Christmas is an amazing time – because it’s God’s declaration of peace.  Peace and goodwill available to us all for the taking.  But what does that mean? The Human Dilemma Here we are, Christmas is almost upon us – can’t believe it but there you go – another year, just a few weeks to go and on the program, we are talking about peace. We have been talking about peace the last couple of weeks because there’s so much turmoil in people’s lives. We get a lot of feedback – people write and ring and send us emails who have listened to this program and for so many people, what they consistently say is that as they’ve let God’s Word, through this program Christianityworks, come into their lives and into their hearts, it’s given them peace in the midst of their turmoil and that’s what God does. That’s what God’s Word does, God’s heart is for us to have peace. But what is peace? What does it look like? Over the last few weeks we have been looking in the Book of Ezekiel, which talks about Israel’s rebellion against God. God blessed them greatly and God started a covenant with them – a promise; a relationship – that we can read about. We won’t go there now, but you can read about it in Leviticus chapter 26. Oh, we will go there now, let’s go. Grab a Bible – can’t help myself – let’s go and have a look at Leviticus chapter 26 and this covenant talks about God’s blessing. It begins by saying: If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you the rains in their due season and your land shall yield it’s produce and the trees of the field will yield their fruit and your threshing floor will overtake the vintage and you’ll be blessed - I’ll bless your socks off, if you keep my commandments. And in the middle of it He says: And I will make my dwelling place in your midst and I won’t abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you will be my people. That is the heart of God; it’s the heart of God then and it’s the heart of God now. God’s heart is to be our God and for us to be His people but right after that He says: But if you will not obey me and do not observe all these commandments - if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances, so that you do not observe all my commandments and you break the covenant (this promise), I in turn will do this to you. I will bring terror on you, consumption and fever that wastes the eyes and cause your life to pine away. And then He goes and lists all the curses that will befall Israel if they don’t keep the commandment. And that’s the dilemma of humanity. You read through the whole Old Testament and Israel could never uphold their end of this covenant and nor can you and nor can I. We can’t keep our end of that covenant and like a marriage, when we fail, we reject God. It’s like adultery in a marriage and God out of His great love, lets His anger roll forth. That’s what this punishment is about. We saw last week on the program, and if you weren’t with us you can listen to the program again at our website, "Christianityworks.com". Go and have a listen – that God’s anger is kindled out of His love because He wants His people to come back again and you can read about that in Ezekiel chapter 14. So that’s the dilemma of the Old Testament covenant that we just read in Leviticus chapter 26. On the one hand God wants to bless us, on the other hand, if we don’t obey Him, He will curse us and He will bring His punishment and judgement and anger upon us but sandwiched right in the middle of those two, in Leviticus chapter 26, from verse 11 through to 13, is this heartbeat of God: I will place my dwelling place in your midst and I shall not abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you shall be my people. And because we can’t hold up our end of that bargain, God had a choice. Either to keep punishing us or to come up with a new plan; a new covenant and He did that. We looked at that last week on the program. He came up with a road map for peace and it was never a plan "B"– it was always His plan "A" because as I said the Old Testament is a story about how we struggle with God and clearly, over a thousand years, it tells us that Israel could never uphold its end of the bargain through its own works. So God can either punish us or God can come up with a new plan and God came up with a new plan that we read about in Ezekiel chapter 37, where He said: I will make a covenant; a new covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them and I will bless them and multiply them and I will set my sanctuary amongst them for ever. My dwelling place shall be with them and I will be their God and they shall be my people and then the nations around them shall know that I am the Lord God who sanctifies Israel, where my sanctuary is among them for ever more. And that new covenant; that new sanctuary; that new presence of God in our midst, is Jesus Christ and that is what Christmas was about. If you flick forward to John chapter 1, the fourth book in the New Testament and it says: And the Word became flesh. God became flesh and tabernacle amongst us. In other words the very presence of God came into our midst. That is awesome! That’s what Christmas is about because God steps into our dilemma. God puts on flesh; God wraps Himself in our flesh and puts Himself in your life and my life, here and now and that’s the Christmas present. God Himself, wrapped in our flesh, one of us, stepping into our dung heap; into our circumstances, into our sickness, into our pain, into our lost-ness and saying, “I’m here, now let me bring you peace.” Christmas is God’s declaration of peace with humanity and that’s what we are going to look at during the course of this program.   Prince of Peace Well, we are talking about this central human dilemma which is our rejection of God and you know, when we rejected God – we all have, none of us have lived up to the glory of God. We have all fallen short and sinned, when we rejected God; we declared war on God and the reason so many people in this world don’t have peace in their lives, peace in their hearts, peace in their spirits, is because they haven’t accepted God’s peace plan. When Jesus was born He was taken to the temple - if you’ve got a Bible grab it and open it at Luke chapter 2, beginning at verse 25: When Jesus was born He was taken to the temple and they presented Him at the temple and there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon and this man was a righteous and devout man looking forward to the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came up into the temple and when the parents brought the child, Jesus in, to do for Him what was customary under the law. Simeon took Him in his arms and praised God saying: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant, (wait for it!), in peace, according to your Word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all the peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. See, this old man, Simeon, in his spirit, knew that God was sending His Saviour, Jesus Christ and he said, “I can now go, in what? "In peace" – "in Shalom" – because Jesus brings peace. Now some people won...

Released on 20 Dec 2020