Title: The God Who Keeps Us
Scripture: Psalm 121
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
I think one of the great truths that we all understand and embrace is that we recognize that life is not perfect. In fact, it's far from perfect. When it was originally created by God, it was created to be good, but it's since fallen into disrepair due to sin, wickedness, and the influence of the devil.
And yet our lives are wrapped up in all of it. What keeps us from a better life on this planet? Three opponents, really. Number one, there is the world.
There is the world, the system of ungodliness that exists in human culture and that opposes all that is good and attacks righteousness at every turn. And we feel that in a very real way every single day. Worldliness is one of our enemies.
Number two, the devil. Satan is the enemy of our souls, and he hates God and all who serve him. And although the devil is a created being, a fallen angel, he asserts immense power to steer the course of the world and tries to deceive, if possible, even the church of God's elect.
And so, yes, the devil is our enemy. But beyond what exists externally, outside of ourselves, our last enemy is, number three, our own flesh, our sinful desires that exist within us to wage war on us constantly. And they steer us, our flesh steers us away from godly obedience.
And so, in a very real way, in many ways, we are our own worst enemy. And yet we are encouraged. Why? Well, because Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, has conquered sin and death.
He has given his life on the cross as a ransom to earn forgiveness for our sins and to satisfy God's wrath, reconciling us back to the Father by His grace. It is an immense privilege. It is an immense joy to know that He, Himself, He saves sinners who trust in Him.
He saves sinners who turn away from evil by His grace, who cling to Him by faith. In fact, all throughout the course of history, God has always been redeeming people by their faith in Him. He is the Savior.
He is the Redeemer. But even for those who trust in God, they still, we still experience the trials of this life. Many of you are in the trial of your life right now, or you've been through a severe trial, or you're maybe about to go through a severe trial.
We experience the trials of this life. We experience the torments of Satan. We experience the temptation of the flesh.
And even believers who are beaten down by opposition can become weary. We can become so despondent and depressed and downcast that we cry out to God in our pain. God, where are you? Have you ever cried that out to God, and maybe you felt guilty doing it because you know in your mind, I know He's there.
The Bible tells me He's there, but I just don't feel like He's with me. But always, we must be steered back to God. Because again, in our humanness, when we're in need of help, we tend to forget God, and we look to other perceived sources of comfort and strength.
We look at times everywhere else except to God, and yet we have to remember that He is the one who saved us. He is the one who keeps us. He is the one who loved us.
And so that's what we're going to talk about today from the Scriptures. And so I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 121. Psalm 121.
If you're using a Pew Bible today, it's page 629. Psalm 121. Now, this Psalm 121 comes at a very interesting point in the Old Testament.
It's one of 15 Psalms that comprise a selection known as the Songs of Ascent. The Songs of Ascent. Some have even referenced this section as being a hymnal within a hymnal.
In Israel, the people would make three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship God together in the temple. They would go for Passover, they would go for Pentecost, and they would go for the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths. So three times a year, everybody, every single Jew in Israel would pilgrimage.
They would travel along dusty roads to get to the capital city. No matter where they were, they would flood the highways and streets. They'd pour into the city for celebration.
And as they're making their way into the heart of the city, into Mount Zion, as they're journeying, they would be singing songs together. They would talk together and share stories. Hey, how are you doing? I haven't seen you since last year.
They would do that, but many of these groups would sing together in preparation for the celebration. And commemorating their journey, they would ascend to the Holy Hill, to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem. And so they would sing these Songs of Ascent, Psalm 120 through 134.
They would be singing along the way. And so Psalm 121 comes toward the beginning of this ascent, right before they see the outskirts of the city. And as they made their way along this journey, they would remember that it was God who delivered them from their enemies, who preserved them through their trials, and who called them to obedience and to worship.
And so let's look at this Psalm together. It's very short. Psalm 121.
It is a Song of Ascent. I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your helper, or excuse me, the Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.
Now in this Psalm, the writer who is anonymous, we don't know who wrote this Psalm, but the writer points the weary worshiper back to God. Back to God who is able to keep and help, protect and preserve them. And so for our purposes, we're going to work our way through this Psalm, two verses at a time, in order to grow our faith and our trust in God.
That's that's my one goal today is to motivate you, to spur you on toward greater trust in the capable hands of our Lord. And so first we're going to look at, number one, the God who helps us. The God who helps us.
Verse one pictures sort of a traveler here marching up to the city, to Jerusalem, and they're weary in their journey. Maybe they're coming from a place of poverty or destitution. Maybe they've just had a season of sickness.
Maybe they've been attacked along the way by animals or bandits or whatever it may be. Maybe they're in relational turmoil. Maybe they're coming with a besetting sin that they know they want to make sacrifice for when they get to the temple.
But whatever the situation, they are weary. And this worshiper here cries out and sings out, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. And then there's the question, from where shall my help come? Now the Bible has scholars who are divided on really the nature of this first verse, the sense of it.
Well, what do I mean by that? Well, when the traveler is talking about lifting up their eyes to the mountains, are they looking up in anxiety? Are they looking up to the mountains being worried about what they might find as they get closer? Or are they looking up to the mountains with anticipation? In other words, are they looking up on guard? Or are they looking up with hope? Again, scholars are divided. They're not sure. But this concept of looking to the mountain is one that is repeated in Scripture.
After all, it was God who was in the mountains in Sinai when he met with Moses. He was in the mountain when he comforted Elijah when he was on the run. And even in Matthew 17, it was Jesus with Peter, James, and John who went up to the mountain of transfiguration, and they beheld His radiant glory there.
So there is a repeated theme of God on the mountain. God on the mountain. And so to be looking to the mountains is really to be searching for God.
We don't find God by looking down at the ground, or looking at our shoes, or staring at our navel sort of inward turning. We don't find Him looking left and right at other people. No, we find God by looking to the mountain, looking to heaven, looking up to Him.
That's what Colossians 3 says, to lift our gaze to see Him. And so that's what the psalmist is doing. He's looking to the mountains, searching for God.
After all, Psalm 123 begins with the proclamation, to you I lift up my eyes, he says, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. So if you're struggling with your eyes down, lift your gaze, look up to the Lord, see Him in His glory. And we know from Psalm 125 that the earthly representation of that dwelling place of God was the temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
And so even though we know that God is omnipresent, He's everywhere, He's here with us now, He indwells believers, He's here now. We understand that in Israel at that time, the representation, if you wanted to be closer to God, they would go and they would pilgrimage to the temple. They would go right to the building as far as they could go and the priests would go inside and once a year they go into the most holy place.
The idea is that they would be drawing near to God in a very real way. And the temple was lifted up on the Mount, Mount Zion. And so again, this theme of drawing near and looking up is repeated over and over again.
And so the worshippers, they're traveling on foot, they're traveling on beast, and they would lift their eyes and they would see the mountains of Jerusalem, the Mount, and they would know as they see the Mount coming that they were drawing near to the Lord. And then we have the worshipper asking this question as they're looking up toward the mountains. From where shall my help come? This word translated help is the Hebrew word hezer, which can mean several different things.
It can mean help, it can mean support, guidance, it can also mean blessing, it can also mean protection. There's sort of a range of meaning with this word. But if you glance at the context around the word, it kind of gives us, I think, a more narrow meaning into what this word could be.
In the previous Psalm, if you look up at Psalm 120, just before it, the worshipper is crying out to God in his trouble and the worshipper there says, deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue, in verse 2. And then verse 6, too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak they are for war. And so if the situation is similar at all to what's happening in Psalm 120, then the situation is opposition from lying people or deceiving people or enemies who are against the worshipper.
Again, if that's the case in Psalm 121, if the preceding Psalm gives us any insight into what's to come, then this sort of help is deliverance, protection, support. So where does our help come from? And the repeated answer in the Psalms, and really in all of Scripture, is that our help comes from the Lord. Let me tell you, your help is not ultimately going to come from your parents.
It's not going to come from your friends, those around you. It's not going to come from your therapist. It's not even going to come from your pastor.
Now, is it possible to receive some help and some comfort? Last week we looked at 2 Corinthians chapter 1 and we saw how there's a fellowship of suffering and also a fellowship of comfort. That's not to deny any of those realities, but if you're looking for the source of true help, the source of true comfort and strength, Psalm 3320, our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield.
Psalm 115 verse 9, O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. We have to get this in our minds.
Psalm 121 too, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Stop being tempted away to try to find your help and your comfort from other things and other people and other places. If your soul is weary, there is one source.
Again, God will mediate that through people and through situations and providence, of course, but if you forget him while you're looking for help from people or things, you're missing it completely. The source of our help is the one who made us. This comment about God being the maker of heaven and earth, this showcases his divine power to act for us.
This phrase is repeated even in the Apostles Creed. Many of you learned the Apostles Creed growing up. We know that he is the maker of heaven and earth.
That's just shorthand for God did and made everything. The ground that we walk on, the bodies we live in, the breath in our lungs, everything is from him. And so, if God has created all things and if God has upheld all things and if God controls all things, then certainly reason with me here, God is surely able to help those who need him.
He's more than able. And we play these games in our heads sometimes because in the moment our troubles, our trials seem like they're just the end of the world. Maybe it's a sickness.
Maybe you had a diagnosis this week. Maybe it's your financial situation. Maybe you've looked at your paycheck and the money's just run out.
You're done for the month. Maybe it's a relational struggle that you just don't know how it's gonna get resolved. Maybe it's someone that you have to confront and you don't know how to do it.
Maybe it's your own indwelling sin. Whatever the situation is, it doesn't really make a difference. But we have this little thing that switches off in our brains and we say to ourselves, self, nobody can help you.
Your problems are too big. We're wrong. God is more than able.
God is able to heal. He's able to provide. He's able to reconcile.
He's able to forgive. He's able to save. He can do far more abundantly than we could ever ask or think.
So let me ask you, where do you look for your help? Where do you seek to find it? Is it in substances? Cigarettes or alcohol or drugs? Maybe it's a prescription that you think is the thing that's saving you? Is it in lovers? Someone that you're not supposed to be with? Is it in self-help or worldly counselors? Maybe it's in distractions. We love to distract ourselves into help, hobbies or travel or experiences. If I can just go and do this thing, I'll feel better.
But does it ever actually help you in the end? Because when you come home, your problem is still staring at you in the face. Or if your problem is your situation, who you are, what you're doing, your sin, then everywhere you go, your problems are going to follow you. The only true help that will aid you in your time of need is going to be from the Lord.
He is the God who helps us. He is also, number two, the God who keeps us. He is the God who keeps us, verses three and four.
The Bible says, He will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
Verse three introduces a key word in Psalm 121. It's a Hebrew word. The word is shamar.
It actually appears six times in this Psalm, but in different forms. In the New American Standard, which is what I'm preaching from today, this word is translated as keep in verse three, four, five, and seven. Four times is keep.
But in the same word, the exact same word, shamar, is also rendered as protect in verse seven and guard in verse eight. So keep, protect, and guard. It's all the same Hebrew word.
Literally, this word, shamar, means to hedge about. It's as if you're building a fence or a protection or a hedge around something to protect it. This word has also been translated in other translations as watching over or preserving.
For example, in Psalm 161, it begins with the word shamar. Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in you. It's a great sense of this word here, of preservation from God and the worshiper taking refuge in finding their help in God.
This becomes a prominent theme in the Scriptures, showing how God deals with his people. You could even just do a very quick word study through this Hebrew word shamar and find it all over the place. I found dozens of examples, but just a couple of highlights here.
Genesis 28 15, God promises Jacob that he will keep him, shamar, he will keep him wherever he goes. Joshua 24 17, God pledges to preserve the Israelites as they wander in the wilderness. Or Job 10 verse 12, God promises that he will preserve Job's spirit despite unimaginable trials.
I mean, you read Job. I mean, it is a depressing 42 chapters. I have a friend who told me they wanted to do an elongated study, and I said I will pray for you.
That's a hard study. It is profitable. It will bless you, but I'll tell you, get a cup of coffee with you.
It's heavy. But here's the thing, through all of this difficulty that Job went through, I mean, Job, I can't think of a single person who suffered in an earthly sense more than Job, and yet God promises to preserve him. I will keep you.
And by the end of the last couple chapters, you see, He does. God preserves and restores and delivers Job. It's wonderful.
Psalm 130 likens God to a guardian who is greater than the watchman, the watchman of the city. See, it's God who keeps us. He's the one who watches over us.
We're the ones who feel like He's wandered off, but we deceive ourselves because God is near. Paul said in Acts 17 when he was on Mars Hill that, oh, we always are feeling around and groping around to try to find God. Oh, where is He? Maybe I'll go over here and find Him.
Maybe this person has an idea. But what does Paul say? He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. God is so near to you.
Do you even see? He's no farther away than the distance of your breath leaving your lips. God is near to you. He watches over you.
He keeps you. But what's neat about verse 3 here is that we notice something interesting taking place even in the grammar. Yes, my friends, grammar is interesting.
Verse 3 here is different than what happens in verses 1 and 2. Verses 1 and 2, the psalmist is talking about God being my help, my help. But then starting in verse 3, and for the rest of the psalm, we see that the focus switches to you, from me to you. It's almost as if we see a worshiper here who's turning and trusting in God, traveling to the city.
He's talking about what God is doing for him, and then he turns to the worshiper next to him, to the traveler next to him, and he says, let me tell you about what God has helped me with, and He will help you do the same. This is ministering comfort to those who are traveling alongside. That's what it looks like, doesn't it? And so verse 3, it's one worshiper seemingly saying to another, He will not allow your foot to slip.
One of the dangers of making pilgrimage in Israel was that these old gravel pathways were dangerous to travel on at times. There was always the danger of slipping and falling. Now, if you just trip over a stone and stumble, you pick yourself back up and you'll be okay.
But what happens if you're traveling, again, first century or even earlier, probably at this point, if this is the Psalms, we're talking about 6th or 7th or 8th century BC. If you're traveling to Jerusalem in this time, and you slip and you break your ankle, or you slip and break your leg and it's gruesome, what are you gonna do? No hospital. I mean, you have to go another couple dozen miles on foot to get to the city.
So there's a real danger of slipping and falling. If you're going along a path that is along a rock ledge or even a mountainside, if you slip and fall, it could be the end of you. So traveling along these pathways was not easy, and it was certainly not safe.
And so there was an increased danger of slipping and falling. There was no guardrails along Palestinian highways, and so again, to slip could mean the death of you. And so here in verse 3, this is meant metaphorically, that He will not allow your foot to slip.
A slip represents a sinful behavior. It's behavior that's gonna lead you into eventual ruin. Deuteronomy 32-35 speaks of God's judgment to those who are prideful, those who are sinners, who think that nothing will ever happen to them that's bad.
He declares vengeance is mine, and retribution. In due time their foot will slip, for the day of their calamity is near, and impending things are hastening upon them. See, here's the problem.
A prideful sinner thinks that they could just continue along the way that they're going, and nothing's ever gonna happen to them. Ever met somebody who's been like that, or maybe you've been like that? I hope none of you are like that now, just throwing yourself into wanton rebellion against God and just assuming everything's gonna work out fine. They're just gonna keep going along the way, and sin's not gonna slow them down.
That's preposterous error. Here's the thing, the Bible says that God is saying to that person, oh, you're gonna slip and you're gonna fall. Your sins will find you out.
No sin will go unpunished. And so if you're caught in a trespass, if you're just sinning willfully, I'm not talking about if you sinned against what you normally do, I'm not talking about a mistake, I'm not talking about just moments of anger or rage or temptation where you slip and you fall, I'm talking about rebellion against God and your own heart and behavior. If you think you can do that and get away with it, you have another thing coming to you.
Maybe you're getting away with it now, but the Scripture says you will slip, your foot will slide in due time. But for the one who trusts in the Lord, for the one who is not presumptuous in sin, for the one who desires to be righteous, they're not continuing along shaking their fist at God, they're saying, oh Lord, keep me, preserve me. To that one, God promises that he will not allow your foot to slip.
Not only, it's not that you're never gonna fall or slip into sin or lapse or anything like that, this is talking about God keeping you from ultimate ruin. He's not gonna destroy you. Like Paul says, struck down but not destroyed.
We get struck down, don't we? We go through discipline, the Lord disciplines those he loves. Yes, you go through trials. Yes, you go through difficulty.
Yes, you'll suffer. Yes, you fall into sin, but not into ruin. God knows how to keep his people.
Psalm 66 9, O peoples, bless our God and sound his praise abroad, who keeps us in life and does not allow our feet to slip. If we're humble, if we trust in God, if we look to him, then he will keep us. And that, my friends, is a comforting thought.
That he will keep us. He will not allow our foot to slip. We will not fall over the rock ledge into our doom.
He will keep us from stumbling and falling off the path. The psalmist then speaks of the attentiveness and the reliability of God. Because you're saying, okay, Lord, this is a tall order.
I'm a mess here, Lord. So to keep me from slipping and falling, you've got a lot of work to do. Because I'm not so great.
However, the Bible says here, he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. This is an interesting concept.
This notion of a sleeping deity. You remember back in your mind to 1 Kings chapter 18, when Elijah has this grand showdown. Elijah versus the prophets of Baal.
Remember that story? When he goes down to the 400 prophets of Baal, and they build the two fires? And what are the prophets of Baal doing? They're running around and they're screaming to their supposed God, Baal. They're screaming and dancing and jumping, doing all these extreme things, even cutting themselves. And yet he doesn't respond to them.
And Elijah taunts them. And at one point in his taunt, what does he say? He says, oh, maybe he's sleeping and needs to be awakened. I love when he says, maybe he's gone out along the way.
In other words, maybe he's in the bathroom. That's the sense of what he's talking about in 1 Kings. And so Elijah's taunting these prophets to a false God because he's not there.
He's not real. He's not going to listen and respond. But the Bible teaches us over and over again that our God never sleeps.
He never sleeps. He never goes out along the way. He's always present.
He's always active. He's always attentive. He's always engaged.
And even if we feel like sometimes, oh, God, where are you? God, are you sleeping? Do you not hear me? I'm calling out to you. Aren't you listening? We think he's sleeping. But the Bible reassures us that God never sleeps nor slumbers.
There is never a point when he zones out. There's never a point he dozes off. There's never a point he's not locked into you.
Never. He knows exactly what's happening in your life, what's happening in your thoughts, what's going on in your heart. He knows your situations.
He knows your past. He knows your present. He knows your future.
He is intimately acquainted with everything in your life all the time forever. And he keeps us and he guards us. Why? Well, because Scripture gives us all the different analogies about this.
He is our good shepherd. He watches over the flock. He is our active watchman on the wall.
He stands over our city, so to speak, and he watches for danger. He is our vigilant God and he keeps us. He is also, number three, the God who protects us.
He is the God who protects us, verses 5 and 6. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night.
Again, the Lord is your keeper. This word again, shemar. Some translations even render this word protector, depending on which Bible translation you use, protector.
And that's definitely a good sense of what's going on here. But how so? How is God the protector here? Well, as again, travelers would go along the way, along these desert roads, one potential threat when they're traveling in the desert was that of sunstroke. You're traveling along for hours and days and sometimes many days, depending on where in Israel you are.
And if it's a hot and sunny day and it's humid and it's, or maybe even in that region it's drier, there's a real danger here. The sun could cook you. I mean, you could become dehydrated.
You could become sunstroke. Huge problems, huge dangers. We don't think about these kinds of dangers today.
But overexposure is a real threat here. But thankfully, verse 5, it says, the Lord is your shade on your right hand. Right hand is your place of preference in the scriptures.
Some of you are left-handed, that's okay. But the idea, the concept here is a right hand is a favored hand, a preferred hand. And so that's the idea that God shields you from the harmful heat and he protects you.
He protects you where you're most needed. One repeated theme in the Psalms is the notion of a God who's a soaring eagle, under whose wings his people find protection. We see this over and over again.
Psalm 17, 8, keep me as the apple of your eye, hide me in the shadow of your wings. Or Psalm 36, verse 7, how precious is your lovingkindness, O God, and the children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings. I was thinking this week of just an illustration, not that I use very much from pop culture, but I remember watching the third Lord of the Rings movie.
And hopefully, you've all seen it. I'm not spoiling the ending for you here. But in the movie, there's a scene where Frodo has to be rescued.
And it's one of the eagles that swoops in and rescues. And Frodo is so burnt to a crisp and just exhausted and worn out from the journey that he falls asleep. And in sort of his slumber, he opens his eyes and he just sees this shadow over top of him and can't figure out what it is at first.
And he dozes off. And in his next moment, he looks up and he sees these wings flapping and he's in the clutches of this giant eagle. That's the sense of here.
You look up and you see the shadow of wings over you. And if you were an enemy, if you were prey, that would be a terrifying sight. If you hate the Lord God, then the shadow of his wings is a terrifying sight.
But if you belong to him, if he's your savior, your protector, your rescuer, then the sight of his wings over you is a comforting thing. That's the sense here that he is our protection. He is our covering.
In fact, this very thing Jesus expresses to the Pharisees in Matthew 23, when he cries out to Jerusalem in their sinfulness, he says, Oh, Jerusalem, Oh, Jerusalem. How I longed to spread my wings over you. Like a mother hen covers their young in the nest.
I wanted to bring you under my wings like little chicklets. I wanted to guard and protect you. And he says, but you are not willing.
Therefore, your house is left to you desolate. You see the longing of the Savior. I want to cover you.
I want to spread my wings over you and bring you underneath my care. We run away. He's the one who desires to bring us under his wings.
Don't run away from him. Stop thinking that you're going to go and do this on your own, that you don't need his protection. You don't need his care.
You spurn his love. You spurn his righteousness. Stop running away from him.
Draw near to God, and Scripture says, and he will draw near to you. He will hide you under the shadow of his wings. And yet God's true worshipers, we share the sentiment of Psalm 63, 7. For you have been my help.
And in the shadow of your wings, I sing for joy. Lord, it is good that I'm under your wings. I praise you that I'm under your wings.
You care for me. You love me. You've protected me.
Brothers and sisters, we can sing for joy that we're under his wings, his care, his love, his provision. This is the song of a joyful worshiper who knows they need God. It is a joy to know that we are under the protective care of a loving father.
That's who he is. He's a loving father who loves to care for his young ones. Verse 6, he says, the sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
Not only will the worshipers be harmed by the sun during the daytime, there's also a risk of being harmed under the moon by night. See, daytime brought dangers like heat stroke and dehydration, but nighttime exposed them to robbers. Nighttime exposed them to cold.
Nighttime exposed them to animals that would wander into their camp. Nighttime was just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than the day, and yet the people of God rejoice in his protection. If we're dipping into verse 7 a little bit here, the psalmist adds, the Lord will protect you from all evil, all evil, not just danger, not just sort of the melees of life, all evil.
And this is the constant experience for many believers that God has protected you from all sorts of evil. Of course, it's not that we're never impacted by evil at all. Of course we are.
All of us have experiences with evil influencing in our lifetime. But have you ever stopped and considered, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but ever stop and consider just how much evil God has shielded you from? When I look back at my life before Christ, in high school, in college, as a young adult, and I think about the situations that I got involved in, the places I went, the company that I kept, I can think back to numerous times when if I had only gone this way, I would have fallen into evil and danger, or debauchery, or destruction, or anything like that that could have ruined me. When someone invited me to go here, when someone handed me this, I think about all the evil that God protected me from.
Now, I got into plenty that was my own, that I have repented for. And yet, when you consider how much God has actually protected you from, and not ruined you to get you to this point, praise Him. Lord, thank you for preserving me.
Thank you for not letting me ruin myself. But yet, maybe some of you have ruined yourself, but that's what got you here. Praise Him for that.
See, unbelievers reject the Lord, and when unbelievers reject the Lord, you know what happens? It's open season from the enemy. Think about this. There is no protection for them.
They're allowed to sin with no restrainer. They're to be tempted to sin with no conscience toward God. It's scary.
I've talked to believers who have come even out of witchcraft. I know many people who are embedded in witchcraft, and they tell me about what their life was like in that, how scary it was, how dangerous it was, how awful it was. And they've come out of it, and now one of the things they're most thankful for is God's spiritual protection over them.
The sealing of the Holy Spirit that will not allow them to be influenced in some ways. They rejoice at God's spiritual protection. Don't ever take that for granted.
We can identify with David in Psalm 23, 4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. Why, David? Why aren't you fearing evil? He says, because you, O Lord, are with me. Yeah, it's scary out there.
It's terrifying out there. But we have no reason to fear. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and power and discipline.
God loves us as believers. He loves His people. And He keeps us.
He helps us. He protects us so that we have no reason to fear. Our Lord is the God who protects.
And finally, He is, number four, the God who preserves us. He preserves us, verse 7 and 8. The Lord will protect you from all evil. Yes, He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. Building on this idea of God's protection, the psalmist promises that He will keep your soul, your soul. The word for soul here in the Hebrew is nefesh.
It also could be translated life, your life. It's your inner life. It's who you are on the inside, your soul, your being.
So more than protecting you from physical harm or even the outside emotional experiences, He has promised to guard and keep and protect your soul. Because yes, there are times where we get delivered over in body and sometimes even in mind. Many people are afflicted all the time.
I've suffered affliction, a mental, emotional affliction from spiritual depression. Many of you have as well. Many of you have suffered the affliction of physical trauma.
You've gone through sickness and illness and broken bones and rheumatoid arthritis and chronic pain. Chronic pain is mind-numbing. Chronic pain is a torment to the body that affects the spirit and the soul.
And so yes, we're afflicted, but here's the thing. He promises, I will keep your soul. I will hang on to you, who you really are.
I will hang on to you. I will preserve you. That's His promise.
He preserves His people. He sustains His people. Psalm 145 verse 20, the Lord keeps all who love Him, but the wicked He will destroy.
See, the wicked, there's coming a day when they will face the God of destruction. He will ruin them. He will damn them.
He will condemn them because of their rebellion, because of their sin against Him. But He's promised that that will not be us. He will preserve us because we love Him.
Do you love the Lord? Isn't that the greatest commandment, Jesus says? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength? To grow to love Him all the more? And you might confess honestly and say, I don't love God as much as I know I should. Okay, confess that. Recognize that.
Acknowledge that. Confess that. Bring that to Him.
And say, Lord, I know I don't love you as much as I should. Forgive me, but help me. Stir affections for you within me.
Give me love for you. I think about the man whose son was tormented, and he says, Lord, I do believe, but help my unbelief. That's a good prayer.
Lord, I do love you, but help me to love you when I don't feel like I love you. That's what Psalm 145 is saying. But Jesus prayed for the disciples in John 17 11.
Holy Father, He says, keep them in your name. That's a prayer for preservation. Don't let them wander off.
Don't let them be destroyed. Don't let them be damned. Keep them.
Keep them in your name. This is known as the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Perseverance.
It goes this way. If God saves you by His grace through faith, if He atones for your sin through the sacrifice of Christ and pays for you, if He forgives you of your trespasses, if He adopts you as His spiritual children, if He places within you a new heart, if He puts His Holy Spirit within you to indwell you, if He promises to sanctify you by His Spirit, if He does all of those things, then don't you think that He will preserve and keep your life? See, sometimes we manifest the unfounded fear that God is gonna save us through the work of Christ. I heard the gospel.
I believed the gospel. I put my faith in Him. But then we have this fear that at some time in the future, He's gonna see who we really are and He's gonna say, this isn't what I signed up for.
You're too far gone. You got a lot of problems. You got a lot of sin.
We think that God's gonna get tired of us and then drop us later. Now, I've never heard someone articulate that in exactly those terms, but I've heard a lot that's like that. That God is just done with me.
I've sinned too much. I'm too far gone. My heart's too sinful and wicked.
Is that what God really does? Is that who He is? Is that what He's promised in His Word? No. Because if you've been saved by God's grace, then He will sustain you by His grace. What's grace? It's unmerited favor.
He saves because He desires to save and to be glorified in the saving. He doesn't save because we're worthy of saving. You see the difference? He doesn't look at us and go, oh, this is a good one.
He looks at us as enemies and says, oh, this one's a mess. This one needs to be saved. Guess what? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
There's not one redeemable person, one savable person on earth. We're wretches at heart. We're enemies at heart.
And yet God, in His grace, reaches out, plucks us off the dusty ground, cleans us off, puts a new heart and a spirit into us, revives us, breathes life into us, adopts us as children, walks with us along the way, and brings us to the end. How could we not praise Him for that? How could we not be comforted by that? What's the idea here? What's the big idea? God will keep you. He will preserve you.
He will sustain you. Verse 8, the Lord will guard. He will guard.
You're going out and you're coming in from this time forth and forever. For the sixth time in this psalm, we read the word Shemar, which is translated here as guard. The Lord will guard, keep, protect, watch over.
You're going out and you're coming in. In other words, your whole daily life, everything about you. When you get up in the morning and you go out to your job or to school or wherever you're going, whenever we go on vacation, we usually get in the car and the first thing we do is we pray.
Before I even leave the driveway, because knowing me, I'll veer off in the ditch over here a mile away. We pray. Lord, protect our trip.
Some of you do that, right? Well, why? Because we inherently know that God is able to preserve us even as we go along the way. So when you go out to work, school, travel, wherever, wherever you go out, He's there. He will guard you.
He'll protect you. What about your coming in when you come in to eat, to sleep, to rest? Even when you're sleeping at night, God is watching over you. He's preserving you.
He's protecting you. So no matter what you do, God is guarding you. He guards you for how long? How long is he going to commit to doing this? It's a big job.
From this time forth and forever. In other words, constantly, consistently, eternally. Of course, Scripture also commands us to keep our way according to His Word.
That's Psalm 119. It comes right before this Song of Ascent here. Psalm 119, the overarching theme is this.
I'm going to keep Your Word because Your Word is good. And I want to follow You, Lord. So yes, it is incumbent upon us to seek Him and to keep His commands and to obey Him through the heart and by the Spirit.
But yet He promises to walk with those who walk with Him. In fact, wasn't that what Jesus promised the disciples at the end of Matthew 28? Remember the Gospel of Matthew? Remember we spent some time there? What was the end of it? How did the story end? Jesus promised the disciples, He promised us, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He promises the exact same thing as the psalmist notes here in verse 8. It's the same promise.
He promises to abide with us. He promises to strive with us. He promises to protect us.
He promises to keep us. He will keep you. My question is this, is He your God? Is He your Savior? Do you worship a false God like the God of Baal? Do you feel like you have to run around and dance and get His attention and do all this effort to get somewhere in life? Or are you resting in the finished work of Christ? Are you resting in the truth that yes, we have sinned, I have sinned against a holy God and I'm worthy of death, worthy of punishment, and so are you.
All have sinned and yet, and yet, even while we were still enemies, the Bible says we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. That Jesus Christ came in the flesh, God in human flesh, and lived on earth, and lived just like we do here, in every single way except without sin, and then offered His perfect life on the cross as a sacrifice, as a ransom, and His blood was shed and paid, atoned for our sins. He died, the penalty of our sin died with Him on that cross.
He was buried in the ground along with our sins and rose again the third day to bring new life. And what are we called to? Are we called to dance around and scream and shout and cut ourselves and atone for ourselves? No, we're called to repent and turn away and trust in Him. Do you believe the gospel that God so loved the world? To whoever believes in the Son will have eternal life.
That is our hope, because all those who belong to God by faith, all of those who are His, He will keep you. He is the God who keeps us. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank You. We thank You that Your character, who You are, Your attributes, Your glory is so perfect, that You are a God of unsurpassing wisdom, amazing grace, unfathomable mercy, unattainable glory, perfect righteousness. And yes, we understand that You are high and exalted and lifted up, and You will not fellowship with sin.
And yet, You condescend, You come from heaven to earth to redeem the lost, to rescue us out of the miry clay, out of the pit of despair, O Lord. You pull us out of death and out of bondage, and You redeem and You keep us by Your Word. And yet, Lord, we confess that there are so many times that we forget.
That we get ourselves so stressed out, so worried, so bound up in our sins and in the world, we get lost, we wander away. And yet, You tell us, if we lift our eyes, if we look to Your dwelling place in the holy heavens, if we lift our gaze and look to You and see Christ seated on the throne and drawn near to You by faith alone, that You save us and preserve us and keep us. You are our rock and our salvation.
Lord, minister comfort to us today. Draw our hearts near to You. And Lord, if there are those who are distant or who have wandered off or maybe those who've never come to You, Lord, would You save and redeem by Your grace convictive sin that we can repent and trust in You by faith.
Thank You, God, for keeping us. Thank You for loving us as our Father. We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.