Transcript

A ship’s mate once challenged a chaplain with the question, “How is it that you are always talking to my men about Jesus Christ? Have you ever seen Him?”

The chaplain replied, “No, I never did.” The mariner said, “Then how can you tell a man to trust in someone you have never seen? I can’t see any sense in that.”

“Well,” said the chaplain, “when you head for a place of refuge in a storm, what sense is there in telling your men to let go the anchor when they cannot see the ground? On what principle do you trust your ship and your life to ground you have never seen?”

The mate said, “We go by our chart.” The chaplain held up his Bible, and said, “I, too, go by a chart, and it is a perfect one, while yours is not. My chart tells me of the only sure ground of my salvation: the finished work of Christ upon the cross.

“My faith, like your anchor, takes hold of this unseen but real ground, and it rides out the storm of life in peace and safety.”

We have true peace in life through Christ. And God’s perfect peace that passes all understanding can carry us through our difficult and trying times in life.

Isaiah 26:3-4: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.”

The prophet wrote and told Israel that God will keep them in perfect peace. And this is a principle and truth that is true for us under grace as well.

The word, “keep,” means to guard, protect, or maintain. It’s a military term meaning to protect a camp or castle. The enemy cannot get in when God’s peace protects us.

Similarly, in Philippians 4:7, Paul wrote, “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall KEEP your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

The peace of God guards and protects our hearts and minds, keeping worry and anxious thoughts out, and keeping God’s peace in.

Peace is elusive in the world. We see restlessness around us all the time. As Isaiah 57:21 describes it, “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

Isaiah 59:8 further states, “The way of peace they know not…they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.” This lack of peace is a reminder of people’s need of the Lord and the peace that is found in and through Him.

Peace is a blessing of the Lord for His people. As Psalm 29:11 says, “The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace.”

And we find here the blessing that God will keep us in His perfect peace.

The words “perfect peace” in the original Hebrew are shalom, shalom. There is no adjective to describe God’s peace, but rather the word for peace is repeated.

And when a word is repeated in the Scriptures, it’s done for emphasis, and it communicates intensity. It’s like an exclamation mark.

Isaiah is communicating that this is a peace that goes beyond human comprehension. It is a peace that really is peace. It is complete and genuine peace for our souls.

And God states here in His Word that we can have His perfect peace and even be kept in that place of perfect peace.

We sometimes say, “If only I could get some peace and quiet,” as if peace were a destination, a vague thing, or a place out there that we find when we get away from normal life, but true peace is what happens in our hearts and is something God gives.

Peace is not the result of our self-determination, but rather the Lord ministers His peace to us as we trust Him. His peace transcends what we can do for ourselves.

It does not rest on personal power, but on God’s working in our lives. It is a peace that comes through our relationship with God.

And God’s peace can be experienced at all times. His peace is a deep, unbroken, calm steadiness of mind and heart that doesn’t depend on circumstances. It transcends our circumstances.

God’s offer of peace is not freedom from duress and difficulty; but rather peace in the middle of hard circumstances. This peace deals with anxiety and give calmness, comfort, and confidence in troubled times.

Even in the midst of trouble and sorrow, we can have this peace not because God has promised to change our circumstances, but because God promises to be with us in them.

Peace is not the absence of something bad; rather it is the presence of something good. It is the not the absence of external conflict, it’s about the presence of the Lord in our lives.

God is the God of peace. And He is always present in our lives. And as we focus on the Lord and His presence and our relationship with Him by faith, we will find peace.

Thus, the prophet states, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.” The Lord is the place of perfect peace and the source of it.

And when our minds are stayed and settled upon the Lord, then He keeps, protects, and maintains us in His perfect peace.

A double dose of peace comes to us when our minds stay centered on God. The word “mind” refers to a mindset or a frame of mind.

And God would have our mindset to be stayed and focused on Him.

Worries, concerns, and fears can steal our thoughts away. Our minds often easily wander away from the Lord into the what-ifs or anxiously trying to find solutions for our problems, when often there aren’t any to find. And in his spiritual attacks against us, Satan attempts to get our minds set on anything except the Lord.

The word “stayed” means to be sustained or established. It also means to lean upon and be upheld, like one would lean on a strong wall for support.

God desires that we lean hard on Him, and He will hold us up. And as we fix our minds on Him rather than our troubles, God gives and keeps us in His perfect peace.

And by a faithful, consistent, running prayer life, and faithfully spending time in God’s Word, our minds are stayed, and we lean and are upheld by the Lord and His peace.

And whenever our thoughts drift from the Lord in difficult times, knowing this promise and truth in God’s Word, we can pull our minds away from our anxieties and bring them back to God and His truth. And as we lean upon Him, we will experience His peace.

As the lyrics from “Like a River Glorious” state, “Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest; finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.”

As our minds are stayed on the Lord, we do so, as verse 3 says, “because he trusteth in thee.” When our mind and mindset are fixed on the Lord, it’s because we trust Him.

Perfect peace is the product of trust. And our trust is the result of the knowledge of God through His Word and believing it. It’s to trust in God’s power and His promise, His provision and His love as His Word declares.

And as Psalm 112:7 says of one who is trusting the Lord, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.” Keeping our minds on the Lord and trusting Him can deliver us from fear.

And a fixed mindset of trust in the Lord results in the gift of God’s perfect peace, and the Lord keeping us in His complete and genuine peace.

Because of this promise in verse 3, the prophet encourages God’s people to “Trust ye in the Lord for ever,” and therefore always receive the blessing of God’s perfect peace.

Verse 4 urges Israel, for her good, to trust in the Lord as a way of life, and for this to be a perpetual, continual state of being, so that she might experience God’s peace all the time.

The prophet encourages Israel to let no adversity, persecution, or trial of any kind prevent her from trusting Him. They were to trust the Lord forever.

All of us need peace when we experience the stresses, trials, tribulations, and storms of life. And God holds His blessing of perfect peace out to us, if we will just trust Him.

And if we do trust Him, Helen Keller put it well, “If we trust, if we relinquish our will and yield to the Divine will, then we find that we are afloat on a buoyant sea of peace and under us are the everlasting arms.”

We are called to trust Him, because “in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” The Lord is everlasting strength, and we gain this strength by trusting Him.

The words “everlasting strength” are literally “the Rock of ages.” Perfect peace is found in the Lord Jehovah, Who is the Rock of ages.

God is strong, firm, and unchangeable like an eternal rock. His love and His power never change. And in Him, God’s people may find protection, security, and defense for everlasting ages. The Lord is a certain Refuge for all eternity.

He is where the trusting person may find an everlasting and strong shelter from all dangers. Knowing and trusting this, we find God’s perfect peace.

John 14:27: “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.”

When our Lord told this to His disciples, they were entering a time of trouble, and were already troubled by the Lord’s words in the upper room. The Lord was just hours away from being betrayed, arrested, and crucified.

The Lord was preparing them for this time of trouble and for His departure out of this world, not long after at His ascension.

When a person writes a last will and testament, they do so to leave their possessions to their loved ones. The Lord was facing His death, but He did not have material things to leave for His loved ones. Instead, He left something that money cannot buy, something richer and fuller: Peace. As the Lord told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you.”

And He added, “MY peace I give unto you,” meaning Christ’s peace, such peace that only He can impart. This is the peace that kept our Lord calm in the face of mockery, hostility, hatred, betrayal, and His death.

Christ can “leave” His peace like a legacy, and He can “give” peace like a treasure as He did here with His disciples. And the peace that Christ gives is a perfect peace.

Christ was leaving His peace as a treasure for the comfort of the disciples for the trying times ahead of them. And likewise, the peace of God is a treasure for us as well, and it provides deep and abiding comfort in and through all our circumstances.

It’s a peace “not as the world giveth.” Thus, it’s not a peace that is given sparingly and temporarily. It’s not a here today and gone tomorrow peace. Peace is elusive in the world. And the world seeks peace in temporal things.

And any peace in this world between nations has correctly been defined as “the lull in the battle when everybody stops to reload.”

Only God through His Word, can authoritatively point to real peace and tell us where to find it. And it points us to Christ.

The peace of Christ is far superior to the unstable, fragile, superficial, and fleeting peace that the world gives, which is based on favorable conditions and circumstances.

Peace, as the world gives, concerns an absence of trouble. But the peace that the Lord gives is peace in spite of troubles. It is peace through the presence and power of God, a strong peace that comforts and strengthens us through our trials and at any time.

Having His peace, the Lord told His disciples, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” The peace Christ provides brings true calm to troubled hearts.

His peace banishes and dissolves fear based on faith in His control and presence in all our circumstances. As we know this peace, we do not need to be troubled or afraid.

We see the peace of Christ in His person and the type of peace He gives when He stilled the stormy Sea of Galilee.

March 4:37-39 reads, “And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?

“And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

The first thing you see with this account is that Christ didn’t keep the disciples from the storm. Instead, what you observe is that Christ went through the storm with them, and He does the same with us today! He never leaves us or forsakes us.

This great storm was severe. The wind was strong and the waves were high and were beating against the ship and broke over and into the ship. As a result the boat was filled with water and was in danger of being swamped and sinking.

But in spite of the storm, Christ was asleep in the back of the ship. Typically, the Lord sleeping is primarily considered a demonstration of His humanity. It does show us this.

But the fact that the boat the Lord was in was in the middle of a violent and noisy storm, being tossed up and down on these large waves, being jolted by waves breaking against it and over it, more than just showing His humanity, it shows us His peace.

The fact that He could and did sleep in this circumstance showed how He was at perfect peace. He had total calm in the midst of the storm. In His total peace, He was asleep in the stern with His head on a pillow.

The storm never woke the Lord. The disciples actually had to wake Christ up out of His peaceful and calm sleep.

And the disciples were anything but calm in the middle of this severe storm. As the ship was now filled with water, the panic-stricken disciples woke the Lord said, “Master, carest Thou not that we perish?”

This was a cry of distrust, but a very human one. It was a cry often matched by us today in difficult circumstances when we might feel as if the Lord does not care or might not be aware of what we are going through.

The Psalmist in Psalm 44:23-24, echoed a similar refrain: “Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off for ever. Wherefore hidest Thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?”

The Lord did care. The Lord cares deeply for the perishing. He cares for those in the middle of personal and severe storms of life.

In demonstration of His deep care for the disciples, “He arose” from off the pillow that had been under His head, and He got up off the bench in the stern of the ship.

Sleep is a picture of death in the Scripture. When Lazarus had died, the Lord told the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep,” or that He was going to raise him from the dead.

The Lord sleeping in that ship is a picture of His death. And the disciples being fearful and asking the Lord if He cared that they were perishing, is a picture of all mankind being fearful and in a state of perishing spiritually in their sins.

But then Christ woke from His sleep and “He arose” in that ship, just like Christ arose from the dead and stood up in that tomb because He paid for all our sins.

And as a result, Christ brought salvation, victory, and peace, just like He did here. As Mark 4:39 says, “And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

Christ gave the order, and the elements of the storm ceased. And all was quiet and still. The wind stopped howling. And it was just a glassy calm on the water.

He spoke, and it was done. He rebuked the wind, and the wind ceased. He told the sea to be still, and the water was stilled. It did so because Christ is God and the Creator.

As Psalm 89:8-9 says, “O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto thee?…Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.”

The disciples were saved from certain death, and they found themselves in the midst of complete peace. And Christ’s kingdom will be one of perfect peace on the earth.

In the future, after His Second Coming, the Lord will calm the stormy sea, which pictures the storm of the Tribulation and the nations of the earth being thrown into chaos.

But by His authority and power, the Prince of Peace will usher in a worldwide kingdom of perfect peace. There will be peace on earth, and the nations will be still and at peace. That is what the peaceful Sea of Galilee symbolized after the storm.

What you see by this account is that Christ is the Model of peace, and He is the Source of peace. We see His model of peace in how He slept on that ship in the storm.

And we see Him being the source of true peace by how He stilled that storm and uproar in an instant. And just as that water was a perfect, glassy calm, and all was still, that’s the kind of peace Christ can provide us.

To find peace in this life, the peace that comes from the forgiveness of all our sins, the peace of God that comes to our daily life and comforts us in its difficult circumstances, and the peace of assurance that comes from a certain hope in heaven, it is all found in Christ.

You see the power of God over turmoil in this account. And there is turmoil in us, near us, around us, and it dominates this world.

But Christ can calm the turmoil in us and bring His perfect peace, calm, and rest to our hearts. And it is by looking to Christ and trusting Him that we discover it.

Following the Lord calming the Sea, He turned to the disciples and asked, “Why are ye so fearful?” The disciples had the Lord with them in the boat. But their lack of faith had led to their fear. Thus, the Lord asked them “how is it that ye have no faith?”

The disciples had accepted and believed that Jesus was the Messiah. But they had not yet drawn all the conclusions and implications from this fact or come to trust Him in all that He is and can do. There is security and peace to be found in Christ.

Unbelief in Him had caused their fear as the Lord pointed out to them. This teaches us that faith is the critical component in realizing and experiencing His peace. Faith in the Lord brings peace in the storm and drives our fears away.

2 Thessalonians 3:16: “Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all.”

The Thessalonian church was suffering for their faith, and they were facing adversity. And the Apostle Paul closes his letter to them with encouragement about God’s peace.

Out of his love for the church, Paul wanted the suffering saints at Thessalonica to know and experience the peace of the Lord of peace at all times and in every circumstance.

Peace flows from every member of the Trinity. The title, “the God of peace,” is found multiple times in Pauls’ epistles and refers to God the Father. Here, Jesus Christ, is called “the Lord of peace.” And Ephesians 2:14 declares that Christ Jesus is our peace.

The Holy Spirit is also the source of peace. Peace is a fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians 5:22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, PEACE….” And Paul wrote in Romans 14:17, “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and PEACE, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Each Person of the Godhead is at perfect peace at all times. This has been eternally true. God is the very essence of peace, and He is the source of our peace. What He gives us He has and He is. And God is the God of peace.

The old quote is true: “No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.”

And we see in this verse that the Lord of peace gives and grants His peace to believers as a gift, a privilege, and a blessing. As Paul wrote “Now the Lord of peace Himself GIVE you peace.” Peace is a blessing that stems from our relationship with God.

The Lord gives real peace to the heart, perfect peace. The peace He gives come from heaven and it goes deep down into your soul where nothing and no one can touch it. And it is stable and gives us stability in our lives.

The word, “Himself” in “the Lord of peace Himself,” is emphatic, and it’s emphasizing Christ’s personal involvement in this out of His love and care for us. The Lord personally gives us His peace. And we receive it by faith in Him.

And the divine peace that the Lord gives is always available. As Paul added, “Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace ALWAYS.” The Lord is always willing to give us His peace. He is always desirous that we might be at peace in our lives. He gladly bestows His peace to us when we turn to Him in faith.

And the peace that the Lord can always give is available for all circumstances. As Paul wrote, “Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always by all means,” or in every way, at all times, in every circumstance.

The Lord gives us a triumphant peace. He gives a peace that not only guards and protects us from anxiety, fear, and despair; but it is a peace that triumphs in our circumstances giving us courage, confidence, and contentment in them.

The Lord is always with us, and by His continual presence, we can find perfect peace in all of our circumstances through the calming power of Christ’s presence and love.

Are you searching for peace? Is your soul restless from not knowing if you are right with God? To have peace with God, all you need to do is receive God’s gift of salvation that He offers to all.

Simply trusting that Christ died for your sins personally, was buried, and rose again, you are saved from all your sins and immediately you are right with God and at peace with Him. Please make this decision to trust Christ right now.