The Terrible Peace of God Text: Psalm 46:8-11
Introduction: The World's Uproar
We live in an age of perpetual uproar. The nations are in a constant state of agitation, a kind of political fibrillation. Our news feeds are a litany of crises, wars, rumors of wars, and the frantic striving of men who believe that if they just shout loud enough, protest hard enough, or legislate furiously enough, they can finally wrestle the chaos of this world into submission. Men believe that peace is a project to be engineered, a summit to be negotiated, a treaty to be signed. They think peace is something that can be built out of the crooked timber of humanity.
But the Bible tells us a very different story. The peace of man is a frantic, anxious, and ultimately futile thing. It is the peace of the committee meeting, the peace of the ceasefire that will be broken tomorrow. But the peace of God is something else entirely. It is a terrible peace. It is a peace that is not negotiated but imposed. It is a peace that comes, not through the disarmament of men, but through the disarmament of God Himself, who breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
This psalm, Psalm 46, is a song for a world in turmoil. It begins with the earth giving way and mountains falling into the heart of the sea. It speaks of nations in uproar and kingdoms falling. This is not a tranquil poem for a quiet afternoon. This is a battle hymn for the Church militant. And the final stanza, our text this morning, is the thunderous conclusion. It is a summons to behold the works of God, to see how He pacifies the earth, and to respond with the one thing that modern man cannot stomach: stillness.
We are called to cease our striving, to be still, and to know that He is God. This is not a call to quiet contemplation in a Zen garden. This is a call to stand down in the face of overwhelming divine firepower. This is the stillness of a surrendering army. It is the quiet that falls over a battlefield after the victor has won a decisive and total victory. The world wants peace on its own terms. God offers peace on His. And this passage shows us what that looks like.
The Text
Come, behold the works of Yahweh,
Who has appointed desolations in the earth.
He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts up the spear;
He burns the chariots with fire.
“Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Yahweh of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.
(Psalm 46:8-11 LSB)
Behold the Desolations of the Lord (v. 8)
The psalmist issues a command, an invitation to a divine spectacle.
"Come, behold the works of Yahweh, Who has appointed desolations in the earth." (Psalm 46:8)
This is a jarring summons for our sentimental age. We are happy to behold the works of the Lord if those works are sunsets, waterfalls, and sleeping babies. But we are invited here to behold His desolations. The word is stark. It means astonishment, horror, the aftermath of a complete rout. The God of the Bible is no buttercup. He is not a tame lion. He is the Lord who judges the earth, and His judgments are often terrifying.
We must not try to airbrush this out of our Bibles. When the Assyrian army, the global superpower of its day, surrounded Jerusalem and blasphemed God, the Angel of the Lord went out and killed 185,000 of them in one night (2 Kings 19:35). That was a desolation. When God brought the Roman armies in A.D. 70 to burn the Temple and sow the city with salt, that was a desolation. These are not unfortunate side effects of history; they are appointed. God appointed them. He is sovereign over the rise and fall of empires, over the clash of armies, and over the ruins they leave behind.
Why are we commanded to look at this? So that we might have a right-sized view of God. Our God is not a celestial guidance counselor, wringing his hands over the mess we have made. He is Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of armies. To behold His desolations is to be cured of the blasphemous notion that man is in charge. It is to see the wreckage of human pride and ambition and to recognize the hand that brought it all to nothing. This is the beginning of wisdom. You cannot understand God's peace until you have first understood His power to make war.
Peace Through Superior Firepower (v. 9)
Verse 9 explains the purpose of these desolations. It is not destruction for its own sake, but for the sake of peace.
"He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts up the spear; He burns the chariots with fire." (Psalm 46:9 LSB)
How does God make wars cease? By winning them. Decisively. He does not broker a truce; He breaks the weapons. The bow, the spear, the chariot, these were the main instruments of ancient warfare, the equivalent of our tanks, missiles, and fighter jets. God does not ask for them to be handed over. He comes and snaps them over His knee. He melts them down.
This is the ultimate disarmament program. All human attempts at disarmament fail because they rely on the goodwill of sinful men. But God's disarmament works because it is unilateral. He simply removes the capacity for war from the hands of rebels. This is a promise that looks forward to the Messianic age, when the nations will beat their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4). But it is also a present reality. Whenever God brings a conflict to an end, whenever He humbles a proud nation, He is demonstrating this principle in miniature.
The ultimate fulfillment of this, of course, is at the cross. On the cross, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, disarmed the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). He took the full fury of God's righteous war against sin and absorbed it into Himself. He broke the power of our greatest enemies, sin and death, not by negotiating with them, but by destroying them. The peace we have with God is not a truce; it is the result of a total victory won on our behalf. He burned the chariots of the devil with the fire of His own holy sacrifice.
The Great Command to Be Still (v. 10)
In light of this overwhelming power, God Himself speaks. And His command is as counter-intuitive as it is profound.
"Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalm 46:10 LSB)
The Hebrew for "cease striving" or "be still" means to let go, to drop your weapons, to slacken your grip. It is a command to stop. Stop your frantic worrying. Stop your clever political maneuvering. Stop trusting in your own strength. Stop trying to fix the world yourself. Stop trying to be God. Just stop.
And in that stillness, in that cessation of our own efforts, we are to "know that I am God." This is not intellectual knowledge alone. It is the knowledge of experience, of submission. It is the quiet confidence of a child who has seen his father deal with the monsters. It is to recognize His absolute authority and His total competence. We are to know that He is God, and we are not.
And notice the result. "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." This is not a question. It is a declaration of what is going to happen. God's glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. History is not a random series of events; it is the unfolding of God's purpose to glorify Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. He will be exalted. The nations can either join the exaltation willingly, or they can be crushed under the weight of it, but either way, He will be exalted. Our job is not to make this happen. Our job is to be still and watch Him do it, and to know that He is the one doing it.
The Unshakable Refuge (v. 11)
The psalm concludes with a refrain that has appeared earlier, a bedrock statement of covenantal confidence.
"Yahweh of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah." (Psalm 46:11 LSB)
This is the foundation of our stillness. Why can we cease our striving? Because the Lord of Armies is with us. The commander of angelic legions is on our side. This is not a generic, distant deity. This is Immanuel, God with us.
And He is not just "God," He is the "God of Jacob." This is profoundly comforting. Why not the God of Abraham, the faithful patriarch? Or the God of Isaac, the promised son? Jacob was the schemer, the supplanter, the trickster. He was the one who wrestled with God and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. To say He is the God of Jacob is to say He is the God of grace. He is the God who chooses and loves and protects and uses weak, flawed, and failing people. If He can be the stronghold for a man like Jacob, He can be a stronghold for us.
Our security does not rest in our own strength or our own righteousness. It rests in His covenant presence and His gracious character. He is our fortress, our high tower, our place of safety when the desolations come and the earth shakes. "Selah." Stop. Think about that. Let the weight of that truth settle into your bones.
Conclusion: The Still Point of a Turning World
The world will continue in its uproar. The nations will continue to rage. But the Church has been given a different calling. We are called to be the still point in this turning world. We are the ones who have beheld the works of the Lord. We have seen His desolations in history, and we have seen His ultimate victory at the cross.
Therefore, we are the ones who can be still. We can cease our striving because we know that He is God. We do not have to be anxious about the headlines, because we know that He will be exalted in the earth. His kingdom is coming, and His will is being done, whether the talking heads on television know it or not.
This stillness is not passivity. It is the deepest form of action. It is the action of faith. It is to drop our tiny, pathetic weapons and to take our stand behind the one who breaks the bow and shatters the spear. It is to entrust our families, our church, and our nation to the God of Jacob, our everlasting stronghold.
So come. Behold His works. See His power. See His victory. And then, in the midst of all the noise and fury of this world, be still. Let go. And know, with unshakable confidence, that He is God, and He is with us.