The sermon teaches that peace originates in God’s own character and is reflected in the harmony of the Trinity. Sin introduced rebellion and disorder, but Christ restores peace with God and the Holy Spirit brings order and calm to troubled hearts. This divine peace must also govern church life, where ambition, pride, anger, doctrinal error, and self-seeking threaten fellowship. Christians are therefore urged to trust God, remain united as one family, and love one another faithfully while awaiting the perfection of peace.
Theological center: The triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is the God of peace who reconciles sinners to Himself through Christ, gives peace to believers, and will finally perfect it.
Applications: Trust God for inner peace · Reject ambition and pride · Remain united in fellowship · Love fellow believers faithfully
Primary texts: Romans 15:33 · Matthew 11:28 · Romans 15:30
“Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.” Romans 15:33 PAUL once advised the Romans to strive. Three verses before our text he actually gives them an exhortation to strive and yet he here utters a prayer that the God of peace might be with them all. Lest you should think him to be a man of strife, you must read the verse. He says, “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” That is a holy strife and such a strife as that we wish always to see in the church, a strife in prayer, a surrounding the throne together, besieging God’s mercy seat, a crying out before God, until it actually amounts to a striving together in our prayers. There is also another kind of striving which…