Peace sermon ideas
Peace describes a life — and indeed an entire creation — that experiences the full flourishing God intended in the beginning. Vastly more than the absence of war, peace in Scripture involves myriad behaviors that seek not just to head off conflict but actively to build up all other people and creatures in ways that lead to flourishing. Peace is shalom, and shalom encapsulates God's original design for his creation in which everyone's goal is helping everyone else to lead a life of abundance and joy. Living in such rich and zestful ways surely entails an absence of war, but the kind of peace the Bible talks about is so much more than that — it is a picture of pure joy as everyone engages in mutually edifying relationships of life-affirming delight.
What does the Bible say about peace?
- Numbers 6:22-27, the Lord bless you and keep you
- Psalm 85:10-13, righteousness and peace will kiss each other
- Isaiah 9:6, the child will be the prince of peace
- Isaiah 11:6-9, the wolf shall live with the lamb. . .
- Isaiah 32:16-18, the effect of righteousness will be peace
- John 14:27, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."
- John 20:19-21, Peace be with you
- Romans 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit"
- Ephesians 2:13-17, Jesus is our peace
Sermon ideas about peace
Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would have among his titles that of "Prince of Peace." Once Jesus arrived on this earth as that Messiah, he made it clear that what he would leave behind in the wake of his saving work was peace — peace with God, peace among all peoples, peace as a font of joy and the assurance that in God's kingdom, all is well (cf. John 13 and so many similar passages). In the epistles of Paul and other apostles, it is hardly a surprise that salutations and benedictions yoke together "grace and peace" as the finest blessing a person could experience in Christ. Through Jesus' grace we are saved into the kingdom of God, and as citizens of that kingdom we experience a deep-down peace. This shalom, this sense that we and all things are being made right with God, is so deeply implanted in us by the Spirit that it endures even when our outward circumstances are troubling. When pastors use "grace and peace" to bless people today, they are extending the calm and assurance — the life-giving joy — of the kingdom of God into the lives of people. Those people then exit worship as ambassadors of peace to a world that desperately needs not just the cessation of warfare but the deeper sense that in Christ there is a path to flourishing.
One of the odder utterances Jesus ever made came when he said in Matthew 10:34, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." That's not what you'd expect the Prince of Peace to say! But in the context of that chapter — as well as within the wider context of Jesus' ministry — the meaning is that for the gospel to make inroads in a world as badly fallen as this one, peace will come only when all that is wrong is defeated and when the spiritual enemies of restoring God's original creation shalom are routed. Shalom will finally be restored by God's grace in Christ, but no one should think that it will come quickly, easily, or without resistance.
"The webbing together of God, humans, and all creatures in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies. 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." ({{Not the Way It's Supposed to Be}}: A Breviary of Sin: Eerdmans, 1995, p. 10.)
Translation insights about peace
In Kassem, a language spoken in the African nation of Burkina Faso, having peace is expressed as "having a cold inner being." There is an expression in Kassem that says, "If the sun is hot, the speech is hot." This means that if it is hot out, people get angry more quickly and they are less patient. To have a cold inner being means that one is calm and feels peace. Having a cold inner being even when it's hot outside means that one has inner peace, even when the circumstances of life are difficult. This is the kind of peace that Jesus wants to give us: a peace that does not rely on our outward circumstances.