Read Psalm 119:153-160

 

            Conflict is a state of this world we live in day in and day out.  We see conflict in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our city government, in state and national politics, and in the world as a whole.  We live in conflict.  We sometimes thrive on conflict as it is the motivation that springs us forward into action for what we hold to be just, right and true.

 

            Psalm 119: 153-160 describes conflict and what God has put in place to resolve the conflict in your life.  That conflict is between God’s love and the persecutors who attack and lure and entice you day in and day out.  Because God does not want you to succumb to these persecutors he supplies his help against them.

 

            God has called you to be his child.  He has purchased you back from your old sinful condition and given you new life in your savior, his son, Jesus Christ.  Jesus explains as he speaks to Nicodemus, we must be born again.  In your faith and in the precious gifts given you in your baptism, God provides that new life through many sources.  They are laid out for us in this Psalm.

• v. 153 – law
• v. 154 – promise
• v. 155 – decrees
• v. 156 – laws
• v. 157 – statutes
• v. 158 – word
• v. 159 – precepts
• v. 160 - words

           

            As you follow this Psalm, you see the conflict between you as a believer and the world around you.  At the beginning (v. 153) you come to God with a humble heart and cry out in your suffering for him to deliver you.  You already know God’s law and you know his love for you in Christ Jesus.  That causes your suffering and you come to him with a sorrowful and repentant heart because you have not forgotten his law.

           

            Contrast that with verse 155.  The salvation you know is far from the wicked.  Instead of seeking God’ decrees, they go the opposite direction.  The wicked are those who deny God, who deny his love to all in his one and only son.  They deny the goal believers hold so dear, the salvation that comes only in the sacrifice made once for all on Calvary. 

 

            God’s action in love are described in v. 153 and 154.  We cry to God to deliver and to redeem.  We have strayed away from God.  We are owned by our sinful condition.  We want to be delivered from our lost condition and purchased from our slavery into sin.  As our faithful shepherd, God seeks us out and delivers us from all evil.  In his complete sacrifice for us, God has redeemed us, bought us back from sin, death and the devil, with the precious blood of his son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

 

            Paul writes to us that “…the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life….” [Romans 6:23]  Three times we ask God to preserve us, to keep us from that eternal death.  First is according to God’s promise [v. 154), the promise that began in Eden.  Second (v. 156) is according to your laws.  God’s laws are just.  God’s law is a law to himself.  He keeps that law perfectly in eternity as he does in Jesus’ earthly life.  He cannot and will not go back on his law.  God’s law is to save those who trust in him for keeping his perfect laws perfectly as he does.  He bestows his perfectness on you by his grace, through faith in that perfection Jesus fulfilled on your behalf.  God does not change himself as he is perfect.  God does not put something on himself that changes how he sees you.  God puts his son on you to change you to be as he made you in his image. 

 

            The third preserve verse is 159.  Preserve my life according to your love.  God’s love is like his law, perfect.  God’s love is what God is, nothing but love.  God’s love is selfless as he gives himself completely to you.  God’s love is nothing other than his word, his son, Jesus Christ.  Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  [John 15:13].

 

            As we pray this Psalm, you cry out to God to:

• deliver you from suffering,
• to redeem you and to preserve your life,
• give you his salvation,
• for God’s great compassion to you,
• treat you according to his love,
• and to remain faithful, true, and righteous for all eternity as
• he keeps you faithful to him for his eternal and gracious gifts to you.

 

            So many times we look to Scripture as an escape, wondering if we could only legislate God’s laws, all would be perfect in this world.  God’s laws have been in men’s hearts since creation.  Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel all knew God’s commands loud and clear.  It is not the presence of the law.  It is the heart that holds, that loves, that follows the law.

 

            The law is righteous as it is God.  It is given in love.  It is administered in love.  It is judged in love.  It is when man judges himself, removing himself from God’s love, that man condemns himself and continues in that judgment.

 

            Our Christian lives are about conflict.  Our Christian lives are about how God resolves the conflict for us and restores us as he made us.  Our Christian lives begin in death and are restored to life.  Our Christian lives are won by Christ who overcame all conflict.

 

            Our Christian lives are in conflict with the ways of the world, the ways of the wicked.  The sinful world does not understand and cannot accept the means of grace that God utilizes to redeem, to protect, to preserve those who trust in his grace in Christ Jesus alone.  The sinful world does not understand God’s word as truth.  That truth being non-negotiable with worldly values is a concept the sinful world cannot and does not accept. 

 

            Jeremiah acknowledged there can be no peace on this earth.  Paul describes the conflict of faith with the world’s view.  In the world one lives to die.  In Christ, one dies to live.  We die to sin and live in the salvation given in and through Jesus.  This is not of our works, but by God’s grace alone.

 

            Jesus forewarns that he came to bring peace between sinner and God.  This does not mean peace between sinner and sinner.  There will always be the tension of conflict, even amongst closest of family members.  This tension of conflict exists within congregations and entire denominations.  Our calling at Immanuel is to remain true to God’s word, his love, his precepts, his laws, his promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal life in the blood of Jesus.

                                                           

            Amen.