This Book will keep me from sin, or sin will keep me from this Book.

“Great peace have they which love thy law:”
Peace.  One of the critical graces that this old world is wanting today is peace.  Men look for it, go to war for it, sign treaties for it, search for it, desperately work for it, but cannot find it.  It is highly prized but rarely if ever seen.  What is the answer to the world’s woes?  Believers know, it is Jesus Christ!  Until He returns, peace on earth is just a pipe dream that vanishes like a vapor.

Peace, and not just “peace” but “great peace” can be had by God’s child.  God’s child knows, understands, and owns God’s peace!  Our personal relationship with the Father, through the work of the Son, and the call of the Holy Spirit has given us His peace.  God has made peace with us, and we treasure this bond with Him.  In our verse for today, we understand that great peace comes from loving the Word of God.  We need to understand that “loving” the Word is not a casual fling with it, but a profound and lasting walk of a lifetime.  Loving the law of God, His Word is to read it, to meditate upon it letting the words change our thinking, to memorize it, to repeat it to others, to study it, to make applications of it, and to strive to live it daily obediently. In other words, we let this Book saturate our being until we become like Jesus.

As lovers of the Word, we have great peace!  God’s peace in our lives yields wonderful consequences. Here’s one:

“And nothing shall offend them.”
Today we mean this word “offend” as to cause someone to feel upset, or hurt, or angry because of what someone did to them.  This is not the Bible idea.  The Hebrew word that David used for “offend” is an interesting word.  It means “a stumbling, means or occasion of stumbling, stumbling block.”1  It is something that trips up or causes a person to sin or to fall.  The more I fall in love with the Word of God, the more I obey it and let it grow and change me, the more I let its’ precepts guide me, the less I “sin or fall.”  No, we will not be perfect this side of heaven, but we are to be letting God’s Word change us, little by little.

Do you keep stumbling over the same sins? Do you know God’s great peace because of a personal relationship with Him, and a love for His Word? Do you obey what God’s shows you in His Word? Do you let His Word lead you?

Believers, we need to fall in love with God’s Word.

1. Brown, Driver, Briggs. Brown-Driver-Briggs’ Hebrew Definitions, the electronic version in eSword.