Psalm 119.161-176
165 Great peace have they who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble.
Think for a moment how you react when something goes wrong.
Do you panic and run around like Corporal Jones in ‘Dad’s Army;
shouting ‘Don’t panic’?
Do you look around for some else to blame? ‘It must be their fault’
Do you turn the blame in on yourself? ‘It’s always my fault.’
Do you blame God?
How do you handle pressure from others and criticism?
Is it likewise either accusing them or condemning yourself?
And then you realise that you are no longer walking with God
- you’ve fallen flat on your face, you’ve stumbled.
Isn’t v 165 such a positive and challenging call to keep walking
and not let ourselves trip up?
165 Great peace have they who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble.
One of our missionaries in India found herself with an Indian pastor
acting as mediators between Hindus and Muslims
in violent conflict with each other.
It was not the easiest place to be but she recalled saying to her colleague:
‘you know we ought to feel afraid, but I don’t’
and he said the very same;
and then one of them said to the other:
‘This must be nothing other than the peace of God.’
They had great peace in their close relationship with him
and so they were kept from fear in a fearful situation
and kept from any kind of reaction that would have tripped them up.
At the Coleraine conference ‘Confident in Christ’
one of our missionaries in Malawi told the story of a dreadful road accident.
A family he knew were moving house.
They had piled all their furniture on a truck and the family sat on the very top.
As the truck climbed a hill it skidded off the road and down a bank
and one child was killed and the others in the family badly injured.
As he went to the hospital he wondered how he could comfort them
but the family comforted him.
The father said as African Christians often say:
‘God is good all the time, all the time God is good’
How can you say such a thing at such a time
unless you have that great peace which helps you not to stumble?
Is our peace great? Are we confident in Christ?
‘Here on Jesus Christ I will stand. He's the solid rock of my life.’
That’s easy to sing, but is it true for us?
Is it still true when things go wrong?
The secret of the great peace that keeps you from falling is
in the phrase ‘who love your law’.
65 Great peace have they who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble.
This phrase does not refer to people who love bible studies
and know a lot about the Bible and win Bible quizzes.
It refers to people who rejoice in the covenant agreement
they have with God
people who love the Bible in the Old and New Testaments or Covenants
because it shows us how our relationship with God is grounded
and how it is to be lived out.
The writer of Psalm 119 is so passionate about the Law
because it is the link for him between heaven and earth,
between a holy God and us sinful humans.
It is God’s declaration to his people, bad and disobedient as they are
that he still loves them and has delivered them from slavery
and wants them to express that liberation by living in new and better ways.
Of course the New Testament shows us that Christ is the fulfilment of the law
so we love God’s law, we love the whole Bible
because it shows who Jesus is and what he has done for us
The holy scriptures are able to make you wise to salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus
as Paul reminded Timothy (2 Timothy 3.15)
And as he went on to say (vv 16-17)
'All Scripture is God-breathed
and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.'
If you want to be grounded in the great peace of God
you need to be well acquainted with the words of God
so that you won’t get tossed around in the storm or wander lost in the dark.
As Selwyn Hughes put it
'Someone who tries to live without the guidance of the Bible
is like a captain of a ship brushing aside his charts
and saying he will be guided only by his intuition.
No one can remain spiritual who is not scriptural.’
Ajith Fernando directs ‘Youth for Christ’ in Sri Lanka.
He spoke at the ‘Confident in Christ’ conference
and was very open about his own weakness.
He tells his workers:
‘When things are going well, read your bible,
that when things go badly it may help you.’
And he told this story about how he had become discouraged
by the great difficulties they were facing:
war, persecution, poverty, internal divisions.
One day he heard his wife saying to the children
in the sort of loud voice wives use when they are talking to the children
but have a message for their husbands.
‘Father is in a bad mood, lets hope he goes and reads his bible.’
Ajith said to us:
‘When I go to the scriptures I enter another world
where there is stability and security and I am lifted up.’
How relevant to Christians anywhere when so much is unstable and insecure!
65 Great peace have they who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble.
And indeed even when we do stumble
what else helps us get up than what God says?
Lets be clear as we close that this is God’s peace from God’s word.
Jesus promised his disciples at a time of great fear and uncertainty
that he would give them his peace, not the world’s peace.
We all love the world’s peace:
times when the sun shines and it’s calm and bright
and the phone doesn’t ring and your neighbour’s music isn’t too loud
and burglar alarms aren’t shrieking away.
But that's a temporary peace.
And sadly some people think they can get peace
from a bottle or a pill or a needle.
but that is an addictive peace that destroys.
The world’s peace evaporates at the first sign of trouble
The great peace of Jesus is there in the times of trouble.
As somebody put it (E Clowney)
‘Peace is not just quiet fellowship with the Lord in the upper room.
Jesus gave shalom to his disciples
as he sent them into a world of trouble and suffering
and as he went to the cross
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
(John 16.33)
So how do we react when we face trial and trouble?
Panic? Blame? Despair? Hurt?
I will not try to hide from you that I am not an expert in great peace.
Those who know me the best will know my weakness
that I too have bad moods when I need to go and read my Bible
and renew my relationship with the Lord.
My life, like all our lives, is a work in progress
and I thank God that things that used to annoy me a lot
don’t bother me so much now.
When I got into conflict with people especially over spiritual matters
it used to unsettle my peace.
If somebody said to me they didn’t believe in God at all
or mocked my beliefs as childish and out of date
I used to get defensive or depressed or even vindictive
trying to think of a smart reply to come out the winner in the argument
and have the last word.
A lot of that had to do with my desire to be right
and to be seen to be an effective, successful Christian.
I am still grieved by unbelief, it is sad when people mock Jesus.
I still struggle with criticism
how to accept it when it makes a fair point
and to leave it with Jesus when it is undeserved and unfair.
He took a lot of undeserved and unfair criticism.
But more and more I have come to see that my great peace
comes only from being accepted and forgiven and established by Jesus Christ
who died for me and is risen and exalted.
And I love the words of God in this book
because they make that clear
and reassure me when I get down
and challenge me when I get proud
and correct me when I want to go my own way.
Here on Jesus Christ I will stand.
He's the solid rock of my life.
It’s not the work of my hands
There's no other place I can hide
'til the storm that rages subsides.
My voice cries to God from the flood,
and I'm saved because of his blood.
He's the solid rock of my life.
Some verses from Psalm 112 (1,3-7)
make a good commentary on Psalm 119.
[1] Blessed is the man who fears the LORD,
who finds great delight in his commands.
[3] Wealth and riches are in his house,
and his righteousness endures forever.
[4] Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man.
[5] Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely,
who conducts his affairs with justice.
[6] Surely he will never be shaken;
a righteous man will be remembered forever.
[7] He will have no fear of bad news;
his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.
Speak to us, Lord Jesus ‘with the voice that spans the years,
speaking life, stirring hope, bringing peace to us’
you have died to be our peace, you have risen,
one day we shall be with you for ever.
Until then help us to cope joyfully with trouble
in your joy and your peace.
Lord,
help us to understand and accept your providence
which causes it to rain alike
upon the just and the unjust
and scatters things of this life
as trifles of so little importance
that they mean neither love nor hatred.
Please fix our steps that we may not stagger
at the uneven motions of this world,
but steadily go on to our glorious home,
neither judging our journey
by the weather we meet with
nor turning out of the way
for anything that happens to us,
as true followers of Jesus Christ.
(adapted from George Hickes edn
of devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices by John Austin
in An Anthology of Prayers ed. AST Fisher)
'May you receive the peace that Christ gives you, not as the world gives
May your hearts not be troubled or afraid.'
May his presence within guard and keep you from sin
Go in peace, go in joy, go in love.
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