If there is one thing that most people in the world could wish for, peace would certainly be on their list. We all seek peace in our lives and the world. We hope and pray for it, but rarely seem to find it. In our Scripture today we see that there are several points that Jesus makes, one of them being a promise of bringing peace to His followers. Let’s take a look at that promise, along with another point that Jesus makes in this passage.
I will begin with the first statement Jesus made in our Scripture passage, which we find in verses 23-24. Here, Jesus stated that if someone claims to love Him, to love God, they will keep His Word, they will be obedient to what He says. Plainly speaking, we cannot claim to love the Lord God, yet disobey what He has said in His Word, the Bible. Jesus put the words “obey” and “love” together here. Many people will readily claim that they love God. They may go to church and gladly sing “Oh, How I Love Jesus”, but when they leave church they make no attempt to obey the Bible. Words are meaningless without actions to back them up. Our obedience to God is proof that we love Him. If obedience to the Word of God is absent, then genuine love for Him is absent, as well.
We might protest that obeying God is too hard, that we slip up, make mistakes, and fail all too often, and that is true. None of us can obey God every day without failing now and again. We can’t do it in our own power. However, as Jesus continued on, He promised us that He would send the Holy Spirit to be our Helper (vs. 25-26). He promised that the Holy Spirit would come to believers, and would teach us from God’s Word. He would bring to our remembrance every thing that His Word had said, as in our own power we can’t remember everything written in the Bible. When Satan comes to tempt us into sin, then we need to pray to God, and the Holy Spirit will give us verses from the Scripture that we can claim and use as a sword to fight back against the tempter’s wiles.
As we continue on in our passage, Jesus proclaimed a very special promise to His followers, which was that He promised to give us His peace (vs. 27). People desperately crying out for peace. Where can we find real peace? This world has never known a time when there wasn’t a war going on somewhere. The hippies and “flower children” of the 1960’s never found it. Nor those who chose drugs. Obtaining wealth and power won’t give us peace. Only when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives will we discover true peace.
The peace that the Bible is talking about here is not the absence of armed conflict, but is instead a divine sense of spiritual well-being that stands against our natural fears and anxieties which we face on a daily basis. With Jesus, we can have peace within ourselves no matter what is happening in the world around us. With God’s peace we can be in a state of tranquility or quiet even though there are anxious times and circumstances all around us. It is a peace of heart, mind, and soul. We know that no matter what happens, we are in the care of Jesus.
Everyone who has accepted the Lord Jesus as Savior has peace with God. This was made possible through the shed Blood of Jesus. However, not every believer has the peace of God, as we see in so many believers who suffer with worry and anxiety all through their life. We can have this peace, though, as Jesus promised it to us here as part of our inheritance. He doesn’t want us to struggle and work at obtaining this peace through our own efforts, which will only fail. Instead, we are to rest in Jesus and the peace He alone can bring, focusing on Him and His faithfulness.
When we rest in Jesus, casting all of our cares and worries upon Him, we can have that peace. It will keep us from fear and worry, because it brings us straight to Him, and teaches us to depend on Him in everything we face. No matter what our circumstance is, Jesus will sustain us, strengthen us, and enable us to walk through it victoriously. No matter what we are going through, God promises to give us peace at all times and in every situation.
When we look around at people, we see fear and anxiety in them, but it is not necessary, if they would only turn to Jesus. When we feel fear or uncertainty, we need to stand on God’s promises that we find in His Word. The promise of the Peace of God will heal our troubled heart, and take away all fear.
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