The Shade At Your Right Hand - Psalm 121 Series

Psalm 121:1 A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the mountains-- where does my help come from? 2 My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot slip-- he who watches over you will not slumber; 4 indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD watches over you-- the LORD is your shade at your right hand; 6 the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD will keep you from all harm-- he will watch over your life; 8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Introduction

You have probably all seen those lists that tell you which passage of Scripture to read at various times in your life. When you are happy, read this chapter. When you are grieving, read this. When you need direction, this, etc. Somewhere in your Bible you might want to make a note, “When you’re afraid, read Psalm 121.

Danger is not evenly distributed in this world. In some places the people face deadly threats every single day. In our part of the world, compared to others we are pretty safe. It seems like everything you buy these days comes with safety instructions. You get a box of Kleenex and there will be a whole booklet – “Attention! Important safety information!” So you might expect that with all the safety precautions out there in our culture we would all live lives completely devoid of fear. You would think that in a place like this everyone would have forgotten what fear even feels like. But that is not the case at all, is it? Even with all the seat belts and helmets and warning labels and government regulations protecting us from ourselves, and bailouts, still – think of how many times in your life you have been afraid. Danger is not evenly distributed in this world, but fear is universal. Every one of us knows exactly what fear feels like.

Some of you know what it feels like to realize you are about to lose your spouse, or your kids. Or you find a lump on your body and there is a real good chance it is cancer, and you have to wait ten days to get the test results. On days like that there is nothing any human being can do to protect you from the thing you are afraid of.

Some of our fears are irrational. We call those phobias. We regard them as irrational because they don’t make any sense (there is no actual danger). But danger or no danger – the fear is as real as it can be.

Probably one of the most widespread fears right now is the fear of financial trouble. The threat of layoffs is constant these days. It seems just about everyone’s livelihood is at risk. And when you take a step back and you realize, “OK, I’m capable of earning this much money, and my bills are almost double that figure,” and you are plummeting further and further into debt and you can’t see any way out, that is scary. Especially when the anxiety over it causes conflict in your marriage, so you have the fear of a dying marriage relationship piled on top of all your financial fears. Just because we do not live in a part of the world where bombs are exploding every day does not mean we are foreigners to fear. Fear is universal because threats to our wellbeing are universal, and so it is good to know where to turn in your Bible when you are afraid.

What is the Promise?

But before we go through each of the promises in this psalm we need to address the question of what is being promised and what is not, because if we interpret it to be promising something other than what it is promising, we will be disappointed. Imagine a little four-year-old having a tantrum in the car on the way to the airport. He is angry because yesterday his father said, “I have a treat for you tomorrow” and the child took that to mean he was getting a piece of candy. But in reality, what the father meant was he was taking him to Disneyland. So when the kid finds out it is not a literal treat in the sense that he is used to, he regards the whole promise as worthless. We can do the same thing with God’s promises when we fail to interpret them properly. We take them to mean one thing, and it turns out they mean something much better. But our hearts are so set on the first thing that we get no joy at all from the thing that is really promised.