Inevitably, you will ask this question, as I have asked the question coming to the Bible, well now, how is this possible? How is it possible for an ordinary person like you or like me to have peace at all times and in every way? Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick, and Colin, I’m glad that you’ve asked that question because, hopefully, you might have an answer because some of us are going, really? Peace at all times and in every way? You know, it’s a great question to face, honestly. Two things to say. The first is that in the Scriptures, Paul himself speaks about having conflicts outside and fears within. That’s part of Christian experience, that we’re not walking around with smiles on our faces all day and experiencing this marvellous, marvellous peace. There is such a thing as the real experience of trouble and conflict. Having said that, what we’re reading here in the Bible is a prayer. Paul says, I am praying that you would experience peace at all times and in every way. That’s a wonderful prayer. It’s a prayer for us to use for each other and for ourselves. And it raises this question, do I think that there is any situation in which I could not know God’s peace? What would be the situation in which I think it would be impossible for me to know God’s peace? There is none. It is possible to know the peace of God in any and every situation. And therefore, I should make this my prayer. And especially when I experience, as Paul did, you know, conflicts around and fears within. Then especially, I need to make this my prayer. And we’re going to look at the foundation on which peace rests and the way in which we may move towards it. So if you can, join us in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 16 to 18, as we continue our message, The Peace and the Presence of God. Here’s Colin. How is it possible for an ordinary person like you or like me to have peace at all times and in every way? And I want you to notice here how he introduces the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he introduces the Lord Jesus Christ by this wonderful name in verse 16. He calls him, gives him this title, the Lord of Peace. Now you say, now what does that mean? Well, it means first that he has peace. He has it in himself. He has peace. That is why he’s able to say to his disciples, my peace I give to you. What I have in myself I can give to you. It means that Christ makes peace. That’s what it means that he’s the Lord of Peace. This is why he came into the world. He came to make peace between God and us. We celebrate this today around the Lord’s table as we take bread and wine in a few minutes time. This is why the angels said when the Lord Jesus Christ was born into the world, peace to men, because this is why he was born. And he has made this peace, how? By shedding his blood. That is what he did on the cross. And he’s the Lord of Peace not only because he has peace and because he makes peace, but because he gives peace. And that’s the particular point that Paul is making in this verse. May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace. He has peace. He makes peace. He gives peace. That’s what it means for him to be the Lord of Peace. The Lord of Peace. The word Lord has authority in it, doesn’t it? That means he has command over peace. Peace goes where he sends it. And of course the most obvious illustration of that is the occasion when Jesus was in a boat. You remember the story well. And a storm rises on the Sea of Galilee and the whole lake is in turmoil and the disciples are there in a panic. And Jesus speaks. And remember what he says. Peace, be still. And as he speaks he imparts peace to the lake. He imparts it. That’s what it means to be the Lord of Peace. Now Paul is saying this is what I am asking this Lord Jesus Christ, your Savior, to do for you. May the Lord of Peace give you peace. And notice that this is something that Jesus Christ does himself. May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace. This is a direct ministry of Jesus Christ to your soul. And he knows what you’re worried about. He knows what you’re anxious over. And he’s able to do this and Paul says, as I think of all that you’re facing, this is what I’m on my knees praying for you. That the Lord of Peace himself will give to you peace at all times and in every way. Now I’m reading through this chapter and when I get to this point I’m asking a question. Why doesn’t he end there? Don’t you think that would be the perfect ending for this letter? Don’t you think you could just put a period at the end of that and say that’s the perfect close? May the Lord himself give you peace. And then you look and you say, he goes on about writing greetings in his own hand and adding a couple of things here. You think you know, what’s happening? Why is he going? Why didn’t he just stop? Let me suggest this to you and I think there is something very wonderful here. We need not only to ask for peace but we also need to know how to receive it. You need that, I need that. I pray and what do I do next? I need to know not only that I can ask the Lord of Peace for this marvelous gift but I also need to know how can I receive it? And remember this is a real letter that is being written to these people who are facing extraordinary difficulties. Like us, they didn’t know what the future holds. They have many fears. They have to know how to get up on Monday and face life just as you have to do that in the week that lies ahead of you. And let me simply say this, it’s a very important principle to understand that the worst thing you can ever do with your fears is to suppress them. It’s the worst thing you can ever do. It’s to try and push them away. Listen, fear is like a coiled spring. The more you compress it, the more it presses back against you. The harder it becomes. You try and push your fears down, push them away. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. You know what? You think about it. You can’t beat fear that way. There is only one way to deal with the lurking fears of our lives and that is to bring them out into the open and to face them at their worst. It doesn’t help to say, don’t worry, it might never happen. Don’t say that to yourself, don’t say that to someone else. It’s never helpful because it merely leads to you saying, yeah, but what if it does? What if it does happen? What if I do have cancer? What if I do lose my job? What if I am left alone? What if that court judgment does go against me? Well, you see, there will be times when you lie awake at night and you’re worrying about these things and you say, oh God, give me peace. And what are you going to do next? What if the unthinkable happens? What if you face the nightmare scenario that you’re trying not to admit and push away all the time? Well, here’s what you can do in these times. You can ask Christ to give you peace and, that’s why the letter doesn’t end here, you can remind yourself of the foundation on which peace rests. That’s very important. You can ask Christ for peace and you can remind yourself of the foundation on which peace rests. In other words, this prayer for peace, it’s not some kind of helpless cry in the dark. It is grounded in the promise of God and as you make this prayer, you are to bring to mind what Paul does here, which is the foundation on which this peace of God rests. You say, what is the foundation? It’s just in three simple parts, very briefly. But they will be so helpful to you on those occasions when you worry and when you lie awake at night and you say, what if that does happen? Here’s the foundation of peace. God’s presence is with me. You see that in verse 16, the Lord be with all of you. The Lord be with all of you. Now, there is a special beauty in this because, remember, the Apostle Paul could not be with all of them. He had led them to Christ. He had established them as disciples. He was their father in the faith. He was the one that they looked to. He was the gift of God to them in their lives. But after just three weeks, he had been taken from them and he was not able to return to the city. So now you think for a moment of the circle of people that God has placed around you, the people you look to, the people who mean much in your life, family, friends, colleagues. Who is the person on whom you lean most for help? And when you think about that person and all that they mean to you, maybe you say sometimes, what would I do without him? What would I do about without her? And here’s your answer. God’s presence is with me. And God’s presence is with me. God’s presence is with me. Say that with me, would you? God’s presence is with me. You may need to say that to yourself to reestablish the foundation of faith in the middle of the night. To face your fears. And then there’s something else that’s the foundation of faith. And it’s this, that God’s promise is sure. God’s promise is sure. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and the message, the peace and the presence of God. It’s the final message in our series, staying the course when you’re tired of the battle. And don’t forget if you ever miss one of our messages or if you want to go back and listen again, you can always do that in two different ways. You can go online, come to our website, that is openthebible.org.uk, or you can find any of the messages as a podcast. Go to your favorite podcast site, search for Open the Bible UK and subscribe to the podcast to receive regular updates. Let’s get back to the message now. Here’s Colin. Now notice this strange thing in verse 17. And at first you may find looking at it, you say, now what is in the world is that there for? And certainly that’s the question I had as I came to it first. He talks about the distinguishing mark that is in all of my letters. What is all this about? Stay with me for a moment. I promise you this is worth it. It’s good to remember how the books and the letters that make up our Bible were actually given. And as we study the word of God every weekend, there are really just two scriptures that you need to know that tell you everything you need to know about the Bible. The first is in second Timothy chapter three and verse 16. It says that all scripture is God breathed. Wonderful statement. All the words in this book, the Bible have been breathed out by God. God is their source. They are his words that have been given to us in scripture. God spoke his word and he gave it to apostles and prophets. The second scripture that you need to know to grasp what is most important about scripture is in second Peter and chapter one. And Peter says this in verse 20, no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophets own interpretation. In other words, prophets, apostles weren’t just making up their own thoughts, you know, to try and help and encourage people in these various churches and so forth. He says this prophecy never had its origin in the will of man. It didn’t come from what a man wanted to say, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That’s a hugely important statement about the inspiration of scripture. But these two together, all scripture, everything in your Bible has been breathed out by God. And how did it come to us? Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Who were these men? Apostles and prophets. Now that is so important and I say it for this reason. The words of this letter on which our souls have been fed over these last weeks, the words of second Thessalonians did not have their origin in Paul. These words came to him. They were God breathed. Their source and their origin was in God. Paul wrote them as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit. And when you read the Bible, whether it be two Thessalonians or any other book of the Bible, you can read it with this confidence that you are reading the word of God. Now it seems from what is said here that Paul dictated the words of this letter. I want you to try and picture this. Picture the apostle and he’s walking around the room and words are coming to him. They’re coming to him by the direct inspiration of God. He is being, in Peter’s words, carried along by the Holy Spirit and he is speaking out these words and some scribe is writing them down. Maybe it was Timothy. Maybe it was Silas. Maybe it was some other scribe who was with them and he’s writing down these words as they are being given to the apostle Paul and as he speaks them out. And then as Paul gets to the end, can you picture this? He goes over to the desk where all this is being written down and he says, give me the pen. Give me the pen. And he writes, I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark of all my letters. This is how I write. Now do you see the importance of that? He is signing the document with the mark of apostolic authenticity. And it’s more than an autograph. It’s more than just, you know, Paul. You’re sincerely Paul. You know? It’s more than that because that might be easy to forge. He writes out two entire sentences in his own hand and he says, now this is the distinguishing mark of all my letters. This is how I write. And if you remember from earlier in our series, you will see the importance of that because back in chapter 2 and verse 2, we read about a letter that had been circulated, supposedly having come from Paul, that was saying that the day of the Lord had already come. In other words, there were forged letters that were being pushed around the church. And you can easily understand why. Apostolic letters had authority in the churches. Letters from the apostles, even from early days, were exchanged between the churches, passed from one church to another, so that churches could benefit from these God-given writings. And so it is not surprising that even in the early days of the church, there were false teachers. Folks, and there are always these folks, who want to try and promote themselves, and so what they did was they wrote their own letters and then claimed that these letters were apostolic so that the churches would read them and they would build an audience. And so you can see that there was great potential for confusion. How could we know that a letter really came from Paul? How could we tell a genuinely apostolic letter from one that was a fake or one that was a forgery? And Paul takes the pen and he writes these sentences and he says, This is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write. Now you see the importance for them, and you see the importance for us. God spoke his word through apostles and through prophets. This letter really is apostolic. This is what God says and you can trust it. That’s the point of verse 17. This is what God says and you can trust it. So here is how you can face your greatest fears, your darkest days. God has spoken in the scriptures and you can rest your life. You can rest your death. You can rest your eternity on what he has said. God cannot lie. The scripture cannot be broken. All of God’s promises are yes and amen. They’re signed, sealed and delivered. Jesus said, My words will never pass away. So here on these occasions when you might be awake at night and anxiety is pressing in on you, it is how you face your fears. Whatever happens, even the worst I can imagine, God’s presence is with me and God’s promise is sure. I can rest my life, my death, my eternity in this. And then very briefly and lastly, God’s grace is sufficient. You see the very last line there? The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And you know that Paul knew what it was to be undarably crushed. He knew what it was, as some of you know right now, what it is to face overwhelming pressure. He knew what it was to feel his own weakness, as I so often experience that, and I’m sure you do too. And he knew what it was for Christ to say to him, My grace is sufficient for you. And his grace is sufficient for us as well, at all times and in every way. So face your fears. Don’t push them back. Bring them out into the open. And when you find yourself awake at night, ask Christ to give you his peace. And then remind yourself of the foundation on which this peace rests. And say it with me. God’s presence is with me. God’s promise is sure. God’s grace is sufficient. What a powerful truth to cling to. Face your fears. Don’t push them back. Bring them out into the open and then ask Christ to give you his peace. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And our message today is called The Peace and the Presence of God. It’s the final message in our series, Staying the Course When You’re Tired of the Battle. And if you’ve missed any of the series, or if you simply want to go back and listen again, there are two different ways you can do that. You can come to our website, that’s openthebible.org.uk. There you can listen to any of the previous broadcast messages. The other way is to search for it as a podcast. Go to your favourite podcast site, search for Open the Bible UK, and subscribe to the podcast to receive regular updates. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners, that’s people just like you. And this month, if you’re able to begin supporting us with a new donation in the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to send you a free gift. It’s an Advent devotional and it’s called The Coming of the King by J.C. Ryle. Colin, what makes this book so special? Oh, two things. The first would be its theme. It’s all about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, or rather I should say the comings of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it is both about his first coming that we celebrate at Christmas and about his second coming that we anticipate with hope and with joy. So a book that just focuses us on the coming of Jesus is going to be a blessing. And the second reason that it is a marvellous book is its author, Bishop J.C. Ryle. He was a bishop in the Church of England in the 19th century. He is one of my favourite authors, all-time favourite authors, and especially in regards to the Gospels. He has some marvellous books on the four Gospels. And this little book, The 25 Readings for Advent, The Coming of the King, is selected from Ryle’s writings on the Gospels. They’re simple, they’re clear, they’re beautiful. They shine the light on the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re faith-building, they’re refreshing, and you will enjoy reading this little book during Advent. Well, we’d like to send you this book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month and setting up a new monthly donation for £5 per month or more. Full details on our website, that’s openthebible.org.uk. For Open the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick, and I very much hope you’ll join us again soon. How can you overcome your fears? Find out next time on Open the Bible.