“But the word of the Lord came to me, saying,…’You shall not build a house to My name because you have shed so much blood on the earth before Me. Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side. His name shall be Solomon and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. He shall build a house for My name.’” (1 Chron. 22:8-10)
In my latest book, The Kingdom Election, I discuss at length the fruit of the spirit of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It is not love, not faith, not miracles or signs and wonders. Rather, it is peace. Isaiah 9 tells us that of the government of peace brought by the Prince of Peace [Christ] there shall be no end. The first proclamation of Christ’s coming into the world was made by many angels crying to shepherds by night, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men.” Jesus’ first words after appearing to His disciples following His resurrection were, and He said them twice, “Peace be unto you.”
The peace of the Christian who has truly elected citizenship under the government of the Prince of Peace comes to him through knowing the King is on His throne, nothing in his kingdom is amiss, nothing is broken, there is no injustice, and sin has no foothold, for that same passage in Isaiah goes on to say that Jesus is ruling now and forevermore in justice and righteousness in His kingdom.
This stands in stark reality to the mindset of most Christians today who try to live with one foot in His kingdom and the other firmly planted in the kingdom of man where everything is amiss, everything is broken, politicians are elected through a corrupt and chaotic process and removed through more corruption and chaos, and lawlessness and injustice run rampant. Dual citizenship never leads to peace.
King David wanted in the worst way to build the temple of God in Jerusalem, but there was a problem: in his pursuit of what God put him on this earth to do he had shed much blood. David was not a man of peace, but a man of war. Warfare is how he gained his fame and his throne, and what “the man after God’s own heart” had to do to establish their rule of the Promised Land and build their temple in Jerusalem. David was not wrong for accomplishing what God gave him to do, but he was not the man to build the temple of the throne room of the kingdom that would last forever. That would be up to a man of peace and rest: his son Solomon.
This begs the question: today, as the kingdom is in the process of its second great arising since Christ came [also explained in my book], should we be looking for men of war or men of peace to lead the church? That should be obvious, although to look across the Christian landscape you would think it would be men of war everyone wants. Christians everywhere are crying out for justice and bemoaning all the lawlessness and perversion they see in the world. Most want leaders, political or spiritual, to rise up and put yet more fingers in the dam that is leaking from every pore. Their anger are palpable and the sun sets day after day after day on their frustrations. According to Paul in Ephesians 4, that never leads to solutions but rather giving the Devil a foothold in their lives.
People looking for warriors, or to be warriors, today have no peace and are not looking to be led by men of peace. They are as the children of Israel looking for David to keep on conquering even though the battle was over, and the war won. Well, our battle today is over, and the war has been won by our King! Was He a man of war or of peace? Did He win the battle for our souls by conquering evils in the world, or by humbly laying His life down? Did He win this war by staying on His throne or by humbling and reducing Himself to the form of a man and dying a criminal’s death on a cross?
And when it came to “entangling Himself in the everyday affairs of men” (2 Tim. 2), He ran when His people came to “by force make Him king” (John 6) and when before the San Hedren and Pilate, “as a sheep before it’s shearers was silent and did not open His mouth” (Isa. 53). He refused to join or fight, or even appeal to worldly power brokers of His day when being falsely accused and executed.
In Romans 8 we are told the entire creation of God [ourselves included] has become unwillingly subjected to the futility of sin and is eagerly awaiting the revealing of the sons of God to liberate it. Who is a son of God? We are told:
- They are made sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3)
- They are sons of the resurrection of Christ (Luke 20)
- They are indwelt and led by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8)
- And according to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, they are defined specifically as peacemakers!
As I say in my book, I believe we are now living in the days Jesus referred to in Matthew 24 as “the Birth Pangs” or “Days of Sorrows.” One of the reasons I believe this is the dramatic upswing of the lawlessness here in America and around the globe which Jesus foretold would be one of the markers of that age. If this is correct, lawlessness and injustice will only continue to increase. Things will not get better. According to Jesus this will be accompanied by famines and earthquakes and His people being hated, delivered up, and martyred for their faith!
Will we look for warriors, political or religious, to defeat the evil we see exploding all around us? Will we allow all the things that serve to make us angry and frustrated in the kingdom of man turn us into angry warriors? Or will we keep our feet firmly planted as citizens of the kingdom of heaven where the Prince of Peace reigns and His peace fills our souls? Will we then allow that to make us peacemakers and sons of God?
In 2 Timothy 3 it says that evil men and impostors will “proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” We could likewise say there is a righteous progression that mirrors this unrighteous one: that men of truth and light will proceed from faith to faith, making peace and living in peace. We are not to be warriors in these days, but men of peace. Peace will shine like a light in our world of chaos, fear, and turmoil and people caught up in the confusion will flock to those in whom they see peace. The Lord no longer exists in temples built with human hands, as it was in the days of David and Solomon. He now lives through His Spirit in the temple of our hearts (1 Cor. 3). Let us be the men of peace God has always used to build His temples!
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