This sermon focuses on ending the war with God by seeking peace through Jesus Christ. It emphasizes the unique experience of having peace with God, which leads to reconciliation, a new spiritual life, and a deep relationship with Him. The sermon highlights the consequences of being at war with God, such as inner turmoil, suppression of conscience, and a distorted relationship with oneself. It concludes with a call to repentance, seeking forgiveness, and surrendering to God to receive His peace and blessings.

And the subject is ending our war with God, and here is the great statement of Christ. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, the peace of God, a unique experience, an amazing experience, to have peace with God. The experience that a person with only one life, you may say, never has. To have just one life, that is ordinary human life, but to receive another life, spiritual life, and blessing from God, reconciliation with God, and a whole new experience of life, walking with Him, knowing Him, interacting with Him, proving Him. Well, this is the peace of which Christ speaks, and it can be known and described and thought about really only by those who possess it and have it. Their war with God is over. Millions of people are at war with God, and really, they don't even know it. Peace with God, not the peace of the graveyard. This is peace and reconciliation, which is so full of experience and events, not inactivity, not the peace of silence, certainly not the peace of boredom. This is an astonishing peace. The word peace that Christ uses, well, in the Greek, it comes from the verb to join, to be at one. Peace I leave with you, oneness, reconciliation. Our war, the war between us, is at an end. Hostilities have ceased. Now we are at one. We are at peace, and we can interact and relate. That is what is meant by the peace of Christ. And it's twofold, really. It is peace with God, and it is also peace from personal disorder, because if we do not have peace with God, and if we're not reconciled with Him, and in relationship with Him, then we're not at peace with ourselves either. We have a very strange and twisted relationship with ourselves. Does that sound a scandalous thing to say? Well, I hope to prove to you that it's true. No peace with God, hostility with Him, we are also in hostility with ourselves. Now John Bunyan had a marvellous picture of being at war with God, and it's in, well, many people think his greatest allegory, even greater than Pilgrim's Progress possibly, though that's debatable, the Holy War. And the human soul is depicted in terms of a city, a town, the town of Mansoul. And Prince Emmanuel, the rightful head of that town, has withdrawn because of the rebellion and disaffection of the people. And now Diabolus has moved in. Who is Diabolus? Well, that is the very Greek word used in the New Testament so often for the devil. It is the Greek for slanderer or accuser, and that is one of the names of the devil, of Satan. So Diabolus has moved into the city, and he has assumed control, and the people are in his pocket. And so the town of Mansoul is described and depicted by Bunyan like a human soul at war with their Maker, at war with God. And there are so many insights in that allegory. It's remarkable. But it describes us. Before we're converted, before we come to Christ and seek Him and His pardon and His love, we're like a city. Our souls, our lives are like a city in rebellion against God. We want to be rid of Him. We want to keep Him out of our lives and our consciousness. We want to avoid Him. We view Him with constant suspicion. Diabolus is in control within us, the enemy of our souls, the devil. And we steal and plunder our own lives from God. We say, no, God did not make me. God is not my owner or controller, and I seize whatever gifts, capacities, powers I have for myself. I steal them. I plunder them. And I think I can repel God easily. There's an old illustration, and I've used it numerous times before, comes from the USA, I think, about a yard dog. That gives away its origin. We'd call it a garden dog, some sort of a guard dog someone may have. And this dog jealously guarded the property. And whenever it heard an aircraft in the distance, probably coming over the house, it would begin to rush about and bark furiously and throw itself into the air and bark at this aircraft. And the aircraft would come overhead, and then off it would go into the distance. And the dog would sink down, lathered, and now in relief that it had warned off another invader. But of course, it hadn't actually made the slightest difference to the aircraft. And so it is with God. We think we can repel God and shut him out of our lives and shout him away. But he's still there. And we are actually his property. And one day we must give an account for what we've done with our lives. And we must face him at the end of life's journey. Well, we despise his laws. We resent his authority over us. We want the territory, the city of our life and soul. We want it for ourself. We don't want to share it with God. Not at all. Well, here we are at war with God. That's the truth. That's the reality. But if I'm at war with God, I am also at war with myself. And let me explain how. You see, I'm at war with my conscience. If I'm at war with God, I'm at war with my conscience, because God has put within me a conscience with a knowledge of his laws and rights and wrong. And I have to suppress that conscience. In Bunyan's allegory, in the holy war, conscience is bound up in a dungeon, a basement. But occasionally its roars are heard throughout the city to the discomfort of everyone. And so it is with us. This fundamental part of me, God given my conscience, I silence it, bludgeon it into submission. Well, I push it out of the way. But it's active and it troubles me from time to time. And I don't know what's the matter with me. And I'm upside down. I'm at war with myself, because my conscience tells me about things for which I need the forgiveness of God. And only he can put the conscience at ease and forgive my sin and put me back on the right path. So if I'm at war with him, I'm at war with myself. I'm at war with the instincts that God has put within me to believe in him and to know that he's there. And whatever people say, we all have it. And if that instinct is suppressed and silenced, I will always be in some way or the other ill at ease. So I've injured myself. And I'm suppressing my instinct for God. And I'm suppressing also my instinct for eternity, which God has put within me. There is this instinct that this life is not the only life. There is an afterlife, but I know nothing about it. I've parted company with God and thrust him out of the picture of my life. What am I going to do? I'm going to fear death. I'm going to be ill at ease. I'm going to be uncomfortable, because I'm fighting my own instinct. And also I have an instinct for worship. We're all human beings. We are worshipping creatures. We have this instinct for worship. If you've decided God isn't there, or God doesn't exist, or you don't want him, you've still got this urge to worship. You know what you're going to do? You're going to worship people who are not worthy of your worship. You're going to overestimate people, pin your hopes on them, worship sports personalities, or stars, or people who can't possibly satisfy your longing to worship and respect and esteem something transcendent and higher and better and bigger than yourself. And so you hurt yourself by ignoring God. Your worshipping faculty is all over the place and you pin it on unworthy substitutes. Why, dear friends, if you're at war with God, you're at war with yourself. Here are some of the symptoms of being at war with God. Always running from God. Uncomfortable at the mention of him. Rather resentful, perhaps, sometimes in sermons. If you come and you worship and you listen, and if you're at war with God, well, there's all sorts of things that will offend you and put you off. Always searching for something better. Aspiring to something you can barely attain to. You're always trying to grasp and get a fulfillment, a satisfaction, a reward, an enjoyment or pleasure, something in life, a whole bundle of things, perhaps, because you're not at rest. You're at war with God. You're at war with yourself, an unsettled person, always stretching forward to you know not quite what, and never satisfied. Driven by your pride, perhaps, or by the void within. There's something I need. People say, I've got a need for this. I've got a need for that. Next thing they're telling you, they've got an identity crisis or a longing or a void in this way or the other. And we disadvantage ourselves if we're at war with God. And we're always unstable, if not in our tempers, in our aims, being away from God and fighting against him. Now, so often society says, here is the solution. If you feel all these things, it's nothing to do with not knowing God and walking with him. You need greater self-worth. Greater self-worth, that's our problem. Oh, it's just increase the delusion, the lie. You, if you can only think better about yourself, everything else will fall into place. But no, that's adding one deception to another. And it invariably, in the long run, makes us much worse. Why the problem's too deep for shallow solutions like that? No, the solution is this. I need to know who I am and face up to that. I'm a created being, created by God to know him and walk with him and honor and love him and have his peace and have his blessing. I need to know who I am. I need to know my destiny, that there is a hereafter. And I need the Lord. And I need to aim and walk to that eternal inheritance with him and be certain of it. I need to know my heavenly father and the savior and to know their love and their blessing and their power. I need their help. I need their certainty as to the meaning of life. I need God to be my Lord and my ruler and the one who I worship. I need to satisfy my mind, to know why I'm here and about God and what he's like. These are the solutions to the problem of being at war with oneself and unsettled and confused. Above all, I need peace of conscience. I need to know that my sins are forgiven. I need to know that God will receive me and I may walk with him and have his blessing. Look at these tremendous words, the words of Christ, verse 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. My peace, not superficial, shallow peace. My peace. What did he mean by his peace? A peace which is exclusively attributable to him. He means that peace which he purchased for us by suffering and dying on Calvary's cross to make an atonement for needy sinners, to bear the punishments due to us for our sin on our behalf. My peace is the peace of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is exclusively his peace. He has secured it. He's brought it to pass through his vicarious substitutionary death on Calvary's cross for needy sinners. This is what we need, his pardon, the gracious reward. Reward, did I say? I'm a rebel against him. I've pushed him out of my life. I'm like that town of Mansoul in Bunyan's allegory. I've gone against my God and sinned away my years and yet he'll give me a reward if I turn to him. That is the amazing grace of God. He'll pardon and forgive me freely and he'll give me new life and eternal rewards. I haven't deserved them. I never could but Christ has secured them for me. That's Christ's amazing peace. I turn to him. He gives me the power of a new nature, power over my sins. He gives me the faculty to pray and I prove him and so much evidence flows to me as I pray in life and he hears and answers and blesses. Now without this we're at war with God but we're on the losing side. Your life is like a besieged city. You are cut off from any help from God. No outside spiritual supplies come into your life but in this city the show goes on as it were. You pretend all is well and you live out your life as though none of this were true. There are waste areas in this city of yours, this life of yours. Years have been lost and wasted already, years away from God. There's chaos and disorder in this besieged city which is my life if I'm away from God. The ravages of sin, things have gone wrong already and I've made serious mistakes. I have a phony morale in this city under siege. I pretend God is not there, that he's not powerful just as happens we're told and did in ancient times in cities under siege where the king or the ruler or whoever constantly had to try to persuade the occupants that this would all be over in no time at all and they could easily withstand the siege when they couldn't so we have to somehow keep ourselves buoyed up without God. He isn't there. I know all sorts of people and they're atheists and unbelievers. I need not take this seriously and I bore up my own atheistic attitude and spirits by various means. The schools are shut in this city of mine. There is no learning going on at any rate, not the most important learning, learning of God and discovering him and knowing more of him and pride reigns in this city and there's looting going on in this city of mine because my integrity is being squandered as I make excuses for my conduct and my sin and the barricades around the city are high. I don't want to see over the top. I don't want to see the besieging forces. I want to pretend they're not there and that's how we live when we're at war with God. We convinced ourselves he doesn't exist. He isn't there. There is no personal God. It is not true and we're heading for a wretched capitulation because we will capitulate but tragically we'll leave it probably too late to be in time for the amnesty which God has provided. You leave it until death before you turn to Jesus Christ, acknowledge your life has been in rebellion against him, seek his forgiveness and his converting power. After death it's too late and possibly even before death because we become so callous in our minds and so determined in our unbelief we are for a certain point we never will turn to him. Says the Lord, my peace, this is our greatest need, peace to be joined again to God through Jesus Christ, to have his pardon for all our sin, to have his blessing, his reward which we could never deserve, his amazing kindness, to have him rebuild the city of our lives which he will do lavishly. You never hear about this in human life. If there's a rebel country or rebel part of a country and finally the rebels are brought down and the rightful rulers enter in once again they may rebuild but not lavishly. But I repent before Jesus Christ and seek forgiveness for my atheistic unbelieving life and he comes in by the power of his spirit and he rebuilds me infinitely better than I ever was before. My character, my understanding, my desires, my ways and I'm at one with the living God. No execution if I repent speedily, nothing but blessing and kindness and reward. Look at this 27th verse, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Have you sought the peace that the world can give? I've already mentioned self-esteem, let's bolster our self-esteem as unbelievers and people in rebellion against God. It's a lie, that won't help us, that won't give us peace. Have we bought another lie from the world? Your conscience, don't let that trouble you, that's just full of a lot of junk standards and morals which are Victorian forebears drilled into their generation and these standards are still there hanging around and you don't have to obey them, just don't believe your conscience, it's been wrongly programmed. That's another lie of the world, put yourself at ease, do whatever you like, don't listen to conscience, what it says is a myth and they tell that kind of thing and God doesn't exist they say, he is a myth and you can be blissfully happy if you explore and exploit possessions, wealth, pleasures, sex and the worship of human beings and you do these things you'll be a happy man and a happy woman, well that's the peace the world gives and it doesn't work, it doesn't help you, it doesn't give you depth and peace and happiness, you get your fun and some of it may be legitimate fun but it only comes in bursts if you're away from God and you're not living for him. To end the war dear friends, seek the forgiveness of God, seek admission to his kingdom and citizenship with the Lord, ask him to re-educate you from his word, ask him to repair you, your soul, your moral life, everything, believe in Christ who makes this salvation possible because you must be judged by a righteous God, you must be punished for your sin but oh the amazing thing is Christ the second person of the trinity has come and stood in our place and said to the father punish me instead of them that is those who will be in the kingdom of God and he has taken the punishment and he has done it all. Look let me read a few verses as we move to conclusion the words of Christ verse 19, yet a little while and the world seeth me no more but ye see me because I live ye shall live also at that day you shall know that I am in my father and ye in me and I in you can you can you sense the exclusiveness of this for want of a better term he that hath my commandments and keepeth them he it is that loveth me and he'll be loved and Judas not Iscariot verse 22 says Lord how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world yes that's what it's all about in the preceding verses this blessing only comes to those who believe in Christ this blessing only comes to those who seek him personally and sincerely no one else can have it you must come to him and ask for your mind and your heart to be completely changed and opened and awakened and you must repent of all your sin and believe that you can be forgiven only because of what Christ has done in his amazing love when you come to know peace with God you'll have the smile of God upon your life and in your heart you will have laid down your arms see yourself as a city under siege you'd have laid down your arms you'll have opened the city gates for the rightful ruler to come in you'll have hurled down the barricades and maybe if you'll permit the illustration the barbed wire too with its barbs of slander against God with which you've protected yourself from belief in him and you take them all down and the flag of pride this is my city my life and I'm going to rule it and determine my affairs not God the flag of pride is run down that flagpole and the bunkers in which you've hidden hidden your head and hidden your mind from God they're cleared and the amnesty of God and of Christ come unto me all ye that labour in a heavy laden why you trust it and you believe it you run up the white flag to God seeking mercy and then he comes and he forgives you and he makes himself known to you and he deals tenderly with you and he begins the great rebuilding of your life it happens so quickly but the temple in your city is rebuilt the seat of worship in your heart and you worship your God and you love him for his mercy and you serve him and praise him and learn of him yes the law courts are opened in your city and your conscience comes to life and you seek the help of God to live a better life and to please him and the libraries and the colleges are thrown open because now you're hungry to learn of Christ and to know more of him and his plans and his ways an industry if you like flourishes again in your city because your life is now for the service of God and to please him and to honor him why you have peace from the tyranny of sin which just got hold of you you have peace from shame especially in the last day when you must stand in judgment you have peace from meaninglessness which is all you have without Christ you have peace from Diabolus and Satan you have peace from God's artillery with which he'll finally bring down the city of your life in death if you continue a rebel against him and then you'll be eternally judged or will you bear with me for just a few moments what will this world give you if you never come to Jesus Christ the lover of human souls who suffered and died to bear away our sin you'll have costly happiness in this world every bit of happiness you have you'll have to pay for dearly you come to Christ your inner happiness walking with him and knowing forgiveness and knowing you're a child destined for eternity that is free all the best joys and pleasures you trust this world you're living in mere hope that it'll see you through and you will be happy all your life but if you come to Christ these things are absolute certainties if you live for this world well you have no purpose but with Christ you have an eternal purpose you know who made you why you're here where you're going what is planned for you is if you live for this world you know nothing but moral weakness you can't get on top of your darling besetting sins all kinds of things bring you down you come to Christ he gives you help and power and you can control yourself and walk for him and please him if you live for this world well your notion of life will be shallow your conscience will be suppressed and angry and you'll have no ultimate peace but all these things are so different when you come to Christ and your conscience is cleansed because you repent of your sin if you live for this world you've got doom ahead of you the judgment of God but if you walk with Christ you know he's with you in every circumstance every situation and he will see you through and take you home according to his promise to eternal glory you live for this world you'll have some happiness and pleasure but you'll have also many cruel and crushing disappointments but with Christ you'll prove him by prayer and have his blessing and help and comfort and consolation in every issue of life if you live for this world your life will be lived under a pall of uncertainty you're a besieged city but to know Christ dear friends is everything what you must do is repent of your sin sincerely ask him to forgive you alongside that you must trust entirely in what he did on Calvary when he died for sinners don't think it's a little bit of Calvary and it's a little bit of some inherent goodness in yourself know when you repent of your sin believe with all your heart that you could secure no favor from God it is all what Christ has done for you and purchased for you and then ask him for forgiveness ask him for forgiveness and life and one last thing as you do these things sincerely wholly unreservedly give your life to him and say Lord I will be thine not my own not the property of this vain world I will be thine and if you remember those things and they're in your heart you will never seek him in vain and he will forgive you and change your life and bless you and make you his and you'll know him peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you let's pray together oh god our gracious heavenly father look upon us stir our hearts we pray help us to see the predicament we are in spiritually help us to see the wonderful love of Christ and all that he has purchased for those who trust in him and depend upon him and oh lord draw us to thyself we ask bless us in this place give us no rest until we have committed our lives to thee and surrendered these city states of our lives with all their rebellion into thy rule and into thy keeping help us we ask oh lord in the name of our dear savior amen