Christ speaks in the psalm. He says, “I am peace.” He is peace. He is God’s peace. God gave Christ for a covenant of the people. In his own person God and man are Christ. In him, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. In him God reconciled his people and established peace. In him God reconciled the Jews and the Gentiles and out of twain made one. 

Outside him there is only warfare and strife. There is warfare of man with man but more terribly, warfare of man with God. That warfare of man with God is on account of man’s sin. But God in his eternal good pleasure willed peace for his people, to take away their sins and to reconcile them to himself. His thoughts toward his people were ever of peace. And he gave Jesus Christ as their peace. In him is peace that passes all understanding.

And of that peace Christ speaks in the world through the word of the gospel. He ever declares that God is the God of all peace. Christ declares that God has established this peace in the cross of Jesus Christ. He says that God reconciled his people to himself. And he irresistibly calls his people to peace, draws them into that peace, and establishes them in that peace. Peace with the living God through Jesus Christ by the forgiveness of our sins. Oh, sweetest fellowship with God!

And in that very word, he also declares that there is no peace to the wicked. As soon as that word comes into the world, it stirs up a terrible opposition and hatred. Whenever and wherever that word comes, they are for war, for they hate peace. They hate peace as they hate God.

Those of Mesech and Kedar! Oh Mesech, the land of Noah’s apostate generations. Oh Kedar, the territory of the carnal children of Ishmael. To dwell among them was dangerous. So the psalmist means that the speaking of the word of God stirred up the implacable hatred and fierce opposition of perfidious and false Israelites. They hated the very existence of David among them; and when David spoke of God, the promise of God, and the peace of God, they rose up against David with their lying lips and their false tongues.

And such was also the experience of the Son of Man in his sojourn on the earth. His appearance stirred up the reprobate in the sphere of the covenant, Herod; the apostates to works-righteousness, the Pharisees; and the apostates to carnal worldliness, the Sadducees; and they all attacked and lied against the Word, and through their lies they crucified him.

And so also all those who are Christ’s must expect the very same experiences among those of Mesech and Kedar. Are we not for peace? Do we not desire the blessed gospel of peace to be heard in the whole world? Do we not desire that the sinner who is mired in his sin know the peace of forgiveness, and so we rebuke him? Do we not desire that those who labor under the heavy yoke of works-righteousness exchange that yoke for the yoke of Christ, which is easy, and whose burden is light? When you speak—when you speak the word of God that alone gives peace—then they will raise against you their lying lips and their false tongues. Because they are for war, and they hate peace. Deliver us, O Jehovah, from those lying lips and from deceitful tongues!