Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 121, Psalm 121. And you'll have to excuse my Northern Irish pronunciation, Psalm 121, if you don't know what I'm talking about. As we come to God's Word, to the reading and the preaching of it, let me pray for us. Father, in your light, we see light. And so we pray that you would come now and by your Holy Spirit, illuminate the reading and the preaching of your word so that we would see Jesus more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly. And we ask this in his name who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever praised. Amen. Psalm 121. A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. Life is tough, but so are you. Life is tough, but so are you. I came across that quote in the Encyclopedia of Modern Wisdom, otherwise known as Twitter. Yes, it was just a tweet, but it caught my attention. Life is tough, but so are you. I thought the first part was refreshingly honest. Life is tough. Sure, there are fun moments and happy moments, but there are also hard moments and sad moments. Life is tough. Just think about your daily routine, all the things that you need to do each day, but then add to that the common experiences of life, the relational problem with that colleague at work, the longing for companionship or marriage, but never finding that someone, the hidden pain of infertility, month after month after month, the worry over a particular child or a strained relationship with a parent, that issue in your marriage that you keep arguing over, the boredom of an uninspiring job, the financial constraints because of a lack of a job, the physical aches and pains of old age or chronic illness, the heaviness of depression, or the panic of anxiety. The common experiences of life make life hard-going at times, don't they? Life is tough. But then add to that the unforeseen crises of life, the shocking news of a terrible illness, the breakdown in a relationship, the sudden death of a loved one. The daily routine of life is hard work. The common experiences of life are hard-going. The unforeseen crises of life are heartbreaking. I think the first part of the tweet is refreshingly honest. Life is tough. The question is, what do we do with the second part? But so are you. Life is tough, but so are you. If the first part is refreshingly honest, I think the second part is particularly telling. Not because I think it's true, but because I think it captures an underlying attitude of our Western culture, and that is that you have all the resources within yourself to deal with whatever life throws at you. Life is tough, sure it is, but so are you. It's like that classic Billy Ocean song, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Or that American cultural cliche, when life gets tough, you got this, you got this. Boys and girls, this kind of thinking's there in some of your movies and your songs. Have you seen the Trolls movie? You might remember the song, Get Back Up Again. Hey, I'm not giving up today. There's nothing getting in my way. And if you knock, knock me over, I will get back up again. If something goes a little wrong, well, you can go and bring it on. Because if you knock, knock me over, I will just get back up again. That is what our culture teaches us. Life is tough, but so are you. And when you get knocked down, just get yourself back up again. When life is tough, you got this. Tweets like that, song lyrics like that, sayings like that, they reveal one of the great pillars of our secular culture, and that is aseity. Self-sufficiency. The cultural attitude in the West today really has two cultural pillars, autonomy and aseity. Autonomy says you're independent, you're self-determining, you're self-ruling, you are the master of your fate, the captain of your soul. That's autonomy. But then there's this other pillar of aseity. Self-sufficiency. A saint, he says, you have everything in yourself to be who you want to be and to do what you want to do and to overcome whatever life throws at you. Sure, life is tough, but so are you. Do we agree? Well, there's one thing this psalm does for us today, is that it affirms the first part of the tweet, and it denies the second part of the tweet. Psalm 121 concerns normal life, everyday life. The reference to our foot in verse 3 speaks of a journey we're on. Verse 8 speaks of goings and comings. That's life. That's our normal, everyday life. And this Psalm affirms that normal life is tough. Verse 3, our foot can slip. Verse six, the sun and moon can strike us, metaphorically speaking. Verse seven, there is evil all around us. So this normal life under the sun and moon life, everyday life, it's tough, it's difficult, it's dangerous. This Psalm affirms that, but then it says something different to our culture. Our culture says life is tough, but so are you. This psalmist says, life is tough, but our help is in the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Our culture says to us, when life gets tough, be self-sufficient, self-dependent. This psalm says, when life gets tough, be God-sufficient, God-dependent. And the Psalm communicates this truth in two ways. Number one, life is tough, but the Lord is our helper. Verses one and two. Life is tough, but the Lord is our helper. 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. Now, the logic of verse one has been interpreted in different ways. Some people think the hills here have an ominous tone to them. Hills were places of danger, where thieves and robbers would lie in wait in the mountain passages. Hills in the Old Testament were places of idolatry, where they would worship other gods on the high places. So one reading is that the sense is, I lift up my eyes to the hills, a place of danger. Where does my help come from? My help comes from somewhere else, from the Lord who made heaven and earth. But I don't think the hills here have an ominous connotation. The hills in Israel, and especially Jerusalem, had a far more positive connotation. John Calvin thought that the hills might symbolize might and strength. And so the logic here is a contrastive one. I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? Well, not even from something so great and mighty as the hills. No, my help comes from the Lord, who made the hills and the heavens and the earth. That's a possible reading, but if I may be so bold as to disagree with John Calvin in a Presbyterian church, I don't think the hills here are meant in a contrastive sense. I think it's a complementary sense. Look again at the heading of the psalm, a song of a sense. Psalm 120 to Psalm 134 are 15 Psalms of ascents. The songs of ascents were sung by the pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem. And if you've ever been to Israel, you know that Jerusalem is set on top of a range of mountains. When you fly into Tel Aviv and you get the bus or the taxi up to Jerusalem, it's just this steady incline and your eyes are lifted up, up, up to Jerusalem. Now I think about what that eye lifting up experience would have meant to a pilgrim walking up to Jerusalem. As they walked up to Mount Zion, singing this song, what were they looking at? God's temple. in the hills in Jerusalem where God lived. And so the psalmist is saying, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the God who lives in those hills. God in his temple. That's where my help comes from. In Psalm 125 verse two, the hills have a positive connotation. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore. So I think the hills here have a positive, complimentary connotation. Our help is in the hills, is what the psalmist is saying in his historic context. In the God who lives in his temple in the hills. But in order to make sure we don't just domesticate this God to the hills of Jerusalem to a local deity, the psalmist adds, who made the heavens and the earth. The God of the hills of Jerusalem is the God of the heavens and the earth. Heaven and earth here is what's called a merism, two parts that speak of two polar opposites and everything in between, like A to Z and everything in between. Heaven and earth denote everything. God made everything. And that is why he can help you with anything, because he made everything. God can help you with anything because he made everything. The reason why the gods of other religions cannot help people is first and foremost because they have never created anything in their life, never mind the heavens and the earth. The gods of the nations are created, not creator. They are made, not maker. That is why they cannot help people, because they were made by people. But the great claim of this Psalm is that the God of Israel, the Christian God, whose name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this God is able to help people for this one fundamental reason. He made everything. He made everything. The reason God is your helper is because He is first your creator. And this is what we need to remember, brothers and sisters, and boys and girls. Whatever happens in our lives, whatever life throws at us, whenever life gets tough, whenever we get knocked down, whenever we feel hopeless and helpless, remember this, our help is in the Lord who made everything. It's why He can help us with anything. When life gets tough, it's so easy to look into ourselves or to look around to others. It's so easy to experience a difficulty in life and turn to Google before we turn to God. But what this psalmist is saying to us is, don't look into yourself, don't look around to others, don't go in onto the internet to try and find help. Look to the God who made everything. the creator of the heavens and the earth. Life is tough, sure it is, but the Lord is our helper. That's the first thing this psalm teaches us. Second, life is tough, but the Lord is our keeper. Life is tough, but the Lord is our keeper, verses three to eight. Life is tough, but the Lord is our helper, verses one and two. And life is tough, but the Lord is our keeper. Now, it's important to notice that verses 3 to 8 are not a prayer for protection. Did you notice that when I read it? This psalm is not a prayer to God. None of it is directed towards God. This psalm is a promise, not a prayer for protection. Verse 5, the Lord is your keeper. Verse 7, the Lord will keep your life. Those are promises. Not prayers. And the promises are made sure by the Lord, who is our keeper. And that's the key word in these verses. Keep or keeper. It occurs six times. Just glance down at verse three. Verse four. Verse five. Verse seven. Verse eight. You see it? Life is tough, but the Lord is our keeper. And we can see that He's our keeper in four ways. The Lord is our personal keeper. He's our personal keeper. Notice how the Psalm shifts from the first person in verse one and two to the second person in verses three to eight. Verse one and two, I, my, my, Verses three to eight, you, your, you, your. Some think this is the antiphonal singing as the pilgrims made their way up to Jerusalem. One group would sing verses one and two. The other group would respond with verses three to eight. Others think that it was sung by the king, verses one and two. I lift up my eyes and then verses three to eight, the priest and the people singing the promise over the king at the temple in Jerusalem. I think there's something to that second interpretation, and I'll come back to it at the end. But notice now just how personal this psalm is. It's deeply personal. Some of the boys and girls here, perhaps you can help me. I want you to count with me how many times you hear the word you or your as I read through some of these verses. You can count them on your fingers and then tell me how many you find. Verse three, he will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day. nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore." How many did you get? 10. 10 times in six verses, this psalmist is saying, the Lord is your keeper. Not just our keeper, he's your keeper. It's like that little kids song, boys and girls. You know the one, he's got the whole world in his hands. You know that great song? Well, that's like verses one and two. He's got the whole world in his hands. He's the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. And then verses three to eight is like the second verse. He's got you and me in his hands, brother, sister. He's got the whole world in His hands. He's also got you and me in His hands. The Lord is our personal keeper. Second, the Lord is our persistent keeper. He's our persistent keeper, verses three to four. 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 foot slipping here is not merely referring to tripping on a path and causing yourself an injury. That would be to suggest that Christians are not exposed to the normal accidents and tragedies of life as everyone else is. We know from experience that's not true. Rather, the foot slipping imagery in the Old Testament can speak of someone falling off the path to eternal ruin. Psalm 73 speaks of God setting the wicked in slippery places so that they are swept away and utterly destroyed. And the promise here is that that will never be the case for the Christian. And the reason why is because the Lord is our persistent keeper. He does not slumber or sleep over his people. There may be a progression in the verbs here. Slumber is like dropping off for a wee nap after a heavy meal. And sleep is like the deep sleep at the end of the day. Or the verbs are just like in Hebrew parallelism. They're saying the same thing but in different ways. And so we get the point. God never nods off. Never has a micro sleep over his people. In verse four, there's a reference to Israel, which indicates that God is not just our creator, in verses one and two, he's also our redeemer. God redeemed his son Israel out of Egypt. Now, the reference to Israel means we're talking about more than just one individual, but that doesn't take away from the personal nature of God's protection. He is the keeper of Israel. as well as the Israelite. He keeps the whole church, and he keeps every Christian in the church. And the nation of Israel found its fulfillment in God's Son, Jesus, and God kept Christ. God kept Christ, and that's why he will keep the church, and that's why he will keep every Christian. Because God does not sleep nor slumber over his son, over his children. Boys and girls, do you remember what Jesus was doing in the boat in the storm? Having a good nap. Having a great sleep. Why was he sleeping? Because he knew that his father wasn't sleeping or slumbering over him. Alexander the Great, the king of ancient Greece, was once asked, why do you sleep so well on your military campaigns? In those days, the king would sleep in a tent, just like all his other men. While his own men slept, the enemy could come in and kill him. While he slept, his own men could betray him and kill him. And so he was asked, Alexander, why do you sleep so well on your military campaigns? And he replied, because Parmenion does not sleep. Parmenion was his own personal bodyguard. And that is why Alexander the Great slept very well, because Parmenion did not sleep. And it's the same for us. Our sleep can be sweet. when we remember that God is our personal bodyguard and He does not sleep or slumber over us. As James Durham said, there is no king or monarch so well attended and guarded or who may sleep so secure and sound as a believer. Do you struggle to sleep at night? then I pray this verse might be a great comfort to you. God doesn't sleep over you. So sleep tight. Life is tough, yes, but the Lord is our personal keeper. He is our persistent keeper. And third, He is our present keeper. He's our present keeper, verses five to six. 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. Obviously, the sun and moon are not known for dropping out of the sky and striking us on the head like some meteorite. So we must read this symbolically. The sun is a danger in the ancient Near East because of its heat. And if you're exposed to it, you're in danger. Perhaps the reference to the moon was simply to complete the parallelism in the Hebrew. You know, dangers in the daytime ruled by the sun, dangers in the nighttime ruled by the moon. Or the moon could refer to moon stroke. Imagine dangers from a person's unstable mental state. Perhaps those who suffer from anxiety or panic attacks or paranoia can identify with that. But whatever it means, we get the idea, don't we? The sun overrules the influences of the day. The moon overrules the influences of the night. And both periods of the day have dangers for us, real or imagined. And the psalmist's point is nothing can strike us. Nothing can deal a deadly blow to us. But why? Well, the answer is in verse 5. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. In other words, the sun and moon can't strike us because the Lord is present with us. God keeps us by being present with us. He himself is our shade. Boys and girls, have you ever chased someone's shadow? How do you get into someone's shadow? Got to get close to them. You ever stood in the sun talking to someone and the sun's blaring in your eye? What do they do? They move between you and the sun so that you don't have to be blinded. You stand in their shade. But how do you get in their shade? By them being close to you. And this is how we live in God's shade, in his shadow, by God coming and being present with us, close to us. We live and function in God's own shadow. That's how close he is to us, like a true friend, a true companion who stands between you and the sun. In verse two, God is our creator. In verse four, he's our redeemer. And now in verse five, he's our companion. Creator, redeemer, companion. What does that remind you of? Sounds a bit like the Trinity, doesn't it? God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, God the Holy Spirit comes alongside us. Alec Mateer puts it beautifully. He says, Psalm 121 is the Holy Trinity incognito. That's who your keeper is. That's who's present with you. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. as your shade on your right hand. Life is tough, but the Lord is our personal keeper, our persistent keeper, our present keeper. And number four, the Lord is our perpetual keeper, our perpetual keeper, verses seven to eight. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. These verses convey a totality to God's care. Do you see that in verse 7? Your life, that is, in all its fullness and facets, God is going to keep it. Verse 8, He keeps your going out and your coming in, another mayorism, two polar opposites with everything in between. God watches over every day of your life and all the days of your life. all your comings and goings, from cradle to the grave, from the womb to the tomb, and everything in between. His care is total, but it's also perpetual. You see that in the final words, from this time forth and forevermore. In other words, God's keeping does not end with this life and this world. It continues on into the life of the world to come. The Lord is our perpetual keeper. When we die, our soul goes to heaven. God's protecting care of us doesn't end there. We might say it's only beginning. When your loved one in Christ departs from this world, God hasn't stopped keeping them. He is keeping them for that great reunion. And not just their souls, but also their bodies. God is watching over the whole of us, soul and body. Love the story of Rabbi Duncan, the Free Church of Scotland professor, who, when his wife died, was found standing by her bedside, reading the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question and answer 37. What benefits do believers receive at their death? The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory. And their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." What a beautiful little phrase, their bodies still being united to Christ. do rest in their graves. Do you have a loved one in Christ who you have laid to rest in a grave? Do you know that Christ is still keeping them, united to them until the resurrection? He is our perpetual keeper. It's what the Apostle Paul prays in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 to 24. May your whole soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. The Lord is our perpetual keeper. He's our personal keeper, our persistent keeper, our present keeper, and our perpetual keeper. This is the second great truth that this psalm gives us in the midst of life's difficulties. The Lord is our helper, and the Lord is our keeper. But what does that actually mean? What does it mean for God to keep us? What does it mean for God to keep our goings and our comings? What does it mean for God to keep us from all evil? To keep our life? What does it mean that the moon and the sun will not strike us? What does it mean that our foot will not slip? to some kind of health, wealth, and prosperity gospel being preached in 10th Presbyterian this morning. We walk along the same paths in life as unbelieving friends and neighbors. We live out our lives under the same sun and moon. We get the same kind of cancers that they do. We encounter the same evils that they do. Life is tough, whoever you are, wherever you are, and being a Christian doesn't make it less tough. So what is this keeping that this psalmist is talking about, which he is promising? Not just praying, promising you. Well, I think the answer is found in verses seven and eight. He will keep your life. He will keep your goings and your comings from this time forth and forevermore. Let me unpack those verses by telling you about a Vietnamese pastor and translator called Hien. After Vietnam fell in the 1970s, Hien was captured by the Viet Cong and imprisoned and tortured. His captors beat him continually and brainwashed him with communist material. And eventually he stopped praying and he became an atheist. And then one day the prison guard told him he had put him on toilet duty. And so he was cleaning the toilets this one particular day, and on a piece of paper that had been used for toilet paper, he noticed a single word on the top left-hand corner, Romans. He rubbed off the human excrement, folded it up, put it in his pocket. And that night, when he was in his prison cell, he took it out and switched on his torch, and this is what he read. And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him. who have been called according to His purpose. What then shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's what was on the toilet paper. The next day, Huyen said to the prison guard, can I do toilet duty again? He's like, yeah, sure, go ahead. And believe it or not, he recovered the whole book of Romans. He said, Lord, you would not let me out of your reach for even one day. He later escaped and became a pastor to Vietnamese people here in America. That is the kind of keeping that Psalm 121 is talking about. It's the spiritual preservation of God's people in relationship with Him, both now and for eternity, come hell or high water. You've heard of the perseverance of the saints. Well, this Psalm is about the preservation of the saints. Psalm 121 is to Old Testament saints what Romans 8 is to New Testament saints. It is the reassurance that nothing in this life or the next life can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Those are the key words, in Christ Jesus. When George W. Bush read Romans 8 at the memorial service in New York on 9-11, in memorial of 9-11, he left out those words, in Christ Jesus, because they're offensive to the Muslims. But they are so necessary, because unless you are in Christ Jesus, you will be separated from the love of God. And the reason why we need to be in Christ is because we can only receive the benefit of protection and preservation because they were first his benefits. Do you remember I said at the beginning that one way you can read the shift from first person to second person is that the first two verses were sung by the king and the rest was sung by the people to the king. I think that is the case, which means that this psalm was first meant for the king, and then through him for the people. In other words, Psalm 121 is first for Christ, and then for the Christian, then for the church. Because Jesus was the great singer of the psalms. He sung all the psalms. He sung this psalm as he made his way up to Jerusalem to be crucified. He knew the promises of God and he sung them. The Lord was his help as he made his way up to die. The Lord did not let his foot slip in the garden of Gethsemane. The Lord watched over him in the wilderness. The sun did not strike him by day nor the moon by night when the devil tempted him for 40 days and nights in the wilderness. The Lord kept him from all evil. He resisted the devil's temptations. He escaped the schemes of the Pharisees to kill him on a number of occasions. And even when their plot did work, the Lord kept his life. He raised him from the dead three days later. The Lord kept his going out from heaven and his coming back into heaven. Christ experienced Psalm 121 as the faithful Israelite, as Israel's faithful king. It was his statement of faith to say, 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 because he was kept, he can now keep us. And this is where our trust should lie this morning, brothers and sisters, boys and girls. Not in ourselves, but in the Lord, Jesus Christ, the one who himself experienced this psalm and won for us the protection and the preservation that it promises. Because you know as well as I do that life is tough. Life is tough, but our help is in the Lord who made heaven and earth. And Jesus knew that. Jesus knew that His Father did not slumber or sleep over Him, even in His death. And so if we are united to Christ, then not even death itself is going to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can sing with Augustus' top lady, safe in the arms of sovereign love. Or Matt Merker's song, He Will Hold Me Fast. He will hold me fast. When life gets tough, you don't get tough. Thien, the Vietnamese pastor, is an example. He didn't get tough. He got knocked down, and he didn't get himself back up again. He didn't have this. But when life got tough, his creator got going. His creator had this, and his creator kept him. This is what it means for God to be our helper and keeper. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So hear these encouraging words from the Apostle Paul as we close. May your whole soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it because he did it for his son. Let's pray. Father, you are our creator. Lord Jesus, you are our redeemer. Holy Spirit, you are our close companion. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, help us this week to live lives that reflect our dependence upon you, that our help is indeed in you, the maker of heaven and earth. And we ask this in Jesus' strong name. Amen.