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[Sermon] Will You Choose Peace or Chaos? | The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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This week in our "Four Horsemen" series, Pastor Cyle dives into the meaning of the Red Horse from Revelation—symbolizing the removal of peace and the rise of chaos. In a world that often feels out of control, this message challenges us to examine our own lives: Are we living as people of peace or agents of chaos? Discover how the absence of peace leads to personal, relational, and even global turmoil—and how, through Christ, we are called and empowered to be peacemakers.

Main Points Covered:

  • The Red Horse in Revelation: What does it symbolize?
  • The difference between peacekeepers and peacemakers
  • How chaos begins in the heart before it spreads to homes and nations
  • The consequences of moral decay and the loss of peace
  • Why true peace can only be found in Jesus, the Prince of Peace
  • Practical steps to pursue peace in your relationships and community
  • Encouragement to choose peace daily, even in a chaotic world

Whether you’re struggling with chaos in your life or seeking to bring peace to those around you, this message will inspire and equip you to live differently.

🙏 If you need prayer or want to connect, let us know in the comments or fill out a connection card at church!

 Well, last week we took a pause from the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse series. We normally do an October series, uh, but we wanted to launch our vision of three 30 for the future. So we kind of started a little early, took a pause. We, and we're getting back to it. And so we always take October because you know, it's a season and we do some kind of the more outer things in scripture that people kind of steer away from.

'cause they don't always understand what it means. And so we like to dive into those in October and just make that a thing where we like wrestle with scripture a little bit. And what does, what does, what do these verses mean for our lives? What do they mean for our relationship with the Lord in the future?

And so we're talking about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And so at first I want to get into a question for you. Have you ever felt like peace suddenly just like vanished from your life, from your home, your relationships, or now for even the nation? Anybody been just like a, you've had a period of peace in your life.

Everything was good until all of a sudden what is happening right now? I had this happen yesterday at 7:35 PM so, uh, anybody else have that experience? If you don't know, that's when USC scored roughly. Um, so quickly. Um. So, I mean, ultimately we have that moment, like we, some of us, you know, our life, we, we've had these moments in a relationship.

You're, you're going well in a relationship, you're in a romantic relationship, a friendship, things are going well, and then all of a sudden, where did this come from? Like, why are we fighting? Why are we at odds? I thought everything was good. Or in your, you know, your home. Everything was peaceful and fine.

Everybody got along until they don't. I call that having three kids instead of two kids at at a moment. So we always say, my wife and I, when we leave two kids together, totally peaceful. We add that third kid in chaos. So, and no matter how we do it. So that's just kind of our life. But ultimately, we all have these experiences.

We're peace and chaos, don't coincide well in our lives. And I didn't plan to, to te teach about this the week after we just announced, had a big announcement of a peace tree in the world. But like, it just kinda the way it falls. Uh, but we have to understand that peace is a real thing we wanna live for and strive for.

But let me ask you this question. Do you live in peace or chaos? Now think about this. You don't have to raise your hand. Are you a person that has a peaceful existence or is your existence chaos? You know the answer. And like for some of us, we strive for this. I, I choose peace. That's my life. I, I wanna live at peace at all times.

I don't wanna fight. I don't wanna argue. I don't want to, I don't want to be at odds. That's just not my thing. And so I try to resolve it because I want to bring peace into my world. I don't like chaos. I don't, some people, they thrive in chaos. Their whole world's chaos. When they have peace, they cause chaos.

Some of you are those people in your life. You are the person in your life that causes the chaos. You embrace chaos. If everything's peaceful, you'll cause someone else who likes chaos. So you can have chaos in your life. That's just people. And in a church our size, we have people that are both people of peace and people of chaos.

And we are called to live as people of peace, not a people of chaos. And we, many of us, we choose these things in our lives when we don't, by the way, we, we interact, by the way we connect, by the way we make choices. It will cause peace or chaos to be the result of it. And so when we talk about the four horsemen apocalypse, really the four horsemen apocalypse are, are.

Leading us to discuss like the signs of the end times, like the end is gonna come, eventually, the world is going to end. That's the promise of scripture. And if you're on TikTok, it's the promise of November. November, I think 11th aliens are coming. I went down that deep hole after I found that out a couple weeks ago.

It's weird. People come up with the weirdest stuff they really do. Uh, and you know, a few weeks ago, somebody on TikTok said the world was gonna end. And a lot of Christians believe this. There were people that hook, line and sinker. They thought the end was coming because someone I don't know on TikTok told me it's so, I'm not sure that should be everywhere you base anything on.

But, um, the signs of the end have always been a question like, when's the world gonna end? Am I gonna be ready for it? How's that gonna work? And this isn't a question just from us. This goes back to Matthew 24. Uh, verse three. Remember, yours is the yellow part. To read out loud, Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, and the disciples came to him privately.

These are his best buddies, his friends, they've seen all of his miracles. They've cared for them. They've laughed with him. They've, they've been hungry with him. They have traveled with him, and so they pull him aside privately and they say, Hey, just so you know. We know, we listen to your teachings. We know that we're supposed to be in relationship with you, and the end is gonna come and one day there's gonna be a judgment and the people that follow, you'll be saved.

So they come to him privately and say, when will this thing happen? And what will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age, they wanna be ready. His closest friends also wanted to make sure, Hey, just make sure we're good. Like, are we gonna be good? Like what's gonna happen in the world? So I know that moment, so I'm ready for it.

That's such a human characteristic, right? We all are like that. If I told you the end was coming literally this, you know, December 23rd, this year, December 23rd, you'd be like, you'd be ready, right? If you, well, if you believe me. So you'd be like, I'll be ready. I'll be ready to go. Right? Get your, get your stuff in order.

That's what the disciples were trying to do. And so Jesus responds to them and he says, he answers. He says, watch out that no one deceives you. For Many will come in my name claiming I am the Messiah, and will deceive many you'll hear of. Wars and rumors of wars. But see to it that you're, you're not alarmed.

Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Now, I'll just tell you, in 2000 years this war has been full of famines, earthquakes, and wars, kingdom against Kingdom for 2000 years.

At any moment, the Lord could return based on these passages because we are a broken world full of sin and full of people, and the world is broken. So there's famines, earthquakes, people are broken, there's, there's wars and kingdoms are against kingdoms. And so what Jesus is saying, you're gonna hear, listen to all these rumors on social media and the news, and these are gonna leave you to be deceived.

And the problem is that deceit is not gonna point you to the real truth, which is me and my plan. Now we know from scripture Jesus is going to return, he is gonna reclaim the world. That is gonna happen. We don't know the timeframe of that. It's been 2000 years. It could be another 2000, it could be another two minutes.

We don't know. It fell at 7 35 like it was then. But um, um, yeah, last night. But ultimately. We have to be ready. And so Jesus' closest friends, we're trying to be ready in their life. And what we can learn from that is we need to live in a state of readiness. We need to be ready. We need to be prepared. Now, what Revelation is now, revelation is a book, which is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It is really John writing in, in 90 to 96. He's on an Isle of Patmos, which is in modern day Greece, and he's a, he's a follower of Jesus. He's one of Jesus' closest friends. And he has this revelation, this vision of the past and the future and the present, all intertwined. He's seeing things that he doesn't understand, and he's explaining 'em in the way that he sees.

This vision, this revelation and this revelation is really apocalyptic literature, the apocalypse, and we love to talk about apocalypse in our culture. We love to have movies called Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse and all these different things, but apocalyptic literature is just a genre. Full of vision symbols and cosmic imagery that reveal God's plan for history and for eternity.

See, the revelation, uh, is a book that we don't often understand. For 2000 years, scholars have been fighting about what it means, what the images and descriptions say. Um, pastors have been arguing about it. No one knows. I don't know. No one knows no scholar of the internet. Nobody on TikTok. Nobody actually knows what revelation, what it is.

You can, I prefer a literal reading of Revelation because I like dragons and there's a dragon in there. And I really think it'd be cool if there was a dragon. I don't want to be here when the dragon shows up 'cause that means I missed it and I shouldn't be here. But I still think dragons are cool. And it'd be cool if the dragon with the lady riding on top it with all the horns and crowns.

I think that's a fantastic imagery. That'd be neat if that happened. I just don't wanna see it when it happens. Um. 'cause it's bad if it happens and you see it, so, um Right. But ultimately we don't know. No. And if you listen to scholars, if you're on YouTube, people come to. Teaching this on YouTube and I'm like, it sounds crazy.

'cause it's crazy what they're saying. The truth about Revelation is John is trying to tell people truth as he sees this vision from God. And there's four things that he's really trying to accomplish when he is writing this that apply in our life now. 'cause we need to take the intention of the original writer for his original audience and we take that truth and we try to apply it in our life.

We don't try to make up things that don't exist in the text. We try to take, go back and say, what was John saying to the readers of the day? And then what does that mean for us now? And what he was trying to do, he was trying to encourage believers facing persecution and temptation. John was writing in a, in a time in the Roman Empire where they ruled the world and Christians were persecuted.

They were being killed just like Jesus was killed. They were being persecuted, they were being tortured, they were being torment. They got blamed for burning down the city of Rome. And so the Christians then got persecuted all over the Roman Empire. They became the enemies. And so it was a big deal. So he's writing people who are facing daily persecution.

And temptation because the Roman Empire has every sin that you could ever imagine in it and available just like we do now. And so he is telling those people stick with it. Stay the course, and then he's writing to show that God is sovereign over history. Even when evil seems to prevail, the evil is the empire, right?

Just like Star Wars got the evil empire rolling, rolling everything in Rome, and so he's saying, Hey, even though it looks like they're winning, Jesus is going to win. Ultimately, that's the vision of Revelation, that Jesus Christ will ultimately win and restore and reclaim everything. And then he is warning unbelievers of judgment and inviting them, repentance people who don't believe.

There is a danger to that, that judgment is coming. There is a promise in scripture from Jesus, from scripture, from the New Testament, from Revelation that judgment is coming. When Jesus comes to restore things, those who follow him will be judged, and those who follow him will go to eternity and righteousness, and those who don't will be cast out.

That's, that's the danger. So he is trying to say, Hey, if you don't wanna face the dragon, maybe follow along with what Jesus is saying. And then to assure the church of ultimate victory in Christ, in the difficulty of living in a world that's broken and sinful, and people are mean and sinful, and do horrible things to each other, just know that ultimately Christ is gonna win.

Amen. That's Revelation. Christ is the victor. At the end of the book, Christ wins and restores everything. And so when we read Revelation, when you're reading it, you're reading it for those perspectives always. Yes. If you like the fantastic imagery that he sees, and you can try to extrapolate that maybe some modern thing or whatever you want to do.

The truth is this is what he's trying to accomplish to his readers. And so when we take those, the wisdom and the nuggets of truth out there, we apply this stuff into our lives. It's an encouragement to us because we do live in a world, um, of temptation. We do live in a world where it seems the evil prevails.

We do live in a world where bad things happen, and we need to believe in the ultimate victory of Jesus. That's revelation. And so as we get into Revelation, we're gonna pick up the story at Revelation six, which is the seven seals of judgment. And we talked about the first seal two weeks ago when we started this series, and that first seal was the white horse and a rider comes out on a horse and a a white horse from the sky.

And he is, he is the deceiver and he is the false Christ, the antichrist, and he's trying to convince people. To follow Jesus. And that's why Jesus says, be careful to not be led astray by the deceivers. 'cause the deceiver will be the first judgment. We'll be pulled into the deception of someone or some philosophy that looks like Christ, but it's not Christ that's dangerous.

And so as be careful about that. And so that was our first message. If you miss that, you can go back and listen to it. And so these seals, each of these seven seals reveal a stage in God's sovereign plan. The lamb, which is Jesus, allows humanity to experience the escalating consequences of sin. The lamb opens the seal, so the first seal is the white horse.

The second seal we're talking about today is the second horse of the apocalypse, which is in Revelation six, three through four. It says, when he opened the sea, the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come and out came another horse. Bright red. Bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another.

And he was given a great sword. Now that bright red is the word like pyros, which is fire. So it's this fiery red horse coming out of the sky. And on top of that horse is a rider, and that rider has a great sword. Now that's the second horse of the apocalypse. And so there's the white horse and then there's the red horse.

And the red horse comes outta the sky. Now if you take a little interpretation of this, that means there's actually gonna be one day riders come from the sky, alright? To judge people and. And they'll suffer the consequences of their sin. And so that Red Horse has a rider that removes peace. Now, I love how it says this intentionally.

It says what it says in Revelation six four. It says, and it came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. It's not creating war, it's removing peace. There's a difference. It's not like, well, people are just gonna rise up in war.

War starts somewhere else with the absence of peace in our homes, in our hearts, in our lives. And so when peace is removed, chaos ensues. And when chaos ensues, people do sinful things and ultimately end up in war. So the writer that's coming is removing peace from the earth and families, friend groups, marriages, the world, nations will descend into chaos and be at war.

Now this great sword that's mentioned here. When you think of a great sword, what do you think of, you think of like his giant like sword with like two handed sword, like uh, Mel Gibson and Braveheart or something? Anybody? Anybody that's, is that what you think? Great movie. Okay. Yeah. Great. Great movie.

Thanks Chris. Great movie. Thanks. Um, but it's not actually the sword that's mentioned in this passage. So when it says great sword, we, I don't know why they translate this in English 'cause it's not what it means. But the word that is Greek there is mahara, mega or megas. Which means it means can mean great sword, but it's, it's not what it means because the Roman sword that we know is the Roman sword we see in gladiator based in gladiator, right?

That big, you know, sword is the standard Roman sword. You see in every Roman movie, every Roman photo that's called a gladius. That's like a long sword. That is not what's mentioned here. It's not a long sword. It's not a gladius that you would know. It's the Majaro, which is like a short tagger. And that great could mean powerful.

It could also mean like curved, and so it's this little dagger that was kept. It's the same word for sword that's used with the sword of the spirit. The Bible is the sword of the spirit. The Bible is not the gladius. Alright, that we, that we take into war and we raise and we cheer and we run into war. The Bible is this mahara, which is this little dagger, and the, that is the weapon that Romans soldiers would've kept on their inner thigh.

So when they, when they got knocked over, they've lost their shield, they've lost their friends, they've lost their sword. They would've grabbed this dagger out of their thigh and they would've fought to the death, hand to hand. And defense. That's the sword of the spirit. This is the same sword that's mentioned here.

So this rider that's gonna come outta the sky on this red horse, he's gonna be holding like this curve dagger when he's coming and, and it would admit something to the original audience. And so it needs to mean something else because that dagger is the dagger that people used when they assassinated people, when they killed people.

They would walk through a crowd, have a dagger concealed, and they would stab somebody, assassinate 'em, and run off. That's that weapon. And that would cause uprising. It would cause civil unrest. It would cause revolution and war. It would be rebellion, but it also would be what you would have at home if you were gonna murder somebody.

It would be brother against brother Fred against friend. That was a sword of chaos, of unrest, not a weapon of peace, a weapon of like personal violence. And so that's the weapon of cultural hostility. Relational breakdowns and ultimately global war. So when this Redhorse rider comes, he's coming to remove peace from the world.

So people descend into their own chaos. And what do we do with our own sin, our own temptation, our own chaos. We do bad things. We divulge into sin. We devolving into sin, and we have personal violence. We have cultural hostility. Marriages fall apart, families fall apart. Schools fall apart. The world falls apart, communities fall apart, and that's when there's no peace.

And so for us, we have to recognize the dangers to this because the red horse is really just the natural result of moral decay as society is decaying morally. That's we're allowed in the second seal being open. We're allowed to descend into that chaos. Now, if you look at our world, it seems like morality has taken a backseat to, to life, right?

It doesn't seem like we live in a very moral world anymore. Watch any show, any kid show now, and any any network, right? You can't even trust those anymore. And so we, we, we tend to be at a place where moral decay is real. And what happens when moral decay is, is real, is people start descending. Into chaos, not into peace.

I love this passage from the Old Testament, Isaiah 57 21. It says, there is no peace, says my God, for the wicked, wicked. If you're living a life that's wicked, which means apart from God's plan, you're choosing sin and the way of the world instead of the way of God, there's no peace for you. And if you're living in chaos in your life right now.

It might be because the decisions you're making, the lifestyle you're making, or the priority of Jesus is such, so low that you are allowing the chaos to be the consequence of the way that you're living, the way that you're thinking, the way that you're acting. And so we really have to evaluate, am I and age a chaos of my own life?

Sometimes the chaos in our life comes from other people's sins. We do suffer consequences of sin our own and other people. Sometimes other people's sin kind of just splashes onto us and their consequences affect us, even though we might be choosing good. That's why some of us are living in peace and all of a sudden our peace is just like ripped away from us because of someone else's sinful actions or wickedness.

That's the reality of just living in a broken world. And so when we look at the seals and we look at the seal being released, the second seal, God will let humanity taste the fruit of its rebellion. Like we want to, like as people, as broken creatures. We, we re rebel against God. And so when we rebel against God, there's a consequence to that, and that is judgment judgment's gonna come.

And so when the disciples are talking to Jesus, they're hearing his teachings. John's taking some of the teachings and he's having this vision, and he's kind of telling people years later, after Jesus is already ascended to heaven, Hey, judgment's coming, everyone. I was one of those people that talked to Jesus and I wanna be ready and here's how you can be ready.

'cause here's what's coming. Make sure you're ready when judgment comes because it's coming. But ultimately, even though that's coming, if you follow Christ, he's gonna have victory. And you'll have victory. That's, that's the important message of it. There's a victory coming also, but we focus so much on the judgment.

The real results of scripture is that victory in Jesus is coming. It's promised and it'll be true. And we have to remember before nations go to war, homes go to war, and before homes go to war. Hearts go to war. It all starts in our heart. How do you affect the world at large? You change your heart. That's how I can affect the world at large.

I can change my heart. I can live different. I can be different. I can act different. I can love different, I can choose peace. Over chaos, I can choose peace over war and that hopefully will change my home. And then as my home changes and other people's homes changes, it'll hopefully change our, our nation and it'll change the world.

It starts there. John 1427. Jesus says these words, and it's recorded in John. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you not as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your hearts be troubled, neither. Let them be afraid. For some of us today, our hearts are troubled. Our hearts are afraid. We're so afraid of how we live or what we say to certain people.

We're just worried about the chaos that's gonna sue. 'cause those aren't peaceful people. We're not peaceful people. We need to go to God and recognize that God gives us a peace that the world doesn't understand. And if you're trying to make peace the way the world does, you're never gonna have peace. God gives us a a lasting peace.

A peace that the Bible says surpasses all understanding and a peace that only comes from Christ who is the prince of peace. We can have peace. And so if you're tired of living in chaos, you, you've gotta choose peace. You've gotta choose peace. You can choose peace. I truly believe you can live at peace with people.

You can live at, live at peace with your family. You can live at peace with your friends. You can live at peace with your enemies. You can live at peace with your coworkers. You can live at peace with people in different political parties, and you can live in peace with people in the world. You have to choose it.

And the truth is, you know what culture would say that's gaslighting. It's not gaslighting. That's just Bible. You choose peace. You also choose chaos because it's either peace or it's chaos. You don't have a middle ground where you just like blah, right? You can't live in blah. You live in peace or you live in chaos.

And I know this 'cause I choose peace. I don't have to get frustrated, mad about things. I can just choose peace. And when I do counseling with couples and they both want to choose peace and they both wanna figure it out, they do. It's amazing for me today, this was a exciting thing happened to me. First service actually before service.

I asked our worship team who was gonna pray because, you know, we're, we're a little short staffed. Cody's just recovering from surgery. He's here somewhere. Uh, I don't, I saw, I think I saw him in the lobby. Um, Jared, mark, the other campus and, or sorry, Jared and Matt and Mark's over at, at youth camp and he's serving, so we're.

Who's gonna pray? I can pray, but I get up here a lot, right? So, uh, I'm always willing to pray. Um, when I get invited to dinner, I'm the guy that usually prays, right? Uh, it's fine. So, but Chris, Chris is the camera guy. Chris, like, I'll pray. Which I was just like so proud of Chris at that moment. I didn't say anything in the moment.

I just thought about it. I was like, I'm really proud of Chris. But Chris is the camera guy. He is gonna come up. He's he is. And pray like he prayed. And like the cool thing about Chris is I've known Chris now for nine and a half years. I lived through a lot of chaos with Chris in his life and watched the chaos Chris turn into a man of peace.

Amen. And so I know that God can transform people because they transformed Chris to the point. Not only is he, is he praying on stage, he's actually preaching up north this weekend at The Pines. So it's gonna be exciting. So we're excited about it. Yeah, he didn't know by saying Yes, I was gonna say any of this stuff, by the way.

But if you know Chris, and you've seen his life from then till now, his, his mother-in-law came in one time and was like, I knew Chris before and whatever's happened here has been amazing. So amazing. And she's just so excited about what God has done in his life. But if, if you've ever know Chris, Chris drives for a living, uh, and he often just called people and talk with him, he'll regularly call me and like, Hey, what's up man?

Can I pray for you about something? Right. Just randomly. And he just does that for a lot of people in our church. And if you. If you understand the difference from who he was into who he is now, if you heard his testimony like a year ago, it was powerful. Powerful to hear God, what God has done his life.

You can choose peace, but you have to choose it. Amen. Have to choose it. And his wife's here so she can tell you there was a lot of chaos, right? Yeah. And there's a lot of peace now. Yeah, it, God could change you, but you have to choose it. And so Colossians three 15 says this, let the peace of Christ. Rule in your hearts, you have to choose that if Christ really rules your heart, you'll have more peace.

That doesn't mean you'll have an absence. Absence of chaos, like there's still moments of my life that get chaotic and is usually people's chaos or my kids' chaos, that affects my peace. But then I can choose to get back there quickly as quick as I can. Sometimes it requires an apology. Sometimes I realize that I've, my lack of remembering something or doing something that's caused chaos for my wife soon causes chaos for me.

And then we have to figure out that back and walk. Walk that back. But you can get there. Same thing with your friends, your family, whatever. But if you let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, you're gonna have peace. Things will more likely roll off your back. You'll be able to navigate your days better.

You won't feel like the, the life has been sucked out of you because when you're living in chaos, it just feels at times like everything is just bad and you're exhausted and you're famished and you're just like, oh my goodness. I'm so much drama all the time. And if you're tired of that, it's 'cause the peace of Christ is not ruling in your hearts.

Because the world is always gonna be broken. It's always gonna be bad. People are always gonna be chaotic. You can still be live at peace in the midst of that chaos. That's the truth. You can true, but you gotta choose it. So what does this mean for you? We're talking about this because this, this passage where Jesus is preaching his most famous sermon in Matthew five.

Jesus says this, blessed Arthur. Peacemaker peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Now, here's the, here's the thing. It doesn't say, it doesn't say blessed to the peacekeepers. It says, blessed to the peacemakers. Now we know what peacekeepers are. The UN has peacekeepers. They send them into war torn ravaged places to keep the peace, which just means to not allow it to get worse.

It doesn't really make it any better. I've been to places the UN's at, they're not doing anything to make it better. They're just not trying to make it allow to get any worse. They're hold the status quo. Some of you are living as a peacekeeper. You're just trying to keep the status quo. Trying to navigate so it doesn't get any worse, but that doesn't bring peace.

That just keeps things the way they are. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. Peacemaking is something that requires. Active pursuit. It isn't passive. If you're trying to live a life of just passivity and just trying to get along and keep the peace, you probably got a lot of chaos. You probably feel exhausted doing that.

Peace isn't passive. It's active pursuit. You gotta make the first move. You have to make peace. You have to choose it. To choose it in your relationships. You have to have difficult conversations. You have to initiate reconciliation with people. When we talk about our culture of honor, release bitterness, that's the first part.

But then you have to restore gently. That doesn't mean release bitterness and just get along. Don't bring it up again. It's release bitterness and restore gently. That's make peace be a peacemaker. Literally. The reason why we have restored gently is because in a book called The Peacemaker. Uh, by Ken Sand, he has a process that's called Restore Gently, and it's a whole process of making peace with people and being a peacemaker in your life.

And it comes with the understanding that that's what we're called to do in scripture. Make peace. And so for some of us, the way you do that is you start, need to make the call. For those of you who don't like making calls, 'cause you're, you know, gen Z, gen Alpha, whatever. Write the email, send the text, send the chap Snapchat, chap snap.

That's not even a thing. Well, I'm a Okay Boomer, sorry I blew that one. All right. Write the email. You have to start the healing. You do. If you've got broken relationships that are in chaos, you have to be active about making peace. That means you need to go have a hard conversation even though you don't want to, that person that you don't like, that you just kind of avoid to keep peace.

Guess what? That's not peacemaking. That's peacekeeping. And Jesus didn't call you to that. That's selfish. That's 'cause you don't wanna get your feelings hurt. You don't wanna take that risk 'cause you might get hurt. That's really a peacekeeping is a selfish thing. Peacemaking is a God thing. See, true peace only comes through Jesus.

Only you wanna know what we can learn from these seals is that judgment's coming. And if we listen to what John is saying, he's actually giving us a guide how to love people and live in life. Don't be deceived and make peace with people and in your heart and with your God. That's how you deal with judgment.

And if you do those things, you're ready. When judgment comes, you don't have to worry about what's coming. You're ready. 'cause true peace comes to Jesus. Romans five, one says there four, we have been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's where peace comes from.

Jesus is our source of peace. He's the prince of peace. His death on the cross is what allows us to have peace. Through the forgiveness and restoration with God that comes through that. And so when we, when we think about the chaos that we're in, if you want to have peace, it's you. You've gotta go to Jesus.

You've gotta go to Jesus. You can have peace. It's not gonna be a hundred percent of every day because you have to choose it all the time. Just like we have to choose love all the time. Right. We have to choose peace all the time. I literally chose peace yesterday by turning off the TV and I decided I'm gonna go to the camp and see what our teens are doing at the retreat, because that's something better.

Right? So, and you know what? I forgot all about the horrible game till somebody asked me at church today. Yay. No. You can choose peace, but you have to start doing things different to make peace in your heart, in your life, in your scenarios, in your situations. So the question I have for you this morning is.

Will you find your peace in Jesus? Or you continue to find your peace in selfish things, satisfying yourself? Do you try to peace keep, or are you really trying to peace make through Jesus? It starts with a relationship with Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is not the center of your life, if you're not living for him, if you've not submitted to him, if you just believe that he is real, but you haven't said, all right, I'm gonna give everything I am to you, if you haven't lived out what our new vision is.

Of John three 30, he must increase and I must decrease. If it's still about you and he's not increasing, you're not gonna have peace because the more God increases in your life, the more you're gonna have peace. The the less of you in your life and the less of others. As that decreases, the more peace you're gonna have.

So if you need to find peace, it starts with just acknowledging God all in Jesus' Lord. Just say, Jesus, I believe and I want peace. Make that decision and then communicate that out to your friends and family. Hey, I decided today I'm, I don't just believe that God's real and Jesus is real, but I'm gonna live for him.

That's the path to start the peace, and that's you. You can grab our connection carding. Check that little box in the back, and Matt can reach out and say, how can we equip you? How can we help you? Maybe go to Rob's discipleship class if you're one of the guys that can go and just learn more about God's word.

Start the process of peace. Maybe you're here and you're just, you've been following Jesus for a long time, but you've got a lot of chaos. You're exhausted, you're frustrated, you're afraid. And you're not really experiencing the peace. It maybe it's time that he needs to increase and you need to decrease because if that's your experience, there's too much of you and not enough of him and your life and your scenarios.

If you're a person who loves to create chaos for other people, stop. Stop. Maybe have a hard conversation at lunch and look at somebody and say, listen, I love you, but you are an agent of chaos in my life and we need to figure it out lovingly. What can we do to figure it out together? Is it me, right? Maybe it's you doing something that's causing someone to be your age, agent of chaos.

Have hard conversations lovingly with the desire for Jesus to increase in your life individually, collectively, and that's you. If you, if you've been following Jesus a long time, I've been in church my whole life. I've seen a lot of grumpy, angry, frustrated, chaotic Christians who say they love the Lord and they can spit out Bible verse, but they don't look at all like they actually have peace in their life or follow him.

If that's you, just make a change. Get into your word, maybe go back and read Colossians. It's a great book to read and choose peace, but you gotta choose every day of every moment for the rest of your life as you choose Jesus. If you need help with that, our church will pray for you. On the back of your connection card, write peace.

Destroy the word. Peace we'll pray for you in staff meeting by name. Make sure you put your name and number on it so we know who we're praying for. We'll pray that you have peace and then just start choosing it. Start choosing it. 'cause we wanna be a church of peace. We wanna be a people of peace. We wanna make a difference in this community.

I'll tell you this, I talked to a guy, uh, the other night who does not attend our church, but he has a business in town and a lot of you, patron go to our patrons of that business and, uh, he loves our church. One, because you're good to him. He knows when people come in, a lot of you wear gear that says Hoddle, but the way that he sees our church is through a filter of those are good, peaceful people in a world that's broken.

There's just something amazing about it, and it's great to hear people, that community say there's something different about the people that go to your church. Good. We're trying intentionally to be active in our peacemaking, active in the way we love people. That's what followers of Christ do. And you should be different.

And so if you need the help, write peace. And as we close to pray, we're just gonna pray for peace in our lives that the Holy Spirit. If you need more peace, if you need to know that you need to do better to resolve peace, you need to have the courage to say the hard thing and to make that initiate that conversation for reconciliation, that the Holy Spirit not only convicts you of that.

But empowers you to say the right things. Normally when I get up, before I pray, before I come up and speak, uh, I spend time researching, study on these things. But always what I do in that process is pray that the Holy Spirit guides that process. And then when before I get up here on stage, I always pray, Lord, I need the Holy Spirit just to say whatever needs said.

It doesn't matter what I want to do. Right. Sometimes you guys hear completely different things that I even say. I don't even know how that works out. A lot of times it just does and it's like, well, that was really powerful, Cyle. I didn't say that. So like, but great. Right. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us and bring us peace and help us have peace.

And so let's make that our prayer. If you know that you need to start that relationship with the Lord, do it. Just say, I'm done living this way. I'm done with the chaos. I want peace, and then let us help you walk through it. And if you know that you're a follower of Christ and you're struggling in this, it's time to make some better decisions about how you live, how you love, how you have relationships, so you can have peace.

Let's pray for that heavenly Father, that we just pray that we are a people of peace, that we're a church of peace, that we love each other, and we draw people in this community into reconciliation, not only with each other, but with their families and with the world. And we pray that as we love you and as we get to know Jesus, we also get to understand how his peace transforms us.

And can transform our lives. Lord, we pray that your spirit not only encourage us and guides us to peace, but convicts us if we need to make a change. Lord, we pray that for anyone here who's just knows right now, they didn't make, make a decision to acknowledge Jesus is Lord, because they're tired of the chaos that they just, that just confess right now, Lord, they need you and they're gonna start living for you so they can choose peace.

But we just pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. 

Amen.