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We keep wanting peace now—the right circumstances, the right outcome, the right person in charge—and that hunger is not wrong, just misdirected. In Luke 19:41–44, Jesus weeps over a city shouting for peace while blind to the only kind that lasts, and his tears raise an uncomfortable question about what we're actually seeking when we seek it.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon describes how the crowds hailing Jesus were seeking “peace” but didn't understand what kind of peace Jesus actually offered. What does it mean practically to confuse earthly peace with God's peace? Can you think of an area in your own life where you've been tempted to settle for temporary relief instead of waiting for true peace?
Jesus tells the people that “the things that make for peace” are hidden from their eyes. What does it mean for spiritual truth to be “hidden”? Is it hidden because God conceals it, or because we're not receptive to it—and does that distinction matter?
The sermon emphasizes that we live in a “now culture” where we want immediate solutions. How does this cultural pressure affect our spiritual lives? Where do you find yourself most prone to wanting God's answer “now” rather than trusting His timing?
Jesus wept over Jerusalem decades before the Roman siege happened in 70 AD. What does this teach us about God's nature—His knowledge of the future, His sorrow over coming judgment, and His desire for people to turn to Him? How should the reality of coming judgment shape the way we live today?
According to Romans 5:1, peace with God comes through justification by faith in Jesus Christ. How does that kind of peace hold up when earthly circumstances remain unsettled—and where do you find it hardest to rest in it?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Greater value somewhere else. What really came to a head last week as we thought about the Triumphant Entry, the Palm Sunday narrative, was how all the people are so excited to encounter Jesus because they're looking for someone who's going to fix things for them.
There's this giant celebration, so what does Jesus do in response to that? He weeps over them and speaks about the end to come. Maybe not what we expected, maybe not what they expected, but we do spend a lot of time in life thinking about the end of things.
I remember ever since I was a kid, and I think probably for many of us this is the case, if I have a sense, we're fascinated by certain unexpected endings, like I mentioned a while back Pompeii, and I think about the ending for those people. They go out on a beautiful day in 79 AD, things seem like they're going really well, they're eating meals together, doing normal life stuff, and in a moment it was over.
I find all those sorts of unexpected ends fascinating, especially when you can go back and see something of it. One of the reasons I find myself drawn to understanding more about the Chernobyl disaster and what happened there, and how you can actually, there are people that go on tours. I don't think I'd want to do this, but you can go on a tour of the area around it. Why would you want to do that? Because as people had to leave, everything's just left there, just all there, paused in time from decades ago.
The Titanic, similarly, right? Why did we have a disaster, was that last year or the year before, where a submarine exploded that went down to see the Titanic? Why do people risk life and limb to go see the Titanic? Because it's fascinating how things can be so normal until they're not.
So we're fascinated by it, but do we really think about how that applies to us? I think the answer may be yes and no. I believe part of the reason why we're fascinated by these occurrences is that we think about what would it have been like to be in that situation, to have one moment, everything going normally, or you're, say, on the Titanic, and you're in that first-class area, and you've probably seen the movie, so you know how beautiful it was, right?
And it was amazing, right? All the finery and the musicians and the good food, all this stuff, and then all of a sudden, it's over. So sometimes we put ourselves in that position, but on the other hand, do we day to day?
The people, as they hailed Jesus as he came into the city, they were anticipating an end to suffering. They were looking forward to the day when it wouldn't be so oppressively Roman in their area, when they wouldn't pay all those taxes to the Roman government, when they wouldn't be regulated by the Roman government, when they wouldn't be under the thumb of the Roman soldiers.
They anticipated the end of that, but they weren't really thinking, well, what happens if I meet my end instead? Jesus challenges them as they call out for peace to think about these things. He calls us to think about them, too.
Let's go ahead and come before him in prayer and ask for his guidance as we encounter him tonight.
Lord, we come before you, and this is a heavy passage that we're looking at tonight. Would you help us not to stay on the heavy side of it, because Lord, you don't intend to leave us there. Rather, as we look at your call to be aware of what's going on, you're calling us to rest in your deep, deep love.
Lord, would you help us to feel that love tonight and to be surrounded by it, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
I am not typically, as you know if you've been here, a fire and brimstone preacher, so it feels kind of weird to dive into the deep end here, but we're going to start with that judgment is coming. That's where we start tonight. If you came in tonight feeling a little burdened and you just think, do we really have to go there?
Hang on with me, because here's the good news, Jesus isn't going to leave us there. But it's important that we go there, because it is coming, and he has a solution for it, but he wants us to actually understand what he's solving, because if we don't understand what he's solving, we won't understand the solution.
Luke 19, verse 41, it says, “When he,” that is Jesus, “drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes, for the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
One of the things that Jesus challenges people with over and over and over again is what's hidden from them. It might sound like a funny thing, but the challenge for us is, are we willing to be receptive to what Jesus is doing or not? And over the last two chapters of Luke that we've been exploring this summer, we've seen some people who want to encounter Jesus, for example, the blind man, blind physically and yet able to see what Jesus is doing. He could understand Jesus in a way that those who were spiritually blind around him couldn't.
And on the other hand, there were those people who wanted to hang on to this thing or that thing in this earth. And he thought it was going to keep them happy, keep them safe, keep them powerful. And from them, what was happening right in front of them was hidden.
Jesus weeps here, not over how they've treated him, although surely, can you imagine being the creator of the world and encountering people who don't want to receive you? Why does he weep? He weeps because of what's coming. He knows what's coming and it's necessary. And yet the very Lord of the universe weeps.
Now I think this is a really important thing for us to hear as we come into a declaration of God's judgment. Because sometimes we think of God and we hear the word judgment and we think, oh, here's an angry God who just wants to smite people. What we're really thinking of is ourselves. Someone just annoys us. Someone makes things hard for us. What do we want to do? Well, we think, well, it's a good thing I'm not God right now. Because if I were God right now, you would feel my wrath, right? And I'd have to get a carpet cleaner for the carpet afterwards.
Jesus weeps. It shows the love of God that we encounter in Jesus. That here he is on earth. Why? To save people who aren't receptive. To save people who turn away from God at every turn.
But as he comes into Jerusalem, city of peace, that's what part of the name means, Salem, peace. He comes into that city of peace, he sees a city that's hurtling very quickly towards anything but peace. It's in the name, but it wasn't in the reality.
And for too many of the people, including the people who had just got done waving palms and celebrating that Jesus was coming in, they thought they were hailing in this peace because Jesus was going to come, the Messiah was coming, and the Messiah was going to bring peace by eliminating the Romans, or so they thought. Thought they could achieve a political peace like that, and then things would be good.
But Jesus says to them, what God is doing here is hidden from you. And if they'd actually paid attention to the prophets, if they'd been hearing what God was doing, they would've understood that God's promise of sending the Messiah, the ultimate King of David, wasn't to bring earthly peace in a moment, but it was to bring eternal peace.
And yet, that wasn't what they were seeking after, because they were human. Quite often, it's not what we're seeking after, either. Quite often, it's not what I'm seeking after, either. I want peace right now, right in this moment, with this earth. That wasn't what he was coming to bring.
The crowd had been hailing one coming in the name of the Lord, bringing peace, but they didn't understand the sort of peace. And we thought about that somewhat last week, but we're going to keep dwelling in that, because even as Jesus was teaching them, they weren't getting it. And even as Jesus teaches us, often we aren't getting it, because we keep thinking, yes, Jesus, I know it's about eternal peace, but surely, if I just do this right, you're going to bring peace right now, right?
I know that's what you said you weren't going to do then, but now, you're going to do it, right? We keep seeking after the wrong kind of peace.
Many of those people that surrounded Jesus and hailed him in that moment would turn away from him at the end of the week when he was crucified. And even after he appeared to many in the resurrection, and then the witnesses went out, and were declaring that Jesus was alive, that he is risen, many of them would not choose to follow Jesus.
But what would they do? They keep seeking after messiahs. We'll find a messiah who actually does what we want him to do. He wasn't the right kind of person. He wasn't really the messiah, clearly, because he didn't bring us peace. The Romans are still here.
Ironically, in seeking the sort of peace they thought they wanted, they ended up getting the absolute disaster they most feared. Because what happens? Well, they seek after other leaders, the sorts of leaders who actually take on Rome, and what do you know? In 66, they succeed.
In 66, they take over the Roman garrison. Jerusalem's a pretty well-fortified city. They take it, and they hold it, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they declare a provisional government. A few years later, the Zealots don't think they go far enough, so then they take over. And then the Romans come, and they crush them.
They tear down the temple. Every stone is overturned, and thousands and thousands of people are killed. The ones that aren't killed are scattered. Here's the irony in that.
In that moment, where they took over in 66, and they found someone, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the people thought, I remember when I was young, there was this man named Jesus, and he talked about bringing peace from God, but look, he ended up dead. He ended up an enemy of the state, but look at these folks. They brought us peace. Finally, the Romans are off our backs.
And in that moment, they thought, we did it. It finally came. This was what God was really promising, not that Jesus fellow that talked about all kinds of spiritual things, and wanted us to focus on the kingdom of heaven.
No, no, now we have what we really, really wanted. And then they faced the very judgment that Jesus had told them would come. And seeking the wrong sort of peace, they actually became those who brought about the judgment that Jesus wept over.
Because unlike them, they couldn't imagine, they didn't know what was going to happen 30 something years later, but Jesus, as he looks at that city, that city that he had chosen for his people to be the capital, the place where the promise had come to David that there would be a king in his line on the throne for all eternity, and here is the ultimate eternal king in that line.
He looks at that city, he knows what's to come, because those people are going to choose to turn away from him. Now, some chose to follow him. And some of those people also faced Rome's wrath.
However, as they did, they were challenged to understand whether they really had grasped what kind of peace Jesus intended for them or not. Because Jesus hadn't intended for them earthly peace. Those around them that were seeking after earthly peace, well, those following Jesus in the city of Jerusalem, yes, they were going to be unfortunately brought along for the ride. But as they looked at Jesus and they understood what Jesus had promised, they understood that yes, this is falling apart around us, this situation is deteriorating rapidly, and it's going nowhere that we'd ever hoped for.
But they understood that Jesus was still the king.
Luke 21, verse 20, Jesus says, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart. Let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are the days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written. Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, for there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
Decades before it happened, Jesus told them exactly what would happen, and they kept seeking after the wrong kind of peace. He offered them something better, he offered them something fuller, but false peace is often far more fulfilling in the moment than the true peace of God is.
That sounds really, really weird to say, doesn't it? You're going to feel more fulfilled if you chase after false peace. You can just see that on Twitter. Tim said, my pastor said, you know, check it out, you can watch the livestream, he said false peace is going to be more fulfilling to you than God's peace, but here's the thing that we often don't like to say but it's true, it absolutely will be oftentimes in the moment. It won't last. That's the problem.
In 66, do you want to think about those people for a moment? They've just overthrown an oppressive government, and now they're ruling themselves for the first time in their lifetimes, do you think they felt fulfilled in that moment? I absolutely think they felt fulfilled in that moment. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't I? Of course. It was a false peace.
And in that peace, you can see the compromise that we make that leads it to be false. The Pharisees and the Sadducees had been compromising for years, why? Because they wanted to keep the Romans happy so they could stay in power, and then when the Romans fell, okay, now we'll take over, because what they were really seeking after is their own power.
And many of the people that followed them had done the same. We had the false peace of a political victory there. In the moment, it feels great. But it doesn't bring peace.
And here's what we need to understand. Nothing that anyone promises in this world is going to bring us peace. And if we chase after that kind of peace, then we'll be blinded to what God is doing.
I don't think Jesus was merely weeping over one city as he wept. Because that city is a picture of humanity. And as he saw what was coming to them, he knew what was coming to so many people around the world in the time to come. And over and over again, we'll seek after a false peace and find it incredibly, incredibly hollow in the end.
But we have it right now. And that's incredibly, incredibly appealing in the moment.
Sometimes we need something right now.
A few months ago, I got a notice. We have our communion that we serve. And don't worry, Chris, it's not quite time for communion yet. You're doing fine. You have not broken your record of knowing exactly when it's coming up.
A few months ago, though, I got a notice. We get it from a particular supplier. We've been getting it for the last two years from the same place. And I have it through Subscribe and Save on Amazon. They ship it every few months. I got a notice. “We're unable to fulfill your Subscribe and Save order this month because it's out of stock.”
So I knew which kind we'd been getting. I go over to another shop and try to order. And it said they could fulfill it in three months. Went to another place. Could fulfill it in three or four months. Well, this is interesting. So I was confronted with a challenge.
I could wait three or four months. We were going to run out of communion. Or what I really needed was I need a solution and I need it now. And I started looking and apparently a lot of people were going through the same challenge because a lot of different brands of communion.
Here's something I bet you never even thought of. Right? That communion supplies could sell out. I hadn't. But a lot of the different ones were backordered because I think the one ran out and then people started trying to buy other ones.
And so I find one that's available. That one was the one we had the very first week we met. And if you remember, if you were here the very first week we met in person, did I have some people here with some knowing? Yeah.
So for those of you that weren't, let me just tell you, it was the most interesting communion experience we've ever had because when we met that first week, I'd ordered this communion. It had decent ratings on Amazon. I ordered this particular brand and it's all nice and sanitary sealed as we do nowadays. And the one thing I forgot was to make it so you could reasonably open the thing.
And I know that several of you during our communion time didn't end up partaking in the communion except on your clothes because it just kind of exploded as you tried to get the thing open.
And a couple months ago, three months ago, whenever that was, as I'm looking on the product pages and I see that's the one brand that was available. I was confronted with, do I need communion now or do I want true peace? Now thankfully, thankfully right before I had to make that compromise, I guess they got whatever was going wrong with their fulfillment fixed and we were able to get the kind we've had again, thankfully.
But in that moment, it really was sort of a now but a false peace because I know what's going to happen during the service or a true peace.
We're faced with that in all sorts of areas in life, right? Maybe you go out to eat and you order something from the menu and the waiter says, well, I'm sorry, we're out of that. Would you like something else?
Now in those sorts of moments, it makes perfect sense to say, well, it's dinnertime. Have company with me. I'm not going to get up and leave. I'll order something else. I really felt like fried chicken, but fine, I'll have some roast beef instead. It'll be fine.
We make those sorts of compromises. But then there's those times it's a bit bigger deal. Maybe you're shopping for an appliance and you have to decide, well, this is a relatively big purchase. Do I wait two or three extra weeks or two or three extra months to get the one I really want or do I just go ahead and compromise for the one that's in stock?
Nowadays, it seems like that's often the challenge with a car, right? Do I want the car that I can actually get this year or do I want to put my name on a list and wait? Do I want to get the perfect car that has everything I want on it or do I get the car that the lot was able to obtain?
Those are questions that we ask ourselves day in and day out, but here's the thing that we often don't think about. We think about that when we're making a purchase because we're thinking, well, I'm spending my money. I'm at this restaurant. I had my mouth watering for fried chicken and I don't know if I want to hand over money for roast beef. I wanted fried chicken and we have to decide what the compromise is.
But when it comes to our spiritual lives, we're often not thinking about the actual cost that we're choosing. We say, I want peace. I want it now. Jesus says, well, you're going to find peace now. There is peace to be found in this moment, but let me tell you, it's not going to be a lasting peace.
And as Jesus spoke to the people here, he's challenging them to think, do you want a lasting peace or do you want to feel like you have peace right now? Because we don't have to have it at this particular moment. It's more akin, it's not to when you go to the restaurant and they're out of the fried chicken, it's when they say, well, you know, we don't have any already prepared, so it's going to be about 30 minutes if you want fried chicken.
Are you willing to wait? Are you willing to wait? And you have to say, well, no one else is ordering fried chicken, but you're all just going to have to wait. I want my fried chicken, right?
We're waiting for the true peace of fried chicken. Jesus says, wait for the true peace of God. It might take a little while to cook. It's not in the buffet line already for you, but it's going to be so much better than what you get otherwise. It's going to be so much more satisfying.
But how often do I settle for the temporary calm rather than the permanent peace because I don't have the patience for it? I just want it now. Now sounds so good. We live in a now culture, right? Everything is now. Our deliveries are now. Our success is now or we'll just go ahead and find something else to be successful in because it's too long to wait.
We're not going to put in time into this. And too often that's the way we are with God. God says, I'm calling you to a life of patience. We say, I don't feel like being patient. God, if you knew what it was like to live on this earth and have to wait for things to be right.
He says, that's a half. Jesus walked on this earth and experienced the frustration that we experience and yet what did he not do? He didn't compromise. Kept his eye on the prize. He kept holding on to the peace that he was going to bring even though it was going to bring the most horrible of costs to himself.
Take a look again at verse 44. Jesus said to them, “Would that you, even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.”
I think it's really important that we hang on to the fact that Jesus doesn't say, how terrible it was that you want peace. If only you said, I don't care about having peace at all. It doesn't matter to me. Then everything would have been all right for you.
He doesn't say that. He says, if only you understood the things that will bring peace. They had it all worked out in their heads. If we just gain political power, if we just have success and we can take out those Romans, then we will have peace.
Now imagine the individuals there. Not all of them were maybe focused all the time on conquering the Romans or pushing out the Romans, but they had other smaller issues they had in mind. And they thought, well, once the Messiah, he's going to be amazing if he can take on the Romans. Once he does that, then he'll take care of these other issues too.
They thought they knew what the means of peace were going to be. But Jesus says, if you only understood what was going to bring peace. Trusting in him was what was going to bring peace, but they couldn't see it.
The rich young ruler we saw a few weeks ago in this series. He comes to Jesus, he knows that Jesus is teaching the truth of eternal life, and yet what's the one thing he won't do? He won't give up his riches. Why? Because they bring him peace in the moment.
And even though he comes to Jesus thinking, here is someone who is speaking the word of God, I want to hear from him, he says, yes, great, but no thanks. Because I think I already know what's going to make me happy.
How often do we do that? Here's the irony of this moment. Jesus is standing there in front of them. The one who offers them a true peace is right there in front of them, and they're even shouting that he's the one bringing peace, but they're so fixated on what that peace looks like, they'll miss out on the peace he's actually going to give them.
Verse 44 is the picture of the perfect missed opportunity. They've been waiting for God to visit them and to bring peace. God was right there with them. He was right there with them. And they came so close, but he didn't do what they thought he should do, and so they miss out.
Take a look at verse 44. What's going to happen? The enemy army is going to tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation.
Salvation was there for them. In this moment, salvation was there for them. At some point, the stubbornness that we can build up in ourselves, and we frequently build up in ourselves because we think we know what we want, we think we know how it should be, goes from just plain stubbornness to utter blindness.
That's what happens to them. Peace with God is available now, but they need to understand how.
Romans 5, verse 1, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Kathy read the rest of that passage when we opened tonight. During the confession time, Greg read more of Romans 5, and you think about the picture of Romans 5. What does Romans 5 speak of? That through Jesus' death, the lack of peace for Jesus, what does he offer? He offers us true peace, peace actually with God.
That was being offered to them, but they needed to seize the opportunity. They actually needed to say, what I want is to be right with God. I don't care what happens on this earth. I don't care if the Romans dominate our land for the rest of my life and the lives of the generations to come.
What I know that really matters is that I have peace with God. They said, I want peace on this earth. I want peace with the powers that be now. And so they missed the opportunity.
For years, the St. Louis Cardinals have offered a really neat program called the Clergy Pass. And what it is, just to give a little shout out to the kindness of our local true baseball team—I mean, the true baseball team, right? The St. Louis Cardinals. Go Cards, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go Cards.
They've had this thing called the Clergy Pass, which was an ingenious thing. They've changed it a little now, but the way it was for years at least, they give you two tickets to most games, not Cubs games, not opening day, but most games if you were clergy, so that you could take someone to the ballgame.
That was a nice idea, right? Because they wanted pastors to be able to take their congregation to the ballgame. And you can't justify that on a church budget. I mean, it's not really feasible.
So they did this really neat thing for the community, right? A really neat thing. Here's the thing. I learned about this in March of the year I was ordained. I was ordained, actually, in March. So I learned about it then.
And so I get all excited and I go on and I type in the web address to go to the Cardinals Clergy Pass website because now I'm a member of the clergy. I can get these tickets, right? And it says, we're sorry. We've run out of Clergy Passes for the year. But please check back next February.
So I put it in my calendar. Next February I checked back. And I got the Clergy Pass. And it was great. Ah, free tickets. I mean, what could be better than free Cardinals tickets, right? And so that was great for that year. And I remember the next year.
The following year, though, I didn't put it in my calendar. And somewhere in, like, I don't know, late February I started thinking, oh, it's Clergy Pass time. I should go do that. Go back. Ah, it's all gone, right? There was a window of opportunity there to get that Clergy Pass. But I missed it.
Fast forward all the way to this year. They discontinued it during COVID. It was back this year. I go to the site. But it's been so long since it had been offered, I didn't really think about it in February. I show up at the end of March. And what do you know? It's gone again.
There's a window of opportunity for these things, right? This moment that you can seize on it. And I missed it.
Now here's something that can be said about the Clergy Pass. I know they only have a certain number of them they give out. They can't fill the stadium with free passes. They'd go bankrupt, right? So I don't know what the number is. There's a certain number of passes they'll give out.
What does God's window of opportunity look like, though? It's not that you need to go get a ticket and see if you're one of the fortunate few that meet the quota before God runs out of seats in heaven. But there's still a window of time. Am I going to seize it?
And here's, I think, the challenge that we run into. We know what peace looks like on this earth right now. We say, okay, I even know it's a false peace, but I still want it right now.
Here's what I'll do. I'll set a reminder next February to check my calendar. And then I'll see if maybe I want to apply for God's peace at that time. Because then maybe I'll be past this and it'll be okay.
It takes me back to Pompeii and to the Titanic and to Chernobyl and how many other disasters have happened. And how many times, and it doesn't take a giant disaster, how many times is it something as simple as someone goes to bed one night and has a heart attack and doesn't wake up the next morning? We don't know what the window of opportunity is. We don't know how long our lives are going to go.
And so we play this negotiating game with God saying, well, I'll seek after peace later on. How long is it going to go on? It may be that my death arrives when I don't expect it. It may be that Jesus returns. It may be that as I'm negotiating that, and maybe I'm even going to reach that point, that God has plans to use me that I am not taking part in because, because of what? Because I'm playing chicken with God and seeing how long I can go before I have peace with him.
Even those of us who trust in Jesus, how often do we trust in Jesus and we hold on to his peace, but we keep stretching as far away from it as we can to see if we can grab on and link hands with the peace of this world in this moment?
And I'm not saying as we do that that we're giving up our salvation, but I am saying that we're missing out on the true peace with God in that moment because we're so focused on what we think is over there, that kind of peace, that we're missing out on the peace that God is offering.
As Jesus looks at these people, he's basically saying to them, don't play chicken. You think that you're going to race, and at the last moment, you can dodge out of the way of whatever's coming at you, pray, and God's going to save you.
The man we talked last week during Sunday school, we referred to as, he comes up from time to time, the thief on the cross. Here's someone who at the very last moments of life, what does he do? He trusts in Jesus and he's saved.
But not all of us are given that opportunity. And God says, don't try to be the thief on the cross.
I don't know if any of the people, as the Romans poured in in 70 AD and started burning everything down and tearing down the stone walls and everyone that came in their path, I don't know if anyone thought back to a moment they'd heard Jesus decades before and thought, I wonder if I should have followed him.
Maybe some actually chose in that time to follow him. But I'd imagine others, they were in their houses cooking, having a meal, sleeping, and the Romans came pouring into their house and killed them and they didn't even have time to respond.
Life is coming. The end of each of our lives is coming. Judgment is coming. And judgment doesn't need to be a scary thing because God offers his peace. We can hold on to it today. We don't have to play chicken and see if someday we can work it out.
God's peace is here now. As the people were hailing Jesus, his peace was there for them. They had it right to that point, they just didn't hold on to it.
And Jesus is saying, you can hold on to it right now. Peace is here in this moment. You just have to hold on to it.
Pray with me, please.
Lord, would you help us tonight to hold on to your peace? If anyone here hasn't yet, Lord, would you nudge him or would you nudge her to know that your peace is available? And even for those of us who trust in you, as we still reach after earthly peace and miss out on truly enjoying oftentimes the peace that you offer us, would you remind us that your peace is here and is here right now?
Lord, would you guide us? Would you direct us? And would you let us experience the fullness of your love and your peace? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
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