The sermon titled 'Peace With God' by Scott Brown explores the concept of peace with God through justification by faith. The speaker emphasizes that peace with God is a finished work and a gift from God, not something that can be earned or improved upon. He also highlights the difference between peace with God and the peace of God, and discusses the impact of justification on believers. The sermon emphasizes the importance of having peace with God and the blessings that come with it.

And verse one, we'll be just covering verse one in Romans five today. Romans five, verse one. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we thank you for this remarkable gift, this remarkable word of encouragement to your people that you have done such a thing and I pray oh Lord that you would help us to understand it and for anyone who doesn't know it to have it to get it today. Amen. Please be seated. So if you have come to this church for any length of time, you'll find that because of the text that we're studying on that particular Sunday, some of the sermons have quite a bit of conviction in them. Some of them are dealing with various matters of doctrine, instruction.

Well, they really all are. All of them really are applications of the sufficiency of scripture and in praise of our only sufficient Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. And all of them really have at its heart the desire to exalt Jesus Christ and the greatness of his kingdom, his bountiful love toward us. And today, I really want to do the work of Isaiah that he spoke in Isaiah chapter 40, where he said, comfort, yes, comfort my people says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem.

That's what I wanna do today. Cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned. You know, there are some people, I would just call them conviction junkies. They don't feel like they've heard a sermon unless they've just been convicted one side up, down, and the other, you know. But that actually might not be the focus of this text.

I'm delighted to come as an emissary of hope, of peace from God, and to try to explain what it means to have peace with God. And so we've come to this actually a new section in Romans in chapter 5. The message of the first four chapters was twofold really primarily to convict the world of sin, to say that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that there's none righteous, no not one. The Apostle Paul goes through various categories of people, pagan people, immoral people, religious people, Jews. And he's saying man is not justified by the works of the law or by anything but the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And so the Apostle Paul has spent lots of time, he doesn't leave any stone unturned to make it very clear that mankind is under condemnation without Jesus Christ. And so as we come to chapter five, there's a change. The first part, the first four chapters, was really focused on unbelievers to help them understand their spiritual state and also to explain justification by faith alone. And we've done that, that's what we've been doing. But as we move into chapter five, the apostle actually is talking to believers.

He's talking to the people who have been justified, who do have the faith of Abraham, who do believe God, just like Abraham did. They believe God. They want to walk with God. And how imperfectly yet they desire with all their hearts. So that's what this whole section is about and so he's now talking about the impact of justification.

What so so what so what about justification And this is a big so what in verse one. And I hope it's a blessing to you. You know, I hope it's a source of encouragement. I hope it's a source of comfort about this whole matter of having peace with God. I don't think I've been able to completely grasp it for my own self, but I've been trying to.

What does it mean to have peace with God? And we learned that, you know, justification is something that is is one and done. So we in verse one, it opens up with this word, therefore, therefore having been justified by faith. So he's obviously with a word like therefore which is there to help you understand what came before. He's moving through a chain of logic and deduction.

The apostle Paul wants his reader to think through arguments and make conclusions based on the propositions that have been made before. And when you come to the word therefore, you know that this is connected to that. This is what's being said now is being connected with that which was said before. And we've talked a lot about justification, that justification is a judicial, legal, and transaction where God declares the sinner righteous, and he sees them as righteous. And it's so important to understand justification by faith.

You know, there are people, and maybe you feel like this from time to time, you know, that justification, that your faith in Christ is like washing your car. You know, you wash your car, but then it gets dirty again, and then you gotta go back and get justified again, and then you wash your car. You know, I actually, I like clean cars. I don't like dirty cars. So I'm constantly making sure that my car gets clean.

But I'm so grateful that my salvation is not like that. But there was a there was one one cleaning, one act, one judicial act of God that made me clean. And that's the doctrine of justification. By faith where your sins are pardoned and where your punishment is canceled and the sentence is suspended. I just want us to try to soak in that principle that your salvation has been secured.

And there's not one thing you can do to be more justified. And you don't need to go back and get your car washed every day because Jesus Christ has justified you. This is a finished work. And then he speaks about this thing about peace of God. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

Now that too is a finished work. The kind of peace that he's talking about here is not something that you get good at. It's not something that you can improve on. The peace of God has been accomplished. And you know, most people go through periods of life, everybody goes through periods of life where they're finding a hard time having peace in their heart.

That's a different kind of peace. That's the peace of God. We're talking about peace with God. You know, the peace that we often search for so much is the peace that comes from finding ourselves in favorable circumstances and in particular blessings. I was reading Augustine a while back and he talks about, he says, who will grant it to me to find peace in you?

He's crying out to God. He says, who will grant me this grace that you should come into my heart and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace you? You are my only good. What Are you to me? Have mercy on me." And then he, he says that famous thing that is quoted so often in Confessions.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Well I think that's the whole point of this text. To find your, find a restless soul with rest. Rest in what? Not your circumstances, not your feelings, not your chemical imbalances, not the crazy things that have happened to your body and your life, but something that's done, that's accomplished, that actually It exists apart even from your feelings though I would say and we'll elaborate on this in the next verse that I'll preach on in time to come that the peace with God does have something to do with the peace of God but we'll save that. Now in Romans in these first 11 verses there are eight blessings of justification and the first one is peace with God.

The second one is access By faith into this grace in which we stand. I can't wait to get there I've loved that verse Since the beginning of my Christian life and then third we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God Well, we'll get to those but I really want to focus in on this one idea of having peace with God. And I felt that I just wanted this congregation to bask in it, to let it sink in, and not go too fast over these great blessings of justification. We've spent so much time talking about condemnation and justification and now the fruits of it, the assurances of it are here in front of us and they're such such critical things to understand. And I want, here's what I want, I want you to know if you have a sense of subtleness in your soul about this.

You know, have you settled this in your soul? That you know that you have peace with God. That you, that you're, that you're experiencing the grace of God in the peace of God. Because God desires his children to be like that in the world. He wants you when you're walking around in the world not to be dominated by the danger and the threat of God wiping you off the face of the earth or hurting you in some way, like as if there's a Damocles sword hanging over your head, because it isn't.

Because God has made peace with his blood-bought children, who actually are still dealing with remaining sin. I want us to understand that. You know I was speaking with a friend this week and he asked me he said what have you been up to today? And I said I've been thinking all day about what it means to have peace with God. And there was this silence and I said, Do you have peace with God?

He said, I have peace with Scott. And it broke my heart because he didn't understand. He didn't understand the danger it was to have peace with Scott but not peace with God. And yet that's the most important thing for any person to know. Not even that they have peace with people or in this world or peace with themselves.

That's meaningless in some ways. But what's most important is do you have peace with God, with the God who sees all things, who knows all things. Do you have peace with God? So let's begin with this. We have.

We have peace with God. It's not something that you can attain to. It's a gift of God. It's something that he gives you. And we have it, look at these words.

These are so loaded. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's from whom you get the peace. Lord, he's the sovereign ruler and master. Jesus, that's his name for savior.

And Christ, that's his messiahship, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Apostle Paul will use that phraseology over and over again. He loves to say that, the Lord Jesus Christ. I love to say that. But He's talking about the peace with God.

Now there are two kinds of peace. There is the peace of God and there's peace with God. There is, one is subjective peace and the other is objective peace. Subjective peace, the peace of God is a sense of consolation. It's a sense of rest and inner serenity, a sense of satisfaction.

We would talk about it in terms of peace of mind. You know Isaiah said he will keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. That's different. That's a different kind of peace than the apostle is talking about. That's the peace of God.

The apostle talks, or Peter talks about the peace of God that passes all understanding. That's a different kind of peace. I believe that's in this text. I think that it it has an effect. Peace with God has an effect on having the peace of God, but this is a separate category of peace.

The peace of God is subjective. It's fleeting. It goes up and down. It might go up and down ten times a day. But the peace of God never goes down and it never goes up.

It is. And it's an ongoing reality. We have peace with God. And it's a secured peace. And here's the kind of peace it was.

It is. It's the peace that a former enemy experiences. We were once enemies of God. And God was an enemy of us. The Bible teaches that.

But this is an objective peace. It's a signed peace agreement. You know, it's a testimony that the war is over. Many of you know that my dad fought in World War II. He was a P-51 Mustang pilot flying missions off of the island of Iwo Jima onto the mainland of Japan.

And one day, it was on May 29th, 1945, my dad was shot down over Tokyo Bay and was floating around in enemy waters. And five months later, five months later after he was shot down and he did survive. I'm proof of that. He did survive. But on September 2nd, five months later, Germany surrendered, and then Japan surrendered.

And there was a peace treaty that was signed in Tokyo Bay with General Douglas MacArthur and the Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz on the USS Missouri and there you can see these pictures they're very dramatic where the Japanese officials came on board and on the USS Missouri and they signed a peace agreement and the war was over. The war was over. That's the kind of peace we're talking about. The peace treaty has been signed and the fighting has stopped. That's peace with God And the peace with God is over objectively by a peace agreement that was signed by the Lord Jesus Christ in his blood.

You know, there's a young girl from another country who wrote something recently. I was so taken by it. I've seen this girl grow up. She lives in another country and she wrote, she quoted Samuel Rutherford. She said, your rock does not ebb and flow, but your sea does." In other words, the circumstances are ebbing and flowing, but your rock doesn't.

And then he says, you yourself may ebb and flow, rise and fall, wax and wane. But your Lord is this day as He was yesterday, and it is your comfort that your salvation is not rolled upon the wheels of your own making." I like that. Not rolled on the wheels of your own making, sliding this way and that way, going up and down. And he says, neither have we with Christ of our own shaping. In other words, he's the rock.

And in this sense, he's declared peace. And it's done. But on the other hand, I think in order to talk about the peace that we have with God, we have to understand the war against God and God's war against sinners. And for example, in Psalm 7 verses 11 and 12, we don't read that God loves everybody. Rather we read that God is angry with the wicked every day.

He will sharpen his sword. He bends his bow and makes it ready. God is angry. God is at war with the person who has not yielded to his authority and believed in the Son of God. In Romans chapter one, verse 18, we're very familiar with this because we were just there a while back.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But we have to recognize that the unbeliever is in a suppression mode. He's always trying to ignore. He's always trying to deny God's authority in his life. He's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

He's suppressing the only beauty in the world, the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the wrath of God rests upon him. There's a war. In John 3, 36, Jesus says something very different, that the wrath of God abides. In other words, it's an ongoing present reality that continues on, that the wrath of God abides.

In other words, it's an ongoing present reality that continues on, that the wrath of God abides. I'll read the verse to you. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him." In other words, there is a war against the unconverted, against the unrepentant And I pray that you're not one of those. You know, even if you're a child and you've grown up in this church, you need to know that if you do not believe and receive and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, that God is waging war against you. The wrath of God abides on you.

And you might not feel it, But it is. You might be like that person, you know, who just committed a great crime and the authorities are after him and the helicopters are in the air. And he's just driving. He's just driving casually, you know, through the streets, but the helicopters and the surveillance cameras know exactly where he is because his, because the gig is up. He's going, He's going to get captured.

But he's driving along thinking everything is fine, but the helicopters, they know. They're waging war against him but he doesn't know it yet. And so God wages war against the unbeliever. But also it's even, the Bible makes it even clearer than that. Not only is God at war with the unbeliever, but the unbeliever, the unconverted person, is also at war with God.

In Romans 1 30 we read that the unconverted are haters of God. In John 3 18 we read that the unbeliever hates the light. He says, for everyone practices evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." So The unbeliever is at war with God. He hates the light.

He doesn't want to be exposed. And he would rather have, in my experience, peace with Scott than peace with God. That's the most dangerous thing for a man, to self-congratulate himself that he's at peace with men. But he's not at peace with God. You can be an unbeliever and be at peace with men and be such a nice person and still be at war with God.

You can learn how to be at peace with people. There are all kinds of instructors that will tell you how to win friends and influence people. They're just things that you can do. You know, there are examples out there that you can learn from. You know, you could be like some of these wonderful politicians that are just, they just light up the room, you know.

You can learn how to do that. But having peace with man is meaningless if you don't have peace with God. When we were talking about this at men's Bible study, one of the men said something that was very insightful. He said we should recognize that the parties are not equal, that God is almighty. Waging war against almighty God is very dangerous.

The omnipotent God who created billions and hundreds of billions and quadrillions of stars at one word by saying, let there be. This is the one that man is at war with. With. In Psalm 5 verse 6, David says, the boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity.

God will destroy those who do not follow Him and love Him. I was reading Obadiah last week and Obadiah uses some of the most graphic amazing language about how man tries to hide from God like that man driving on the freeway you know going all of his places but he does not know that the helicopters are there and they're waiting for the moment. Obadiah says, though you ascend as high as the eagle and though you set your nest among the stars from there I will bring you down says the Lord. Obadiah 1 4. And then I was also reading in Amos this week too.

Amos 9-2. He talks about people who desperately try to escape some sense of the wrath of God and a sense of God. And that he is so against them in their unbelief. He says, though they dig into hell, from there my hand shall take them. Isn't that terrifying?

Doesn't matter where you go. You can try to hide from God behind your niceness and your accomplishments. Though they climb to heaven, he says, from there I will bring them down. If they go on to the top of Carmel, I will search and take them. Though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, from there I will command the serpent and it shall bite them." A sea serpent.

I mean these, this is language to help the unbeliever to understand the the untenable situation that he's in. He cannot win. The parties are not equal. He will be found. He will be sought out.

He will be destroyed. And then Amos, he talks about, he says, all the sinners of my people shall die by the sword who say the calamity shall not overtake or confront us. These are people who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They don't believe that God is at war with them. And you know, if there are unbelievers here today, you probably don't believe that God is at war with you.

But the Bible tells a truth that not only are you at war with God but God is at war with you. Amos chapter 6 verse 3 he talks about the people who act like judgment will never come. It's just so far in the future There's nothing to worry about. Woe to those who put far off the day of doom Who caused the seat of violence to come near who lie on their beds of ivory and stretch out on their couches. And it talks about how they eat this wonderful food, they go to all these wonderful places, but they say, no, the doom is far off.

We'll just eat and drink and be merry. But the peace of God is the absolute cessation of all hostility. The complete cessation of all hostility. That's peace with God. All the obstacles have been cleared away.

All the charges have been dropped. You know, a little boy a few weeks ago came up to me after the service and he said, Mr. Brown, he said, if God saves us, then why is his wrath against the ungodly? And what he meant was why he thought that the wrath of God was toward believers. And I said the wrath of God isn't on believers.

It's been withdrawn. The wrath of God is against those who are walking away from God, but not those who are walking toward God. The wrath of God has been taken away. And you get peace with God. I told them with God you get peace with God.

You get the fruit of the Spirit. You get living bread. You get the fruit of the vine, you get every good thing. That's what comes from God. Every good gift comes down from the Father of lights.

And you get peace with God. In Romans 324, We read already that the peace of God was pacified being justified freely by his grace Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood. Through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. To demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. We have propitiation by His blood, which means that the anger of God has been neutralized.

He's no longer angry. That's what propitiation means. It's a wonderful word. It means that God is not angry, that the wrath of God has been removed. In Romans 5 10 we learn that in justification there's reconciliation because we have a mediator from God.

For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation. In Colossians 1.21 we learned that what else it means it means that we were actually brought near to God God is not holding us with the stiff arm his anger has been taken away and He brings us near That's the other image Colossians 1.21 and you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet Now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. And we have that through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

So this war that has been ended and the treaty has been signed. It comes at the hand of the Prince of Peace. He's the Prince of Peace. It's glorious to meditate on the messianic prophecies of Jesus Christ that promise his coming. It's a glorious thing to meditate on the coming of Jesus Christ.

You know, the whole world now has some, some sometimes crazy sense of what the incarnation is all about. I liked on December 23rd 1855 just before Christmas Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon and he said This is the season of the year when we wait when when whether we wish it or not we are compelled to think of the birth of Christ and Then after after saying that you know, it's not a necessity for the church to celebrate a Roman Catholic celebration, he says, however, and I love Spurgeon's view of Christmas, frankly, however, I wish there were 10 or a dozen Christmas days in the year, for there is work enough in the world and a little more rest would not hurt the laboring people. Christmas day is really a boon for us and enables us to assemble around family and hearth and our friends once more around around what? The coming of the Prince of Peace What a blessing He was preaching out of one of the great messianic texts on the coming. It was like, it was like Isaiah 9.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. Meaning that He will always be making peace with sinners until the time that he comes again. He will always find the ones who are at war with him and he'll bring them in and he'll sign a peace treaty with them by the blood of his son. What a blessing that is.

He is the God of peace, and he is the Prince of peace. At the end of Hebrews, there's a benediction, and it really talks about God's nature. He so desires this thing called peace and he's called the God of peace. And so the benediction goes, and now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead Through the blood of the everlasting covenant Make you complete for every good work Working in you what is well pleasing in his sight Through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Now may the God of peace who sends the Prince of peace into the world in rebellion against him.

In Galatians four through seven we read, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman born unto the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. If you celebrate the incarnation, if you celebrate some form of Christmas, remember that, you know, Bethlehem is the most important marker in the war against God. And You have in the incarnation, you have man warring against God and then God breaking the power of sin. And you have God ending the enmity. You have God rescuing the seed of Abraham by faith.

You have God fulfilling his promise to crush the serpent. You have God in the flesh, a baby in a manger. You have God with us. You have God working at double imputation. His righteousness laid upon you and your sin laid upon him.

This is what you get in the incarnation. You get peace with God. And it's so important to remember that. You remember the peace of God was announced right at the beginning. The angels were terrifying the shepherds that night, you know, and an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were greatly afraid.

Then the angel said to them, Do not be afraid for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be for all the people and then there suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, on earth peace. Most of the world celebrating Christmas is at war with God, But God came to end the war by the sending of his son. In Isaiah chapter 12, the prophet talks about the coming of Jesus Christ, the coming of the Messiah, this Prince of Peace, and he says, In that day you will say, oh Lord, I will praise you. In other words, what he's saying is that when he comes, there are people that will say things, there are people that will, they will give utterance to certain things. In that day you will say, when he comes, when the Prince of Peace comes, you will say, Oh Lord, I will praise you, though you were angry with me.

Your anger is turned away, and you comfort me, and you comfort me. You know I'm here today to just try to comfort anybody who's a believer who's lost a sense of peace with God. Because he is the Prince of Peace. You know, when you have peace with God, you become a friend of God. You know, I was thinking about this this week, you know, when God makes peace with someone, How does he think about them?

And I started writing down the different ways that God talks about his children. In his making peace with you, You are adopted. You are an heir and a co-heir with Jesus Christ. You are a people for God's own possession. You are called saints.

You are called the redeemed. You are called the chosen. You are called a kingdom of priests. You are a temple. You are a body.

You are a family. You are the beloved. You are the true Israel, you are the Israel of God, you are the bride of Christ, you are a new creation, you are soldiers, you're sons of God, you're slaves and servants of God, you are children of God, and God says to his children, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God. You know, parents are maybe a way to try to understand this. Parents, parents love their children.

Parents are not at war with their children, but they do discipline their children. It's right, it's right that they would bring good discipline to their children, but they're not at war. They don't hate their children, lest they fall into such a grievous sin. But God thinks of us in that way. And so the big question is, do you have peace with God?

And people do all kinds of things to get peace, you know, inner peace. That new car gives you just a little bit of inner peace for a little while, that new tool, that remodeling, that thing that you, that new house that you bought, you know, that exotic place that you went to. Oh, it gave you a little bit of peace thinking about it, a little bit of peace experiencing in that, and then a lot less peace five years later. Because none of these things that we seek to make peace in our hearts actually work. And the truth is we will all be buried without anything that we have today.

In a hundred years, you'll be in the grave. Your homes will be owned by someone else. Your possessions will be given away. Your heirlooms will probably be thrown away. Your houses will be torn down, or they might be owned by somebody else.

And your cars will either be sitting out in a field overgrown or they'll be crushed and melted down. And most of your descendants won't even remember you. But do you have peace with God? That's the only thing that matters in this world, is to know that you have peace with God. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. What a blessing it is to know of this gift of justification, that those who are justified by faith have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope that's a help to your soul today. I hope it makes you happy. I hope it makes you, I hope it gives you a sense of freedom.

I hope it helps you to love one another more, to recognize that your brother or your sister has peace with God. And so ought you, have peace with your brother. So I think there's much to apply here, but I do so pray that God would give this little local church a sense of peace with God as we fellowship today. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord thank you, thank you for declaring peace, thank you for justification by faith alone that has turned enemies into friends and who has, oh Lord, made peace with us so that we might be able to walk through this world without the scowl from heaven.

But peace, amen.