SERIES: ADVENT 20
Prince of Peace
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
DATE: December 19, 2010
Note: This sermon was preached on Christmas Sunday in Wichita, my last Christmas as Senior Pastor.
Introduction: Peace. Everyone desires it and nearly everyone talks about it, especially at Christmastime. We are all familiar with the words of the great company of angels who appeared to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Peace is one of the few themes of Christmas with which even a thorough-going secularist seems to be comfortable.
I receive, as I’m sure you do, many Christmas cards from all kinds of businesses–banks, insurance agents, real estate companies, you name it. These cards are usually generic because they go to all kinds of people–Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics–so they don’t talk about the Son of God or the Incarnation or the Savior of the World. But I notice they frequently talk about peace.
When the secularist speaks of peace, he is usually thinking of the cessation of hostilities between countries or racial reconciliation or perhaps labor peace or maybe even animal and environmental rights. He may even be willing to tolerate an occasional watered-down reference to the Man of Galilee if he can use that to get people to think about resolving conflicts or preserving Nature (capital N).
I want to speak to you today about Jesus as the Prince of Peace, only I want to make it clear right up front that Jesus was given that title, not primarily because of any particular focus He brought to peace between warring nations, or peace between labor and management, or peace between blacks and whites, or peace for animals and trees. He received that title because He made it possible for us to enjoy peace with God and then to enjoy peace with one another in the Church.
Interestingly, Jesus is called the Prince of Peace in only one passage in the Bible, and that is Isaiah 9:6, which we read earlier in our service: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” In Biblical times names had more significance than they do today, for they were often prophetic of the lives of biblical personalities. Parents gave great attention to the naming of their children because they believed the name given was relevant to, sometimes even determinative of the child’s character, success, and ultimate destiny.
The names given to Jesus Christ have significance beyond all other names. Here in Isaiah 9:6 four different names are given to Him. Please note these names were given prophetically some 700 years before He was even born! Each communicates an important truth about Him that speaks to one of our greatest needs in an unstable world–the need for wisdom (Wonderful Counselor), the need for strength (Mighty God), the need for security (Everlasting Father), and the need for peace (Prince of Peace). It is the fourth of these that we are going to focus on today.
While Jesus is called The Prince of Peace only in Isaiah 9:6, there are scores of passages that talk about His role as Peace Maker. The premier passage in the whole Bible is, in my estimation, Ephesians 2. Please turn there with me. In this great chapter the Apostle’s theme is the incredible grace, mercy, and love of God which motivated Him to redeem a people for Himself. Listen to these mind-boggling words beginning in verse 1:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Most of us are quite familiar with these words. We take them as our spiritual inheritance, our birthright. Just as our constitution declares that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, so also Ephesians 2 declares, in effect, that all believers are endowed by their Savior with certain unalienable privileges–new life in Christ, an inheritance in the heavenly realms, eternal enjoyment of the incomparable riches of His grace.
And all that is available to us by grace through faith in the Son of God.
However, this amazing destiny that is ours should never blind us to where we came from. And that is where the very next verse (11) takes us:
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)–remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. (Now look at the next statement). For he himself is our peace….
For the next 25 minutes I want us to contemplate that statement, “He himself is our peace.” Why was Jesus given the name Prince of Peace? It was not, as some may think, because of His unique birth.
Jesus did not earn the title Prince of Peace because of His unique birth.
We celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace this week, and what an amazing birth it was–the only virgin birth ever, predicted for centuries, announced from heaven. And nativity scenes are always peaceful (and for the most part, fictitious). If you stop and think about it, nothing about Jesus’ birth earned him the title, Prince of Peace. No wars that I know of ceased when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, no enduring animosities ground to a halt, no major social reconciliation was achieved.
In fact, Jesus’ birth actually produced conflict and violence, for example the death of the little children in Bethlehem at the hands of King Herod.
I want us to see, secondly, that the title Prince of Peace was not earned through His unique life either.
Jesus did not even earn the title Prince of Peace because of His unique life.
Again, what a unique life it was–the only sinless person who ever lived, the greatest teacher who ever taught, the most amazing example who ever showed people how to live. But if you stop and think about it, there was little in His life that made Jesus the Prince of Peace. Oh, He lived peacefully enough as the son of a carpenter. And during His earthly ministry He taught His followers not to pick up the sword to settle their differences. And in His discourses He urged people to love their enemies and forgive those who spitefully used them. He certainly was no Muhammad, urging his followers to kill all the infidels.
But the fact is, His was a lonely voice in this regard throughout His ministry. Even His closest followers, the Twelve Apostles, had a very difficult time following His advice. When Jesus was arrested, one of His inner circle of three actually pulled out a sword and tried to decapitate the high priest’s servant. Being a fisherman rather than a swordsman, he missed and cut the poor servant’s ear off, which Jesus promptly put back on.
Furthermore, in Matthew 10:34-36 Jesus Himself said some very enigmatic things about peace:
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Now I’m fairly convinced that Jesus is speaking here of the kind of spiritual conflict that was inevitable between those sold out to him and the world. But clearly, the normal notions of peace were not what God had in mind when He spoke through the prophet Isaiah, referring to His Son as the Prince of Peace.
I think we must admit that both the unique birth of Christ and the unique life of Christ passed without any noticeable lessening in the incidence of war or violence or hatred on the earth. In fact, within 30 years of His death, His own nation was completely wiped off the face of the map by war, not to reappear for 19 centuries.
So why was Jesus given the title Prince of Peace?
Jesus is the Prince of Peace because of His unique death, because of the Cross.
I want to share with you three peace initiatives Jesus achieved at the Cross, which elevated Him to the lofty position of Prince of Peace.
At the Cross Jesus made it possible for God and His enemies to become friends. This is obvious from our text in Ephesians 2, which speaks of “objects of wrath” being “made alive” with Christ, but it is seen even more clearly in a somewhat parallel passage, Romans 5:6-10:
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us…. when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”
Notice the descriptive words Paul uses here of humanity: powerless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies.
Now you may have never thought of yourself as an enemy of God; in fact, you may downright resent the suggestion, but that is what all of us were when we came into the world, and many still are. You may think of yourself as neutral toward God, as agnostics do, and those who are simply too busy to think about Him much at all. Or you may have a positive bent toward God, being careful not to take His name in vain and going to church from time to time, especially on Christmas Sunday.
But God says that we are, in fact, ungodly sinners and His enemies by birth, not seeking Him but running away from Him, not obedient to Him but rather pursuing the desires of the sinful nature. But then God took the initiative to resolve that enmity by doing the most amazing thing imaginable. He sent His one and only Son, who was perfect in every way, to die on the Cross to pay for our sin. And He offers complete reconciliation if we will simply put our faith and trust in Jesus. In fact, He pleads with us to be reconciled to Him. Here’s how Paul puts it in 2 Cor. 5:20-21: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (How? Through the Cross). God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.”
A second major peace initiative that Jesus accomplished in His death is that …
At the Cross Jesus provided access for pagan Gentiles to join the family of faith. We are familiar with the fact that starting with Abraham some 4000 years ago God chose a people for Himself through which to demonstrate His power and glory and through which to bring the Messiah into the world. That was the Jewish nation. God gave them advantages no one else experienced. Romans 9:4ff speaks of some of those advantages that Israel enjoyed: “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Messiah.”
The Jews were clearly the insiders; the problem is that everyone else was left on the outside looking in. As outsiders, the moral condition of the Gentile world was not pretty. Right here in Ephesians 2 Paul uses the following descriptive phrases of the Gentiles: “dead in transgressions and sins” (1, 5), “disobedient” (2), “objects of wrath” (3), “separate from Christ” (12), “excluded from citizenship in Israel” (12), “foreigners to the covenants of the promise” (12), “without hope and without God in the world” (12), “far away from God.” (13).
If you’ve spent much time in southern Michigan where there are lots of immigrants from Holland, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase, “If you’re not Dutch, you’re not much.” Well, from this list it’s obvious that if you weren’t Jewish in the first century, then spiritually speaking you weren’t much either. In fact, you were hopeless.
“But now,” says verse 13. I love those two words. Yes, the Gentiles were in desperate straits, “But now you who once were far away (and that includes us!) have been brought near through the blood of Christ.” Jesus didn’t accomplish that through His birth or through His life; He did it through His death, through His blood shed on Calvary.
So many shy away from any emphasis on the blood of Christ. Some preachers even. They love to talk about Jesus’ birth, His life, His teachings, His example, but to talk about His blood, that’s so primitive and so, well, bloody. But friends, it is the Gospel, it is the means by which we have been brought near to God.
I love the story told of the late Dr. Charles Berry, who once preached a very inadequate Gospel. Like many other young men with a liberal theological training, in his early years he minimized the atoning nature of Christ’s work on the Cross and looked upon Christianity as essentially a way of being a good person.
During his first pastorate in England, late one night while sitting in his study he heard a knock. When he opened the door, there was a Lancashire girl, with a shawl over her head and clogs on her feet. “Are you a minister?” she asked. Getting an affirmative answer, she went on anxiously, “You must come with me quickly; I want you to get my mother in.”
Imagining that it was a case of some drunk woman out on the streets, Berry said, “You must go and get a policeman.” “No,” cried the girl, “my mother is dying, and you must come with me and get her in–to heaven.”
The young minister dressed and followed her through the lonely streets on a journey of a mile and a half. Led into the woman’s room, he knelt beside her and began to describe the kindness of Jesus, explaining that He had come to show us how to live unselfishly.
Suddenly the desperate woman cut him off. “Mister,” she cried, “that’s no use for the likes of me. I am a sinner. I have lived my life. Can’t you tell me of someone who can have mercy upon me and save my poor soul?”
“I stood there,” said Dr. Berry, “in the presence of a dying woman, and I had nothing to tell her. Amid sin and death, I had no message. In order to offer something to that poor soul, I leaped back in my mind to my mother’s knee, to my cradle faith, and told the woman the story of the cross, and how the blood of Jesus was able to save to the uttermost.”
Tears began running over the cheeks of the eager woman. “Now you are getting at it,” she said. “Now you are helping me.” And the famed preacher, concluding the story, said, “I got her in, and blessed be God, I got in myself.”[i]
Friends, it’s the old, old story, the story of the Cross that enables those far away to be brought near. But not only did Jesus’s death permit Gentiles to join the family of faith; it also gave them equal status with the Jewish believers.
At the Cross Jesus inaugurated a new Body, called the Church, in which
all believers are equal. We didn’t read the section of our chapter starting in verse 14, so let’s do that now, only I’m going to read it from The Message.
“The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used, to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name ‘Christian’ as anyone.”
The Apostle reminds us of the fact that the early church was made up of both Jews and Gentiles in the same Body. If that’s not remarkable to us, it’s because we have little understanding of the historical enmity between these two groups. The best way I know to communicate how remarkable this is, is to ask you to imagine a new religion being founded today, made up of Palestinians and Israelis, a faith in which the poorest Palestinian and the richest Israeli participate alike, loving one another and putting one another’s needs ahead of their own.
Now you might be able to imagine one or two unusual Palestinians developing a deep spiritual friendship with one or two unusual Israelis, but tens of thousands laying down their arms and renouncing centuries of fear and hatred and embracing one another? You say, “That’s impossible!” Or imagine a new religious faith developing between Serbs and Albanians. Or between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland? Or between Pakistani Muslims and Indian Hindus? Or between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda? Or between Democrats and Republicans in an election year? You say it can’t happen.
But it did. The hatred and disdain Jews and Gentiles felt for one another in the first century was every bit as deep-seated as any of those I have mentioned. They were polar opposites religiously, morally, culturally, socially, aesthetically, and in every way imaginable. They wouldn’t eat together, work together, play together, live together, worship together, and they definitely wouldn’t intermarry. The only exception they made to excluding one another was economic. If they could make a buck off one another, they would, but of course they would try to cheat in the process.
Yet in a very short period, just a few years, a faith community came into existence which overcame all these hurdles. It was so unique that in this community, called the Church, ethnic Jewish merchants would sit submissively under the teaching of Gentile slaves, Jewish believers would drink wine from the same communion cup as a recently converted pagan, and young Jewish men were marrying young Gentile women with their parents’ approval. How is all this possible? Only because the founder of this faith, namely Jesus Christ, brought us together through his death on the Cross.
I implied earlier that racial reconciliation is not a primary purpose for which Christ came as Prince of Peace. I still say that, even though this passage clearly emphasizes racial reconciliation between Jew and Gentile. You see, when we hear about racial discrimination today, it is almost always in the context of economic opportunities in the corporate world, or affirmative action in education, or equal housing, or racial profiling by police, or segregation in social institutions.
The resolution of these issues are noble goals for politicians and social workers to strive for, and frankly all of us should be concerned about them. But they are not what Jesus was born for, not what He lived for, not what He died for. Rather, He came and gave His life so there would be no racial prejudice in the Church, no social exclusion in the Church, no hatred between brothers in the Church. What business do we have lecturing the world about peace if there is not peace in the Church.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Redeemed people who love God and love one another in the Church, will also be concerned about peace and justice in society and in the culture. In fact, they can’t help it. They will reject racial and gender discrimination in their own lives. They will support equal housing and job opportunities as simple justice. You see, as the Gospel changes people’s hearts, the injustices in society will begin to be solved in a way that legislation and court injunctions and shrill politics on the left or right can never do. Only the Gospel can do that. We must start with people getting right with God, then right with their fellow-believers, and only then is there the possibility of getting right with the rest of society.
You know something? What I value more highly about First Free than anything else (other than its commitment to biblical truth) is the peace and harmony we have enjoyed as a church family. It hasn’t been perfect, but when I see church after church going through gut-wrenching splits and agonizing disunity, I just have to stop and thank God that we have not had to walk that path. What’s especially amazing about that to me is that we are not a uniform Body by any means. Where else can you go to find hundreds of people who span all ages, all economic strata, many ethnic backgrounds (we even have some Swedes), all kinds of personalities, all sorts of viewpoints, and many varieties of religious backgrounds. And they’re not just sitting together in worship, but even loving one another!
I do not take this for granted, nor do I take any credit for it. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of this Body. The Apostle Paul exhorted us to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We aren’t expected to create unity, only to maintain it. Unity is the Spirit’s job, and so long as we are not grieving the Spirit or quenching the Spirit, I believe we can continue to enjoy this unity. But ultimately there would be no unity and there would be no peace were it not for the Prince of Peace, our Lord Jesus Christ. He Himself is our peace.
Conclusion: In conclusion I reiterate: Jesus’ birth was unique, and His life was unique. But His birth would have been forgotten, and so would His life, were it not for what He accomplished in His death. He offered Himself as a substitute for sin so the enemies of God could become His friends, so those on the outside could become insiders, and so those who hated one another could come together and live in peace in the Body of Christ. That is why Jesus is “the Prince of Peace.”
Have you made your peace with God? Actually, I don’t even like that question, because it implies there is something you can do to make peace with Him. He’s already done it. But you can receivethe gift of His Son. Perhaps you would like to join me in offering a simple prayer of commitment to God.
Prayer: Father, I lack peace in my life, and I know in my heart it’s because I am estranged from You. I have sinned and violated your standards. I stand guilty before You. I thank you for sending your only Son to become one of us, to live a perfect life, and to die as a sacrifice for my sin. I put my faith and trust in Jesus and in Him alone. Thank you for making it possible for me to be Your friend and a member of your family forever. Help me to find peace in every area of my life through Jesus. Amen!
[i] Citation lost.