Sunday 01 • 28 • 18

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. 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. 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 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 forth and forevermore. — Psalm 121

The word of the lord.

Good morning. It's a privilege to be able to be here with you today. When Jeff asked me to preach, I was thinking about what I'd like to speak on and this Psalm came to mind because it speaks to the nature of being a pilgrim in this life. But to be a pilgrim that deals with stress, to really be an anxious traveler, and that's something that I know a lot about.

In a couple of weeks, I'm going to be taking 23 students to London, England. And it keeps me awake at night because I worry, am I going to leave one behind? That would not be good for the reputation to leave someone in another country. But I come from a family of anxious travelers. When we would travel down to Mobile, Alabama where my family was from, we would often ride down with my grandparents and my grandfather would want to leave before the sun gets up. We would have to wake up in the middle of the night to get over to their house to be able to travel before the sun hits the highway. He wanted to be gone.

But this created some tension in our family. One time there was this early morning where my grandfather wanted to get up and get going, and he didn't care about needs, he had a goal. And so he was out in the car. The car was on. It was running. He wanted the family in it, and so he started to honk his horn. Flash into the kitchen, there's my grandmother in her housecoat, hair in curlers, cooking breakfast with this grimace. I've gotta put up with this guy but we're going to feed the family before we leave.

But why did my grandfather want to leave so early? It's because he was worried about the travel. He was worried about all the things that could go wrong and they filled his mind up and so he thought, the only thing I can do is something. I gotta do something. I don't know what it is but at least we can go.

I think a lot of us can resonate with that because we live in a world of chaos, live in a world of things that are anxious to us, live in a world of things we can't control, and we just want to go, we just want to do something. But then we have this psalm. This psalm is a psalm for the anxious traveler. This psalm is a psalm that speaks into that reality of us as we stress over chaos and helps us to know how it is that we live in a world of chaos with confidence.

The outline for today, the thing that I hope that we walk away with is this: On scary paths, you can't sleep, so you better sing. On scary paths, you can't sleep, so you better sing.

But before we begin, I'm gonna pause and then pray, and you're welcome to pray along with me in your hearts that God might work in all of us today.

Our Lord and our God, we thank you that you are present in real, tangible ways today and that you can work in our hearts to give us hope, to give us confidence in the midst of chaos. Speak, Lord, and help us to hear. We pray this for Jesus' sake, amen.

The Psalms of Ascents

This psalm, Psalm 121, is one of the Psalms of Ascents. And these really are the pilgrim psalms. These are psalms that were sung by the people of Israel as they would travel from throughout the kingdom to Jerusalem for the great feasts, for the times of sacrifice, for the times where they would come together and worship God.

And as this psalmist is traveling up the hills and mountains to Jerusalem, he kind of looks ahead at the journey and he begins to stress out about it. He looks up and he sees these mountains and he says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? He looks and he thinks about the hardships of the journey.

He reflects in this psalm about the sun and the way that the sun beats down on him as he travels and how that could create heat problems, things like sunstroke. He reflects on the treacherous paths that he'd have to climb to get up there, and he worries about the fact that his foot could slip and he could go, boom, right down into a ravine. He worries about the nature of travel and how he can't combine all the forces of nature to be on his schedule, and so he has to deal with night and day. And when night comes, he worries about things like robbers. Like we see in the parable of the good Samaritan, how people could be hiding in the dark and jump out and attack.

The psalmist sees the mountain and he begins to freak out. Like most of us, right?

We begin to go down the paths of life and things come and they begin to fill our view like mountains that bring out stress in us, deadlines that have come up because of the projects that are put on you that you think that deadline is unattainable. Relationships that get into these awkward places and you don't think that there's a way to get out of it. Financial difficulties that have been put on you and you wonder how in the world am I going to manage this. We live with this kind of sense of chaos that is at our door that we're always trying to manage and hold back.

I don't know about you, but the snow days recently were like a moment of rest. It's like the city shut down. But once it melted, it was like jumping back onto a treadmill that someone had turned right up to eight miles an hour that I had to keep up with. We live in a world where it seems like there's things that are daunting, things that are weighing on us as this journey presses on, and we wonder, How can we do it?

My Help Comes from the Lord

But in the midst of this fear, in the midst of this uncertainty, the psalmist pulls back and he reflects upon the God that he's going to worship. He says in verse two:

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

He's reminding himself that he's not alone on this journey, but there's one that helps him. And he refers to the Lord, which is not a generic term for God, but as you may know, this is actually God's personal name. This is the name that God gave to Moses when he was at the burning bush and Moses says, "Who do I say that you are?" And God responded, "You say, I am who I am" or Jehovah or Yahweh. This is the personal name of God. And he gave it to Moses to give to the people so that they could know him and call on him in a personal way.

Have you ever moved to a place and you don't really know anybody, but you meet somebody and they give you their car, they give you their name, they give you a piece of information that gives you a sense of, "I'm not alone here." Now, how encouraging that is to think that even in the midst of this new place, I have someone I can call on. I have somebody that can help me. To give a name like that is to obligate yourself to service, and that's what God does to his people. He gives us his name so that we can call on him. He gives us his name so that we know that in the midst of the stress of the journey, we have someone that we can reach out to that can respond and it's not just kind of a nice person that's willing to help. This is the Lord as the Psalmist says, who created heaven and earth.

And by using heaven and earth, he's saying that the Lord created all things all the way from the depths of the earth to the heights of heaven. All things were created by him and this is your helper. This is the one who you can call on in the midst of the stress of the journey.

The Psalmist sees the daunting mountains and thinks of the treacherous past and thinks of all the things that could go wrong. And in those moments, he stops and thinks, "But I have someone I can call on. I have a name. I know that in the midst of these fears, I can call on the Lord, and he will respond." But will he? Sometimes in the midst of the times of life when we feel stressed, we know that we can call on God but we wonder, will he answer? We know that we're supposed to call on him, that somehow he's going to help us, we think, but we wonder, will he come through?

God Will Not Slumber

The psalmist deals with this reality in verse three. He says:

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.

The psalmist is thinking like you. He's thinking of the treacherous paths. He knows that he can call on God's name but he's wondering, "Is he going to miss something for a moment? Is my foot going to slip on a rock and I'm going to fall down and hurt myself?" How do I have confidence that God is going to watch over me in a way that will protect me? How do I have confidence to know that in the midst of all the dangers that I see that God will not miss something and my life will fall apart.

And so the psalmist in reflecting upon the dangers of the journey reminds himself that God is a God that doesn't sleep. He mentions this twice in this repetition, this exclamation. He's saying, "But God doesn't sleep," which is a weird thing to say, right? I'm sure when you're stressed out, you don't all of a sudden in the midst of the library you're studying for a final or in your work cubicle at work say, "But God doesn't sleep." That might freak out your neighbors. Try it. See what happens.

Why does the psalmist remind himself that God doesn't sleep? It's because he lived in a world where people thought that gods would sleep. In the ancient Near East the way that people thought of gods is they thought of them as basically deified versions of humans with the same needs and the same desires.

And this was a way that they made sense of a world where sometimes it seems like their gods would come through and help them, and sometimes it seemed like their gods wouldn't show up. And so they couldn't really trust or rest in their gods because they didn't know whether their gods would be a help at the times that were crucial in their life.

We saw this when we looked as a congregation at the story of the prophets of Baal and Elijah. And there we saw a great contest between the God of Israel and the prophets of Baal. Elijah called out to the God of Israel, and the God of Israel showed up. The prophets of Baal called out to their God, and he didn't show up. And Elijah mocked them about this. He said:

Cry aloud, for he is a god. But perhaps he's musing. Perhaps he's using the bathroom. Perhaps he's on a journey, or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened.

And the prophets of Baal cried aloud, and then they began to cut themselves, as was their custom, with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Isn't that what you fear about God? That you're going to be in this crucial moment when you need him, this crucial moment when you want him, this crucial moment when he must show up? You're going to be left with the silence that the prophets of Baal experienced—that there was no voice, that no one answered, that no one paid attention.

When we see the mountains, when we see the journey, when we see the stress, we think that, "Yeah, there is this God, but we wonder. When we really need him, is he going to show up? When we really need him, is he going to be there? Or are we going to fear silence? And are we going to be left alone with no voice, no answer, no one paying attention?"

But the psalmist says that God does not sleep. The psalmist says that there is one who is watching over you, who does not need to stop and take a break, who does not need to stop for a moment to rest, whose attention is always on you.

I know as a parent that just a moment's misdirected attention can create problems. I could speak about unexpected haircuts. I could speak about unexpected bumps and bruises. I could speak about the great ice cream and toilet bowl debacle. I can see how just a moment of missing something can create huge problems. But God doesn't miss anything. He's a God that doesn't sleep.

The psalmist shouts out: God does not sleep. He does not neglect us. He never misses a thing. His eye is always on us. He's never distracted from us. The Lord serves us by constant, enduring, faithful attention. The psalmist is reminding us here that God does not need to sleep, and so there's never a moment when the creator of the heaven and the earth does not use all of his strength, all of his energy, all of his power, all of his attention to care for his pilgrims, to care for his people, to care for his children. We are people who sleep, but we have a Creator who does not.

Jesus in the Garden

This comes together at one time when the Creator of this world came into this world to join with us in this pilgrimage. Jesus came into this world fully God as a pilgrim, walking along the paths with us. And he had a time of need when there was a mountain that he was to climb, when he was to climb up the hill that led to his cross. And what did he do? He asked his creatures to not sleep. He called to his friends. He called to his disciples and says, "Stay here. Keep watch over me."

In his greatest moment of need, the God of the universe said, "I need you to not sleep, to watch over me." But what happened? His closest friends, his disciples couldn't stay awake. Three times he asks, three times they fall asleep.

We know this about ourselves—that we're sleepy people, that we cannot keep our eyes on ourself, that we cannot protect ourself, that we need someone to watch over us. We are people who are unfaithful. But what is God like? How did Jesus respond to his disciples who were unfaithful? How did the God of the universe respond to the creatures that couldn't do what he asked them to do—to stay awake and watch over him?

He continued along his path alone. He went up the hill and he entered into the things that we fear. He entered into the chaos. He took the chaos onto himself, seeing the sun fall away from the sky, feeling the earth shake under his feet, feeling the God of the universe turning away from him, taking away his care, keeping his eye not on him but away from him.

He endured all the things that we fear, the chaos that seems just outside of our door, so that we wouldn't have to fear that chaos anymore. Despite the unfaithfulness of us, he was faithful. He suffered all of our fears to pay for our sleep and our unfaithfulness. He continued on his pilgrimage to the cross because his faithfulness is never dependent upon our faithfulness.

His lack of sleep is not dependent upon our ability to stay awake. Have you ever heard the phrase, "God loves little good boys and girls"? I think somehow this idea always gets into our bloodstream that the way we keep God's attention on us is by getting him to notice us, that we think we have to keep God focused on us.

But this psalm corrects that mistake by reminding us that God's attention to us does not wax and wane based on our spiritual temperature. He doesn't give us more attention when we give him more attention. He doesn't focus in more on us when we are doing better in our life. It's not because of our action that God stays awake—it is his character. It's his nature to be a God that doesn't sleep.

And think about it this way: where in this passage do you see the condition? Where in this passage do the psalmist say that you can trust God if, you can trust God when? Where's the condition? There is none. Because this psalm is a psalm that reminds us that God's care for us is not dependent upon our faithfulness to him. God watches over you. God doesn't sleep because of who he is, not because of what you have done.

So we do not have to be like the prophets of Baal who cut themselves to try to get their God's attention, but we have a God who cut himself so that we would know his attention is always on us. This psalmist speaks of God as one who is enduring in his faithfulness to us, but not just in a passive way, but an active way. The refrain of this psalm is the fact that the Lord is your keeper.

When I was young, I was taught to pray a prayer that some of y'all may have prayed:

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

That's kind of creepy, and we had that cross-stitched up in my room. I'm surprised I don't need more therapy than I already do. But the idea behind that prayer is to remind us as we step into our moment of most creatureliness—sleep—where we are completely unable to protect ourselves, completely at the mercy of the chaos around us. Our hope is that the Lord will keep us, that he will stand between us and the evil, the chaos that seems to be ready to destroy us, and protect us from all things.

That's what the psalmist begins to do as he reminds himself that God does not sleep. He says that God is not just there awake, but is actively standing between us and evil. He says that the Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The right hand is the place of strength in this society. And so he's saying that the Lord is the shade that protects you from the sun in the way that the sun can sap your strength. He stands between you that needs strength and the thing that could remove that strength, and he allows that evil to fall onto himself so that you can endure.

The Lord is concerned that the hardships of the journey do not create lasting damage, and so he puts himself between evil and us, chaos and us, so that the danger does not destroy us.

Every time I watch Frozen, I cry, and I'm man enough to admit that. I cry at the moment when we see Elsa about to be struck down by Hans. And what does Anna do? She steps in between the sword that Hans is about to strike down on her sister so that she could take the blow for herself. And that's what we have in Jesus, right? The one that stepped between evil and chaos and us and took the blow onto himself so that we would never have to feel the blow.

And that is what the psalmist is reminding us: that we have a God that stands between us and the sun. He stands between us and anything that will harm us on the journey so that we can have confidence to go to him.

The Crescendo of Confidence

This psalm is this crescendo that rises to confidence as the psalmist is reflecting more and more upon the depth of the love and the faithfulness of his God that stands between him and evil. And so he picks up speed, more and more saying:

The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.

It's not only the rays of the sun, but the sun itself isn't going to come down and harm you. There's nothing in this world that can destroy you. Then he says:

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 forth and forevermore.

Isn't it remarkable? He started out this journey with a sense of fear, thinking about all the things that could go wrong, but he ends this psalm with this great sense of confidence, great sense of hope, great sense of courage that there is nothing that will prevent him from getting to where he needs to be. Drawn into his home with his father, drawn into the temple to worship, drawn into the presence of his God.

This is a psalm of confidence in the midst of the anxiety of the world. But how is it that he builds that confidence into his life? It's by singing. These Psalms of Ascent were psalms that the pilgrims would sing as they went to Jerusalem.

They would sing to themselves, and they would sing to each other, reminding themselves of the character of their God. Because it's only when we remember the character of our God that we have confidence in this world. It's the character of our God that gives us confidence to do the stressful things that exist in our life.

When my son Sam was younger, he would jump at any time if I was near, expecting me to just be able to catch him like a ninja. I'm not a ninja, but thankfully I very rarely dropped him. But what gave him that confidence to jump? It was that he trusted in the strength of his father. And that's what we need. We need the confidence that we have a father that we can jump and know that he will catch us.

And so the pilgrims sing to themselves. The pilgrims sing to each other. That's what we see in the Psalm in verse one. He reminds himself:

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

He's speaking into his heart the truth that he needs: that I have help. Help from the Lord, the one whose name I know.

You need—we often talk about Bible reading. We have these fancy CBR journals that we have in our church. We often talk about prayer, that's a part of our worship, and it's easy to get the idea that this is something we do to get God's attention. But the reason that we pray, the reason that we read our Bible is not to get God's attention, but so that we get our attention to God, to give us confidence in the midst of stress and fear and chaos. There is a God who enters into that chaos and brings life. We, as pilgrims on this journey, must be singing to ourselves of the character of God to give us confidence to move on. That is why we do things like prayer and Bible reading—not to get God's attention, but to get our attention to him.

But if you notice in this Psalm, there's a shift in the persons. I'm using grammar here, I'm sorry. But he goes from speaking about himself in the first person and then to the second person starting in verse three. He's talking about you as opposed to me. And why is he shifting his person? It's because he goes from speaking to himself to speaking to others. He goes from reminding himself about the confidence he has in God to bringing hope into the lives of the other anxious travelers by reminding them of the confidence they too have in God.

This is part of how we live in an anxious world—not just by finding the strength in ourselves, but having people come alongside of us and reminding us of the character of our God to give us hope for the journey.

This happened in our community group last week as we were reflecting on hard things and as people began to share stories of how they heard hope. It gave us all more hope. This is something that's happened for this congregation in Preston. I remember vividly Preston standing up here and hearing him talk about his impending death and not seeing the fear that I know I would have in that situation, but instead seeing confidence and joy in the face of suffering and death. And I know I've come back to that moment many times and been encouraged as I saw a pilgrim who was ahead of me in the journey have confidence in face of evil. It has given me, in my smaller evils that seem to press into my life, greater confidence that God was with me.

This is what we need in the midst of the mountains, the fears, the chaos that exists—to be reminded of God's goodness, reminded of God's character, reminding ourselves by coming to him in prayer and the Word and being encouraged by those around us that what he says is true, that what he says is real, that the Lord is our keeper, that the Lord will be with us, that the Lord's watch care is without interruption or distraction or failure, but is enduringly true and good. And the more that we hold this truth in our hearts, the more that enables us to have confidence for the journey and to know that as evils come, our feet will not slip, but we'll be brought into the presence of our heavenly Father.

Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your faithfulness and love and the way that the steadfast love endures forever, and the way that those of us whose hope is in the Lord will renew our strength, the way that we can soar on wings like eagles. We pray that you would help us. Help us to sing of these truths and to take courage in you. We pray this for Jesus' sake. Amen.