“27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. ”
It is safe to say that we all have concerns right now. Some of us find ourselves in that sixty and above age range that seems to be so affected by covid-19. Some of us are concerned about loved ones in that age group. Some of us work in the medical field and have concerns about what the near future looks like. Some of us have concerns about how the nation’s response will affect our economy and small businesses that support so many families. Some of us are nearing retirement age and are watching our IRAs fluctuate wildly. Some of us are about to launch into the job market and we have no idea what that will look like now. It is safe to say that we all have concerns.
There is a difference between concern and worry. Concern leads to constructive thought and action. Worry leads to worry. You might be worrying about the 15% mortality rate in the eighty and above age range. You might be worrying about the potential impact on the economy. You might be worrying about any number of matters that have absolutely nothing to do with covid-19. Remember, we all had problems before any of this started.
This is no time to live in worry. This is no time to panic. In fact, there is never a time to panic. The time of the black plague was not a time for panic. The night on which Jesus was betrayed and arrested was not a time for panic. On that night, Jesus offered his disciples peace. He offered them his peace. His peace is still available to his disciples and that is the peace we will be studying this morning. Jesus gives his disciples peace so they will not live in fear. That is true for those disciples and that is true for us disciples. That is the claim of this sermon: Jesus gives his disciples peace so they will not live in fear.
We will see this in three points. First: Jesus’ peace. Second: the world’s peace. Third: don’t be afraid. You find these three points separated by the three periods of verse 27. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you,” is the Scripture behind our first point. “I do not give to you as the world gives,” is the Scripture behind our second point. “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid,” is the Scripture behind our final point.
First: Jesus’ peace. Just as there are reasons for concern now so there were certainly reasons for concern on the night in which Jesus’ spoke these words of John 14. Jesus had just told his disciples that he was going to leave them. They had devoted every day of the past three years to him and now he was leaving. He had told them that one of them would betray him. He had said that Peter would disown him. In the midst of all these high stress statements, he says, “do not let your hearts be troubled.” He says, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” and then he tells them that Satan is coming. He says, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” and then he leads them to the garden where he will be arrested.
Now peace that is able to sustain all of that stress is the sort of peace that I want. That is the sort of peace that the church can have in the midst of panic. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus told his disciples on the night he was betrayed, “my peace I give you.”
Although John recorded this in Greek, the actual word that Jesus said was doubtlessly “shalom.” “Shalom” was a standard greeting and farewell in that culture. Now, of course, Jesus meant much more by it than that just as you sometimes mean much more when you say “goodbye.” Goodbye is a contraction of “God be with you.” There are some circumstances in which “goodbye” simply means “farewell” and there are some circumstances in which “goodbye” means “God be with you.” I’m sure you’ve said both types of goodbyes. You’ve said goodbye to a loved one in the hospital for the last time. You’ve said goodbye to friends at the end of college. You didn’t simply mean, “farewell.” You meant, “God be with you.”
Jesus was using the word “shalom” in its fullness here in John 14. Shalom is “the way things ought to be,” as our denomination’s own Neil Plantinga has defined it. He writes, “In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.” That became a greeting because that is what you want for people when you see them. That became a farewell because that is what you want for people when you leave them. Jesus meant it in its fullness.
He meant it in its fulness because he brought this shalom. He brought the way things ought to be. He brought the good news that God was putting everything right starting with humanity. This is the good news he preached. On the night in which he was betrayed, he made clear that his disciples could enter this shalom instead of panic. That shalom is still available.
Now you won’t see the fulness of the way things ought to be until the new creation, but the new creation breaks into this life and it breaks into it in you. The new creation begins with people who are born again. People with the Holy Spirit are people who are becoming the way they were created to be. In other words, they are becoming like Jesus and can have his peace. Notice that he gives his peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” Jesus had that peace because he knew the Father was in charge of what was occurring. The Father would make everything right. The Father was bringing shalom so Jesus could have shalom.
You see Jesus’ peace best by looking at Jesus. Consider his peace in the midst of what would send a normal person into panic. Consider his peace as he was arrested. Rather than responding with panic, he had the sympathy to heal an injured man. Consider his peace as he stood before the man who had the power to decide whether he lived or died. He said, “you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” Consider his peace on the cross. He had the love to listen to the thief and the love to say, “truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” That is Jesus’ peace at work in the worst of life. That peace is available to you. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
That peace is available to you today. You can respond to this current situation in the way that Jesus responded on the night he was betrayed. He wasn’t ruled by panic. He acted as if the ways things ought to be were breaking into the way things are. He acted as if God was in charge and that meant that all of this would end well. He was, as Deon Wynia has been teaching us, “trusting God to make my life work on His terms.”
That is the only peace you can have in this life. You must trust God to make your life work on His terms. That is shalom in the midst of the way things are. You panic when you want God to make your life work your own terms. We want Him to promise that we won’t get covid-19. We want him to promise that our loved ones won’t get covid-19. We want him to promise that there will be no wars or rumors of wars at this time. We want him to make certain financial promises to us in the midst of this uncertainty.
As a man appointed to herald what He says, I can’t tell you that He will do any of that. What I can say is that you can trust Him to make your life work on His terms. What I can tell you is that Jesus offers you the sort of peace that he had on the night on which he was betrayed, and that peace resulted in the confidence you see in the midst of what would cause a normal man to panic. You can have that sort of peace. You can experience the first stage of the new creation by becoming the way you were created to be in the midst of the way things are.
That is real peace. It is very different from the peace that the world gives and that is our second point: the world’s peace. The world tries to offer peace. Watch for it in the midst of this response to covid-19. The world will try to offer peace in the form of goods you can purchase to distract yourself. The world will try to offer peace in the form of medical precautions. The world will try to offer peace in the form of following protocols to ensure your safety.
Now none of that is bad in and of itself, but the fatal flaw of all of it is that none of it can secure peace. You can take all the precautions and still die. You can find yourself in a relatively resilient age range and still die, and if it isn’t covid-19, it will always be something. The world cannot keep you safe from death.
The world tries to offer peace, but it can’t because fundamentally it cannot put itself right. Shalom is about the way things ought to be and the world cannot make itself the way it ought to be. As Calvin put it, “[Jesus’ peace] is of far greater value than that which is usually to be found among men, who generally have the word peace but coldly in their mouth, by way of ceremony or, if they sincerely wish peace for anyone, yet cannot actually bestow it.”
Many people think the world actually is slowly but surely putting itself right. For some reason the atrocities of the last century don’t dissuade them. Other people recognize that, of course, the world can’t give peace, but they still cling to whatever peace it offers because the only alternative they can imagine is to live in despair. That is the majority of people alive today.
Jesus offers them a viable alternative to living in fear or at risk of living in fear. He offers them his peace. He offers them a peace that stands up against everything including death. He secured this peace by way of blood and hell. As Jesus spoke these words about peace, wrote Herman Ridderbos, Jesus was “at the point of going away on a journey in which he will have to fight for that peace against the powers of darkness and violence, a peace that he will have to bring back from the depths of death.”
It is no mistake that Jesus’ first words to the disciples after his resurrection were, “Peace be with you!” He fought death and hell to make all things new and then said, “Peace be with you”, or, “shalom is yours.”
Now consider Jesus’ peace in that moment because his peace can be yours. They tortured him and still God’s purpose prevailed. They killed him and still God’s purpose prevailed. Jesus had confidence that not even death would stop him. This is the confidence of Romans 8, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.” You can have that confidence. You can have that peace if you follow Jesus, or, you can have the peace that the world gives which is really no peace at all but is merely a distraction until the next problem comes along. The choice really is yours. Please live by Jesus’ peace that the Father knows best and is working your life out the way He wants.
You need Jesus’ peace. You need to trust God to make your life work on His terms. You need to give up control or rather your illusion that you can control the world. This is not your world. This is your Father’s world. “This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father’s world, the battle is not done. Jesus who died will be satisfied and earth and heaven will be won.”
That is real peace. The peace that the world offers is no peace. It is the peace of the false prophets in Jeremiah of which God said, ‘They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, “when there is no peace.”’
Don’t subscribe to the world’s peace. Know the good news of Jesus well enough to know the difference. The world’s peace will leave you in fear, maybe not in this matter but rest assured you will live in fear over some issue because you can’t control everything or really much of anything. Jesus’ peace will leave you at peace because his Father does control everything. His peace is the only way to live without fear. That is our final point: don’t be afraid.
Jesus spoke all these words right before he and his disciples began the walk to the Garden of Gethsemane. Imagine the peace necessary to urge peace as you began to march towards death. Imagine the peace necessary to know what was coming and still offer peace saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Now if you have you Bible open you can see that Jesus used these same words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” in verse 1 of chapter 14. This repetition of this same phrase forms what is called an inclusio. An inclusio emphasizes the interconnectedness of what comes between the repeated statement. Think of the phrase “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” as the bread of a sandwich. It hold everything within it together.
So what comes between the bread of this sandwich? What comes between “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” in verse 1 and “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” in verse 27? Jesus’ promise of the new creation and the coming of the Holy Spirit comes between. You can read it later today. That is why the disciples on that night and disciples today don’t need to be troubled. We don’t need to be troubled because we have the promise of the new creation and the Holy Spirit.
Your heart doesn’t need to be troubled by anything having to do with covid-19 because there is a new creation coming and until it comes you have the Holy Spirit within you. You know how all of this ends. It ends with the new creation. You know that God will be with you until that new creation because you have the Holy Spirit. In other words, you have every reason to trust that God is going to make your life work on His terms until He makes it work on terms that we describe as heaven.
Now there will be matters to consider in your life until the new creation but given that you know how your life will turn out and that God will be with you until then there is no reason to panic. The new creation and the Holy Spirit are pretty compelling motivations for peace in the midst of panic.
Jesus thinks that what we have studied is sufficient for peace. He thought it was sufficient for peace on the night in which he was betrayed. We lose this peace when we look for something beyond what he has promised. We lose this peace when we want specific promises about what will happen with our health tomorrow or the wider economy. You will have decisions to make in these areas, but such matters can never be the ground of any lasting peace. Jesus reminds you of how this will all end. Jesus reminds you that he will be with you until it ends. It’s exactly as we studied in Psalm 23. Even the right paths that lead to abundance wind through dark valleys and even in the dark valleys the shepherd is with his sheep. Jesus spoke these words about peace so that his disciples then and now might not be afraid. “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
These parting words were similar to the parting words of Moses, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of [the Canaanites], for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Moses told Israel not to be afraid because their story would end in the Promised Land and until they entered that land God would be with them every step of the way. Jesus told his disciples not to be afraid because their story would end in the new creation and until they entered the new creation the Holy Spirit would be with them every step of the way.
That includes whatever you step you are in the midst of right now. That includes whatever step you are taking in the midst of this covid-19 response. You might be in the age range that has a high mortality rate. If you follow Jesus, you know that your story ends in the new creation and that until you enter the new creation, the Holy Spirit will be with you every step of the way. You might own a small business and have concerns about the economic impact of this social distancing. I don’t know how your bottom line will be affected, but if you follow Jesus, I do know that your story ends in the new creation and that until you enter the new creation, the Holy Spirit will be with you every step of the way. That is why you need not be afraid. That is why you can have peace rather than panic.
You can’t wish covid-19 away and even if you could remember that the world wasn’t the way it should have been before covid-19. You can’t wish any of the trouble away. What you can do is live by this peace that Jesus offers. Live by the hope of the new creation, not by the hope that somehow this world is going put itself right. Live by the hope of the Holy Spirit, not the sort of hope that the world gives. That is your choice to make. Jesus offers his peace so that people could have it. He offers his peace so that you could have it in the midst of this situation. He offers his peace so that you could have it in any situation. Amen.