Jesus Gives You Peace

BIBLE MEDITATION

“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27

 

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

One of the wonderful names of Jesus is “The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah prophesied that He would be called “The Prince of Peace.” Jesus holds the key to peace, whether it’s personal peace in your heart, domestic peace in your home, or eternal peace in heaven.

The angels told the shepherds that His coming was “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10), for His incarnation meant peace and goodwill toward men.

Certainly, there is a need for peace. But look around. What’s happened to the promised peace? It was postponed when the world rejected and then crucified the Prince of Peace whom God had sent.

There will be no peace on Earth until the world that rejected our Savior receives Him again in power and glory. The only true hope for peace for the church, the nation, the world, and the individual is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

ACTION POINT

This Christmas, do you have peace with God or is the war still going on? The only way you can have the peace Jesus made is to surrender to Jesus. He has fought and won the battle. He has made peace with the blood of His cross. But that peace does you no good until you bow to Him in total, absolute surrender and lay down your sword of rebellion at His feet. Once you have that peace with God, then you can have the peace of God.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Glory Is the Goal

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2)

Seeing the glory of God is our ultimate hope. “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). God will “present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

He will “make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). He “calls you into his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12). “Our blessed hope [is] the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Jesus, in all his person and work, is the incarnation and ultimate revelation of the glory of God. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). “Father, I desire that they . . . may be with me where I am, to see my glory” Jesus prays in John 17:24.

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1). “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

“We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7). “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30).

Seeing and sharing in God’s glory is our ultimate hope through the gospel of Christ.

Such a hope, that is really known and treasured, has a huge and decisive effect on our present values and choices and actions.

Get to know the glory of God. Study the glory of God and the glory of Christ. Study the glory of the world that reveals the glory of God, and the glory of the gospel that reveals the glory of Christ.

Treasure the glory of God in all things and above all things.

Study your soul. Know the glory you are seduced by, and know why you treasure glories that are not God’s glory.

Study your own soul to know how to make the glories of the world collapse like the pagan idol Dagon in 1 Samuel 5:4. Let all glories that distract you from the glory of God shatter in pitiful pieces on the floor of the world’s temples. Treasure the glory of God above all this world.

John Piper 

Bible Study

12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh,

14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.

17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. - Hebrews 9:12-17

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. - Hebrews 9:14

20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. - Philippians 1:20-21

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,

20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

If You Want to Know God, Look at Jesus

BIBLE MEDITATION

“[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who [Jesus] being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

Hebrews 1:2-3

 

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

Two thousand years after His birth, there’s never one minute on earth that millions are not studying what Jesus Christ said. Think about it: a person who lived in a tiny land 2,000 years ago, yet His birth divides the centuries from “B.C.” to “A.D. “

He never wrote a book. Yet libraries could be filled with the volumes written about the Lord Jesus. He never painted a picture, yet the world’s greatest art, music, and literature have Jesus Christ at their center. He never traveled far from His birthplace, yet His testimony has gone around the world. He only had a handful of followers and a ministry of only three short years, yet 2,000 years later, we still say, “Jesus, Your name is wonderful.”

He had no formal education, yet colleges, universities, and seminaries are built in the name of Jesus Christ. To know Him is to love Him. To love Him is to trust Him. To trust Him is to be radically, dramatically, eternally transformed.

Human speech is too limited to describe Him, the human mind too small to comprehend Him, and the human heart can never completely, totally absorb who Jesus Christ is. He was God, manifest in the flesh.

ACTION POINT

If you want to know God, come to know Jesus. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What Is Your Aim?

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. . . . And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17)

When you get up in the morning and you face the day, what do you say to yourself about your hopes for the day? When you look from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, what do you want to happen because you have lived?

If you say, “I don’t even think like that. I just get up and do what I’ve got to do,” then you are cutting yourself off from a basic means of grace and a source of guidance and strength and fruitfulness and joy. It is crystal clear in the Bible, including these texts, that God means for us to aim consciously at something significant in our days.

God’s revealed will for you is that when you get up in the morning, you don’t drift aimlessly through the day letting mere circumstances alone dictate what you do, but that you aim at something — that you focus on a certain kind of purpose. I’m talking about children here, and teenagers, and adults — single, married, widowed, moms, and every trade and every profession.

Aimlessness is akin to lifelessness. Dead leaves in the back yard may move around more than anything else — more than the dog, more than the children. The wind blows this way, they go this way. The wind blows that way, they go that way. They tumble, they bounce, they skip, they press against a fence, but they have no aim whatsoever. They are full of motion and empty of life.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful — to have a focus and an aim for all our days. What is yours today? What is yours for the new year? A good place to start is 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

John Piper 

Bible Study

5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. - John 3:5-6

23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

24 for "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 

25 but the word of the Lord remains forever." And this word is the good news that was preached to you.  - 1 Peter 1:23-25

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. - John 1:12-14

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Corinthians 4:4-6

Do You Know the Future?

BIBLE MEDITATION

“…when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels…. When He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe….” (2 Thessalonians 1:7, 10).

 

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

Christmas is not the end of the story! It’s not yet finished, for the Jesus who came the first time is coming again, and Christmas is not complete without the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The incarnation without the coronation would be like east without west, like an engagement without a marriage.

You may have thought this was a good Christmas for you—but, friend, the best is yet to come! The Heavenly Father has so much more in store for us when Jesus comes again.

We get all wrapped up in the little baby in the manger, then we then go beyond the birth of the baby, saying, “Yes, He came to die for our sins” (thank God He did that), but I want to remind you that the First Coming of Jesus and the Second Coming are linked together.

The Christmas Story in Luke 1 and 2 speaks not only of the Jesus who redeemed but the Jesus who reigned. Not only the Jesus who came the first time but the Jesus who is coming the second time to sit upon the throne of His father David, to rule over the house of Jacob forever and ever.

ACTION POINT

Imagine for a moment what your life would be like without the Resurrection, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Jesus. The most glorious fact of the past is that Jesus came the first time. The most glorious fact of the future is that this Jesus is coming again. The one sure hope of this jittery old world is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers