The Rocky Road to Peace
Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Toney, Alabama, December 8, 2019, Ernest L. Williams Sr. - Luke 2:14
What is peace? Peace defined is the freedom from disturbance, or calmness or serenity, or it is the state or absence of war. Christology: Peace is to agree with God about our sinful condition and seek to please God by obeying His command concerning our sins. Christ establishes peace by his death. He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor.
5:21).
Détente is an agreement between two hostile nations to ease tensions in order to achieve peace.
Whatever causes of hostility between the nations remain. At the birth of Jesus, the angels sing of peace on earth and good will toward men. Is peace on earth achievable? Is this possible? Let’s be honest, in light of where we are as a nation, a world, a community, in reality, it does not seem like it. We do have our good organizations and honest loving people who seek for change and seek to help the helpless, without any political or monetary motivations.
We thought that education, financial stability, religious and social group affiliations would change us and bring about peace. So we move in the best neighborhoods, put our kids in the brightest schools, join the most popular church, associate with the idea social organization
like the Masons, Eastern Star, Omega Psi Phi, Alphas, AKA, Deltas, Sigma, Zetas, KK Psi, and Kappa Alpha Psi… Most times all we produce is a rich spoiled brat, an educated fool, religious hypocrite, and a social nut that would end up doing more in a social organization than for the church.
The other extreme to achieving peace is when a person just tries to get along with everybody. As the late great philosopher Robin Harris said, they “Don’t want no trouble” [Broken English intended]. If you are not careful you end up trying to please everybody, but you
end up loosing your identity and pleasing nobody. Adrian Rogers said, “You end up buying things that you don’t like, to please people who don’t like you, and buying these things with money you don’t even have.” [Illustration: The man, the boy, and the donkey.]
Central Thought: In order to achieve peace, someone must suffer. Many of us are unwilling to suffer to achieve peace, so we settle for the state of detente.
1. Every good and perfect gift comes to us by way of blood (I have butchered up Heb 1:17
for good cause).
“The life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev 17:11). Heb 9:22, “And without shedding of
blood of blood is no remission.”
a. The perfect marriage
b. This nation.
c. Equality for Blacks.
d. This sanctuary
e. Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection.
2. It takes as much power to maintain peace as it were to first obtain.
a. Look at the high cost for peace: law enforcement, our military, and all of the
safeguards and investments we all put into security and enjoyment for our
families.
3. What people fought for a long time ago has lost its sting today.
a. Slavery doesn't interest our children today.
b. Nobody is complaining over this building today.
c. The trinity, the deity of Jesus, the OT and the NT. And I wonder if we are standing up for the blood atoning death of Jesus Christ?
d. The major issues today that seemed so difficult to achieve will be easily accepted and taken for granted in the near future. In the Middle Ages, society was executing people for copying the Bible into the language of the people.
4. If we are not careful, we will allow the philosophy of the age to num us to not to fight for
the peace of our family and our spiritual values. We have been given as it were Novocain.
The peace that Luke 2:14 is not present today. We gave it up, we voted it out of school,
our homes, and now even our churches. What did we vote out? The quest for peace. The
fight for peace. Peace comes by way of bloodshed. But nobody wants to bleed. Here, our
blood is a reference to our dying sacrifice to Christ to bring about peace. I am not
advocating that we hurt or kill someone to bring about peace. That is what the world
seeks after. But that is false peace. We learned that from history from Machiavelli. Jesus
said if any man comes after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.
Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood to bring about the only real peace that the
world would ever know. We must be the continuing agents/ambassadors to bring about
His peace to the world through the preaching and the “living” of the cross.
5. How do we bring about this peace? It’s really in the text. Luke 2:14.
a. Somebody needs to give God glory to the highest!
b. We must be the agents to fight for peace. Who’s going to continue the struggle for peace? Who, like the apostles, early church fathers, and those who have come before us, will continue to fight for what is right? Where are the Harriet
Tubman(s) of today, the Fredrick Douglass(s), Sojourner Truth(s), WEB Dubois(s), Booker T. Washington(s), Dr. Daniel Hale Williams(s), Dr. Charles Drew(s), Dr. Carter G. Woodson(s), Thurgood Marshall(s), Dr. Martin Luther King(s), Congressman John Lewis(s), Dr. Sonny Hereford(s), President Barrack Obama(s)? It’s going to take Mommy and Daddy, Son and Daughter…
c. Seek the good of man, to do good toward all men regardless of color, religion, sexual orientation…
i. Micah 6:8, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth
the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God?”
ii. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army was on to speak
at an event, but he was lying ill on his dying bed. He could not make the
event. He asked if he could just write something on a piece of paper and
have it read by someone at the event. The scribe went to the assembly hall
and read Mr. Booth’s one-word message, “Others.” That’s how we bring
the peace of Jesus, we put others before us. Jesus died for “others.” Our
church should be open for “Others.” As a young person, your career goal
should be “to help others.”
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