In Psalm 119:165 the Psalmist cries out, “Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.” He had found a place where there is an abundance of peace (Hebrew Shalom, to be safe, figuratively well, happy, to have friendship and, abstractly, welfare, i.e. to have health, prosperity, and peace). Are these not the things we all seek for in life, but seeking them in the ways of the “world” we find them to be so elusive? The Psalmist found the answer in affection for God’s law – His precepts and statutes. We find this place today in Christ alone who “is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4). By living and walking in Him, who is the Word that “became flesh and dwelt among us …” (John 1:14), we can experience this great peace; and with our eyes focused on Him and His word there is nothing to cause us to stumble or turn back. Hezekiah seems to have tapped into this after he recovered from a deadly sickness, when he wrote the words recorded in Isaiah 38:17, “Indeed it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; But You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption. For You have cast all my sins behind your back.” A life of sin, like Hezekiah’s sickness, brings great “bitterness”, no real peace, no real satisfaction, no lasting contentment, which are only found in Him (Christ) who delivers us from that horrible pit of corruption, putting every sin behind our back “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). Only here can we experience that abundant life of Shalom that we were created to crave!
Great Peace
-By Rose Hill
Do you want a peace so great?
And for God’s blessings do you wait?
This peace have they that love His law,
And nothing shall offend them at all.