TITLES OF GOD: JEHOVAH-SHALOM
DR. JIM DIXON
JUDGES 6:11-24
SEPTEMBER 10, 1989
On the road from Seattle to Vancouver at the United States Canadian border, there is a park, a beautiful park called the Peace Arch Park. There’s a monument there celebrating the peace that exists and has existed between these two nations. The flags of America, the United States, the flags of the United States and Canada stand together, and the monument and the peace arch has these words: “Children of a common mother.”
Two months ago, as Barb and I and Drew and Heather were driving our car across the Canadian American border, there we saw that arch. We read those words, “Children of a common mother.” I asked Drew what he thought those words referred to and he said, “I hope that they refer to God.” And of course, I’m sure the theological feminists were pleased. But the truth is, of course, the word “mother” refers to England. “Children of a common mother.”
Both the United States and Canada were conceived in the womb of Great Britain and it is all together fitting and proper that we should celebrate the peace that exists between our two nations. Because in this world and throughout its history, peace between nations is all too rare. In fact, historians tell us that since 3600 B.C. to this day, there have been 14,531 wars between nations and countries, taking the lives of 3,650,000,000 people collectively. Only 262 years throughout recorded history when there’s been an absence of international war.
Fifty years ago, this month, September 1st, 1939, the first shots of World War II were fired. We must not forget that this century, the 20th century, has seen more people killed in war than any other century. We are the people. This century is the century that truly has made war global. According to Time Magazine, even now, today, there are 30 nations in this world at war —30 nations. Tremendous technological and scientific advancements in the 20th century, but no improvement in the heart of man.
Well, as Christians, we are called to strive for peace. As Christians, we are meant to understand biblically that this world will never truly have peace until the consummation. We strive for peace, but we know global peace will not come until the consummation when God Jehovah-Shalom sends his son Jesus Christ and he “beats our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, and nation will not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore.” Jehovah-Shalom, the Prince of Peace.
And even now, even today, prior to the consummation, in this age of the world, God offers peace to you. He offers a personal peace. He offers an individual peace. He offers an inner peace because he’s Jehovah-Shalom. He’s the Lord of Peace. And the peace that God offers to each and every one of us today is a strange and mystical peace. Our Lord Jesus Christ said it’s a peace that is not of this world. It’s a peace that this world cannot give. The Apostle Paul said, “It’s a peace that surpasses human understanding.”
This morning, I would like us to examine this peace biblically. This peace from Jehovah-Shalom can be defined in two ways. First of all, it is the peace of being completely forgiven. It is the peace of knowing that your sins are absolutely and totally forgiven.
In the city of Madrid, in the country of Spain, a few years ago, an ad was placed in a local newspaper. The ad said, “Dear Paco, meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father.” Apparently, Paco was a runaway son, much like the prodigal in the Bible who had left home to pursue life in the fast lane. The incredible thing was that the next day at noon in front of the newspaper office, 800 guys showed up all named Paco, all seeking reconciliation with their father, all desperately wanting their father to forgive them.
Psychologists tell us that it’s really not possible for any of us to have inward peace unless there’s some measure of reconciliation with our parents. The Bible tells us all the more it is not possible for any of us to have true peace and true wholeness until we have reconciliation with the Father who is in heaven, reconciliation with Jehovah-Shalom.
This world has 5 billion runaways ways. 5 billion prodigals. It is not possible for any of us, truly, in our deepest being, to have peace until we come home to him.
I know most of you have heard of the book, a movie called Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies was written in 1954 by a British man named William Golding. If you remember the story, it tells how a group of boys were stranded on an island. These boys looked innocent enough and they were normal enough. But as time passed and these boys were stranded on this island, they became more and more savage. They tried to establish society and guidelines and structure, some measure of civilization, and they formed two groups. They formed a group of hunters and a group of fire keepers. And the hunters were kind of the doers and the fire keepers were the thinkers. But see, eventually these two groups became hostile to each other and they went to war with each other and they began to kill each other. And as time passed on this little island, these boys became savages.
I don’t know why William Golding chose to call the book Lord of the Flies. I do know that “Beelzebub” is a title used in the Bible, in the Bible for Satan, and that also in the old Hebrew literally means “Lord of the Flies.” I think William Golding understood that there’s a little bit of Satan in every person, every man and woman, even in children. The Bible says there’s evil in all of us, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And there’s evil in you. There’s evil in me. There’s also good in you, and there’s good in me. The problem is God is wholly good. The Bible says “He is light. In him is no darkness at all.”
And the Bible says that we cannot have fellowship with him as long as there is unforgiven evil in us. And this great wall separates the people of this world from the Living God and being separated from God, there’s no true inward peace. And indeed, because there’s good and evil in all of us, we are at war even within ourselves. We are riddled with guilt. We desperately need sin forgiven. We need evil cleansed. Well, God is Jehovah-Shalom. He is the God of peace. He offers complete forgiveness to each and every one of you. He offers complete forgiveness to me. He wants to forgive the evil that is in you and reconcile, provide reconciliation with God. He wants to provide you with peace. He wants to reconnect you through faith in Jesus Christ with him. He wants to cleanse your sin. He wants to remove your guilt.
Of course, we live in a world which tries to establish a synthetic peace by denying the reality of guilt or the appropriateness of guilt. A world that says there really is no sin. A world says that man is not morally culpable. We are not really responsible, and we are simply products of our environment. What we do is simply natural, but this doesn’t really provide peace because deep down, deep within us, we all know that we sin. We desperately need to have that sin forgiven.
I know many of you have read the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Luke and remember how our Lord Jesus one day was invited to the home of a Pharisees. A very unusual thing. The Pharisees didn’t usually invite Jesus Christ to come to their home, but this Pharisee did. We do not know what he had in mind, but we do know that Christ went there. Christ accepted, went to the home of the Pharisee, and they went out onto the patio, an open court. In Jewish homes 2000 years ago, most of the homes, certainly the homes of those who were middle class or above, had open courts patios, and they went out there. And so, oftentimes, they’d have their meal out there, and as they would sit out there, the court would be open to the public street and people would sometimes just come in and fellowship. And as people saw Jesus talking with this Pharisee and the Pharisee’s friends, probably other Pharisees, people began to come from the streets. They wanted to listen.
You remember how a woman came into that house, into the courtyard. She was a prostitute woman of the streets riddled by guilt, separated from God. She had no peace. She came into that court and the Bible says, “She fell down before Jesus Christ.” The Pharisees were angry. They said, “If this man is who he says he is, if he’s really the promised one, the anointed one, the Messiah, the son of God, he would have nothing to do with her. She’s unclean.” They were offended that she had even come into their home or into their court. But the Bible says, “Jesus had compassion on her.” She came with a jar of ointment. She wanted to anoint the feet of the Son of God.
As she came, and as she fell before him, she began to cry. And the tears, the Bible says, “were just falling down her face.” And the tears fell from her face onto the feet of Christ. Big drops of tears just fell onto the feet of Jesus Christ as she took her hair that was not wrapped. It was normal for a respectable woman to have her hair wrapped in Jewish society, but she was not respectable, and her hair was loose, and it was unbound. And she took it and she began to wipe the tears from Christ’s feet. And then she took the ointment from that jar, that costly ointment, and she poured it on the feet of Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that Christ looked at her and he said a beautiful thing, the most beautiful words she could ever hear. Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Can you imagine that moment? A prostitute riddled with guilt, separated from God, having no inward peace – she comes in true repentance, true remorse. She wants to change. She knows he is the Son of God. She falls down, tears on her face in repentance, and he says, “Your sins are forgiven you.” And then he said, three words, “Go in peace.” “Your sins are forgiven you. Go in peace.” You see, you can only go in peace. Actually, the Greek means “Go into peace.” You can only go with peace when you know your sins are completely forgiven. And that’s what God offers you because he’s Jehovah-Shalom. But you must come to him in true repentance with no hardness of heart. You must come with tears on your face, in your heart. You must fall down before him. You must say, “Have mercy on me a sinner.”
The Bible says when we confess our sin, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And when he does that, you have a peace the world can’t possibly understand. No one else has the power to forgive your sins. Only Jehovah-Shalom. No one else can remove the taint of sin from your soul. No one else can give you peace within. And when he removes our sin, he does it completely. You see, the Bible says, “He buries our sin in the depths of the sea.”
There are two Greek words for forgiveness. There’s the word “charidzomai”, and there’s the word “aphiemi.” “Charidzomai” is built on the Greek letter “chi”, which looks like an “x.” And whenever a debt was forgiven, the certificate of debt was “x’ed” out, “charidzomai”, forgiven, canceled. But, you see, this other word, “aphiemi” is a more beautiful word. It’s the word the Bible uses for forgiveness. And “aphiemi” means to wipe a slate completely clean. No “x” over the record. The record is completely removed. It is wiped clean, a clean slate. And that’s what God offers to you and to me. When we come to him and we receive his son as Lord and Savior of life, we come to him in repentance. He gives the peace of complete forgiveness.
Well, there’s a second meaning, a second definition of this peace. It’s the peace of being unconditionally loved, completely forgiven and unconditionally loved. “The Lord must love common people. He made so many of them.” Those were the words of Abraham Lincoln. And because Abraham Lincoln said those words, his face was placed on the one cent coin, the United States penny. You see the United States penny was designed by David Brenner. David Brenner was born in Russia. He had lived in poverty, in oppression, but he came to the United States of America and he found liberty an opportunity, and he made the most of that opportunity. And David Brenner became a famous sculptor, and he was given the privilege of designing the one cent coin, the United States penny. He could have placed any face, within reason, on the one cent coin that he chose to place. He chose the face of Abraham Lincoln because he knew that Abraham Lincoln loved common people. He knew that Lincoln had said, “God loves common people”, and he knew that the one cent coin was the most common of all coins. And so, he put the face of Lincoln there.
Well, God does love common people, but he doesn’t only love common people. He also loves uncommon people. He loves you. He loves rich people. He loves poor people. He loves all people. “Red, yellow, black and white. All are precious in his sight.” But you see, it’s so hard for us, so hard for us to comprehend the depth or the height of God’s love. His love is unconditional. And the Bible says we cannot even fathom the nature of God’s love.
Some of you are parents, you have children. Think back to when your first child was born. How easy it was, how natural it was to love that child when that child came into the world. I remember when Heather was born almost 15 years ago, and she came home from the hospital. In those first few weeks, I couldn’t wait to get home from work, I wanted to see my little child. I wanted to pick her up and hold her in my arms. I wanted to look in her eyes, her big eyes. She still has big eyes. I wanted to hear the noises that my little child made. And if I came home tired, she kind of cheered me just to hold her like that. If I came home stressed out after a hard day at work, I’d hold her in my arms, and it would calm me. And it wasn’t because she loved me. In fact, in those early months, it occurred to me that if my heart was broken, it wouldn’t have affected her sleep. And if my body had been riddled with pain, it wouldn’t have affected her play. If I had died, she would’ve forgotten me in a few days or a few moments. You see, it wasn’t that she loved me, it was that I loved her. And I didn’t love her because she had accomplished anything or because she ever would accomplish anything. I didn’t love her because of what she was going to give to me. In fact, I already knew that as the years went by, I was going to have to give a lot to her. I didn’t know how much, but I knew I was going to have to give to her, and I loved that. I wanted to do that because of my love for her. All the money in the world, I didn’t have much money then. I don’t have much money today, but all the money in the world couldn’t have bought her from me.
You see, that’s the way that Barb and I love Heather and Drew today. We love them like that. If they flunked out of school, we wouldn’t love them any less. We’d be angry, but we wouldn’t love them any less. And if they became promiscuous, began to participate in immoral lifestyles, we wouldn’t love them any less. Though our love would cause us pain. And if they were in horrible accidents and their bodies were disfigured or even dismembered so that they became grotesque, we wouldn’t love them any less. In fact, we’d probably just feel our love all the more because that’s how most parents love their children. I suppose that’s how most of you love your children. We love our children with an unconditional love. Sometimes our children can’t feel that. They have a hard time receiving that, but as parents, we know we love our children like that.
You see, the Bible tells us that this parental love actually pales when compared with the love of God. The love that we have for our children is a pale love when compared with the depth of God’s love for you. When compared with the depth of God’s love for all of us. The Bible says we can’t even imagine or comprehend the depth of God’s love for us. That was the love that led him to take our flesh upon himself. This is the love that led him to Calvary’s cross, led Him to die for you and to die for me.
Well, the Bible says that when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, when we accept Christ as Lord and Savior, we come into the kingdom of Christ and we begin to be able to experience God’s unconditional love. When we come to Christ and we receive Him as Lord and Savior, you begin to be able to receive and experience the unconditional love that God has for you. And that love, to the extent that you experience it, and you receive it, and you believe it to that extent, you begin to experience peace, a peace the world can’t understand because he is Jehovah-Shalom.
Jesus said in John Chapter 14, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you.” He said those words to his disciples in the Upper Room. Only a few seconds earlier, he had spoken to them of the love which the Father has for them, and only a few seconds after he said, “Peace, I leave with you.” He said, “As the Father has loved me even so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” You see, you only have his peace as you learn to abide in his love and bask in that unconditional love.
The biblical word, the Greek word, for the love of God is the word “agape.” It’s a special word. There were many Greek words for love as the word “eros.” Eros is the word from which we get our English word, “erotic.” A lot of people mistakenly believe that eros referred simply to sex, but the Greek word eros referred to far more than sex. It referred to love between the sexes. It referred to the kind of love that a man would have for a woman or a woman for a man referred to romantic love. But you see, romantic love is a very conditional love. Even young people begin to understand that when they begin to date, they know that eros is a very conditional love. That’s why they want their hair to look just right, and they want their clothes to look just right and they want to look just right, and they want to act just right because they know eros is a very conditional love.
When I graduated from high school, I had been going steady with a girl for two years. Her name was Margaret. She was, she went by the name “Pep.” She wrote in my graduation yearbook. She wrote, “I’ll always love you, Jim.” She wrote, “I love you, Jim, I’ll always love you.” She went to a foreign country for three months, and when she came back, she said, “Let’s be friends.” You see, that’s eros. It’s a very conditional love. Some of you have experienced the pain, the horror of being married to someone for many years, and now you’re divorced, and you heard that person you were married to come to you and say, “I don’t love you anymore.” They were the person who knew you better than any other person in this world. And they said,” I know you better than anyone in this world, and I don’t love you anymore.” That’s eros, conditional love.
There’s the Greek word “phileo.” That’s a word for love. It refers to the love of friendship. In fact, biblically, the word for friend is the word “filos”, which is built on this word phileo. It refers to friendship love, the love that one friend has for another. But, you see, even friendship love is a very conditional kind of love. “Prosperity makes friends, adversity tests them.” That’s what a famous philosopher once said. And even those friends who are tried and found to be true, their love is still a conditional love because, you see, friendship by definition is reciprocal. It takes two people to truly form a friendship.
In the Bible, the greatest illustration of human friendship is the friendship between David and Jonathan. They both swore loyalty and friendship under death, and they were faithful in their friendship unto death. But even their friendship was conditional, subject to the condition of death. So it was that Jonathan died at the Battle of Mount Gilboa. David didn’t have his friend anymore. He only had pain. But, you see, there’s a greater love, the agape love of God, and it is subject to no conditions, not even the condition of death. It transcends everything. Nothing can separate you from this unconditional love as a Christian, and God wants you to know and he wants you to believe.
It was Carl Bart, the famous German theologian, who once spoke to the graduating class at Princeton Seminary. When he was asked what he considered to be the most profound theological truth, Carl Bart looked at those graduating students and he began to sing those words “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Do you know that? Do you really know that Jesus loves you? You see, if you know that you’re beginning to experience the peace of Jehovah-Shalom, the peace of unconditional love. Apostle Paul said, “I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all of creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” If you are absolutely convinced of that, you have the peace of God. As you accept Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior, you come into the kingdom of Christ and you begin to experience the peace of forgiveness and unconditional love.
I’d like to close this morning with a little story. Some of you’ve probably heard it. It’s a true story, took place in Great Britain. The story of two painters who were asked to paint a picture of the peace of Christ, the peace that Christ offers to his people. One painter came back with a picture that was beautiful. It was the picture of a beautiful, tranquil, placid country scene. A beautiful country home surrounded by fields of wheat. And you could almost smell the wheat and you could almost feel the gentle breeze. White, billowy clouds at the top of the picture looking like whipped cream, and then the light of the sun coming through those white clouds and the sun gently falling on that country scene. Cows under the tree, people sitting in rocking chairs out on the porch of this country farmhouse. The world sometimes offers a peace like that, but that’s not really the peace of Jehovah-Shalom.
The other painter came back and he had truly grasped the peace of God. He came back with a painting that showed a violent sky with thunderheads, dark and ominous lightning bolts crashing to the earth. A picture of a violent waterfall. The water just cascading over rock and pounding down onto jagged rock, a barren landscape with no vegetation. Save one tree and that tree barren, but on the edge of a branch on that tree where the water came crashing down on the jagged rock, in the midst of the thundering noise, a bird nest. In the midst of that bird nest, a bird sound asleep. That is Christian peace. It’s not a peace that’s based on circumstances. It’s a peace that transcends circumstances. It’s the peace of Jehovah-Shalom, the peace of knowing no matter what happens in this world, you are completely forgiven, and you are unconditionally loved. Let’s close with the word of prayer.