For the last few weeks, we have been talking about God’s desire that we have inner peace.  We have explored three essential elements of our life with God to have inner peace.  We learned we must first talk to God, earnestly, genuinely, and unashamedly. We then learned that in our conversation with God we must trust him and give him our anxiousness so that he can fill us with peace.  Last week, we learned that we must be engaged in worship of God for in worship our spirit is transformed and strengthened, and we are better able to understand our part in God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.

          Today, I would like us to understand a fourth element of God’s desire to have inner peace.  And that element is service through the body of Christ.  I want to begin right away noting that there is a distinction between serving as an individual and serving through the body of Christ, meaning His church.  We can accomplish much serving on our own, but we do not acquire the full measure of peace God desires for us, until we serve through the church.  To understand this distinction, we will begin where most stories begin, at the beginning.

          We spoke a couple of weeks ago that God created earth and all its plants, creatures, and features to be in perfect harmony and peace.  God then created man to care for his creation.  And God saw all he had created and said it was “very good.” Then, sometime later, 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). In the goodness God created, God noted that being alone was not good.  And so God created woman, in the image of God.  God created man and woman in his image so that they could be companions to one another.  God made partners for us in life because we have a deep need for one another.

          This need for others is express all throughout the Old Testament as we see partnering and pairing of people.  Beyond Adam and Eve, we saw God’s story play out in the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Aaron, David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and the list goes on.  The story of God has been revealed to us in the Bible though God’s interaction with groupings of people.

          We see this pattern continuing as Jesus came into the world and began his public ministry.  Jesus began his ministry by calling disciples to his side: Andrew and his brother Peter, John and his brother James, along with Matthew and Thomas, as well Mary Magdalene, Martha, Joanna, and others.  Jesus made it clear he did not want his public ministry to be a “go it alone” journey.

          Jesus never performed miracles in secrecy.  Jesus ministered to people in the presence of his disciples and other witnesses.  When the time came for Jesus’ disciples to begin their work, Jesus paired them up and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go (Luke 10:1).  Those sent were sent as representing Jesus and they went as the body of Christ.  Importantly, Luke shared with us that when the disciples returned from serving, they did so with joy (Luke 10:17).

          Luke described for us here that the disciples served and in return from serving, the disciples were joyful.  I think it is important for us to remember that Luke did not witness the return of the disciples.  Luke put together a chronology of Jesus’ ministry we have in the Gospel of Luke some 30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Memories can dim over 30 years.  But here Luke reveals that the lasting memory of the participants and witnesses was that the disciples having served together in Jesus’ name returned in joy.

          Now, a couple of thousand years later, science and psychology seek to explain the phenomenon of service and joy.  Time Magazine reported that “Scientific research provides compelling data to support the anecdotal evidence that giving [serving] is a powerful pathway to personal growth and lasting happiness. Through MRI technology, we now know that giving [serving] activates the same parts of the brain that are stimulated by food and sex. Experiments show evidence that altruism [selfless concern for the welfare of others] is hardwired in the brain.”  Other recent medical studies suggest that helping others causes our bodies to release of hormones, specifically endorphins, that create a sense of euphoria, that they researchers named a “helper’s high.”

          MRI’s and endorphins are modern man’s attempt to rationalize, explain, and at times diminish, the testimony of faithful people both ancient and modern.  In the case of Jesus’ disciples, the singular emotion from the collective experience in serving in the name of Jesus expressed 30 years later was joy.

Luke’s account suggests that what the disciples experienced in serving together in Jesus’ name was far beyond a helper’s high brought about by a hormonal change.  I believe that the disciples, perhaps for the first time in their life, experienced an understanding of God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.  I believe the disciples came to understand what Jesus meant when he said they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

          In paraphrased terms, before sending out the disciples, Jesus said, “14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16 MSG). 

The disciples had experienced what it was like to become the light into the darkness not just by helping others through the difficulties of life but also because in serving as Christ’s hands and feet, they gave others the opportunity to be open to God and his goodness.

          To help someone and open them up to seeing God is the most wonderful and joyful thing we can do.  Why is that? This is true because God knew that men and women could experience his presence most powerfully, not through glimpses of heaven or mystical experiences but through a human form, someone with whom they could relate.  Therefore, God sent Jesus, in human form.

          The Apostle John understood God’s design for us when he wrote, “14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) “17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).  God sent his fullness in the person of Jesus Christ because we would best experience God’s presence most powerfully through a human form.

          Understanding that God came in human form through Jesus was a powerful thought to John because he would later write, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete” (1 John 1:1-4). 

Here John linked God, Jesus, and the fellowship of believers, to complete joy.  John was saying here that understanding the presence of God was experienced through Jesus and was still experienced through the fellowship of believers.  The presence of God is still experienced best in human form now through the church.

          Why is it that God is best experienced through the church, the fellowship of believers?  First, that is the way God intended it to be.  Second, we humans cannot experience something except by acquaintance.  We cannot understand that which is completely unknown unless there is some connection to what we already know. 

Let me give you a simple illustration.  Suppose a person was blind from birth.  How would that person experience red as a color?  We could say red is primary color like yellow and blue and that person could recite those facts but they would not have experienced the color red because we related the color red to colors yellow and blue which are as unknown to them as the color red.  So how might we express to this blind person something about the way the color red could be imagined without ever seeing the color?  We could only do that by acquainting that person with something they already know or could know.  We might say that we acquaint red with the emotion of angry, as in “seeing red!”  Or that we acquaint red with something that was hot to the touch.  Or perhaps we would share with our blind friend that we acquaint red with danger or the need to stop whatever we are doing.  Our blind friend, though they could not see the color red, could begin to acquaint themselves with that unknown quality by its relationship, by the experience, of something they could or do know.

How does that illustration help us understand what John was saying?  It is this. John and others came to experience God through their living with Jesus Christ and experiencing Jesus’ character and acts of service, such as washing the feet of the disciples.  Now the members of John’s churches could experience Jesus Christ through his apostles and disciples, the church, if they imitated Jesus’ character and acts of service.  In experiencing Jesus through the fellowship of believers, then the joy of knowing God and experiencing Jesus is made complete in all who would follow. This same pattern of experiencing Jesus and thus knowing God has been continuing ever since.

And so when we as the church reach out to serve another person in Jesus name, those who are served can feel Jesus’ love, a love made incarnate, full and complete, in the caring people they see, touch, and hear, and then those being served are assured and acquainted with God’s presence even if they have not yet experienced God themselves. Those being served can begin to understand that God is caring, that he desires comfort for those afflicted, that God does not forget or abandoned people because they have seen that behavior in the people from the church.  When Christians love and care for those who are hurting, God’s character shines forth. Those served know it and those who serve experience God.

There is no greater joy and thus no greater peace for the believer than to experience God.  Those serving know immediately and profoundly that caring for another person is not a two-person relationship, it is a three person relationship.  There is the one being cared for, the believer doing the caring, and there is Christ. Knowing this is priceless. Knowing this is peace.

Aloneness and anxiousness are never so difficult as when someone is suffering.  One gift we can give as believers is to be present in someone else’s pain.  A learned pastor put it this way, “Your presence is worth much, much more than words. Your presence communicates to the other that he or she is valued, precious, beloved.  Your presence brings not only the gift of yourself into the relationship but also, in and through you, the gift of God” (Haugk, 51).

Think for a moment what Jesus said to his disciples on the hillside one day.  Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).  When we, the body of Christ, bring peace to another person by our presence and our acts of charity, then we become known as the children of God.  Since that it is the truth, it would also be true that children of God have a profound inner peace because they know, they feel, they experience to their very core, that they are God’s children.

If we want inner peace, we must begin a continual conversation with God.  In that conversation, we must be willing to trust him and place into his hands our anxious thoughts and allow him to replace that anxiousness with calmness and assurance.  In our pursuit of peace, we must be willing to worship God and allow that experience to change us and fit us together with other believers.  In our togetherness with other believers, then we need to serve in the name of Jesus.  Serving others through the body of Christ allows the light of God within us to shine spreading the peace of God’s presence to those being served and allows peace to be returned to us.  We know that being at peace with ourselves, being at peace with one another, and being a peace with God was Jesus most urgent desire for his followers.  After Jesus was raised from the dead, Jesus sought out his disciples who were fearful and anxious behind locked doors.  Jesus entered that room and said to them, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36).

Let us all walk and serve together in peace.  Amen and Amen.