This past Sunday at Bethel, Pastor Mat discussed Advent’s second theme which is peace. But not the thin, fragile peace our world often tries to manipulate or manufacture. He preached about the deep, restorative peace that God brings, especially in fearful and uncertain times.
Drawing from Isaiah 11:1-10, Pastor Mat reminded us that Isaiah spoke to a nation shaken by political turmoil and failed leadership. Judah felt cut down, like a stump. Yet Isaiah insisted that God was not finished. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,” Isaiah proclaimed. God was bringing new life right where the people saw only loss. True peace, Pastor Mat said, begins in the very places that feel barren or broken.
Isaiah’s vision of wolves lying with lambs and children playing safely near once-dangerous places is more than poetic imagery. It is a promise of a creation healed from the ground up. Early Christians saw this fulfilled in Jesus, the “shoot” from Jesse’s stump, the One upon whom the Spirit rests.
Pastor Mat then drew our attention to John the Baptist in Matthew 3:1-11, standing not in a palace but in the wilderness. Peace, he explained, is often born far from power and privilege. John called people into the wilderness so they could hear God clearly, away from systems that claimed to offer peace but never delivered it.
Both Isaiah and John speak strong words about judgment, and Pastor Mat helped us see these not as the opposite of peace, but as expressions of God’s fierce love for the oppressed. God’s peace confronts what harms, lifts the weary, and restores the excluded. Pastor Mat closed by reminding us that Christ’s peace is a gift, given even while the world shakes. It is peace that walks with us. Peace that lets us proclaim, even in the wilderness, “It is well with my soul.” Amen.
