“WHEN YOU ARE AFRAID ON THE JOURNEY”
Psalm 121
June 1, 2008
SERIES: “SONGS FOR THE JOURNEY”
Our society is obsessed with security today – we have flight insurance, IRA’s, tax shelters, health clubs, and a thousand and one other solutions to keep us physically, financially “safe and secure from all alarms.” Security is the theme of today’s “Psalm of Ascent” and probably the best known of this section of the Jewish hymnbook. I and other pastors have read from this Psalm many times beside hospital beds and at the scenes of other kinds of traumas. And with good reason. The Psalm reminds us that our true and only help is in the Keeper of Israel, who is also the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and whom we know as our heavenly Father. In fact, the verb, “keep” is found no less than six times in these eight short verses. So what do we need to do when we are afraid? This text gives us four directives that will keep us afloat during tough and scary times. And these four directives easily break down into the two-verse couplets of our poem. So let’s dig in. First we need to remember that…
OUR FATHER’S CREATION IS BEFORE US. (v.1-2)
Now the travel hazards back then were much different than those of today, since travelers usually walked. For example, a traveler had to go up and down sharp ravines, since there were no bridges. One could fall and break a leg with no one around to help and be left to die in the desert. Or he could come upon ferocious beasts or robbers (like the man who was cared for the Good Samaritan). He could run out of food and water on a long trip, or become exhausted or suffer sunstroke. The Psalmist begins by looking at the hills. In that day, unfaithful Jews would look to the “high places” for help, those places on hills and mountains where altars were built for pagan idols. Faithful Jews, on the other hand, would look to the mountains wherein the city of Jerusalem sat, the dwelling place of the Lord. So it wasn’t the hills so much as the city that was in the hills, and the God who was represented by the city. So he says, “I look to the hills, but that’s not really where my help comes from. My help comes from the Lord.”
We humans buy into the myth that we are autonomous and self-sufficient – and yet, a microscopic virus can knock us flat. So the writer here recognizes, rightly, that our true help is from the Maker of Heaven and Earth. The God who is revealed in Genesis Chapter 1 as the God who made the heavens in all of their immensity, and the earth in all of its variety is the same God revealed to us in Genesis Chapter 2 as the personal God who comes and walks and talks with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day. That is good news!
Every galaxy, every burning star in space, is an object lesson in sheer physical energy. Take our sun for instance. It is a ball of fire that astronomers classify as a moderate star, neither small nor large on the stellar scale. It is 864,000 miles in diameter, all of it gas - two billion, billion tons of gas. And over every square inch of its core there presses down a crushing weight of a million pounds of matter. The only thing that keeps the sun’s core from collapsing is energy, inconceivable floods of energy that raise the sun’s internal temperature to 25 million degrees Fahrenheit. It consumes 655 million tons of hydrogen each second, but it can still go on burning for another 50 billion years! And that is just one moderate star. The amount of energy put out by all the stars of space is beyond human comprehension.
Now do you think a God who has the kind of energy to make stars of that magnitude is likely to need an afternoon nap? No, we can forget about the problem of weariness. We humans may get tired, but God never does. And his watchful eyes are always on his people.
The Psalms speak elsewhere of the awesome power of our Creator. Here are a few examples:
The Lord looks down from heaven and sees every person. (Psalm 33:13, New Century Version)
The heavens are yours. The earth is also yours. You made the world and everything in it. You created north and south, Mount Tabor and Mount Hermon sing your name joyfully. Your arm is mighty. Your hand is strong. Your right hand is lifted high. (Psalm 89:11-13, God’s Word Translation)
Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise He is to be revered above all the gods. The gods of other nations are merely idols, but the Lord made the heavens! (Psalm 95:4-5, New Living Translation)
So be sure to lift your eyes high enough when you look for your help, so that you can see, by faith, the great God who cares for you. The problem with the 10 spies who went into Canaan was that they did not look high enough. They saw the giants and the walls, but they did not see the Lord who was far above all. Only Joshua and Caleb did. You find that in Numbers Chapter 13. When things here get too big to handle, lift your eyes to God. Try meditating on Isaiah Chapter 40, the whole theme of which is “Behold your God.” (Isaiah 40:9) And focus especially on verse 26: “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 them each by name, Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” (Today’s NIV). The point is that every time we see our Father’s creation before us, we are reminded that a God who is big enough to make and sustain our world and all of the universes he has made is big enough to help you with your problems today. Now the second important thing to remember is…
OUR FATHER’S EYES ARE UPON US. (v.3-4)
Okay, so we may know that he big enough to handle our problems. But the real question is, is this all-powerful God really interested at all in our little needs? The phrase in verse 3, “he will not let your foot slip” is a Hebrew idiom which means that God will watch out for us in any kind of trouble. God made this promise to Jacob when he was preparing to leave his family and home to travel to parts unknown: “Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:15, Holman Christian Standard Bible)
I read about a pastor who was getting ready to go on a Conference trip, much like I did just two weeks ago. Before he left, he prayed with his wife, “Dear Lord, please protect Carolyn and the children while I’m gone.” When he finished, his wife looked up and said, “Who do you think protects us while you’re here?” We pray for “travel mercies” when we are about to fly or drive a long distance. I don’t know about you, but I have hit two deer in my lifetime with cars I was driving. Both accidents happened within a mile of my home! What about praying before we drive to the bank, or to Publix, or to Walgreen’s? He’s still watching us then, too, not only in emergencies or on long trips.
No, the Psalmist tells us that God never sleeps or slumbers. I am reminded about the battle between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Remember how the false prophets were dancing and whirling and cutting themselves with stones, anything to get their “god” to act. After a while, Elijah began to taunt them! I can picture him sitting under a tree, watching them, with his arms folded up behind his head and maybe a piece of grass in his mouth. In 1 Kings 18:27, he says, “Shout louder! Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy, or traveling! Maybe he is sleeping and most be awakened.” (New International Version).
Now even if Baal were real, which he was not, he couldn’t be expected t keep his eyes on everything – especially ordinary folks. But God does. He never needs rest. You see, one of the things sleep does is to remind us that we are not God. We can rest in him.
The Lord watches over the righteous and listens to their cries. (Psalm 34:15, Good News Translation)
The Lord says, “I will make you wise and show you where to go. I will guide you and watch over you.” (Psalm 32:8, New Century Version)
But what about Scriptures like Psalm 44:23? Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. (English Standard Version) Isn’t this a contradiction? Not really. Here it is a metaphor for God’s seeming inactivity. The word could just as easily be translated, “arouse.” Arouse yourself, Lord! Bestir yourself! Take action for my cause. That is the idea here. But God never needs to be awakened from sleep.
I read about a pastor who was talking to one of his parishioners who was an electrician, He said that he would not teach his child to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” because the words of that prayer would be like reminding God to put her on his agenda that night, as if he really needed to do that. The pastor concluded that the electrician was also a theologian, because he was making a statement about the kind of God that God is.
Remember that God’s eyes are always upon you. Then here’s the third thing to remember.
OUR FATHER’S PRESENCE IS BESIDE US. (v.5-6)
See, God is not only looking down on us, He is actually at our side.
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by. (Psalm 57:1, New Revised Standard Version)
The one who lives under the protection of the Most High dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91:1, Holman Christian Standard Bible)
This does not mean that we are never in danger or in pain. The whole point of verse 1 is that the Psalmist needs help. But God is always with us. He takes up a position from which he can defend us – at our right hand. We never know where the attack may come from. It can come from our own families or friends. It often comes from a point of weakness we have. But it can also come from a point of strength. Elijah’s strength was courage, taking on 450 prophets singlehanded. Then he ran in fear from the threats of one woman, Jezebel. Abraham’s strength was faith. But he did not believe God to protect him when he went to Egypt, so he lied about his wife. Moses’ strength was meekness. Yet Moses did not enter the Promised Land because of the loss of his temper.
The promise here, in the use of the ideas of both day and night, is that the Lord will be at our side for anything. We can entrust everything and everyone to his care. The sun would be dangerous because of sunstroke. And whether right or wrong, ancient people believed that too much exposure to moonlight could cause “lunacy” (from lune, the word for moon). We could be “moonstruck.” In addition, the sudden drop in temperature at night would bring, at the least, discomfort, and at the worst, sickness. But day or night, the Lord shields us.
Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser writes:
“How many times have we been in harm’s way and never knew it, because our God has been watching over us day and night? So often, whether traveling by air, by auto, or merely walking along, we may have been exposed to danger, only to have been silently, but most definitely, delivered by the God who never sleeps or slumbers”.
Someone has well said, “Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Late one night, a member of Pastor Slim Cornett’s church was showing him around a county airport in rural Mississippi. He pointed to a switch and said, as he flipped it, “This switch lights up the runway. Then let’s say there is a plane in distress up there, I would throw this switch and turn on the search lights.” No sooner had he said this than a small plane materialized out of the darkness and landed. The pastor and his friend watched in amazement as Franklin Graham, son of the noted evangelist, stepped out of the plane. The pilot had been flying Franklin from his home in North Carolina back to school in Texas when the electrical system shut down, leaving them stranded in the Mississippi night without lights or radio or any means of guidance. From out of nowhere, the search beam had come on and guided them to the landing strip. And as Ruth Graham later told the story in one of her books, earlier that evening before Franklin had left home, Billy Graham had prayed for the Father to protect and guide his son and the pilot. No, it doesn’t always happen this way. But if we are really watching and praying, we will see the Father’s hand and feel his presence much more than we realize. There is one more thing for us to remember.
OUR FATHER’S CARE IS AROUND US. (v.7-8)
The life of Joseph in the Old Testament is such a great example for us. Joseph had to endure the slander and hatred of his brothers. He spent 13 years of separation from his father, plus the false accusations of his employer’s wife and years in prison, all because of his brothers’ sins against him. But in the end, Joseph was able to say to them, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20). And Paul said the same things in Romans 8:28: “All things work together for our good…” The things that God allows into our lives may hurt at times, but they will never harm, that is, they can’t touch our souls or separate us from God’s love.
The phrase “coming and going” in verse 8 is another Hebrew expression which simply means all our daily activities, even the minor ones we take for granted. You can rely on God to be watching and present when you go to the gas station or the store or take or send your kids to school. Just like the screens at an airport, every arrival and departure is monitored by the Lord. And note, it is for both now and evermore. Commentator Derek Kidner has written:
“It would be hard to decide which half of verse 8 is more encouraging, the fact that it starts ‘from now,’ or that it runs on, not to the end of time, but without end.”
God’s protection doesn’t just begin in the future. We have it right now, and it continues into the future. He is our Helper, our Keeper, our Shade – therefore, we can say, with the Psalmist…
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:23, 26, New International Version)
And so we would heed the words of the Apostle Peter:
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you. (1 Peter 5:7, New Living Translation)
But how do we do 1 Peter 5:7? How do we not worry about drunk drivers, plane crashes, terrorists, rapists, molesters? We must learn to dwell in the goodness of God. His eyes never leave us. We cannot say, like Martha… “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21, New International Version) He is here. He’ll be here. He does not get fatigued or distracted. John Piper writes:
“This is what we must believe – really believe – in order to rejoice always, and give thanks for everything, and have the peace that passes understanding, and be anxious for nothing, and hate our lives in this world, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”
I close again with the hymn poem based on this Psalm written by the great Isaac Watts.
To heav’n I lift my waiting eyes, there all my hopes are laid;
The Lord that built the earth and skies is my perpetual aid.
Their feet shall never slide to fall when he designs to keep;
His ear attends the softest call, his eyes can never sleep.
His will sustain our weakest powers with his almighty arm,
And watch our most unguarded hours against surprising harm.
Israel, rejoice ands rest secure, thy keeper is the Lord;
His wakeful eyes employ his power for thine eternal guard.
Nor scorching sun nor sickly moon shall have his leave to smite;
He shields thy head from burning noon, from blasting damps at night.
He guards thy soul, he keeps thy breath where thickest dangers come;
Go and return, secure from death, till God commands thee home.
Let’s pray.