South Shore Pentecostal Church

J. Craig Ouellette: And we're going to talk about the God of peace today. The God of peace.

Hallelujah. I don't know about you, but I like peace in the midnight hour. I like peace in the morning, peace in the afternoon, peace in the midnight hour. And there's a God of peace. Amen. A God of peace.

Praise God. In Isaiah 9:6 says, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

And we know it's talking about Jesus, right? We're talking about Messiah. These are all titles and it's giving us revelation of who Jesus is, really, right? He's wonderful. Amen. If you meet Jesus, it's wonderful. He's the counselor. He can give you strength in the midnight hour. He can give you direction. He's the mighty God. Not a mighty God, the mighty God. The Everlasting Father. There's only one Father. He's the Prince of Peace. That's why we're reading it here this morning. He's the Prince of Peace. The God of peace we're talking about.

Isaiah 26:3 says, "Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth thee." If I don't trust God, it's hard to keep my mind on him and not drift to my problem. If I don't trust God and God says, "Just wait, I'll take care of it," I'm going to get nervous and probably try to fix it myself.

Amen. So, if I can trust God, if I keep my if I can trust him, I can keep my mind on him and listen to him. John 16:33. On the night of the last supper, Jesus is saying a lot of things to his disciples. They don't understand what he's saying a lot of it, because they don't know that in a few minutes he's going to be captivated, taken away captive, and it's going to lead to his crucifixion. This is after the night of Last Supper.

And in John 16:33, he says, "These things have I spoken unto you that in me, say in me. In me you might have peace, in the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." So, understand that serving God doesn't mean that everything automatically is beautiful in the world for your life. But it does mean that if I can stay in him, even in my problem I can have peace.

Amen. Even in my circumstance, I can have peace. Even in the storm I can have peace. Romans 16:20, finally, and this is what led to the title of this. Romans 16:20, he says, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen." Praise God. We're going to pray.

Lord God, asking you, Lord God, to help me bring out what you want brought out. Asking you, Lord God, to help our minds hear and concentrate and understand the things that you want us to understand and retain according to your word, not according to my speech or my ideas, but according to your word and your purpose. We pray here today. And Lord, we give you the praise. In Jesus' name.

Everyone said, amen. Amen. So, we know this today, the world's looking for peace. Amen. If you if you watch news, a little bit of news, it doesn't take too much. Your peace gets upset, can get upset pretty quick, because there's not a lot of good things on the news. And part of that is is they know they can get your attention and get your goat and get you reading by kind of presenting things even in a negative light.

So, one of the signs of the coming of the Lord. Anybody believe in the coming of the Lord? Okay. God's going to come someday for all of us. Amen. He's going to come for some people that are alive, but if we've died, he's going to come for if you're a believer, he'll he'll bring you out of the earth. If you're not a believer, you haven't died in faith, God will resurrect you at the end of the thousand years and you're going to stand before him in judgment. But we all will stand before the Lord.

And one of the most amazing things is going to be is people that have spent their life trying to deny that God is real, that they need God, are going to be rudely awakened to find out that God is real, the Word of God is true, and that God is going to do just what he says he's going to do in his word.

Now, one of the values of studying the Bible is you find out that when God says something, he's going to do it. He may take a long time to do it, but he'll do it. He may take a long time to bring it to pass. So, don't let time be the issue. If God gives you a promise, you can say, "Well, I'm 99. I might as well give up. I haven't seen the promise." God can keep you alive till the promise comes.

If God can keep Abraham alive to 175, God can keep you alive. If God can keep Noah alive 350 years after the after the flood, God can keep you alive. So, time is not a problem to God. It's a problem for us. But we still we don't know our days and our times, so we need to seek God.

But the Bible says in in Matthew 24:6 and 7, "Wars, rumors of wars, pestilence are going to be signs of the coming of the Lord." It talks about a man called the Antichrist, who's not only against Christ, but he'll also be an imposter of Christ. He's going to pose as the man of peace. That's why we're talking about. He's going to pose as the man of peace.

He's going to make a covenant agreement with Israel and then he's going to break it in the midst of a week, a seven-year period. When he makes that, and this is this is one of the things. God is allowing turmoil in the Middle East to get our attention, to draw our eyes in the world there, because that's where he's coming back to, the Bible says.

He's coming back to the Mount of Olives. So God is allowing that. So, we're never going to have a real measure of peace, full peace in Israel and in in Jerusalem until the Lord comes back and straightens everything out. There may be some seasons. Some seasons. The day of the Lord, the second coming will come in a time when the world is proclaiming peace and safety.

All right? Governments can only bring us a measure of peace. Only God can bring true peace. You need peace, seek God. But God, I'm in this situation. Listen, God God is God. He can put you in a new situation, he can remove the people in the situation, he can change the situation, he can send angels to help you get through the situation, he can lift you up above the storm. God is able to do whatever's needed in the situation.

So, we don't need to know how God's going to do it. We just need to trust that if I'm right with God, if I'm right with God, God is going to help me. Amen. And we know that today that you look out in the world and you see people involved in drugs and gambling and sex and and all kinds of things and relationships. And a lot of times the reason they're driven to all these things is they really don't have peace.

And they're looking for something to lift them above that disruption in their soul. Amen. They don't want to be by themselves because they have to contemplate what's inside of them. You see, when you got peace, you're not afraid to be in the room by yourself. When you got peace, you're not afraid if you're alone, because you got God. When you got peace, you're not afraid to go to bed at night because the Lord is still there.

When you got peace, you're not afraid of what the world is saying, because you've got a God that's in charge of the world. Amen. And so the reason why people are so vulnerable to all these things is they're looking for a high that will lift them above their unrest. Amen. You got people working, they're workaholics. Amen. They don't they don't want to sit and think because they really don't have peace inside.

But when you got peace, you don't mind just sitting for a while. In fact, you don't mind meditating on God. Amen. Now, spiritual war. And again, this this was an eye-opener for me when I got saved, but all humanity is involved in a spiritual war. All of us. Whether we believe in God or not, we are involved in the war.

There's only two sides. There's God's side. There's the devil's side. And when you don't accept God's side, by default, you are on the devil's side. Now, that's the big deception, because the majority of people out there are not really consciously saying, "I'm on the devil's side." They're not saying, "I choose the devil." But they're thinking that they're in some kind of no man's land or gray zone that they can walk in because they have not made a choice for the devil, nor a choice for God.

But either you're for God or you're against God. And if you're against God, you're not with God. Amen. So there's not a gray zone, and so every human being is involved in a spiritual warfare. And there's a devil out there that is trying to get everybody to go to hell. He doesn't want you to go to heaven. He doesn't want me to go to heaven. He doesn't want anybody to go to heaven.

He's out there trying to deceive everyone. And if he can get you to believe that you're okay when you're not okay, he has succeeded. Remember the book of Joel says, "Multitudes in the valley of decision." And it's talking about a judgment that God is bringing. Multitudes of people. People today, every day, people are making decisions, but are your decisions for God or not? We're involved in a spiritual warfare.

So we're going to read some scriptures to support what I said. Ephesians 6:12. A lot of us are familiar with this scripture, but let's read it anyways. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Paul is writing this to the church, specifically to the church at Ephesus.

He says, "We're wrestling, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness." And you might say in your mind, "Well, I don't think that. I've never wrestled with a demon." But you see, the wrestling's in our mind. The wrestling's in our mind when God says, "You need to come to me." God says, "You need to get some things right. You need to repent." God says, "You need to change some things in your life."

The devil's over there wrestling with you to say, "No, no, no. That's just that's just being prudish. That's being too strict. Nobody does that. You don't need to live that way. Just keep going. Just be a good person." Just be a good person. Just do nice things. There are going to be nice people going to hell. Nice there's going to be nice people going to hell.

Bible doesn't say that God God's going to look and say, "Did you do nice things?" He's going to look in the book. Is your name written in the book? Is my name written down above? How do I get my name written there? I obey what the Apostles said to do. I repent, I get baptized in Jesus' name for the remission of sins and I receive the Holy Ghost.

Okay? You want sin out of your life, you need to be water baptized in Jesus' name. It will remit your sins. It'll give you freedom from sin. Amen. So, we're involved in a spiritual warfare. Paul again talking to the Ephesian Church in Ephesians 2:1 says, "And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sin."

So he's telling all those people in the church, "Before you got saved, you were dead in trespasses and sin. You were spiritually dead." He says in verse 2, "Where in time past you walked according to the course or the order of this world." You know, a good a good check of your spirituality is what where are you getting your influences? What's got the most influence in your life?

Is the way the world acts, the way the world dresses, the way the world's popularity goes. Are you in a place you can't live without the world's music? Are you in a place you can't live without watching all the shows the world puts out? Are you in a place that you've got to dress like everybody else to fit in?

Or can God tell you not to dress that way? Can God tell you not to listen to that? Can God tell you not to watch that or read that or go there? And if he can't, the world's got more influence on you than God does. Hallelujah. So he said we're they were walking, we walked according to the course of the world. This is what happens. Everybody's saved, if you talk to them, they'll tell you.

You know, I was doing these things that weren't right. Amen. And I wrestled with it trying to come out of it. And God finally got a hold of me. I gave my heart to God and I did what God said to do in the Bible, got the Holy Ghost, obeyed the plan of salvation, got baptized and God broke the chains and now I'm living for the Lord. Amen. God will do that.

And he goes, he said, "We're going according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air." That's the devil. "The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." See, our problem is is we look around and we measure our disobedience against others. And we say, "Well, I'm just a little bit. They're real bad. I'm just a little bit, so I'm okay." No.

If I'm not obeying God, I'm in trouble when it comes to judgment. Amen. So, either people are on the Lord's side or the devil's side. Joshua made a challenge to the people of Israel in Joshua 24. When they had finished conquering the land of of Israel there, the promised land, after coming out with under Joshua, as Joshua's getting ready to pass off the scene, Joshua lays out a challenge.

And he says to them in in Joshua 24:15, "And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, or that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." You must choose to serve God.

Nobody gets accidentally saved. Nobody gets accidentally saved. You must make a choice to serve God. God's not going to make you serve him. He wants you to serve because you want to serve him. Amen. Luke 2:23, it's supposed to say 9:23 there. Luke 9:23.

Jesus said, in Luke 9:23, "If any man will come after me, say, any. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, what? Deny himself and take up his cross on Sunday." Daily. "Take up his cross daily and follow me." So that means there's got to be effort. I've got to choose to take the cross up.

I've got to choose every day, "Today I'm going to live for God." You got to make a decision to live for God. It's not once saved always saved. That's not a Bible doctrine. That's popular with a lot of people, but it's not a Bible doctrine. Again, I've got to make a conscious decision to follow the voice of the Lord. John 10:27.

Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." So I've got to make a conscious decision to follow Jesus. So ask yourself, am I am I making a conscious decision to follow the Lord? What what kind of effort am I putting out for God?

What will I do tomorrow when I wake up? Will I just say I didn't like church or it was a good service, but today's Monday and I'm going to do what I feel like I want to do or what I feel like I need to do? And I'm not saying to be irresponsible. We need to keep our commitments, that's part of living for God. If you made a commitment, God expects you to keep that. You got hired by somebody, God expects you to do a good job.

Amen. If you get higher, if you accept a job and they say, "I'm paying you X dollars an hour," and this is what you're supposed to do, and then you get on that job and you don't work your hours because you think, "Well, I they should be paying me more," you're not keeping your word. You are not being a good witness for God.

But my boss is mean. That's not the point. You made an agreement to work for them, do this job for this amount of money. You're supposed to do it. Amen. You and if you don't say amen, amen. Praise God. Amen. So, we've got to choose God. And I just picked a few scriptures. We got to choose God.

And Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and if he's a prince, I've got to decide I'm going to let him rule over me. Sometimes we we call we claim it, we say it, the Prince of Peace, but then we wonder where our peace is, but the reason we don't have peace is we're not letting him be in charge. We're going where we want. Do you know that sometimes when you come to serve God, you may have to radically change your life, even if you're not a druggy, an alcoholic,