do we want the peace of and emotionless stoicism, the kind of peace that one has to steal himself in order to obtain. But what we are thinking about when we think about biblical peace is the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I doubt that anyone had a more troubled life, outwardly, than the Lord Jesus. He had disciples who didn’t believe him, who were a trial to him. He had enemies who were constantly after him. They were persecuting him, and they were anxious to have his life and ultimately they did have it. And yet our Lord fully cognizant of all that he has suffered and all that he faces says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” So the kind of peace that we’re thinking about is the kind of peace in which a man can be at rest with God and at rest with the world and at rest with himself in the midst of all of the trials of life. That’s the peace that Jesus Christ had. And that’s the peace, I feel sure, that all of us would like to have. It’s not the peace that means that we do not shed a tear for he shed tears; but it’s the peace of emotion, but it’s the peace of quietness within in the midst of the ups and downs of our life, the trials and tragedies.

Well now the first of the promises that’s one of them. The first of the promises however that our Lord speaks about is again this promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Look again at verse 25. He says, “These things have I spoken unto you, being present with you. But the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.” So the Paraclete is the first of the promises, the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And remember the word Paraclete comes from the Greek word parakaleo which means three things. I hope I can remember them, I don’t have them in my notes, but it means to encourage, so the Paraclete is one who encourages. It also means to exhort, and so the Paraclete is one who exhorts. As I mentioned in one of the studies, he is not only the comforter, but he is our discomforter upon occasion when he points out the things in our lives that are displeasing to the Lord. So he exhorts, and he encourages, and he also comforts or consoles. All of those ideas are bound up in the word parakaleo, which means literally, “to be called along side,” kaleo, meaning “to call,” para meaning “by the side of.” And that’s the basic idea of the word, to call along side in order to help by consoling, by encouraging, by comforting or exhorting, so the comforter.

Now notice the two things that the comforter is going to do. Now remember when we are talking about our Lord’s upper room discourse we are talking about a situation in which our Lord is addressing them before his cross and before Pentecost, telling them of the things that will happen in the new age, but we live in that new age now, so that things that he promised are things that we actually have now as our possession. So don’t lose the proper prospective he is speaking prophetically, but we are living in the age in which the prophecies have come true. So, the first thing that the Holy Spirit will do, and he is the possession of all who believe in him, the remainder of the New Testament tells us, is teach. “He will teach you all things.” Now what does that mean? Well that means that the revelation that is given in the word of God, and specifically through the Lord Jesus Christ, will be taught us by the Holy Spirit. In other words, that speaks of the clarity of divine revelation as a result of the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Now revelation is the truth given to us by God. It refers to the giving of the truth and also to the truth that has been given. Illumination is the work of the spirit in enabling us to understand what has been given us in revelation. So the revelation is complete. We have final revelation in the word of God. We don’t need any further revelation. That’s why people who stand up today and say they are prophets are not really true to the word of God. Now frequently they don’t understand the Bible, and they speak of prophesy in the sense of, or revelation or prophesy or whatever it may be in the sense of, teaching or understanding or perhaps speaking vividly the truth of God. But the Bible teaches the revelation is complete. What we need is illumination that is, light thrown on the Bible so that we understand it. That’s what you pray when you open your Bibles, I hope. That’s what I do. “Lord, help me to understand this through the illumination ministry of the Holy Spirit.

So, “he will teach all things.” He will take the things of Christ, and he will show them to the disciples in the new age. Many things the Lord said to them they did not understand. Isn’t that strange? You never think of our Lord as teaching things that they could not understand. I would imagine that often the apostles when they got off by themselves would say, Peter speaking to John, “John, did you understand that?” And John would say, “No, he was way over my head today.” [Laughter] You never say that in Believers Chapel, of course, [Laughter] but they said it. So, it’s apostolic to say that, I presume because he will say later own, “I have many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now.” So, he will teach them. He will take the things of Christ and he will show them to them so they will understand. The clarity of the revelation will be the object of the spirit’s teaching ministry, but also he says, he will, “bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you.”

One of the older commentators on the Gospel of John in the 20th century was a man who was on the board of one of our leading theological institutions. This man in his commentary on the Gospel of John has told of a young man who had formally attended a modernistic seminary, and he was saved through the ministry of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse. And this man who was a business man came to speak in that church some years ago and while he was preaching he referred to the fact that it was absurd to think that John the Apostle could remember all of the things that our Lord said in that great prayer of John 17 which we will ultimately come to here, were it not for the fact of John 14:26, “I will bring all things to your remembrance.” So he just simply pointed out that it would be far beyond the capacity of John to remember everything that our Lord said in the upper room discourse and record it as he has recorded it. Well the young theological student came up to him afterwards and thanked him profusely because one of the criticisms of his theology professors had been simply this. That it was ridiculous to place confidence in the statements of a man who was ninety years of age about something that had been spoken scores or decades of years before and expect that we would have an accurate record of the words of Lord Jesus. So he thanked the Bible teacher for pointing out that it was the work of the Holy Spirit to remind them of the things that the Lord Jesus had spoken. He said to the Bible teacher, “But oh I felt like shouting for joy when you dispelled the theory that it was not John’s memory, but rather it was the Holy Spirit’s own memory bringing back to John word for word what the Lord Jesus had to say.”

Well whether we want to go altogether with what he said, it may well be that John is giving us a brief transcript of what our Lord said. And we know that it’s true to what he said, but nevertheless it’s one of the works of the Holy Spirit to bring to their remembrance the things the Lord Jesus said. Now that speaks of the continuity of the revelation so that the revelation our Lord gave up to the time of his death is followed in the new age by the Holy Spirit’s teaching and illumination and his reminding ministry so that the things that our Lord said find their ultimate continuity in the things that the apostles write in the New Testament. We’re not to think that the words of the apostles are any less inspired than the words of our Lord. They’re just as inspired because, while we have our Lord speaking in the gospels, we have the Holy Spirit speaking through the apostles in the epistles. And so it is the triune God that reveals truth to us and teaches it to us through the apostles.

Incidentally in the Gospel of John you have some evidence of this reminding ministry in several of the remarks that the apostle makes. For example, back in chapter 2 and verse 22 we read, “When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.” So, John tells us that they remembered the things the Lord had said later on. That was the spirit’s reminding ministry. And then in the 16th verse of the 12th chapter, the apostle writes, “These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.” So you can see that they’re life was a constant reminding by the Holy Spirit of the things that he had taught them.

So the Holy Spirit then is to be given, to teach and to remind, but now we come to the promise of peace in verse 27. This is the second of the promises of the section. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Now peace is usually something that we wish for someone else. We say to some of our friends who are in trials and tribulations, “Well I certainly will be praying that you have peace.” What we are just doing is really hoping, trusting the Lord the answer our prayers that they will come to peace. Now the Lord Jesus does not say, “I wish,” or “I hope,” that you do have peace, but he says, “I give my peace to you.” He has the authority to do that because he is the Son of God. That’s something, of course, that we are not.

Now notice again that his peace is not the absence or the suppression of feeling. We must never equate feeling happy with biblical peace. Happiness is only a secondary goal. If people say to you now, “In Christianity we will teach you how to be happy.” Well, of course, we are happy upon occasion, but Christianity promises something better than happiness which depends largely on the things that happen to us. That’s why it’s called happiness. We’re interested in what the Bible calls joy or peace which is something that a person possesses in the midst of things that happen that we don’t particularly like. Look back at chapter 12 verse 27 and you’ll see the Lord Jesus was not always happy. We read in verse 27, “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.” So, you see our Lord Jesus had peace, but he was also troubled. He was troubled in the Garden of Gethsemane. He spoke about how his soul was troubled almost unto death. But in the midst of that he had the joy of the Lord. That’s biblical peace. That’s a Christian’s peace. So it is not then the absence of emotion. It’s not suppression.

Maybe we can look at one other illustration of this. In Mark chapter 14 and verse 33 in the prayer of agony in Gethsemane the Lord Jesus prays, in the first place, he goes forward, you remember, he first gets down on his knees, and then he’s so burdened by the things that are happening to him that he falls upon his face and gravels in the ground like a worm, reminding us of the statement in the 22nd Psalm. “I’m a worm and no man.” And in the midst of this awful agony of Gethsemane he cries out, “Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done.” Now, that’s peace. When a person in the midst of trials such as that can say, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” So it is not, then, the absence of feelings. It is not the suppression of feelings. As a matter of fact this peace is not a matter of emotions at all. It’s a matter of convictions. It’s a matter of assurance of the truthfulness of the word of God in the midst of the circumstances of life.

Convictions, well, we can think of all of the convictions that we have; the convictions that we do belong to the Lord by virtue of the blood that was shed. The conviction that Christ paid the penalty for his own people that he is truly the savior of his people, or we can think of the conviction that heaven is assured for those who have believed in the Lord Jesus. We can think of the conviction that he is with us in the trials of life. “Low I am with you always, even until the end of the age.” The conviction of a heavenly Father who cares for us, the conviction of a Father who loves us enough to discipline us a little bit, sometimes a lot, but that’s what we need. We need some discipline, and here and there he does discipline us. Isn’t it great to have a Father, even if he does discipline us? How much better to have a Father who disciplines us than not to have a Father at all? So the peace that he is speaking about is not the suppression of emotions. It’s not the absence of emotions. It’s not a matter of emotions at all. It’s a matter of convictions concerning the truths of the word of God.

Now, let me just make a few comments about the words here. He says in verse 27, “Peace I leave with you.” Now, that word leave here is the word that means to forgive in some spots, but here it clearly means to leave in the sense of bequeath. It’s like a man who is talking about his will and speaking to his children and saying, “Now I’m going to leave you my money, or I’m going to leave you my furniture. I’m going to leave you this possession or that.” That’s the force of this. “Peace I leave with you.” Now this peace is bequeathed to those who have been reconciled. It’s not for the world. If you are not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have not received the forgiveness of sins because he died for sins, if there’s been no personal transaction between you and the Lord, this peace is not for you. This peace is the peace that he made by the blood of the cross, as Paul tells us in Colossians. So it’s this peace that he bequeaths us.

Legacies, we know from reading the news papers, are often unclaimed. It’s too bad that some believers have never claimed their legacy of peace, it seems because they are constantly in turmoil, constantly upset, constantly disturbed. It’s almost as if they have this inheritance, but no one has been able to locate them and inform them of it.

There’s a story of a Confederate soldier. I hate to tell this of a Confederate soldier. I’d like to turn it around and make it a Yankee, but this happens to be one of a Confederate soldier. It seems that three weeks after the late lamented war was over that a couple of Yankee soldiers were on their way between, I believe, Richmond and Washington and as they were on the way and were passing over a rather lonely spot, there was some noise and movement over in the bushes and a very disheveled looking Southern soldier came out and met them. And he said to them, “I’m starving to death. Can you help me? Can you give me some food?” And the Captain, who was on a horse, said, “Starving to death, why don’t you go into Richmond and get what you need?” And he said, “Why if I went into Richmond, I deserted a few weeks ago, if I went into Richmond they’d put me in jail and then shoot me.” And the Captain said, “You haven’t heard the news?” He said, “What news?” “The war is over. There’s no longer any war, and if you go back there, they’ll take care of you.” Well one wonders if there’s not a situation something like that in our spiritual life. Sometimes even we who are Christians have failed to understand that our Lord has won the war, and now the peace is bequeathed to his own. Have you claimed your legacy? It’s left for you.

There’s a little stanza in a hymn that we sometimes sing. “I hear the words of love, I gaze upon the blood. I see the mighty sacrifice and I have peace with God.” That’s when we’ve come to reconciliation. And he goes on to add the second aspect of it, “My peace give I unto you,” and that’s the kind of peace that is bestowed upon us as a gift for our daily lives. It’s possible that these two kinds of peace are the peace of expiation, the peace of the forgiveness of sins, and the other, the peace of our experience because it is said to be “My peace I give unto you.” We do know that the Bible teaches that there is such a thing as peace with God when we believe in Christ the account is settled between us and the Lord, peace with God. The other kind of peace is the peace of God that we enjoy because by the grace of God we’ve learned to rely on the Holy Spirit in the experiences of life.

Have you ever noticed this about the Lord? There was no flurry in our Lord’s life. There was no sign of strain. There was no trace of nerves. He never said to the apostles, “Now you’re going to miss me for a little while because I’m going over to the Christian counseling service for next weekend and spend a little time there and try to get things straightened out in my own Christian life.” I’m not trying to run down such. I’m just trying to say that our Lord was at peace in spite of the experiences of his life. He was.

He had continual intrusions into his privacy. He didn’t know what the doctrine of privacy was. And consequently he was a person who was constantly the object of the attention of the saints and those that were not saints, and yet he was at peace. He had no respite from dawn to dark. He would get up early in the morning and pray while everybody else was snoozing away, or snoring away as the case may be. There was a steady drain on his spiritual resources. There were inconsiderate people who broke in upon him at all hours of the day. There was the awful burden of sharing every hurt heart’s sins and sorrows and of feeling them as personally as if they were his own for he thought surely as he carried out his representative work of those whom he was representing. He was called Jesus because he would save his people from their sins, and so those burdens were upon his heart constantly. He had the misunderstanding of his own believing friends. He had the cutting criticism and the petty kinds of criticism, the pettiness of people. How petty we can be, of course? And the terrible unremitting toil, the disappointments, the experience as the Son of God of preaching the clear message and finding people turn away.

There are people who say, “If we just preach the message clearly, everyone would believe.” Jesus Christ’s preaching gives the lie to that. How ridiculous can a person be? The Apostle Paul preached the gospel plainly and clearly. Only a remnant responded to his teaching. You see salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit, but there is a sense in which our Lord’s benevolent affection went out to all of the people to whom he ministered, and so he had to experience that experience of seeing them reject the word of God and knowing what that ultimately meant. So, no flurry, no sign of strain upon his face, no trace of nerves, always, “My peace,” why? Well, because his trust as the Son of God was in his Father, and so in the midst of the experiences of life, Peter tell us that, he handed over his affairs into the hands of his Father in heaven.

Isn’t it great to have a Father, now think about it for a moment, you know, by the way don’t we often say, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be a child again? No cares in the world, a child.” Why children have no cares because their parents take care of them. Isn’t that what we think? Wouldn’t it be nice to be five and six and seven years of age again? Or three? No cares, if we could just blot out everything that’s happened and live back there? Now, think about it for a moment. What did we say? No cares because the parents take care of them. The father takes care of the child. Do you know what the Bible calls us? Children. Why? Because the Father has undertaken to take care of us. We are children, so rejoice, the cares are gone. The ultimate cares are in the hands of the Father in heaven. Cannot you see that even that little figure is designed to show you how much you mean to God in heaven? You’re a child, and he’s a Father. And like any Father, he takes care of the children’s needs.

Now, the apostles, they were interesting men because their experiences are so often similar to ours. Their nerves sometimes gave way. They passed through a Samaritan village, and those people were rude and inhospitable to them, and so John cried out to the Lord, “Let us call down fire from heaven to consume them.” Good apostolic suggestion, isn’t it? The Lord Jesus said, “You don’t know what manner of spirit you are of John.” And then they were with him on the Sea of Galilee and the storm came up and they came and they awakened him and said, “Master, Master carest Thou not that we perish?” And he arose and rebuked the winds and the seas, and then he looked at them and said, “How is it that ye have so little faith?” And then we remember too that when the crowd of five thousand was getting ready to be fed. What was the advice of the apostles? Send them away. Let them go get their own food. Let them go over into the village and get their food.

Do you remember Peter in prison? Well things had changed by then. The Apostle Peter had come to experience the presence of the Paraclete, and as a result of the presence of the Paraclete, he had come to know something about a heavenly Father and so now he is in prison in Acts chapter 12, and what was he doing? He was to appear before a judge who had just already put one of his colleges to death, James. And he’s going to appear before him as judge. What do you think an apostle would be doing? Gnawing at his fingernails? Well he was sleeping. Just as our Lord was asleep in the midst of the storm so now the apostle having learned that the presence of the Lord is with every believer is sleeping in the face of death. In fact it’s always amused me, but Acts chapter 12 teaches that Peter was so sound asleep, and he had not taken anything, there were no pills then, but he was sleeping so soundly that when the angel came in his prison, even the bright light of the angel didn’t awaken him, and the angel had to nudge him. Do you remember, had to nudge him and awaken him? So, soundly did he sleep in the midst of the peace that had been his since the Holy Spirit had come.

Well the third promise if a promise of parting. Verses 28 through 31 the Lord Jesus said, “Ye have heard,” oh by the way I did want to make just one comment about, “Not as the world giveth.” How does the world give peace? Well they don’t give peace. The world offers us only unsubstantiated hope. That’s all.

Now in verse 28 we read, “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.” This is somewhat of a recapitulation of chapter 14, of course. Now the leaving of the Lord Jesus, he says, should be cause for an accession of joy, not an accession of anxiety. But they were dominated by selfish fear, not serine faith. They were thinking if he goes, to whom shall we go? Little realizing that since he now is to go, he will be available for everyone at every moment. So that it is an advantage for him to go. While he was here in the flesh, he might be with Peter but not with John. But now he can be with Peter and John at the same time. So, you should rejoice that I am going to the Father, and I am going there as the Son in subjection to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. In other words, they should be glad since union with the Father will enlarge the work of this perfect man in their behalf.

But what’s the reference to, “For the Father is greater than I?” We always were taught, were we not, in the Christian church that the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there are three co-equal divine persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So how can we possibly say that the Father is greater than the Son? Does not that teach then that the Son of God is not really God, in some way he’s not as great as the Father? Well I would like for you to notice because it’s important that you study the Bible word by word. How many times have I said that? And others have said it too. But it’s something that needs repetition. He does not say, “My God is greater than I.” He says, “My Father is greater than I.” He’s not talking about the essence of deity here. He’s talking about his office as the son of man carrying out a mediatorial work under the direction of the Father. The Father is greater than he in the since that it is he who is directing the son through all of his experience while he is here carrying out his mediation. That is, his work of becoming the savior, his work of making the atoning sacrifice, and he still is the mediator in heaven until the full results of the atoning work or the possession of the believers. So he acts as mediator now. When he comes the second time and the resurrection takes place, we’re caught up, the living, to meet him in the air, when the kingdom takes place upon the earth he acts as mediator, until finally Paul says, he’ll turn the whole thing over to the Father that God may be all in all throughout the ages of eternity. So, “The Father is greater than I” means simply that in this matter of mediation, he is the one who is taking the lead. In the matter of essence, I have the same essence that he has. In this same gospel in chapter 10 verse 30 he said, “I and the Father are one thing,” John chapter 10 and verse 30. That has to do with essence. This has to do with his office as mediator.

I don’t know whether I can tell this in three minutes or not, but it’s something of an illustration. There was a Christian firm in this city, I guess it still is. I haven’t maintained contact with it in recent years. But at one time there were three brothers who were active in this business. One of them was the President. One was the head of the sales, and the other was a man who was head of the plant, the technical side of the business. We could conceive, let’s assume that they each owned thirty-three and a third percent of the business. I don’t know that that was true, but let’s assume that. And let’s assume that as they looked at their own capacities one said to the other, well, John E. is the person that’s best fitted for being President. He meets people well. He has the kind of leadership and administrative abilities that suit him for that task. But Orville, well Orville is the one who has the technical skills and consequently, we’ll turn over the technical side of the business, it was a manufacturing plant, to him. And Don, well he is gifted in salesmanship and we’ll allow him to handle that.

You might have meet Mr. John E. Mitchell on the street, being one of their customers, and you might have said, “Mr. Mitchell, one of your machines that we’ve been using with a great deal of success has worn out and we’re changing our plant a little bit, and we’d like a machine.” And with that you launch into a very technical description of the kind of machine you would like for this company to build for you. And the chances are Mr. John E. Mitchell would say, “I’m sorry. That’s not my part of the business. When it comes to the technicalities of the business, Orville knows a great deal more than I do. He’s greater than I in those matters.” And so in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, there were certain tasks in the Trinity that were committed to him, certain tasks committed to the Holy Spirit, certain tasks are the Father’s tasks. In those tasks one may say, “The Father is greater than I.”

Now he goes on to say, “But, now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” In other words, I’m telling you all of these things so when they come to pass well you’ll have some assurance for your faith. “Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh (That, of course, is the evil one, or Satan) and hath nothing in me.” In other words, the evil one will come, and he will test me, and he will find that I do not fail at any point. H.B. Sweet said, “The ruler found a man he could not rule.” The prince of this world found someone that he could not rule, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, two of these great promises we have. We have the promise of his parting, and he is now at the right hand of the Father. We have the Paraclete. But do we have the peace, which is the third? The peace of God depends upon the sense of adequate resources. Do we have the sense of adequate resources? “I can do all things through Christ who keeps on pouring his power into me,” Philippians 4:13. “My God shall supply all of my need by his riches in glory through Christ Jesus.” That’s pretty adequate resources isn’t it? Philippians 4:19. In the midst of the crises of life, we have adequate resources. Peace depends upon a sense of fellowship with God.

Listen to what Paul says in Philippians 4:6 and 7 and I’ll have to close with this. He writes, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.” I know someone says, “Well, that’s not for me. That’s for preachers perhaps, outstanding Christians.” Why when the Lord said in verse 27, “Peace I leave with you,” “My peace I give unto you,” that’s a plural you. And like so many of the promises of the word of God it had its first reference to the apostles, but to all who stood in relationship to the Lord Jesus as those whom he represented when he died upon the cross at Calvary. That is the great bequest of peace that is the Christians inheritance through Christ. May God help us to learn how to lean upon him and in the experiences of life, find the peace that he offers us. Let’s bow in a word of prayer.

[Prayer] Father, we thank Thee for the peace of God which passes all understanding. So often Lord we have in the midst of the flurries and trials and tragedies of life trembled. But we thank Thee that the rock of the promises of God has never trembled under us…

[RECORDING ENDS ABRUPTLY]