Psalm 120: Peace

Psalm 120 begins a 15-psalm section referred to as “The Songs of Ascents”. While there is some argument about when and how these songs were used, the majority believe that they were sung by pilgrims as they journeyed to Jerusalem for one of the great annual festivals. A handful of them are attributed to David, one to Solomon and the rest are anonymous. In the group there is lament, declarations of trust in God, praise for God’s goodness, His protection and provision, but the thing that ties them all together is the hope that God would fulfill the Davidic covenant by sending the Messiah to rule as the Son of David. 

Is there anything more Messianic than peace? The first promise of the Messiah, in Genesis 3:15, was that He would end the conflict between the woman and the serpent. The prophecy that we quote of Jesus’ birth every Christmas, Isaiah 9:6 says, “For to us a child is born, a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Israel was waiting for Him to come and defeat their enemies, to re-establish her to the greatness she had known under David, to bring the peace they desired. Many of us, as believers in Jesus the Messiah, are waiting for the same thing. We are praying for, declaring and believing that Jesus has and will defeat our enemy, the devil, and shape our lives with prosperity, ease, and the absence of conflict. That He will make peace for us, as we define and desire it. 

What if the peace we desire is not the peace that God has planned? What if the battle that God is waging is both for and against us? What if the enemy that needs to be defeated is within us and the war that needs to be won is not for us, but with us? What if the only way to peace is for us to surrender? 

The psalm begins as many do, “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me.” The psalmist was experiencing conflict, he was in turmoil, he was faced with enemies and from that place he called on God, and God, as He always does, answered. What I find most interesting as I read through the Old Testament and see documented God’s care for Israel, is that they never had an enemy that God did not defeat and yet the only enemy that God was ever truly concerned with was the deceitfulness of their own hearts. In Numbers 14, the Amalekites and the Canaanites defeated Israel because they had refused to trust God and go into the land after the report of the 12 spies. At Ai they were defeated because there was sin in their camp. They were defeated by the Philistines at the battle of Aphek and the Ark of the LORD was captured largely because of the sin of Eli’s sons, the priests Hophni and Phineas. Judah was taken captive by Babylon for judgment of their sins against God. Every time Israel lost a battle it was because God was dealing with their hearts. 

Just think of how their victories were won: they won a battle because Moses held up his arms and God worked on their behalf. God caused the sun to stand still so they could win another victory. They walked around the walls of Jericho for 7 days and then shouted and the walls fell. There were times when enemies were cast into confusion and battled against themselves, times when Israel arrived at battle to find their enemy was already dead and defeated. God used a boy to kill a giant, He used 300 men to defeat an army of as many as 135,000 Midianites, He used the water of the Red Sea to destroy the army of Egypt, there was no enemy He could not defeat. When Israel lost a battle, it was because God was dealing with their hearts. The only enemy that could ever cause them harm, was the enemy of and the enemy in their hearts.

The same is true for us. There is no enemy of ours that God cannot defeat, in an instant, in any way He desires, but the battle He is focused on is not the battle that we are often consumed by. We live our lives worrying about the temporary while God is working to establish the eternal. We worry about provision while God is teaching trust. We fear loss while God is creating contentment. We give in to complaints while God is calling us to gratitude. We get impatient while God wants us to be strengthened by waiting. We listen to our hearts, but God speaks through His Word. We are often the enemy that God is battling. 

In verse 2 the author wrote, “Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.” It is assumed that he was dealing with and talking about an external enemy, but I want to deal with our internal one. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it.” As Israel traveled from Egypt to the Promised Land what was their real problem, their real enemy? Was it that they ran out of food or the voice inside them that said they would starve? Was it that they ran out of water or the fear that they might die of thirst? Was it the Red Sea in front of them, the Egyptian army behind them or the sudden assumption that this conflict was a sign that they should have never left Egypt? In every one of their circumstances, the true enemy, the true conflict, the true issue was what they believed in their hearts. They were not just being lied to, they were now perpetuating the lies to themselves. 

The enemy of our souls always lies to us about God, that is what he did in his first appearance to Adam and Eve and what he has done ever since. The battle is not to get the devil to stop lying, it is for God’s people to stop believing and repeating his lies. Peace is not the absence of conflict, Jesus said “in this world you will have trouble”. It is not even the presence of God, Jesus promised that He would be with us always. Peace is when we believe the truth, when we stop entertaining and spreading the lies, it is when we choose to believe the person of Jesus over the nagging uncertainty of our flesh, our fear, and our own definition of peace. 

What makes most of us uncomfortable is that there is a constant conflict, there must be. The psalmist ended with this statement of lament, “I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.” He, just like me, wanted peace to be a silencing of the opposing voices, but again, what if that is not peace at all? Galatians 5:17 says “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed (NIV in conflict with) to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” There is always a war going on within us. The Holy Spirit lives in us to lead us into all truth, our flesh keeps trying to distract us with the lies of the world, of the devil and of our own desires. This war must be fought each day. Paul said, in reference to the flesh, in I Corinthians 15:31 “I die every day”. How do we do this? 

First, we must believe what the Spirit says, about God and about the flesh. We talk often about God’s character: He is holy, He is good, His is faithful, He is the truth, He is love, He is patient, merciful, kind, just, and righteous. But what does the Spirit say about our flesh? Romans 7:18 says that there is nothing good in the flesh. Jesus said that it is in the heart or the flesh where evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander come. What may be most important to understand is that II Corinthians 5 teaches that knowing Jesus according to the flesh, according to our understanding, our expectation, our desire, and even our emotions, is not knowing Him at all. Since God desires that all people be saved, He is always working, in the saved and the not yet saved, for the truth to be revealed and the lies to be exposed. In this I must be a bit pointed, we have all believed lies about God, lies that make us feel better about ourselves, lies that allow us to stay the way we have been, lies that do not require our hearts to be exposed or transformed, it is those lies that God is fighting against, that is the war that He is concerned with, we are the enemy that He continues to battle. Remember this, Satan is defeated, Jesus holds the keys, God is sovereign, the only war that is ongoing is His battle to win our hearts. 

And so, peace is not when our enemies stop fighting against us, it is when we stop fighting against God. Ephesians 2:17 says that Jesus came and preached peace. Colossians 1:20 that peace comes only through the blood of His cross and Ephesians 2:14 says that Jesus Himself is our peace. In the same way that truth is a person (John 14:6) peace is also a person, the same person, the person of Jesus.  It is not a feeling that washes over us, the absence of fear during a trial or ease in things that used to be difficult, peace is when we believe Jesus, when we trust Jesus and when we follow Jesus. The only way to have peace in my heart is to surrender my heart to Jesus. Jesus does not end the battle He wins the war, He confronts the lies, He exposes the hurts, and He corrects the wrongs. He makes peace in us when we stop fighting against Him.