All Problems Solved?
Last week we looked at our first song for the road, the first of the Psalms of Ascent – and it was one that got us going on the road of faith by reminding us of the need to repent. It wasn’t the happiest psalm. But it was an important one. It set things in perspective. It reminded us that living as followers of Jesus begins with saying “no” to the lies of the world and “yes” to the truth of God.
Now, thankfully for us, once we’ve begun this trip and are on our way, we can count on the fact that “all of our problems are solved, all our questions answered, all our troubles over.” As Christians, we are members of that privileged group of people who no longer have to worry about accidents, arguments, misunderstandings, rebellious children, and illness. And, in fact, if any of those things do befall us—whether a disease, a car accident, a fight with a husband or wife, kids who won’t listen like they should—it is likely a sign that “something is wrong with our relationship with God.” Somehow we’ve gotten off track. We’ve taken a detour off the road of faith and taken back the “yes” we said to the truth of God. And God, tired of our wavering and fickle faith, has gone off to look after someone more deserving of His attention. Our circumstances are the result of our faithlessness. I’m going through difficult times because there is something wrong with my relationship with God; and God, simply put, just got tired of me.
Does any of that sound right to you? Is this what it means when we go through difficult times? Better yet, is this what you believe? Or have you ever felt this way? Let me just say three words if you have: you are wrong.
But we are sometimes still surprised as Christians when bad things happen to us. Despite what Jesus says in Matthew 5: 45—“For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—there’s always this little part of us that thinks, “If I were really a Christian and God really loved me, then none of this would happen to me.” Deep down we’re unable to reconcile our belief in God’s love and care for us with all the bad stuff life throws our way.
Eugene Peterson says that “no sooner have we plunged . . . into the river of Christian faith than we get our noses full of water and come up coughing and choking. No sooner do we confidently stride out on to the road of faith than we trip on an obstruction and fall to the hard surface, bruising our knees and elbows. For many, the first great surprise of the Christian life is in the form of troubles we meet. Somehow it is not what we had supposed.” Something bad happens and we look around for whatever help we can find. After we stumble to the ground in confusion and pain, we ask the same question as our psalm: “I lift my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?” We want help. We need help. And sometimes, before we find ourselves saying the next verse of the psalm, we find ourselves looking in a lot of other directions for this help first. Now, let’s take a closer look at Psalm 121 and see what it says to us about the circumstances we can often face and where we should seek help.
Well, to start, our psalm today is perfect for travellers. In fact, Psalm 121 is just the right song for someone travelling by foot. First of all, in verse 3—“He will not let your foot be moved”—we see a reference to stumbling feet. If you were journeying by foot, it would have been easy to step on a loose stone, fall, and sprain your ankle. Verse 6 refers to the fact that someone travelling exposed to the hot sun for a long time would risk sunstroke. And the same verse warns of the danger of moonstroke, or the possibility that “a person traveling for a long distance on foot, under the pressures of fatigue and anxiety, can become emotionally ill.” Ancient writers described this condition as moonstroke. We call it lunacy, which comes from the Latin word for moon. It is from these travelling dangers that the Lord protects us according to Psalm 121.
And we can add to these dangers things anything that intrudes into our lives and causes difficulties, struggles, trials, and troubles. And sometimes it seems that no matter what precautions we take—with our seatbelts fastened and our doors securely locked—we can’t ever guarantee our own security and safety. We all know Christians who fall and sprain their ankles. We all know Christians who struggle with anxiety, even depression. But doesn’t this psalm say that the Lord will not let the sun strike us here? Doesn’t it say that He will not let us stumble? What’s right: the psalm or our experience? Is it any wonder there are Christians who end up thinking their struggles are a sign that something is wrong with their relationship with God and He has left them alone? If God hasn’t left them alone, would they still be stumbling and getting moonstroke?
“I lift my eyes to the hills”
Because we end up thinking sometimes that God must have abandoned us—that our troubles are a sure sign of this—we look elsewhere for help when troubles come our way. The question is, when we do look around for help, what do we see?
In Psalm 121 the writer begins by looking up to the hills or mountains. Now I remember being in Vancouver visiting Alisha when we were still dating and how amazing the Rocky Mountains looked. Here were these huge, magnificent mountains that reached into the skies, and what better image of firmness and stability and strength can you find? No wonder the psalmist looked to the mountains.
But actually a Hebrew would have seen something quite different when he or she looked up to the hills. “During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practiced on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil.” The hills offered protections and spells for travellers. Are you worried about the sun’s heat? Go see the sun priest pay him for protection and he will make sure the sun doesn’t harm you. The most prominent pagan gods were Asherah and Baal. And they weren’t exactly impressive gods. For instance, the legends of Baal show him as being an immoral, drunken god. They talk about how difficult it is to wake him because he’s asleep in a drunken stupor. Remember the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal? At one point Elijah taunts the priests by saying of Baal: “Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18: 27). You couldn’t even guarantee that Baal would help you if you called on him; you’d have to wake him up first!
The mountains or hills in Psalm 121 represent other attempts to get help when we find ourselves in trouble on the road. They represent our attempt to make it without calling on God for aid, concluding that the very presence of troubles is a sign that God has left us anyway. We turn elsewhere because we figure God has more important things to do than bother with us. It’s as though we believe that God can’t be bothered with the little things. But where do we turn then? What are our mountains and hills? I’m sure you can fill in the blanks without my help.
I was truly impressed with the Rocky Mountains when I was in Vancouver. But, you know, no matter how fantastic and majestic the Rocky Mountains may be, for all their strength and beauty, they are in the end just hills. Referring to what the travelling Hebrews would have seen in the hills, Jeremiah 3: 23 says: “Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains.” They don’t, in the end, amount to anything. No matter how alluring their promises of safety may be, they are, in the end, lies, all part of the same lies we talked about saying “no” to last week. We delude ourselves when we believe that these hills have any real help to offer us. Psalm 121 is a song for rejecting all other fruitless attempts at getting help during life’s troubles.
“The Lord is my keeper”
In Psalm 121 the Lord is called our keeper no less than six times: in verses 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8. Verse 5 says that “the Lord is your keeper.” But how is the Lord our keeper? We already know from experience that He certainly doesn’t keep us from going through difficult times and troubles? If He doesn’t keep us from those things, what does He keep us from?
The first thing we are told that in verse 3 is that “he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” So first of all our God is always present to us, always available. We don’t have to wake him up like that no-god Baal. One of the jobs of the priests of Baal was to try and wake him up—and they weren’t always successful! But our God, the Lord of all creation, doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t take a day off. It is not hard to get his attention. He doesn’t take a break from wanting to help us. Verse 8 tells us that “The Lord will keep your going out and coming in from this time on and forevermore.” Our God is the Lord and Creator of time; He is with you when you begin your journey and He is still with when you reach your destination. There is no point along the journey that He is not with you. No matter where you go, He is with you and will keep you along the way.
And the fact is that the promise Psalm 121 makes to us is not that we will never experience trouble, never trip over a loose stone, but that these things will never have any evil power over us. There is nowhere in the Bible where you can find a promise of a life free of difficulties. There is no more honest book than the Bible. Look at Job. Look at the rest of Psalms. Look at the life and ministry of Paul. Look at Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, his prayer in Gethsemane, and the cross. And think of the many strong believers that you know that have known or know pain and struggle and hard times. Do you think less of their faith because of the hard times they’ve gone through? The promise here is one of preservation in the midst of hard times, not protection from hard times.
Verse 7 of Psalm 121 says: “The Lord will keep you from all evil.” Jesus taught his disciples to pray the same thing: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And according to Scripture that prayer is answered everyday in the lives of those who walk the Christian way. Think of Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 10: 13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way so that you may be able to endure it.”
I’ve heard it said that all the water in the world cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. Well, the same is true of us and evil. Unless we let it get inside of us, not all of the evil in the world can do us any ultimate harm. For the Lord keeps us from evil and there is nothing that can separate us from His purposes in us. Paul says in Romans 8: 38, 39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Psalm 121 says in verse 7 that the Lord “will keep your life.” And what can we say about our life as Christians? Colossians 3: 3, 4 tell us that “your life is hidden with Christ in God” and that “Christ . . . is your life.” Our lives are guarded and kept and no evil, thanks to Christ, can get in and sink us.
“My help comes from the Lord”
Remember, then, that the biggest mistake any of us can make when we find ourselves facing illness, anxiety, conflict or whatever is to conclude as a result that this is a sign that there is something wrong with your relationship with God. “That is the only serious mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.”
We will face hard times and troubles. We can’t escape these things any more than anyone else. Living a Christian life is not a not heavenly, serene oasis in the otherwise unwelcoming wilderness of the world. It is not a straight, open highway, with blue skies constantly above us. “The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know that we are preserved by God.” This is God’s care, what theologians call God’s providence.
This, too, should shape our attitude to the troubles we face. As Christians we should not be hanging our heads, gloomily focusing on all that seems to be going wrong in our lives. Too often we allow our experiences of the negative to shape our attitudes. Psalm 121 doesn’t allow us that option. It tells us that God keeps us. It tells us that our lives are in His hands. It tells us that He guards us forever, from the time we place our trust in Him until that day when “mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” We shouldn’t describe our Christian walk by all the various trials we face, but by describing the God that keeps us in the midst of them. And it tells us that until we get this truth deep into our hearts and that as we travel along this road of faith, we better keep on singing this particular song for the road, for it is this psalm that teaches us to look beyond all in this world that we may look to for help when we believe God has left us, to our true help, to the One who is our Lord, “who made heaven and earth,” because only he can truly keep us “from this time on and forevermore” and give us the faith to move mountains, no matter how impressive they may seem to be.
