Psalm 121 - So Help Me God

According to the 20th Amendment of the United States Constitution, a president's term of office begins on January 20th at noon on the year following the election in November. The oath of office is taken by the president as the Supreme Court Chief Justice administers that oath. And at noon on that 20th day of January, when each president is being inaugurated, the president elect will place his hand on a Bible. He will raise his right hand and he will repeat these words after the Chief Justice. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The very first president ever inaugurated was George Washington of course and George Washington added these words onto the end of that stipulated declaration. He added these words, so help me God. And every president since that time has added those words, they're not required to by the Constitution, but every president since that time has added those words that George Washington set the precedent for recognizing with this high duty and oath of office that God's help is needed. So help me God. I will do what I'm supposed to do. Since that time there have been other oaths of office developed for Vice President, for members of Congress, for Supreme Court justices, and all of them have included that phrase, so help me God. It is a recognition, one that some in our government may not approve of, but it is a recognition on the part of our government officials that without God's help, no one can govern effectively, and no one can rule a nation effectively without God's help. So help me God to be able to do what I'm supposed to do as president or as a Supreme Court justice or member of Congress or a Vice President. I think if we are honest, we all recognize at some point we must have God's help. We all need God's help, whether it's early in the morning when you face the challenge of a day or maybe late at night when the loneliness begins to set into your life. Maybe it's when a disaster or a tragedy has struck your family or you personally, and you come to that point of recognition where you know you need God's help. And so you cry out to Him, help me God. It's been three or four years ago now, I guess that I was on my way to a meeting in Beckley and was at the end of an exit ramp off of Route 19, ready to turn onto busy four lane street there to Appalachian Bible College, and was waiting to get out into traffic. It was about eight o'clock in the morning and so it was a busy time. And I heard some breaks screeching and looked in my rear view mirror just in enough time to recognize that a truck was going to hit me. And he was coming about 50 miles an hour. The police estimated drove the rear into my car all the way back up into the back seat of the car. And I remember being able not to respond at all, not being able to react at all. And just recognizing I was going to be hit. And remember hearing the impact and recognizing that I was being thrust out into two other lanes of traffic and was going to get hit again from the side. And I don't, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. And the one thing I can remember saying that just immediately came to my lips was, God help me. I don't know if it was the first or second thing I said, I think it was in the top two or three. But I know it was pretty quick. It was almost instinctive. And I think that is the instinctive cry of a child of God when you're in trouble and you realize there's nothing I can do about this. Your instinctive cry is God help me. I need your help. Now it may not be a situation like that for you. It may be more of an enduring situation for you physically or financially or personally or in your family that you just know you need God's help. Well there's a Psalm that tells us the kind of help we need and the kind of help that God offers us. It's our favorite Psalm for the day. It's Psalm 121. And so I invite your attention to this wonderful little chapter in the book of Psalms where we find God's help promised and described for us in a wonderful, wonderful way. Psalm 121 is one of those Psalms of classic beauty. It's a Psalm of comforting promises and it is a Psalm that tells us how God promises to help us. The Psalmist begins with an admission of need. There is the need for God's help in verses one and two. And he describes the nature of God's help in verses three through eight. As he begins the Psalm with this need for God's help, he expresses first of all in verse one an admission of need. Notice what he says there in verse one. He says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? Now that expression I lift up my eyes to the hills has often been a puzzle to many. It was common in Old Testament times for false religions to build altars on tops of hills. And so some have said, well is the Psalmist referring to that? Certainly, couldn't be. And I don't think he is. Some have suggested that maybe the Psalmist was looking to the hills for refuge, for protection, a place to hide. And that could be. Some have suggested that maybe the Psalmist was looking to the hills in anxiety because if you're traveling, that's where robbers might hide and come cascading down off the hills to rob you and beat you. And so maybe he was looking to the hills in anxiety. Well, that's possible, I guess, too, but I don't think it's very likely. I think the best way to understand this expression is to understand the subject and topic of this Psalm. You'll find that it has a title. You'll notice at the beginning of Psalm 121 it says, a song of a sense. You probably have that title in your Bible and it's the second of 15 consecutive chapters in Psalms that are entitled that way, a song of a sense, Psalm 120 through Psalm 134. All are entitled that way. And probably they were written to be quoted or sung by Jewish pilgrims as they were on their journey to Jerusalem to worship in the temple. And so as they came to the city, as they would ascend, if you will, you always went up to Jerusalem because Jerusalem is on the top of a series of hills. And so as they would go up to the city, the Psalmist might very well break into song and say, I lift up my eyes to the hills. And what he's speaking of literally is Mount Zion, the hills of Jerusalem. The hill that the temple is built on. He's literally saying, I'm lifting up my eyes to that place where God has promised to meet us and to help us, his temple, the place where I'm going to worship him. So I lift up my eyes to the hills. I'm actually lifting up my eyes to the Lord. It is an admission of need. And the very lifting of the eyes admits that there is a need present, that the Psalmist needs help beyond his own limited resources. Lifting the eyes to help is an admission of the fact that we are not all sufficient in ourselves, that we do not have it all together, that we don't have all the answers and we don't have all the strength, and we need God's help. A few weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, my wife had surgery on both of her feet to kind of reconstruct some severe arthritis damage in both of her feet. So the first week or so, she could only get around in a wheelchair around the house. And so I would, when I was there or whoever was there with her would roll her from place to place in the house in the wheelchair. One evening, our grandchildren were there and our five-year-old granddaughter, Holly, just a little bit of nothing. She wanted to push the wheelchair. And so she got up real big and grabbed hold of the handles like she was going to push the wheelchair. And I knew that she would not be able to do it. So I was kind of standing over her with my hands also resting and she just kind of looked up at me. Didn't have to say a word. All she had to do was look up and I knew that she needed help and was asking for help. And so together, we pushed the wheelchair. You know, that's what the psalmist is saying here. I will lift my eyes. I will look up to the one that I'm expecting help from. And we may not even be able to verbalize what our need is or be able to express the intensity of the desire of our heart. But when we lift our eyes to the Lord, we know that His help will be there, that He is waiting to help us with whatever the need might be. And so the question at the end of verse one is not a helpless question. When He says, where does my help come from? It simply anticipates the answer to the need in verse two. The admission of need leads us to the answer to our need in verse two, which is this. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. We look to that place, the hills, where the temple was, the place where the presence of God was. We're looking there to see because we know God will help us and He's promised to help us. But we're really not looking to the hills. We're not looking to the temple. We're looking to the God who made heaven and earth, the maker of all things. That's the one that we're looking to. And as we look to Him, the one who made heaven and earth, the one who made this star universe and flung this world into space. And the one who created the rocks and the pools of water and the animals and the plants that inhabit this earth. And the one who created us, that's the one who has infinite power to be able to create all of those things. That is the one we look to for help. And we are admitting our need. We are addressing ourselves to Him and He promises to answer our need. In fact, if He is the maker of heaven and earth, then certainly He is in control over every element, every part of the heaven and earth, including your life and my life. If He is great enough to make it all, certainly He is wise enough and powerful enough and strong enough to help us in all of our need. And so the answer to our need is to call out to God. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. There is no problem at all for Him to help us with whatever need we have. So what kind of help should we expect when we call out to God, when we lift our eyes to Him and we cry out to Him and we have the promise of His answer? What kind of help can we expect? Well, in the rest of this Psalm, there is a wonderful catalog of the description of the help that God promises us. In verses 3 through 8, we find the nature of God's help and He describes for us the kind of help, a detailed description of the kind of help that God offers us when we call out to Him. There are eight simple descriptions in these next few verses of the kind of help that God offers. Let's look at them briefly if we can. The first kind of help that God offers is that His help is stabilizing in verse 3. He will not let your foot slip. So His help is stabilizing. In other words, God's help provides for us a sure foundation, a firm, secure place for our feet to rest. We know that we are on solid ground when we are asking Him for help. Last summer, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit and minister with some of our missionaries in Japan. And Japan is well known for earthquakes and typhoons or hurricanes, what they call typhoons over there. We had two earthquakes and one typhoon in a week's time and I was ready to come home after that. And I was, while we were there, there actually were two earthquakes in Japan. The week we were there, the first day we got there, they had an earthquake that was over six points on the Richter scale. We didn't even feel that one. It did some damage. We read about the newspaper, but I suspect it was because we were riding back from the airport and the way the missionary drives, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell. If there was an earthquake, I didn't feel anything. But the next one we did feel, it was on Thursday evening and we were getting ready to go to church. We were upstairs in the meet as home and preparing to go to a service and all of a sudden, I thought at first maybe a large truck was starting to rumble by and sometimes your house will shake a little bit when that happens or something, but it kept getting worse. The walls were going back and forth and you felt like you couldn't stand. It was really an eerie feeling. Never felt anything quite like it. I just expected the whole place was going to collapse in a minute and it lasted for about 30 seconds and then it was over. But it was the strangest feeling to feel like I'm not sure I can even stand up here. I don't have a solid place to put my feet. Now what the psalmist is saying is there are times in life like that where life seems to pull our feet out from under us or life is shaking us so badly that we don't seem to have a good place to stand firm. And what the psalmist is promising that God will do for us is he will not let your foot slip when your faith and your foot is planted on the solid ground of the eternal God. You cannot lose your spiritual equilibrium or balance. God promises that he will not let your foot slip no matter how much you may be shaken by the changing events of life. You will be able to maintain your spiritual footing. You maintain your spiritual perspective. You will not let your foot slip. His help is a stabilizing help. But it is a second kind of help as well. Not only is it stabilizing, it is certain. Look at verse three. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. God promises that his help is certain and it is so certain. He says it is utterly impossible for me to abandon my promises to you because I will never slumber and I will never sleep. It is that certain. Everything that two different concepts are used there, two different words. First of all, God will never slumber. That is talking about a brief nap. It is talking about just the need for a little bit of rest. You get tired, you need a nap, you need to catch up a little bit, you take a brief rest. God doesn't need to do that. God does not suffer from any expenditure of energy that depletes him in any way. And so he never needs to rest. He never needs to catch up. But not only does he not need to slumber, verse four says he will never sleep either. That is the longer rest of night where we get that deep sleep that refreshes us physically and emotionally and spiritually. He doesn't need that either. God does not need to slumber. He does not need to sleep. There is no momentary rest or break needed by God. God never has to say enough, I am tired, I am exhausted. Give me a break. I need a break for a while. God never has to say that. And so his help is always certain because he doesn't need to slumber and he doesn't need to sleep. So no matter where you are, I mean if you can't sleep at night and you are waking up in the middle of the night and your heart is perplexed and your mind is racing and you are worried about whatever you can call out to God knowing that he is already awake, that he will be ready to hear your prayer. There are no dark seasons with God where he is taking a rest, where he is sleeping or slumbering. He will always be ready to hear you. And when you are exhausted to the point that you have no strength left, he is alert and ready and eager to hear you. So God's help is certain. God's help is certain. Thirdly, God's help is personal. He says it there in verse 5. The Lord watches over you. Now the watching over us here is like century duty. It's like guard duty. I have never been in the military, I never had that privilege. But from what I understand it is not usually the generals and the higher officials that do guard duty. That's usually reserved for the privates or the lower ranking enlisted men. They are the ones who do century duty. The idea here is that the Lord Himself is your century. The Lord Himself watches over you. He posts guard over you. It's not that God says I'm going to delegate this to some lower official or some angel can take care of this. No, God says I myself personally will guard you. I will perform century duty over you. And it even gets better than that. It says in verse 5 that the Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. Now the place of the right hand in the Bible was a place of honor and significance. To be seated at someone's right hand was to be seated at the place of prominence at the dinner table. And so what God is saying is not only will I not delegate that responsibility to someone else to watch over you. I will myself perform century duty. But I will take my position in great honor at your right side. I am honored to be at your right side to provide you protection. Now I don't know how that hits you. The way that hits me is that that is an amazing declaration of God's grace. That God himself would say I personally will take it upon myself to watch over you. And I will do so from a position of great honor. I will come alongside you. And I will be honored to watch over you. That the great God, the maker of the universe would do that. And say that of me and of you is just a reflection of his great grace. That he would be willing to give of himself for us in that way. So his care, his help for us is so personal. I will personally watch over you and I will be honored to do so. What grace, his care is personal. And his care is also refreshing, verse 5 says it this way, the Lord is your shade at your right hand. Now we understand at least in the hot summer time and we don't really get that hot summer around here. But we understand the value of shade of being able to get out of the sun when it's hot. But they would appreciate that even more in the Middle East. In the area of the world where these psalms were written, you're very near the equator. And the sun bears down with an intensity that we know a little about in this part of the world. There is a directness to the sun's rays. There is an intensity of scorching heat to the sun that is so intense in that part of the world. I remember back in 1984 when I had the privilege to study in Israel for a month, study the history and geography of the land and we took numerous field trips throughout the country. We were told two things, you never go without in Israel. Don't ever go anywhere without a canteen. And don't ever go anywhere without a hat. You will suffer either way. You'll suffer sunstroke if you are exposed to the direct rays for a long period of time. Without some covering on your head, you've got to have a hat. And you've got to have water with you at all times or you can easily dehydrate. There were a couple of guys who thought there were too much over that kind of thing. We ended up carrying them out of a couple of places. Nobody was too much over that kind of thing. You had to protect yourself. It was absolutely essential at times that you find shade or you provide as much for your head as you could. And what the psalmist is saying here in that culture, in that part of the world, it is life-saving sometimes to be able to find some shade. The Lord promises to be that refreshing shade for us. His help is refreshing. And then if you'll notice in verse 7, verse 6, his help is constant. It's constant. The psalmist says, the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. So that pretty much covers every part of the day, doesn't it? All 24 hours. Day, night, daylight, darkness, and the implication is any event that may come our way during those periods of time. The sun will not smite you by day. The moon by night. So no matter what period of the day it is, whether trouble or difficulty or hardship may approach us in the broad daylight or whether it may sneak up on us in the darkness, regardless of what time of the day it is, God's help is provided constantly. His help is constant. No matter what time of the day, no matter what event in any part of the day may come our way. God's help is constant. He promises. It will always be there. So his help is constant. Number 6, his help is protective if you'll look at verse 7. His help is protective. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. This is an interesting verse and again it sounds like one of those verses that we've seen before. We struggled with this sum in Psalm 91. God makes a blanket promise to keep us from all harm. This sounds too good to be true. Sounds like we'll never have any trouble in life. It sounds like we'll never have disease or heartache or tragedy or death or any of those kinds of problems. But certainly that's not true to life. And so how do we understand these kinds of promises? And I remind you of what we talked about back in Psalm 91 when we saw similar promises. Obviously, the Bible is not promising us an easy life. The Bible never promises that we will never have hardship or difficulty. In fact, the Psalmist began this very chapter with an admission of a need for help, which indicates that there's something going wrong in his life. And he admits his need of God's help and he's calling out to the Lord and crying out to the Lord for his help. And so obviously, even in this chapter, the Psalmist is not saying, I'm free from problems. You see, God does promise to keep us from all harm, I believe, in the following ways. He promises that no matter what we go through in life, his presence will be with us. He never promises that we will be exempt from hardship, but he does promise that he will be there with us in hardship. And we will never go through it alone. And for that reason, he is with us to protect us as we go through that hardship. God also promises something else, not only his presence. He promises that he will always use whatever happens in our lives for good. In other words, he will take both good things and bad things and turn them around, mix them all together in his wonderful providence and bring good things out of them that will lead to us being more like his son and more like him. God will bring good things out of difficulty, in other words. Remember the familiar verse in Romans 8, 28, we know that all things work together for good, to them who love God, to those who they're called according to his purpose. The Bible never says everything that happens to you will be good, but it does say that God is able to take all things that happen and work them together in his strange and mysterious providence to bring good out of it. And so he promises that no matter what happens to you or to me, he will bring good out of it. And then thirdly, I think he promises us to keep us from harm in this way that he promises his protection in the sense that nothing can ultimately harm us. Nothing can ultimately separate us from him. You know, again, in Romans 8, in that great chapter where Paul is talking about how God works everything together for good, he ends that chapter by talking about some of the things that maybe imagined in life that could possibly separate us from God. And he comes to this firm conclusion. He says, 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 else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So nothing, it doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter what difficulty or tragedy or heartache or disease it may be, for the believer nothing can ultimately harm you. Nothing can ultimately take you away from him or his presence. In fact, if the very worst thing happens and you lose your life, it simply means you go directly into his presence. So you can't ultimately be harmed as a believer. That's the promise of God's protection. And that is that he sees us through life's difficulties with his presence. He promises to turn even bad to good and he promises his protection in the sense that nothing can ultimately separate us from him. And it is in that sense, in those senses I should say that the Lord says, I will keep you from all harm because I'm watching over your life. So his care, his help, his protection is there for us, his help is protective. But look at verse 8 and we'll find a couple of other descriptions of God's help for us. God's help is also comprehensive. Verse 8 first part says, the Lord will watch over your coming and going. That's speaking of all of the activities of a day. You're coming out, you're going back. You're going out to meet your day's activities. You're coming back to your place of refuge. The idea is that of every day we wake up and we prepare ourselves for the challenges of the day and we go out to life to our workplace or to our responsibilities or to our personal obligations and we go out to see that certain things are done. And then possibly later in the day or evening we come back to our place of refuge to our homes. So that's the going out and the coming back that's spoken of here. And included in that is every activity of the day, every responsibility that you have, every obligation personally or vocationally that you may have. Everything is included in that. All of you're going out and you're coming in. All of your daily responsibilities, the Bible says the Lord will watch over those. He is keenly interested in everything you're doing in every part of your life. And every time you leave the house to go to a responsibility or come back home to obligations there, the Lord is watching over you. There is nothing in your life that is too big for him to notice and to care for. And there is nothing in your life that is too small for him to be concerned about. All you're coming and going, he watches over. It's comprehensive. This is a policy that covers everything in your life, everything possible. But it is also a promise of help that is eternal. If you look at the end of verse 8, the Lord will watch over you're coming and going both now and forever more. I am grateful and I think we all are grateful that God's help is promised to us now because it is often in the now, the present, the right here and now that we recognize greatly our need for it. But we ought to be even more thankful that his help is promised into eternity that it's not just good for now, but it is good for ever, both now and forever. His help will be there. A couple of hours we'll be having a funeral service for Otis Rains, Otis a long time member of our church and went into the Lord's presence on Thursday. I was thinking yesterday of a verse in 1 Peter that we'll be using today in the service. It's a verse that talks about how God has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he says that hope is unto an inheritance that is undefiled, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God. Have that inheritance that we have awaiting for us in heaven. The Bible says is reserved for us. It is kept for us. It's being laid up and held in store for us. And it is just as certainly being placed there on deposit as any help you get from God today. And so that when you pass from this life into the next, when you go into the presence of the Lord, you have the promise of an inheritance that is undefiled that nothing on this earth can take away. And it's perfect and it's forever. You see, God has not only provided for your help now, but forever, forever in eternity in heaven. He has provided you a place where you will be with Him forever and you will experience His help forever. So you see God's help which is promised to us as we lift up our eyes and we call out to Him His help is stabilizing. It is certain. If personal, it's refreshing, it's constant, it's protective, it is comprehensive and thank God is eternal. In summary, what the Psalmist is saying in Psalm 121 is that there is nothing in life or in death that is uncovered by the amazing providence of God and His promise of help to us. It covers everything. His help is that wonderful. Received a letter from a dear friend within the last couple of weeks. I won't mention his name. He's probably not known to most of you in this room. He was a college buddy of mine a couple of years ahead of me in college when I was in Bible college and he was kind of a mentor to me. And dear friends, since then, we've kept our friendship going for 35 years. And every once in a while we still communicate, we'll call or talk and when occasion allows we'll get together and fellowship together. We had an opportunity like that back in October to do that. I just got a letter from him. He wrote to several of his friends describing his recent diagnosis of cancer. He said, I recently wrote some friends concerning my diagnosis and referred to this as a new situation and opportunity. I refer to this as an opportunity because I believe that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And because I believe there are some lessons that I can only learn by going through this experience. I am also aware that there are folks in my church family who are going through far more difficult situations. I am reminded of how much we need to pray for each other. Though the enemy of our souls would like to use trials to destroy us, God uses them for our good. God also uses the prayers of His people to accomplish His purposes. David goes on to write, perhaps like some of you, my faith is not always as strong as my fear of the future. So my prayer requests would be that the Lord Jesus Christ would be seen as the all-sufficient and all-satisfying Savior that He is, that He would give peace to my family members and to those who are close to me and that I would draw near to God and learn the wonderful lessons He has for me through this experience. And that through the surgery, all the cancer will be removed and important nerves will be spared. As I read that letter, I was reminded of how real God's help really is. You know, it doesn't matter what you're going through. It doesn't matter what phase of life or what situation of life you may be in or what news you may get this week. God's help is very, very real. And we can, like the Psalmists say, I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Would you bow with me in prayer?