Transcript
Will you pray with me? God, give us eyes to see and give us ears to hear what you would have for us this day. Amen. Good Psalms for hard times.
That is our 10-week summer series with the top 10 Psalms that the church voted upon. And was there ever any question that Psalm 121 was going to make it on that list? It was on my list that I turned in. I love this Psalm.
It has been quoted and sung throughout centuries. Its poetry has withstood the test of time. So I am going to read it for us today.
If you would like to follow along in your pew Bible, I’m not sure what page it’s on, but it is Psalm 121 in the Old Testament. I lift up my eyes to the hills from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved.
He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper.
The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil.
He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Perhaps like me, this is one of your favorite Psalms. It’s one of those that’s easy to memorize, easy to pray, easy to carry with you.
But one of the reasons I love Psalm 121 is because you don’t just hear it, you feel it. Made of four couplets, four sections with two verses of scripture, the structure of Psalm 121 suggests that it may have been sung as a call and worship of some sorts. So as I said earlier in the first service, very appropriate that we made it part of our call to worship.
It’s almost like we do these things, we worship plan and we think these things through. In each of the couplets of the Psalm, the nature of God is gradually revealed more and more to us. God is majestic helper, faithful keeper and preserver.
This Psalm must have been a great encouragement to Israel. And it still carries the potential to bear up those who journey through life and are filled with uncertainty and danger. Now some scholarship disagrees how Psalm 121 originated.
Some scholars believe that it may have originated as a prayer or profession of a warrior and then was later re-read as a pilgrimage Psalm. Others suggest that it originated as a farewell liturgy where verses one through two should be heard as the words of one who was about to depart. And then verses three through eight as the response of the one who was staying behind, which is why I believe that often we turn to this Psalm in times of sorrow or grief or loss.
We hear it read at funerals. But either way, this Psalm is interpreted. The usefulness of it has transcended the circumstances of its origin, as well as its role as an ancient pilgrim song.
This Psalm is the second in a series of 15 Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. And as a Psalm of Ascent, we are going to look at it through this lens of it being a prayer God’s people sang or said as they journeyed up to Jerusalem. Every year pilgrims would make the trip to the holy city, climbing roads that were beautiful but uncertain.
The hills were places of wonder, but of course they could also conceal danger. These were songs for people on the move. They were for the travelers, those who knew they needed God’s help.
And I believe that’s what makes this Psalm timeless, one that has stood the test of time because all of us are pilgrims on a journey of some sort. Now the Psalm begins with a question that is echoed through every generation. I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where will my help come? For centuries this has been a statement of confidence, but before it is a declaration of faith, it is first an honest question.
And that matters because questions are often where faith begins. The psalmist turns their face and looks towards the horizon and sees both possibility and uncertainty, and there’s something deeply human about looking toward the horizon. When life becomes uncertain, our eyes instinctively search the distance.
Sometimes we look towards the hills, toward the next bend in the road, toward the place where answers might be found. We may lift our eyes because we are filled with hope, or we may lift our eyes because we are filled with fear. And often those two emotions live together in the same heart.
And that is where this Psalm meets us. It is a song of a traveler, the prayer of someone who knows the road ahead is beautiful, but not always safe. The hills could be a place of promise, but they could also hide dangers we cannot yet see.
Every journey carries both possibilities. Every new chapter contains both excitement and uncertainty. We begin careers not knowing where they will lead.
We enter marriages without seeing every joy and every sorrow. We raise children without a map for every season, which that might be my biggest complaint against God, perhaps. If you have ever raised a child, you may have wanted to know what you were doing when you didn’t.
But we face illness, grief, retirement, change, and loss without knowing exactly what lies around the next corner. Life just keeps inviting us onto roads we have never walked before. And standing before all of that, the pilgrim asks the question, from where will my help come? On a gut level, we know that question.
This question is not a sign of weak faith. Faith grows because we dare ask that question, from where will my help come? The beautiful thing about scripture is that it never rushes us past the questions. It lets them breathe.
It allows uncertainty to become the pathway through which trust enters. Because the answer comes, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. The psalmist here is giving the Lord some credentials, right? Our Lord is kind and compassionate, but it’s also the creator of heaven and earth.
The God who scattered the stars across the heavens is the same God who watches over tired travelers. The God who formed the mountains and the hills is the same God who steadies uncertain feet. The one who holds the universe together also holds us.
When I was helping with VBS a few weeks ago, I don’t think my mic’s picking up on me. I’ll stay right here. It’s very hard for me.
But when I was helping with VBS a few weeks ago, which, by the way, everyone should do at some point if you were unable to do so this year, guess what? You can next year. There’s a new opportunity. I digress.
There was a familiar children’s song that Katie led the youngest children in during their music time. I’m sure you know it. He’s got the whole world in his hands.
Have you heard this song? Now, I have the backing of the choir. I did not ask them this beforehand, so putting them on the spot. But we’re going to sing a little bit of this song together.
You ready? He’s got the whole world in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands.
He’s got the whole world in his hands. Thank you. That was beautiful.
I would not have wanted to do that alone. And I just kept coming back to this song when I was studying this psalm because it has this familiar movement. Our kids, of course, knew it.
They loved it. But the thing is that it moves from the God of the cosmos, the God who has the whole world in his hands, to the ways in which God has all of us. Because then you start singing other verses and you say, God’s got you and me, brother, in his hands.
He’s got you and me, sister. I’m changing the words. Sorry.
He’s got all the little babies in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands. In our group, God also had the dinosaurs, the trucks, everything you can imagine.
But the thing that Psalm 121 does is it affirms that the sovereign ruler of the cosmos has a personal concern for the lives of all of God’s people. The God who has the whole world in his hands also has your sister and your brother and the babies and the dinosaurs and everything else. The one who holds it all also has you and me and cares for our going and our coming.
And in the next three couplets in this psalm, the psalm introduces a word that I believe is the heartbeat of this psalm. One Hebrew word appears six different times. And the root of this word is shamar.
It means to keep, to guard, to watch over, to preserve. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord will keep you.
The Lord will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in. In Hebrew, this repetition is intentional.
It’s as though the psalmist wants one truth to settle deep into our souls. God keeps us. Now, this word shamar, it’s more than simply standing guard.
It carries the picture of someone paying careful attention to something precious. A shepherd keeps the flock. A gardener keeps the vineyard.
A parent keeps watch through the night over a sick child. This is more than just some distant supervision. This is loving, attentive care.
And this is the word the psalm chooses for God. Not king, not ruler, not judge. Keeper.
God who keeps us. God does not merely count us among his possessions. God treasures us.
Our pain is not invisible. Our tears are not insignificant. Our fears do not go unnoticed.
When our hearts ache, God’s heart is not indifferent. God is our keeper. The psalm goes on to say that one of the ways that God keeps us is because God neither slumbers nor sleeps.
We do. God does not. We become exhausted.
God never grows weary. We lose sight of the road. God never loses sight of us.
And there is such wonderful comfort in that. Sometimes we lose our confidence. Sometimes we lose certainty.
Sometimes we wonder if we are even holding on to God anymore. But Psalm 121 quietly reminds us that our hope has never rested on the strength of our grip on God. For as easy as it seems to lose our grip, it is nice to know that God does not lose a grip on us.
God never slumbers. God is always keeping us. I remember going for this hike when I was in seminary.
It was one of those trails that looked very manageable on a map. And then when you get out there, you thought that map lied. That’s not what this trail is.
And I probably should not have been walking alone, but it was just one of those days where I woke up. I needed to clear my mind. I needed some space.
So I go on this walk. And the morning started out very cool. It was bright, not too hot.
The air smelled of pine and that damp earth. And then sunlight just filtered through the trees and these like long golden beams. And I thought this is going to be a beautiful walk.
And at first the climb felt easy enough. But then as I kept going, I realized that it just kept going. And every bend, there was another bend and every ridge led to another ridge.
And as the minutes turned into a couple of hours, my legs grew very tired. My water bottle was growing very light. And the excitement I had at the beginning of this hike was slowly giving away to fatigue.
And I perhaps should have turned around, but I cannot stress this enough. I am far too stubborn. And so I didn’t.
At a few points, I actually stopped and looked around. And I’m just looking, not entirely sure I was still on the right path. And you know, when you go out on these hikes looking for silence, it can be very beautiful.
But then when you’re lost or uncertain, it becomes very unsettling. But then just as doubt began to creep in, I noticed on the trunk of a tree a little bit of paint. Then as I walked a little further, I saw this little stack of stones carefully placed beside the trail.
They weren’t dramatic. They didn’t suddenly flatten this mountain or shorten the distance. My legs still ached.
The climb was still steep. My water was still running low. But those markers changed something inside of me.
They reminded me that someone has walked this trail before me. Someone knew the way. Someone had taken the time to leave the sign so that strangers like me would know they are on the right path and could keep moving forward.
God just doesn’t give us a detailed map of the whole journey. We don’t always get to see what’s waiting over the next ridge. But instead, God gives us enough grace for the next step, enough shade or light for today’s path, enough reminders that we were not the first to walk this road and we will never walk it alone.
The ancient pilgrims, they knew that. They knew that feeling as they climbed toward Jerusalem. Every step reminded them that they were dependent upon someone greater than themselves.
Their feet could stumble. The weather could change. Enemies could appear.
This journey required trust. Now, for honest, at least for me, this raises a difficult question. If God keeps us, why do faithful people still suffer? Why do pilgrims still climb steep roads? Why do illnesses come? Why do prayers sometimes seem unanswered? Why do tears still fall? But Psalm 121 doesn’t promise that no hardship will come.
If you read this passage, it tells us that the traveler still walks. The sun still burns. The night still falls.
The road remains uncertain. What changes is that no part of the journey is walked alone. And that’s the kind of confidence that this psalm invites us to have.
The one who keeps us is not distant from our suffering, but present within it. We see this in verse five when it says, the Lord is your shade at your right hand. Now, shade may seem like a small gift until you’ve had to walk through a desert or you get lost on a trail that you shouldn’t have been on.
Sometimes God’s grace doesn’t remove the heat. Sometimes God’s grace is the shade that makes the journey possible. Many of us spend an enormous amount of time trying to avoid every hardship.
We may pray for the end. We may pray for it to stop. Yet scripture often offers something deeper than escape from our situations.
It offers companionship. God does not always keep us from hardship, but God always keeps us through each hardship. The psalm ends by saying, the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on forevermore.
God is always keeping us, even in the quiet prayers whispered at the end of a long day or in the mundane moments that no one else may see all of them. Friends, each of us will leave this sanctuary today on our own journeys. We will continue on them in our pilgrimage.
And the world offers so many reasons for us to lower our eyes to become cynical or overwhelmed or numb. Do not turn on the news. Psalm 121 invites us to lift our eyes instead, because the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps is still at work.
The one who has kept generations before us is keeping us now. Our confidence is that wherever the road leads, God’s presence goes before us, walks beside us, and sends us to become signs of that faithful presence for the world. The Lord is our keeper.
When we cannot see around the next bend, the Lord is our keeper. When our prayers are reduced to tears, the Lord is our keeper. When our faith feels strong and built up, the Lord is our keeper.
When our faith is full of questions, the Lord is our keeper. From our first breath until our last, the Lord is our keeper. From your going out to your coming in, the Lord is your keeper.
So wherever the road leads this week, lift up your eyes. Not because the hills themselves hold your hope, but because the one who made the hills is your keeper from this time on and forevermore. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
