The Traveler’s Psalm

A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________

Robert J. Morgan
July 13, 2003

 

 

Some chapters in the Bible are so special that they’ve been given their own title.  We call 1 Corinthians 13, The Love Chapter; Hebrews 11 is The Faith Chapter; Psalm 23 is The Shepherd Psalm; and 1 Corinthians 15 is The Resurrection Chapter of the Bible.

 

In our study through the Psalms today we’re coming to one of the most beautiful and beloved of all the chapters of the Bible—Psalm 121.  It has been called, “The Traveler’s Psalm.”  Let’s read it together from the old King James Version:

 

1  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  2  My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.  3  He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.  4  Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.  5  The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.  6  The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.  7  The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.  8  The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

 

This is the second of the fifteen “Psalms of Degrees” or “Psalms of Ascents,” which run consecutively from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134.  Last Sunday we looked at the background for these chapters, saying they were perhaps compiled during the reign of King Hezekiah to commemorate his recovery from a fatal illness and the extension of life God gave him.  We also speculated that this compilation became a little hymnbook popularly used by Jewish pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the three annual Hebrew festivals.  So these are, it would seem, Pilgrim Psalms.  Certainly Psalm 121, by the nature of its content, lends itself toward that view.  This is a chapter for anyone setting out on a pilgrimage, and for anyone who is leaving home or traveling.

 

Haddon W. Robinson recently wrote a devotional for the booklet, “Our Daily Bread,” in which he said that Psalm 121 was a favorite of his father.  He wrote, “When my father left the ‘old country’ as a teenager to sail alone to the United States, he was bidden farewell with this psalm.”  When he was heading off into the World War and at various other critical points of life, the elder Mr. Robinson leaned on this Psalm.

 

That’s a scene that has been repeated many times in Christian history.  James Montgomery Boice said in his commentary on the Psalms that this was a very dear chapter to him because his mother always gathered the family together and read it before they left on trips, or before one of the children in the family left home.

 

The great missionary explorer, David Livingstone, read this Psalm as he worshipped with his father and sister before setting sail for Africa; and his mother-in-law, Mary Moffat later wrote to him, telling him that Psalm 121 was always on her mind as she thought and prayed for him.

 

So today, let’s look at the “Traveler’s Psalm”—Psalm 121.  In terms of its structure, there are eight verses here, and it seems that the first two are set apart from the last six.  In verses 1 and 2, the Psalmist is lifting up his eyes, speaking in the first person, giving his own testimony:  “I will lift up my eyes….  My help comes…”  In verse 3, he shifts pronouns lifts up his voice:  “He will not allow your foot to slip….  He who keeps you will not slumber…”  So in verses 1-2 he’s proclaiming what God has done for Him; and in the remainder of the Psalm, he’s promising what God will do for you and me.  In verses 1-2, he lifts up his eyes to God to reassure himself.  In verses 3-8, he lifts up his voice to reassure others.

 

For the purposes of our outline today, let’s put it this way:  In verses 1-2, we’re told to keep our eyes on God, and in verses 3-8, we’re told that God keeps His eyes on us.

 

Our Eyes on God (V. 1-2)

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.   And here we encounter an exegetical difficulty.  The ancient Hebrew manuscripts do not tell us how verse 1 should be punctuated.  Some people believe it should end with a period, and others think it should end with a question mark.  Is the Psalmist saying, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help”?  Or is he saying, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills.  Where does my help come from?”

 

Most commentators and most of the newer translations take the latter approach, putting a question mark at the end of verse 1:  “I will lift up my eyes to the hills.  From whence comes my help?  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”  In other words, here is the pilgrim starting his journey.  As he looks toward the horizon, those distant hills present a great challenge.  They are steep, and sometimes the trails are dangerous.  Many travelers have had disastrous falls when their feet have slipped on the rocky pathways.  There are thieves and bandits in the mountains around Jerusalem, as we see in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan.  The path is steep and uphill, and perhaps our traveler is older and he’s worried that he might not have the strength to make it.  He lifts up his eyes to the hills and there he sees challenges, danger, and adversity.  It is a rigorous, dangerous journey.

 

So it is with life’s pilgrimage.  We’re going to encounter much difficulty and danger along the way.  Where will our help come from?  Where do we find someone to give us safety and strength for the mountains of life?  The Psalmist said:  “I lift up my eyes and see the dangers and difficulties of the mountains?  Where can I find strength and security to face them?  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

 

The second way to interpret this verse is to put a period at the end of verse 1, like the older translations do.  “I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”  I’m in the minority here, but this is the interpretation I favor.  I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, and no one who grows up in those mountains ever takes them for granted.  Every day they are there, rising up in our backyards, forming the backdrop to the roads and highways that thread through the valleys, providing breathtaking vistas for hiking and picnicking.  From the mountain streams comes our water supply.  From those hills come the logs and lumber to build our homes.  They surround us, providing shelter and protection—a certain isolation—from the outside world.  These Appalachian Mountains are towering and rugged, green in the summer, golden red in the autumn, and snow-clad in winter.  They almost seem as solid and sturdy as God Himself.  They are, as it were, a witness to His creative majesty.  They serve as a constant reminder of His glory.

 

Many years ago here at our church we had a wonderful banquet which featured the Poet Laureate of Tennessee, a man named Pek Gunn.  I became friends with Mr. Gunn, who lived over in East Nashville, and one day he gave me a framed, signed copy of his most famous poem, which was on this subject.  I’ll not read the whole poem, but what it says in essence is this:  I was getting older and starting to worry about the future, about what was going to happen to me in the years to come.  But as I was fretting about it, I went up to the Eastern part of the state—to East Tennessee—and took at the mountains.  They were alive with beauty, towering with majestic serenity and solidarity. 

 

As I stared at dem big mountains, trees and flowers everywhere

From my heart there welled up praises, 'cause my Lord had put ‘em there.

Now I’se ain’t frettin’ any longer for there’s one thing dat I see,

If my good Lord made dem mountains, He can shore take care of me.

 

So I think the Psalmist was saying, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills and remind myself that the God who made these mountains is the same God who is watching me.  That leads to the second part of Psalm 121.  Verses 1-2 tell us to keep our eyes on God; but verses 3-8 tell us that as we do, He is keeping His eyes on us.

 

God’s Eyes On Us (V. 3-8)

Now it is easy to uncover the dominant theme of these six verses, because the Psalmist uses the same word over and over again.  You don’t pick it up in the English translations; for some reason they translate this word differently from one verse to the next.  Perhaps the translators were trying to remove the redundancy of using the same word over and over.  But in the original Hebrew, the word “shamar” occurs six times in these six verses.

 

Let’s read it like that:

 

He will not allow your foot to be moved;

 He who shamar(s) you will not slumber.

Behold, He who shamar(s) Israel

Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your shamar(-er);

The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall shamar you from all evil;

He shall shamar your soul.

The Lord shall shamar your going out and your coming in

From this time forth, and even forevermore.

 

The word shamar in the Hebrew is very much like our English word keep.  It has a wide variety of meanings, but in this connection it literally means to keep a close watch on something.  The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, which is one of the best tools we have for dissecting the vocabulary of the Hebrew Scriptures, gives this definition to the root of shamar:  To exercise great care over.

 

In other words, God has promised to keep a close eye on His children.  He exercises great care over you.  This particular Psalm tells us when and where He does that.

 

He Keeps an Eye on Our Ups and Downs (V. 3)

First, He keeps a close eye on our ups and downs.  Verse 3 says:  “He will not allow your foot to be moved.”  A better translation is:  “He will not allow your foot to slip.”  The picture is of a traveler going through the mountains, over a rocky pathway.  A false step could send you into the gorge.  Last year we vacationed at the Grand Canyon, and my girls and I hiked a long way down inside the canyon.  The footpath was only a yard or so wide, and there were places where a false step could have sent us over the edge.  It was quite frightening.

 

But it’s a picture of life.  Sometimes we’re going uphill, we have an uphill journey with our finances, for example, or with our jobs or with our marriages or with our kids.  Other times, we’re going downhill and things are a little easier.  We may slip and slide a little bit, and the gravel may roll under our feet.  But Psalm 121 says that God’s eyes are on His children, and He isn’t going to let us go over the edge.

 

I had breakfast this week with a dear friend, a young man, who told me that he and his wife had encountered difficulty in conceiving; but finally they were successful and expecting a child.  But then she miscarried, and the child was lost.  They were devastated, but they chose to trust God with it.  They felt enormous pain.  I remember calling him the day it happened, and the two of them were hurting very deeply.  But this week my friend said that one morning sometime afterward they both just work up with a sense of peace.  They couldn’t explain it, but they could experience it.  They knew God was exercising great care over them, keeping a close eye on them, and they were able to trust His peace.  There are still some tough days, and occasionally they’ll shed tears or have to talk through things again, but that peace has never left them.  They didn’t fall over the edge of grief.  They didn’t fall over the edge of bitterness.  They didn’t fall over the edge of depression.  He didn’t allow their foot to slip.

 

He Keeps an Eye on our Days and Nights (V. 3-4)

So the Lord watches over our ups and down.  Second, He watcher over our days and nights.  Verse 3 continues:  He who keeps you will not slumber.  Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

 

There’s an old and famous story about a woman who was too worried one night to sleep.  She had a great problem, and it was keeping her awake.  Finally she opened her Bible in the wee hours and it fell open to this verse.  Having read it, she closed her Bible and said, “Well, Lord, if you’re going to stay awake, I’m going to bed.  There’s no need in us both staying up.”

 

I think she understood very well what the Psalmist was trying to say here.  When someone asked Alexander the Great how he could sleep so soundly at night though surrounded by death and danger on every side, he replied that Parmenio, his faithful guard, was always standing watch through the night watches.

 

How wonderful to know that we have a Faithful Guard whose eyes are always watching out for us day and night.

 

He Keeps an Eye on Our Sunshine and Shadows (V. 5-6)

Third, closely related to that, our Father keeps an eye on our sunshine and shadows.  Verses 5 and 6 say:  The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.  The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

 

In the deserts of the Negev, it could become dangerously hot during the day and bitterly cold at night.  The desert is a strange place, a place of extremes, and a place of discomfort and danger.  God did not promise to adjust the temperature so that His people would always live in a pleasant 72-degrees environment.  We’re bound to have some uncomfortable days, but there will never be a day however hot or a night however cold in which the watchful, loving eye of the Lord will not be upon His children.

 

He Keeps an Eye on Our Comings and Goings (V. 7-8)

The next verses tell us that God also keeps an eye on the comings and goings of His children:  The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.  The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in….

 

What a comfort this is.  Someone asked me recently if I was afraid of flying.  I said, “You mean am I ever nervous about being stuffed in a little cigar-shaped metal tube and hurled 700 miles an hour thousands of feet above the ground from one continent to another?  Why should that make me nervous?”  The answer is yes—I’m always a little nervous about flying.  But I frequently remind myself of these verses.  This is, after all, the Traveler’s Psalm.

 

To be honest, I’m more nervous thinking about my children being out on the highways.  There was a remarkable story in the news this week from a town called Mountain View, Arkansas.  A man named Terry Wallis has just emerged from a coma there.  He has been comatose for 19 years, ever since he was involved in a car crash in 1984.  He was 19 when the crash occurred, and he is 39 years old now, and has just come to almost 20 years later.  He thinks Ronald Reagan is still president.  He’s still living in 1984, and he doesn’t realize how much time has gone by.

 

There are so many things that can happen to us, so many dangers, so many toils, so many snares.  But Psalm 121 says that God watches over the travels—over the comings and goings—of His children.  Does that mean that Christians whose eyes are on the Lord—Christians who are in God’s will—will never have accidents?  That’s right.  Christians are never involved in accidents.

 

That doesn’t mean Christians won’t have wrecks.  Most of us know dedicated Christians who have been hurt or killed in a wreck of some kind—but not in an accident.  There are no accidents for those whom God is over-watching.  As A. W. Tozer puts it, “To the child of God, there is not such thing as accident.  He travels an appointed way….  Accidents may indeed appear to befall him and misfortune stalk his way; but these evils will be so in appearance only and will seem evils only because we cannot read the secret script of God’s hidden providence.”

 

In Psalm 120, the Lord does not promise to keep us from every danger or to protect us from every wreck.  What is promised is that He will watch over us carefully.

 

The story of Job is very instructive on this point.  The Bible says that God had put a hedge around Job and around his family and around all that he possessed.  Satan was unable to touch Job or his family or his possessions without the Lord’s allowing it, which He did on one occasion as we see in the book of Job.  It resulted in a very difficult period in Job’s life, but the end of the process was increased blessings for Job.

 

When we’re following Christ, nothing can separate us from God’s will for our lives.  Romans 8 says:  “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ….  In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

He watches over our ups and downs, over our days and nights, over our sunshine and shadows, over our comings and goings.  And finally, His eye is on His children both now and forever.

 

He Keeps an Eye on Us Now and Forever (V. 8)

Look at the glorious way this Psalm ends:  The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.

 

Notice the words:  Both now and forever.  This Psalm ends very much like Psalm 23—Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

 

Blessings both now and forever.  In other words, this Travelers Psalm never expires.  It doesn’t expire with old age.  It doesn’t expire with death.  It doesn’t expire with the end of human history.  It is always going to be in effect.  The promises in this Psalm will still be working on our behalf 100 years from now, 1000 years from now, a million years from now, a billion years from now.  Both now and forevermore.

 

This is a Psalm for God’s people—for those who have taken Jesus Christ as their Savior.  Have you done that?  Are you His child?  The old Scottish Christians had a habit of taking the Psalms and putting them in verse form to be sung.  I’d like to close with this wonderful versified arrangement of Psalm 121:

 

I to the hills will lift my eyes;
O whence shall come my aid?
My help is from the Lord alone,
Who heav’n and earth has made.

 

He will not let thy foot be moved,
Thy Guardian never sleeps;
With watchful and unslumbering care,
His own He safely keeps.

 

Thy faithful Keeper is the Lord,
Thy Shelter and thy Shade;
’Neath sun or moon, by day or night,
Thou shalt not be afraid.

 

From evil He will keep thee safe,
For thee He will provide;
Thy going out, thy coming in,
Forever He will guide.

(Scottish Psalter, 1912)

 

So keep your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ; He never takes His eyes off you.

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