The Gift of Peace
Saddleback Church Weekend Messages
Saddleback Church
4.7 • 723 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Christmas Eve, we gathered to celebrate Jesus and the gift of peace He came to give. We looked at a question many of us ask, is this really all there is? Scripture reminds us that God has more for you. He has a plan and a purpose, and true joy and lasting fulfillment are found as we know God, find community, pursue growth, make a difference, and impact the world. If those things stirred something in you, we invited you to start the new year with us as we begin our new message series, Back on Track. We also explored what the Bible says about peace. Jesus never promised a problem free world, but He did promise peace in Him. Peace is not the absence of chaos, it is the presence of God. As we closed with candlelight, we were reminded that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and His peace is available to us today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, this is Andy Wood, and I'm the pastor here at Saddleback Church, and this is our podcast. |
| 0:07.9 | Be sure to subscribe so we can get you these new messages every week, and I hope you enjoy today's message. |
| 0:14.2 | Let's dive in. |
| 0:26.3 | I want to talk about a subject for a few moments that shows up a lot during Christmas. |
| 0:30.8 | And it's in songs, it's on Christmas cards, you've probably seen it. |
| 0:32.7 | It's the subject of peace. |
| 0:36.2 | And there's a certain phrase that often shows up on Christmas cards. |
| 0:37.7 | It's this phrase right here, |
| 0:43.0 | Peace on Earth. Now, Stacey and I have been doing Christmas cards with our family since the kids were really young, and we've even put that phrase on our cards before, peace on earth. And there's |
| 0:49.0 | something inside of all of us that longs for peace. We look for it in various places, circumstances, relationships, |
| 0:56.6 | maybe calming down and slowing down a little bit. But you know that phrase, peace on earth, |
| 1:01.5 | I did a little bit of research this week to figure out where does that phrase actually come |
| 1:06.2 | from. And I was surprised to find out that phrase comes from Jesus, but it comes in a very unique way. In Luke |
| 1:12.0 | chapter 12, verse 51, and there's some notes around you if you'd like to pull them out. Jesus makes |
| 1:17.4 | a statement. He says, do you think that I've come to bring peace on earth? Now, if I were to just |
| 1:22.8 | read that question, most of us would say, yeah, I thought Jesus came to bring peace on earth, but Jesus |
| 1:28.4 | said, no, I didn't. I didn't actually come to bring peace on earth, not the way that you think |
| 1:33.9 | of peace. In fact, what Jesus is saying is that so often our looking for peace is found, we often |
| 1:40.2 | think that it's found in our circumstances, so we look to the things around us, the world |
| 1:45.0 | around us somehow to bring peace to our lives. But the reality is all of us know that the world |
| 1:50.7 | is full of problems. The world was full of problems when Jesus was here and the world is full of |
| 1:56.0 | problems now. And Jesus actually said to us that the world would give us a whole lot of trouble. I want you to |
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