The Gospel of Psalm 121

I flagged the other night. I could feel it. Funny when sin comes upon you unsuspecting, crouching at your door. I was just puttering around the kitchen, and, whamo! there it was in my heart. It spread to my mind, and I was beginning to 'go there' where I shouldn't. It spread through my body, where I could feel my jaw tighten and my muscles clench.

Take every thought captive...
Master it, or it will master you...

It was a momentary stand on the precipice of sin, vanishing almost as quickly as it came. I fought it; I caught it--thanks only to the Holy Spirit. But it had come. I can't deny that. I don't mean to imply that me battling sin is somehow infrequent. It's just that this time was more like a weird out-of-body experience in which I was simultaneously fighting the battle and observing it.

The heart is desperately wicked...
Every inclination of the heart is only evil all the time...

Sin did not pounce on me from the outside. It was not lurking around the corner. The devil didn't make me do it. Sin came from inside my heart because that's where sin always comes from. I was nobody's victim. I didn't need therapy, counseling, or healing. I needed to repent.

I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come?

Psalm 121, my favorite psalm, is a Song of Ascents. When the Jews made each of three annual, required pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they sang songs of ascent. And those mountains? We're inclined to read into the text that they were a source of help. But Ligon Duncan disagrees. Those mountains, which signified Jerusalem, were a menace. They were the reason the psalmist was crying for help in the first place. I have to agree.

But forget for a moment the physical dangers of the road. Forget the wild beasts. Forget the lawless men. Forget the blistering heat of the day or the terrifying darkness of the road at night. They were going to Jerusalem to meet the Lord.

If there's one area where the ancient Jew has the modern Christian licked--in spades--it would be the way he feared the Lord, as in, he was terrified. These were people intimately acquainted with what the Lord could do, not for them, but to them. It was part of their psyche because it was part of their history:
the earth opening up and swallowing people whole...
serpents biting and killing them...
fire consuming them...
plagues decimating them...
enemies dragging them off to captivity...
(For a more complete catalog of God-induced misery, see Deuteronomy 28. Yikes.)

So here's the Jew, making his annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was supposed to be a time of feasting, celebrating, not what the Lord had done to them, but for them. Nevertheless...he will be cut off from his people if he doesn't go. And he must not appear before the Lord empty-handed when he does go--you know, the same Lord who did those things cited above...

Where does his help come from, indeed.

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Oh. So the Lord, who is making this requirement of me, is going to help me carry it out. Now hold on. What does that sound like? The gospel. This sounds like the gospel. God is going to ask me to do something hard...and then He's going to help me get it done.

Author Trevin Wax says in his book, Gospel-Centered Teaching, that we must be careful to read all of Scripture in a way that is distinctively Christian. He says that if we read, for instance, the Old Testament in a way that a faithful rabbi would concur with...we're reading it wrongly.

So how does the gospel impact the way I read this, my favorite psalm? I can see how the Jew on his pilgrimage might read it. But how do I read it through a cross-centered lens?

He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.

Sleep is an incredible gift. On a good night, the sun sets, the work is over, the melatonin kicks in, and we're off to LaLa Land. On a good night. But not all nights are good nights. I can think of a number of things that keep me from having a good night:
A child heavy on my heart...
A difficult relationship...
A health issue...
The future...
The past...
But most of all, the ultimate sleep stealer is the reality of my sin and the fact that that makes me not right with the Lord. Scares the livin' daylights out of me. For some reason, I'm able to think more clearly when the sun is up. For some reason, I'm able to see the facts, preach the gospel to myself, and understand the renewing mercies of the Lord during the day. And that's why I need to sleep, not think, at night.

But He will not allow my foot to slip. That truth should give me rest. He keeps me, AND He will not slumber. Here's the good news: the Lord does the work of wakefulness so that I can find rest and sleep. No wonder the psalmist says elsewhere that He gives sleep to those He loves.

The Lord will protect you from all evil; he will keep your soul.

Evil. My first thought of evil is bad guys. Criminals. Terrorists. Tyrants. People who seek to do me harm. But the fact is that the most damaging evil is the evil in my own heart. I know that. Deep, deep down, I know that. We have got to start thinking correctly about evil. God does NOT promise to keep me from the bad guys. He promises to keep my soul.

When I had that out-of-body experience the other night, it was sobering. I was instantly aware of how sinful that was against the Lord, what a precarious place that put me, how quickly something offensive could bubble up out of my heart. But He was faithful. As quickly as I sinned, He was right there with a warning. And He was right there with forgiveness. He was keeping my soul.

The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.

One day, two thousand years ago, another Man made this pilgrimage. He looked to the hills of Jerusalem, set His face like flint, and went. He went, not to celebrate what the Father had done for Him, but to receive what the Father was about to do to Him. He did not come empty-handed; He offered Himself. And the awful irony is that His sacrifice cut Him off from the land of the living. The Father poured out His wrath...and then the Father turned His face away.

Because Jesus did not appear empty-handed before the Lord, I do not appear empty-handed before the Lord.
Because Jesus was cut off, I will never be cut off.
Because of what the Father did to Him, I can celebrate what He will do for me.

The Cross is not ancillary to Psalm 121.
The Cross is key to Psalm 121. 
So let's read it again, this time through the lens of the Cross.

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord who made Heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. 
The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. 
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. 

The Lord brought me in. And the Lord will bring me all the way home.
My help comes from the Lord.
That's gospel, people.
That's gospel.