Songs for the road: part 2

Join us here at Salt and Light Church as Pastor Branden speaks on Psalm 121. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

Well, good morning, church. How are we doing this morning? Oh my. Wow. Let's try that again. Good morning, church. How are we doing this morning? Okay. We need more coffee. There's coffee in the back if you guys need that. Well, today's the first time that I get to preach in front of you here at our new space in Drum Intermediate, and it is an incredible opportunity to get to stand here in front of you guys today. And today we're going to continue on in our series through the songs of ascent. Okay, the songs on the road. And oh my goodness, I have had an incredible time this last week studying the psalm that we're going to go over today. We're going to study Psalm 121. And so I highly recommend that if you have a Bible somewhere to view a Bible to pull that open, because we're going to do a lot with the words that are going on in that uh scripture today, and there's depending on which translation you look at, you're going to want to know what you're looking at, right? Um, or some way to take notes. Because there's so much packed into just eight verses that I'm not entirely sure we're going to get through it all today. We are. We're going to. So buckle in. But as I sat with this psalm, you know, the songs of and the songs of Ascent more broadly, one idea kept coming to me over and over again. We live inside such a big story that God is writing. And I know I've said that before, but I think it's easy for us to become so close to our own lives, so caught up in our own stories, that we lose perspective of the greater things that are going on. Like you, you have things happening in your life. I got things happening in my life, right? But God is writing the story of your life, and He's writing the story of my life. And on mornings like this, our stories come together and they happen to intersect for a morning. But we can zoom out and we can look at the story of our church, even what's happened over the last six and seven months of what's gone on. We can zoom out again and we can look at the story of our country, the politics and the tensions, the hopes and the fears playing around us. We can zoom out farther than that and we can see all the stories that are unfolding across the world. And then we can zoom out further still and recognize that God has been writing a story across the entire history of creation. The same God who is writing your specific story is also writing mine. And he's writing this church's story, and he's writing every nation's story, the world's story, and the story of the universe itself. And I think that gives us some perspective on what it means to say that God is the author. We're not merely living a collection of disconnected stories or moments. We're living inside a story that is much larger than our immediate circumstances. And we need to keep that larger story in mind as we come to Psalm 121 and begin unpacking what this Psalm says about the God who keeps us. Now you may or may not be familiar with this particular psalm as a whole, but you've probably heard pieces of it. Verses of this appear in worship songs and on signs, on pillows, on cards, and on artwork. The famous line in the beginning says, I lift my eyes to the mountains or to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. But when we pull individual verses out of the psalm, we can lose the full force of what this song is saying. Psalm 121 is a song about God keeping his people. It doesn't mean that God is going to keep you from every painful situation or every disappointment or every interruption or every moment when our plans fall apart. It means that God will keep us within the larger story that He is writing. He is the author, and even death does not bring his story to an end. Because the story does continue. And that is what I want us to see in Psalm 121 today. Before we walk through the Psalm, though, we need to understand what kind of song this is. And Psalm 121 is one of 15 Psalms of Psalms 120 through 134, known as the songs of ascent, the songs on the road, the songs as we go. The songs were sung by pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for Israel's annual festivals, for Passover, for Pentecost, and for the Feast of Tabernacles. So the men were commanded that they had to go to Jerusalem three times a year. So for wherever they're living throughout the whole countryside, even in Babylon, when after the exile, they had to come journey to Jerusalem three times. And these 120 through 134 were the songs that they sang. And Jerusalem sits in a Judean hill country, so the ascent was literal. The pilgrims were actually going up towards Jerusalem. Jerusalem sat on a hill and they sang these songs as they traveled. They were songs for the road. They were songs for the tired, exposed people who did not know everything that was waiting for them around the next bend. Psalm 121 is one of the best loved of these songs, but the real weight of it is easy to miss when we only hear those familiar lines. So we're going to walk through this Psalm slowly and see what it means to be kept by God. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore. So the psalm begins. I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? So notice that the psalm begins with a question. But most scholars say that there is a shift between verse 1 and verse 2. Verse 1 asks the question, verse 2 gives the answer. And this actually may have been sung back and forth on the road, where one person would sing the first verse, and then the people around them would sing the second verse as a response to them. Or the people would sing it, and then the priests would sing from the front. And perhaps maybe it is a single person asking this from one side of their heart and the other side responding where the help comes from. One voice says, look at the hills, look at what we're facing. And another voice says, No, no, look beyond the hills. Remember the Lord. That's a conversation that many of us have inside ourselves. We look at what is happening around us, and then we have to remind ourselves of what is true. We see the diagnosis and then we have to remember God. We see the bills, and then we have to remember God. We see the conflict, the uncertainty, the closed door, the struggling child, or the unstable future, and then we have to turn our attention back towards God. The Hebrew word translated I lift up comes from a word that can also mean carrying or bearing. It can describe bearing a burden. There's something heavy in the movement. The pilgrim is carrying something as he lifts his eyes. He's not casually admiring the scenery. This isn't a tourist stopping to take a selfie of the background. He's looking up because he is searching for help. He is carrying a weight from the journey. He is aware of his limitations. He knows he cannot guarantee his own safety, and so he lifts his eyes. And some of you understand that kind of looking. You didn't come to church today simply because it was Sunday, and that's what we do on Sunday. You came carrying something. You came bearing questions. You came holding grief. You came exhausted from trying to keep everything together. You came because somewhere inside you is this question where is my help going to come from? The pilgrim lifts his eyes to the hills, and there's some intentional ambiguity in this image. Because we look up and we say, Oh, they're lifting their eyes to God. When actually it says, I lift my eyes to the mountains, and lifting my eyes to the hills. The hills represented the path towards Jerusalem. They were part of the journey towards the temple, the dwelling place of God's presence. So perhaps he looked at the hills with hope. But the hills were also places of danger. Bandits could hide there. The journey could become treacherous. Pagan shrines and places of false worship were often located on the high places. So perhaps the hills represented fear. Were the hills the sign of hope or a sign of danger? Were the hills friend or foe? The psalm doesn't tell us. And I think that's because the psalmist is doing something deeper than answering whether the hills are safe. The psalmist is relocating the entire question. The question isn't ultimately whether the hills are friendly. The question is not whether the road will be easy. The question is not whether the circumstances will cooperate. The answer is my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. The psalmist doesn't say my help comes from the hills. He doesn't say my help comes from knowing exactly what is going to happen. He doesn't say my help comes from carefully controlling every possible outcome. And he doesn't say my help comes from my strength or my intelligence, experience, discipline, or preparation. He looks beyond the hills and he declares, My help comes from the Lord. Now the Hebrew word translated help is the word Ezer. And this is a powerful word throughout the Old Testament. Now catch this, this is a quick diversion because I just think it's we've got to say it. So it this word Ezer is the word used in Genesis when God says that he will make a helper suitable for Adam. The phrase there is Ezer connecdo, a powerful co-equal. Something powerful about God creating woman. And how he uses that word there to describe her. But throughout the Old Testament, Ezra is used repeatedly to describe God Himself as the helper of his people. Psalm 33 says, We wait and hope for the Lord. Psalm 115 says, All you Israelites trust in the Lord, he is their help and their shield. Deuteronomy 33 declares, There is no one like the God of Jashuran who rides across the heavens to help you. When an Israelite heard the word Ezra, the word itself carried the memory of God's faithfulness. God is the helper of his people. He is the one who steps into situations where human strength is not enough. And this is not weak assistance. God is not your assistant. He's not standing beside you hoping you can handle most of it and then waiting to lend a hand when you become overwhelmed. He is your help because without him you cannot sustain your own life. My help comes from the Lord. Then the psalmist tells us which Lord He is talking about: the Maker of heaven and earth. The word translated maker describes God as the one whose identity is to create, form, and sustain. He's not merely the God who made the heavens. So the maker of heaven and earth, the word there in the Hebrew is a present tense. So not he made the heavens and the earth, he is the maker of the heavens and the earth. Creation continues to exist because God continues to sustain it. The stars remain in their place because of him. The seas remain with their boundaries because of him. The sun rises because of him. The seasons turn because of him. Every breath you take is possible because of him. And the God who helps one tired pilgrim place one foot in front of another on their way to Jerusalem is the same God who holds the cosmos together. So think about that. The pilgrim is asking, Who is going to help me over the hills? The answer is the one who made the hills. Who's going to help me survive beneath the sun? The one who made the sun. Who will help me through the darkness? The one who separated light from darkness and hung the moon and stars in that darkness. Who will help me navigate what I cannot see? The one who sees the beginning, the end, and everything in between. Isaiah 40 makes the same connection. Isaiah says, Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. Then Isaiah asks, Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord? In other words, if God has lost track of a single star, if God has not lost track of a single star, he has not lost track of you. You are not hidden from him. Your road is not hidden from him. Your pain is not hidden from him. Your questions are not hidden from him. But here's the reality: when we become afraid, we often lift our eyes to the wrong hills. We look to money and ask it to make us feel secure. We look to control and ask it to protect us from uncertainty. We look to another person and ask them to carry the full weight of our identity. We look to our reputation and ask us to tell us that we matter. We can look to political power, career advancement, perfect health, family stability, or our own competence. And none of these things are necessarily evil because planning is wise, good stewardship matters, relationships are gifts, work matters, health matters. But none of them can bear the weight of being your ultimate help. They cannot keep you. They were never designed to do that. And some of us are exhausted because we keep demanding that created things do what only the Creator can do. So the first movement in the Psalm 121 is a redirection. Lift your eyes, but do not stop at the hills. Look beyond what you can see because your help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Golly, and that was just two verses. Beginning in verse 3, a particular Hebrew word begins to dominate this psalm. The word is the word shamar. It means to keep or to guard, preserve, watch over, or carefully attend to something. God gave me the image of somebody who's watching over a garden, right? So you're tending to a garden, you're keeping it safe, you're watering it, you're watching it, you're preserving it from danger. The NIV often translates this word shamar as watches over. But it is the same Hebrew word repeated again and again. Six times in eight verses, the Psalm declares that God keeps his people. This is the heartbeat of Psalm 121. God keeps you, God keeps Israel, God is your keeper. So listen to verse 3. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. The word translated slip describes tottering or being shaken. It is the moment your foot begins to give way beneath you. So anyone who's walked along an uneven trail understands how quickly that can happen. You step on loose gravel, a rock shifts beneath your weight, your ankle turns, and for one second you lose your balance. On a dangerous path as this pilgrim's traveling to Jerusalem, one misplaced step can change everything. The same Hebrew root of this word is used in other Psalms to describe the foundations of the world being shaken. Psalm 46 speaks of mountains trembling and falling into the sea, but here that massive image is brought down to the scale of one person taking one step. The God who keeps the mountains from moving is paying attention to the pilgrim's foot. That doesn't mean the pilgrim will never stumble. The Bible is full of people who stumbled. David stumbled, Peter stumbled, Israel stumbled repeatedly. The image is not a promise that you will execute every step perfectly. It's a promise that God will not allow your stumbling to remove his keeping. A stumble is not the end of your story. A painful season is not the end of your story. A failure is not the end of your story. You may veer off the path, you may find yourself shaken, you may look down and realize you are nowhere near where you intended to be, but your keeper has not fallen asleep. Verse 3 says, He who keeps you will not slumber. To slumber, the Hebrew word that we translated slumber, it actually means to doze. You know, Uncle Charlie at Thanksgiving dinner after it, right? It's nodding off in the chair. That's what it means, to doze. It's it's that moment when your eyes become heavy and attention begins to fade. But God does not doze. His attention never wanders, his mind is never elsewhere. He never becomes distracted while caring for you. You've probably experienced the limitations of human attention. Someone loves you, but they become tired. Someone intends to help you, but they forget. Someone promises to be there, but they have needs of their own. Even the most faithful people in your life cannot watch over you constantly. They must sleep. They must attend to other responsibilities. They can't see everything. But God never looks away. He doesn't become overwhelmed. He doesn't become overwhelmed by the numbers of people who need him. He doesn't say, I'm sorry, I was dealing with someone else's crisis and didn't notice what happened to you. He doesn't miss the moment. He doesn't lose concentration. He doesn't take a nap. And in this, there's also a quiet challenge to the false gods of the surrounding nations in these words. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal and they cry out to Baal for hours, but nothing happens. Eventually, Elijah begins to mock them. Shout louder, he says. Maybe your God is in deep thought. Maybe he's traveling. Maybe he is asleep and must be awakened. But the God of Israel does not need to be awakened. He never becomes unavailable. You do not have to shout loudly enough to get his attention. Your tears do not become dramatic enough for him to notice you. Before the prayer left your mouth, he saw you. Before you knew what was happening, he was present. Before you found the words to explain your pain, he understood. Then verse 4 expands this promise. It says, indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Verse 3 said, He keeps you. Verse 4 says, He keeps Israel. The promise becomes larger. Your keeping is personal, but it is not private.

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You're being held within a story of faithfulness that began long before you were born. God is keeping you, is the God who kept the God who is keeping you is the God who kept Abraham. He kept Isaac, He kept Jacob, He kept Joseph through betrayal, slavery, false accusation, and imprisonment. He kept Israel through Egypt. He kept them through the sea. He kept them through the wilderness. He kept them through the exile. He kept them through generations when they were faithful and generations when they were not. The psalmist says the one keeping you right now is the keeper of Israel. Your confidence does not rest merely on what you're feeling in this particular moment. It rests on the demonstrated character of God across generations. And you may be confused about what God is doing in your life right now, but you're not the first person God has carried through confusion. You may feel like you're walking through a wilderness, but you're not the first person God has sustained in a wilderness. You may feel surrounded by enemies, you may feel forgotten, you may feel like the promise has been delayed for so long that perhaps it will never be fulfilled. But you are part of a people who have repeatedly discovered that God remains faithful even when his faithfulness is difficult to recognize in the moment. Then we come to verse 5. The Lord watches over you. That's how the NIV translates it. A better translation would be the Lord is your watcher, or the Lord is your keeper. Then it says, the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The Hebrew phrasing becomes stronger. Watch the progression. It says, He keeps you, he keeps Israel, he is your keeper. At first, keeping is something that God does. By verse 5, the keeper is who God is. This is not an occasional activity. It is not a temporary assignment for God. God does not reluctantly agree to watch over you for a few days. Keeper is part of his settled identity towards his people. He is your keeper. And I want that sentence to settle for a moment. The Lord is your keeper, not your anxiety, not your ability to anticipate every possible outcome, not your bank account, not your ability to keep everyone happy, not your perfect decision making, not your capacity to remain strong at every moment. The Lord is your keeper. I am not my keeper. I want us all to say that. I am not my keeper, right? If you go to Psalm 23, it says, The Lord is my shepherd. I am not my shepherd. I am not my keeper. If you let it sit for a little bit, you're gonna feel this weight lift off of you. Oh thank God. I am not my keeper. We are not ultimately responsible for preserving our own existence. But we are responsible for faithfulness. We are responsible for obedience. We are responsible for good stewardship of the life that God has given us. But you are not the sovereign lord of your own life. Some of us have confused responsibility with sovereignty. We believe that because we have choices to make, that we must control the outcomes. Because people depend on us, we must guarantee that nothing ever goes wrong. Because we have responsibilities, we must personally hold the entire world together. But you cannot. Because you were never asked to, and you were never designed to do that. There's a difference between carrying what God has entrusted to you and trying to carry what only God can hold. It's possible to be responsible without pretending to be sovereign. You can prepare without worshiping control. You can work hard without believing everything depends on you, and you can take the next faithful step while trusting the keeper on the road. Then the Psalm says, The Lord is your shade at your right hand. And shade may sound like a pleasant image to us. We picture sitting beneath a tree on a warm afternoon, drinking something cold and enjoying the breeze. But a traveler in the ancient Near East, shade was not simply about comfort. Shade was survival. The heat could become deadly. Exposure could drain your body of strength and disorient the mind. Shade meant protection from something relentless. The language echoes God's present with the presence with Israel in the wilderness. By day, the Lord led them with a pillar of cloud. The cloud was a sign that God was near. He was leading them, covering them, and remaining with them on the road that they didn't know. Psalm 91 says, Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The right hand was the place of vulnerability and action. It was the hand used to work, fight, and defend. God is not watching you from a great distance. He is present at the place where you feel exposed. He is close enough to cover you. He's not shouting directions from the other side of the valley. When you take another step, he's there. When you become exhausted, he's there. When you have no idea what to do next, he's there. When you can't feel him, he's there. And when the circumstances seem to contradict everything you thought God had promised, he's still there. He keeps you. He is your keeper. Verse 6 says, The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night, and it would be easy to rush past this verse as though the psalmist was simply saying, God will protect you all day and all night. Now that's part of the meaning, but the imagery carries more weight. The sun will not harm you by day. The verb translated harm is a strong word. It means to strike or to smite. It was used elsewhere for military attacks and for the plagues striking Egypt. The sun doesn't merely make a traveler uncomfortable, the sun strikes. On an exposed road, sunstroke was a genuine and potential fatal danger. The pilgrim could see the sun. He understood the threat. He could feel the heat against his skin. He could watch the water supply becoming smaller. He could see the landscape offering little little relief. The danger was visible. It was understandable, but it was unavoidable. But then the Psalm says, nor the moon by night. Ancient cultures commonly associated the moon with mysterious illnesses, mental disturbance, and forces they couldn't understand. You know, we have the word lunacy. Comes from the Latin word for the word moon, lunar. The sun represented the danger they could see and name. The moon represented the danger they could not explain or control. The psalm covers both. God keeps you from what you can see coming and from what you can't understand. He keeps you under the blazing sun when the problem is obvious. He keeps you beneath the moon when the darkness fills your mind with possibilities. Some fears have names. You know exactly what you're afraid of. You know that the appointment is scheduled. You know the money is running low. You know the conversation needs to happen. You know the relationship is strained. You know the deadline is approaching. That's the sun. It's visible, it's right in front of you. But other fears are harder to name. Something feels wrong, but you don't know what it is. Your mind becomes restless at night. You imagine conversations that haven't happened and outcomes that may never happen. You feel an anxiety you can't fully explain. That's the moon. It lives in the shadows. It's mysterious. It grows larger in the darkness. Psalm 121 says that the God who keeps you is God over the sun and over the moon. He is God over what you understand. He is God over what you can't explain. He is the God in the daylight when you can see the road, and he is the God in the darkness when you can barely see your next step. There is no shift change in heaven. God doesn't keep you during the day and then turn it over to someone else at night. He doesn't keep you in the parts of your life that make sense and then disappear when life becomes confusing. His keeping is total. Then we arrive at one of the most difficult verses in this psalm. Verse 7 says, The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. So what does that mean? We know. We know faithful people experience harm. Believers become sick, Christians suffer violence, people who love God experience betrayal. Parents lose children. Marriages end, bodies break, prayers appear to go unanswered. Faithful people are persecuted, and some believers have died while singing the words of this psalm. So we need to be honest. We should not protect the Bible from the tension created by its own words. If the Lord will keep you from all harm means that nothing painful will ever happen to any person who trusts God, then the promise clearly doesn't match reality. But that's not what the Psalm is promising. The Hebrew phrase translated all harm can also mean all evil. In the context of God's covenant faithfulness, the promise is not necessarily that no hardship will touch you. The promise is that no evil will finally possess you, destroy you, or remove you from the purposes or presence of God. The promise is preservation unto the end, not exemption along the way. The promise is preservation unto the end, not exemption along the way. And I know that may initially sound like we're making the promise smaller, but we're not. We're discovering that the promise is deeper. A God who promises that nothing difficult will ever happen to you is promising an easy road. Psalm 121 promises something greater than that. It promises that no road, no suffering, no betrayal, no loss, no persecution, or even death itself can carry you beyond the reach of your keeper. The harm may be real, the grief, the wound, the injustice may be real, but it will not have the final word. It will not define the end of your story. It will not separate you from the love of God. Paul says it this way in Romans 8: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Notice that Paul doesn't say that Christians will never experience these things. He names them as real possibilities trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, danger, sword. Then he says, No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Not apart from these things, not because we avoided these things, but in all these things. Then Paul declares, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels, nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is what it means to be kept. The promise is not that death will never touch you. The promise is that even death cannot separate you from the love of God. Verse 7 continues, he will watch over your life. The Hebrew word translated life here is the word nefesh. Sometimes Nefesh is translated as soul. But when we hear the word soul, we often imagine a spiritual part of ourselves that exists somewhere inside the body. We picture the body as one thing and the soul as another. But Nefesh is much more holistic than that. Genesis 2 says that God formed the human being from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living Nefesh. The text doesn't say that God placed a Nefesh inside the man. It says that the man became a living Nefesh. The word describes the living, breathing, animated person, your whole self, your embodied life, your desires, your longings, your breath, and the complete person God formed from the dust and filled with life. He will keep your nefesh. He will keep the whole you, the you who laughs, the you who cries, the you who becomes tired, the you who carries memories in your body, the you who has been wounded, the you who has made mistakes. He keeps the you who has experienced moments of extraordinary faith and moments of deep doubt. He keeps the you who sometimes knows exactly what you believe and then sometimes praise, God, I believe, but help my unbelief. God keeps your whole life. Your story is not disposable to him, your body is not meaningless to him, your suffering is not irrelevant to him, your history is not forgotten. He is preserving the whole person he created. And this is why the Christian hope is not merely that our souls will escape our bodies and float somewhere forever. Our hope is the resurrection. God redeems the whole person. He's not abandoning creation, he's restoring it. He's not discarding the body, he's raising it. The promise of Psalm 121 stretches towards the resurrection of the dead when the keeping work of God will be seen in its fullness. So verse 8 completes the Psalm, the Lord will watch over you and your coming and going both now and forevermore. Literally, the phrase is the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in. This is the Hebrew way of describing the whole of life by naming two opposite movements: going out and coming in, beginning and ending, leaving and returning, morning and evening, work and rest. Everything in between that is included. God keeps you when you go out, and the God keeps you when you come home. He keeps you when you begin something new and when in and when a season comes to an end. He keeps you when you walk into the room and when you walk away. He keeps you in public when everyone can see what you're doing, and in private when nobody knows what you're carrying. He keeps you in the extraordinary moments and in the inordinary movements of the of your day. And we often think most seriously about God's keeping during moments of crisis, when we receive the phone call or when the accident happens, when the diagnosis comes or when the relationship falls apart. Then we cry out, God, keep me. And he does. But Psalm 121 is not only a crisis psalm, it is a traveling psalm. It's about putting on your sandals in the morning. It's about packing your belongings. It's about taking another step. It's about going out and coming in. God's keeping is not reserved for the dramatic moments of your life. He's keeping you in the ordinary. He's present in the commute. He's present in the meeting. He's present while you wash dishes. He's present while you raise your children. He's present in the conversation you've had a hundred times. And he's present in the small acts of obedience that no one celebrates. He is present while you do the work in front of you, and he keeps your going out and your coming in. The phrase also echoes the covenant blessing of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 28 says, You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. Psalms 121 isn't using random poetic language. This is covenant language. The pilgrim is being reminded that he belongs to God, that God has bound himself to his people, that the keeping of God is not based on temporary mood, it rests on covenant faithfulness. Human beings make promises and then change their mind. We make commitments when we're emotional and then emotion fades. We become tired, we become frustrated. We decide the relationship costs too much. But God's covenant does not rest on the instability of human emotion. He is faithful because faithfulness is who he is. And the psalm ends both now and forevermore. Now, in this moment, on this road, under this sun, beneath this moon, with this problem, in this body, carrying this burden, God keeps you now. And forevermore. Not only until you reach Jerusalem, not only until the crisis passes, not only until the prayer is answered, not only until the road becomes easier, but forevermore. The psalmist reaches for language that has no ending. God's keeping extends beyond the horizon that you can see. It extends beyond the final day of your earthly life. But how do we know? How can we trust that suffering will not have the final word? How can we believe that death itself cannot carry us beyond the reach of our keeper? The answer is found in the resurrection of Jesus. The tension inside Psalm 121 is not resolved through a philosophical argument. It is resolved in a person. Jesus Christ is the ultimate pilgrim. He set his face towards Jerusalem. He walked the road of obedience. He trusted the Father completely, and yet Jesus was not kept from harm. He was betrayed by one of his closest friends. He was abandoned by his disciples. He was falsely accused. He was mocked, beaten, struck, nailed to a cross. He suffered, he bled, and he died. If being kept by God means that nothing painful will ever happen, then the cross looks like a complete failure of Psalm 121. Where was the keeper? Where was the shade? Where was the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps? Jesus himself cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? From outside it looked like Jesus had not been kept at all. His enemies had won, his body was placed in a tomb, his stone was rolled across the entrance. The pilgrims who had followed him went home in grief, and hope appeared to be dead. But early on the third day, the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty. Jesus was raised from the dead, and the resurrection reveals what the keeping God has always meant. Jesus was not kept from the cross, he was kept through the cross. He was not kept from suffering, he was kept through the suffering. He was not kept from death, he was kept through death and brought to the other side. Man, death did its worst. Evil exhausted its power on Jesus. The grave closed its mouth around him, and still it could not keep him because the Father was keeping him. What looked like failure of God's promise was actually the place where the promise was being fulfilled most deeply. God kept his life. God kept his nefesh. God preserved the whole person. Jesus didn't rise as in a disembodied spirit. He rose bodily. The wounds were still visible. He ate with his disciples. They touched him. The whole Jesus who entered the grave came out of the grave, transformed and victorious. The resurrection is the guarantee behind the words forevermore. Without resurrection, forevermore would be a beautiful religious sentiment. But because of the resurrection, forevermore is a declaration of victory. The Apostle Peter says God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Why is our hope living? Because Jesus is living. Why can our inheritance never perish? Because death could not keep Jesus, and nothing can remove him from those who belong to him. Jesus says in John 10, My sheep listen to my voice and I know them and they follow me, I give them eternal life. And they shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. That is the keeping of God. You may walk through suffering, but you cannot be snatched from his hand. You may be shaken, but you cannot be snatched from his hand. You may not understand the road, but you cannot be snatched from his hand. You may experience loss, you may carry wounds, you may reach the end of your own strength. And one day, unless Jesus returns first, your earthly body will die. But even then, you will not be lost. The keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, the one who raised Jesus from the dead, who also gives life to your mortal body. This is why Christians can grieve without grieving as those who have no hope. We don't tell wounded people that their pain isn't real. The cross prevents us from doing that. God Himself entered human suffering. Jesus wept, Jesus groaned, Jesus bled, and Jesus died. But the resurrection declares that suffering does not get the last word. Death does not get the last word. Cancer does not get the last word. Injustice does not get the last word. Betrayal does not get the last word. Your worst day does not get the last word. Your greatest failures do not get the last word. Jesus gets the last word because his word is life. So let us return to the beginning. I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? Where are you looking for help? Not where do you say your help comes from, because most of us know the right church answer for that. My help comes from the Lord. But where are you functionally looking for your help? What has been carrying the weight of your trust? Where does your mind go first when you become afraid? Do you immediately begin calculating how much money you have? Do you begin planning how you can control every variable? Do you replay other people's opinions, wondering whether they approve of you? Do you look to a spouse, a leader, a parent, a friend, and expect them to provide the security that no human being can provide? Do you look at yourself and say, I will just have to be stronger? There's nothing wrong with making a plan. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. There's nothing wrong with building healthy relationships or preparing for the future, but none of those things are your keeper. Some of us are staring at the hills so intensely that we have forgotten the maker of the hills. We're studying every threat, analyzing every possible outcome, rehearsing every conversation and preparing for every disaster. We are looking at the hills, and the hills are real. The road may be dangerous, the sun is hot, the night might be dark, your foot might feel unsteady. Faith looks honestly at the hills, but then beyond them. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, the one who keeps me, the one who keeps Israel, the one who is my keeper, the one who never slumbers, the one who never sleeps, the one who is my shade at my right hand, the one who keeps my whole life, the one who keeps my going out and my coming in, the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Maybe today's invitation isn't to try harder to keep yourself. Maybe it's to surrender again to the God who is already keeping you. Where have you been trying to hold together something that only God can hold? Where have you confused faithful responsibility with ultimate control? Where are you carrying the pressure of guaranteeing an outcome that has never actually been yours to guarantee? You can release it. And that doesn't mean you stop caring. It doesn't mean you stop praying. It doesn't mean you become passive or irresponsible. It means you take the next faithful step without demanding to see the entire road. It means you obey God with what is in front of you and trust Him with what is beyond your sight. The pilgrim didn't receive a map showing every turn. Sometimes we want an explanation when God gives us presence. We want to know exactly why this is happening. We want to know precisely how it will end. We want to know when the road will become easier. And sometimes God graciously gives us understanding, but often he gives us something else. He gives us himself. I am your keeper, not you will understand everything. I am your keeper, not nothing will hurt. I am your keeper, not the road will always be easy. I am your keeper. And because he is your keeper, you can keep walking. You can take the next step, you can walk beneath the sun, you can rest beneath the moon, you can go out, you can come in, you can face what is known, and you can face what is unknown. You can walk through the suffering without allowing suffering to tell you that God has abandoned you. You can stand at a graveside and weep while still believing in resurrection. You can carry unanswered questions without surrendering your trust, and you can say with the psalmist, My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Church, the Lord will keep your going out and your coming in. He will keep you when you know where you're going and when the road disappears into the darkness. He will keep you now, and because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, we know that he will keep you forevermore. So lift your eyes. Look beyond the hills. Your help comes from the Lord. Your keeper is awake, he is near, and he is faithful. So let's take the next step. Amen. Amen. Let's stand and pray. Father, I thank you for all that you have continued to unpack in this verse. Lord, and it is just a picture of our growing faith that sometimes we give you the ability to watch over our foot. We'll maybe give you our family. But then for you to become my keeper means that I have got to release control and to continue saying, I am not my keeper. And Lord, may that refrain just be in us this week as we go from here and to just continually say, I am not my keeper. I release sovereignty, but not responsibility. I know I have a place to play in this, Lord. I know you've called me to it, but God, you are my keeper. Keep my whole life, God, my going in and my come, my going out. God, from now until forevermore. Lord, thank you for this church community, this body that you've given us to walk this out together. Lord, keep us, keep all of us, Lord, and be our keeper. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Uh okay, so it is July, right? Yeah. And we have lots of cake back there for July birthdays. Do we who's got a July birthday?