Psalm 121

Transcript

Tonight, I want to take the opportunity to share some exciting things that I've found over the past year in one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Psalm 121. I know it's a favorite of many. My mother-in-law, for example, told me that it was her mother's favorite psalm, Christina's grandmother, and that fact takes me back to a memory just before Chris and I got engaged walking with her grandmother from her home up to the hill where there's this beautiful view of Mount Ascutney in the distance. And before her death declined in the last few years before she fell asleep, she used to do that walk regularly. And I can imagine the words of that psalm coming to her mind regularly as she looked out on that beautiful view of God's creation. And in my life and with my family, we've sought out opportunities to go to places where we have that kind of vista, that kind of beautiful view of what God, the creator of heaven and earth, has done. And it's just an inspiring thing to get up to the hills. Let's see. Am I frozen? Can everybody hear me still? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah, you're coming through. Okay, good. So this psalm makes me think of some of the special places that I've been with with Chris and my family where the beauty is especially stunning. And when we are in these elevated places or look up to elevated places, it naturally elevates our mind to think about our most high God, God who made the heavens and the earth. So in this passage, the psalmist begins with a question, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains from where does my help come? That is an important thing for us to keep our minds on and bring our minds to again and again in our lives. With uplifted gaze, the answer to that question becomes clear. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. So this psalm is one of a group of psalms, a group of psalms that have a subtitle above them or a title above them that is the songs of ascent. And in

the King James translation, I don't think Butch read the title, but it is actually in the original Hebrew, the

titles above many of the psalms. In the King James, it says like the song of degrees, I think, which is, I think, a real mistranslation perhaps from a cultural misunderstanding of what a sundial would have been back then because the word is used in speaking about the sun going back 10 degrees in the King on the sundial of Ahaz in Isaiah 38.8. But all modern versions of this verse translate this word as steps because the word in Hebrew that's translated degrees in the King James or ascent in the modern versions has a root word of going up.

And so that's really the idea. Now part of seeing that, well, one other side note, just that trying to bring into English the idea of a device that uses the sun to keep time, we call it a sundial in modern English. The idea of dial has the idea of a round thing, a circle type thing. But in the ancient Near Eastern culture, that really wouldn't have been the idea at all. And there's no dial word really in the Hebrew. It's really about steps. Famous Israeli archaeologist Yigal Yadin had made this particular picture of a structure that would use steps to keep time. As the shadow would lengthen, it would go down a step. So rather than like little degrees on a circle, you can imagine the shadow changing which step it's on. And that would be the idea of timekeeping back then. So these songs have a sense. So if you understand that meaning that it's really about a sense going up and steps going up, then it makes sense that these

songs would have been used for during the journey of a pilgrimage feast. Like in Deuteronomy 16, well, we have the instruction that God gave the Israelites in Deuteronomy 16, 16. Three times a year, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, which later became clear was Jerusalem. And those three times were at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. So if you think about Jerusalem, the place topographically, you can see that it's you know, up among the hills. And Jason can probably tell us all about it. He's probably pictured in his mind very well, the hills of Jerusalem, and how going to Jerusalem would be an upward journey. So these songs, well, they would involve going up like it says in Psalm 122, just the next Psalm, after the one we're studying tonight, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, built as a city that is bound firmly together to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel to give thanks to the Lord. So these songs, with their themes of upward journey and of Jerusalem's special place in God's creation, and of God's care and protection for his people, bringing his people back from captivity, all of these themes would be very appropriate songs to bring the minds of those pilgrims that would journey to Jerusalem for the feasts. They would have comfort as they made that ascent up to Jerusalem to think on these things about God and his care for them on their journey and his care for them as a people. Yeah, so the word translated as sense is, as I said, also translated steps. It's also thought these Psalms would not only serve on the journey of many days and miles it would take for people on foot to come to Jerusalem from afar, but it also would help bring spiritual focus and it would complement the atmosphere as the pilgrim makes the final approach to the Temple Mount. So it's said that between the court of the women and the Israelite court in the temple there were 15 steps and the Mishnah links these 15 Psalms of a sense to the 15 steps of the temple compound in two places. Tradition holds also that during the pilgrimage feast one of the Psalms of a sense would be read on each of these 15 stairs. And that's also worth noting that, you know, 15 always represents, well, according to

what I read from a number of sources, 15 always represents the elevation from the physical or natural to the spiritual. And if you think about it as the sum of seven plus eight, you can think of the seven days of creation, thinking about God's natural creation of the physical, but then the eight pointing forward to the eighth day would be the idea of going from the natural to the spiritual and in our journey of faith, you know, that's what we're doing. These steps in particular would have been steps that Jesus and other Jews of his era walked up as they approached the temple, especially on the great pilgrimage festivals, Passover, Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, and Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. This site mentions that the risers are low, a mere seven or 10 inches high, but each step is 12 to 35 inches deep forcing the ascending pilgrims to walk with a stately, deliberate, I would say meditative tread. The pilgrims enter the temple precincts through the double and triple gates, still visible, although walled up now in the southern wall. So if the imagery and the themes of these Psalms, which serve the pilgrims' journey to the feast in Jerusalem, if they had beautiful, poignant meaning for those people, they can have the same effect on us as if we look to these Psalms, I think, during our spiritual journey, the spiritual journey of our lives toward God's kingdom, which will be centered in this place that represents the overlap of heaven and earth, of God's dwelling with man. These Psalms give us a chance to walk thoughtfully, meditatively in our journey, keeping our focus on the destination and the one who's guiding us there. So let's look particular at Psalm 121. We noticed in verse 1 and 2, in the first person, I will lift up my eyes to the hills or to the mountains. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. So this is a person speaking, asking a question, reflecting, and answering as their journey is about to begin. The remainder of the Psalm is all in the second person, you, you, your, and it's a blessing bestowed on the pilgrim that is going on their journey. And the idea of journey is all throughout this Psalm. You can see it in verse 3, he will not let your foot be moved. You're not going to slip. He who keeps you, well, the idea of a keeper guiding is, well, it's a very important word in Hebrew. The word that has the idea of keeping, guarding, protecting, caring for comes in many, many, many places. It's used of Adam's role in the garden to keep the garden. It's used of Jacob's care and protection of the flocks. So on a journey, having a keeper, you can imagine us as sheep

journeying with our shepherd kind of guiding us along. Looking at a couple of those passages that use these important words, I mentioned Adam, Yahweh, God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it or to keep it or to tend it. That's that Hebrew word, chamar. And Cain says of Abel, am I my brother's keeper? That's the noun form of that verb, one who keeps, which is used three times in our Psalm. In Genesis 30, verse 31, Jacob says,

well, he said, what shall I give you? That's Laban. And Jacob said, you shall not give me anything. If you do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it. There again is that word. So you can imagine the Psalm has this image of one who keeps and protects, just like a shepherd and like Cain should have been for his younger brother there. Other images of journey, if you're going back to that list, verses five and six speak about this, the sun and your heat, God is your shade. The sun will not strike you by day. You can think of walking. I'm sure Jason knows well that walking in the heat of the sun in Israel, they can just sap you of your strength. And because it's an oppressive sun, that close, much closer to the equator and dry desert heat. And poetically, the moon by night, even journey in the nighttime can involve considerable cold temperatures. The thing with dry places without a lot of moisture, the rocks don't have a whole lot of heat capacity. So when the sun stops beating down on you, the temperatures can drop really quickly and can get quite cold. And then there's the dangers of dry traveling by night of robbery and things like that. He will keep you from all evil, something very important on the minds of a traveler to have that protection. And he will keep your going out and your coming in. So you can tell that this Psalm is definitely about journey. And so it fits in the Psalms of a sense. So I'll comment later, but I don't think this was written in the time of necessarily people going up to Jerusalem necessarily. There's not an overt reference to that here. But I feel like it was something that would have had that resonance. We had a 60th birthday party from my brother-in-law days ago. His daughter did a little slideshow and included Neil Young's old man, take a look at my life as kind of a wink, I think, to the soundtrack. But Neil Young wasn't thinking about my brother-in-law, obviously, but it has a resonance. As we get older in our life, we can think about how we've changed from being in a younger generation to being in an older generation, for example. Well, these Psalms would have had resonance, I think, for the people going up to Jerusalem, even if it comes from a time much earlier than that. Well, another thing that was repeated again and again in this Psalm, besides the journey motif, was something that I think was caught first. Well, I mean, it definitely wasn't. I can't claim the credit. It was caught, I believe, by the eye of Brother Jim Boyko when he shared this Psalm in an email the day after I gave one of my classes on God's name. I looked for the email. I couldn't find it because it's kind of a while back, but I'm pretty sure my memory serves that he did something like this. He took all the places where it says the Lord in all caps and put Yahweh, which is God's name, which is in again and again and again in this passage. Without any explanation, Jim shared an emphasis of this passage that I hadn't noticed before. None of the typical words used to reference God are used here other than Yahweh. No other name or title of God is used in the Psalm. No Elohim, no El, no Adonai, no El Shaddai, no El Elion. None of those kind of words. It's exclusively Yahweh. When Jim shared that,

I was just floored because, as I said, this is a Psalm that's meant a lot to me. I remember preparing and giving a Wednesday night class maybe two years after I was baptized on this Psalm and digging into it and really seeing some interesting things in it. I didn't know until researching into it that this idea what the Psalms of a sense were. That comes from a much earlier time in my life. This opened up yet another thing because Yahweh, if you remember, now I understand if you don't because it was a while back, but I did some classes on God's name. To review a little bit, we looked at Exodus 3 where a God speaking to Moses at the burning bush says, God said to Moses, I am who I am, and he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, or Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered. This is my memorial name throughout all generations. Here, God is revealing himself. With some familiarity in Hebrew, you can actually see the connection between the two ways that God is referring to himself. He's saying, I am who I am, as many of you know, is Ehieh, Asher, Ehieh, and then the I am that comes after is Ehieh in verse 14, which means I will be or I am. And yet we don't really hear God refer to that way very much by people because it's kind of weird to say I am, it sounds like when you're talking, you're talking about yourself because it's first person. So Yahweh is really a third person version, he will be that is related to Ehieh in verse 14. So it makes more sense for us not being God to be calling him the he will be rather than I will be. So the first person Ehieh connects with Yahweh, the he will be, which is in the third person. And in my class, I mentioned that the context, when I first saw this, just blew my mind that the context gives us a meaning of that phrase that I think God intended clearly to reveal in his name. The context, first in the immediate context, he says in just a few verses before that in Exodus 312, but he said, I will be same word Ehieh with you. So a second word covers those last two words with you, and this will be assigned to you. So God was telling Moses, I will be with you, just two verses earlier, and then he says, my name is Yahweh, I will be who I will be. And the context is not just on that side, just shortly after in the same conversation that God's having with Moses, when Moses says, Well, maybe you should get somebody else, God, because, you know, I can't really talk very well. God said, Go, I know, I'm the one who created the mouth, go, and I will be with your mouth. And that's Ehieh again. And I will teach you what to speak. So there's that immediate context, which I think gives us insight into what God meant when he said, I will be he was trying to in his very name, remind us that he was going to be with us. And so when I first saw glimmers of that, I like, I thought that was just amazing. But digging a little further, it's the context extends further out into the surrounding books, all the books of Moses and Joshua and part way into Judges, every other use of the Hebrew word Ehieh in all of those places is spoken only by God, the author, be it Moses or people who took what Moses handed down and wrote it down. And for him, whoever that would be, they chose to reserve that word Ehieh only for God, because I feel giving reverence to that name that God God revealed. But also, not only is it only spoken by God, but it's always with the message, I will be with you. It's happened again and again and again, he says it to Isaac, he says it to Jacob, he says it to Moses, he says it to Joshua, he's repeating it again, again and again. And that, I think is telling us that the you know, I will be who I will be, you know, on one sense, taking it at simple face value. It's like an it's an enigma, like, what is God trying to say? It's speaking in a lot of ways about God's transcendence. He's, he's the one who was who is and is to be, he's, he's beyond time. God is so much beyond us and transcendent. But it's also meant to teach us to remind us that God is with us. Not only is God transcendent, but his love for us is transcendent. So that was, you know, an exciting thing for me to see a few years ago when a couple years ago when I when I first started digging that. But then now taking and bringing that emphasis to Psalm 121. It's like, wow, the meaning of God's name fits this context so well. The one who is with us is with us on our journey, on our journey that includes dangers and trials and difficulties and struggles. It makes me think of well, yeah, so in those journeys that can be dangerous, we have the reminder again and again and again, God is with us. And that's the message of this song. So thinking about that, the, there's a Kenyan phrase that when we were in Kenya, that people would say when we're about to travel, may God grant you journey mercies. And you think about it in a land where extreme weather, wild animals, thieves can make a journey very dangerous. There's recognition that God in his mercy is watching over us in our journey. And, you know, life is filled not just in our literal journeys, but in the journey of life. There's dangers and fears that can fill our life. But this Psalm is reminding us that through it all, God is with us. He is there. And, you know, despite the fact that this world is filled and our lives could be filled with disease or injury, it could be war, natural disasters, there's so many things and dangers that exist. And I'd like you to each, you know, take a moment, think about what are the greatest threats or fears that you and your loved ones are facing right now? When you think on those things, this Psalm speaks to you. You know, say those first two verses with me. I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from Yahweh who made heaven and earth. There's power in these words, that recognition that this ancient author had way back when holds true for us today. So continuing with thinking about that author, you know, there is a possibility that somebody after

David established Jerusalem as the center of worship could have written this and saw, you know, fit. Maybe they penned it to be included in this collection of journey Psalms, of Psalms of a sense, thinking about the image of going up to Jerusalem for the three feasts. Yeah, like we looked at, like Psalm 122, that clearly, well, that one's written by David and that's talking about that journey and Jerusalem's mentioned by but not here in this Psalm. So again, I wonder is it possible that it was just written before and like a classic song that we can hear and recognize and have it resonate with our hearts and minds as we think about how those timeless words like speak to us in our current situation. It's amazing how that happens with music. Well, I think that could have easily been the case here. Psalm 121 grouped in the ascent's collection because of its resonance, even though it's not specifically mentioning the journeys of a sense and maybe the compilers of the Book of Psalms added that title afterwards because of how they saw it fit with these other Psalms of a sense, even though it was maybe written in an earlier context. We can't say, you know, for sure, we don't have a title. We don't have an author attributing. But what I want to share with you next is something that came to me that I was started on maybe six months ago or so, six or eight months. I don't remember exactly when somebody pointed out to me and got me looking for even more connections to the life of Jacob. And it makes me wonder, like, was this, it could it have been a song? You know, we have the song of Moses in the Book of Psalms written by Moses many, many years before. This psalm, I propose, maybe it was even written by Jacob. Jacob was a shepherd caring for the sheep out in the pasture, having time to think and to pray to God. Did he compose a song? David, the shepherd, took, I think, got his start, you know, writing Psalms when he was a shepherd. Could it have been the same with Jacob's or David's ancestor, Jacob? We don't know. OK, but so let me share with you some thoughts as to why if even if this wasn't written by Jacob, there is an abundant amount of purposeful, whether it be from the human author or from the divine inspiration, I don't know. But there's a lot of purposeful connection back to the life of the patriarch Jacob. One way of looking at it, for example, the the chiastic structure, there's a chiasm in Psalm 121. And if you look at the psalm, you see the beginning, God's twice referred to as my help. And that kind of mirrors the message at the end, the multiple times of God preserving and keeping the journey, the person on the journey, the pilgrim. Then you have verse 2B,

the second half of verse 2, reference to heaven and earth. And that links with the actual objects in the in the heavens, the sun and the moon. Back to verse 3, you have the foot being mentioned. God's not going to let your foot be moved or not. He's going to let you slip. But also, God has shade upon your right hand, another extremity of the body. And then you have the message of God who keeps you and Yahweh is your keeper. And that all brings us to the center where chiasms tend to point to the center of having he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. God keeps Israel. This is at the center of this psalm. And this isn't one of the things, well, I should say to give a little credit where credit's due again. I mean, Jim Boyko got me started on looking at this psalm again in a deeper way. And it was really, really powerful. Another person that I've mentioned before, Rabbi David Foreman, did some classes about six months ago. And I heard the first few of them. But somewhere along the line, I can't seem to find it. Seems like they've dropped off the internet, the website, or whatever. I can't find them anymore. So I didn't get to hear all of them. But it got me started where he brought out some of the connections to this psalm. He didn't mention the chiastic structure, at least in the classes that I heard, but found this later. And it points to more evidence of that this is really a psalm that's making a number of connections to the life of Jacob. Well, let's look at a few in the text itself as well, besides the center of the psalm, the phrasing, the wording, and the themes again and again point back to Jacob. Verse 1, I will lift up my eyes.

Well, that phrase echoes very much Genesis 33.1, where Jacob, after fleeing his brother for his life, now 20 years later, it says, and Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with him. A definite important point in Jacob's life journey, where he had to rely upon God to help him through the danger that was there. Also in verse 1, it says, from where does my help come in our English versions? Well, that word from where is a word used only 17 times in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible. And the first time, wouldn't you know, the first time that that word is used is in the story of Jacob going to Padana Ram to find his wife. And after when he was fleeing for his life from his brother the first time, you know, 33 that we looked at is when they're reuniting. But here, four chapters earlier, he's fleeing from his brother. And Jacob said to them in chapter 29, verse 4, my brothers, where do you come from? And the where and the from are separated in English, but one word in Hebrew, the same word that we have in Psalm 121, 1. And they said, where from do you know Laban? Yeah, we know him. This is his daughter Rachel coming. So this is an event, another important event in the life of Jacob where he was finding help from God in finding his mate, or actually his mates that came from Laban. Now, another thing, remember how we said in the first six books plus a little bit into Judges, the word I will be was reserved for God, God speaking, only one speaking it. And every time other than when it was used for God's name was the was in the phrase, I will be with, I will be with you, I will be with your mouth. Well, the first occurrence of that phrase, I will be with you, was with those specific words was in was to Jacob's father, Isaac. But the second was when Jacob was beginning to feel the danger of Laban and his sons growing with some jealousy. And God calls, God calls Jacob to journey and promises to be with him. Well, so what's the connection? So back to Psalm 121 in verse two, there's a word that is in the Hebrew that we don't see in English. It says my help, just because it doesn't make sense when we translate it this way in English. But verse two says my help comes from Yahweh in English. But the Hebrew actually has two prepositions connected together from with Yahweh, from with Yahweh, which, you it has the idea of from his connection with Yahweh is where his help is from with God. Okay, so and by using that word, I'm that that connects with

the God's name, Yahweh, and how the first first person version of that, and how he uses it again and again and again to I will be with you. That is hint. I mean, there's a little bit of a connection. Maybe it's a little tenuous. But when you put it together with all the other things in this in the Psalm, it just it makes sense to me. Different wording, but the same idea, although it has the in in in Genesis 2815, behold, I am with you, God promising, Jacob, I will I am with you, or I will be with you, and will keep you wherever you go. Well, there's that keep word that we see again and again, six times in three times as a noun and three times as a verb in in Psalm 121. I will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. Your comings and goings, I will not leave you until I've done what I promised you. So in

the life of Jacob, we have this important theme, and we have these verbal connections to Psalm 121. The second instance, so this actually is using those same words, first instance again to his father, Isaac, but then the second instance of I will be with you using the phrase that's in Exodus three, the burning bush narrative is in Genesis 31 to and Jacob saw that layman did not regard him with favors before so that jealousy that I was mentioning, and God said to Jacob returned to the land of your fathers, go on a journey into your kindred, and I will be with you. So very important message that God gives in the life of Jacob. And I think the Psalm is hinting at that. So continuing looking at Genesis 35. Let's read verses one through five. God said to Jacob, arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away your foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments and let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may there an altar to the God who answered answers me in the day of my distress and who and who has been with me wherever I've gone. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had. If you remember Rachel, remember hiding some of the gods that she'd stolen from her father and put them in the camel saddlebag and was sitting on it and said, I can't get up, I apologize, but so there were some of these foreign gods were were imported into Jacob's household. But here now he's calling on his family to get rid of them. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods in verse four and the rings that were in their ears and Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So here in this passage again, we're getting these echoes of Psalm 121 of going up and God being with me wherever I'm gone and the protection on the journey so that what could easily befall a traveler on

a foreign land, they could easily be taken advantage of, robbed, killed. God protected Jacob in his journeys. So verse three was the center of that. We looked at that and said, you know, God has been with me. Now that's really a third person version of I will be with you. And there's another version of the to be word that's very similar to the shape of God's name. And so it's almost like this is presage. When you think about God promising a little bit earlier, and then here, Jacob now saying, he will be with me. It's like what God's doing in Exodus three, you know, he's promising I will be with you. He's calling himself a but then he's translating it to which is more natural way in response that we would speak of God that he is the one who is and who will be and who will be with us. And we commented on verse five, which how that ties in with the end of Psalm 121. God will keep you from all evil. Continuing. So we looked at that. Let's see. Yeah, Psalm 121, verse three, that's the kind of the center of the psalm. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. So here was God's promise to Jacob to keep Jacob. But notice, think about the context, the timing of this. Jacob, what was Jacob doing when God said this? Back in Genesis 35 that we were just looking at, Jacob was sleeping. And God told him, I will be with you. So Genesis 28, verse 15, not 35, going back a little bit, when Jacob's at Bethel the first time, God went to Jacob in the dream at Bethel and says, Behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go. I will bring you to this land, for I will not leave you until I've done what I promised you. So here, Jacob is sleeping. He's slumbering and God, the one who neither slumbers nor sleeps, who promises to watch over him, and because he doesn't need to slumber or sleep, is somebody who can protect us and keep us through the dangerous night when we could be very vulnerable. God is protecting us. God is protecting Jacob, and he's reflecting on, well, if this is Jacob, he's reflecting on that truth in the middle of this psalm. Or those who are reflecting on how God was there for Jacob, their forefather, if they pen this psalm later, same principle. I think they're thinking about Genesis 28. They're thinking about Bethel when they write those words in the center of the psalm. And in response to that promise that God made later in the same chapter, Jacob made a vow that if God will be with me and will keep me in the way that I should go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I may come again to my father's house in peace, then Yahweh shall be my God. And God kept to those promises again and again in Jacob's life. And in hearing this, it's really the shepherd recognizing the protecting and guarding and keeping hand of his shepherd. What else? Well, yeah, just again emphasizing Jacob's

life was all about coming and going back and forth to the land of promise, going to Laban's house, going back to the land, going to Bethel. There was a period where you can see him retracing kind of the footsteps of his grandfather Abraham and how the promises of God to give the land were kind of being re-shared again with now this generation of Jacob, his grandson. And God was protecting him and keeping him and is going back and forth from and to the land of promise, from being a stranger in the land of promise to being in exile elsewhere outside of the land and back again, again and again. Jacob was no stranger to troubles, especially family troubles, but God was with him through it all. Looking back on his life, there was plenty of difficulty and that's reflected in Jacob's words to Pharaoh when he goes down to see Joseph. Joseph brings him to Pharaoh. He says the days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers and the days of their sojourning. He had a long and difficult life, but God was with him through all of those troubles. And at the end of his life, he, Israel, says to Joseph, behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you again to the land of your fathers. Jacob passes on that recognition that God was with him and God was promising to be with his descendants as well. God would be with Joseph. One more main passage I want to look at that is in the life of Jacob. When he's praying to God before seeing Esau in Genesis 32 verse 9, he says, Jacob said or prayed, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I'm not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you've shown to your servant. For with only my staff, I crossed this Jordan and now I've become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. But you said, I will surely do you good and I will make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for a multitude. So, you know, there's a number of beautiful things in this prayer. Jacob recognized his unworthiness. He knew, you know, he knew that he was a bit of a right and then tricked his father into getting the blessing. He wasn't worthy, but he recognized God's steadfast love and God's faithfulness to him through all of life's difficulties. He recognized the abundant gifts that God had bestowed upon him. He started with just the staff in his hand and now he's got these abundant blessings that God had given him and a family. And he acknowledges his fear. He's not afraid to say it to God. God, I'm afraid. And he prays for God's deliverance and he relies on God's promises. That faith that Jacob had came as a result of seeing God's hand in his life through all of those trials and difficulties and struggles through all of his journeying, both physical and metaphorical of his life. And I think that's just a beautiful thing to think about and thinking about the theme of this psalm that Israel's keeper, you know, he will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Let's remember that God was with Jacob and he promises to be with us as well. He promises to be with Israel, both the person and the nation and spiritual Israel as well. Look back

on your life and see God's steadfast love and faithfulness to you in your life and let it strengthen your faith and help you depend on him more as new trials and new difficulties come. So let's follow Jacob's model, recognize our unworthiness, recognize God's steadfast love and faithfulness and how it's been shown to us in our lives, to recognize God's abundant gifts,

to acknowledge that we have fear. There's reason to be fearful in times in our life, looking at things perhaps from a natural perspective, but we can look, we can lift our eyes to the hills and beyond the hills, above the hills, to God who dwells in the highest heaven and recognize that he can deliver us, to pray to him to deliver us and rely on him and to rely on the hope that we have because of his wonderful promises. In closing, I want to look at one passage from one little section of verses from Hosea chapter 12 that look back, Hosea is looking back on Jacob's life and picking up in verse four, it says, He or Jacob strove with the angel and prevailed. He wept and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel and there God spoke with us. In the Hebrew, the Septuagint and many translations also say with him. So anyway, it could be looked at two ways.

Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, the God of hosts, Yahweh is his memorial name, which is an echo back to Moses at the burning bush. Yahweh was called his memorial name, a name of remembrance. And so you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and to justice and wait continually for your God. And so when we think about the life of Jacob and we think about how God was with him as he journeyed through his life and how this Psalm really captures so much of that, it brings new depth of meaning to me when I look at that Psalm and think about how all of that, those parallels and how it connects to God's name, not just his name, but the meaning of his name, his memorial name, that he will be with us. And looking at Jacob's life and as this verse five here says, you know, or sorry, verse four, the end of verse four, you know, God spoke with Jacob at Bethel and told him that he was going to be with us, but he's also speaking with us and calling us to closer relationship with God, to greater faithfulness to him, to greater trust and reliance upon him. So Psalm 121, whether it was authored by Jacob or not, when you see this, these connections, it can give us a new appreciation of God being with his children, with us on our life's journeys. And just as he was with Israel, the person, he is with Israel, the nation, he's with all of God's children who have been naturally born to that family, but also to those who God has gathered together through Jesus to be part of that family. So