Speaker: What we're gonna talk about this morning together is
something that can be elusive.
Peace can be elusive.
For some, peace is a quiet house, while for others, peace is a house
that's full, full of family, full of laughter, full of the, the
noise of relatives and loved ones.
For some, peace is obtained by staying out of conflict.
For others, peace is found by just brute force.
For some, peace means emptying the mind, while for others, like
believers, peace means filling the mind with the right things.
For some, peace may have at one point looked like changing a job, thinking,
"Well, if I get a different job, then things are gonna get better and I'll be
at peace, and the problems that I have now will be gone," only to find when you
get the new job that the new job presents its own challenges to you being at peace.
Others have sought peace through divorce, thinking to themselves, "Well,
if this marriage is just over, then both of us will be happier and we'll
be okay," only to realize after the fact that the relationship may have
been dissolved, but the impact lingers and infects and affects your family
and your kids and your grandkids.
For some, peace looks like looking forward to retirement, but for others
who are currently in retirement, you've realized that the peace that you thought
you might have has been replaced by anxieties and worries and fears about now
the brevity of life and asking questions about what's next Peace can be elusive,
and we live in the time and a context in which the world is in turmoil and chaos.
We've got wars going on between Russia and Ukraine.
You've got the United States and Iran.
You've got rising costs here that we're facing in America.
You've got falling water levels.
You've got all kinds of things that cause us to say, "Is there really a
foundation, a basis for my peace today?"
I don't find a whole lot of peace when I open up the news browser.
I don't find a whole lot of peace when I look around at my workplace,
or sometimes we may even be thinking, I, I don't find a lot of peace
when I look around at my family.
And so where is peace found?
Can peace be found?
Well, the good news this morning is yes, peace can be found as long
as we know where to look for peace.
I wanna do something a little bit different this morning.
We're gonna be in verses 161 through 168 in Psalm 119, but jump right
into the middle of the passage.
Look at verse 165.
Psalm 119 verse 165 says this, "Great peace," there's our word, "great
peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble."
Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.
This great peace, it's a, it's a peace that abounds, a peace that overflows.
It, it, it's a peace that is unending.
And the psalmist, who I believe is David, says that that's available for those who
love the law of God, the Word of God.
Our whole series this summer has been about being in God's Word, and
we've looked at various benefits of being in the Word of God.
And this morning what we're gonna find is that there's the benefit of
peace that comes from the Word of God.
Now, I read from Romans chapter five that there is a static peace that we
already have in Christ, that there is a peace that you have with your Heavenly
Father that doesn't ever change because that peace was won for you by Jesus on
the cross and through the empty tomb But that said, there's a static peace
and then there's a, a dynamic peace, and, and that dynamic peace is the
peace that we experience on a day-to-day basis, saying, "Do I feel peace today?
Do I feel close with the Lord today?
Do I feel confident in where I stand with Christ today?
How do I think about wars, and rising costs, and all of the things that
the world wants me to be afraid of?
How do I have peace in the midst of all that?"
Well, that peace is dynamic, and that peace is a peace that we read about
here in Psalm 119:165, which is a peace that comes from the Word of God.
And it's a peace that means that nothing else that happens to us can
make us stumble if we have the peace that comes from the Word of God.
And, and why is that?
Well, it's because the peace that we're gonna talk about this morning
is a peace that's not circumstantial.
A- a- and so this peace is not yours if your life is going well.
Th- this peace is not only available to you if your marriage is good.
This peace is not available to you if there's no wars.
This peace is not just available to you if, you know, you're getting the promotion
at work and finances are in order at home.
No, this is a peace that transcends circumstances.
This peace is not circumstantial, and because it's not circumstantial, this
peace is also not temporal, meaning this peace is not just peace that's
gonna only be there for a season.
Sometimes you enter into seasons where you feel more at peace than
others, and you can be thankful, thankful and grateful for those times.
But because so often peace as the world defines it is circumstantial,
that it's, it's temporal.
It doesn't last.
You'll go in and out of peace throughout your life, at least
from a world's standpoint.
Instead, this is a peace that, while not circumstantial or temporal,
instead is a peace that never fades.
It's a peace that never lessens, and it's a peace that's always available
because it's always going to be available to you if you love the Word.
Again, 119:165, "Great peace have those who love your law."
That's the thesis of our whole passage this morning.
You could put it this way: Those who love the Word will find true peace.
Those who love the Word will find true peace.
Where is true peace found?
True peace is found in the Word of God.
We're gonna begin in verses 161 through 162 as we jump back up from 165.
Here it says this: "Princes," David says, "Princes persecute me without cause, but
my heart stands in awe of your words.
I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil."
So David is, is, i- he's going through it as he's writing this.
David's not writing this from the lap of luxury.
He's not writing this during one of those times that the world would look at David
and say, "Well, that guy's at peace, so of course he's writing about being at peace."
No, no, no.
David's writing this as he's being persecuted, he says
here, by the, the princes.
The princes would've been the rulers, the authorities, the powers.
We don't know exactly the circumstances facing him, but we
know there were times in David's life where he had to run for his life.
We know there were times where David was being chased by people
who had the power to kill him, to execute him, to take him out.
A- and so David is saying, "This is one of those seasons.
Princes are coming after me.
They're persecuting me.
They are chasing me.
They are following me.
They are pursuing me."
But notice he says, "Without cause."
In other words, David is saying, "It's not as though this is God's
hand of discipline in my life."
Rather, this would be like one of those seasons that we've read about
in the Psalms during our DBR where David pleads his, his innocence, his
integrity before the Lord, where he would go before the Lord and say, "Lord,
I'm asking you to deliver me according to the innocence of, of my hands.
I have not been guilty of what people are saying I'm guilty of."
And so David is, is there, and people are coming after him.
He's got all the reasons in the world not to be at peace.
In fact, he has all of the reasons in the world to be fearing
those that are coming after him.
And yet he says, "But my heart stands in awe of your words."
My heart, the inner self, is in awe, or actually in the Hebrew there, it's
the word that means my heart fears, not the princes who are persecuting me.
I'm not i- in awe of or trembling before my circumstances, God.
I'm, I'm trembling before you and your word.
My heart stands in awe of your words.
And then he says, "I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil
Again, peace.
Peace is something everybody wants.
You're never gonna find somebody that's, and, and offer them peace
and say, "Hey, uh, would you like to have more peace in life?"
Only for them to be like, "You know, thanks, but no thanks.
I kinda like anxiety.
I, I, I like being afraid.
I like worrying about whether or not my job is gonna be there next week.
Yeah, thanks for the offer of peace, but no thanks."
No, if, if peace is on the table, usually people want peace.
And what we find here is, is even though David was in the midst of a, a turmoil
and a trial, he's saying even in the darkest hours of his life, there is
peace that's available to him, and it begins with a right perspective of the
Word of God, which will frame a right perspective of the God of the Word.
Our first point this morning is this: if you want more peace, the peace that
comes from the Word, it's this: let the awe of the Lord bring peace to your soul.
Let the awe of the Lord bring peace to your soul
I love the, the picture of these opening verses as David is saying,
"The per- princes are persecuting me, but I stand in awe of your word."
I, for some reason, what came to my mind is the movie scene where the
main character is walking through the midst of … in slow moti- motion.
The explosions are going off all around him, and the bullets are flying
across the screen, and he's just walking through unfazed by it all.
'Cause why?
Because his eyes are somewhere else.
He's focused on something else, and so he's able to endure.
He's able to persevere.
And, and the things that the world is doing, the things that the enemies
are doing, all the explosions, they're not really rattling him.
They're there.
He's not gonna deny that they're there, but he's walking through unfazed because
he's got his eyes somewhere else.
David says, "The princes are persecuting me, but I stand in awe of you."
My focus is you, Lord.
My focus is on your words.
Again, my heart stands in awe.
It's, it's the concept of, of fearing God, of, of trembling before his Word.
I wonder this morning when's the last time you were in awe of something like that?
That, that you had something that just took your breath away.
Maybe it was a, a sunrise or an athletic feat that you witnessed or a work of art
or maybe your, your child being born.
I remember back in California being a college pastor, we took our,
our college ministry up to, uh, go see Yosemite, um, on a retreat.
And I remember when we were there or, or going there, they were telling
me, because I'd never been there before, I had just seen pictures.
They said, "When you go to Yosemite, you drive through a tunnel."
And some of y'all have been there, and you know the tunnel that I'm talking about.
And so you drive through this tunnel, and before you get to
this tunnel, I, I mean, it's
Whatever.
It's pretty.
It's nice, but it's nothing that's awe-inspiring.
But then you hit this tunnel, and I remember the students that
had been there ahead of me, they, they said, "Pastor PJ, just wait.
When you come out of this tunnel, it's the most amazing sight you've ever seen."
And so sure enough, you come out of the tunnel, and you just see spread out
before you Yosemite Valley, and you see El Cap and you see Half Dome, and you
just see the beauty of God's creation on display, and it seems like it comes
out of nowhere, and it is awe-inspiring.
You're left there just feeling small and just feeling just
wonder at God's creation.
Maybe you've had a, a moment like that where you've thought about, you've
been in awe of something in life.
But when was the last time you were in awe of the Word of God?
When was the last time you, you trembled in amazement at what God has revealed
about himself in the scriptures?
You might think, "Well, why would I be in awe over words on a page?"
Because of whose words they are.
Look at what David says again.
He says, "My heart stands in awe of…"
What are the next two words?
Your words.
My heart stands in awe of your words.
Now, for King David, that would've been the Torah.
That would've been the, the first five books of the Old Testament, which
we believe were written by Moses.
But David doesn't say that my heart stands in awe of Moses' words, and
he doesn't say my heart stands in awe of the Word, or my heart stands
in awe of the, the Scriptures.
No, David personalizes this.
Because of the, the one behind the Word of God.
That's what makes the Word of God something that we should be in awe of.
He says, "My heart stands in awe of your words."
And this is, again, something that I keep coming back to when I think about this,
and this has been something that God has been challenging me about in this whole
series this summer on Summer in the Word, is that this Word, this Bible, is God's
written revelation of Himself to us.
The God of creation, the Lord of the universe, the highest of all
conceivable beings, condescended
to tell us about Himself in the form of this book.
I want you to think about your backyard for a second.
We live in Texas, so you have fire ants in your backyard.
Unless, we got lawn carpet in our backyard.
We have turf in our backyard, so they don't like that, so they're not there.
But I want you to think about a fire ant hill, and I want you to imagine
going to the fire ant hill and, and then stirring up the fire ant hill
really quick with a stick because it's fun, and they just start sc-
s- you know, scurrying all around.
And then I want you to imagine looking down at the fire ant hill
and saying, "Um, hey, ants, can I have your attention please?
I've written a, a book for you and, and I want you to have it, and it's
gonna tell you, uh, all about who I am.
Um, because I have the power to end your life.
I've got magnifying glasses.
Don't make me go get them."
Right?
You think that's absurd.
That's absurd.
Why would I, as a human being, stoop to make myself known in
that way to an, an ant hill?
Y'all, that is nothing compared to what it took God to condescend
to make himself known to us
To His creation.
W-w-we didn't, we didn't deserve it, we didn't earn it, we didn't merit it.
In fact, we rebelled against Him.
We rejected Him from the outright.
Yeah, God, that's nice and all, but yeah, I think the serpent has some wisdom
that I might wanna listen to instead.
And still, what did God do?
He gave us, right here, His Word.
"This is who I am," is what the Lord is saying, "and this is who you are,
and this is what I've done about it."
And so why should I be in awe of the Word of God?
W-why should I let my soul feel awe as I read the Word of God?
Because it is the Word of God.
It's not about the word, it's about the God of the Word, and the Word
of God tells us about Him, and the Word of God gets us to Him.
Some might think, "Well, what does that actually look like for me practically?"
Well, this morning, if you're doing our daily Bible reading with us, we're
in the Book of Acts, Acts Chapter 26.
So in Acts Chapter 26, the Apostle Paul is found there, and he's on trial, and
he's standing there, and he's giving his testimony and, and that's exactly
what we find in Chapter 26, where Paul says, "This is who I was," okay?
"But God…
And, and then now I'm here bearing witness before you, calling for you to believe."
And so we read this, and, and we read Acts 26, and we might even
think to ourselves, "You know what?
I've read this before.
All right, what's next?
What else do you have for me, God?"
But what if we stopped and we thought a little bit more intentionally as we were
reading, and we thought, "You know what?
This is Paul's testimony.
This is the story about God, h-how God took somebody who was spiritually
dead and made them alive, and used him to do amazing things for the kingdom
God's not only done that in Paul's life, man, God did that in my life too.
And so now all of a sudden Acts 26 becomes an occasion for us
to reflect on how God saved us.
The story that God is, is telling in our life and writing in our
life, how He's transforming us from death to life and using us,
maybe not to write the scriptures obviously, but to serve Him still.
And so we can read Acts 26, and we can be intentional in how we think and how
we reflect, and all of a sudden find ourselves in awe of the God of the Word
as we spend our time in the Word of God.
Remember the story of Jesus calming the storm?
I think there's a, a parallel here.
Uh, uh, Jesus' disciples had seen Him do some pretty amazing things, hadn't they?
I mean, even the first miracle right out of the gate, He's turning water to wine.
That's pretty powerful.
That's amazing.
They had seen Him do all of these other things and these wonders and, and yet
I believe one of the reasons why God brought them onto the sea and into
the storm on the sea is because they were probably getting a little bit
too comfortable with Jesus, a little bit too familiar with their rabbi.
And so all of a sudden they're on the sea, Jesus is with them, but Jesus
is sleeping, and here comes this massive storm that had these seasoned
fishermen thinking this was the end.
And so the, the waves are lapping over the boat.
The boat is filling up and, and they're so terrified, they go and
they, they, they wake Jesus up.
"U- u- um, hello?
Don't you care that w- that we're dying?
We're going down here."
And Jesus gets up, and He goes to the front of the boat, and He looks out
at the storm, and He says, "Be still."
And not only does the wind cease and the storm cease, but the waves
become immediately placid and calm
And the response of the disciples, we read in Matthew 8:27, was this.
It says, "The men marveled, saying, 'What sort of man is this that even
the winds and the sea obey him?'"
The men marveled.
They'd been with Jesus for so long, and yet God brought them again to this
moment of marveling and remembering who He is and going, "God, wow, who is this?"
Y- you may have been walking with Jesus for the last four or five
decades, or maybe for four or five years, or maybe for four or five
weeks, or maybe for four or five days.
Wherever you are, there are gonna be moments where you are gonna
have occasion throughout your walk with Christ to be in awe of God.
And I'm just saying if you want peace, y- y- the, the world's
gonna try to, to terrify you with everything that was going on.
Instead, come and sit humbly before the Lord and be in awe of Him.
But here's the thing, y'all.
That's gonna take a concentrated reflection.
It's gonna take work.
It's gonna take you sitting there s- saying, "Okay, God, what are you
teaching me about yourself right now?
What am I learning about your sovereignty and your goodness and your
compassion and your love and your mercy?
What do I see here?"
And, and, and, and sit with that stuff.
Sit with those meditations.
Sit with those observations, and let them drive you to wonder at God
But it's not just a- an awe that is a, a fearful awe.
It's an awe that's also a, a joyful awe.
Look at verse 62.
162, sorry.
In 162, he says, "I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil."
And so he says, "The princes are persecuting me.
I'm on the run.
But I stand in awe of your word, and I rejoice.
I rejoice at your word, like one who finds great spoil."
Jesus told a- another parable.
He told a story in, in Matthew, uh, chapter 13 about a man who found a field.
Maybe you remember this story.
He found a field.
In the middle, middle of the field, he discovered a treasure.
And it says there in the text that he took the treasure, he buried it, and
he went and he sold all that he had, and in great joy, he bought the field
so that he could get the treasure.
I want you to picture going to look for a house.
Um, I've told you before, I've, I've readily admitted this and, and I'm
n- not ashamed to admit it again.
I still watch House Hunters, uh, from time to time with my wife.
But imagine i- in House Hunters, there's always the one house that
you're going, "Why did you go there?
That's, that's not even, that's not even anywhere in what they're looking for."
And you go, "There's no way they're gonna buy that house.
There's nothing appealing about that house."
So I want you to imagine you're looking for a new house, and
that's the house that you come to.
You're sitting there, and you're wondering to yourself, "Why
did our realtor bring us here?
This is n- none of the things that we're looking for.
It's not what we want.
It's not what we need.
It's not in the area that we need.
It's not new.
It doesn't look nice.
I-- Why are we here?"
But then all of a sudden, as you're looking through the house, you wander
off and, and you find the attic, and, and being adventurous, you're like, "Well,
I'll just check what's up in the attic.
Let's just see what's up there."
So you go up in the attic, and you find a, a suitcase, and it's clear
that this suitcase has been h- up there and forgotten about for decades.
It's got layers of dust on top of this thing.
And so out of morbid curiosity, you go, "Yeah, sure, I'm
gonna unzip the suitcase."
So you unzip the suitcase, and you open it up, and to your great shock
and awe, what you find in there is that the suitcase is filled with
stacks of hundred dollar bills.
And so you pull out AI, like I had to do this week to find out how much
money fits in a suitcase, and you quickly do some numbers, and you
realize you're looking at about six million dollars in this suitcase.
All of a sudden, this three hundred thousand dollar house that you're looking
at, going, "Why did they bring me here?"
Takes on a new form.
So you zip up the suitcase, you go back down the attic, you find
the realtor, and what do you say?
Sold.
Full asking price, right now.
Let's do this.
Get him on the phone.
No inspection necessary.
We'll take it as is.
What changed?
You realized something that caused you great awe and gave you great joy,
and then you said, "I have to have it.
I have to have it
Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like, like a treasure hidden in a field that
a man found and co- covered up, and then in all of his joy, he goes and sells what
he has, and he buys this, this field.
He's talking about the kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of
heaven is only understandable as we come to the Word of God.
And so in the Word of God, we find the treasures that God wants us to have.
We find treasures along the way as we read it that can bring us this great joy.
Treasures like God's sovereign love in Romans or treasures like the, the grace,
saving grace of God in Ephesians or Christ's sufficiency in Colossians or
joy in Christ in the Book of Philippians.
Or we find in Psalms the, the treasure of what it looks like to lament our
circumstances, but to find comfort in God.
Or we go to the Book of Proverbs, and we find in Proverbs what it
looks like to seek the wisdom of God.
And these are all the, the treasures that are ours if we will give ourselves over
to pursuing the Word of God and studying it and mining it and reflecting on it.
These are things that will bring us awe.
And all of a sudden, everything else going on in our lives won't
seem, seem nearly as impressive or frightening when we realize the God
that we serve revealed in His Word.
But y'all, this is gonna take time, and it's gonna take work.
I want you to think about an appointment.
I'm sure you've been in a circumstance or a situation where somebody, either a
leader, a boss, a team lead, a manager, somebody has requested a meeting with you
And you probably responded by saying, "Okay
And then maybe they said, "Okay, I, I'm gonna need 30 minutes from you."
And my guess is that your response wasn't an eye roll like, "Oh, 30 minutes?
Can't we do it in five?
Can we just make this like a…
Can you just record a podcast for me about what this meeting's about and
send it to me and I'll listen to it?"
My guess is that you're probably like, "Okay, you need
30 minute, minutes with me.
You have the right to request that because you are my boss and,
and you're the one that I'm, I report to, and so let's do this.
I'm, I, I want a meeting with you, 30 minutes
Or let me change it.
Let me change the, the scenario for you.
Let's take it away from being your boss.
That's one example.
Let's make it somebody that you love
Let's say somebody that you love said, "Hey, can we go out
to dinner together tonight?"
You're like, "Yeah, let's, let's go."
"Okay, great.
I was thinking that we should go to this restaurant and, uh, and eat there."
And you're thinking in your mind, "Oh man, the wait is gonna be so long there,
and then it, it's a sit-down place.
The Rangers game starts at 7:00.
Can we, can we just go to McDonald's?
Can we do something quick?
Can we do something faster?"
Y- you realize in both of those scenarios that it's absurd to respond to the
person who's requesting time with you to say, "How little time can I give you?"
And yet that's our approach to God's word
You have the creator of the universe who said to you, "I want
a daily appointment with you.
I want time with you."
And we look at him and we're like, "Well, can't we just do it in five?"
Can't, can't you just be happy with two minutes?
I give you two that I know some people that don't even give you any
If y'all want the peace that the Word of God holds out to you, I'm not here
to tell you that it's a- as easy as just sitting down and opening it up
and, and reading it and walking away
The peace that comes from God's word isn't just found by being around
God's word or in God's word, but it's about being under God's word.
It's about sitting with the word of God.
It's about meditating on it.
It's about reflecting.
It's about asking yourselves the question, "God, who are you revealing yourself
to me right now in this passage?"
And so spend the time.
Feel the awe.
Awe doesn't come in a brevity.
Awe doesn't come in, in just a quick, "Let me just pop this in on my commute
to work," and get out and just be able to say, "Okay, great, at least I got
some word of God in my life today."
Awe comes through concentrated time and concentrated effort, and it
will produce a peace along the way.
Well, the peace that comes from the word of God has its origin in the God of the
word, so it makes sense as David moves on that he's gonna move from being in awe
of the Lord to, to worshiping the Lord.
So look where he goes next in verses 163 and 164.
He says, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.
Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules.
I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.
Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules."
The, the peace of God that comes from the word of God is meant to lead us
to the worship of God, in other words.
And so our second point this morning is this: Lift your soul to
the Lord in worshipful adoration.
Lift your soul to the Lord in worshipful adoration.
As you come to the word of God, seek to worship and adore Him
What are the things that you love?
What are the things that you're devoted to?
What are the things that, that have your loyalty?
What, in other words, are, are you worshiping?
Went to the Rangers game with, with my three youngest sons, uh,
while their older siblings were at, uh, revival this last week.
And, uh, it was the game that the good guys won 10 to nothing.
It was awesome.
It was, it was a great game to be at.
Uh, but while we were there, towards the later innings, all of a sudden
there was this great commotion going on up in the stands up to, to the
right from where we were sitting.
And I looked up there, and there were a bunch of dudes with their shirts
off, whipping them around their heads.
This is known as the tarps off crew.
It's, it's something…
I don't even remember where it started.
I think Miami or somewhere like that, or St.
Louis.
Maybe it was St.
Louis.
Uh, and this has kinda swept all the, the Major League parks.
And, and people that are younger and in better shape than I
am, they like doing this now.
But what was interesting, I was watching it the, for part of the game,
because every time somebody else came and joined them, they would go crazy
like somebody just hit a grand slam.
And, and so the- there were probab- it started out with, like, 30 guys.
By the end, there were probably 75, 80 men, uh, that were just whipping
their shirts around their heads.
Even the Rangers mascot, Captain the Horse, went up there, took off his shirt,
and was whirling it around his head.
Which if you don't know baseball or anything else and you're
thinking there was a horse with no shirt twirling around, it's okay.
It's not really part of my point.
My point is I looked at that and I was like, "That's fanaticism.
That's devotion.
That's worshiping what's happening on the field."
They were going crazy.
They had chants.
They had things that they all knew, and they had these
rhythms and everything else.
A- and, and, and that's the worship that they were offering
to this team on the field.
What do you worship?
How does the word of God inform your worship?
W- when we are in awe of the God of the Word, it will lead us to worship
Him, and that's part of this process of finding peace on a daily basis.
Because there's two things that the worship of God is gonna
change about us, or the peace of God is gonna change about us.
The first is this: the, the peace that, of God that transforms our lives is gonna
transform our affections God's peace is gonna begin to transform our affections.
When we come to the Word of God and when we encounter the God of the Word
there, it's gonna change what we love.
Look at what David says here.
He says, "I hate and abhor."
Notice the language.
The language is, is that of affection.
"I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law."
And so David is saying, y- y- I, I detest deception, but
I've come to love the Torah.
I've come to love the truth of God's Word.
And so David is contrasting here, and, and like we mentioned last week, the
more we follow God, the more we will find ourselves at odds with the world.
And one of the other reasons why we will find ourselves at odds with the world
is because the world is governed by the prince of the power of the air, who Jesus
in John 8:44 called the father of what?
Lies.
And so the father of lies rules over the system of deception and
the system of lies in this world.
And so as we follow the God of truth, then we will find ourselves
again at odds with the world.
And as we come to the Word of God, what we will find is God's Word is gonna
begin to transform our affections.
We will be less and less in love with the lies and the deception in the world,
and more and more in love with the God of the Word, with the, the God of truth.
You cannot be at peace with the world and the Lord because you cannot be at
peace with both truth and deception.
It's impossible.
The law of non-contradiction says I cannot be- believe a lie
and the truth at the same time.
And so Jesus, for example, says to us, "You know what?
You need to take up your cross daily and follow me."
Talking about self-denial.
The, the world says you should do what makes you happy and eliminate
all toxic people from your life.
Okay, well, which one is it?
Is it self-denial or is it self-exaltation?
I can't have both.
And God said, "This is the will of God for your life," 1 Thessalonians
Chapter 4, "that you would abstain from sexual immorality."
Okay?
The world says, "You know what?
We're gonna take lust and leverage it as our greatest weapon against people today.
We're gonna flood your entertainment venues and your social media timelines
and everything else with all kinds of sensuality and immorality."
And so God says, "Be pure."
The world says, "Don't worry about it.
It doesn't hurt anybody."
God said, "Look to the interest of others."
The world, based on the very base naturalistic evolutionary
theory, says it's all about the survival of the fittest.
You know what the survival of the fittest doesn't have on its agenda?
The interest of others.
So in other words, y- y- you can't be one foot in and one foot out.
A- and the world is gonna wanna pull you towards its deception and its
lies, and, and this is where I wanna bring it back to your pursuit of peace.
Because if you give in to what the world is offering you, what you're
gonna find is it is deception.
It is empty.
It doesn't fulfill.
A- a- and that's the hideous nature of sin, is the lure is there that
says this is gonna give you peace
Whether that's alcohol or drugs or just the peace of saying, "I
wanna be comfortable in life," or, "If I make enough money, then I'll
be at peace," or, "If I have this type of family, then you know what?
Then I'll be at peace."
A-and yet y-you get those things and you realize that peace
that was promised isn't there
Again, I don't know why other than God just has, has not let me forget,
but the, the death of, of Robin Williams, I always go back to this
He was a multimillionaire many times over.
He made people laugh for a living, and he was good at it.
He was married and had kids, and by all reports, had a, had a good family.
You know what Robin Williams didn't have?
He didn't have peace.
That led to the tragic end of his life.
A- a- and so the world says, "Come chase these things because
these are gonna give you peace."
And, and I think what David is saying here is, "I hate and abher- abhor the
falsehood that are the offers of trying to, to find peace anywhere else but God.
God, I, I hate that.
I…
Instead, I, I love your law."
And so what the peace of God does in our lives is it begins
to transform our affections.
The second thing the peace of God does in our lives is it transforms our worship.
It transforms our worship.
We are worshipers by nature.
In fact, we are never not worshiping.
The only question is what or who are you worshiping?
Part of our hardwired design by God is that we were created to worship.
In fact, he…
We were created, the chief end of man is what?
To glorify God and to, to enjoy him forever.
To glorify God is another way of saying to worship God.
We were designed and created by God to worship him.
Well, enter the fall of mankind, and what's the problem?
The problem is that we have taken God off the throne and replaced
him with all of our other idols, chief among them ourselves.
And so we are by nature a people that worship.
The problem is that we worship the wrong thing.
Paul put it this way in Romans chapter 1.
He said, "Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to
impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because,"
and notice, here's the indictment.
This is the main indictment of all of mankind in Romans chapter 1, "because
they exchanged the truth about God for a lie," notice the truth and deception
component there, "and worshiped and served the creature rather than the
Creator, who is blessed forever."
And so mankind's chief problem is a worship problem
before it is anything else.
We have taken God off the throne, and we've put ourselves on the throne.
We've worsh- worshiped and served the creature rather than the
Creator, who is blessed forever.
When we come to faith in Christ, when we get into the Word of God, one of the
effects of the Spirit of God using the Word of God in our life is to get us off
the throne and put God back on the throne.
It's to begin to go after the idols in our lives and to transform
the things that we worship.
That's why David says in verse 164, "Seven times a day I
praise your righteous rules."
He, he wasn't saying, "Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven."
He meant to completion.
That's what the word seven re- represents there.
"I, I keep praising you, Lord.
I am perpetually worshiping God," because his encounter with God
and because the Word of God is producing that worship in his life.
Charles Spurgeon convictingly said this about this verse.
He said, "Do we praise God seven times a day, or do we
praise Him once in seven days?"
The Word of God is intended to lead us, y'all, to the worship of God.
Again, we, we wanna be in awe of the Word of God because the awe of the Word
of God comes from the God of the Word.
And, and when we get there, then we are moved into this
posture of worshiping the Lord.
And worshiping the Lord that way is gonna bring us peace.
You say, "How is it gonna bring us peace?"
Let me give you an example or a few.
Maybe you do have uncertainty about what's going on in the world right now.
The geopolitical scene keeps you up at night.
You're checking headlines every morning, and you're just more and more
discouraged, you're more and more anxious.
What the Word of God does is the Word of God lifts your eyes to the Sovereign
One who installs kings and removes kings, and reminds you that He's the
one that's ultimately on the throne.
He's the one that's declared the beginning from the end, and it leaves you saying,
"God, I'm gonna praise you for that
And what was once a heart-gripping fear becomes now a, a
heart-possessing trust in Him.
You're worshiping Him
Or maybe it's your kids.
You worry about your children.
You, you worry about what their future's gonna be like.
You worry about what the, the world that they're gonna grow up in is gonna be like,
or you worry about whether or not they're gonna come to faith in Christ someday, and
it keeps you up at night for those things.
And then you go to the Word of God, and you read in the Word of God that God
has knit them together in their mother's womb, that God has written down every
one of the days of their life before even one of them came to pass, and you
praise God for the fact that He loves your kids more than you even love your
kids, and you worship Him for that.
And what was heart-gripping fear becomes heart-gripping trust in Him
Or maybe you're angry over injustice at work because things aren't going well
in your job, and things are happening and they, and you don't deserve to
be in the position that you're in.
And then you go to the Word of God, and your eyes are lifted to the one who
knows all and sees all, and the God who is the God of justice like our students
learned last week at revival, and the God who will right every wrong and
reward every act of faithfulness, and you are able to worship him for the fact
that this life is not all there is, and that eternity will see all rights made,
made evident and all wrongs dealt with.
And what was the heart-gripping fear or anger becomes the
heart-gripping trust in the Lord
You find yourself wanting more of the peace of God this
morning, go to the Word of God
Ask yourself as you go to the Word of God, not only what do I have to
be in awe of, but what do I have to worship God for this morning?
But peace is found in joyful awe.
It's found in worship of the Lord, but it's also found somewhere else, and that
is how we respond to the Word of God.
Look at our last three verses here.
He says this, "I hope for your salvation, O Lord.
I do your commandments.
My soul keeps your testimonies.
I love them exceedingly.
I keep your precepts and testimonies, for all my ways are before you."
It's not just knowing the word of God that gives us peace.
Obeying it is key to our experiencing the peace of, of God as well.
Think of Peter sleeping when he's in prison, or think of Paul
singing hymns when he's in prison
Their peace and their confidence in those situations where their life
literally hung in the balance came from a, a confi- confidence that was
produced by their knowledge that they had nothing to be ashamed of because
they were taking the word of God and living it out in faithful obedience.
Our third and final point this morning is this: focus your
soul on devoted obedience.
Focus your soul on devoted obedience.
Have you ever been really anxious about something and then found yourself so
busy with even sometimes the thing that you were anxious about that
you're no longer worried about it?
That you find that you're so busy that you don't really have time to
think about that thing anymore that was once giving you so much pause?
My family and I went to, to Colorado on vacation this summer, and we
did something called the Manitou Incline in Colorado Springs.
2,768 steps.
I know because we counted them, and there's plaques on them along the way.
2,768 steps, and when I say steps, I mean railroad ties.
Sometimes they were three inches apart, sometimes they were a foot,
and it's 2,000 feet up in elevation.
So we had planned this.
My wife had, had seen it, and she was like, "We need to go do this."
And, uh, and, and some of you also decided to try to discourage us,
and we know who you are, by the way.
"Oh, this is really hard.
We tried it, and it's, it's really hard."
We were able to do it, but there was almost that, like, you didn't
say, "I don't think you guys are gonna be able to do it."
We did.
All of us, we all made it.
Even the, the wee ones, they made it up too.
But it was so, so intense and, and we, we were even hearing
rumors that people trained for, like, months to do this thing.
We trained not at all.
We just showed up from Texas in Colorado.
We were like, "Sure.
Hill.
It's a hill.
It's steps.
We can do steps.
We know how to do steps.
We got them in our house.
We'll be able to do them."
And, uh, we drank water and, like, Gatorade packets, so
we were, we were good to go.
We covered our bases.
But coming up to it, we, we…
All week long before we got there, we saw it in the distance, and seeing it on
the mountain, this, this, like, line that goes up this mountain that just is…
It's a scar carved into the side of the mountain, and you begin to wonder.
You begin to fear.
You begin to question.
You begin to get anxious about it.
And even after we, we got there and we parked and we rode the shuttle to the, the
place where you start this climb, and, and we were, we were nervous about that too.
And the…
Then it didn't help because we, right at the bottom of the steps, we
encountered this nice lady, and we were like, "Can you take a picture for us?"
She was like, "Sure," and she took a picture of our family before we started,
and we were like, "Are you not going?"
She was like, "Oh, no, I would never do anything like that."
Okay.
Great
We had all of the, the, the questions and the nerves until we took the first step.
And then we took the second one, and then the third, and we kept going.
A- and once we started the walk, once we started the climb, then what we were
thinking about wasn't all of the fears.
Are we gonna make it?
Will we get there?
Where's the next bail?
We weren't thinking about any of that.
You know what we were thinking about?
We were thinking about the next step.
What do I have to do now?
What's next?
What's in front of me?
For the, the anxious Christian, it's so good for us to go to the
Word of God and simply say, "God, what do you have for me next?"
Idleness is never good for the anxious soul.
When we're idle and left to our thoughts and left to our, our, our
fears, the enemy is a, a master artisan at painting the worst picture in our
minds that you could ever imagine.
But instead, when we're active, when we busy ourselves with what the Lord has
for us to do, the enemy doesn't have time to rob us of the joy and the peace
that we've been talking about already.
Look at verse 66, 166 again.
David says, "O Lord, I hope for your salvation, and I do your commandments."
I hope for your salvation.
Uh, the word hope is I, I wait for it.
But while he's waiting, he's actively waiting.
I'm waiting for your salvation, and I'm doing what you have for me to do.
I'm taking the next step.
I'm climbing.
I'm gonna keep going.
Christianity, y'all, is not passive.
Following Christ means following Christ
And so there's three things that I want you to think about, about
the nature of this obedience.
The first is this, we, we want to pursue a devoted obedience by keeping
a clean conscience before the Lord.
Having a clean conscience before the Lord, and this is what David
is saying, "I'm waiting for your salvation, oh Lord, and in the
meantime, I'm doing your commandments.
I'm gonna make sure that I'm living a life of integrity.
I'm gonna make sure that when I lay my head down to sleep at the end of
the night, I can say, 'Lord, I've, to my knowledge, faithfully served
you today as best that I could.
I did what you had for me to do.'"
That clean conscience is going to give us a peace.
Uh, back in Acts chapter 23, I was talking about Paul in Acts 26 earlier.
Well, before that, in 23, he appears before the Sanhedrin, the
Jews, the, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, and they want to kill him.
And yet Paul begins his address before them.
He says, "Looking intently at the council, Paul said: 'Brothers, I
have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.'"
And so the peace that Paul had in the face of his accusers who
wanted him dead was to say, "I know I've got nothing on my record.
I've got a clean conscience before the Lord."
And so for us, as we come to the Word of God, one of the ways, one of
the reasons why we wanna focus our soul on a devoted obedies- obedience
and be active i- is because we want to have this clean conscience.
We want to follow Him in obedience.
And it could be for some of you that you've been, uh, asking yourself the
question, "Okay, look, I've, I've been coming to church, I've been
reading the Bible even, a- and I've been praying and asking God for peace,
but none of it seems to be working."
Could it be that your conscience isn't clean?
Could it be that you've got sin harbored in your life, and you're hoping that
going through the motions in, in, in all of these other items is gonna make
up for the fact that you're not ceding this area of, of sin in your life to
the lordship of Christ, repenting and confessing and being rid of it Maybe the
peace is being withheld because you've got sin that needs to be eradicated.
Again, it's not just to be around the Word of God, and even to just be in the Word
of God, it's to be under the Word of God.
And to be under the Word of God is to hear it, to read it, to study it, and
then to take it and to do it, to apply it.
Again, we can't be at peace with the world and peace with God.
We want a clean conscience before the Lord.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is I, I want you to think about obeying out of a love for the Lord.
Having a devoted obedience is a devoted obedience that's fueled by a love for God.
Look at verse si- 167.
David says, "My soul keeps your testimonies; I love them exceedingly."
Notice what he doesn't say.
He doesn't say, "My soul keeps your testimonies because I have to do this."
He doesn't say, "My soul keeps your testimonies, and what a
burden it is to me to do that."
He says, "My soul keeps your testimonies; I love them exceedingly."
When you are walking in faithful obedience to the Lord, devoted
obedience to the Lord, your obedience is not duty but delight.
Now, there are going to be times in your life where for self-control, you're
gonna have to say no to something your flesh really wants, to say yes to God,
and that may, in seasons, feel like that's more duty than it is delight
because you're saying no to the thing that you feel like you would delight in.
But the more you do that and the more you go to the Word of God, the less
appealing that thing's gonna be and the more appealing Christ is gonna be to you.
It's like the old hymn that we sing, "All the things of earth will
grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and, glory and grace."
The, the way that the things that have your heart right now, the sins that
you battle, the, the hope that you have to overcome those, is by getting
more of the Word of God in your life and learning to have your affection
stirred for Christ more and less for the world so that your devoted obedience
becomes more an act of your love for Him than it does anything else.
But then finally, your devoted obedience is not only born out of
love for the Lord, it's also born out of a fear of God, and those two
things don't contradict each other.
You can love the Lord and fear Him at the same time.
Notice what David says finally in the last verse.
He says, "I keep your precepts and testimonies, for all
my ways are before you."
I keep them, for all my ways are before you.
Proverbs 15:3 says, "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping
watch on the evil and the good."
Proverbs 5:21, "For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths."
This is related to our clean conscience, right?
If we wanna look back at the end of the day and say, "Lord, I've lived
faithfully before you," we need to know and understand and acknowledge
that He's watched us all day long
And so because we know that the Lord watches us, out of a fear of God,
we wanna live a life of faithful and devoted obedience to Him.
We wanna say, "Lord, I want to, to pursue a, a life of obedience to you."
And, and there's peace therein because then at the end of the
day, you truly can lay down.
And maybe you didn't live a perfect day because we all are still sinful,
but maybe at the end of the day you can say, "Lord, to the best of my knowledge,
I lived faithful before you today.
Your eyes were on me, and I lived in light of that
There's your static relationship with the peace of, of, of God, right?
And that, that's what I read about in Romans 5:1.
We've been justified by faith, and now we have peace with God.
That peace is immovable, it's permanent, it's never going anywhere.
But there's a dynamic peace that is the day-to-day peace that is
available to us with our Savior.
That peace is related to our relationship with the Word of God.
Great peace of those who love your lo- love your Word, and
nothing can make them stumble.
Again, this is gonna take work.
This is not easy.
It's gonna involve sacrifice, vulnerability, accountability at times.
But in the end, the payoff is great.
It's the great peace that's available for those who love the Lord.
As we close, I wanna just suggest three things for you this week.
I wanna challenge you to do something.
When you come to the Word of God this week, three things I want you to do.
Take a piece of paper and write down these three things.
Number one, I want you to write down, what is something that I'm in awe of about
God after reading His Word this, today?
Number two, I want you to write down, what is something that I wanna worship God for
as a result of my time in the Word today?
And then number three, I want you to write down, what is something that I need to do
as a result of my time in the Word today?
That we would begin to train ourselves to come to the Word of God, to find
awe in the Word of God, to find o- occasions for worship in the Word
of God, and to find the guidance for faithful obedience in the Word of God,
trusting that His Word tells us, "Great peace of those who love your law."
Let's pray
Lord, your Word is, is a gift to us, and we do live in the midst of a, a
chaotic and, and topsy-turvy world.
Lord, we live in a world that is far from soothing at times, especially now
when news is available 24/7 for us.
At the open of an app on our phone, we can see all of everyone else's problems
splashed right there on our screens.
And yet, God, we know the God who is sovereign over it all, and we
know that you've given us your Word to remind us of what's true.
We know that you've given us your Word to guide us in this life.
And so, God, I, I pray that you would enable us to give
ourselves over to the study of it.
Lord, that we would learn to, to love your Word and experience the great peace
that you promise there in verse 165.
God, that we would have your Word be our guiding light, that it
would control our thoughts and how we perceive the world around us.
Lord, and that we would experience as a result the peace
that surpasses understanding.
Lord, a peace that transcends our circumstances, a peace that will
give us the ability to continue to press on in faithfulness to you.
And so we thank you for the gift of your Word, and we thank you that ultimately
we will one day be at full peace with you when we step into your presence,
and we pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen.