The Peace Of God
gtcotr/ss092406
Look at someone and say: “Guard Your Heart And Mind.”
Some of you may remember a four point message I preached some time ago. It was off the cuff but it was nonetheless effective.
1. Don’t worry about anything
2. Pray about everything
3. Tell God what you need
4. Thank Him for all He has done
Key Scriptures: Philippians 4 NLT
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
7 If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
If you do this? Yes! If we do these things we will experience a peace from God which we cannot even understand.
God’s peace will guard your heart and mind.
There is a character in the bible who evidently did not follow this program. Today we are going to use him and his story to learn how to keep ourselves in the peace of God and out of trouble.
How many of you realize that the bible does not pretend to give us all of the details of every person’s life. There is always more to the story than can be written.
Key Scripture: John 21:25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.
If everything was written that Jesus did the whole world could not contain the volumes. Some details are just left out but not forgotten.
Moses wrote Genesis about 1500 BC or 2400 to 2500 years after the creation of Adam.
How did Moses know what to write? First God inspired and guided him, but also he had a credible account of these things handed down to him through the generations. More details than he could write.
You see: (don’t let me lose you here - I have a point)
Genesis 5;11;21;25;47 & 50
Name Year Born Age Son Age @ Death Yr Died
God eternal Adam God is life
Adam 0 130 Seth 930 930
Seth 130 105 Enos 912 1042
Enos 235 90 Cainan 905 1140
Cainan 325 70 Mahalaleel 910 1235
Mahalaleel 395 65 Jared 895 1290
Jared 460 162 Enoch 962 1422
Enoch 622 65 Methuselah 365 987
Methuselah 687 187 Lamech 969 1656
Lamech 874 182 Noah 777 1651
Noah 1056 500 H/S/J 950 2006
Shem 1558 100 Arphaxad 600 2158
Arphaxad 1658 35 Salah 438 2096
Salah 1693 30 Eber 433 2126
Eber 1723 34 Peleg 464 2187
Peleg 1757 30 Reu 239 1996
Reu 1787 32 Serug 239 2049
Serug 1819 30 Nahor 230 2049
Nahor 1849 29 Terah 148 1997
Terah 1878 70 Abram 205 2083
Abram 1948 100 Isaac 175 2123
Isaac 2048 60 Jacob 180 2228
Jacob 2108 90 Joseph 147 2255
Joseph 2198 ? Ephraim 110 2308
* Adam lived 930 years
* Adam was 687 when Methuselah was born
* Adam and Methuselah lived together for 243 years
* Methuselah lived 969 years
* Methuselah was 369 when Noah was born
* Methuselah and Noah lived together for 600 years
* Noah lived for 950 years
* Noah was 892 when Abraham was born
* Noah and Abraham lived together for 58 years
* Jacob was 50 years old when Shem died
* Shem outlived Abraham by 35 years
* Moses was born only 71 years after Joseph’s death
Moses reasonably had only 5 intermediaries between him and creation and only 3 intermediaries between him and the flood.
Yes Moses was inspired and guided by God to write the 2300+ years of history we call Genesis, but he also was well familiar with each story as it had been handed down to him in a very credible manner from very credible people - people who knew what they were talking about with more detail than would be written.
This is the same way it is today. We hold the written word of God to be inerrant and we also understand that it cannot contain every detail of every life represented in it.
The Jewish Rabbins not only hold the sacred book of Genesis to be the true word of the Living God, but they also teach many of the details which were not included in the writings, but were passed down from teacher to teacher through the generations. We call these traditional Jewish beliefs. They are interesting but without authority.
One such traditional belief involves the bible character I spoke of earlier. The character we are going to use this morning to learn about the peace of God and how one can get messed up without it.
Who is this character? Jewish tradition identifies of the son of the widow who fed the prophet Elijah her and her son’s last meal during the famine recorded in 1 Kings 17. Moses did not give us his name in the book of Genesis, but Jewish scholars tell us his name was Jonah. That’s right, the same Jonah Elijah raised from the dead and who would later disobey God and be swallowed up by a great fish.
I cannot know if this is absolutely true, however nothing in the word of God points to any fact which would disallow this. Anyway, lets survey the life of Jonah and look at one scripture which will show us why he seemed to have no peace in his life.
Remember the story of Jonah’s life? It reveals that:
1. Jonah disobeyed God
* Why? He had his reasons - but he had no peace.
2. Jonah obeyed God
* Why? He had his reasons - but he had but no peace.
3. Jonah never agreed with God
* Why? He had his reasons - but he had no peace.
4. Jonah had no peace
* With God
* Within himself
* With others
When the book of Jonah ends his story, Jonah is sitting on a road wishing God would bring judgment down on the people he was sent to help. He was so frustrated and depressed that he just wanted to die. He had no peace.
Why? We read earlier where peace comes from. Remember?
1. Not worrying about anything
2. Praying about everything
3. Talking to God about your needs
4. Thanking Him for all He has already done
Then: God’s peace will guard our heart and mind.
It’s God’s peace that will keep us from getting all stirred up, giving voice to our opinions, place to our frustrations, irritations and insecurities, becoming petty, selfish, depressed and self destructive like Jonah did. He was one moody dude riding the roller coaster of highs and lows … no peace with God’s path for his life.
It was not that he did not know what was right, but rather that he did not do what he knew was right. Let God be God!
In one of his clear moments of thought, after three days and nights in the belly of hell, as he put it, he states the truth of his dilemma. “I now know what my problem is!”
Jonah 2:8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
Lying vanities - worthless idols - things we allow in our heart and mind to compete with God’s word, will or way.
If Jonah had just:
1. Not worried about it
2. Prayed about it
3. Ask God to meet his needs
4. Been thankful for what God had already done for him
Philippians 4:7 NLT
If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
He would have experienced a peace that passed all understanding and that peace would have helped him keep his mind from embracing stinking thinking and his heart from getting hardened.
So, what is the conclusion?
Let us decide:
1. We will not worry
2. We will pray
3. We will depend on God for what we need
4. We will thank Him for all He has done
and …
God’s peace will guard our heart and mind.
