(Delmont Record – 1/27/2017)

Peace and Quiet

The Lord’s justice will dwell in the desert, his righteousness live in the fertile field. The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.  – Isaiah 32:16-18

When we look at this world and our country today, we don’t always see the good things talked about in this passage: justice, peace, quietness, confidence, peaceful places, secure homes, and places of rest. These are the types of things everyone longs for, but it is also clear from the divided nature of our nation that there are different opinions on what actions can bring these things about. And it seems that the harder we try to bring them about, the further and further away from them we get. It is difficult for human beings to understand that the more we fight for things, even good things, the more elusive peace becomes. We fight for justice; we fight for peace; we fight to feel secure, and yet we wonder why we never find peace – in our world, in our country, and even in our own hearts.

Thankfully, the Lord has a different plan. The Lord has promised that He will bring peace, justice, security, and peace and quiet, but those things will only come to those who pursue them His way. The answer to all these things is the righteousness of the Lord. That is why peace eludes our world, because our world has, by in large, rejected the producer of peace – true righteousness. We want justice, but we don’t like to hear what true justice means for us. We don’t want to accept that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and that all of us “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We don’t want to hear that the call for justice is really the call for our own judgment – our eternal judgment – because we all fall short of the righteousness of God. This reluctance shows that what we are pursuing is not truly justice, but the right to determine for ourselves what is just. And Scripture teaches us that is why “there is no peace for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). So in order to obtain peace and justice we must first be willing and able to obtain the righteousness of God.

Unfortunately for us, our default to obtain anything is to fight for it, and many try to fight for righteousness as well. Some think that if they try hard enough to do the right things in life, they will find peace. Or if they fight against all those people that oppose their sense of justice that they will finally be able to rest with a feeling that they have made a positive difference. But of course, this brings no peace – not to the world or to the soul.

Fortunately for us, God has revealed to us the path to righteousness, peace, and justice, but His path is not traversed by fight but by surrender. The first step on that path is to obtain the righteousness of God. This is not done by earning it or trying hard, but simply by acknowledging our inability to do it on our own. It starts with confession of our sin and confession of our trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And upon this confession, we are taught that the righteousness of Christ becomes ours by faith. Immediately we begin to see the fruits that righteousness brings. The passage above calls peace “the fruit of [the Lord’s] righteousness” and Romans 5:1-2 states:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

It is the Lord’s righteousness alone that can bring true peace to our hearts, and only hearts that know true peace can ever hope to bring peace to the world. As Jesus said in the Beatitudes from Matthew 5:9, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. But this surrender gives us a new vision of justice as well. 1 John 1:9 promises us, If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. When we surrender to God, we learn that His forgiveness, because it is based on the shed blood of Jesus as payment for sin, is true justice. 1 John 1:7 tells us that it is “the blood of Jesus, His Son” that “purifies us from all sin.” So if we seek justice in this world for others, it needs to be centered on forgiveness. Forgiveness that can only come at a price. And the only price paid that is sufficient for our sin is the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us on the cross.

Only when we surrender and come to understand God’s forgiveness, His righteousness, His peace, and His justice can we be of any use in spreading these things into the world. And, yes, we are to work for justice and peace in this world, but we need to be willing to do it God’s way. And we need to be willing to live in the peace of God even when the world is at war; we need to be willing to trust in the justice of God even when we are surrounded by injustice; we need to be willing to wait to see these things revealed, but yet have the quiet confidence that God will bring justice and peace to earth – but in His time, and in His way.