Psalms 121 The Best of Keepers

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.

This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsak. Let's listen in.

Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Those of you that remembered the time change, congratulations.

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All right, with all that out of the way, my hope is that everyone here is in the process of adopting our vision statement to some degree of growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

That's our vision for us as a church, is that everybody together is growing in those three capacities.

If you think about it as a Venn diagram, in case you don't know, that's the one with the circles that overlap. If you think of it in that regard, then think of those as expanding circles with the sweet spot being the place where faith, community and service meet.

And that's our tagline, by the way, Recast Church, where faith, community and service meet. And the idea is that that is that that place in your life is growing and expanding.

That, in other words, maturity, maturity for the Christian does not look like an arrival at a location as if you arrive.

You continue to grow to a point where your faith, you cross a line and now I've arrived and now

I don't have to grow in faith anymore. Or where your community, your sense of community is like, well, I've grown enough in community,

I've arrived and now I'm mature in community and my love for others. Should that continue to expand and continue to grow in the

Christian life? Absolutely, regardless of where we are at in our walk with Christ, we are to be continuing to grow in faith, community and service.

And so, maturity is not a line that you cross or a place that you finally arrive at, but maturity in the

Christian walk, the Christian life, looks like a commitment to a process. In other words, a commitment to a journey that we're ever expanding, ever growing, continuing to take on more in the realm of faith and community and service.

And so, that's the reality of the Christian life. And it's a commitment to a journey and we're picking up a psalm, we're picking up psalms here as we walk through this series on the

Psalms of Ascent. The Psalms of Ascent, Psalm 120 through 134, we're actually talking about 15 psalms that deal with a journey.

As we continue through this study, that's exactly what we're trying to accomplish is taking a journey together through these 15 psalms.

I want to point out, and it might have been confusing and I should have said this last week as we tackled the first of these 15 psalms, is that this is like a compilation of psalms.

Sometimes we might have the tendency to think that all of the psalms, you know, they were written at the same time, in the same era, and so as you read them...

Have any of you ever been confused about where they come from or how they were compiled? Well, these are 15 songs that were written at various times throughout

Israel's history by different authors. So, these are not all 15 psalms written by the same guy, sat down with a pen, wrote a song this time, like it's the best of a dude.

These are a variety of different songs that were sung in various capacities and around, but they ended up being compiled much like you probably have a compilation of Christmas songs in your mind or on your iPod or something like that.

On your iPhone, on whatever device you use. You probably have some, how many of you have a selection, a compilation of Christmas songs that you play, you pull them out during Christmas or maybe you have some

CDs that you only pull out at certain times of the year? That's kind of like this, this collection of 15 songs was used like that.

So, you know a Christmas song when you hear one, usually, right? You know a Christmas song when you hear one? They would have understood these as the pilgrimage songs.

These are the traveling songs. These are the songs when you're ready to take a spiritual journey to Jerusalem.

So, they would have been literally sung at specific times in the life of the

Jews, of God's people. Specifically centered around these three annual festivals that they would remove themselves from their location and go to Jerusalem, to the temple, the place of the acceptable worship of God.

So, that is the nature of these psalms that we're looking at and Psalm 121 is the next one in these.

They're about growing. These songs are about drawing nearer to God in faith. They're about taking steps.

They're called songs of ascent where the word ascent means like the next step in a staircase.

So, each one building off of the next and moving us closer to the place where God lives.

The figurative picture for our lives is obviously heaven or moving towards God's place.

But in the life of the pilgrim, a literal pilgrimage to the temple where God was present with his people.

One of the beautiful things about the psalms is that they are not ivory tower academic writings about theoretical theology.

But the psalms are songs. They're poetry. They're written with emotion.

Sometimes, if you've read through psalms, you recognize sometimes you've turned there for encouragement and what you've read is a little bit edgy.

Like you turn there and you were like, boy, I just need some encouragement. I'm just going to turn to a psalm and it's like, whoa, that's encouraging.

Let me find another one. Sometimes, they're edgy. Sometimes, just like us, they state things in the extreme.

How many of you ever been known to say something that's a little bit extreme? Some of you are like ribbing your spouse, right?

It's kind of like you should have raised your hand. But we know that we all at various times and at various seasons of our lives have said things in different ways that sometimes your tendency is to downplay things.

Sometimes, the psalmist downplays things. Sometimes, the psalmist overplays things and overstates them in extreme ways.

But these songs, they reflect a whole spectrum of human emotions. And all of them were written in the context of a relationship with the

Almighty God. This morning, we're going to take this next leg of the journey. We take the next step up the pathway toward the holy city.

And in this next step, we find a much -needed reminder of the God who is our keeper.

That's a word. Keep is a word that's used six times out of eight verses in our text this morning.

Keep. The Almighty Creator is our helper. He is a watcher over us.

I think He is like the title of my message this morning, the best of keepers.

Now, I was a soccer player from the time I was young. I first started playing soccer when I was six.

I played all through high school. I played two years for a little Bible college in South Carolina. I can attest that having a keeper matters.

Okay, it's significant. I was a sweeper, which is the last line of defense. And the key thing is the communication between a keeper and his defense.

And that's central to the component of defense in soccer as a keeper who has communication and is interacting with the other players on the team, make a wall, move to the left, all different kinds of interaction.

But even in the midst of gameplay, the goalie is shouting out, cover this guy, do this.

And there's all kinds of communication that's going on. So if having a good keeper is essential in the concept of soccer or hockey, we saw, some of you might have watched a game this week where we could have used a better keeper in hockey.

Some of you know that it would be good to have a good keeper there. So if having a good keeper in these sports is essential, how much more is it in life?

The Apostle Peter told us a few weeks ago that we have an enemy who is seeking to devour us.

He's taking shots at us left and right. But God in this psalm is going to be declared to be our protector, our shield, our sustainer, our keeper.

So let's dive into this exceptionally encouraging traveling song. This is an excellent song to sing at the start of a rugged and difficult and treacherous journey as the pilgrim would be taking literally.

But as we think about the analogy towards our life, some of us recognize that we are indeed on a treacherous journey.

This very psalm, by the way, Psalm 121 has been used historically consistently for travel.

It was often in the Middle Ages, a psalm that people would sing before they left on a journey on their horse or before they undertook a move or anything like that.

It was a song that's been used. It was used on the frontier times for travel and even in our own

American history that people would tie into this psalm as the psalm of travel.

And so you'll see what I mean as we turn to it. Open your Bibles to 121. If you need a Bible, if you don't have one in front of you,

I know some of you need to just navigate over there in your devices or whatever. And I'm just trusting that you're not texting with it while we're reading this.

But if you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and one of these guys will bring you one. And that way everybody's got a copy of the word of God in front of them as we dive in and read it together.

Short eight verses, packs a punch, has the power to transform your life because this is a word from God to you.

So listen in. Psalm 121. A song of a sense.

By the way, I'm going to read that each week that I'm preaching on this because that is in the original manuscript. That's part of scripture.

The titling, the heading of this psalm as a psalm of a sense is in the word. 121.

A song of a sense. 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.

You're going out and you're coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, I rejoice and delight in this psalm.

It's been an encouragement to my soul this week to pray in a prayerful mindful way that you indeed are my keeper.

You are the one who is sustaining me. You are the one who is watching out for me. You are watching out for all of these people here in the room and particularly those who who are called by your name as Christians.

Particularly those who are under the blood of Jesus Christ and whose sins have been washed away. Father, for your covenant people in the

Old Testament Israel, you were watching over them and here in the New Testament times in this modern era, you are watching over your people.

And so Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to worship you, we would worship you as a people who are your possession who are kept firmly by you.

Father, I pray that we would rejoice in that sustaining power that has seen us through to this very day and the one that we trust that you indeed will keep us and watch our going out and our coming coming in and every intimate detail of our lives from this day forth and forevermore.

Let our hearts rejoice in you every breath every day that we live in Jesus' name. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us this morning.

Is this on? You're getting it? Okay, perfect. Please, I just encourage you to get comfortable and keep your

Bibles open to Psalm 121. That's really going to be the outline for the day, having that open in front of you and being able to see that as we dive in.

Remember that if you need to at any time, you can get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, supplies last, restrooms that we ask you to use.

There's multiple restrooms in this building, but we ask the men to use the one upstairs at the end of this hallway and the women the one downstairs down here if you need that at any time during the message.

And remember that I recognize that those are not the most comfortable seats made by mankind that you're sitting in.

And so if you need to get up and stretch out in the back or anything like that to kind of keep your focus on God's word and not on your lower back, feel free to take advantage of that too.

You're not going to distract me if you're back there doing jumping jacks, but if you ask me to count along that could be distracting.

But at the start of our journey this morning, the pilgrim is on his way.

We saw that last week. He took off from a location and he's expressed last week dissatisfaction with his culture and his society.

He looked around and he saw frustration and people who were for war and for violence and deceiving lips and lying lips all around him and he was discouraged by his society.

And the text last week actually ended with a level of dissatisfaction and culture around him, a dissatisfaction that would lead him to take steps on the journey towards God.

Often our journey must start with a dissatisfaction with our lives and the culture around us to come to the end of ourselves and go, you know what, money isn't it?

My job isn't it? Fame isn't it? My wife can't be all of that. When it's all said and done, it's going to take more than this to solve the problem of my heart and a dissatisfaction leads us to the place where we're ready to take a journey to God's place.

We're ready to say there is a solution out there and I'm going to search for it and I'm going to find it and I would suggest to you that that's a that's a good place for a person to be.

A place of dissatisfaction with culture, dissatisfaction with sin, saying I don't like what

I see in my own heart, I don't like what I see in my culture's heart, and I believe that there's got to be something more in beginning that journey.

He was particularly in our text a songwriter longing for Shalom, a word that occurs multiple times in these 15 songs that we're going to be looking at.

The word Shalom meaning the true peace of God's presence. Having a rightly ordered life that is not based on sin and mitigating sin.

How many of you know that a lot of our lives are spent in the process of mitigating or putting down or fighting against or trying to work with sin?

Isn't that a significant chunk of our lives? And imagine a life with Shalom, imagine a life where that was not a daily requirement on you, that was not a part of your life because there was no sin.

How many of you are looking forward to that day when there is a new heaven and a new earth and and the bulk of your time is not taken up processing and working through sinful scenarios in your own heart as well as in society at large?

I look forward to that day and that's what this journey is about, a movement towards Shalom, a movement towards Jerushalom.

Jerusalem is the word in Hebrew means Jerus, Jeru the the word for city in Hebrew and Shalom the city of peace and that's where this pilgrim is going, to the city of peace.

Much like our journey in the Christian life is one that is moving towards the place of God's peace.

And so there's a correlation between, this is a metaphor, these songs are metaphors for your spiritual journey and my spiritual journey.

They are metaphors for us walking together, taking step -by -step, ascending to the high point of the nation of Israel to the temple on the

Temple Mount in Jerusalem and that's the that's the picture of our lives. This person wanted a rightly ordered life and and one that is based on love, kindness and service towards others.

That's what he wanted to see in a society. How many of you look around and you see a society based on just love and care for one another and or sometimes you look at the chat rooms on websites and then you realize it's not necessarily a culture and society of a circle of affirmation or something like that, like whatever we learned in elementary school.

You've probably experienced enough of life to recognize it's not all about a circle of affirmation in our society, in our culture.

And so he's discontent, set his feet on this journey towards God and metaphorically we might say that where we left the person last week, they were on their leg of the journey called the conviction of sin, right?

A discontent with that. They're beginning to recognize that life is not a place of ultimate peace and satisfaction.

You're at a place of searching and wanting more. And at the point of searching the pilgrim, now in this next song, that's the next leg of the journey, he lifts his eyes up.

He's on his, he's on the way. He's left his city. He's left Kedar. He's left Meshach. He's left that place on the road and he lifts up his eyes and he sees the distant hills that would surround

Jerusalem and from the flat plains of the Judean wilderness his eyes and there are the hills in front of him and he asks a reasonable question.

It's a reasonable question in his culture, might be a confusing question in our culture and it needs a little explanation.

But in the process of lifting up his eyes to the hills, he asks where does my help come from?

Where does my help come from? The pilgrim lifts his eyes up to the hills and I want you to hear the humility in the question.

Where does my help come from? Help. You see this man is on a journey and are you ready for it ladies?

He asks for help. This would be, you know, I mean, of course, this is before the days of GPS, right?

Even those of you who, how many of you remember the days before GPS? Some of you drove a car before there was GPS, right?

So if you remember those days, those were the days where real men never stopped to ask for directions, right?

Do you know what I'm talking about? Any of you relate to that? You don't stop and ask for directions. I'm never lost.

I'm just finding my way and we're taking a roundabout way to our location, right? Well, I mean real foolish men never stopped and asked for directions, but what don't want to quibble.

Now, how many of you know that it takes a lot of humility to ask for help? Does it take humility to ask for help?

I would suggest to you that it is probably easier for most of us to offer help and we're more delighted to be asked for help than to turn around and be the one in need, to be the one who is asking for the assistance from others.

And yet this person here, this songwriter, writes, where is my help going to come from?

In America, we have great axioms, great sayings, and these pithy quotes like,

God helps those who help themselves. You guys have heard it before. The majority of Americans, by the way, attribute that to the

Bible rather than Benjamin Franklin. In the Bible, some of you are like, oh no, that was me.

Nope, it's not in there. As a matter of fact, I would suggest to you that that axiom that God helps those who help themselves is one more example of how unbiblical and counter to the gospel our society runs.

That we're a people who believes that God helps those who help themselves. It isn't

God helps those who help themselves, but as one of the commentaries that I read said this, and I quote,

God helps those who know they need it and are humble enough to ask.

God helps those who know they need it and are humble enough to ask.

Not God helps those who help themselves. God helps those who recognize that they can't help themselves.

Hear the difference? Significant difference. But why raise your eyes to the hills?

Why is this guy who's walking this rugged, dusty, dry pathway through the Judean wilderness on his way to Jerusalem, why is he looking to the hills in the context of asking for help?

Was there an expectation in his culture that help would come from those hills? What's that got to do with anything?

And this is where we might be confused and kind of misunderstand a little bit. What do the hills mean in this context?

There's a couple of opinions about these hills, but I believe that the songwriter had his share in his real -life experience of watching people go to those very hills for help.

He had experienced that. He had seen it with his own eyes. He had seen people on pilgrimage that went to the destination of those hilltops, not to Jerusalem, not to the place of God's presence, but would stop off along the way and get sidetracked on these hills.

I mentioned last week that we find ourselves in desperate places, and when we do so, we we turn to all kinds of things as our source of help.

And in ancient times, they would turn to the hilltops around Jerusalem as a place of help.

The hilltops in in Old Testament times were often called the high places. They were places of the worship of pagan little g gods.

Oracles, pagan prophets, the worship of Baal, Asherah poles, all kinds of horrible, detestable practices of pagan society happened on those hilltops.

And so the pilgrim lifts up his eyes as he's approaching the area of Jerusalem, and he sees these hills and he asks the question,

I know where a lot of people turn for help. Where does my help come from? In modern days, this might be like us watching a commercial.

Commercial and saying, where does my help come from? Does it come from more stuff? Does it come from driving the right car?

That's where my help's gonna come from, the right car, or better yet, the right deodorant, right? The right soap, whatever, whatever it might be.

How many of you know that that's what the commercial is geared towards, is saying, well, you need this. This will help you. This is where you're gonna find help.

You know, if you just had more stuff, then you would be satisfied. Everything would be okay. Some of you have been around long enough to know that that's just not true.

That's not real life. You just have a hunger for more and more and more. But some would turn off to the hills, to the high places, to the oracles, to the hope that there might be some help there.

There might be some solution there. Maybe in our modern culture, this is like an alcoholic watching a beer commercial asking, where is my help?

That's not my help anymore. Where is my help? The Beatles and the later

Joe Cocker declared openly where their help came from. Joe Cocker repeating the song.

They got by with a little help from there. They got high with a little help from their friends.

Where did their help come from? They declared it brashly and openly and directly. Where do

I get help? I get a little high. That's where I get my help. That would be a bad sound bite to clip that and just have me, you know, sometimes

I... Never mind. Distracting myself here for just a second. Where does your help come from?

Where do you turn in your time of need? What are the hills for you? What are the distractions on your journey to the city of peace?

What are the temptations to get sidetracked in the hills and never make it to your destination because there, hey, there's other places

I can turn for help. And maybe I'll try those first and if those don't work, I'll continue the journey. But I'm gonna try a bunch of different things along the way and just figure out, hey, maybe they could help me.

I would suggest that each one of us has a couple of hills that represent temptations to turn for help.

From somewhere other than the one who can truly help us. But not this songwriter.

Not the writer of Psalm 121. Verse 2 is an exultant exclamation that breaks into the midst of temptation.

He lifts his eyes to the hills and there's temptation before him. The high places. But he says my help comes from the

Lord. That's where I'm going. I'm not gonna be waylaid in my journey to the destination of God, but that's the place of my help.

Not these lesser little G gods. These other idols and these other things to worship.

I'm going straight for the heart and I'm going for the one who has created it all.

My help comes from the Lord, from Yahweh, Jehovah, however, you pronounce it. The creator

God. He happens to be the one who made everything in heaven and on earth.

The creator of it all. The cells in their diversity of the human body.

His design. Sunrises and sunsets. He made them.

Sexuality. His idea. Nebula, black holes, planets, stars of all different sizes and intensity.

His creation. Gravity. His idea.

Winter. Fall. Spring. Summer.

Hard to even imagine those some of those things, right? But his creation.

Ethnicity and diversity and unity and even his church that we have the privilege to be a part of.

All his creation from his good and gracious and merciful hand. My help comes from the one who made all of these things.

What a glorious reality. Who is our help? The one in charge.

And I want to point out just briefly that often throughout Scripture the declaration of God as creator isn't as much about science, but it is primarily an issue of comfort.

When you see God spoken of as creator, it is a it is a a way of bringing comfort to us and a recognition of his awesome and glorious power.

So often we can get wrapped up when we think, when we see the word creator, we want to go all of a sudden talk about evolution and creation and things like that.

But what about the grandeur? What about the glory? What about the majesty that's just simply there for the taking in the pages of Scripture to say he's creator.

He is the originator of all that we see. And rather than getting sidetracked into scientific discussions and debates to fall on our knees and say this power and this majesty is available as our help, as our keeper, as the one who cares for us.

Let me clarify that I believe that God orchestrates all kinds of things for our help.

It's not as if he is saying that you you just need to pray alone and just only pray to him and never ask for help from anybody else.

And that's the point. Or equally that you never thank anybody else. On the flip side that you never thank anybody else because well, all help comes from God.

But let me suggest to you that when a friend offers to provide child care during a tough stretch in your life, you could thank them and acknowledge that God is the one who has provided you with help.

God uses all kinds of means to assist his children. But at the end of the day, the question that is being posed or really the statement that's being posed is where does this songwriter turn for his help?

His search begins where? With God, the maker of heaven and earth.

And as we contemplate and consider this journey, the text goes on to say he's able to sustain us on this journey.

He is indeed our source of help. He lifts his eyes to the hill, says where does my help come from? Comes from the Lord and he has the power as maker and creator to sustain us.

He can keep our feet from slipping on this rough and rocky pathway of life. Keep in mind that this is a metaphor all the way through.

We can get caught up in the reality that this would have been sung on a literal journey. And so I think that that there's that interplay going back and forth between the fact that this would be it would be indeed a rough rugged journey and there'd be fear of slipping and falling and to get up to Jerusalem no matter where you're coming from, you're gonna climb some significant hills.

You're gonna have some narrow pathways. You're gonna have some sheer falls. You're gonna have, if you have fear of heights, you're gonna have a hard time walking from anywhere in Israel to Jerusalem to climb up everywhere you go from.

And the one who is our help, the text goes on to say he is always vigilant and he is always alert.

I'm sure that sleeping arrangements would be a significant thought on the mind of a pilgrim. Where are you gonna spend the night each night?

It would be an attempt each night to find a safe shelter sometimes out in the wilds. Danger would be real.

And so this reminder that God doesn't slumber or sleep ties in with this pilgrim's theme. The idea that God is there even if you're asleep and here in verses three three and four are introduced.

We're introduced to the term keep which I mentioned in my introduction occurs six times in various forms in these eight verses.

Anytime a word appears that much in a text you go, I think that's a significant word that we ought to deal with.

The text says he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

In other words Israel in the wilderness is an example to some degree of the keeping of God over our lives.

How did he roll with them? How did he work with them? During the Exodus God provided water for his people where there was no water.

He provided food for his people where there was no food to be found. He protected them miraculously from foreign armies.

He sustained them and tended to them with laws and structures for a peaceful shalom -like society within and equally he protected them from enemies without.

We use the word keep a ton of ways in English if you think about it. There's the building like a medieval keep.

There is the I will give you one donut hole and keep five for myself. There's the concept of zoo keepers, goal keepers, grounds keepers.

But there are two common threads throughout all of these that factor into this biblical word.

Two two branches of definition. One idea of keep is sustained possession.

Keeping the five donuts for myself. I'm gonna possess them. Not necessarily protecting them.

They're gonna get eaten. Sustained possession, but then the second use of the word is indeed protection, right?

The goalkeeper has his assigned area to protect his purpose in the game whether it's lacrosse or hockey or soccer.

His goal is sustained possession of that area for the purpose of protecting it from the ball or the puck, right?

It's a protection notion to it. A zoo keeper keeps animals where they belong. It's their possession making sure they don't escape and sustains them in health and care.

The medieval keep was a place of sustained protection for a military force. A place of protection for them.

A place that they would possess. The Lord is the one here in this text who keeps his people.

He watches over them and he never rests from this task. He is diligent and tireless in watching over your life.

Your foot will not slip even though you walk on the high places, the text says.

Last week we talked about claustrophobia. We talked about the tight spaces of life.

Here he addresses the fear of heights with God protecting your foot from slipping. Some of you struggle with claustrophobia.

Some of you have fear of heights. Some of you like me just have a fear of falling. It's not necessarily the heights that bother you.

But when Linda and I went to the Grand Canyon, we were not prepared for the amazing beauty and grandeur of that place.

I mean we saw postcards. Any of you have been to the Grand Canyon? Okay, so those of you that haven't you can look at the postcards and you can you could even look at watch a video of an aerial flyby or something.

But until your eyes can take in the grandeur of that place, you know people told us, oh, it's awesome. It's glorious.

It's a majestic. It's beautiful. You can use all kinds of words to describe it and then you see it and then you like those don't words don't quite work for it.

So we weren't prepared for the beauty and the grandeur, but we equally were not prepared for the lack of handrails.

And the constant parade of tourists standing way too close to the edge with their children playing on the rocks hanging their feet over the edge and stuff like that.

We just we were not at all prepared for that and I'm gonna confess that it was a bit terrifying.

We did a lot of white -knuckled hand -holding, improving our grip with our kids that week, you know, there was just like this, you know, death grip on their hands.

Fortunately, we didn't have to amputate any but it was close. So is verse 3, think with me for just a second, is verse 3 promising that it is impossible for a

Christian to slip over the edge of the Grand Canyon? That's just impossible, right?

Because God would protect your foot from falling. He would protect you from slipping. I mean, we've got it right here in Scripture. It says he will protect your foot from falling.

So, of course, maybe we lacked faith by keeping our kids away from the edge. Maybe we should have just been right up there with our toes hanging over because hey, he won't let us slip.

He won't let us, he won't let our feet fall. Please remember, please, please remember that the

Psalms are poetic metaphors. Okay, this is poetry that we're looking at here.

They are meant to be felt and I think when you read this Psalm and when you've heard it read in its entirety, you read the same things

I read in the emotion of the song and that is primarily a radical trust in God Almighty for help.

It's a radical recognition of God as our keeper. And by verse 8, we will see that God's keeping of us is not in the end to prevent every hardship in our lives, but it is to maintain possession of his people forever.

In other words, keeping our feet from slipping is a metaphor for watching over us and caring for us in this life and being controlled over every aspect of our lives.

But the traveler has another specific concern. It's not just the fear of heights, but he goes on.

There's also fear of the heat of the day, which you can imagine in a dry and desert land, on a journey, trying to carry as much water as you can actually physically carry because you're gonna run out and there's no wells along the way.

You're gonna have a hard time on this pilgrimage. Sunstroke and sunstroke is a genuine problem during the day and the evils of the darkness at night are both fears of the traveler during this time.

So the author declares that God is the shade on your right hand. Great, my right hand needs shade.

What about my head? What about the rest of my body, right? The right hand, I want to point out, was often a metaphor for power in battle.

It was the place where most people were right -handed and it was the place where, what would you hold in battle in your right hand?

Your sword, right? The place of power, the place of authority. But most historians and scholars see this reference here as highlighting, ironically, the unprotected nature of the right hand.

Despite having a sword in that hand, it's equally unprotected as opposed to the left hand, which in battle during this time would carry what?

A shield. So this hand is, this hand is much more protected than this hand. And so the image that we have here in the metaphor is that God being the shade on your right hand is basically saying he completes the armor for you.

He takes care of your weaknesses. He's covering the weak side for you. He will be your shade on your right hand.

You can imagine the value of shade on this literal journey for a pilgrim during this time. And so as a metaphor, it would be powerful to say that God is the shade on your right hand, on your unprotected side.

God is indeed our shade as we travel through the dry and dusty times of life, where the, where it feels like the heat and the sun and the pressures of life are beating down on us.

He's a place of shade. He's a, he's a place where you can go for protection. He will indeed protect us on this journey through night and day.

He's not literally protecting the Christian from sunstroke or heat exhaustion. Can a Christian suffer heat exhaustion or sunstroke?

Absolutely. But metaphorically, God is indeed our protector by night and day. From sun and moon, the text says.

But equally, the songwriter acknowledges that God is our protector in this declaration from sun and moon, from both real and imagined dangers.

Some of us struggle much more, if we're honest, with imagined dangers than we ever struggle with real ones.

How many of you are like a worst -case scenario kind of thinker? Your mind jumps immediately to the worst, and then you're pretty sure that's going to happen like in the next five minutes.

And so if you're, if you're like that, then you're, then you know what I'm talking about when I talk about imagined dangers. The, the difficulties that aren't, aren't really here, but man, they could be.

You know, that could, that might happen. The moon in this text is an unreal danger, an imagined danger.

Many during the times of the writing of the psalm imagine that too much exposure to moonlight would cause someone to be moonstruck.

That it would cause you to go loopy, cause you to go insane. We have the notion of a werewolf, for example, with moonlight and different things.

But even in our culture, even in our language, the words lunacy and lunatic have luna in the middle of them, the

Latin word for the moon. So even over, carried over into Old English, when, when

English, the English language was being started, there were still, there's still this notion that too much, too much exposure to the moon was going to cause you to go nuts.

I think that probably there is some kind of an association with the darkness of night and being out in the countryside during this time and a little bit going loopy.

And I think their argument isn't necessarily a locked down scientific argument that the rays of the moon create insanity, but it seems likely to me that those who spend a lot of time out in the countryside at night in an era without electric lightning, without electric lighting, without flashlights, without any, how many of you think that in the, in the, the grandeur of darkness in ancient times on a hillside out, outside, you might develop an unhealthy paranoia?

You think that might be a little bit of reality? No lights and you're out in the darkness alone?

Freak me out. So we've covered claustrophobia, we've covered, covered fear of heights, now we've kind of covered a little bit of the fear of darkness.

But the God who never slumbers or sleeps protects his people in the heat of the day and the darkness of the night.

Up on the heights, on the pathway to him, he is watching over your feet.

And he can indeed keep them from slipping. And now in verses seven and eight, the author steps out of the poetic metaphor to level it at us straight.

He makes his point explicitly. The Lord will hold on to you. The Lord will protect you.

The Lord will keep you as his possession from all evil. He holds your life in his hand.

And if you are with Christ, you are his. The Lord watches over you're going out and you're coming in.

He watches and keeps you wherever you go. Wherever your pilgrimage takes you, he is protecting you.

Do you feel the comfort in this? We're supposed to. And if you're like me, then you think about this way less than you should.

Do you pray to God as the keeper of your life? Even this week, this psalm has affected my prayer life as your pastor.

The hard attitude of this songwriter is that God is for you. He cares for you. He is your help.

He is the maker of heaven and earth and he is your keeper. The one who made it all is for you.

But now look at the end of verse eight. The songwriter showed us what he's had in mind all along in this text.

The end of verse eight, the Lord will keep you. The Lord will keep you're going out and you're coming in. From this time, that is this era, this present day and age that you live in, right here, right now, where you sit, from this time, forth, forth gives us movement, forth gives us momentum into the future, towards the era yet to come, towards the, but now we're moving.

From this time, forth, and forevermore, without end.

He is your keeper. The reality of the watchful care and keeping of God is one we're familiar with, if you've been here during this series at all on the book of 1st

Peter, right? Because God is shown to be the keeper of his people, even in the midst of hardship and suffering.

As inconsistent as that can sound, Scripture teaches clearly that God's people face trials and hardships in life, and are kept by him.

Just like Jesus endured great suffering in this life, and was kept by him, raised from the dead by him, and is now exalted at the right hand of God the

Father. To be protected from all evil is not to have everything cushy and comfortable and go our way in life, but it is the idea that God is in complete control over whatever comes into your life.

In other words, to use the illustration I used in my introduction, nothing finds the back of the net without God's okay.

Some of us, you might go, well, is that, is there comfort in that? And I would suggest to you that there is. Of course, Job, the

Old Testament, the entire book of Job, the Old Testament serves as a case study in somebody who suffered and yet was kept by God.

Satan had to come to God for permission to do anything to Job. He had to come through Job's keeper first.

And God did not allow anything to happen to Job that would pull him out of the possession of the

Almighty. Paul expresses the idea of this in a beautiful passage, the

Apostle Paul in Romans 8, 35 through 39. Do you guys have a, have the verse on there?

There you go, yeah. Romans 8, 35 through 39, which states,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

Lord. This is Paul.

This is Paul who had been shipwrecked, who had been stoned and left for dead.

And I don't mean stoned, I mean rocks pelted his body until they thought he was dead and they were satisfied that they'd done a good job.

He was beaten with canes, whips, falsely imprisoned, all for the cause of Christ.

And he says, I've been kept in the love of Christ and I'm convinced that nothing can separate me from him.

We need to consider, what does it mean? What does it look like to be kept by Christ? Kept in his love. Kept as his possession.

The word keep, by the way, you do a word study on the word keep and you're gonna find that it is a rich significant word all throughout the

Bible from Old Testament to New Testament. Jude wraps up, Jude the half -brother of Jesus writes this at the conclusion of his letter, like how he wants to wrap things up.

The last two verses in the book of Jude 24 and 25 say this, and you can go ahead and advance that slide.

I think it's on there. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only

God and to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen. To him who is able to what? To keep you.

The Lord God, the maker of heaven and earth is able to keep you from stumbling.

He will not let your foot slip away from him in those times when temptations assail you in the high places.

He is your protector in the white hot days of weariness and thirst. He is your keeper in the dark nights of life when irrational fears haunt you in the lonely hours.

He is there. He is our protector from the effects of evil outside as well as the evil that wells up within us.

He holds our life as his possession even when we find ourselves in doubt and distress.

He is there. God intimately knows every detail of our journey.

I love this. He watches over our going out and our coming home. Wherever you go, he is there.

And for those who are his, he is our keeper from this time forth and forevermore.

How do we apply this? What does this have to do with this next week? What's the main point?

God is the source of help for his people. There is one simple application that I would recommend that has helped me even this week as I've thought through this in my conversations with God.

I've begun to pray to God recognizing that he is my help. He is my keeper. I must admit that in my very

Western brain, intellect -oriented mind, I often am quick to acknowledge that God can help me.

God can protect me, but I'm not quick to turn to God as my protector. I mean, if something bad happens to me,

I don't want it to reflect poorly on God. So I try to protect his reputation by not putting too much over on him, but through this psalm,

I'm convinced that God is saying, and here's the application, trust him.

Trust him. You may go through the hot days of thirst. You may go through some dangerous terrain where it's hard to find footholds.

You may go through dark nights of the soul, but he is your keeper. You can lift up your eyes and look to him.

He is the maker of everything, and you can trust him to keep you forevermore. This morning as we come to communion, maybe some confession and repentance is in order for you like it was for me.

I've honestly been guilty to some degree of withholding my trust. Experiences in life, and some of you have experienced some of the rougher sides of life.

Losing my father to cancer at eight, and then my mother to cancer at 22, and honestly, it makes trusting

God as the keeper of life a challenge. I'm sure some of you can attest to things that have thwarted and gotten in the way of a complete and utter wholesale just giving your life over to him.