John Hagee - The God of Peace
Everyone wants peace, but what is it? The search for peace has become an international obsession. We live in an age of anxiety. Americans live behind locked doors in fear. We have burglar bars. We have burglar alarms. We have guns cocked and loaded. Gangs rule the streets and rule in terror. Women carry mace just in case. A woman is raped every 48 seconds in this United States. We have become the most violent society on the planet. Planned parenthood sells baby body parts, which is absolutely no different from what Adolf Hitler did in the Third Reich. We write books on peace of mind, and they sell like hotcakes. Why? Because we're searching for, in a book, what we do not have in our lives.
So what is peace? What is peace? If you can't define it, you won't know when you find it. First, start with peace is precious. The ancient poet has said, "Heap upon other men the treasures of this world. But give to me the treasure of the untroubled heart". The point is we are an uptight generation. There are many things we desire. We desire health, and love, and riches, and beauty, and talent, and fame, and power. But without peace of mind, all of those things bring nothing but torment. Some of the most miserable people I have ever met are multi, multimillionaires, miserable all the time. If we have peace, no matter what else we may lack, life is beautiful. Without peace, a palace of gold is still a penitentiary.
And people live in those kinds of places. What is peace? The absence of strife is not peace. Most people define peace that way: it's the absence of strife. That's not true. You're not fighting: you're just too tired to fight. The point is the absence of strife does not mean you are at peace. You're just too tired to fight. Your marriage is not going to be healed, because you're just resting to reload. When he comes home, I'm going to say this, this, this, and this. Don't raise your hands. I'm just talking here. Your family has not reconciled, because it's resting until round ten. And then everyone answers the bell and chaos starts. The streets of America's major cities are quiet, and riots explode. You do not have the peace of God in this country.
Peace is not absolute tranquility. Peace is not detachment from risk and responsibility. Peace is not total security. Peace is not the absence of tension, the blue haven of the untroubled life. In this world, there's no such thing as absolute security from tension. A woman went to her pastor for counseling. And she said, "I'm tired of the struggle. I'm tired of the tension. I'm tired of the stress. The endless responsibilities of life are more than I want! I'm tired of this. I want it to be over". And the pastor said, "Good: I'm going to show you where you can find it". He walked out of the church, put her in a cab, and drove to the first cemetery, and said, "Get out. When you get where they are, you'll find what you're looking for".
Think about that. As long as you're live, there's going to be challenges. There's going to be battles to fight. There are going to be victories to be won. But you can't do anything other than what Jesus said: "Take up your cross and follow me". Take up your task. There are giants to defeat. There are mountains to climb. There are responsibilities. There are principalities to conquer. There's a race to run. There are victories to be won! Get up off your pity pot and get back in the game!
Many people see Christianity as a retreat from reality. Absolutely not. The Christianity of the Bible is an engagement to engage the challenges of life. It's the call to live, not death. Christianity is not escapism: it's involvement. Christianity is transforming adversity into opportunity. It's snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Christianity is giving and forgiving. Christianity is fighting the good fight of faith until the victory comes. Christianity is resisting the devil, and he will flee from you. Christianity is knowing that nothing is impossible with Christ and to those that believe. Christianity is to count it all joy in the trials of life. Christianity is ours and the victory is ours, because Christ is Lord and triumphant over all! Give him praise in the house!
Saint Paul said, "The peace of God surpasses all understanding". Why? Because you can be happier in the combat zone than you can in your comfort zone: happier in the lion's den with Daniel than walking with the king down the palace halls, giving birth to a new group of peptic ulcers, wondering how Daniel is doing: happier in the fiery furnace with the fourth man in the fire than you can be with those cowards outside, bowing down to the image of Nebuchadnezzar and defying the God of heaven. Quit looking for Maalox and dialing 9-1-1. There is more peace in the battle than there is sitting on the sideline. Peace is won by accompanying God into the battle. Get up! Get involved! You can make the difference! Give the Lord praise in the house!
There's peace in the midst of trouble. There is peace in the battle to save your business, to save your marriage, your health, your family, and this nation. There is peace in the hour of death. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me", listen, "Shall never die". You're never going to die if you're in Jesus. Your last breath here is your first breath there. You go from this life to eternal life. And that life is better than this life. You're going to live forever! It was never God's intent that there should be universal peace. Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace". This is in the Bible. He said, "I have come to bring a sword".
And a sword divides. Jesus is the divider of everything on planet earth. Jesus divides wheat from tares. He divides sheep from goats. He divides light from darkness. He divides and chooses the broad way and the narrow way. He says what is truth and what is not truth. You're either a servant of Jesus Christ or you are a slave to sin and Satan, one of those two things. Which are you? Paul said in Romans 5:1, "We have peace with God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ". Peace is the gift of God. And without total surrender to Jesus Christ, peace is not possible! Therefore, peace is not for everyone. It's only for the people who choose Jesus Christ to be the Lord of their life.
Isaiah said, "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters stir up the mire and the dirt. 'there is no peace,' saith God to the wicked," pure and simple. The idea of a universal peace for a Christ-rejecting, God-hating, Bible-disregarding, pleasure-loving world enslaved by greed and materialism is an absolute pipe dream. That's just not reality. Peace is the gift of God, and he gives it only to those who bow their knee to his son Jesus Christ and confess that he is the Lord of their life. Amen and amen. Peace is the opposite of hatred. It is absolutely true that the most expensive thing in the world is hatred. Look at the by-products of hatred. Hatred is the source of every war, of every divorce, of racial prejudice, of riots in the streets of the United States of America, of antisemitism that's turning our universities upside down, of slander. Right now, slander is an art form in Washington.
If you disagree with the woke government, the media assassinates you in an effort to get you to shut down. Suicide has now become a way of escape for America's young people. How can these things be eradicated? Not with more bombs, and not more armies, and not more fighter jets, not more laws, and not more lawyers. We started out with one law, "Don't eat this forbidden fruit". We gravitated to Ten Commandments. Those Ten Commandments are the structure of society. Now there are over a million laws on our law books, and we're the most lawless country in the world. More laws is not the answer. Obedience to the law of God, that's the answer! Jesus said in Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the sons of God".
Where is peace found? Nowhere in the Bible is peace sought as the end and the goal of existence. Peace is the consequence of something. The Fruit of the Spirit is peace. Say that with me. "The Fruit of the Spirit is peace". Peace is the fruit of reconciliation. Saint Paul said, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God". When you reconcile with God, you have peace with God. In every man's heart, there lurks a sense of wrongness and a hunger for righteousness. Uneasiness within the heart is called guilt. And it's useless to sweep it under the rug, or to take it to some seashore, or to some mountain resort, some shangri-la, to forget. Guilt will follow you to the grave until you confess and get your life straightened out with the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happens, peace like a flood will engulf you, and your life will become a thing of joy. Give the Lord praise.
The problem is our generation has dismissed the whole idea of guilt. If you're doing the wrong thing, it's your mother's fault, it's your father's fault. The boy scout leader didn't give you enough cookies, it's their frustration: that's their problem. Our generation has dismissed that. They've dismissed the idea of forgiveness and conscience and moral responsibility. We've sought to rearrange attitudes, and to manipulate emotions, and to banish evil without quitting evil. We're trying to get the peace of mind without the moral price. We're trying to get the gifts of God without the need of God. Adjustment is the new Gospel. Accept your sin: don't rise above your sin. Alibi is for failure to reduce the pain of conscience is something that is on the market today in every church in America.
Let me tell you this: why did Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden? They didn't get kicked out of the garden because they sinned. They got kicked out of the garden because they refused to confess their sin. Adam and Eve were found by God. They were hiding. Believe me, when you're hiding, God knows where you are. They were naked and God knew that too. And when God found them, they started justifying their lives. Adam said to God, "This woman that you gave me", you did it. And the woman looked at God, and said, "That snake started talking to me, and it just sounded so rational: I thought we should do it". Adam failed in his spiritual leadership for letting his wife talk to strange snakes in the garden. What snake are you talking to? Too many are trying to get adjusted to their sin rather to be converted from their sin. They're having their sins explained rather than forgiven.
The Bible says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness". I don't care what you've done. God is anxious to forgive you. But for heaven's sake, stop alibiing for who you are! The night before the greatest battle of Jesus' life, the powers of hell were trying to destroy him. And in that situation, Jesus said: he spoke those words, "My peace I give unto you, not at the world has, but such as I have give it unto you," hours before he was to be beaten to death with a Roman cat-o-nine-tails. Jesus did his duty. He went to the cross and he died for you, and for you, and for you, and you, and you, and every person watching by television across America and around the world. We are in a spiritual dog fight for the soul of this nation. Stop complaining about our situation and start fighting the good fight. Stand up to evil. Speak up for righteousness. Go to the house of God and defy the evil forces. Resist the socialist poison that's coming out of Washington, D.C. Rise up, church of Jesus Christ! Live by this book, and the victory will be ours!
Moses did his duty. He faced Pharaoh. At the risk of death, he faced the most powerful man on the face of the earth, and he led Israel out of 430 years of captivity. He served for 40 years. He lived to be 120, and he walked to his own funeral. Brother, that's the victorious Christian life. Joshua did his duty. He marched around the walls of Jericho seven times, shouted, and the walls fell down flat. David did his duty. He saw Goliath, who was a tyrant, who was wanting to destroy Israel. And God anointed him to kill that monster. The question is, "Are we doing our duty to our generation"? Are we speaking the Gospel truth to them? Are we telling them what we're doing now is going in the wrong direction? When the church decides to be salt and light, America will have a moral compass. Church, rise up! Live a righteous life! Speak a righteous life! So shall we save these United States of America! Peace is the fruit of righteousness. The angels sang, "Peace on earth, good will toward men".
World peace, how does it come? Peace on earth will come when the Prince of Peace comes, and no other way. It's much easier to hate war than to hate the things within ourselves that cause for war. That means in your own house. The price for world peace is world righteousness. The end of economic disaster is righteousness. How so? The Bible says, "Six days you shall work". That means get off the couch and quit waiting for the government to mail you a check. If you've got a healthy body, you deserve nothing until you work for it! Peace is the fruit of repentance. The last Word of God to the church is not the great commission. To the seven churches, repent or else. And he said to five out of that seven churches, "You are on the wrong road". Cafeteria Christianity has become America's theology. I'm sure that if that proportion still handles, five out of seven churches probably need to repent of the message that they're presenting to America right now. Hot-tub Christianity has become the order of the day. It is so sensuous. It is so relaxing. It's nothing short of hedonism, which is the comfort of the physical man above the spiritual man. Hot-tub Christianity does not call for spiritual warfare, or the crucified life, or discipline, or fasting and prayer, or evangelism, or personal responsibility.
The times in America are desperate, but the church is not! One man said to me the other day, "But our churches are full". And I said, "Of what"? Stand up, church of Jesus Christ. Stand up for Jesus Christ. Stand up for the Word of God by being peacemakers, not the world changing us, but us changing the world. Peacemaking a proactive. It's a decision to do something and not just dream about something. Peacemakers, meaning peace must be made. You may drift into a divorce. You may drift into war. You may drift into racial hatred. You may drift into a global economic disaster. But if peace is ever realized, it's going to be made by a conscious, persistent, sacrificial effort when we decide to be peacemakers in our homes, in churches, and in our marriages. It is not possible for all to make great fortunes. But every person in this room and every person listening to me can be a peacemaker even in your own home. Start there. Well I just can't forgive my husband or my wife. Wrong! You can: you just don't want to. Because you use that to manipulate them to get them to do what you want to do. That's manipulation. That's witchcraft, by the way.
Oh, dear God. Hmm. Get your home in divine order. The father leads in the home, in this book, by the way, not on your silly television set, he's the blob of protoplasm that sits on the couch. In this book, he's the leader of the house. "Wives," it says, "Submit to your own husbands as unto the Lord". Paul wrote this. "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. So let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything". If you want real peace, peace that lasts, peace that endures in your marriage, in your family, then you have to make sure that you have confessed all of your sin before the Lord, and take responsibility for your lives and for your decisions, and seek righteousness, and peace will come. You have to make peace. That means you go to the person and talk to them about peace between me and you. That's very, very simple and it's very, very hard.
Let me tell you how I know that. Because I've done that a lot of times in my life. Because by instinct, I am a fighter. I love a good fight. And there are times that I let that side of me get on the wrong side of the issue. And I have to go back and say, "I have said the wrong thing. Let's go this way". And it always works out. It always works out. Peacemakers are the children of God: otherwise, you're just a useless blob of protoplasm taking up space. Hmm. And with that, I'll end the sermon. Stand. Those of you here who say, "Pastor, I don't have peace in my home, my family, my marriage, my life. I don't have peace of mind. I live with stress, worry, and apprehension. I'm more concerned about the problems I'm facing than the people I live with". If you are tormented by raging emotions of anger, and heartache, and anger. And sorrow, and you would like to have the peace of God, in this audience and those of you who are watching by home, would you slip your hand up and let me pray for you? I want you to pray this prayer:
Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, today I receive your peace, peace that surpasses all understanding, peace that forgives and forgets the past. I want to be a peacemaker, because I have the peace of God in my heart and my life. Let the peace of God rule my home, my marriage, and the United States of America. And let that peace begin in the church triumphant, in Jesus' name. Amen.