Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.
Since you have been serious about your walk with the Lord you have probably found that there are no troubles or problems for you to deal with…right? The more committed you are to holiness, to godliness, to righteousness, the more care-free and trial free your life has been, because after all, you are actually living what you believe. Serious Christians are among those who don’t have accidents, we don’t have arguments with our spouses and our children don’t disobey us.
Of course, if that is what you have thought of the Christian life you are wrong, but in this case it is good to be wrong.
Psalm 121 is a quiet voice gently and kindly telling us that we are, perhaps, wrong in the way we are going about life, and then very simply showing us the right way. It is a good and necessary sequel to the previous psalm which gets us started on the Christian way…Psalm 120 would be the first psalm sung as we journey up to worship…now Psalm 121.
And the bottom line is that we need help. We no sooner dive into the river of the Christian life and of walking with the Lord than we get our noses full of water and come up coughing and choking. For many, the first great surprise is that it is very, very difficult and filled with all kinds of trouble. I think too many times we think the Christian journey is Eden or perhaps the New Jerusalem right away, but that is simply not the case.
There is trouble…and we need help; As the wise man said, man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards.
Lift up my eyes to the hills…In this day in Palestine there were all kinds of false worship around and most of it took place on hills, or the high places as we often read. Shrines, groves of trees, etc., it was physically appealing, and they offered spells and enchantments as well as sexual pleasure that would make you feel better.
I think the Psalm is saying, I lift my eyes to the hills where pagan help is offered, Baal, Ashteroth, but they are a shabby lot, immoral, diseased, drunken frauds and cheats, but they promised help. As Jeremiah put in “Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains…” 3:23
Today we might think of all the gimmicks and counterfeits that offer us help, that tell us how to get better, where we are to put our hope, that kind of thing, we see them all around us bidding us to place our confidence in what they offer; science, safety, 401Ks and all the rest. As we journey we will not seek help from this world, religious or not.
Our help comes from the Lord, the one creator of all things. The personal name of God, Yahweh, is used three times and the word for guardian or keeper is used 8 times in the original. The Lord is not some impersonal force, some distracted deity…He is with us, guarding us, leading us, teaching us. Baal had to be woken up on occasion but God never sleeps or slumbers, he is never caught snoozing so that something spins away from Him. And the Psalmist wants you to see this as he repeats it twice and with a “Behold” in the middle…
Now, where is our problem in the Psalm? Well, we think, but I do stumble…in fact I even fall! And the sun, so to speak, DOES strike me as does the moon, whatever that might mean. And I am not kept from all evil, but rather, must deal with it in the world and in my own sinful heart all the time.
In 2 Timothy 4:18 Paul says to the young pastor Timothy: The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed…(did the Lord do that? Was Paul rescued from every evil deed?) and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.
The promise of the Psalm is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power OVER us, that is, will be able to separate us from the Lord or from His purposes for us. The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships…is to conclude that God has gotten bored looking after us and has shifted his attention to something much more entertaining.
This is why the Psalm is so important for you…you and I often find ourselves in trouble, we look to the Lord to help us, and He, the Lord, never turns away, never is distracted, never gets bored, but is ALWAYS there for us, ALWAYS at working doing exactly what He has purposed to do with us.
The Christian life, like the Psalms of Ascent, is going to God. In going to God, we travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, we breath the same air, we drink the same water, we shop in the same stores, read the same papers, pay the same prices for gas, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures and in the end will be buried in the same ground.
But there is a difference…in that every step, every breath we know we are being preserved by God and accompanied by God, ruled by God, and therefore protected by God.
What did Luther say?
And thought this world with devils filled
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him
His rage we can endure,
For lo, his doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him.
Your life has been created by God and shaped by God so that every day you live and in countless ways, you are experiencing God’s care, love and grace for you. The Psalm sets for us the conditions in which we carry out our discipleship, the conditions of our journey and the chief characteristic for us; the hope and confidence for the journey is not found in what is on the hills, or in ourselves, but in the Lord who watches over his people, who never sleeps.
Prayer: Father, how easily I forget. I forget your love. I forget your promises. I forget that you have made me a promise to never leave me nor forsake me. How easily I believe my own fears and the voices surround me in a cacophony of fear and anxiety. Deliver me Father, from all voices but Your own, and allow me to walk in the peace of your presence, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Song: Peace, Perfect Peace
