Peace as Fruit | Sermon | The Grove Church, Port St. Lucie

What Kind of War Brings Real Peace?

“Peace is not a project. It’s a person.”

Summary

Galatians 5:14–26 names peace as the third fruit of the Spirit and sets it beside a warning about people who bite and devour one another. Preaching at The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, David Hancock traces the Hebrew idea of shalom, wholeness rather than the mere absence of war, from the Trinity through Eden to the blame-shifting that began at the fall. He argues that the flesh, Paul’s word for self-reliance, is a two-faced monster that wakes up every time we try to build peace on our own terms, which is why changing presidents, bosses, and spouses never delivers shalom. Real peace is not a project but a person; it was purchased on the cross and grows in the believer as fruit through dependence on the Spirit.

Key Takeaways

Peace in the Bible, shalom, is not the absence of war but the presence of wholeness, and it is older than the world, rooted in the eternal life of Father, Son, and Spirit.
The flesh is self-reliance with a monster on its other face; every attempt to secure peace on our own terms turns into blame, rivalry, and war, inside us and around us.
Peace is a person, not a project: Jesus Christ is Himself our peace, and He grows that peace in believers as fruit through walking by the Spirit and keeping in step with Him.
The order matters: shalom must take root in a person before that person can carry it into a marriage, a home, a church, a workplace, or a city.

Read Galatians 5:14-26 (ESV)

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Talk about it

1. The sermon opened with a line almost everyone agrees with: life is not supposed to be this way. When you picture the world set right, what is the first thing you would fix? Who, if you are honest, do you tend to blame for it being broken?

Shalom: What Does Peace Mean in the Bible?

In Hebrew culture the word for peace, shalom, was a greeting, a farewell, and a blessing: be whole, be complete, flourish. To ask “How are you?” was to ask “How is your shalom?” So when Paul writes peace into his list, he imports a whole history of songs and hopes for a world becoming what it was meant to be. He also puts it third, after love and joy, and the order matters. Love is the foundation, joy is the thrill of God’s presence, and peace is joy that has settled in to stay: the party in the heart that quiets into a calm night under the stars, with the certainty that what is whole will remain whole. That peace is older than the world. Before anything was made, Father, Son, and Spirit lived in perfect shalom, like three singers who never miss a note, with no anxiety that anything could go wrong. Eden was the overflow of that peace, a world God called good, ripe to grow into wholeness, handed to kings and queens with the charge to finish what He had started. Then the serpent offered a shalom without God. Shame came first; then the blaming began, Adam pointing at Eve and Eve at the serpent, and humanity has been pointing ever since.

KEY WORD: SHALOM

Shalom is the Hebrew word usually translated peace. In the Old Testament it means far more than a ceasefire; it describes wholeness, completeness, and flourishing in every direction at once: with God, with other people, within oneself, and with the created world. Ancient Israelites used it to greet one another and to bless one another as they parted, and the prophets used it for the world God promised to restore under the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6–7). When Paul lists peace as a fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, this is the idea behind the word.

Talk about it

2. The sermon defined peace not as the absence of conflict but as the presence of wholeness, joy that has settled in to stay. If a friend asked you tonight, “How is your shalom?”, what would the honest answer be? Where in your life is there quiet, but not wholeness?

The Monster Within: Why Can’t We Fix the World?

Like Adam and Eve, we blame everyone else for the world being the way it is. In politics we point across the aisle; our side wins and life is not what we hoped. At work we wait for the one boss to leave; a new boss arrives, and with him a new snake. At home we resent the spouse closest to us, or we snap at children who are not causing our stress but exposing it. Paul has a name for all of this: the flesh. The flesh is self-reliance, the insistence that I can find the good life on my own, and when I cannot, my pride looks outward and vilifies whoever is in the way. It is a two-faced thing, self-reliance on one side and a monster on the other, so that every self-made attempt at peace wakes the monster and sets us up for war. And the war is not only out there. James says our quarrels come from passions at war within us, and G.K. Chesterton, asked what was wrong with the world, answered, “I am.” The flesh sits in every chair: the president’s desk and the cook’s kitchen, the bank, the construction site, the pulpit, and your seat. You can change who sits where, but you still wake up with you. But what if all the right things came into place, the right people in power, the right circumstances? Galatia already knew. The Pax Romana gave it safe roads and festival bread, and it was order without wholeness. That is the best the flesh can do.

THE SERMON’S ILLUSTRATION: THE PAX ROMANA

About seventy-five years before Paul wrote this letter, bandits were ruining the peace of Galatia’s cities. Then Rome moved in and brought the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. The roads were safe, money and order arrived, free food appeared on festival days, and a temple in the center of town carried the emperor’s achievements carved in stone. Across the empire Caesar was called savior. By Paul’s day no one in the Galatian churches could remember anything else, yet they still knew something was wrong. The Roman historian Tacitus later recorded a blunter verdict on that kind of peace: “they make a desert and call it peace.”

Talk about it

3. Paul describes the flesh as two-faced: self-reliance that insists it can build the good life, and a monster that attacks whoever gets in the way. Where does your self-reliance most often turn into blame? Who, specifically, have you cast as the villain in your story this month?

4. The sermon suggested some of us are running a very small Rome: a quiet house, a managed marriage, an office where nobody says what they think, everything under control and nobody whole. Where are you keeping order instead of seeking wholeness? What would it cost you to admit the difference?

Peace as Fruit: Where Does Real Peace Come From?

Is there hope? Not within us. But there is hope outside of us, and it is not a boss, a president, or a king. It is a person. Christianity insists that the God who is peace came into our world and walked among us; peace is not a project but a person. The Galatians, starving for real shalom under the Roman kind, heard that news and believed, and peace grew in them like fruit, not out there in the empire but in them. If peace is fruit, then it is stronger than circumstances; it grows no matter what is happening around you, like a tree heavy with fruit blooming in a desert. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches,” and the picture holds: He is the root system that carries every nutrient of peace, and by faith He is in you and you are in Him. So how do you draw it up? Paul says walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. To walk is to make something a habit; to keep in step is to be disciplined in it. The habit is dependence, the Spirit running like a vein from the branch down into Christ Himself, drawing up the One who is peace.

KEY PHRASE: WALK BY THE SPIRIT

Paul gives two related commands in this passage. “Walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16) describes a habitual way of living, the ordinary daily path of depending on the Holy Spirit rather than on oneself. “Keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25) adds discipline to the habit; the Greek word pictures people matching their stride to a line or a leader. Together they describe not a feeling but a practiced dependence, through which the Spirit draws the life and peace of Christ into the believer the way sap moves from root to branch.

Talk about it

5. Peace is fruit, not a project; it grows as you depend on the Spirit to draw up the peace of Christ in you, whatever is happening around you. When you lose your peace, what is your actual habit: fix, fight, flee, or depend? What would one disciplined step of Spirit-dependence look like for you this week?

Caesar’s Stone, Christ’s People: Where Will You Start Seeking Peace?

You can seek peace by fighting every problem out there and blaming every bad actor you can name, and you will often be right about them. But if you want peace, it must start in you. The question is where you will begin: depending on yourself to change your circumstances, or depending on the Spirit to give you peace whatever your circumstances are. Self-reliance only grows the war inside, and a world full of self-reliant peacemakers is a world relying on monsters to make peace, replacing one with another. So the order matters: admit you cannot make yourself whole, learn to walk in a peace that passes understanding, and then carry it into your home, your neighborhood, your church, your workplace, and perhaps into the larger corruptions of the world. In a marriage, peace does not come from winning the argument or always giving in, but from depending on the Spirit even while you are fighting. In a city, God tells His exiles to seek its shalom (Jeremiah 29:7), not by force or power but by becoming people of shalom, people with enough peace to lose it or give it away. Imagine the Galatians in a rented room, hearing Paul’s letter read for the first time: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Peace, not from Caesar but from Christ. Caesar carved his peace in stone; Christ grows His in people.

THE SERMON’S APPROACH

First, recognize the monster in yourself and in others. Second, know that the Christian has hope: the Spirit is fighting the flesh in you and in every other believer. Third, know that you and other Christians are capable of both great harm and great good. Fourth, depend on the Spirit, and patiently help others depend on the Spirit, to animate the peace of Christ in you.

Talk about it

6. The sermon said there is a kind of war that brings peace: the internal war the Spirit is fighting and winning in you as you depend on Him. Where are you trying to bring peace to others without first having peace within? In your closest relationship, what would it look like to stop trying to win and start depending?

The Heart of It: How Did Jesus Make Peace?

This is where you meet Him. Peace is never a project; it is a person. Paul says of Jesus, “he himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), and he opens this letter with peace “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.” Christ is fully God and fully man, the one human life with nothing missing, fractured, or broken, and He came into the world that went wrong. He did not hand us a strategy for peace; He came to be its seed. On the cross He took all that is wrong with us and with the world and held it as His own: our sin, our shame, our guilt, our monsters. God looked straight at the monster within you and embraced you still, embraced you on the cross in order to destroy it. Then He died and rose, appeared to His disciples, said “Peace be with you,” and showed them His side: the cost of peace. That monster in you is dying but not yet dead; it hangs crucified with Christ. There Jesus went to war with all evil, entered the most unhuman thing of all, death itself, and the Spirit raised Him, defeating everything that is wrong with our world. That same Spirit lives in you now and is resurrecting peace in you. So, how is your shalom? In Christ the answer can always be: growing, even in the driest desert.

ISAIAH 53:5

“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” Written some seven hundred years before Jesus, Isaiah’s song of the suffering servant names the cost of peace: it is purchased by the one who takes the punishment others deserved.

Talk about it

7. Isaiah says the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him. God looked at the monster in you and embraced you anyway, on a cross, to put that monster to death. Where do you still treat peace as something you must earn or protect rather than something purchased for you? What would change this week if you believed it was already yours?

Questions This Sermon Answers

What does shalom mean in the Bible?

Shalom is the Hebrew word usually translated peace, and it means wholeness, completeness, and flourishing rather than merely the absence of war. Ancient Israelites used it as a greeting, a farewell, and a blessing; to ask “How are you?” was to ask “How is your shalom?” The prophets used it for the world God promised to restore.

What does Galatians 5:22 say about peace?

Galatians 5:22 lists peace as the third fruit of the Spirit, after love and joy. Paul calls it fruit rather than a work because it is not manufactured by effort or circumstances; it grows in the believer as the Holy Spirit draws the life of Christ, who is Himself our peace, into the person who depends on Him.

Why is peace listed third in the fruit of the Spirit?

The order tells a story. Love is the foundation, joy is the thrill of being in God’s presence, and peace is joy that has settled in to stay. Peace is the calm after the celebration, the settled certainty that what is whole will remain whole. It cannot come first because it is the fruit of love and joy that have taken root.

What is the flesh in Galatians 5?

In Galatians 5 the flesh is not the physical body but self-reliance, the insistence that a person can secure the good life without God. It is two-faced: self-reliance on one side and a monster on the other, which blames and attacks whoever gets in the way. The works of the flesh in verses 19–21 are what that monster produces.

Why can’t we fix the world by changing leaders or circumstances?

Because the problem is not only out there; it is in each of us. James 4:1 says quarrels come from passions at war within us, and G.K. Chesterton, asked what was wrong with the world, answered, “I am.” You can change the president, the boss, or the job, but you still wake up with yourself, and the flesh comes along.

What was the Pax Romana?

The Pax Romana was the Roman peace, the long period of order Rome imposed across its empire beginning under Augustus. In Galatia it meant safe roads, trade, festival bread, and a temple carved with the emperor’s achievements. It was order without wholeness; the Roman historian Tacitus later wrote of such peace, “they make a desert and call it peace.”

What does it mean to walk by the Spirit?

To walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16) is to make dependence on the Holy Spirit a daily habit rather than relying on oneself, and to keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25) is to be disciplined in that habit. Through this practiced dependence the Spirit draws the peace of Christ into the believer the way sap moves from root to branch.

What does “he himself is our peace” mean in Ephesians 2:14?

It means peace is a person, never a project. Jesus, fully God and fully man, the one unbroken human life, entered our broken world and on the cross took our sin, shame, and guilt as His own; Isaiah 53:5 says the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him. Risen, He greeted His disciples with “Peace be with you” and showed them His wounds, the cost of that peace.

Vision for the Christian Life

The Christian life this passage envisions is a tree bearing fruit in a desert: men and women who have stopped waiting for the world to be fixed before they can be whole. They still live under small Romes, still feel the heat of a broken world, still catch the monster stirring in their own chests, yet something is growing in them that circumstances cannot kill. They walk by the Spirit the way a branch draws from a root, morning after morning, and the peace of Christ settles in like a calm night under the stars. From there it spreads: into a marriage that no longer needs to win, a home that is whole rather than merely quiet, a church with enough peace to give it away, and a city that tastes shalom because people of shalom live there. Caesar carved his peace in stone. Christ grows His in people. Draw from the root. He will grow it in you.

Discussion Questions for Small Groups: Galatians 5

The sermon opened with a line almost everyone agrees with: life is not supposed to be this way. When you picture the world set right, what is the first thing you would fix? Who, if you are honest, do you tend to blame for it being broken?
The sermon defined peace not as the absence of conflict but as the presence of wholeness, joy that has settled in to stay. If a friend asked you tonight, “How is your shalom?”, what would the honest answer be? Where in your life is there quiet, but not wholeness?
Paul describes the flesh as two-faced: self-reliance that insists it can build the good life, and a monster that attacks whoever gets in the way. Where does your self-reliance most often turn into blame? Who, specifically, have you cast as the villain in your story this month?
The sermon suggested some of us are running a very small Rome: a quiet house, a managed marriage, an office where nobody says what they think, everything under control and nobody whole. Where are you keeping order instead of seeking wholeness? What would it cost you to admit the difference?
Peace is fruit, not a project; it grows as you depend on the Spirit to draw up the peace of Christ in you, whatever is happening around you. When you lose your peace, what is your actual habit: fix, fight, flee, or depend? What would one disciplined step of Spirit-dependence look like for you this week?
The sermon said there is a kind of war that brings peace: the internal war the Spirit is fighting and winning in you as you depend on Him. Where are you trying to bring peace to others without first having peace within? In your closest relationship, what would it look like to stop trying to win and start depending?
Isaiah says the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him. God looked at the monster in you and embraced you anyway, on a cross, to put that monster to death. Where do you still treat peace as something you must earn or protect rather than something purchased for you? What would change this week if you believed it was already yours?

Related Messages in This Series

Watch or listen anywhere: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | SoundCloud

Pastor David Hancock is the Lead Pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, FL, a church where believers and skeptics wrestle honestly with faith and doubt.

Wrestling with a question this raised? You can text in your question on any Sunday and hear it answered after the sermon. Or come sit with people asking the same things. Plan Your Visit

Read the full sermon manuscript

Life isn’t supposed to be this way. Almost all of us, believers and skeptics alike, scream this in unison. There is too much pain, suffering, difficulty, and loss. How do we make it right? If we can just reform politics, find the right religion, fix corrupt systems, or get rid of that bad boss, stop natural disasters even. There’s a saying, Christians are to heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. This thinking is that if your mind is always on heaven, you won’t care about what’s in front of you. The opposite is, in fact, true. The Christian understands that the resurrection means God has begun renewing this world. In one sense, the Christian says, “This is not my home; I’m just passing through.” Yet in another sense, this place will one day be God’s Home and our Home in full. So we should care the most about this world and what goes on in it.

We are in our series called Christian freedom from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and today we look the word peace, or as the Hebrews call it, shalom. It’s third in Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit: My aim today is to help us find the core of what’s wrong with our world, and the path to make it right. The path will surprise you, and it’s both easier and harder to walk than you think.

14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

The word peace in the Hebrew culture is rich with meaning. They use the word to say hello or goodbye; it’s like a blessing you say before they go. When you great someone you say shalom to you. If someone asked, "How are you doing?" they would say, "How is your shalom?"

The blessing would sound something like, be whole, be complete, flourish. Like a wish for someone to flourish physically, emotionally, socially, culturally, because of a spiritual flourishing.

Peace, or Shalom, doesn’t mean the absence of war, but the presence of wholeness.

When Paul uses that word, he imports a rich history of songs, stories, and hopes for a world to become what it’s meant to be.

Now, a question we should ask is: why is this word third in the list of what Paul calls fruit?

It sounds like it should go first, doesn’t it? Perhaps we can see this another way.

Love, which is 1st on the list starts as the foundation; 2nd, joy, is the thrill of the presence of God. And peace is joy that has settled in to never leave.

Imagine what J.R.R. Tolkien calls eucatastrophe. It’s the joyful turn amid pain, sorrow, and tragedy. It’s when, not only do you say, "Life should be this way," but you've hit an all-time low and hope is lost, and then the light breaks into the darkness and rescue comes.

From being in the grips of death to being rescued by the prince who loves you and gives you a home in the castle. The happy ending.

That is the joy. But when that joy settles, when the party in your heart turns from singing and dancing to settling into the calm night under the stars, knowing that life is and always will be whole and complete as it should be. Laying your head on your pillow knowing this will last forever. That’s peace.

So peace is knowing joy and peace will never leave.

The expression of peace is ancient, even older than our world. Before the world began there was perfect shalom in the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each fully God, fully loving to another, fully enjoying the other, that will never end. Shalom.

That is what we are after, the shalom found in the Triune God.

A love and joy that lasts and can’t be lost, and there is no anxiety that it will be lost. No anxiety that anything will go wrong.

I used to be a worship leader and developed something called a vocal nodule. It’s like a scar on the vocal cord. Around certain notes, I would lose control of my voice. At any moment, my voice could break. It caused a kind of anxiety in me.

The shalom of trinity never had to worry about something like that. Like three singers who never sing the wrong note. To look upon the triune God would not only rapture you into a love and joy that gives you ecstasy and bliss, but would calm you down.

Praise and rest all at once.

When God made our world, it was an overflow of God’s shalom. Eden was the land of shalom.

God made the world and said it is good.

The word for good in Hebrew is Tov. It doesn’t mean perfection, but the potential for it. It’s full of a life that is meant to grow into perfection. In other words, it’s rip to reach shalom.

So God said to Adam and Eve something like: You are kings and queens; take this garden of Eden, all its goodness, and grow it until it covers all the earth.

In other words, finish the shalom I started. This is called the creation mandate.

While humanity was growing and expanding the garden, a snake, slithered in and spoke of a shalom that was possible without God. It said to Eve, if you eat of this fruit, you can be your own kings and queens. You can build your own kingdom of Shalom. You can make your own Eden, shalom without God. As soon as the fruit was eaten, the tov, the potential of the world becoming what it was always meant to be, seemed lost.

It started with shame. God, who is shalom, came looking for Adam and Eve, and they hid from Shalom, from God. God’s wholeness made them embarrassed and ashamed. God said to them, how did you know you were naked? In other words, that isn’t a feeling you are supposed to have; that isn’t shalom. Did you eat of the tree?

Immediately, shalom among Adam and Eve dissolves. Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent. And from then it began the long and terrible story of humanity blaming others for why the world isn’t like it should.

Humanity was thrown from the mountain garden of God into the chaotic waters and violence of the earth. Natural disasters, sickness, war, hatred, broken hearts, and death now rage here below the mountain garden above.

And the cycle of blaming others for how our world is began.

The same way Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpant, so we blame everyone else for why our world is like it is.

In politics, we point across the aisle and say they are the problem. We think if our side wins, shalom will come back. Then they win, and life isn’t as we hoped.

In the workplace, we think if that one boss or leader could just leave, then life will be better, but even if we get a great new boss, a new person, a new snake, a new problem surfaces. Or this new great boss sees us as the problem.

We become unhappy and blame the person closest to us: our spouse. This makes us resent them until we leave them or secretly look for someone else. But then that new and exciting thing turns into a disaster.

Our kids get loud as we try to fix a problem in our life; our blood starts boiling, we just need to escape them, as if they are the cause of all of your stress, when in reality they are just exposing your preexisting stress.

Blame, blame, blame everyone else for not having peace.

Paul has something interesting to say. He calls all of this blame-shifting the flesh. Let me show you what I mean. Paul calls the flesh self-reliance. It’s like saying, “I can find the good life. I can do it.” And when you don’t, in your pride you look out and judge others, and point at them as part of the problem because it could never be your fault.

Then you vilify others.

Here is where it gets more interesting. Paul calls the flesh not just self-reliance, but a monster.

Imagine a two-faced man. On one side is self-reliance to achieve peace.

On the other side, a monster that blames and attacks anyone in its way of finding peace.

Why it’s so interesting is because the flesh is both self-reliance on one side, and a flesh monster on the other. So when you try to find peace by your own efforts, you can’t help but engage and activate the monster.

This sets you up to bring war on anyone that gets in the way of your peace.

On top of that, Paul has been telling us there is a war within us raging. So we don’t even have internal peace.

The lack of shalom is already happening inside of all of us.

James 4:1 agrees and says, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you.”

Could it be that the problem isn’t just out there, but in each of us?

G.K. Chesterton was asked what is wrong with the world today. He said, “I am.”

His theologian understood that each of us is the problem with the world.

The fleshy monster is everywhere. It’s sitting on thrones and in the hearts of a king’s servant.

At every president’s desk, and in the cook who prepares his meals.

Those of low rank blame those of high rank, and those of high rank blame those of low.

The flesh sits everywhere: behind bank accounts, behind big sales, on construction sites, in restaurant kitchens, and behind the wheel of every car that passes by you. The flesh is everywhere in everyone.

Even behind this pulpit and in your seat.

We can keep changing who sits in every chair but it’s still the flesh.

We can change our job, our hair, where we live, but the flesh keeps following.

You can change the president, the boss, the job but you still wake up with you.

You want peace and the monster in you would never blame itself, so when you don’t get the peace you want the monster in you blames all them out there and bites, devours, and consumes them.

We seek peace and don’t get it so the flesh has fits of anger.

We seek peace and don’t get it, so we run from our reality with alcohol.

We seek shalom and see others get it that they don’t deserve, so we turn jealous.

What would happen if all the right things came into place? The right people in power, the right circumstances? Would that bring peace?

We don’t have to imagine it. 75 years before this letter was written, bandits were ruining the city’s peace.

But then Rome just kinda moved in and took over. And it was wonderful.

The roads were safe. The bandits were gone. There was money, and order, and even free food on festival days. They built a temple in the middle of town and carved the emperor's achievements on the walls. Across the empire, they called him savior.

This is called the Pax Romana, the peace that Rome provides.

By the time Paul shows up, nobody in that church has ever known anything else. Their grandparents remembered the Galatian king. They only remembered Caesar.

Yet, just like us today, they knew something wasn’t right in the world.

Yes there wasn’t war, the enemies weren’t openly attacking them, but it wasn’t shalom.

One Roman writer later said it plainly: "they make a desert and call it peace."

That is the best the flesh can do. It can’t find true peace.

Some of you are running a very small Rome. A quiet house. A managed marriage. An office where nobody says what they think. Everything under control, but nobody is whole.

It there any hope for you? Not within you. But there is hope outside of you. In a person. Not a boss, not a president, not a leader or a king. But it is in a person.

Christianity insists that God who is peace, came into our world, and peace walked among us.

Peace is not a project, it’s a person.

The Galatians were starving for real shalom, heard the good news of Christianity, and despite how unbelievable it would be that God would come into our world, God pricked their hearts, and they believed and received peace, like fruit that grew in them. Not out there but in them.

If real peace is fruit, then it’s stronger than earthly circumstances.

It’s something that grows in you no matter what is happening around you.

Imagine a beautiful tree blooming in the desert with lush, juicy fruit. That’s real peace.

Jesus says I am the vine and you are the branches, without me you can’t bear fruit. That means Jesus is like the root system, that has all the life and nutrients to have peace. You must simply draw the nutrients from Him.

By faith, He is in you, and you are in Him. So how do you draw His peace up?

Paul says walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. To walk by the Spirit means to habitually do something. To keep in step means to be disciplined in the habit. What is the habit? Dependance on the Spirit to draw Christ’s nutrients into you.

The Spirit is like a vein that runs from the branches, you, to Christ deep within, in the secret places of your soul, to draw up Him who is peace.

So you can seek peace by fighting all the problems out there and blaming all those bad people out there, and you will be right. But if you want peace, it must start in you.

Here is the question for you today: Where will you start to seek peace?

Will you depend on yourself to fight the world and change your circumstances, or depend on the Spirit to give you peace no matter what is happening in the world?

If you are self-reliant to find peace by fixing the world, the war only grows in you. And then there is no hope for the world around you, for your home, for the church, because if all of us are self-reliant to create peace then we are relying on the monster to create peace.

We must first have shalom in us before we can grow it in the world around us.

So admit right now, you can’t make yourself whole.

Learn to walk in the Spirit and have a peace that passes all understanding, no matter what is happening in your life, and then you are ready to be a person who can help change our world.

Master the art of Spirit dependance, and let the Spirit master the monster in you and give you peace within.

Once you have peace in you, now you can bring it into your home, then your neighborhood, your church, your workplace. And then you might become someone who knows how to bring peace into the larger corruption of our world.

The problem of our world is that we try to bring peace in the world without first having peace within us, so we replace one monster with another.

I want you to image the Galatians. They are all seeking true peace. Paul sends this letter to them and someone stands up, perhaps in a rented room like this one, opens the letter and here is how it starts.

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Peace. Not from Caesar but from Christ.

Caesar carved his peace in stone. Christ grows his in people.

You can go home and keep running your little empire with self-reliance, letting out your monster that demands peace or you can lay down your self-reliance and depend on the Spirit to grow peace in you and through you into your home.

There is a type of war that brings peace, and it’s the internal war the Spirit is fighting and winning in your life as you depend on the Spirit to animate the peace of Christ in you.

1st step is to recognize the monster in you and others.

2nd know that the Christian has hope. The Spirit is fighting the flesh in you and in other Christians. The Spirit is our hope for peace.

3rd know that you and other Christians are both capable of great harm and great good.

4th seek to depend on the Spirit and help others depend on the Spirit to activate the peace of Christ in you.

Be patient with your friends and encourage them to depend on the Spirit to grow peace.

In your marriage, peace doesn’t come from winning an argument, being right all the time, or always letting the other get what they want. Peace comes by depending on the Spirit to animate the peace of Christ in you, even when you are fighting.

And then our city. In Jeremiah, God says seek the shalom of the city you are in.

But not by force, not by power, but by being people of shalom, people who are whole, shaped into the person of peace, Christ, and wherever God carries us into workplaces, business owners, politicians, doctors, lawyers, teachers- we live with a peace, a shalom.

These are the people who use their power the right way, because they have enough peace to lose it or give it away.

Great evil exists in this world, and the hope is the Spirit of Christ traveling through every Christian, animating the life of Christ in them.

In Eph. 2:14 Paul says, “he himself is our peace.”

Peace is never a project; it’s a person.

Gal. 1:3-4: Peace comes “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.”

Christ is fully God, fully man. The one human life with nothing missing, fractured, or broken.

He came into our world that went wrong.

He didn’t give us a strategy for peace; he came into our world to become the seed of peace.

And on the cross, He took all that was wrong with us and the world and held them as His own.

He took our sin, our shame, our guilt, our monsters and…

He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

God looked straight at the monster within you, and embraced you still, embraced you on the cross to destroy the monster in you.

He died and rose. Appeared to His disciples and said “Peace be with you.” And showed them His side. The cost of peace.

That monster is dying but not yet dead. It’s on the cross, dying. Crucified in Christ.

There he went to war with all evil. He won, and evil is now in a losing battle.

Because Jesus entered the most unhuman thing, the monster of death and the Spirit raised Him from the dead, defeating all that is wrong with out world.

That same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you and is resurrecting peace in you now.

So I ask you how is your shalom? Our answer in Christ can always be. It’s growing into beautiful fruit here in the even the driest of deserts.