Peace for Those Who Love Your Law

Read Psalm 119:161-168

God gave his people the law for their own good.  They were his people but didn’t know diddly about living a life that pleased God.  They knew to fear God and made some offerings and worshiped him in some ways, but they didn’t really have an instruction manual.

God gave them one.  They were given 10 foundational commandments and another 603 instructions and decrees for various things, some coming with assigned punishment or compensation attached for transgressing. There were proverbs to provide wisdom on top of these directives.  Prophets brought additional messages that pointed his people back to the right living defined in the law.

God also made a way through offerings and sacrifices to be made right with him on a recurring basis.  We don’t understand this life of being made right with God through a sacrifice that we bring.  We’ve never lived this way.

In our relationship with God, he alone provided the sacrifice.  It was not something that had to be done again each year.  It was truly once and for all.  Jesus paid it all. 

We are ransomed, rescued, redeemed, revived, and restored to a good status with our Creator as if we had never sinned. We like it this way.  What a gift!

Our human nature may want to make ourselves right with God by what we do, but when we have eyes to see that we are only complete with God’s love and his grace, then we rejoice in the gift of life and life eternal that we know in Christ.

Last week, we thought about how out of sync we found ourselves more times than not.  We were out of sync with the world.  Things did not fall into place so many times.  We seemed to be swimming upstream again and again.

And that’s not always a bad thing.  It seems bad or inconvenient or just difficult when we are out of sync with our vision of our lives.  But what if that friction was caused not by being in sync with God and his way of doing things but by doing things our way?  We are not talking about persecution here, but peace.  What if our difficulties with this world were a part of God loving us?

Great peace have those who love your law,

and nothing can make them stumble.

If I am doing things God’s way why don’t I have this peace?  Why is there so much friction in my life.  It’s not that I am out of sync with the ways of the world, I also seem out of sync with the ways of God.  Where is my peace?

The psalmist declares that peace—great peace—rests upon those who love your law.  Do we love God’s laws?  Do we love his ways?

Or, do we want to know just how much we can get away with and still be saved?  Do we try not to read the Bible too closely, so we can—at least in our own minds—know that God agrees with the way we see things. 

Or, maybe we do read God’s word and know that we should do things his way. Do we try to be compliant with God’s ways or do we really embrace them?  Do we love the ways of our Lord?

Perhaps the friction that we experience in our lives comes more from within than from around us.  The world is always going to be the world.  That should not surprise us.

But do we love our neighbor because we are commanded to and don’t want to anger the God who is love?  Or, do we love our neighbor because we love God and love his ways?

Do we love the ways of our Lord?

It’s easy to just say yes, but he has called us to do many things that don’t make sense to our carnal minds and human desires.

Love your neighbor.  I can get into that.

Love your enemy.  Can you truly embrace that? Or if you had the chance to talk with Jesus at the creation of the world, would you have asked him to make sure the mosquitos didn’t get on the ark and to omit this stuff about loving your enemies?

And this pick up your cross and die to yourself stuff is something of a hard sell.   Maybe I can comply somewhat, but can I really get into that sort of thing?  Can I?  Can I really go all in on this stuff?

I wrote a message to put in the school supply bags as I do most every year.  I want to connect with people even after they have headed home.  I know some of these messages ended up in the classroom as some parents just send the bag to school without looking inside, but for those who read it, here is the hook:

Near the end of the Bob Seger song, Against the Wind, is the lyric I’m older now but still runnin’ against the wind.  Yes, I know that this is really an oldie for some of you, but the lyrics ring true with many today.

Do you feel like you are running against the wind?

Did you know that the word used in the Bible for God’s Holy Spirit also means wind?  Jesus compared the Spirit of God to the wind.  If it feels like everything—or too many things—seem to be going against you, consider if it is because you have chosen to resist the ways of God.  Ask, am I running against the wind?  Am I trying everything the world’s way instead of God’s way?

You might think, Well, I pray.  That’s good.  It is necessary but not sufficient.  God desires us to have more than thoughts and words.  He calls us to give our entire lives in service to him.  That doesn’t mean that we are all preachers, but we are called to love and serve him and to love others.  He calls us to action. 

When we start doing things his way, we start seeing things his way, and we have a chance to embrace his way.  It’s sort of like the world says seeing is believing and we know that in our faith, believing is seeing. 

It’s something of a corollary to that.  We have a chance to love the ways of the Lord.  If we do what he says, we can see things his way.  We have a chance to love his ways!

Too often we don’t trust, don’t do what his law says, and don’t reap the blessing of peace.

When the world remains a chaotic conundrum of craziness, but you have set your sails to catch the wind—the Spirit of God, you move forward. You accept God’s ways.  You grow in grace to where you embrace his ways.

The world is not changed but we are.  We love the ways of the Lord and follow the leading of his Spirit and we have peace. 

Almost 40 years ago, I was a second lieutenant in what the Marine Corps calls the Basic School.  It is a three and one-half year school crammed into six months.  The drinking from a firehose metaphor does not do justice to this course of instruction.  It’s early to late in the classroom, in the field, in testing and inspection, and in every other thing that could be crammed into six months.

This was education, indoctrination, and tribulation.  Often the associated commensuration included the phrase, “Why in the world do we need to know this stuff?”

Some 8, 15, and even 20 years later, I would answer a question or solve a problem or just know what to do and someone would ask, “Where did you learn that?”

The answer was at the Basic School.  This was the school where generation after generation of newly commissioned officers would remove the letters A, I, and C from the school sign expressing some measure of contempt for the regimen.

For the next 20 years, I didn’t have to think about what to do.  I knew what to do.  I somehow agreed with what to do.  It came naturally.  I embraced what I had been forced to swallow as if they were bitter herbs.  Now there were surely new problems that required new solutions, but so much of what I knew to do came from those 6 excruciating months of my life.

I embraced what I had learned. The more I used it, the more I saw the wisdom of it, the more I reaped the benefits of what seemed to be a ton of useless information decades ago.

What would happen if we studied intently in the ways of the Lord?  What would happen if instead of saying, “That doesn’t make sense,” we presumed that because it came from God, it makes perfect sense?

What if we studied and applied God’s precepts every day?  What if we stopped complying with what God has to say and started embracing what he says?

What’s the difference between complying and embracing?  Peace is the difference.

Great peace have those who love your law,

and nothing can make them stumble.

We will still have trouble in the world.  That’s a given, but we will not stumble.  We will not choose the wrong path.  We will not long for the ways of the world.  We will not veer from the path. 

We will have peace and he will make our paths straight.  We will have peace and he will direct our paths.  I knew that Proverbs 3:5-6 would make its way into this psalm somehow.

Jesus said that he did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill the law.  The law has always been for our own good.  The fulfillment of the law in Christ Jesus gives us a chance to live in right standing with God and to live in his peace.

Too often we think of the law as 248 things we are required to do and 365 things that we must not do.   It’s like 248 hoops to jump through and 365 landmines that we might step on.  But what if it was a guide to good living? 

What if we embraced that God’s ways were and are for our own good?

In Christ, compliance with 613 directives gives way to embracing the law of love.  Do the words all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments sound familiar?  The law did not go away.  It is fulfilled in Christ.

The laws of our Lord are still a guide for good living.  We should embrace them.  But life and life eternal come through the one-time sacrifice made by Jesus. 

We love the laws of God not because our salvation hangs in the balance but because it doesn’t.  What hangs in the balance is our peace.

When we love the ways of the Lord—not just comply with his way but embrace it—we will know peace and God will keep us on the best path for our lives.  We will not stumble.

He gave us his Spirit to help us in this world.  The Counselor, the Comforter, the Advocate, and of course the Helper is within us.  God’s own Spirit is like the wind in our sails.  If we find that we are not moving forward in our lives or we seem to be trying to comply with God’s rules but don’t have any peace, it might be time to adjust our sails.

If we are just trying to follow rules and are not catching the wind that is God’s own Spirit, we are missing out on peace. We need to adjust our sails.  We need to catch the wind that is the Spirit and let God direct our paths.

Let us love the ways of our Lord and enjoy his peace and direction.

Let us love the ways of our Lord.

Amen.