Blog Detail

Jehovah Shalom – The Lord is Peace…

To understand how the Lord can be our Peace, we must first comprehend where our battle lies. Gideon used this name to remember God’s Peace given in a time of Israel’s judgment due to their sinful ways. Gideon was approached by an angel who announced that God had heard their cries due their oppression under the hands of the Midianites. They regularly attacked them and took away their food harvests and their animals, leaving them to starve.
(Judges 6:1-4 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. (2) And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. (3) For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. (4) They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.)
— God had allowed this because the people of Israel had turned from following Him and started to follow the god’s of the Amorites.
— Then God sent an angel with a message for Gideon the son of a backsliding Israelite Joash.
(Judges 6:20-24 And the angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.” And he did so. (21) Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. (22) Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.” (23) But the LORD said to him, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.” (24) Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and called it, The LORD Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.)  

The real battle the Israelites were fighting wasn’t with the Midianites, it was with their unfaithfulness, their abandoning the God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
— In our day, we all are in slavery, because we also have abandoned our Creator God.
— I like the way the Good News Bible brings this out in Romans 3:21-24… But now God’s way of putting people right with himself has been revealed. It has nothing to do with law, even though the Law of Moses and the prophets gave their witness to it. (22) God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ, because there is no difference at all: (23) everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence. (24) But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free.

 

Today God is OUR Peace, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as OUR Lord and Savior.