The Peace of God Stands Guard

"The Peace of God Stands Guard" – Philippians 4:7 "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." A thousand news reports may come out and the whole world may be talking, overwhelmed, but the peace of God stands guard within our lives. The study takes the word "shall keep" as the picture of a soldier who watches over, guards and protects the heart, and follows it into John 14:27, where Jesus leaves His peace to His disciples as an inheritance, and into 1 Peter 5:7, where Peter teaches us to cast all our care upon the Lord. The thread is one: the peace of Christ does not mean the absence of storms, but knowing, even inside the storm, who is with us.

I. The peace of God stands guard: "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7).

A. Mortals are unstable, and that is why the prayer of the righteous avails much.

1. Today one is happy, and tomorrow one does not know how to act or what to do. There are many things in our lives for which we must keep praying: do not grow tired of praying about anything.

2. God gathers up our prayer, not because we are a success or have the most exact words, but because we are His children. An earthly parent sometimes tells a child "I don't understand you"; God does know how to see things as exactly and precisely as we need them.

3. If God did not stand guard over our peace, we would be in despair. In anguish, on the hard and complicated day, we must know that God has peace for our life, and that He keeps it in us as in a case.

B. The heart is troubled.

1. The heart is stirred, despairs and is distressed; it makes us see what is not so and understand what is not so. That is why it cannot guide us: all our feelings settle there, and it confuses us.

2. The heart is the center from which every message is sent, and it is deceitful. That is why the peace of Christ is needed.

3. Our enemy is not what someone said, nor the person you confronted, nor the weather, nor the television. Our own enemy is ourselves, when we have not handed our heart to God and said to Him: "I want Your peace."

C. "Shall keep": peace is a soldier standing guard.

1. The word "shall keep" carries the idea of watching, guarding and protecting, like a soldier on guard duty. That is what the peace of God does around the heart.

2. A soldier on guard is not distracted by whoever comes to talk to him or asks him for directions. In the same way we must train ourselves to be mature, spiritual men and women: let us stop being children.

3. If the peace of God does not stand guard, everyone starts saying things, one takes them as the truth and ends up walking with a bowed back.

4. Peace guards everything we live through: whatever strikes, whatever draws near, whatever rises like an empire to oppress us. And whoever lives oppressed cannot function; one loses even one's senses.

D. A peace that passes all understanding.

1. It is not a peace that depends on how each person sees things. It is the peace we must ask for today: "Lord, I want to have Your peace; I need it, because otherwise I faint."

2. It is not for living troubled, giving opinions, talking and analyzing. It is as simple as the word in the verse: shall keep. There is Someone greater than your thoughts, your will, your worry, your nerves and your anxiety: the peace of Christ.

3. This is not a matter of understanding, but of training ourselves in the Scriptures to know how to live. We must love the Scriptures, know the messages and be trained as disciples of Christ: we are not just one more, we are disciples of Christ.

4. When a storm comes and everything goes dark, or when a mother is filled with anxiety over a sick child, what is needed is for the peace of God to stand guard, so that we do not stop short of what we must overcome and reach.

5. Peace keeps our eyes where they should be. Everyone will suggest something; whoever has the peace of God is not carried along by suggestions, because it is God who directs him.

6. "I don't need a prophet: I need the peace of God to keep me." Whoever hears "I dreamed you were sad and weighed down" and at once becomes sad and weighed down lets something come over him and wrap him up. We are children of God and we live for Him.

II. When fear comes, peace is on guard.

A. Whatever comes into the mind must be cast out.

1. You woke up before dawn, you had a dream: when fear comes, peace is on guard; it is keeping you.

2. Things come into the mind by the heap; if you make room for one, the second one comes. Cast them out. You lived a day of struggle, but tomorrow will be a new day: "Today I overcame; I have the peace of God."

3. Sometimes we stop to listen to what we should not listen to, and those who know you go to church and know your integrity would like to steal your peace. We have to be soldiers.

B. Peace remains when everything changes.

1. When fear, anxiety or thoughts that want to disturb you arrive, peace is on guard. When circumstances change, the peace of God remains.

2. The peace of Christ does not mean the absence of storms: it means that even inside the storm we know who is with us. And if God is with us, He delivers us from everything: where they want to dig a hole for us, the Lord takes us out and sets us in safe places.

3. God has never forsaken us; it is mortals who sting and bite. So do not look at mortals, but look up, because heaven gives the orders.

4. The sovereign God moves whatever angels He must move, not so that we see them or cling to them, but to protect what must be protected. And the trust we place in God keeps our life.

III. Peace as an inheritance: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you" (John 14:27).

A. Jesus sets His peace apart from the peace of the world.

1. Everyone's heart is troubled at times; we have insecurities, and when something happens to us we think it will keep happening all our life. But where one stands in God will never fall.

2. The world has a false peace. The world's peace depends on everything going well; the peace of Christ remains even in the midst of every difficulty.

3. Jesus did not only die on the cross: He left us peace, and in abundance, because His peace is not based on the day, on the circumstance or on the state of the universe.

B. Our inheritance is peace.

1. "Peace I leave with you": Jesus leaves an inheritance to His disciples, and that inheritance is peace. "My peace I give unto you": it is not just any peace, it is the peace of Christ.

2. Angels cannot be in every place, but Jesus can. That is why it does not matter what we have to live through: He left us peace, and the Lord delivers us from everything.

3. Difficulties come, and they come free of charge. But we are soldiers, and a soldier stands up straight with his armor on to do battle, and does not live whimpering, frightened and worried about what is going to happen.

IV. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27).

A. Do not let anguish rule your inner being.

1. What we have lived through must be brought out, so that what produces anguish does not stay inside. Keeping it is a luxury we are giving the enemy.

2. Do not get up tomorrow in anguish: it is a new dawn, with hope and with strength. And we did not overcome alone: we all joined together to fight.

3. You cannot live troubled, getting up and going to bed wanting to fight with the children or with your spouse. The messages are meant to make us mature in knowledge and to train the heart.

B. The presence of Christ lets us face fear with confidence.

1. Many fears come, but I have not seen the righteous forsaken. The peace of Christ means that even in the midst of the storm the heart knows who is with us: "God is with me" is something to sing from the morning on.

2. There can be a storm all around me without the storm having to come inside me. If the storm gets in, I end up carrying it to my children and to everyone around me.

3. What we must always keep is peace. There is pain, and pain is something else; but peace is kept as a duty. Let the children go to school and the parents to work with the peace of God, and may the Lord watch over their going out and their coming in.

4. The storms beat on the righteous, but they do not get inside him, because he has the Holy Spirit and God cares for him and protects him. You are living through things, but you are not being destroyed by what you have lived.

5. There are things to set right in life, and they must be faced with a "that's enough." In sickness, in the trouble with the neighbor, long for peace to keep you.

V. "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you" (1 Peter 5:7).

A. Peter wrote it because he lived it.

1. Anxiety climbs on top of you; when it hooks on, give it a push. What there is to do is fight and face the circumstances.

2. If Peter left it in writing, it is because he knew that human beings suffer a great deal of anxiety: the boat that was sinking, the stones, the day he denied the Master. One day he took a moment of his life and wrote down what he had lived.

3. When they were taking him to be crucified, the pastor recalls that Peter asked not to be crucified like the Master, but upside down. He knew the cross was his lot, and he knew that Jesus, already at the right hand of the Father, would take care of him.

B. Casting our care is praying.

1. You do not have to keep carrying what weighs on you. But to cast it you must pray: not a careless prayer or one said from memory, but you speaking to heaven, to the throne where the Father is and, at His right hand, Jesus Christ.

2. The pastor cannot carry anyone: she teaches the word, gives counsel and sets each person walking so that they know God directly in everything they have to live through. Each one has to face their own.

3. "For he careth for you": here is the reason to rest. God is concerned for us and cares for us twenty-four hours a day. If He tells me to cast my care upon Him, it is because He never wanted me to carry it alone.

4. Whatever worries me I place in the hands of God, because otherwise it turns into anxiety, and anxiety blinds faith. We have a God who called us, chose us, set us apart and is mighty.

5. This does not mean doing whatever one pleases and God will help. It means casting upon Him whatever comes uninvited and whatever we have to live through.

C. Conclusion: the peace of God stands guard over your life.

1. We mortals are difficult and complicated, and no one can take away another's complications. The pastor teaches the word; each one must run after it and put to work the faith that has sustained us until today.

2. Can we live in peace? Yes, for this reason: the peace of God stands guard. That peace keeps watch over your life, and the Lord delivers you from everything.