Sitting in the easy chair

There’s a fascinating passage in Philippians 4: 9: “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Jordan says, “You want the God of peace to be with you? What does that mean? Well, look at verse 7: ‘And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’

“Wouldn’t you get the peace of God from the God of peace? This is peace that BELONGS to the God of peace.

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“In John 14, in the Upper Room the night before He died Jesus Christ met with the 12 apostles (then 11 after Judas left) and introduced to them the new covenant and how the Holy Spirit would operate in them through that new covenant ministry beginning at Pentecost.

“Verse 27 tells them: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ If the peace of God is going to keep your heart and Jesus Christ said ‘my peace,’ could you figure out what the peace of God is if you looked at the peace Jesus had? He was God and He had peace. The next day He’s going to die.

“Philippians 2:8 says, ‘And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ Where did He get his peace from? He got it from being obedient to the will of His Father. He rested in a complete total confidence in the will of His Father.

“He goes from this Upper Room event out into the Garden. Matthew 26:39 says, ‘And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.’

“In going to the Cross He knows He’s going to accomplish the will of His Father. When He came out of that Garden that issue had been settled in His mind.

“The Cross wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t something he was dragged, kicking and screaming, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to go!’

“He went there in obedience to the Father’s will and He says to the apostles, ‘My peace I leave you. The same kind of relaxed mental attitude of confidence in the will of the Father that I have is what I want to give to you.’

“What I want you to see in that is what the peace of God is. The peace that God himself possesses. You see in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, and what’s the peace that Christ had? His peace is, ‘I’m completely content to trust the will and the word of my Father. I’m relaxed in that. I’m sitting in the easy chair. The will of my father is absolutely the place of safety for me,’ and He’s relaxed in that.

“Philippians 4 says that peace of God that passes all understanding shall keep your heart. That word ‘keep’ there is like ‘guard it; protect it.’ Keep your heart and your mind. Here are the internal results inside of your soul; your thinking processes. Your heart; the seat of yourself, of your will, of your emotions and your mind. That renewed mind we talked about last time. That peace of God. That relaxed mental attitude of confidence in the will of your father keeps your heart and mind. That’s the God of peace being with you.

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“John 20 says, ‘Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
[22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
[23] Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’

“Now that’s John’s account of what people euphemistically call ‘The Great Commission.’ By the way, that term was invented by a missionary in the 1800s as a mechanism to try to raise money for his missionary activity in India.

“Prior to that that term did not exist in Christian parlance, but over the last 150 years the missionary movement, especially between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s, picked up that terminology because it was a great money-making and missionary-making terminology.

“Matt. 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20 and Acts 1. Those five accounts on five different occasions Jesus gives the apostles themselves, or the little flock as a group, orders about what they’re to be doing in light of His going away and each of those commissions fit at a different spot during what they’re doing.

“They all aren’t about the same time period and so forth. Matthew 28 looks toward the kingdom. Mark 16 looks toward the tribulation. The Book of Luke and Acts looks at the Book of Acts. The commission in John doesn’t look at any of those time periods but really is talking about the authority that they have as they go do the various instructions they’re given to do.

“That’s why He says He breathed on them … what He’s doing here is He’s equipping them for the work He gave them to do in verse 21. Just like Christ had entered into His ministry as one anointed of the Father, so his little flock, his apostles, are going to enter into their ministry anointed by him.

“That expression ‘breathed on them’ occurs three times in the Bible. The idea of breathing on something in Scripture has to do with creation. Psalm 33:6 says, ‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.’ The breath of His mouth has to do with the creative power of His words. It’s the idea of creating the universe.

“Three times in the Bible God breathes on someone and it has to do with an act of communicating life. In Gen. 2:7 it says, ‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’

“He formed man out of the dust of the earth—there’s his body. He breathed into man the breath of life—there’s the spirit. And man became a living soul—there’s your soul. Spirit, soul and body. The three parts of what makes up the essence of a human and that communication of life in the original creation by an act of God, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. Breathing on him had to do with communicating life.

“You see the same thing in Ezekiel 37: Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.
[5] Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:
[6] And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
[7] So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.
[8] And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.
[9] Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
[10] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’

“You have the vision of the valley of dry bones. These dudes are dead and their bones are dried out. That’s the revival, or resurrection, of the dry bones. They literally come back to life and he watches the part of them—the sinew, the flesh the skin--they’re standing there and then the breath. They’re breathed on and they come back to life.

“Fortunately he tells you what that is. If you read commentaries there are all kind of whack-job ideas about what that is. People say, ‘That’s us, that’s how you get saved. That’s the new birth. That’s the Church.’

“And you say, ‘Wow!’ They have a song, ‘Them bones, them bones, them dry bones.’ If you’ve heard that, you kind of date yourself. Then they got the one about how one bone’s connected to another bone. That comes out of this. What is it? Verse 11 says, ‘Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.’

“When he breathed on them he put his spirit in them. Now if you think about that, and you think about what’s going on in John 20, you can see the parallel. He’s creating, He’s resurrecting, He’s reclaiming the nation Israel.

Just like there’s the communication of life in the original creation, there’s a communication of life in reestablishing the nation Israel. Here He is the head of the new creation creating that little flock. There’s the first Adam and he’s the last Adam, which is a quickening spirit. He’s going to be the life-giver who gives them eternal life. Not just physical life but everlasting life.

“Having breathed on them He says to them, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’ In other words, the breath of life was to communicate to them the Spirit of God and they were to receive the Holy Ghost. All of this is His anticipating what’s going to happen to them at Pentecost.

“Great deal of discussion about what happened there. Did they really receive the Holy Ghost? We’re they regenerated at that moment? But if you go to chapter 7:37 you see they already have some understanding.

“That takes you back to Jeremiah 2 and what He’s talking about is that’s redeemed Israel, functioning as God’s source of blessing to the nations in the earth. And, ‘If you want to be that you’ll be that in me!’ ”