“The new bibles change that because they don’t understand the message there,” said Jordan in his Sunday morning sermon. “They change it to say, ‘Glory to God on the highest, and on earth peace to men among whom there is good will.’
“They say, ‘See, the way you have peace is you have peace
among men who have good will for one another,’ and that’s a good human
viewpoint and religious idea, but that’s not what the verse says.
“Jesus Christ will come one day and be the ‘prince of peace’
and establish peace upon the planet and there will be worldwide, universal
peace among all nations and all men. He will be the prince--the establisher,
the maintainer, the governor--that produces peace on earth and good will toward
men from God and from one another.*****
“You say, ‘Wait a minute, did His mission fail?’ You look
around the world today and you don’t see peace. Look around the planet. Our
world is boiling with racial and tribal and cultural and moral conflict.
Disintegration, separation and secession for racial and religious reasons is
the order of the day.
“America always prided itself on the melting-pot philosophy,
where you would come and meld in; leave where you were and become Americans.
“Today, our government, the leaders of academia, the leaders
of our nation, they look at that melting- pot philosophy as just nativist
bigotry, where you’re trying to lift up one culture above another. And what you
hear constantly is ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘egalitarianism’; that is that every
culture is equal and therefore every culture should be exalted. Listen, that
kind of idea is not the American history. America has become a microcosm of the
world on fire.
“America has always been that kind of a microcosm. That’s
why the world has always looked toward America as a beacon, because here’s what
we could aspire to and become. But in our lifetime, the whole thing’s been
turned on its head and there’s no peace. You bring the nations to America today
and what do they do? They don’t meld into a melting pot. It’s more like a
boiling stew.
“You got one little group here and they reestablish their
home community within the world and it’s, ‘Now we’re going to have our homeland
here.’ Chicago’s full of it. There are over 270 different language groups spoken
in the metropolitan area.
“I look at that, we got the little sign out front, ‘Reach the world by reaching Chicago,’ and it looks to me like a great fishing hole. There’s hardly anywhere you can go and reach the whole world by reaching one community. Just look at Agne and Darius and how they went back to their homeland in Lithuania. You get saved, you learn truth and you take the message back.
“The radio station were on (WYLL 1160 AM in Chicago), there’s
nine and a half million people in this area who can hear it. The last time they
did an Arbitron rating of that station, 43,000 people were listening to (my
show) every Sunday morning at 8:30. I don’t get to preach to 43,000 people
every day, but I do there and I do every Saturday night on the television.
“Our whole culture’s changed and you say, ‘There’s no peace
out there!’ but Isaiah says, ‘There’s no peace for the wicked, saith God.’
*****
“You say, ‘Well, then, if Jesus came to be the ‘prince of
peace,’ and He came to preach peace, did His mission fail?’
“Well, no, because you realize through Paul’s epistles that
the key to it is being able to ‘rightly divide the word’ and understand that
this is not the day of the ‘prince of peace.’
“The only way you’re going to have world peace is for Jesus Christ to come back, sit on the throne of the governments of this world and produce peace through His kingdom.
“Being a premillennial Bible-believer is as much a political
and economic statement, and sociological statement and ecological statement, as
it is a doctrinal statement, because you’re saying there’s no hope for the
peace of this planet--politically, economically, socially, ecologically--except
in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and until then there’s going to be
turmoil.
“You say, ‘Well, then, when Jesus Christ came and preached peace, what’s that all about if it isn’t bringing the Kingdom in?’
“Well, it had to do with what He’s talking about here. By the
way, in this passage in Ephesians 2, when Paul says He comes to preach peace,
did you notice there are three times Paul talks about peace here?
“In verse 14, he says, ‘For he is our peace.’ Verse 15, at the end, what does he do? ‘So making peace.’ And now in the text he comes and preaches peace.
*****
“What is peace? Keep reading verse 14-15: ‘Who hath made
both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man . . . ’
“You see, in Paul’s mind, peace, and he defines it for you,
is being one. In our mind peace is just the cessation of hostility. If we can
stop conflict, but stopping conflict and stopping hostility, agreeing not to
fight, is not real peace.
“I mean, it’s only superficial. It’s only temporary. It’s
only external. Soon enough the animosity will resurface and what you’ll
discover is we agreed to stop fighting simply because we were weary of the
warfare at the moment, and we’ll stop awhile until we can recuperate and rearm
ourselves and then go at it again. Nothing’s really settled.
"In families, moms and dads, husbands and wives, fight and argue and you just finally say, ‘Enough, I’m going to stop,’ but you don’t really resolve it. One of you just gives up for the moment, but it still boils inside. Nothing internally is really resolved. That’s not peace.
*****
“Paul says, ‘He is our peace.’ You see, the secret of
peace is in a person. It’s not in a prescription, it’s not in getting a
conflict management group to come in and tell you how to manage your
conflict—that’s just helping you to stop fighting.
“Christ is the essence of what peace is all about. He’s the
embodiment. In order to live at peace you have to have peace internally. Before
you can live in tranquility with others, you have to have an inner tranquility
with yourself.
“We want to start bringing peace by cleaning up the results
of the conflict. God says, ‘I’m going to start with a person because the issue
is a person.’"Peace is a person, and to live in peace you have to be at peace with that person. If you have peace, then you can begin to resolve the conflict, genuinely. But peace starts, Romans 5 says, ‘Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’
“Until you have peace with God, not just in the sense of not
arguing with Him, but a sense of a cessation of His being against you and you
being against Him . . .
“How do you quit being against Him? How do you get Him to
quit being against you? That’s what peace is, and that’s why at the end of verse
15, Paul says, ‘He’s made peace.’ How did He make peace? He made it through the
blood of His cross. He made it by slaying the enmity of the law that was
against us because we couldn’t keep it.*****
“In Titus 3 is a fascinating word picture of a life without Christ. He’s going to describe what you know about who you were before you came to faith in Christ. Titus 3:3: ‘For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.’
“That’s life without Christ. You say, ‘Well, I don’t live
like that.’ Well, that’s because you’re foolish and you’re deceived. You see,
an unsaved person doesn’t really understand what life is about. They don’t really
know how to live. They think they do but they’re foolish and they’re
disobedient.
“They don’t do what God says and they’re deceived into thinking they know better. And they’re serving-- they’re the slaves, they’re being driven by--all kinds of lust, passions and pleasures. All kinds of thinking that says, ‘I want to be gratified, I want my jollies, I want to be happy and I’m going to do it my way.’ The result is they wind up living in malice and envy.
“If you want to know the culture around you, and you want to
understand why the crudeness and vileness you see around is there, it’s because
the minds of unsaved people are like a garbage can. They’re full of garbage.
You know that because you used to be that way.
“Paul’s saying here, ‘Don’t get mad at lost people for being lost people; don’t you remember what it was like where you were lost?’
“Listen, the only way you can get rid of the garbage is to
get rid of the garbage can that’s holding the garbage. If you just dump the can's contents
out, you know what, it’s still there. There can still be a real, ripe odor to
it. There’s the remnants.
“So you know what God does? Verse 4: you see, he saved us, not by our righteousness. Not by me saying, ‘I’m going to fix all those problems.’
“Titus 3: 4-5 says, 'But after that the kindness
and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
[5] Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.'
*****
“You say, ‘I’m going
to quit being foolish; I’m going to get educated. I’m going to start doing what
God says to do and obey Him. I’m going to control my desires and just channel
them in a certain way, discipline myself, and I’m not going to lie in envy and
malice. I’m going to eliminate hatred and all the conflicts that come from it.’[5] Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.'
*****
“And God says, ‘Good luck.’ As I’ve said to you before, sin
isn’t in the action; it starts in their heart. And to eliminate those things in
Titus 3:3, you have to have a miracle from God that gives you a new heart and
makes you a new person.
“That’s the thing he’s talking about when he says, ‘The one new man.’ That’s the church the Body of Christ, but when God puts you in the Body of Christ, what the Body of Christ is you. You’ve been put into a transforming union with Him; made one with Him.
“He put you in His Son and makes His identity your identity;
makes His reality your reality, His life your life, His righteousness your
righteousness, His acceptance your acceptance. What belongs to Him now belongs
to you because you’re in Him; you’re an heir of God and a joint-heir of Jesus
Christ.
“The verse says, ‘Not by works of righteousness which we
have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of
regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’
“He comes in and cleanses you by making you a new person. He
regenerates you and gives you new life. God the Holy Spirit makes you into a
new creature.”
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