Who Can Help?

The text we'll be looking at this morning is Psalm 121.

This passage of Scripture is no doubt familiar to many of us. In fact, I recall over the years many Christians have shared with me that this is one of their favorite Psalms in the Psalter. Psalm 121.

I want to say just a brief word about the setting of the Psalm before we read through it together. The book of Psalms was the hymnal for the Old Testament nation of Israel, as you know. These songs were used in corporate worship all the way back to the days of Solomon.

They were used throughout the history of Israel, and they continue to be an integral part of worship, both in Judaism and Christianity to this day. Psalm 121 in particular is the second Psalm in a group of 15 Psalms that carry a certain title. The title is A Song of Ascents or A Song of Degrees. Now there's been a lot of speculation regarding the significance of this title, how this group of Psalms might have been used in worship, but most scholars believe that these 15 Psalms were sung by Israelites as they journeyed to Jerusalem for the three mandatory annual festivals that Jews would attend. The temple at Jerusalem was was built on a mountain, Mount Zion, and Jerusalem itself is surrounded by mountains, and so geographically these worshippers would travel up, ascending to get to Jerusalem and to the temple. As these Israelites ascended Mount Zion, they would sing these songs of ascent, and we see a progression through the course of these 15 songs of ascent that would coincide with this sort of pilgrimage to Jerusalem for a for a worship feast. The first of these 15, Psalm 120, speaks of the distress of somebody who's far from home, and the last Psalm, Psalm 134, concludes with the call to praise God in the sanctuary of Mount Zion. So we see that progression through the course of these 15 Psalms of ascent.

So when we come to Psalm 121, the pilgrim is still en route to the temple, but the mountains around Jerusalem are within sight, and so let's read together Psalm 121, and I'll ask you to stand in honor of God's Word as we read it. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil.

You will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Word of the Lord.

Let's pray. Lord maker of heaven and earth, I pray that you would teach us from this Psalm to trust you and to be anxious for nothing. Teach us to worship you as the one who never tires but who is ever ever watchful over our souls. Holy Spirit, through your word this morning would you work into our lives a quiet and still heart before you. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

You can be seated. In the fall of my senior year in high school, my dad and I decided to take a father-son camping trip to a wilderness area in the mountains of North Georgia. We each had a huge backpack on our backs, and we were going to hike to the Jax River Falls, spend a couple of nights there tent camping, and then hike out. Now to get to these falls required a 30-minute drive up a washed out unpaved mountain road. It required about a three mile hike through the mountains to get to the falls, and we were gonna spend our time at the base of the waterfall there. Well as it turned out, we got to within about a hundred yards of the falls when something went terribly wrong.

My dad's hiking boot got wedged between some some tree roots on the trail, and he lost his balance and fell, and the weight of his backpack caused him to twist as he fell, and you can imagine what would happen in that kind of torque. He shattered his ankle, absolutely broke all the bones around his ankle, and you've got to realize that this was a wilderness area. There were no roads, hardly any people back in these woods, so at this point adrenaline kicked in, and I got my dad kind of sort of situated there against a tree with his foot propped up, and tried to run back out to the trailhead, get in the truck to go find help. To make a long story short, the rescue team and I finally got back to my dad about five hours later. The sun was down, and we carried him out on a gurney. He had to have a surgery to rebuild his ankle.

He was in a cast for several weeks. I think I'd rather have hip surgery, but I can remember thinking as I was running out of those woods to get help, what do I do? Where do I go?

Who am I gonna find that can help? I didn't know where I was going yet. Will I even be able to find the way back to my dad in this wilderness area? One moment the mountains were a place of tranquility and beauty, the next moment they had instantly become a threat, a place of danger and fear. You know, I can't help but think about that experience as I read Psalm 121 and realize that this is the song of a pilgrim who is journeying through mountain country up to the temple in Jerusalem, and his song begins with, I will lift up my eyes to the hills, to those dangerous perilous hills that stand between me and Jerusalem.

And then he asks, where does my help come from? I think we see in this question the fact that Israelite pilgrims of centuries ago carried the same anxieties and uncertainties and fears that we carry today, but this is not a psalm about cowering fear. It's a song of great confidence and peace and security. You see, the purpose of Psalm 121 is to evoke in us an unflinching trust in God.

It tells us that as God's people navigate their way through this life, they can have great confidence in God because he watches over them in all things, at all times, forever. This theme of God watching over his people is evident in a particular Hebrew word that's repeated over and over in Psalm 121. It's the Hebrew word shamar. In our English Bibles, it's translated as keeps or preserves.

This word appears first in verse 3, and it's gonna appear in one form or another a total of six times in the psalm. Now the word shamar, keeps, preserves, has a whole range of meanings, but at its heart is the idea that careful attention is being given. Great care is being exercised over something or someone. This idea of God keeping his children, exercising great care of us, over us, is the central theme of Psalm 121. God keeps his children.

So let's keep that theme in mind as we walk through the psalm together this morning. In regard to God's keeping his children, the psalmist answers three questions. First, he answers the question, who is our keeper? Secondly, what does he keep us from? And thirdly, to what extent does he keep us? Let's consider each of these questions in turn.

First of all, who is our keeper? Look with me again at verses 1 and 2. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. I should mention first that some translations, the King James Version among them translates verse 1 in such a way as to make the hills the source of help, or at least the location from which the help comes. The KJV says, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.

It's not a question, it's just one sentence, one thought. This translation sees God's help as coming from the hills, which is reasonable, I think, since God's dwelling place, Mount Zion, is located in the hills, and that's certainly a valid translation of the Hebrew, but there's another valid translation, one which is reflected in the ESV, the version I'd read earlier, and other versions, and this other translation views the opening verse as a question. The pilgrim in this case sees the hills and then in response to that site asks the question, where does my help come from? In other words, rather than the hills being the source of help, the hills are the very thing that caused the pilgrim to ask, where does my help come from? The hills are a bad thing, they're not the source of help, they're the source of vulnerability for the pilgrim. It's the hills that drive the pilgrim to look for safety and security, and so he asks the question, where does my help come from?

And the answer is this, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Now I want us to take note of two things that are said about the one who watches over or keeps the pilgrim. First of all, the pilgrims keeper is Yahweh. You'll notice that the word Lord is printed in all capital letters in our English Bibles. This is done to distinguish between the various Hebrew names for God that are used in the Old Testament, and when the word Lord appears in all uppercase letters, it's translating the name Yahweh. Now there are many names for God in Hebrew, one name that is commonly used is the name Elohim. This name speaks of the power of God, his providence, his dominion over all creation. In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1-1. So all men, women, boys, girls alike are related to Elohim by virtue of the fact that they have been created by him. But the name Yahweh is the covenant name of God.

It's a name that God reserves only for those with whom he has entered into a binding blood relationship. Elohim speaks of the power of God, but Yahweh speaks of the covenant faithfulness of God. Elohim can do all that he wills, Yahweh will do all that he has promised. So whenever we see the name Yahweh or Lord in all capital letters in the Old Testament, we should recognize that what is being emphasized is the redeeming work of God for his people. Yahweh in the Old Testament is the God of redemption. So back in verse 2, we see the significance of the pilgrims choice of words.

Who is my help? Yahweh, the one who has bound himself to me by blood with eternal promises that he will fulfill. This is the one who is my help, not just some generic God, but my God with whom I have a relationship. But notice the second description or title that is given to the pilgrims keeper. He calls him the Lord who made heaven and earth, who made heaven and earth. The pilgrims keeper is the maker of heaven and earth. If the title Yahweh describes God's desire to help, then the title maker of heaven and earth describe describes God's ability to help.

The name Yahweh highlights relationship, the name maker of heaven and earth highlights power. So we see that this pilgrim has great reason for confidence. Not only does this keeper want to help because he's intimately acquainted with him, but the keeper is also able to help because he is none other than the maker of heaven and earth, the one who made the very hills that this fretful, fearful pilgrim is threatened by. His keeper is Elohim, creator of the universe. So let's put ourselves in the shoes of the pilgrim.

Who is our keeper? From where does our help come? If we're in Christ, we can rest assured that we are in a unique and privileged relationship with Yahweh and that he desires to help us, his children. Paul said in Romans 8 14 and 15, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba Father. And as children of God, we can have every confidence that our God, who is the maker of heaven and earth, will use as much of his omnipotence as is necessary to fulfill every promise that he's made to us. Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. So the psalmist has answered the question, who is our keeper?

But notice the second question that this ancient song answers. What does he keep us from? We find the answer in verses 3 through 7.

In fact, there are three categories mentioned in these verses that pose a threat to the pilgrim, three things from which the Lord keeps his child. First, the Lord keeps us from the internal threat of our own failings, our own sin problem. Secondly, he keeps us from the external threat of opposition, of persecution, of oppression and mistreatment from those outside of us. And thirdly, he keeps us from all evil.

Let's look at each of these briefly. First, God keeps us from internal threat. Verses 3 and 4, he will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. So for the Jewish pilgrim on his way to Jerusalem, the hills were a place of stumbling. It was very rocky ground, ground that posed a physical threat. Personal injury was a very likely possibility and would have kept him from arriving safely at Jerusalem and at the temple. And his participation in the festival was in jeopardy because of his own inability to navigate his way safely through these perilous mountains. Now we aren't Jewish pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem.

We're not physically hiking through the mountains and we're not threatened by the the possibility of slipping on rocks and falling to our death. So how do we apply these verses, these promises to our lives? I think if we read these verses metaphorically, the image of a slipping foot represents those threats that come from within us, our weaknesses, our failings, our inabilities, our sins. These are the things that cause our spiritual feet on their way to worship to slip. In fact, the Psalms themselves use this same imagery to refer to sins of the heart.

Psalm 73, for example, we read, truly God is good to Israel to such as are pure in heart, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. See, as pilgrims in this world, our flesh leads us into paths that make us stumble and fall. We face the rocky ground of temptation and the sinfulness that contaminates everything we do, jeopardizes our full participation in the worship of God. It threatens to hinder our spiritual progress.

So on what basis can we have confidence that our foot will not slip? In other words, that our own sinfulness will not keep us from reaching heaven's eternal festival? Verses 3 and 4 tell us, he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Our confidence through this life comes not from our fancy footwork on rocky paths, it comes from a divine keeper who never falls asleep on the job. As I studied this passage, I had to ask the question, how far can we take this statement, this promise, he will not allow your foot to be moved? Because in my own experience, there are plenty of times when my own sinfulness has caused my foot to slip. There are more times than I care to remember that I have stumbled and fallen because of my own spiritual carelessness. In those times, did God break his promise not to let my foot slip?

Let me mention two things that I think help us understand the intention of the statement a little better. First of all, in Hebrew, the clause, he will not allow your foot to be moved, could be communicating a reality, a fact, or it could be communicating a desire, a wish. It could have been translated, may he not allow your foot to be moved, which is a request directed to God rather than a promise from God. So grammatically, it's not necessarily conveying an absolute irrevocable guarantee that we will never stumble because of our sin. Ultimately, we will be protected from our sinful missteps and that God will save every one of his elect in the end, but through the course of this life, there will be times when we slip. Also, it's important to notice that the contrast to the pilgrims foot slipping is the fact that the Lord never sleeps.

Those are the two truths that are being held up in light of each other. I think the psalmist is trying to tell us that when we grow weary and are at risk of falling, God is not the least bit tired. He never sleeps. When we are weak, he is strong.

We're asleep, he's awake. When we think God has abandoned us and we have fallen beyond his reach, he hasn't stopped for a breather, he isn't taking a little break, he's right there awake and alert and in control of what we thought was a fatal slip. So no, I don't think this is wishful and idealistic thinking on the part of the psalmist. It is a promise to every child of God that God will not allow his child's weakness and frailty and sin to separate us from his love. We may stumble along the way in our spiritual pilgrimage, but we will never slip beyond the reach of an untiring God.

That's why Paul in Romans 8 could say with all confidence, I am persuaded that nothing, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. You see the emphasis of verses 3 & 4 is not on my sin problem. I have a sin problem, but that's not the focus of these verses. It's not on those things that hinder my spiritual advancement so much as it is on the untiring watchfulness of God over his children. The focus of these verses is not on the slipping foot, but on the God who never slumbers. My weakness and my frailty and my tendency to get exhausted at fighting the sin in my life never makes God tired.

Those of you with children know what it's like to be responsible for someone with a sin problem. Sometimes I'm sure our kids are the epitome of perfect obedience and delight, but the other six and a half days a week, not so much, right? And we grow weary of correcting and instructing and correcting again and instructing again. We get tired, but folks, God doesn't get tired. He doesn't run out of steam.

He's perfectly consistent in the rearing of his children. We can come to him for the thousandth time and say, Lord, I've done it again. I've sinned.

I'm weary of this fleshly body. Forgive me and hold me up, and he never tires of it. He's our keeper from the internal threat of sin.

But notice also he keeps us from external threat. Look at verses 5 & 6. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The hills were a place of harshness. In the Palestinian countryside, the heat of the sun would have been a very real threat to the pilgrim trying to get to Jerusalem to worship. The moon, on the other hand, was not a real threat, but in the ancient Near East, there was a widespread superstition that exposure to the rays of the moon would adversely affect one's mental health. And this superstition continued even into New Testament times, perhaps even longer than that. We come across the word moonstruck a couple of times in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew.

Lunatic would be the contemporary word that refers to someone whose mental disorder is connected to the moon's phases. Now this may seem absurd to us, but it very likely would have been a perceived threat to the ancient pilgrim. But notice that unlike the slipping foot in verse 3, the moon and the sun pose threats that have nothing to do with the inability of the pilgrim. These are things that are beyond the pilgrims control. Now again, as we try to apply this psalm metaphorically to our spiritual pilgrimage through this world, there are things outside of our control that threaten our spiritual progress.

There are circumstances and people, in fact a world full of lost people that would try to deter us from seeking wholeheartedly after God. But even in the face of these external threatening circumstances, God is our keeper. Notice the word you and and your in verses 5 and 6. These are pronouns that are in the second person singular, so the psalmist has gone from speaking about Israel's keeper in a corporate sense to the much more personal your keeper in a very individual sense.

And this singular use of the pronoun continues right to the very end of the psalm. God is talking to you now personally. He keeps you from those external circumstances and people that threaten your spiritual progress. What would those external circumstances and people be? Well I think the biblical terminology for this sort of external threat that's outside of our control is the world. That's the concept in Scripture that contains this idea of an external threat.

Not the physical universe and its inhabitants, but fallen humanity as it stands in alienation to God. The Apostle John had a whole lot to say about the world and its distinction from those that follow God. John 1 10 says the world doesn't know Christ. John 7 7 says the world hates Christ. John 17 25 says that the world doesn't know God the Father. John 14 30 says the ruler of this world is Satan. John 17 6 says that Christ's followers have been called out of the world. In 1st John 2 15 we're told not to love the world or the things in the world because they stand at enmity with God and are soon passing away. And in 1st John 5 4 we read that those who are born of God have overcome the world.

Folks, the world is not a friend to grace. It is the sun that strikes by day and the moon that strikes by night, but we have the promise of God that even in the midst of this hostile environment in which we exist, the Lord is our keeper. So God keeps us from both the internal threat of our own sin and from the external threat of the world. And thirdly, he keeps us from all evil. Look with me at verse 7. The Lord will keep you from all evil.

He will keep your life. Now the word evil in verse 7 can sometimes refer to danger in a physical sense. Lions, vipers, thieves in the mountains, but more often it refers to dangers in a moral sense.

Evil goes beyond just threatening the physical or material aspects of our being, it threatens our spirit, it threatens our soul. In the Old Testament these hills around Jerusalem had become places of idolatry. As the history of Israel progresses we begin to read more and more about the high places. The high places were altars of worship that had been established without the sanction of Yahweh. Sometimes they were used to worship Yahweh in the wrong way, in a way that contradicted his express will. Sometimes these high places were used to worship totally false gods that had nothing to do with Yahweh, an idol, a supposed deity.

A couple of kings attempted to destroy the high places altogether, but somehow these altars just kept coming back. The wicked covenant breakers in Israel were determined to establish sanctuaries of false worship in the hills of the Promised Land. And so the pilgrim faced yet another threat on his way to Jerusalem, a spiritual threat, a threat of spiritual wickedness and evil as it was applauded and commended in these shameful temples of false worship.

This was a very serious danger. Many, many Jews were lured into false worship and as a result not only missed out on the blessings of worshipping the true God, but received instead the judgment and wrath of God. We as 21st century Christians don't have to allegorize this because we too are tempted by idolatry. Evil is still present and active in the world. There are high places of spiritual wickedness that we wrestle against today. Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 6 verse 12, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

There is a devil and he has a whole host of helpers and they are roaming around this earth trying to devour you and me. That would be a terrifying prospect if it weren't for the fact that the maker of heaven and earth has promised to keep you from all evil. We wrestle against spiritual wickedness in high places, but listen, the Christians help comes from a much higher location than this world's high places because Paul says in Ephesians 1, in Christ we have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. The one who keeps us is the maker of heaven and earth, Elohim, and no power is greater than Elohim's power. The one who keeps us is the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, and no love is greater than Yahweh's love.

The Lord says he will keep your life and that where life includes your passions, your desires, your emotions, your appetites, everything that makes you a living being, the Lord will preserve your life, your soul from all evil. So we've seen who our keeper is, he's Yahweh, the all-gracious one, he's Elohim, the all-powerful one, we've seen what our keeper keeps us from, he keeps us from internal threats, he keeps us from external threats, he keeps us from all evil. Finally, the pilgrim answers the question to what extent does he keep us? Look at verse 8, the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. The pilgrim realizes that the Lord is a great keeper, he has all power, he is able to keep us from the very things that threaten them, but to what extent is his keeping active in our lives? I want you to notice two things very briefly as we close that describe the extent or the breadth, the scope of God's watch-care over us. First of all, he keeps us in all places. Look at the first half of verse 8, the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in. You're going out and you're coming in. Whether the pilgrim was on his way to Jerusalem to worship or on his way home after the festival, the Lord was watching out for him.

And that covers it all, doesn't it? We're either coming or going. Sometimes we're meeting ourselves coming back. But no matter where you are or what you're doing, God is keeping you. If you're heading to work, God's keeping you. If you're heading home after work, God is keeping you. If you're on your way to go meet with that difficult person, if you're heading over to encourage a wayward son or daughter, if you're heading home after a day of one conflict or disruption after another, God is keeping you.

He keeps you when you're going out, you're coming in, he keeps you in all places. But notice also the latter half of verse 8, he keeps us not only in all places but at all times. The Lord will keep you going out, you're coming in from this time forth, from right now and forevermore. What good would God's watch care over us be if he kept us today but tomorrow we're on our own? His keeping is constant and eternal from this time forth and forevermore. As long as there is sin and the world and the devil, God will keep us. He will keep us in all places, he keeps us for all time. I mentioned at the beginning of this message that this psalm was written to evoke unflinching trust in our God. I also mentioned that the emphasis of this psalm is not on our struggles as much as it is on our keeper. You see, when we trust God in the face of whatever threatens us, it highlights his faithfulness, his power, his love. Our trust in him brings honor to him. That trust is itself an act of worship. On the other hand, when we go through life consumed with anxiety and fear and worry, it brings dishonor to the God that we claim to trust.

Christians who are consumed with worry are essentially saying, God, you're not capable, you're not aware, you really don't care about what happens to me, none of which are true, but it dishonors a trustworthy God. I don't know what the hills in your life are. Maybe you face hills of addiction to some frustrating sin problem.

Perhaps your hill is a bad relationship that just can't seem to get straightened out. Maybe you're climbing the hill of dealing with rebellious children or having to deal with decisions for the future that are overwhelming you and they're just so uncertain. Whatever threat you're facing, and however large these distressing hills are looming, you need to remember that God is bigger than the hills.

He's not in the least intimidated by the problems that give you ulcers and keep you up at night. And you need to remember that he has promised to keep and preserve you through these problems. And so brothers and sisters, the right response, the faithful response to the threatening hills of life, is to discipline our minds to think more on the God who made heaven and earth than on the troubles we perceive to be undoing us. We need to pray more and worry less. We need to rest in God's power more than we cower at the hills. I understand why Psalm 121 is a favorite Psalm of so many believers.

It reminds us that the hills aren't in charge. God, the maker of the hills, is in charge and he has unlimited power and he is eternally gracious in keeping and preserving his saints. Let's pray. Lord, teach us to rest in you. Guard our hearts and minds with the peace that passes understanding. And may that steadiness that we possess as your children be a witness to a watching world that you are preeminent in our lives and that you sit enthroned in heaven over all things. Lord, bring us safely to Zion through the power of your spirit in us and by the blood of Christ shed for us in whose name we pray. Amen.