The Gift of Peace - Part A

Is not called the principal not called the Prince of joy. Though he could be called all those things but he is first and foremost to be regarded as the Prince of peace because you really don't have joy you really don't experience true love without that piece you really don't have. You have in today's world peace and peace among people might seem so far out of reach today on connect with Skip Heitzig Skip explores the supernatural peace that Jesus promised you before we begin, we want to let you know about an opportunity you have visited the sites were the prophets and kings in the Bible heard from God is my flight to Israel in 2022 90 on the journey this place is like mastering the Jordan River in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount in the garden and that's just a quick look at the track. Find out more about the trip that inspiration cruises.com/CA DQ now we want to let you know about a resource that will give you critical insight into what exactly is going on there in Israel and in the Middle East and why it's important for you to know, New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg is now based in Jerusalem and he's releasing the new nonfiction book enemies and allies I traveled with Joel to middle cities to meet with Kings Crown Prince. We sat together on the east lawn of the White House for the signing of the historic Abraham and I previewed his new book enemies and allies. I can tell you it contains never before published quotes from behind closed door meetings with some of the most powerful and mysterious leaders in the Middle East. You will want to read enemies and allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis. The authors conversation personal leaders in the world is she leaders meet's howls, meet the most cost leaders enemies and allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis of the authors conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world will send you a hardcover copy of enemies and allies.

Thanks for your gift of $35 or more to give. Visit connectwithskip.com or call 819 to 1888 John Skip Heitzig to get into today's message back in the 1990s was a very popular bumper sticker November the card okay so I remember people start to put that on their car and I was thinking like really you gotta do is think about it, picture visualize that that's going to bring world peace in Oakland. I was sort of the standard response that most people have become law that and they did alternate bumper stickers like this one. Visualize world peace right Rob Issa is watching my favorite one is visualize using your turn signal that's very important one, especially for curfew drivers.

You know, people been talking about peace and singing about peace protesting for peace and giving out peace prizes to one another for generations. We been talking about it saying about it and marching forward, but we haven't been experiencing much of so there was a journalist that was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau for her news outlet and there she was living in Jerusalem is young apartment overlooking the Western Wall complex of the Wailing Wall of the Western Wall is the most iconic part of all Jerusalem. It's the remnant the remains of the old temple complex, so it's that like the best view in the city so she has an apartment looking over the place were Jews still come to pray very sacred spot and so she would notice that every day this same man, an older gentleman with a beard and the hat and the hot side curls and Orthodox man would come to the wall every day and pray and she thought while he would be a great interview.

I want to find out who that is and talk to him so she went down to the wall to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, and she found him after he was done praying and she introduced herself as a journalist and could I have an interview with you and he said sure so she so well how long have you been doing this and what is it you pray for. He said I've been doing this every day for 25 years I come every day. No limit when these guys play at the wall that is stand there and pray they move when they pray pray with such intensity. Shaken rock back and forth so that I been doing this every day for 25 years and I pray for world peace.

I pray for the brotherhood of all mankind.

And I pray for, especially peace in the Middle East.

She was greatly impressed by his answer and she said so how does it make you feel to come here every day for 25 years and pray you drop his arms and he said like talking to a wall when it comes to peace.

I think a lot of people feel just like that like talking to a wall. We talk about it. We sing about it, we march forward, but we just don't have it, where do we get it. So I did a search this week Google some I like to do from time to time just to see what kind of results in an eye. I typed in the work piece and it came back with 1,390,000,000 results. You think it's on people's minds that I typed in the two words world peace got a similar number 1,070,000,000 hits.

Then I typed in personal peace got 1,016,000,000 hits that I typed in the words inner peace and spiritual peace and both of those got a similar amount 215 million results. I found a group of researchers and they they call this the global peace index the global peace. I didn't even know such a thing existed. So it's a group of people who researched this topic and they came up with an index called the global peace index and their statement on their website was. The world is less peaceful today than at any time in the last decade that's been a bad decade, but right now they're saying it's the worst in the last decade. Another surprise us with what we've been through a pandemic we have been through a lot of loss a lot of death, a lot of bad times in our economy so it doesn't surprise us when the global peace index says the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the past decade. There's another metric though that you probably have heard of an economic number and index called the misery index even been made into a popular television series misery index is an economic measuring tool came about in the 1960s by an economist named Arthur Okun. He was an advisor to Pres. Lyndon Johnson and that he came up with this idea of the misery index and that he calculates it this way is the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate.

So it's a combination of rising inflation and people out of work. The best time for the misery index was 2019 was at its lowest. Our misery was at its lowest economically so September 2019, which seems like a long time ago but it was if you can think back a really good time for our country in the world economically out of economic prosperity and it was getting better and better. So, September 2019. The misery index was up 5% it. Pete, at its worst. Just went 2020, the year of the pandemic, up from 5% to 15% in the highest. So our misery index is high are peace index is low. This is another reason why churches essential because you're not going to get any good news anywhere except here you're knocking to get good news in the newspapers are not committed good news and social media. You want to be robbed of peace go there if you want good news go to a place where you hear the truth is in the promises of God's word so we just sort of felt that after year of all this and still not over, we needed to be refreshed with a series on peace and be reminded of the promises of God speaks and we get a look at John chapter 14. In one particular verse, verse 27 it is.

It's a great promise. Years ago there was a schoolteacher from Canada. He read to the Bible 27 times and he decided he wanted to find out how many promises God made to us, so he spent a year and 1/2 after reading to the Bible 27 times decided now I'm going to go through it and and tally up all of the promises took him a year and 1/2, and the number he came up with was there are 7487 promises that God has made to us. Peter calls them great and precious promises but of all the promises God has given to us. Perhaps the most elusive of them is this promise of peace.

So the next few weeks within a look at peace with God.

Peace with each other. Peace within ourselves. And I want to take you to this verse, verse 27 of John 14 where to begin. A couple verses in advance look at back in verse 25 Jesus speaking these things I have spoken to you while being present with you. Let me remind you what is referring to these things is chapter 13, 14, 15 and 16 is called the upper room discourse. It is the last meeting Jesus has with his disciples before he is arrested and crucified. He knows what's coming.

He has announced to them what is coming, but with those announcement come all of these promises in these chapters sold with incredible promises. The power of the Holy Spirit on the promise of peace and many others. So these things are spoken to you while being present with you, but the help of the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you now are verse, verse 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 heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. That's the verse looking to camp on it is such a monumental promise that I want to give you out of that single verse. A fourfold description of the peace the Jesus promised his followers for aspects of this piece. The first aspect is that this piece is needful on nothing anybody would disagree with that.

We need God's peace having everybody here would vote for that yet. I agree with that we needed. But if anyone really needed peace. That night that Jesus spoke these words, it would've been his disciples is what you have to understand at this point in the last supper meal. The disciples are stressed out, they have given up their careers. They been following Jesus for 3 1/2 years.

The anticipated he's gonna come and build the kingdom on earth that clearly is not going to happen all their hopes during this meal come crashing down. Why because Jesus announces to them his exploration and his exit. He says to them I'm going to die and I'm going to leave a minute part and where I'm coming. You can't follow so in the midst of that winter just there their turmoil might even been out of control.

He says peace. Peace I leave with you, I'm in a just venture a guess that when he said these words, a few of the disciples may have rolled her eyes at him and he just said he's leaving he's dying. You can come where I'm going. I'm not building the kingdom you thought peace like piece it out. Syria and there rolled her eyes. I called really, whatever you know you might be sort like this.

Somebody comes up to you and says hey I just want you know that your son or your daughter just got in a traffic accident but don't worry, don't worry, you just lay that news on me and then you say don't worry.

Just tell your personal story. Years ago I was in junior high school I was on a vacation with my parents. I was in the backseat of the my dad was driving mom was in the passenger seat.

We are going from our home in Southern California after Oregon were going out of Reno, Nevada early in the morning were on the highway and we didn't know that there was a driver who had been drinking and it fallen asleep at the wheel and was in our lane coming around the curve on a mountain highway. It was a head-on collision was a 120 mile an hour impact of two vehicles. It instantly killed that man and put my mom and dad in the hospital. I guess they didn't know what to do with me.

I was in the hospital for a little bit getting checked out. Then they stuck me in a hotel room alone, junior high school kids, so I turn on the TV that evening and the evening news talks about the collision. It shows are vehicle that had been in the collision and the news anchor announced that my father and mother had died know what true but I didn't know that at the time so all of the wind gets sucked out of the room. I just I'm freaking out and so I started getting calls from like my brothers and other people announcing don't worry it's going to be Ocampo. It's gonna be okay and then went over.

They didn't really die, but I'll have you know I am in the psych it's it's you're at a moment of heightened emotion and your processing through the information and in the midst of that Jesus says peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I just want you to get that impact among the let's look at the word.

The word that he uses here for peace is the Greek word I rain a which is where we get the feminine name Irene Irene means peaceful one, or peace.

It is defined as an internal state of tranquility is when you are quiet and you have a restful mind, that's the idea of this word irenic. It became a greeting.

A common greeting to say to somebody to say peace to you. I rain a Paul uses that in his C says grace and peace to you from God our father and from the Lord Jesus Christ that our practice of extending peace actually goes farther back than the Greeks, it goes back to the Hebrews the Hebrews to this day. Use the ancient greeting when they meet one another on the street and they say what they say shalom what is wrong is a shalom, and shalom is to extend peace to somebody or to wish them well so that here's Jesus saying peace, shalom. I rain a I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Now notice what he says. Peace I leave with you know it's a deposit it's at gift.

You don't work your way into a feeling of peace. I'm just laying it on you. In fact, the new living translation says I am leaving you with a gift.

Peace of mind and heart what those words sink in. If you're a businessman or a businesswoman and maybe you're losing your business because of all these lockdowns and regulations and restrictions.

Jesus Christ is promising you his peace.

If your worker and you don't know if you have a job this coming week or next month. He is promising you peace.

If you're a student, and you are struggling with zoom classes and you don't know if you to be able to graduate because of this crazy system. He is telling you. Peace. If you are a parent and you have to work and have their children at home and homeschool them because of this, not being able to go to school here. These words Jesus is promising you peace in the midst of that. Okay that's good. Jesus, thank you for that nice sentiment. Thank you for saying peace.

But you know it's it's nice to talk about peace and it's great the promise peace, but the question still remains, where is peace to be found because the truth of the matter is world history shows that there's never been a time of peace. There's never been a time where we have and as a human race experienced war.

I read an article in the New York Times that was quoting Will Durant, the famous historian said in 3400 years of recorded history. The world has only been at peace about 8% of the time so out of 3400 years of recorded history. The world according to the article is been at peace 268 years and people say well you know how many peace treaties have been broken in that time, all of them, all of them so somebody said peace is actually that brief moment in history where everyone stands around reloading our get ready for the next conflict. According to the daily Mail the daily mail is a news outlet in London. The daily Mail said there are more than 40 active conflicts around the world at this moment, this is today. This is now some of the countries currently war, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Mexico, Turkey, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, and it goes on to say the number of people affected by humanitarian crises has almost doubled over the past decade, so you've got war you got humanitarian problems. Add to that covert, 19. Add to that worldwide recession and you have the absence of peace. You have national fees you have international peace and because of that you have her excuse me, the absence you don't have your conflict. You don't have international peace and you don't have because of that interpersonal prints. Anxiety levels are at an all time high. Here's something I found for mental health America that's a group of mental health experts to study this, they said, as the pandemic relentlessly persists. We are seeing the highest levels of anxiety and depression reported since the pandemic hit the US in March 2020. So it's been about a year, almost in this whole year. Right now, depression and anxiety are at their highest.

The article says this troubling trend is fueled by loneliness and isolation. So once again it's great to have a promise greatest thing about great to talk about but where is it that's what we have to keep reading because it says peace I leave with you, but here it is my peace I give to you the peace that Jesus is speaking of is tied to him personally. The promise of peace is linked to the Prince of peace.

So you know that's a title that is given to Jesus by Isaiah the prophet right is the one to keep that that wrote about the Prince of peace. You know the text. Well we talk about it just about every Christmas. Isaiah 96 for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given in his name will be called wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, Prince of peace is a very interesting title. He's not called the Prince of love is not called the Prince of hope is not called the Prince of joy.

Though he could be called all those things but he is first and foremost to be regarded as the Prince of peace because you really don't have joy until you have peace you really don't experience true love without that piece you really don't have hope until you have peace so he goes by that title. The Prince of peace. Now he says my peace. I need you to understand what this means.

It's literally my personal peace. The peace that I own a piece that governs my internal life that peace is what I get.

So he is the manufacturer of this piece and he is the distributor basket height with a message from the series give peace a chance that you Skip with an important message for you. I just want to say thank you, thank you for being a faithful listener to connect Skip it's thanks to the grace of God and generous folks like yourself that were able to expand the reach of this radio program R&B on what we would be able to achieve on our own, and I want to invite you to help us reach even further so you and many more people can hear these Bible-based teachings and experience the transforming power of God's word.

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