Joy & Peace

Jesus himself is called the Prince of peace.

And yet this same Jesus says what I call not to bring peace but a sword to set brother against brother and father against son will discover how to reconcile those ideas. Next on Renewing Your Mind. Following Christ is its very nature, countercultural. Not only are we battling our own flesh.

The world system is hostile to the things of God. With all this conflict is the piece today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. RC Spool pointillist of the only source of true peace so far in our series on spiritual growth.

We've looked at the fruit of the spirit of love and we've noticed that love is both a gift and a fruit and as I mentioned already. Love stands at the beginning of the list of the fruit of the spirit that the apostle sets forth for us in his epistle to the Galatians before we get into that today. Let me just read that text that lists for us the fruit of the spirit. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law mentioned that the list of the fruit of the spirit that we find here in Galatians. I don't think is simply catalogued for us in an arbitrary way or set forth willy-nilly just a loose list for connection of various virtues.

I think that there is a kind of order. A kind of interconnectedness that we can perceive in this understanding of the fruit of the spirit. I don't want to be's lavish about that, but I do think that we see that love stands at the beginning of that list for a reason, because out of love flows. The other fruits of the spirit and there seems to be almost a kind of order or a kind of sequence, a kind of mutual interdependence among these fruits and if you would take the time to compare Galatians 5 with first Corinthians 13. Even though the subject matter of first review 13 focuses on love, you will see contained within that exposition of love in first Corinthians 13, virtually the same kind of content that we find in this list of the fruit of the spirit.

Let's look now at the following fruits of the spirit beyond law. The next two that are mentioned will be the ones that will consider in this session, joy, and peace that when you see virtues or fruits like these occurring in a list without qualification, there is some difficulty in understanding because what kind of joy is the apostle speaking up here what kind of peace does he have in view. If you've ever taken the time to read careful word study of the meaning of joy is its use. Biblically, you will see that the Bible speaks of joy in a multitude of ways as it does of peace. So what is the kind of joy that is specifically in view here. John Calvin, for example, says that the fruit of the spirit that the apostle is capturing here in terms of joy has to do with the disposition of one's personality toward cheerfulness.

In simple terms, the Holy Spirit is not a sourpuss. The Holy Spirit is not morose. The Holy Spirit is not sardonic in his personality, and as the spirit of God is indwelling the Christian and the personality begins to be shaped by the presence of agape in the soul. One of the results of that is a cheerful disposition. In fact Calvin prefers and this is strange. According Calvin for purpose because so often we see Calvin portrayed in literature or even in caricatures. He always see him as this very stern and morose figure. Calvin prefers the Latin term Calera tossed how clarity to indicate what it means to have the fruit of the spirit of joy. Know the basic root of this joy is grounded in the Christian celebration of victory.

What does Jesus say be of good cheer.

Why, for I have overcome the world.

That is the fruit of the spirit of joy is not a superficial type of frivolous attitude, nor is it a kind of plastic happiness that so often is characteristic in the Christian community. There's an over saccharine and over sweetie, sort of a very light and superficial kind of a joy that becomes a masquerade Christians are expected to be happy there expected to be joyful, and so sometimes we manufacture a façade of joyfulness that is really repugnant to those outside of the face because it carries and communicates our of insincerity and superficiality.

That's why we have this image in the culture of being plastic Christian. So what Calvin is saying another's. And I think accurately so is that the cheerfulness that is to characterize the person who's bearing the fruit of the spirit is one that is born of an understanding of something very significant. It is the joy and the celebration of the bridegroom and the bride who understands the happiness that comes from the wedding. It is the joy of celebration and primarily what is being celebrated is the victory of Christ. Christ has over, the world and is that sinks in two months and the ramifications of the cosmic victory of Christ strike home into our hearts. It gives the Christian the capacity to be joyful as Paul elaborates in his letter to the Philippians in the midst of dire and dreadful circumstances in this world. Not that we rejoice in the tragic. Not that we are gleeful in the midst of suffering. I mean, the Christian has to know how to cry, the Christian has know-how to mourn back the Bible tells us that it is better to spend our time in the house of mourning and the spend our time with the mirth of fools, but there is still that deeply in rooted sense of joy and sheer that cannot be taken away that is rooted and grounded in the supreme victory of Christ and what it means for me personally, I think of a New Testament experience or Jesus sent out the disciples on a mission and he gave them extraordinary powers, miraculous powers he took of the power that he had and distributed it to his disciples and sent them out to heal to exorcise demons and they had never had this power before and can you imagine it. If Christ would come to you and just for two weeks gave you his power of performing miracles and sent you on a mission.

How exciting would be they came out in a related fine people were possessed by demons and they were safe because the demons were trembling and run entire toilet 570 was deaf and they would say here and the people we hear how you feel.

If you experience that those guys came back from that mission.

Clicking their heels and dancing and they were so excited I Jesus sort of humor them for a minute but then he said to them, rejoice not, that you have power over the evil forces, but what but that your names are written in C.

When a Christian grows in grace.

When the fruit of the spirit takes hold in his life. He begins to understand what he should be happy about, and the source of his good cheer. Again I say before pass on to the next one.

The mandate of Christ, be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. This is not to say is the superficial salesman comes on and slaps you on the back says pack up your troubles old kit bag and smile smiles. It is not an irrational escapism of frivolity, but it is a cheer cheerfulness that is rooted and grounded in cosmic reality of victory has been one of the matter what else goes wrong in my life.

Real tragedy real pain real sorrow there still is that rock-bottom dimension of cheerfulness should be there because of what Christ is the goal. Along with this cheerfulness and love comes. Also, the dimension of peace and it seems almost a travesty on biblical truth to try to cover the fruit of the spirit of peace in 10 minutes because the concept of peace, biblically, is one of the most all-encompassing dimensions of biblical revelation effective.

I would ask a student what does the Bible mean by peace and he tried to answer in five minutes I think I'm irritated because the meaning of peace is so multifaceted and we can look at it in its various nuances and then be a little bit puzzled as specifically what kind of pieces in view as a fruit of the spirit. We may be tempted to think that the fruit of the spirit of peace is kind of that inner peace that peace of mind that inner tranquility that the Stoics thought that the Epicurean sought and that the peace of mind. Cultists seek in our own day now. It certainly has a dimension of that, but that's not the central meaning of peace biblically and I'm convinced it's not the central meaning of peace as a fruit of the spirit in the first instance peace biblically in the Old Testament word was what shalom so important to the Jew that emerged as the standard form of greeting and words of departure.

When a Jew meets another Jew. He says shalom political peace be unto you in the response, a lack of shalom and to you also. Peace not hello and goodbye. But please please please please enter first. This is what it means is an interlude of safety from the ravages of warfare the pox Romana refers to a lengthy period of Western civilization where peace descended upon the Roman Empire. If you would compare the duration of peace in Rome to the duration of peace to the Jewish nation where we call the pox is rarely a in all of Jewish history at last about 10 years. The insecurity that comes from constant warfare made its mark upon a people who desperately sought the end of wars look to the day that the prophetic vision where the swords would be beaten into policy and war would be no more. As I'm standing here lecturing at this very moment. Israeli tanks are 11 and the Jewish people are engaged in military conflict and peace does not rain in the house of his. What is the Old Testament sort the people to pray for, pray for the peace of Jerusalem in addition to that the concept of peace emerges in the Old Testament beyond the external situation of warfare and the cessation of hostilities of violence and it grows up into a concept that is much more redemptive and disorientation so that peace becomes in the Old Testament. Almost a synonym for salvation because peace reflects a new state of affairs in the relationship between man and his God and man and his felony. The Bible says that by nature we are estranged from God, what does that mean that mean we are at enmity with God, we are at war with God by our fallen nature and not only that we are estranged from our fellow man and not only that, but were estranged from our own selves as though you were born and raised in an atmosphere war even if the guns of the nation are silent your heart is at war with God, your heart, as it were with your fellow man in your heart as it were with yourself, those of the three levels of estrangement and if we read in the Colossian epistle, we read that Christ comes to bring reconciliation and the whole concept of reconciliation presupposes estrangement, there cannot be reconciliation unless there's a prior estrangement in the estrangement again is spelled out for us in Colossians as man is a straight from God from other men and from himself and so the ultimate peace, for which we look is where reconciliation takes place between us and got upset already when Paul talks about justification in Romans he says being justified. Therefore we have what peace with God.

The cross and our repentance and our justification brings us into a restored fellowship in harmony with God, but none of those things are the focal point in my opinion of the fruit of the spirit called peace.

I think of what Paul has in mind here by the fruit of the spirit is that after we are brought into peace with God and the Holy Spirit is shed abroad in our hearts, and that new capacity for love is in there and that new capacity for joy is there. Now we have a new capacity to live at peace with people again if I can point the common common says that the opposite of the fruit of the spirit is the quarrelsome spirit, the spirit of strife, but characterizes the opposite of the fruit of the spirit of person who is growing in grace is a person who follows the apostolic mandate as much as is possible to live at peace with all men, so that a Christian and his maturity is to be a peace loving person. A person who hears the benediction of Jesus when he says blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. You want to be a child of God, a son of God, a daughter of God going to practice a spirit of peace now that can easily lead us into serious misunderstanding and serious air because there is such a thing as a false peace. There is such a thing as what Luther called a carnal peace. A piece of the flesh that is born not out of a disposition of love towards other people, but is born out of a disposition of cowardly nurse, a person who fears conflict and who out of intimidation makes peace. That kind of peace that kind of peace is not what we call an honorable peace or adjust peace but it is called appeasement.

This century has seen the ravages of the world became from the appeasement of Munich is frail, was corrupted to the core. In the Old Testament by the false ministers of peace, the false prophets, whom Jeremiah lamented because the false prophets cried what peace peace when there was no peace in the lament of Jeremiah said these men heal the wounds of the daughter of Israel slightly crying, peace, peace when there is no peace. So we see a kind of paradoxical understanding of of the virtue of peace in the New Testament, Jesus himself is called the Prince of peace is principal legacy which will look at a moment to the Christian's peace. And yet this same Jesus says what I call not to bring peace but a sword to set brother against brother and father against son.

How the world do we reconcile those ideas because were Jesus, peace must always be honorable.

Now I'm going back for second to the passage I mentioned were the apostle enjoins us as much as with interest is as much as it is possible to live at peace with all men know the very beginning of that statement suggests something doesn't. As much as possible, it recognizes that it is not always possible for Christians to be peace with everybody.

Christ was not at peace with the Pharisees. Jesus was not at peace with those who put them to death.

His was a peaceful spirit.

His was not a belligerent attitude, but there was very little peace in the Circus Maximus when the early Christians were thrown alliance they were peaceloving. They were peaceful but just standing at the foot of the cross is to stand at the world center of controversy and we have to understand and that's where the false peace can creep in where we seek peace by compromise, where we seek peace by fleeing from responsibility for persecution from tribulation. We would much rather be peaceful than to have to fight for the kingdom of God. To see the imagery in the New Testament. On the one hand, were called to warfare.

On the other two peace in the Exodus as the apostle said as much as is possible that is to say, there's a certain inevitability that the Christian will be caught up in conflict will be caught up in controversy will be caught up in turmoil because the cross of Christ has a built in offense to it to the world but I think with this fruit of the spirit is, is that when we have a peaceful disposition of peaceful demeanor a peaceful attitude to the world. Then we don't add to the offense of the cross by a belligerent cantankerous fighting quarrelsome spirit. There is also that dimension of the peace that passes understanding that makes it possible for us to be at peace with the world because the Christian along with possessing the love of Christ possesses the peace of Christ.

This was his legacy. Remember what he said in the upper room. Let not your hearts be troubled you believe in God believe also in me. And he went on to say what peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, this is a transcendent, a qualitatively different kind of peace, my peace I give you, and again he says let not your heart be troubled, 20 see the link when you have and possess in your heart, the peace of Christ that gives you the power for a peaceful disposition puts to death the spirit of strife in the quarrelsome personality that does not bring honor to Christ as Dr. RC Sproul with a message from his series, developing Christian character were highlighting this four-part series this week on Renewing Your Mind as we heard RC implied today of the fruit of the spirit is contradictory to our natural reaction see in our own strength, conflict and strife will rule the day. We know that in one of our greatest struggles as believers is in the area of spiritual growth. So we come in this series to you as a as a launching pad for your study will send you the two DVD set when you give a donation of any amount to look at her ministries. There are a couple of ways you can reach us. You can go online to Renewing Your Mind.org work, you can simply call us at 800-435-4343 may also encourage you to download our free leader ministries app. You'll find hundreds of resources including videos, articles, Bible studies and blog posts, and when you request RC series today. Look at your learning library in that app the entire series will be available to watch while you wait for the DVDs to arrive. Just search for legionnaire in your app store will tomorrow. RC will tackle the character traits of being patient and kind. We treat one another is the focus again Thursday on Renewing Your Mind.

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