A few months ago I officiated a wedding in Virginia. Virtually any direction I looked the Blue Ridge Mountains were in view. Being born and raised in Florida, I found their impressive size intimidating. There were some peaks that appeared to be piercing through the clouds. Mountains are symbols of stability and strength. In fact, nothing in all creation is more fixed in its place than these enormous rocks.
That makes it easy to look to them for security and safety. But that may be the problem. Our tendency is to look horizontally at things like mountains and ask with the psalmist, “Does my help come from mountains?” (Ps. 121:1, author’s paraphrase).
If we believe our help comes from the mountains, I have incredibly good news. We’re wrong. Psalm 121 is the calm and kind voice of a friend telling us that we’re looking in the wrong places for shelter, help, and hope.
The psalm is addressed to those of us who forget to look up to God and instead gaze into the distance, wondering where our help will come from. It puts a name to the confused, disorienting, and uncomfortable distrust that leaves us dissatisfied and restless in a way of life that ignores or forgets God. But then it gently leads us by the hand to repentance, so we can once again affirm with full and confident faith that our help comes from God.
Repentance
The keyword there is repentance. The word itself doesn't appear in the psalm, but I don't think we can truly grasp the psalm’s message without it. Looking to something other than God for help requires a change on our part. Biblically, repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of action, which means it isn’t merely an emotion, even though it can be emotional. Repentance is a decision—the decision to admit we've been wrong to suppose we could control life's outcomes and wrong to look to the mountains or hills for help.
Repentance is also the decision to believe that God is in control and that he is our helper and keeper. We don't usually think of repentance this way, but it is both a decisive rejection and a decisive acceptance. It rejects a former way of living and believing—our way of doing things and our self-sovereignty—and accepts God's way of doing things, his sovereignty, and his grace.
When we reject our ways and accept God's ways, our hearts are put in the right place to receive from God and return to the road of discipleship.
Discipleship
We know that Psalm 121 concerns itself with discipleship because it is one of the fifteen “Psalms of Ascent.” These fifteen songs were likely sung by Hebrew pilgrims making their way to the Holy City, Jerusalem, for one of the annual festal celebrations—Passover, the Feast of Booths, and the Feast of Weeks, which makes the songs for a journey. With each strenuous step, these pilgrims were walking the road of discipleship that ultimately led them to meeting with and worshiping God.
And this makes them our songs as well. We too are walking on the discipleship road as pilgrims making their way to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. But as Psalm 121 reveals, the discipleship road isn’t an easy one. It's not broad and smooth, but rocky and narrow. It's easy to twist an ankle, easy to slip and fall and bruise your knee. And it's precisely because it's difficult and bumpy that we tend to wonder where our help is going to come from.
When things get hard, as they certainly will and do, it’s completely normal for us to look left and right before we look up. But even looking up doesn't ensure that we’re looking at the right things to help us. The psalmist here is the perfect example. The road to the Holy City has become hard for him—it's hot, he's thirsty, his feet hurt, and he's slipped a few times. So he looks to the hills or mountains for help.
But why to the mountains or hills in particular?
Because that's where help was thought to come from. During the time this psalm was written, Palestine was overrun with pagan worship, and much of the religion was practiced on hilltops. It’s where the sun priest or the moon priestess could be found for spiritual guidance. But that makes the hills a delusion (Jer. 3:23). The pilgrim psalmist knows this, and so he lifts up his eyes to the hills and realizes that they’re incapable of guaranteeing his safety and safe passage. He rejects the idolatry and pagan practices that take place on the hilltops and instead looks to the Lord who made heaven and earth. He boldly declares that help comes from the Creator and not the creation.
So where are we looking for help?
The mountains and hills are not trustworthy, nor are they sufficient saviors. We must look beyond them to God, our true helper and keeper.
The God Who Helps, Keeps, and Never Sleeps
Like the psalmist, we must console ourselves with truth. God will not let our foot be moved. He is attentive to us in every way, ensuring safe passage to our heavenly destination. We can have assurance because “he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps. 121:3–4). Israel’s history proves that God doesn’t sleep on the job. Sure, there were times when it appeared as though God had forgotten them or that he was indifferent to their dilemma, but his silence could never be mistaken as absence. God was present and watchful. He wasn’t like the pagan gods of the hilltops who needed to eat, sleep, and rest.
He was always watching over his people and always protecting. He who keeps Israel keeps the pilgrim, which means he keeps us too. We are never alone on the discipleship road.
No matter how bumpy the road gets, none of the things that happen to us and none of the troubles we encounter have any power to get between us and God. No trial or tribulation, however severe, will dilute his grace for us or divert his attention away from us. He will neither forget us nor fall asleep on us. He keeps us. The Lord is our protective keeper.
And his protective keeping is comparable to shade on our right hand. Shade would’ve been a welcome gift to a traveler on desert roads where there was almost no shade at all. So, God’s protection will be like shade that is constantly and completely covering us. Each step we take, each breath we breathe, we can know we are preserved and protected by God, who accompanies, sees, knows, cares, and keeps us.
God’s keeping is never generic, however, but purposeful—he keeps us from all evil (Ps. 121:7). God will guard our discipleship and passage to the Holy City. He will keep us from all evil. What an incredible promise! But is it really true?
Whether in the good times or bad, God will keep us. “He will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Ps. 121:7b–8). From beginning to end, we are kept by God. Horizontal looks for help may work for a season, but we need someone who protects and keeps us forever. And we have that someone in God. Adam was to keep, protect, and guard the garden from all evil, but he failed. The fall of mankind into sin didn’t begin with the bite of the fruit but with Adam’s failure to keep the serpent from his garden and wife.
So, God’s promise to keep us from all evil should be good news because left to ourselves, we will so easily let evil in and around us. We would do the same thing Adam did. But then God sent a second Adam, a second keeper—Jesus Christ. Consider our Keeper’s words from John 6:37–40:
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Jesus will never lose his own. He will never lose us because he keeps watch over us. Every step, every breath. He keeps us from all evil because he keeps our life. And his keeping is so extensive that he will raise us up on the last day. He keeps you now and will do so always. Until the end of the age.