Michael Wilkinson, Professor of Theology and Director of Professional Doctoral Studies at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Psalm 121 in SWBTS Chapel on November 12, 2024.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Dr. Dockery, thank you for your very kind words. I think just so you will also know once he taught for me the first time, it wasn’t the last time. And I think if you’ve had him, you will agree I made a good hire. So, I’m proud of it so very grateful to him. Over the years, he is great Old Testament professor and Hebrew professor and good friend as well. So, it is a privilege to be here, and this Psalm has become very real to me over the last few months, as I have gone over it and over it and over it. One of the things reasons I think so is because it has so much to say for those who are in the midst of difficulties and struggles. I have come home over the last two years a number of times and to tell my wife, Terry, I can’t remember the last time that I have heard of so much difficulty, heartache, serious struggles and problems that students are facing.
Colleagues are facing. These are not minor things, but serious, serious issues, to the point it is overwhelming. It is almost weekly that a student emails me or that in a faculty meaning of some sort. I find out from that one of our somebody who works is employed here at the school, whether faculty, staff, whatever, is facing something that is just overwhelming and in many ways life altering. What I would like to lead you to see here is this Psalm is a good word for you when you read it. This is what my PhD did for me. I used to not need to read. Have reading glasses. Now I cannot function without them. I want you to listen to it. And if you, if you listen to it too quickly, you’ll get the idea that he’s talking about. Oh, life is life of the Lord is a cushioned life. I lift my eyes towards the mountains. Where will my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip. Your protector will not slumber. Indeed, the protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. The Lord your protector. The Lord is your shelter at Your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going, both now and forever. At first, it sounds like this psalm is indicating that, with the Lord, life is cushioned. Things bad things don’t happen to you. But that’s not the perspective of this psalm. The perspective of this psalm is Life is hard, very hard. There are dangers, there are challenges, there are things that we face that are intimidating, scary cause doubts. In spite of that, our Lord is bigger. Our Lord is greater. And I’m going to use a child’s expression, our Lord is “gooder” than all than that.
It is a song that acknowledges the challenges of life, but insist on drawing our attention to the fact that God is so much greater. So, let’s, let’s begin. It begins with a just with a simple title, A Song of Ascents. There are 15 songs of Ascents, Psalms, 122, 134, are songs of ascents. Now these, these were songs that were to be sung. On at least three major occasions, on three times a year, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Passover, the feast of weeks, which we would know as Pentecost, and the Feast of shelters, or the Feast of Booths or tabernacles, depending on, depending on your translation, that would occur in the fall of the year, and the instructions out of both Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy chapter 16, I’ll let you go back and take a look at that if you wish, are that these are three times a year that all of the men are supposed to appear before the Lord and celebrate this feast or this festival.
Now frequently what it wasn’t just the men who showed up. It was their families who came along with them. So, three times a year, they would have to travel on this pilgrimage as the passage in Leviticus and Deuteronomy state to the place the Lord has set well by the time we really gets settled in the Old Testament that place is Jerusalem and a Song of Ascents. Because no matter what direction you approach Jerusalem from, you got to go up. It is on top of a mountain. So, it is a Song of Ascents. Now think about this a minute. One of the most recent. One of these feasts would have been the feast of shelters. I was celebrated in the fall of the year. Matter of fact, this year, it would have been about a month ago, a month ago, if we were at this time, we would have traveled together, singing this song to gather before the Lord and in order to express our thanksgiving to God for His blessings of the harvest.
But also, he says to remember that you lived in booths. You lived in tents. When I brought you out of Egypt, it was a reminder that God had protected them, cared for them, provided for them, from the time they left Egypt till the time they were able to enter and take over the land of Israel. So, this is an appropriate, appropriate thing to celebrate. So, a song of a sense. And he begins, I lift my eyes towards the mountains. Where will my help come from? As you lift your eyes to the mountains, I think there are two, two emotions going on. One is a little bit of anxiety. Mountains can be intimidating. It and I love being in mountains. Climbing mountains can be a challenge. I mean, let’s be honest, climbing two floors to get to the third floor of Athena Hall gets you out of breath.
So, climbing a mountain comes with an enormous set of challenges. The road, and back then, the road is not paved. It’s not as smooth as it is today. It is a hard walk up a mountain, and there are times when the grade is steeper and it is much more difficult and much more challenging, because you’re not just going, you’re also carrying things with you. You’re carrying your family with you, but you’re also carrying things with you. Because with you, because you’re not to be there empty handed. So, the mountains are also so in and of itself, they’re a challenge. Also, the mountains are a place that this is where bad people hang out. If any old westerns, the bad guys are always in the mountains.
If you watch the Lone Ranger, the bad guys are always in the mountains. And he’s got to climb through the rocks in the mountains to, you know, to be able to take care of everything. And this is, this is also something that’s true in Old Testament times this, the mountains have the challenges. But notice his statement I lift my eyes towards the mountains. It acknowledges the problems that are there with the mountains. But to lift one’s eyes is also and here’s the stronger emotion, anticipation, hope. When we lift our eyes. We are looking up. We are anticipating, we are hoping. We were looking forward to the destination. What’s the opposite? When we’re downcast, when we hang our head? This is, this is the opposite. This is a system of sadness, desperation, depression, but no he says, I lift my eyes toward the mountains.
So, he is obviously acknowledging the problems that the mountains are. But he is lifting his eyes because he knows there’s some. And greater than the mountains. And so, he’s going to pose a rhetorical question, where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He asked the rhetorical question in order to answer it, I lift up my eyes in anticipation, expectation, because my help and acknowledges the help that I need. I can’t make this journey by myself. I need help. The mountain is too big for me. The challenges that are there are greater than me. I need help. And so, I look towards the mountains in expectation that my help is coming. My help comes from Yahweh.
Yahweh is the one who helps the maker of heaven and earth. So, he tells us two things about his hope, his expectation, and what he is looking forward to in his help. First of all, his help comes from Yahweh. His help comes from God who has given his name, who has established His covenant with His people, God who cannot and will not go back on his word, God who has committed himself to this man, God who’s committed himself to his people. He will not go back on his word. He will not take it back. He will not fail. He is Yahweh now you and I just make a side note here, you and I, Yahweh has established for us a new covenant, a new covenant in which, because of the death, resurrection and dissension of our Lord Jesus, Christ, not only secures for us the forgiveness of sins, but has written the law in our hearts.
He has not only committed himself to us, adopted us as His child, and through the Holy Spirit, united us to the Lord Jesus, Christ. He has given us Christ’s name. We are named a follower of Christ. We are a Christian. We are a little Christ. We bear his identity. Our identity is the Lord Jesus, Christ. That’s not going to change. He does not go back on His covenant, not at all. And we’re going to take a look at another passage towards the end of this, I think, to drive this, this home. So, he is Yahweh. He is the God of the covenant. He is maker of heaven and earth. One of the things, obviously, I teach systemic theology, but one of the things I’ve become increasingly aware of is we have we don’t really understand well enough the importance of the doctrine of creation. The doctrine of creation is crucial to understanding of our faith.
This statement the maker of heaven and earth, makes it into our creeds, into the ancient creeds. God is maker of the heaven and earth. This means that everything that is, and you say, I already know this, I had systematic with you, so everything that is has come about because God has created it. Nothing that exists exists independently of God. Everything that exists exists contingently. It is dependent on God. God is the only one who is independent. A couple of things to say about this. Not only has he created it out of nothing this, there’s no sense of dualism here. There’s no sense of there was self-existing matter or stuff and God. And so, God had to somehow, no, the stuff was created by God. At one time, stuff did not exist, and God said, And God created. And then God began to order and fashion and form this universe for us.
This says a couple of things. Number one, everything is in total dependence upon God. Now I started to put up here one of the things Hebrew the author of Hebrews, says to us that He upholds everything by the Word of His power. I was going to put up here for you the formula for universal gravity, but it’s a mathematical formula. And some of you would have broken out in a cold sweat, and I just didn’t really want to cause you that kind of trauma. But we have a tendency to think of this as, oh, that’s, that’s a mathematical formula. That’s a science. Thing? No, that is the Word of God’s power by which he is upholding everything. Yeah, you can, well, we have a lot of mathematical formulas that describe this exactly. That is the Word of His power.
All we’ve done is put a description on it. That’s what the formulas are. They’re a description of what God has done or what God is doing. This means, then that God has all power. So as I look to the mountains and see the difficulty, the challenges that are there for me that I can handle myself, how am I going to make it well, the Lord, the God of the Covenant, who will not go back on his word, who has unlimited power because he made the heavens and the earth, getting me to my journey is not difficult for him. If creating the universe was not difficult for him, he can get me to where he wants me to be. This is good news. This is this is great news. Now, the way this is set up, you have two voices. Here you have the first voice that is spoken in verses one and two, and then in verses three through eight, you’ve got a response, a response that sort of takes this deeper, and so notice what he says. He will not allow your foot to slip.
Your protector will not slumber. Indeed, the protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. When we get into verse three, verses three through eight, we’re going to have six appearances of the Hebrew verb Shemar. Three of them are going to be participles that we would translate, the one who protects, or just protector. Three of them are Cal imperfect verbs. He will protect so and it’s interesting that the three participles are listed first, and the verbs, the verb forms, are listed the three after that. And I think this is important because I it identifies something about Yahweh, who is maker of heaven and earth, is also when he when he comes down to it, he wants us to understand the goodness and greatness of God, because He is our protector.
Six times the idea of protector protection is used here. If there’s anything that the psalmist wants to drive home to us, it is that God is our protector. Through this, he will not allow your foot to slip. There are so many places in the Psalms where there is a statement made that, with my eyes fixed on Yahweh as I walk in God’s ways, as I, as I, as I, keep my eyes fixed on the Lord, I will not slip. My foot will not slip. What’s interesting is in Psalm 73 verses one through three, he mentions something where his foot almost does slip. God is indeed good to Israel, to the pure in heart. But as for me, my feet almost slipped. My steps nearly went astray, for I envied the arrogant. I saw the prosperity of the wicked. What would have caused that man to slip?
His foot to slip, because he got to looking at the wrong thing. He got to looking at the blessings, if you want to call it, that of the arrogant. He got to looking at what the wicked had received, and when he put his eyes on that, his foot almost slipped, but his attention was brought back to the Lord, and as long as his attention is on the Lord, his foot does not slip. Why? Because the Lord will not allow your foot to slip if you are seeking after him, if you are looking to Him, if you have lifted your eyes and set your hope on the Lord. And that is he is all you are looking towards. He is the aspiration of your heart. He is the thought of your mind. He is the meditation of your heart. He will not let your foot slip. You’re not going to break your ankle. Your knee is not going to get dislocated, your hips not going to go out of joint. You are going to walk on Sure, certain ground, you’re not going to fail because your protector is going to keep you safe. He’s going to give you I should actually say it this way, He will give you security. Why? Because. Your protector will not slumber. At no point does God need to take a nap. At no point is God distracted from you. Not at any point, not for the blink of an eye, is God’s attention not on you. And the thing with with God’s the list, the statement here that God is protector, the word protector really emphasizes the fact that God is very active, intensely active.
He’s not just sort of watching. He’s not just sort of watching from above, as we’re going to see. He’s right here. He’s not just sort of walking, just sort of, okay, let’s make sure, no, not for a moment, not for a millisecond. There is not a single instance of God taking his eyes off of you. He doesn’t slumber, he doesn’t get drowsy, he doesn’t have ADHD, there’s no squirrel that’s going to distract him. And we have a dog who gets very distracted by squirrels, so not at all for any moment. But he continues on.
The Lord your protector, the Lord is your shelter at Your right hand. The Lord your protector, your right hand, for whatever reason, the right side, the right hand, in an Old Testament, thought was a was the position of honor. It was the position of preference. And so to be at your right hand was to be in the honored, the honored position. So where is your protector out there? No, your protector is right here, this very moment, as you were sitting in your seat, your protector is right there, and he’s going to stay right there, in a large presence. He’s not going to move. He stays right beside you, never moving. And so, he mentions some of the benefits that are going to come out of the fact that he is protector. He is personally present.
The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. In preparing for this, I learned it. This is a merism. You learned a new word. A merism is a way of stating two, basically two end points that includes the end points and everything in between. So, our protector is at our right side, sheltering us, shielding us, the sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. Israel, the people who read this would have known and understood the heat of the day we live here, if you have lived here any time from about oh May the 10th until October the 30th. You know what heat is. You know the dangers of heat during the one of the last really bad, hot summers they’ve put on screen, you know, whether put on the screen the 10 hottest summers on record. I have lived through seven of them.
I can still remember the I will show my age here. I can still remember the summer of 1980 now, for some of y’all, that’s like ancient history. That’s like the world was black and white back then, wasn’t it? It was not but I can still remember it. That was the last summer I played American Legion baseball, and I remember games starting at eight o’clock at night that were so hot, you just thought, why are we doing this? And I love baseball. The heat of the day. We know the seriousness of sunstroke. We know the seriousness of heat exhaustion. I’ve experienced this many of you have. It is dangerous. There are dangers during the day. There are dangers during the night, when the moon is out. And it was interesting to read older commentaries, and they would talk about Moon stroke, and as though moonstroke, and you know, moonstroke would cause particular kind of mental illnesses. And, you know, we don’t think that much anymore, but we still have words like lunatic that are associated with that kind of an idea.
Well, I don’t think the author’s trying to say there’s Oh, there’s sunstroke and there’s moonscope. I think what he’s saying is the daytime has its dangers; the nighttime has its dangers. At the nighttime is when a lot of wild critters come out, and you got to be careful where you’re walking. The nighttime is when a lot of people who do want to do bad things. This is when they come out, when they want to do their deeds under the cover of darkness. Nighttime has its dangers for the psalmist, God is so active as our protector that daytime, nighttime and every time between at all times of day, God is actively, intensely working for your protection, to keep you in the fullness of Christ, to keep you safe and sound in your security in Christ.
Well, not only at all times of the day, but he also mentions in verse seven, the Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. This one’s a challenge. The day and the night have their challenges, and they have their dangers. The Lord will protect you from all harm. The Hebrew word here can be translated in a number of ways. It can be translated calamity, evil. It can refer to something that is morally wrong. The basic idea, though, I think, is it refers to anything that is going to be detrimental to your life and your life in its fullness. And again, this can be, I think, difficult to understand, because it sounds like this is a protection that nothing bad is ever going to happen to me. But I don’t think that’s what he is really trying to communicate.
And again, I think to test this out, all you’ve ever got to do is look at the life of Jesus. If it does not test it out there, then okay, it’s did bad things happen to Jesus? Yeah, they sure did. This is not a this is not a blanket promise that nothing horrible will ever happen to you. The best way I can explain this maybe, is that it refers to what God does in the midst of the harm he protects. This is an emotional day for me. Today is my mother’s birthday. I The last time I got to celebrate it with her was 17 years ago, a month later, someone who was bent on destroying someone else’s life, rang my parents doorbell. My mother entered the door and was gunned down. The guy didn’t even know who was dealing with just unloaded a 357 revolver into my mother. She died instantly, an evil, a harm.
As I made my way over to their house, I could remember exactly where I was as I was about to get on George Bush toll road getting ready. I was crossing a bridge to turn left to get onto it, and all of a sudden, this was so real, I can still remember it the Spirit of God just saying to me, Mike, it’s okay. Your mother’s fine. She is with me. I’ve got this. I. Take care of it. What was intended to damage and harm someone else damaged and harmed my mother, my father, my sister, myself, her sisters, my daughter, my son, and their church, a lot of people in the midst of that, the Lord will protect you. What happened? Mom was protected. She is now with the Lord. And would she come back if she was given an option, I don’t think so. She is in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Has the Lord protected us? Yes, yeah. It didn’t knock us off of our faith.
That is not because I’m such a remarkably strong character. That is because the Lord is faithful, because the Lord is the maker of the heavens and the earth, and the Lord was at my right side, carrying me through all of this, protecting me through all of it. The only way I can explain this, really is, in reference to Romans chapter eight, towards the end. What are we to say about these things, if God is for us, and here’s what we say, If God is for us, who is against us, he did not even spare his own Son, but offered him up for us all. How will He not also with Him, grant us everything who can bring any accusation against God’s elect God’s the one who justifies there’s the question. Who can bring condemnation against someone whom God has said is just, whom God is actively justified. No one who is the one who condemns. The answer to that is Jesus, Christ is the one who died, but even more, has been raised.
He’s also at the right hand of God. Intercedes for us. He is the one who’s interceding for us. He is there on our behalf who can speak against us, if he’s for us. No one who can separate us from the love of Christ can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written because of you, we are being put to death all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered for no in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God. That is in Christ, Jesus, our Lord. Listen, some of you are facing some challenging things, and there are things that are going to seek to damage your walk with the Lord, damage your security in Christ, the Lord is there beside you.
He is at your right side to protect you. It cannot take you away from Christ. It cannot remove you from the love of God. I don’t care who tries. I don’t care how hard they try. They cannot succeed. They can’t even come close. Such is the protection that we have in the difficulties of life. So, we are protected at all times of day. We are protected from all kinds of dangers. Notice what else he says. Two more things, the Lord will protect your coming and you’re going. Another merism. We go out, we come back. The full circle of activities in a day, everything we do, we work, we go to school, we come home, we take care of life at home, we are in relationships, at work, at home, in the neighborhood, wherever we go, in our work, in our leisure, in all that we Do, all activities of life. Here is the Lord to protect us in all activities of life. And he ends by saying, both now and forever, right now, as you are sitting there, as some of you are, as soon as we’re finished, you are going to go to lunch.
As you eat lunch. Much, and we’re about to today is always a good day for a hamburger. So, we’re going to get one. The Lord is going to be right here as I celebrate some time with my family. I’m going to come back to work. The Lord is going to be right here as I grade papers and prepare syllabuses. Some of you are going to go to work after this. The Lord is going to be right there to take care of you through work. What about tomorrow? You’re going to get up tomorrow, and I don’t know what Wednesday brings for you. The Lord is going to be right there. What about this season of life? The Lord is going to carry you through and protect you all the way through your schooling, so that you get to where he wants you to be and what he’s preparing and equipping you for. You’re going to get out there and you’re going to enter the next phase of life. Where’s the Lord? He’s going to be right here protecting you in the next phase of life. What about down the road? I don’t know what I’m going to be doing 10 years from now, Lord is going to be right here, protecting you.
He’s not going anywhere. Forevermore, when I pass out of existence in this world, while I await the coming Kingdom, where is the Lord right here, protecting, guarding, keeping, however you want to look at this, God is the blessing of God protecting me now, The blessing of God protecting me forevermore, without end, a remarkable Psalm, a remarkable Psalm that acknowledges that life can be hard, but the Lord is our protector. He is more than up for the challenge. He is always on task. You and I are on a journey. You and I are on a journey. We are we’ve had a few quotes of John Bunyan before. We are on our way to the celestial city. If you’ve not read Pilgrims Progress. Then sometime in the month of December, when you were between tests and exams and papers and everything else, pick it up and read it. The Lord is going to protect us and see us safely to our destination where we will celebrate. We will celebrate his deliverance. We will celebrate the fact that he has been with us through all of these shelters that we have had to live in all the way through. We are going to celebrate the blessings that He has given. And we will no longer be pilgrims and strangers. We will be home under the protection of our Protector. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you so very much. Our Triune God. You are our Protector. You are actively protecting. You’re not distant, you’re not far away. You are at our right side, constantly protecting. We thank you that in the challenges of life that we face, you are going to see us to the celebration where we can rejoice forevermore, we pray in Jesus’ name Amen.
