[SERMON] Shalom: Experiencing God’s Wholeness in a Broken World

In this message, Pastor Cyle explores the profound biblical meaning of "shalom"—not just as peace, but as wholeness, harmony, and restoration found in God. Drawing from personal loss, scripture, and real-life stories, he shows how true shalom is possible even amid chaos, suffering, and uncertainty. The sermon invites listeners to seek completeness in Christ, the Prince of Peace, and to choose shalom daily through God’s Word and community.

Transcript

 Well, uh, hello. I'm Cyle. I'm one of the pastors here. I think I'm on. Yeah, I'm on. Okay. Well, yeah, as you know, it's named member, so make sure to keep using each of those names. We kind of started with breaking down the name of God with our Hebrew series back at the beginning of the series, and we've been using this series to kind of dive back into the Old Testament, examine some of the words.

Of the original language and then see what the depth of meaning we can, we can kind of take from those words. And that our English language doesn't always help us get that, the full meaning of it. And so we've been talking about different words and, and really as part of that experience, I wanted to try to pick words.

It would be great to do a whole year on Hebrew and yeah, it would be great. So I think it would be great. But like we, uh, we only have so many words, so I tried to pick words that. I think there's extra depth in the original languages that maybe you miss out on by just seeing the English equivalent that we use.

And hopefully that's been exciting for you. You've been studying, you've been researching today. I picked a word that, um, some of you may know this word is shalom. Anybody know what this word means? Peace. Peace. Hello. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye. Right. Okay. Well, we'll get into what it means, but, uh, it does, it was used as a, as a greeting, uh, in the ancient world.

People would say like, peace or shalom to each other, uh, shalom be upon you. Those, those type of things. Uh, we know it wasn't just used in like. Informal greetings. It was used in formal greetings. We can see in the the Laish letters from seventh Century bc, which is ancient Hebrew military correspondence that still exists.

We can still see these letters that they began with blessings of Shalom, so they would bless each other with peace officially. Informal documentation and informal communication. Uh, they would greet each other with peace. We also know that this would be in contracts, in contract languages, Shalom would be used in it.

So it was a part of the ancient world and how they understood communicating to each other, communicating. Shalom. And so we'll talk more about what Shalom is we see in first Samuel 21 verse one. Remember the yellow parts, your your part to read out loud and proud. David came to a Alek. Do you come in?

Peace. Peace. Shalom. He said, do you come in peace? Are you here in Shalom? And so for Shalom, it was, it was a spoken prayer, really more than a greeting. Every time that it was used when someone like arrived, departed. It wasn't just, hi, how you doing? Like we would do, uh, for those of you who sit in silence and, and you know, in greeting time when you just say, hi, don't come near me.

Um, that's like, no shalom here. Uh, all right. So. It wasn't just a greeting, it wasn't just, hello? Uh, it was something more when you said Shalom, you weren't saying hello, you were a releasing blessing. The blessing of God. There was a depth of meaning to shalom. It was something used by God's people, the Hebrews, the Israelites, uh, it was something used even in the early church.

They would greet each other. And you can see this even in Paul's letters, in his writings. You know, talking about peace be upon you and peace to you. It was this understanding that this is a blessing from our creator. God, there's something more to shalom than just, hello. I am blessing you. I'm praying for you.

I'm wanting for you to have that shalom. And in number 6 26, this is one of my favorite passages of the Bible 'cause it's been very important in my life. It says this, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, give you shalom. Now for me, I've shared this story earlier in this series that, uh, uh.

On July 20th, 2005, my daughter was supposed to be born. Instead, she was still born on her due date. It was the worst moment in our life that was our first child to be born, and we named her peace because in the worst moment of my life, God gave me an immense peace and we prayed extra number 6 24 to 26 over her lifeless body right before we sent her away.

We believe that God had had really told us in our hearts we were gonna be okay. Everything was gonna be okay. Peace is fine. She's with him. And ultimately I'll get see her again. But we would have peace. And so for me, I understand Shalom to be kind of something that's been a guiding force in my life the last 20 years of my life as she would be 20 today.

And so for 20 years I've been understanding Shalom and so why things happen in life that are good and bad. Ultimately, you can experience. Peace, Shalom, because shalom is not a feeling. It is the face of God turned towards you. There's something different about Shalom. It's not Hello. It is God smiling upon those.

He loves his closeness to the people he has, and it He brings something more than just, hello. It's a blessing. The word shalom equals completeness, harmony, integrity, fullness, and a wholeness. Really life it was meant to be. It's not just peace, it's not just the absence of conflict. It's not just, you know, holding your tongue when you wanna say that mean thing.

We all probably had a parent that said, you know, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say it. That's, that's like a way to keep peace. Um, this is not what shalom is. It's not just holding your tongue. It's not just the absence of war. It's something more, it's a completeness, it's a harmony, it's an integrity, it's a wholeness, it's a fullness.

It's life as it was meant to be for us. We felt, God tell us it was gonna be okay when we lost peace. That, that God would give us peace. He comfort our hearts. We knew there peace, but that peace, we understood it to be shalom, true, shalom. Something more than just peace. A wholeness, a completeness, a harmony and life.

It wasn't meant to be. And really when we truly experienced that shalom in its fullness is when we had our other children. We have three other children. One of mine serves, uh, during services in the back with lights. Um, my 13-year-old, my other two are down serving in children's ministry with my wife. But those children, having those children really was what we felt.

God would say, you're still gonna have your family. Just hold on. You will have that completeness. I couldn't imagine having peace now in the world like my daughter, peace being here because to have her, I wouldn't have carver my son, which I couldn't imagine life without my son Carver and without. Carver.

We probably wouldn't have had Kylie when we had Kylie, so it would've changed the whole makeup of my family. So experiencing Shalom, this completeness of family that I have comes with that with great tribulation and chaos in my life. Losing peace, my daughter, peace. It's difficult. And in the world we look at it.

I mean, Rob was up here talking about Jamaica. They have been living in absolute chaos yet. They have a, a piece, a shalom that we don't understand. They don't know where, where the future is gonna, where, where income's gonna come from. I mean, I was in Jamaica in January. It was green, it was lush. There was fruit and produce everywhere.

Now you look at the pictures, it's stripped Barr. There's no income coming for months, maybe for well over a year. Some of those trees will never recover in those fields. They'll never have the same livelihood. They don't have clothes. They don't food, they don't have water, they have shelter. But you know what they have?

They have Shalom. They're praising God. They're serving him. They don't even know when they're gonna get their next bottle of water, yet they can still praise him and they can still serve him because they have peace. They have Shalom. You can have Shalom, an absolute chaos. For some of you, you not had the same story.

You not have the loss. Like I've had, you've not been in Jamaica in a category five hurricane, but some of you built Legos, right? Anybody ever built Legos before? Who's, who's played with Legos? You don't wanna admit it because you, you built 'em for your grandchild or your children and so of you as you really were playing with the Legos.

Anybody wanna admit to that? There's something great about building a Lego set and bringing it to completion, or in this season of life, maybe making a beautiful snowman, putting all that effort in and making something. You know what happens when I see something beautiful like that, I just, like with a snowman, I just want to go tackle it.

So like I do, I just wanna take that, that thing out. So, and we probably all had that moment where you've made something wonderful and then it gets broken. Like I remember breaking my, my brother's Lego set 'cause I got mad at him and I threw it, threw it on the floor and shattered in my pieces and I destroyed it in chaos.

Something he worked hours to build. And you know what real shalom is, is when the way that I restore that and repair that and rebuild that is I have to go back and find all those pieces and I have to rebuild that thing and get it back to him to restore completeness, wholeness. Because Shalom comes from the verb Shalom, which is to complete repair, to make whole to repay.

See, shalom isn't the absence of trouble, it's the presence of restoration, completion, harmony in the midst of trouble, or after the trouble. That's shalom. And for us it's really experience peace. We have to understand, even though the world is broken, even though people sin and they do horrible things to each other, even though we have financial struggles and we have relationship struggles, and we have life issues and health issues, all those things, we can still have shalom because Shalom is the peace that we get from the wholeness, the harmony of God completing us, even in the midst of chaos.

Now you all know I have like the craziest, I've had the craziest year with vehicles. It continues to get crazy. I like this past week, I have only been to Jackson as twice. It's a church up in North side town twice, and it's been like years apart. First time I went to visit and I met with her senior pastor, I went back out to my car, same car, my Jeep, it died.

So I had to walk back in the walk of shame to the inside and say, Hey, I'm saw in the parking lot because my car broke down, and I'll be out here for a while until the tow truck comes. I went there this Thursday. Same thing happened. No. Oh my. After all the repairs my Jeep, I walk back out to the car, think I'm gonna head on a trip north and it doesn't start.

And I'm just like, not again. Not again. For real. They're gonna be like, this guy should never come here again. And I am never gonna Jackson n again in a vehicle, not my vehicle at least, but I just, I just laughed and cackled like a crazy person. 'cause I just think it's hilarious. I do. I, I really think that's, that's just the hilariousness of life.

My wife didn't, she had to drive to me, bring another car, and then I'd got in that car and immediately broke that car. Uh, I was changing my, my side mirror and like I heard something fall in the door and then the whole thing fell in all I was touching. So, and I just called her and I'm just laughing. And she's not laughing.

Um, she's not laughing. So, uh, but you can have shalom, even in the midst of chaos. You can have Shalom in Jamaica on an island that's devastated in a world of chaos, you can still have Shalom. You can, there are people in Jamaica that are not choosing Shalom. They're not living in Shalom, but there are Christians who are because they know a God that's bigger than all the chaos of life.

Amen. That brings them real Shalom. One of the most profound and transformative moments of my life was I was in Haiti. I think it was like year 2015. And, um, there was a lady we had asked us to come pray with her. She had just got outta the hospital. She had surgery hours before breast cancer surgery, she had her breast removed and um, she was still bandaged up and she was laying in a tent hut.

One room, dirt floor holes in the suit, the tin roof, it's hot, it's Haiti, it's not comfortable. She's on a mattress with no, uh, blankets. It's just a bare mattress on cement blocks on top of the floor. And she's just laying there. And she invited us to come. Her husband came and got us to via us to come. His name was Jaran and he invited us to come and we sat, we stood over at the edge of her bed in this little hut, and we sang hymns.

That's all she wanted. Can you guys s hymns? And we just sung hymns and she just cried. And she was so happy and so at peace, and even in one of the worst things going on in her life, she had peace. And it was, that was a powerful moment in my life to recognize we don't need all the stuff. We don't, you know, what they don't have in, in, in most of, most of the world.

You know what I never saw in Haiti, you know, I didn't see in Jamaica. Storage units full of junk. Yeah. Not saying the absence of storage units brings Shalom, but it probably does. Alright. They don't have all this stuff. They don't have garages, they don't have the cars. I look like a hill bill 'cause I have six cars, three of them broken currently right now at my house.

And you know what? I go to Haiti, I go to Jamaica. They don't even have cars. They don't even know how they're gonna get around yet. Still they have peace. They have shalom. We have too much stuff is the problem. That's what Rob, Sharon, we have. We just have too much. We get lost in all that stuff and we lose sight of, we can have peace, real peace, Shalom if we want.

We don't need all the stuff. The stuff often gets in the way. Kate creates more chaos for. See for us as English speakers, we just think shalom means peace, but so much more. In Isaiah 26, 3, it says, you keep him in perfect peace, which is shalom, Shalom, whose mind is stayed on you. This double shalom. It means perfect, complete wellbeing.

We wanna be in perfect peace. It's shalom. Shalom. It's whole completeness. Complete harmony. Perfect harmony. There's something more. When we see perfect peace, we just, we just think peace. We think of it in our modern English concept, but when the, the Israelites understood shalom, they understood that it was a wholeness that comes from God, which the world can't explain.

You can't explain why people are in Jamaica. With no livelihood, not knowing where money and income's gonna come from, and they're just going to serve other people who are worse off. Ask Ray, ask Casey. Ask Rob. They were down there. They, they witnessed it. They were part of it. They watched people who had nothing go serve people who had even less, and they watched them praise the Lord while they were doing it.

That's why it's so transformative, because you can't have shalom, Shalom if you choose to. Amen. If you know God, our creator, the God of Shalom. Amen. The God of peace. See Shalom, really for us, comes through God's word. That's where Shalom comes from, from it comes from God's word. Psalm 1 19, 1 65 says this, great peace, shalom have those who love your law.

Law. That's the word of God. The law, when they would've referenced it, would've been the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, which was the law that God gave his people to guide their lives, to help them understand how to live in relationship with each other and with the world and with him. And so if you want to have great shalom, great harmony, great peace, great completeness, great.

Hold us of life. You gotta know the law. You gotta know God's word. We have the laws. It's the Bible. We have the Old Testament and the New Testament. We have the New Testaments, the continuation and fulfillment of the old. To bring it even easier to have a per personal relationship with God, so we can have a personal relationship with Shalom and for us.

You cannot walk in Shalom if you neglect God's word. You just can't. You cannot be at peace without knowing God. The world is broken. People are marred by sin. People do horrible things to each other. We suffer through all kinds of calamity, chaos, health issues, relationship breakdowns, we do. And the only way that you're gonna experience Shalom is by getting into God's word and knowing what it means for your life and then living it out.

That's how you can choose to be in Shalom. You can also choose not to. You can keep your mind focused on the world and the stuff of it, or you can keep your mind focused on God, because really Shalom is not a principle. Shalom is a person. It's Jesus Christ. Amen. The Old Testament says, the Messiah that is to come will be the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Shalom.

We see this in Isaiah and in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the Prince of Peace. In Ephesians two 14 it says, of Jesus, he himself is our peace. Peace. Now, this is was written in Greek so it wouldn't be the word shalom, but is the same concept of Shalom. They would've understood that that piece was referring to the Prince of Peace, which is the Prince of Shalom that was promised to come.

Who is Jesus Christ? So Jesus is our shalom. Amen. Our wholeness, our completeness, our harmony. So when everything else is in chaos, we can still have Shalom. I can have Shalom with health problems. I can have Shalom with relationship problems. I can have Shalom with financial problems. I can have Shalom when the world's that chaos and that war.

I can have Shalom. When a category five hurricane hits, I can have Shalom. When I have car problems, I can have Shalom because he is my shalom. Amen. Not the stuff, not the world. Right. And even when Jesus, you know, Jesus lived, he died on the cross. He was buried. He was resurrected from the dead. He went to heaven.

And then he came back and he visited his people. And when he came back, Shalom was Jesus' first resurrection. Words says in John 2019, Jesus came and stood among them. And peace be with you. Shalom be with you. Now, Jesus would've spoken in AMA and Hebrew because he was speaking to Jews. Um, so he most likely would've said, Shalom, be upon you.

Shalom be with you. The Prince of Peace. First words, when he came back after sitting to Heaven.

Shalom, Shalom, because he is the prince of peace. He is the one who brings wholeness, completeness, harmony with the creator, that harmony, that wholeness, that completeness, it comes to Jesus Christ. It does. And not only that, Jesus then ascends to heaven and he leaves us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us the fruit of the spirit.

Well, the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, allows us to exhibit the characteristics of God into the world, and we're told to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit well. Shalom is a fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5 22 and 23 share you the nine fruits of the Spirit. We're just gonna go to one. We fruit of the spirit.

Spirit is peace. It's one of the nine. That fruit of the spirit is shalom. It's not peace. It's not absence of war. It's not that you're not fighting. It's literally shalom. The fruit of the spirit is shalom, completeness, wholeness, harmony with your creator, with the world, and with others. That's shalom. And when we look at Shalom, Shalom heals homes.

Shalom heals, marriages, shalom heals, friendships, shalom heals, wounds. And Shalom, I love this one. Heals histories. Heals histories. Some of the reason why you don't have Shalom now is because of the things that have happened to you in your past. Maybe they're your bad choices, that you're still suffering consequences or the consequences from somebody else's bad actions that have destroyed, harmed, or hurt you in some way.

And the reason you have an absence of Shalom in your life is because there's some history that needs to be healed by God. So you can have peace real. Peace. You can. Some of you're living in a marriage that's not full of shalom. Some of you have relationships, some of you have friendships. They're not full of Shalom.

And so when we think about this, why I wanted to talk about this piece is one, it's been so transformative my life from my darkest moment in my entire life, that God gave me a full understanding of shalom peace. So much so we named our daughter that, that I know that if people will just understand shalom in their life and they live it out, it'll transform your whole life.

Amen. Transform your whole life. So what does this mean for you? Your peace isn't found in your situation, it's found in your savior. The problem is we always try to change our situations to make us happy and have peace. And the problem is it's never a path to happiness. It's never a path to peace because the moment your situation changes back, you're well.

I'm not at peace anymore. Because Shalom isn't found in a situation, it's only found in a savior. Jesus, the prince of peace that was promised, who came, who will come again and when he comes back, he will once and for all, restore all things and bring eternal shalom, wholeness, and completeness to creation.

He'll bring all of creation into harmony. Shalom, shalom. That's what happens when Jesus comes back. He can bring shalom into your life. He can bring Shalom, shalom, perfect peace into your life. But you have to, you have to allow him to choose it. Shalom isn't something you feel, it's something you live in.

The problem is we want to feel at peace. We wanna feel, I wanna feel that I wanna get butterflies, and I just wanna feel this tingly sensation that makes, that means that, God, I'm at peace with the world. That's, there's not in the Bible that doesn't say that right. You choose to live in Shalom, you choose it.

Every time something crazy happens in my life, I can choose the wrong path or the right path. I can choose the path that leads the chaos and destruction, or I can choose the path that leads the perfect peace. Every time one of my cars break down, I can be frustrated or I can tackle like a crazy person.

Um, you choose peace. Choose peace. You can choose peace. God wants to bring a completeness of harmony into your life through his son Jesus and through His word. But you have to be in the Word. You have to be with God's people. You gotta get in Bible studies, in life groups. You gotta get in into, you know, reading the Bible.

You've gotta get to church. People want to be in shalom and then come to church once a month. What I'm telling you, this is not a path to shalom. It's not That's a path to mediocrity. It is, yeah. People live it all the time. Shalom is something you live in and it's something you not only live in. It's something you exhibit to the world.

I want people to know I live in Shalom. I try as best I can to be happy and joyful and at peace. Yeah. The world. Distraction at times. My kids can distract from at times. I can probably distract from at times, but I choose to live in shalom as much as I can. See. Jesus is restoring what? Sin is broken. Sin is broken in the world.

Jesus is restoring creation. He'll come back and restore it. But even in our life, Jesus can restore what sin is broken in your life. Either your sin and the consequences of it or someone else's, and the consequences of their sin that affected you in some way. And if you're at this place this morning where you know there's something broken in your life, you're not at shalom, you're not at peace, let Jesus start with you.

Let him start restoring you. Be in peace. Live in Shalom. I know it. It sounds easy, but it's not. That's that's the truth. You have to choose it actively every day. Part of our culture of honor that we have on our walls is assume the best. You can't be a pessimist and and live in shalom. I'm sorry you can't glass can't be half empty all the time and live in Shalom when you assume the best.

To me, assuming the best is a part of the process of living in Shalom. I try to look at things through God's eyes. I'm glad God's assumes God assumes the best in us 'cause we often fail him. If you wanna live in Shalom, you can't be a miserable, grumpy person. You gotta choose better. You gotta live better, you gotta be better.

Even when you may not feel like it, you still have to choose it. I'm sure it's not easy to be in Jamaica. Uh, pastor Bishop Darren's my friend, and I'm sure there are moments when he wakes up and like. It doesn't feel like going out and serving people all over the island. 'cause he's got his own flock to take care of, not only his church, but he literally has a flock of goats that he raises.

Yeah. As part of his income. I'm sure there's days, but I know who he is and I know that in those moments he chooses Shalom. He chooses Shalom. You can too, but you gotta choose it. You gotta live it. You gotta love it. You gotta seek it. And then you gotta live it for other people. I hope people want more shalom in their life.

'cause they look at my life and say, Hey, he's not perfect, but I'd rather be like that. So that's you. You could start by today in our prayer time in a, in a few moments, we're gonna give you a chance just to say, Lord, this is broken in me. I'm broken in this way, or this is broken in my life. Lord, I, I choose shalom.

I choose to be restored. It's like getting that Lego set gets built and finally you can be resolved. It's back to complete for some of you. You need that in your life. You need to be complete again. And the only way to do that is to get in your Bible, get to church, get around Christian people who are living Shalom and then try to exhibit that and ask them how are you choosing that?

'cause it's a conscious choice you make over and over and over again to live in Shalom. It is. Just, it's not a feeling that you feel, it's a conscious choice you make each and every day, each and every moment of your life to live in that. There are days it's been really hard to not have a 20-year-old daughter, but in those moments, I choose Shalom.

That's the truth. You have to choose it. So as we just pray, I'm just gonna tell you, if you, if you know something's broken, give it over to God. Say, Lord, this is broken to me. It's okay to be transparent. I mean, we can read the Old Testament. David Laments. We've got Book of Lamentations, which is a bunch of laments, which is someone complaining to God, right?

Talk about the frustrations of living in the world. It's okay to tell God I'm not okay, and we say all the time, it's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way. You are, it's okay to be here and not in Shalom, but it's not okay to stay that way. You gotta move to Shalom. You gotta choose. You gotta take the footsteps to Shalom.

And if you need that, tell God, be transparent and then let us help you walk through it. Let's pray. Help me, father Lord, we just, we just come to you recognizing that Lord, we're thankful for the example of your word. Lord, the Bible calls you Yahweh. Shalom, the God of peace. Lord, we know your son. Jesus is the prince of peace that was promised and sent and will come one day to restore all things.

Lord, we pray through your Holy Spirit. Some of that restoration is in each of us, Lord, for anyone here who's telling you what's broken in their life, their heart, their mind, their situation, Lord, we just pray for restoration to begin through a process of peace, of shalom in their life, Lord, to allow them to know what they need to do to begin to choose peace to choose.

Shalom Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit helps them and guides them, that they find the right people to walk the path with them. Well, they get into your word, they get to church, they get into groups, and they can live and choose. Shalom Lord, as a church, we give all those things over to you, Lord, we ask you to move in powerful ways in our lives, our situation, our finances in the world, in our health, in our marriages, and our schools, and workplaces and beyond, so that we can experience Lord Peace, Shalom.

Lord, we give over these prayers to you. We ask Lord you to reveal yourself in a real and transparent way to us as we seek Shalom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.