The document discusses the concept of peace as presented in the Bible. It describes peace as referring to shalom in the Old Testament and eirēnē in the New Testament, meaning a holistic well-being. It then discusses the peace of God, which comes from God's triune nature and sovereign control over all things. It also discusses having peace with God through reconciliation by Jesus' death on the cross and receiving peace from God as a gift. Living in God's peace means being rooted in his adequacy, good intentions, and eternal plans.
A Tsunami Tragedy ~ Wise Reflections for Troubled Times (Eng. & Chi.).pptx
Titus 1 vv 1 4 part 4 peace
1. Welcome to Grace!
“You have heard that it was said,
‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’
But I tell you,
love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children
of your Father in heaven.
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matthew 5:43-45
7. Numbers 6:22 ff.
“The LORD said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons,
‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to
them:
24 “‘“The LORD bless you
and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I
will bless them.””
12. Titus 1:1-4
• Introduction
• The Peace OF God
• Peace WITH God
“For God was pleased to have all his
fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him
to reconcile to himself all things, whether
things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood,
shed on the cross.”
Colossians 1:19-21
13. Titus 1:1-4
• Introduction
• The Peace OF God
• Peace WITH God
• Peace FROM God
“To Titus, my true son in our common faith:
Grace and peace from God the Father and
Christ Jesus our Savior.”
17. Titus 1:1-4
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•
•
•
•
Introduction
The Peace OF God
Peace WITH God
Peace FROM God
Living in it
– Rooted in the adequacy of God
– Rooted in God’s good intentions towards you
– Rooted in God’s eternal plan and purpose
Notas del editor
Titus is on Crete amongst an unruly and wayward people.He is without a great team of supporters.He is having to APPOINT elders in the independent minded churches on the island.He is having to deal with a society horribly riddled with lying and deceitfulness.It is going to be a terribly tumultuous and troubled time!He is there to do battle with the errorists on the island – he isn’t going to have a peaceful time at all.And Paul opens with this blessing: grace and peace!Many of us – in that position – might not necessarily take it kindly!So how DO we take it?
Sounds a bit woolly that, doesn’t it?I want to suggest that the Christian perspective on peace is utterly unwoolly … what’s that? Hairy?The reason you get this sort of response to the word peace is that the bulk of the visible church has moved away from this idea, which lies at the heart of God’s purpose for His world!The effect of this is that if you Google ‘peace’, this is the sort of thing you get …
Now, if when you Google ‘peace’ you get THAT, then at the very least the people of God are failing to communicate with the world around us what God is all about doing with Jesus.Let’s get to grips first with what we’re talking about in this context …Titus … peace, man!
The Biblical language underlying this word Paul uses writing here to Titus is really rather rich.I guess we tend to view peace from our culture as what you come home and sit in the chair wanting … which kids come charging around the place disrupting!We probably tend to view peace as blocking out stress and distraction … an idea of peace shaped (perhaps) more by the ideas of Eastern religion than the Bible … Biblically the idea is based largely, as it happens, on the use of the OT word for peace …
In the LXX the word used here in Titus 1:4 is almost always the word used to translate שָׁלוֹםThis word שָׁלוֹםis the opposite NOT so much of war as of any disturbance in the communal well-being of the nation … a disturbance which (of course) may in certain circumstances make it necessary to go to war!(You get that in 2 Samuel 11:7, for example, “When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going.”That uses the word שָׁלוֹםto refer to the WELFARE of Joab and the WELFARE of the soldiers …It gets used of bodily health and well-being … well-being not simply in some church sense, but in the fullest sense of human well-being.It has a social dimension.It relates to contentednessIt relates to sharing in the benefits of God’s salvation.This sort of idea of peace is found at the climax of the blessing in Numbers 6:24 ff. – This becomes relevant when we get to the application to people … but at the moment we are dealing with God
Blessing gets specified then summed up as ‘peace’.To live in God’s roundest blessing is ‘peace’.
J. I. Durham: “shalom in Numbers 6:24-26 is intended as a description of the man who is blessed, guarded and treated graciously by God; the man who is doubly in God’s presence; the man who is ‘fulfilled’ and so ‘complete’.He goes on to explain that the term is often indicative in the OT of a comprehensive kind of fulfilment or completion or a sort of perfection in life and spirit which transcends any success which mankind alone can attain.It is ultimately the gift of God.After the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC ‘Peace’ became a central theme of the message of the prophets and was seen as being the blessing of the Age to come.It blossoms into the promise of the eternal and everlasting peace that accompanies the end-time salvation, linked to the coming of the Prince of Peace (as Isaiah 9 describes things).
The NT word is the same as the word used in the LXX to refer to this peace.Beck & Brown in DNTT insist there is no development of he term in the NT … it stands firmly within the OT & LXX tradition.It is an order established by God, the God of Peace (1 Cor. 14:33) often closely associated with God’s GRACE.It is the gift of God (1 Peter 1:2) and it is God Who causes peace to rule in the hearts of mankind and so reign in the Christian community, manifesting itself as the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit.However, 2 Timothy 2:22 and Hebrews 12:14 emphasise that this peace which is God’s gift is to be actively pursued.So much for the terms and their impact … but what we’re pursuing here is the peace of God Himself …
The peace of God is not a peace that arises in the absence of the possibility of discord …The peace at the heart of the Godhead arises in the unity of the Trinity …{Diagrams}In fact, the peace at the heart of the Trinity arises directly from the attributes He possesses …Let me introduce you to a very powerful lady …
This is ‘Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene of Monaco’, apparently.His/Her Serene Highness (abbreviation: HSH) is a style used today by the reigning families of Liechtenstein and Monaco. It also preceded the princely titles of members of some German ruling and mediatised dynasties as well as some non-ruling but princely German noble families until 1918 …Now, think about it … serene is the opposite of ‘stressed out’ … right?So a serene person, a person in peace, is not troubled or stressed by anything.You get stressed and ‘un-serene’ when you are frustrated and can’t do what would leave your mind unstressed and at peace.Who is best able to do that?Who ALONE is able to do that?In fact, Who is it – alone – Who always works out everything according to His own plan and purpose?God is the One Who is always superbly and serenely at peace because He is the One Who (because of His absolute sovereignty) is always, entirely at peace.He IS and He HAS peace in and of Himself because of Who He is in and of Himself … the ACTUAL Sovereign Ruler of the ends of the earth, Who does what pleases Him.And what pleases Him is that people, humanity, mankind should no longer be in a state of ‘not peace’ with Him.He is the sort of peace that propagates … His plan is to restore peace to the Creation so that it gets back to being as at peace as He originally made it.Peace was His purpose in Creation.Humanity co-operated in bringing conflict into it.God is now actively and expensively engaged in restoring His plan of peace in Creation … and here’s how!
Here’s how humans come to experience the peace that finds its origin in God …There was not peaceThere was wrathThere was a price to be paid to assuage that wrath because it was based NOT on whim but on justice … that which is right and proper …
Now – this is where the attack on living in the peace that comes to His people from God really kicks off its little game …We will agree straight away that God is utterly adequate for all of our needs.It’s a truth we KNOW.But then, well, … it’s events, dear boy, events – isn’t it?We believe this truth intellectually, but then things happen that don’t seem to relate to this at all, and our ability to live (not convinced of but ROOTED) in the adequacy of God gets hammered.I don’t know what you remember about sermons from a long time ago, but I have a clear memory (perhaps because as a keen young Oik I was taking notes) at the OICCU in 1980 from Alec Motyer.He was preaching in a short series across the student term through Exodus and I don’t remember what the text was but the quote was this:“Christian maturity is developed by learning to find the peace of God in every situation.”It is cumulative.It builds.And it builds as you put your roots down into the peace-giving adequacy of God for each and every trying situation that comes along because it takes you back to the living God in Whom you renew your trust day by day by day as you make your way through that challenging experience …I guess you get rooted in the adequacy of God for whatever it is that has just reared its ugly head as you turn back to this adequate God we believe in and trust Him again with what’s just started happening … it grows cumulatively.
Here again, we really do believe this – don’t we?We are believers in the love of God.We can quote John 3:16.It’s what we would always say.But we are none the less rattled and stressed by the impact of … events!Why?Because so many Christians who would insist that God loves them live lives quite unconvinced that He likes them.Can I suggest to you that it is unfaithful and ungrateful to live your life and make your responses to the events and the interruptions that burst into your life un-rooted in the idea God means nothing but good for you.More than that.Because He is adequate and Almighty (and is possessed of nothing but good intentions to you as His disciple) Paul is able to write as he does in Romans 8 …
God’s eternal plan and purpose is to break down the great dividing walls in humanity and make peace.