Scripture: Psalm 121
If you belong to a gym, you may have noticed that you can’t park quite as close to the entrance as you could a few weeks ago. You may have noticed that the piece of exercise equipment that you want to use is currently being used by someone else—they’re sweating all over it right now. And you hope that they’ll wipe it down when they’re finished, but they probably won’t. In the meantime you have to wait. You may have noticed the gym is a bit more crowded with people.
Why? Because it’s the new year… It’s a time of great hope… a time when most of us think, “This year is the year that I will lose those extra few pounds. This year is the year that I will get into better shape. This year is the year that I will establish these good habits and eat healthier and get more sleep,” et cetera. Because we’ve made our “resolutions.” We are resolved. It’s going to happen… this year.
But just think: if you don’t like all these extra people crowding you out at the gym, just wait until mid-February. It will surely become much less crowded by then… as people abandon their New Year’s resolutions.
Because the new year is a time not only of hope, but also a time—I’m afraid—of false hope… Misplaced hope… Misdirected hope.
And gosh, it’s not just our hope that we’ll finally become physically fit. Some of us place great hope in the upcoming elections—since we’re now in an election year, lucky us. Or some of us place great hope in our favorite sports team. Spring training is just around the corner. Or some of us place great hope in the success of our business, or the success of our children or grandchildren, or the success of the economy, or the success of our financial prospects.
Some of us even place great hope in this new institution that our church is part of—the Global Methodist Church. “Finally,” we think, “things will get better.”
Because we are a hopeful people.
Today’s scripture tells us where we find our true hope… And I want to make three points about that: Point Number One: The Lord is infinitely bigger than any mountains in front of us. Point Number Two: Because God loves us, he will always help us. And Point Number Three… These first two points are are true even though life is hard.
But Point Number One…
Let’s look at verse 1: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?”
Notice that’s a question. “From where does my help come?” Question mark. And every modern translation poses these words as a question. In the old King James Version, however, the translators didn’t make it a question: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” No question mark. And do you see? That implies that we lift up our eyes to the hills because that is the place where we find our help. Which, as I’ll show, is almost exactly opposite of the psalmist’s point!
From the psalmist’s perspective, the hills are not a place of help and hope. The “hills” may be one of two things, both of which are bad. First, they may be a fearful place of uncertainty and potential dangers all around. Let’s recall, for instance, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells us that the Jewish victim is beaten and robbed on the mountainous road that leads from Jerusalem—which is at a very high elevation—down to Jericho, which is a city at nearly at the lowest elevation on earth. This road was notorious for crime. Why? Because it had many twists and turns… many shadowy areas in which visibility was low… many rocky crags behind which bandits could hide… many bends in the road… corners around which innocent travelers could not see… many places where wicked people could lie in ambush.
The mountains were also a place where predatory animals attacked. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Or, as we saw last week in 1 Samuel 17, the mountains were a place where enemy armies attacked.
So the mountains could represent fearful, threatening places—places of crime, violence… potential dangers and death… Not places of help and hope.
But there’s another good way of interpreting these verses, which doesn’t contradict what I’ve just been saying… It complements what I’ve been saying.
If you were an ancient Jew reading this psalm, you were surrounded by superstitious heathens who believed that their gods made their homes in the mountains. In fact, pretty soon, in our “Journey Through the Bible” reading plan, you’ll read 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicles, and the prophets, and you’ll see that one of the biggest recurring problems that Israel faced was the this same temptation to believe in pagan gods who lived up in mountains. You’ll read about idolatrous Israelites who keep building illegal shrines and altars in the so-called “high places”—on mountaintops—why? Because they were influenced by their pagan neighbors to believe that gods lived up there… on top of mountains.
So hills and mountains were centers of idolatry throughout the ancient world, and throughout Israel. In which case the psalmist is speaking against this kind of idolatry: “Of course my help isn’t found there! I pity people who believe that any divine help is found there!”
The New Living Translation gets this sense across in verses 1 and 2: “I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?” For the psalmist it’s a rhetorical question, as if to say, “Of course not…”
So to those people who were frightened by these mountains, the psalmist says, “Your God made these mountains and everything in them. He’s sovereign over them. If you trust in the Lord, what threat could these mountains pose to you?”
And to those who believed that local gods had power over these mountains, the psalmist says, “Our God made these mountains and everything in them. He made the entire world—the entire universe. That’s how powerful our God is. So why settle for worshiping some puny little deity whose power is confined to a mountain or a geographical area… even if such gods existed—which they don’t.”
You can decide for yourself what kind of “mountains” you’re facing in your life right now:
I invite you first to think about those things in your life right now that are frightening: Those may represent “mountains” to you. And God is infinitely bigger than those mountains. Trust in him.
I also invite you to think about the people or the things—besides God himself—that you’re trusting in to make you happy, to give you hope, to make you feel okay about yourself. Think about those people or things that you’re afraid of losing. If you lose these worldly treasures, you’ll fall apart. Those may represent “mountains” to you. And God is infinitely bigger than those mountains. Trust in him.
And that’s Point Number One…
Point Number Two… Because God loves you, he wants to help you. Always…
Do we believe that?
For this point, I want us to turn our attention to a well-known story in the gospels… it’s in a few of the gospels, but if you have your Bibles—and you should—let’s look at it in Mark 5, beginning with verse 25. Let me read it from the New Living Translation:
A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
Do you get the picture? Under the Law of Moses, this woman would be considered ceremonially unclean. And perhaps she had been treated by her fellow townspeople no better than an outcast, or a pariah, or a leper. Perhaps her fellow townspeople considered her especially “sinful,” because after all, she had terrible and incurable disease. “God must be really mad at her,” they probably thought.
Regardless, she was a nobody; she was hardly worthy of Jesus’ time and attention. She must have thought, “Who am I that I should expect that someone as prominent, as important, and as righteous as Jesus himself ought to heal me. I wouldn’t dare ask him to heal me… He would surely reject me.
“So here’s what I’ll do instead. I’ll sneak up on Jesus. And if I can just touch his robe, I trust that that will be enough to heal me. He won’t even know. He doesn’t have to know. I believe that Jesus is so powerful that his healing power will flow out of him and heal me. I’ll get my miracle and he will be none the wiser.”
What I love about this woman’s words and actions is that they demonstrate a great deal of faith. She believes in the power of God at work in Jesus to change her life, to heal her, to make her better. She’s absolutely confident Jesus can do that. She has great faith.
And then if you know the rest of this story, you know that Jesus stops what he’s doing after she touches him and singles her out and causes her great embarrassment… literally makes her worst nightmare come true! He calls attention to this event that she tried so hard to keep secret.
Why do you suppose Jesus risked embarrassing her like this?
In part, because of this: This woman believed strongly in the power of Jesus Christ. She had great faith in his power. But her faith was far from perfect. Why? Because… while she believed in the miraculous power of Jesus Christ, she doubted his love for her.
And I’m sure for a moment she expected Jesus to scold her, to reject her, to show his anger toward her. What does he do instead? In Mark 5:34, he calls her “daughter”: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” Think about what this means: Christ considers this woman not only worthy of a miracle, but even more: a member of God’s family… a member of Christ’s family… his own relative whom he loves like a daughter!”
We sinful parents know how much we love our own daughters and sons… Jesus loves her like that, except of course he loves her perfectly.
So that woman came to that place believing in Christ’s miraculous power. She left that place believing not only in his power but also in his amazing love for her.
And that’s one of the main points of this psalm: God is the Creator of heaven and earth. So of course God has all the power to help us, to “keep” us, to “protect” us, to “take care of” us. If God wants to, he certainly can. But not only that, the psalmist says, he also loves us more than we can imagine. The One who created heaven and earth somehow cares about us, as individuals… God cares about the most intimate details of our lives. See verses 7 and 8: “The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life. The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.”
Isn’t it astonishing how much he loves us?
We at Toccoa First Methodist are probably not like this hemorrhaging woman when it comes to our faith. We tend to have the opposite problem from her. She believed wholeheartedly that Jesus had all the power to help her; she struggled to believe that he loved her enough to help her.
By contrast, we Methodists believe wholeheartedly that Jesus loves us; we often struggle to believe that he’s powerful enough to help us.
Am I wrong? Why then are we so often fearful, so often pessimistic, so often down on ourselves, so often filled with guilt,so often anxious, so often worried?
Why are we so often reluctant to pray that the Lord will help us… to pray that the Lord will do powerful things in our lives… or even to pray that the Lord will do powerful things in our church?
My point is this, brothers and sisters: If we believe that the Lord loves us Christians the way Psalm 121 and the rest of scripture says that he does, and we believe that as “maker of heaven and earth,” our Lord has all the power at his disposal to do whatever the pleases, then why on earth would we doubt for a moment that the Lord will always help us—and he is always helping us?
Yesterday we had an important church meeting involving many lay leaders in the church yesterday morning. It was a meeting to plan the year ahead. And you’re probably thinking, “That sounds boring. I’m glad I missed it.” But it was more than a planning meeting: Because we spent time worshiping God, first of all, and then I spent a lot of time laying out my vision and goals for this year ahead.
And in my homily I shared with the group two words that often show up together in scripture… and these are nearly the two best words I can think of. I think I’m going to put them on a sign or banner or on buttons that we can wear. We see these two words together in many places in the Bible, but one for my favorite places is in Genesis 50:20. This is when Joseph is speaking to his brothers, years after they sold him into slavery in Egypt and treated him very badly… did evil things to him. And now that Joseph has risen in the ranks and become prime minister of Egypt, they’re worried that he’s going exact revenge against them. And that’s when he speaks the words in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20… See if you can hear the two amazing words that I’m talking about:
Joseph said, “As for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
Did you spot the two words? “But God…” “But God meant it for good.” Because his brothers did these awful things, Joseph ended saving Egypt and surrounding nations from the effects of a terrible famine.
Joseph acknowledges all the bad stuff that was done to him in his past: “But God…” he says. He acknowledges the reasons that he might have to be angry or disappointed or worried or afraid: “But God…” He sees, from a human point of view, how hopeless his situation might appear: “But God…”
“But God…” reminds us that ultimately the only thing or the only Person in our lives whose responsible for making us successful and bringing us victory and giving us joy and happiness is God: He’s got all the power and he’s always helping us!
And this brings us to Point Number Three… Notice the many ambitious promises of this psalm. It couldn’t be clearer: God will always “keep” us, protect us, and care for us… And God will do mighty things in our lives as trust in him and pray. By all means!
You’re going to hear more about “But God…” in these days ahead, I promise.
Yet this hardly means a life of comfort and ease for us Christians. Let’s face facts: Life is hard!
Jesus himself warns us in many places in scripture that life will be hard. And when he does so, he doesn’t mean that life will be hard in general for everyone: he means that life will be uniquely hard for those of us who are his disciples… because we follow him. He says so, for instance, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7:13 and 14. In the New Living Translation it says the following:
You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
The “road is difficult.” This is a guarantee from Jesus, isn’t it? The same Jesus who, moments earlier in this same sermon, tells us that we Christians don’t need to worry about anything—because our Father will feed and clothe us and take care of all our needs—words that are at least as reassuring as the words in Psalm 121—but this same Jesus who offers these reassuring words then warns us that the road we’re on as his disciples will be difficult.
And as I just said a moment ago, Jesus only offers this warning to those of us who actually follow him as his disciples in this world. If we’re looking for comfort and ease in this life, Jesus says, don’t waste time with Christianity. You’ve come to the wrong place. Inasmuch as a life of comfort and ease is possible—your best bet is that broad highway and the wide gate that Jesus describes.
But for us who are his disciples, Jesus warns that the road will be difficult.
And notice that Jesus doesn’t say that the road ever stops being difficult for us Christians, does he? He doesn’t say, “Well, once you reach a certain level of holiness, once you get sanctified enough, once you overcome enough sin in your life, once you treasure Christ enough, once you trust in Christ enough, then you’ll find that living a Christian life is a piece of cake.”
By no means!
Because God knows that the only way you become holy, that you get sanctified, that you overcome sin, that you treasure Christ more, that you trust in Christ more… is by walking this “difficult road.”
God loves you enough to make you walk it. God is helping you by making you walk it.
The great Scottish preacher Sinclair Ferguson was preaching on verses 5 and 6, which says that the Lord is the “shade on your right hand,” and the “sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.”
Here’s what Ferguson says that means for us Christians: “There is nothing that can penetrate through to my life without first having its poison removed by the ‘shade’ of the purposes and presence of God on my right hand.”
“There is nothing that can penetrate through to my life without first having its poison removed by the ‘shade’ of the purposes and presence of God on my right hand.”
I like that a lot… And if that’s true, think of how that can help us reinterpret events that have happened in our past.
Over the Christmas holidays I listened to a powerful song by a singer-songwriter Randy Stonehill, a first-generation Christian rocker who enjoyed commercial success in the ’70s and ’80s. The song is called “Christmas at Denny’s,” in which man looks back on his past, on tragic losses, failures, and poor decisions that led to his eating at a Denny’s restaurant… on Christmas Day… alone.
I wonder if the Denny’s people sued him for this song!
But the refrain includes these words: “And I’m dreaming about a silent night/ A holy night/ When things were all right/ And I’m dreaming about how my life could have been/ If only, if only, if only…”
The song is beautifully sung, and those “if onlys” pack an emotional wallop!
If only…
I can think of at least two “if onlys” in the Bible: they come from John 11, which recounts the death and miraculous raising of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. Recall that Jesus delayed going to his friend when he first heard he was sick. By the time he arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days.
And both of Lazarus’s sisters, Martha and Mary, express disappointment in Jesus. Each of them says to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 1 Moments before raising their brother to life again, Jesus ever so gently rebukes them for doubting him and for doubting his timing: “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” 2
It’s natural for us to sometimes feel disappointment in our circumstances and, ultimately, in our Lord. It’s natural to feel regret. It’s natural to think or say, in so many words, “If only…” And when we do, by all means, let’s tell the Lord about it—just as Martha and Mary do. As I’ve preached before, complaining in prayer is better than not praying at all!
But… as we pray, let’s also remind ourselves of Christ’s compassionate and gentle rebuke. We can be sure that our Lord is doing something good for us even in the midst of painful circumstances. Our Lord is giving us something we need. Our Lord has reasons for allowing us to experience the pain we feel. Our Lord is helping us.
Therefore, as with Martha and Mary, our “if onlys” express a lack of faith: They call into question God’s goodness, God’s sovereign control over our lives, and God’s power to transform our circumstances… Perhaps worst of all, they may blind us to what God is doing right now, in the present.
If Psalm 121 is true, there is no place in our lives for “if only”…
“If only…” are two very destructive words, and we shouldn’t say or think them. But I’m guessing that my saying that isn’t going to help very much. We will probably still think or say, “If only”… And when we do, or when we’re tempted to, let’s add two more words. These are good words. Are you ready? “But God…”
For every “if only,” there’s always a “But God…”
Lord Jesus, as we enter this new year of 2024, give us faith to overcome all of our “if onlys” and to trust that you are using them to create a better future for us. Amen..