Preacher: Jason Svintsitsky,
Text: Psalm 121
East River Church (Batavia, OH)
The Lord Protects
Welcome to East River Church. My name is Jason Smitsky and I'm a pastoral apprentice here. As someone training for bivocational ministry, by permission of the session, I've been granted the honor and privilege of preaching the word for you this morning. The scripture before us today is Psalm 121. If you have your Bibles with you, open up to Psalm 121. What we'll do is we'll read the text in full and then we'll pray. 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 your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever more. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, thank you for these words. The very words from your mouth by which we are sustained, encouraged and taught. Grant us the faith to hold on to these promises, to live by them and to look to them as a lamp shining in a dark place. In your son's name, amen. The Christian life is a journey and not in the cliche, corny way either. What I mean is that it is not aimless. It is a trek, a race, a pursuit. Those without Christ could probably described as drifting or lost or chasing vanities, but not God's people. Christ's people, by the grace of the one who has called them, have a glorious destination, a goal, and they are in joyful pursuit of that goal. And it's not a cheesy, predictable journey either. No, the journey has been planned out and written by the greatest author of all time. And like any great story, a great journey should have. It is filled with dangers, challenges, trials, victories, losses, dragons, sea monsters, valleys of shadowy death, glorious heights, and of course, the almighty saving acts of the triune God. But there have been times where God's people have had to go on a literal journey and a difficult one. They've had to go to Jerusalem to present themselves to God. In the first Zion, which was a prototype of the new Jerusalem and heavenly Zion that we see in the New Testament. But more on that later. And because like the Christian life, the journey was not easy. The ancient Israelite pilgrims had to rely upon their God and His promises to arrive safely at their destination. And so God's people on pilgrimage to Jerusalem is the context for our Psalm today, Psalm 21. Psalm 121 is part of a grouping of Psalms called the Songs of Ascent. In other words, songs you sing when you are going up to the holy city. And these songs, by the way, they are gathered together and they are not ordered randomly. There's actually a story that is told by the way the Psalter is ordered. So the ordering of these Psalms is not random. The first three of these songs of Ascent are ordered in a very particular way. So in the first Song of Ascent, the one before the one we are going to look at today, Psalm 120, the worshiper of the Lord finds himself in Meshech and Kedar, which are most likely two separate places that you can't be in at the same time. It's a graphic and poetic portrayal of being far away from home. This psalmist in Psalm 121 is far away from the holy city and longs to be there. He wants to be in the presence of God surrounded by worshippers instead of being encircled by liars and warmongers. In our Psalm, Psalm 121, the journey has been undertaken and the pilgrims see the upcoming hills that eventually lead up to their destination. A reflection on God's providence then takes place for the psalmist, for the pilgrims, and perhaps also some final challenges and weariness is expected. So for this difficult stretch, they look back upon the character of God and the hills could be quite treacherous places for travel. So the pilgrim needs this. This is ancient travel, no paved highways. So he needs his God to comfort him. He needs his promises to make it there. He's close, but not yet. In the next psalm in Psalm 122, we have the pilgrim's safe arrival marked with gladness. I quote, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.' And in many ways, the Christian life is patterned in this way. There is a deep sense of longing to be with our God. We know we have been called to him. We know that we have been called to the holy city, but we are not yet there. We are far from home, and we desire to present ourselves to the Lord and enjoy worship, work, and celebration in eternal joy. We are pained when we realize that right now, in many ways, we are surrounded by enemies, afflicted by trials, and the road ahead of us will prove difficult. And so we keep moving forward by setting our eyes on our Lord and to the lasting city built by him as we journey along on our pilgrimage and rely on his protection and trustworthy word." So with that picture in mind, let's get into the first two verses of this psalm and see what comfort you and I can mine out of this ancient psalm. This is a song that our forefathers in the faith who were in the household of God long before us, saying on their way to Jerusalem, the first two verses, the first couple. "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." And if you're reading the psalms, often there they are again, the hills. Psalm 2, "As for me I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill," Psalm 3, "I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill," Psalm 24, "who will ascend unto the hill of the Lord?" Now commentators differ on how to take these hills in Psalm 121, the meaning of them, but I think the simplest and most natural reading is what best aligns with the fact that this is a song of going up to Jerusalem. The hills surrounding the area of Jerusalem would cause the pilgrims to reflect upon the Lord who dwells there in a special way. And since they are headed to the hill of Zion for worship, I don't believe this is a commentary on idol worship or idolatry. In fact, in the entire Psalter, the hills are never used in that way. They're never used in a way to mark out false worship in the Psalter. That usage is rather found in the historical books and in Jeremiah especially. And so because these pilgrims are beginning to see the hills, they are closing in on the final stretch of their journey. And so they reflect upon God's help, which He has given, and the help which He will give still for the final leg of the trip. And this is a very important lesson in the Psalms in the Old Testament and for the Christian life as a whole today. That lesson is this. God's past dealings with us, His past times where He came to our aid, to our sucker and guarded us. Those are tokens of His steadfast love still now in His faithfulness. It is proof that the same God will do so again for the Christian. He will do so again because our God does not change. So it is a faith strengthening exercise and encouraging for us, Christians, to reflect upon God's past dealings with us. We think about how He's graciously called us to Christ, how He's taught us, how He's guarded us, and how He's disciplined us. In fact, this faith strengthening exercise of recalling God's past faithful dealings is done over and over again in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Exodus was the prime example of God's gracious, redemptive love and His faithfulness to the covenant. And it is used over and over again to stir up and remind the Israelites, the God who redeemed you out of Egypt, who called you out of slavery and darkness. This is the same God. He is still true to His promise to Abraham and He will again deliver His people finally, His righteous ones that are waiting for him. He will bring them out. And so we participate in the exact same exercise today. Although, of course, today we look back on the final Exodus that was accomplished by our Lord outside the city of Jerusalem, when our Lord delivered us from bondage to sin and slavery. And so as the pilgrims look upon the hills, they reflect upon God who is their help. They also bring to mind an important truth about their God in the verse, that He is the Creator. Our help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. I love how Matthew Henry puts it when reflecting on this part of the song. I quote, "We must encourage our confidence in God with this, that He made heaven and earth, and He who did that can do anything. He made the world out of nothing, Himself alone by a word speaking in a little time, and all very good, very excellent and beautiful, and therefore how great so ever our straits and difficulties are, God has power sufficient for our comfort and relief." And so we learn here that the doctrine of creation has practical implications for our faith today. We look to the Almighty God who has created the universe, and that is the same God who is called our Redeemer and covenant Lord. He is the Holy One, the faithful Creator. And brothers and sisters, this is a reminder for us to humble ourselves in childlike dependence upon our Father and to go to Him in prayer, recalling that the One whom we pray to is the Almighty who created the heavens and the earth. It's a reminder for us to cast our burdens upon Him and recall that He is not weak in dealing with what ails us today. He has cared for us all along on this pilgrimage, and He will see to it that we are brought safely into His eternal kingdom. Now let's look at the next couplet of the psalm. 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. Now the first part of this couplet, not let your foot be moved can be more literally translated, He will not give your foot to stagger. So God will ensure the traveler's safe passage free from terrible falls, staggering stumbling. To the ancient pilgrim, this is a very useful and relevant promise. He's headed into the treacherous mountains, and there's a promise that God's not going to give His foot to slip and stagger and perhaps fall to something terrible. And that is precisely the point. The promise is fitted and given by God to be used in the daily travel of the pilgrim. The promise is not one so ethereal, up there, disconnected, too perfect for this world that the pilgrim finds no use for, no. The promise is one that concerns the very steps that the pilgrim takes, the very path that he walks. The God of Israel is concerned with his pilgrim safety. And so the pilgrim's very movements are under the father's care. Now my brothers and sisters, do we know that we are under the same care, the same father, the same God is concerned with our very movements? Our Lord told us that even our hairs are numbered, that we should not fear. The promises of God are for us as we travel. They're for us to be used as we go out, as we walk the paths of righteousness. They are tools in the chest. They are God-ordained comforts for us on this pilgrimage. That is why it is very important for God's people to be able to recall these promises, to read them, to nourish themselves daily with them, to memorize them, to pray them. That's a God-ordained usage of the Psalter, by the way, to pray it. So, Christian, I ask you today, are you anxious, hurried, fearful, then look to this God? And remember the promises. See our Lord, who was the perfect pilgrim, who set his face to Jerusalem, who sang and prayed these very Psalms, who after arriving at Zion found false worship and was rejected there, outside the city crucified. He was buried and then he traveled into the realm of death, but then he was raised and now was seated at the right hand of the Father, and now look at that perfect pilgrim's face. By faith, look at his face and tell me if you think he's worried right now about what will happen to his pilgrims on their travels as they follow in his very footsteps. No we who are on their way to the true Zion, we know that God will guard our steps. We know that he will keep us from stumbling. He will keep us. He who keeps Israel will not sleep. Now let's look at that word keep, by the way. That's the main theme of the entire Psalm. It's very important. That thing gets introduced by the repetition of a verbal root that in our English Bibles is usually translated as keep. I mean, it's almost amusing how bad the author wants you to get this point. He uses it six times in three couplets, and it's a short Psalm. So it's the same verbal root that is used in the opening chapters of Genesis when Adam is placed in the garden of Eden to keep it. It can also be translated guard, which is the main sense there as well as in the Psalm. So Adam fails as a priest king to guard the holy precinct of the garden of Eden. So destruction and death enter in. He fails to guard. But we know that after the fall, God was pleased to make a second covenant with man, a covenant of grace, wherein the second Adam does not fail in keeping, keeping the law. Not only that, fulfilling all righteousness by his perfect obedience, but he perfectly executes the task of a holy priest king and he guards his people perfectly, who are his holy inheritance and possession. He himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam, promises to do so in John 639. And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. He will not lose those who are given to him. He will keep them and ensure that they are raised up in glory on the last day. This is the keeper of Israel and you are Israel. We are the true Israel. The Apostle Paul tells us so in Galatians to the Gentile, Galatians also to the Gentile Batavians for that matter in southwestern Ohio. He says this, "Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham." That's Israel. That is how you read the Psalms today as a Christian. You read them knowing that you are the true sons of Abraham by faith. We are the true Israel. And so these very promises in the ancient Psalter are for us and for our children. Now let us continue with that in mind reading the third couplet of this psalm. 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. So this couplet, by the way, it places up front for emphasis the holy covenantal name of God, the Lord, the Lord, the name by which God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 3. When he's fulfilling, he's answering the promises he made to Abraham. He's coming and saying, "Look, I'm being faithful. I'm going to redeem you because of my promises I made to Abraham so long ago." God reveals himself to Moses in Exodus 3 by this distinct name. The LORD and all caps that was mentioned last Sunday in John Sermon. And so this holy name is used to remind the pilgrims of how they know this God. They know him as a faithful redeemer. They know him through gracious redemption. And so God's dedicated loving kindness, his commitment to the promises, the oaths that he swore to Abraham is the truth that undergirds this whole psalm. It's the truth that gives stability and confidence to the pilgrims. God's keeping or guarding again is stressed here. But then we see this added imagery of God being a shade at the pilgrims' right hand. It's also the same word. The same word for shade is the same word used for shadow. Of course, these words are conceptually tied together. The shadow of a tree provides shade. And so the sense of the imagery here is that our God is as close as a shadow, as comforting, as a shade, as refreshing as a shade. Now here's what's interesting. In this song of ascent, which is all about going up to Jerusalem to enjoy the special presence of God, this very song has a promise of God's close presence to the traveler already. God is already at the traveler's right hand. The psalmist says so that he's close by, he's like shade, he's like a shadow. Though God has chosen Jerusalem to be the holy city of the great king, where his special presence is, he's no local pagan God who's restricted to a geographical area or to a part of life. This is the infinite and omnipresent God overall. His whole being is everywhere. He's not split up. And of course, the ancient Israelites know that. But the question still remains, why do they have to travel at all? God is everywhere. His whole being everywhere. Why do they have to go to Jerusalem and go through this trouble? Well, you could say, well, God commanded it of the Israelites, of course, that's true. But there's more to it than that. And often when you hear Christians talk about the distinct, the difference between the old and the New Testament, they'll say something along the lines of, well, we don't have to go anywhere to worship. We have the Holy Spirit. So you know, you can worship from home, you know, they told us that years ago, stay at home, no need to travel anywhere and go and be with other Christians. You have the Holy Spirit, okay? But the Holy Spirit was not given so that believers can live in isolation. The exact opposite. The Holy Spirit brings believers into union with the invisible church, Christ's body, and then that same Holy Spirit, he commands for the edification and equipping of God's people, he commands them to join a visible local manifestation of that church. He commands them to meet with professing believers. So you see, when we move from the old to the New Testament, you don't see things removed, chopped off. You actually see things expanded. You see things get their full fulfillment and greater reality. The Old Testament types and shadows are given in that way as a prelude to what the New Testament has. There's no removal. It's actually pretty shocking. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem in this Psalm is not removed in the New Testament. There's still a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the New Covenant. The writer of Hebrews gives us quite a picture of this in Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 22-24. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels in Festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. So a text like this really opens up our eyes to see what truly happens by faith when God's people gather in an assembly because contextually in Hebrews, he commands in chapter 10 for them to gather as the day is drawing near. And then he shows them what they're gathering for, not Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, but the heavenly Jerusalem. We by faith today, we are participating in the heavenly liturgy. We're worshiping along with the faithful cloud of witnesses that were given in chapter 11 and opened up chapter 12 in Hebrews. And we worship by faith along with angels in Festal gathering. Festal gathering is Old Testament feast and pilgrimage language. That's what it is. That's the language from the command to go up to Jerusalem and feast before the Lord. So today, as New Testament Christians, we are still leaving our homes and traveling to gather with God's people. And that's what the pilgrims of Psalm 121 are doing. They know that the God of Israel is omnipresent. They know that he is everywhere. But what they are craving is the full assembly of God's people, the great throng and worship, the joy and gladness of brothers dwelling in unity and the blessing of God that falls upon the holy places where they gather, that falls upon like the dew on Mount Herman. And our gathering now is as it was back then. It's still a foretaste of that full reality that has yet to dawn. It's already here. We've already come to the Mount Zion in heaven, but the fullness is not yet. We know that that fullness will dawn upon us when our Lord returns. We know that this is only right here. On Sunday mornings, there's only a preview, a taste of that blessed state of worship when we're gathered with all of the redeemed and eternal glory. In fact, the writer of Hebrews says this in chapter 13, verse 14, about us. Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Yes, we pilgrims are seeking the permanent stability and the imperishable glory of that final state when we are secured finally and forever by the keeper of Israel. But in the meantime, we thank our God for this foretaste. We treasure it this preview, the gift of the gathering, the gift of the visible church. We hold on to it. The gift of encouragement that we receive from one another when we gather here, when we worship alongside other professors of Christ and know that we need to not only treasure this, but take the Lord's day Sabbath very seriously. We need to prepare for our weekly pilgrimage. We need to prepare our souls. We need to get ready each week for this blessed worship. The Son of God established this visible society called the church on earth. And he's done that so that we would be edified and equipped. He's done that so that we would participate in the privileges, the ordinances, and be strengthened by those ordinances for the journey continued. And so, brothers and sisters, we must not neglect the gathering of the saints. And we must take preparation for the Lord's day Sabbath seriously in our homes, personally, in our hearts. Now let's look at the final couple of this song. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever more. There's the repetition of keep again. And this time it's really packed in there, three times in three short lines. Keep, keep, keep. So you may ask yourselves a very natural and good question, why does the psalmist bother to repeat himself so much? Isn't it sufficient to just say once God will keep you pilgrim and to move on? I love how John Calvin addresses this question in his commentary on the psalms. And this quote is long, but it is well worth it. This is what he says, "It is of importance to mark the reason why the psalmist repeats so often what he had briefly and in one word expressed with sufficient plainness. Such repetition seems at first sight unnecessary. But when we consider how difficult it is to correct our distrust, it will be easily perceived that he does not improperly dwell upon the commendation of divine providence. How few are to be found who yield to God the honor of being a keeper so that they are assured of their safety and led to call upon him in the midst of their perils on the contrary. Even when we seem to have largely experienced what this protection of God implies, we yet instantly tremble at the noise of a leaf falling from a tree as if God had quite forgotten us." Yes, we are prone not only to wander, but to forget the promises of God and to act as if they do not apply to us. That is why it is necessary to constantly feed upon God's word, and that is why it is necessary for the psalmist to repeat himself so much. He knows our frame and he knows our weakness. And so the inspired psalm repeats this promise that he will keep us. And what about this promise? The Lord will keep you from all evil, all evil. What sort of promise is that? Does God keep his people from all hardship and suffering? I mean, we know by experience that that cannot be the case. And not only by experience, you look at the Psalter elsewhere and there are psalms that are laments, weeping, hardship, suffering, dark psalms, dark psalms. So it can be a promise that the pilgrim's path will be without any difficulty. That can be what's happening here. Now this word for evil, by the way, has a very wide range of meaning in the original it can be translated disaster or calamity. And disaster is a helpful gloss here, kind of fills out that picture, an irrecoverable disaster striking and making a final end of the pilgrim before he gets home. And a horrible happens to him and he fails in his mission to present himself to God. So the promise is that disaster and destruction will not have the last word for the pilgrim. God will ensure that the pilgrim's pursuit of worship ends in success. And I was reading this text, I was reminded by the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 17, it's a chapter that covers the perseverance of the saints. That's what came to mind for me. I've been studying the confession and I love how the confession summarizes this truth of God ensuring that his people will make it to the end. Listen to the confession here, just two lines, "They whom God has accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his spirit can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved." Yes, God's people may enter periods of difficulty backsliding hardship, but God will keep them and ensure that they reach final, full eternal salvation. Destruction and defeat will not have the last word. It cannot. For the last word has already been uttered by our Lord, it is finished. He has purchased our perseverance. And so Christ's intercession that we heard about last week now as High Priest does not fail to be answered. We will be kept from all evil, all final destruction that seeks to bar us from reaching that blessed state in glory. Now to solidify that interpretation of this promise of God to protect us from all evil, a good exercise is to use other scriptures to shed light on the scripture you're reading. And I think it's helpful for us to do that today with very clear words from the Apostle Paul and they're in 2 Timothy chapter 4 verses 14 through 18. So let's look at his words quickly because the Apostle Paul as a pilgrim here finds himself in the final leg of his journey in 2 Timothy chapter 4. He's close to death. And you know what his ministry was filled with, lots of hardship, suffering and difficulty. And these are his words to Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 4. Alexander the Coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, or he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them, but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. So that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom to him be the glory forever and ever, amen. There it is. The Apostle Paul did endure evil. Great harm was inflicted upon him by Alexander. And the Apostle Paul was even abandoned. So the pilgrim experiences real loss and real pain, but the Lord never abandons them. He stands by his own to strengthen them. And the Lord was close by to comfort him. And Paul had a confidence that God would rescue him from every evil deed that was seeking to stop him from that ultimate goal. He knew that our Lord would not fail to bring him to worship in final glory. Yes, brothers and sisters, the Lord will keep our lives in this chaotic hour. He will keep us forever. The psalmist says he will keep us from now on to forever. Our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does not change. The God who has called us to himself to worship him will not leave us now that we are closer than ever before to the day of our final salvation. On this journey, we must lift up our eyes to the one who has gone before us. The pioneer of our salvation. We must repent of our unbelief, ridden fear. That's where it's born out of the fear comes from unbelief. We must repent of this unbelief and let the Lord of hosts alone be our fear and dread. And we must lay aside every weight and sin that cleans so closely and run with endurance the face, the race that we have been called to. Ultimately, we must remember that our hope and our rest are in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let us bow our heads now and pray to the triune God who keeps us. Father in heaven, in the name of your Son and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we first ask that your name would be hallowed in our pilgrimage. We thank you for your promises which you have given to us to believe, to cherish, and to live by. We thank you for reminding us so often because we are weak, that you guard us on our way and that you do that guarding because of your incorruptible love for us. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. Grant us newfound strength and zeal for what lies before us. In Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]