Gaining Stronger Faith in God
and
comfort from God
through reading Psalm 121.
As I share about
this psalm,
I will use the New King James Version.
The verse by verse
commentary
starts after
the music.
Note that we have historical information
about this psalm
after
the verse by verse commentary.
Psalm 121 Music
-
Two Psalm 121 Scripture songs
Beautiful music
to accompany God's Words
Another Psalm 121 Scripture song -
note that
we are not sure who wrote this psalm
Reading God’s word
builds confidence and faith
in the supernatural abilities of God
and
in the loving intentions
that God has toward each of us.
Psalm 121 verse 1 says,
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills –
from
whence comes my help?”
The idea of “Looking up” has great meaning.
To begin with -
think about the image of looking down.
Writers use the idea of looking down
to convey sadness, or discouragement, or depression.
This verse instructs us
to
look up
– to be encouraged –
to be expectant for God to help us.
I love Psalm 3:3 which says,
“But you, O Lord, are a shield for me,
My glory and the One who lifts up my head.”
Psalm 3:3 has the same idea as the
first verse of Psalm 121.
I’ve seen television shows portray a person who is
sad, and we - the viewers - know that person is sad, because
the person is looking down at the ground. Next,
we see another person walking over to gently take the sad person’s chin and tenderly lift it.
The Lord wants to tenderly lift our head up.
He wants us to reject all the negative thoughts that are trying to dominate our life, and he wants us to focus on him – the one who is our ever - present help.
Verse 2 says,
“My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.”
In this verse, God wants to remind us about the power of God.
It was God who made the beauty and the complexity of the earth, and it is God who made the vast and spectacular heavens.
When we compare our problems to our God – the comparison should increase our confidence in God’s ability to help us.
Verse 3 a says,
“He will not allow your foot to be moved.”
Here I see a picture of a person
who has made a commitment and a stand for God
and this verse assures that person
that God will secure his foothold.
There are several other psalms
that talk about surefootedness
such as Psalm 17:5
in which the psalmist says
to God,
“Uphold my steps in Your paths,
that my footsteps may not slip.”
Does God steady our footsteps
no matter what path we choose to walk?
Under what circumstances
does God steady our feet?
To answer those questions,
let's look at several verses in the Bible
that can help us
gain understanding.
I’ll highlight Psalm 26:12 a
that says,
“My foot stands in an even place.”
When you look up the phrase “even place”
in Strong’s Hebrew concordance,
it contains the idea of
a righteous place.
So here God is helping us understand
that choosing
to pursue righteousness
in our life
helps us keep from stumbling.
“Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor stands in the path of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord
and in his law
he meditates day and night.”
So we see that the person spoken of in Psalm 1
has positioned himself in the righteous paths of God.
My point is that
God helps us with surefootedness
as
we walk on HIS PATHS.
Verses 3 b - 4
“He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
So many times when we are facing
difficult circumstances,
we stumble because we doubt that
God is keeping constant watch over our situation.
~
The enemy of our soul wants to tell us
that God is really busy,
and
therefore he is not paying close attention.
But...
the Bible tells us that he is totally focused on us.
God focuses on each of us
as though there were no other people.
~
Because he is God,
he can totally focus on you,
and totally focus on me,
and
totally focus on everybody on the earth.
When I used to teach little preschoolers,
I would frequently tell them
that God will not make any more people
than he can keep up with!
I also reminded the children that Psalm 139 tells us that God knows when we sit down and when we stand up. He knows our thoughts. He knows what we will say BEFORE we say it.
God is not too busy!
So when God tells us that
“He who keeps you will not slumber” –
he is just giving us a word picture
to solidify in our mind
that he will never take his eyes off of us
or our situation.
It makes me feel good
to remind myself
that I have all the intellect of God
working for me every day.
I’ll continue with verse 5 –
“ The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.”
Wow, the Lord is your shade at your right hand!
Where I live, summer temperatures
sometimes go above 100 degrees –
this verse is a picture
of the relief that God gives us
from the extreme heat of our daily experiences.
Verse 6 says,
“The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.”
Here we see a poetic way of saying
that God can protect you
from things that could happen to you during the day
and things that could happen to you during the night.
Verse 7 says,
“The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.”
God tells us that he is our Protector.
He specifically highlights protecting our soul.
Our Soul
Our soul is made up of
our mind, our will, and our emotions.
So God is saying that his will
is to
preserve our mind, our will, and our emotions
from evil.
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Of course implied in that verse
is that
we will submit to him.
I am reminded of James 4:7 which says:
“Submit to God.
Resist the devil
and he will flee from you.”
Check out our James 4:7 POWER Page
Psalm 121 verse 8 says,
“The Lord shall preserve
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth, and even forevermore.”
The Hebrew word translated “preserve”
in verse 8
is used 6 times in this psalm.
Three times in the New King James version,
it is translated
“preserve,”
two times it is translated “keeps,”
and once it is translated “keeper.”
Obviously God wanted to emphasize
that word to us.
From Strong’s Hebrew Concordance,
we find that the definition of this Hebrew word
gives us the idea
of God
keeping, guarding, observing, watching,
and preserving us.
In this psalm,
God sends a message
of assurance
that he is working on our behalf.
~
He wants to
build our faith
about his love and protection.
Psalm 121 is a psalm intended
to help the Jews (and us)
build faith and trust
in the God of all salvation.
The Lord gave US this psalm
to increase
OUR Faith
about the assurance of God’s help
even though our enemies
(and challenging circumstances)
may be around about us.
All 150 psalms were at one time
put to music and sung to God
by Jewish worshippers.
Psalm 121 is called a Song of Ascent.
There are 15 Psalms of Ascent.
They are Psalms 120 – 134.
Psalm 120 is the first psalm of ascent.
The topic of that psalm
is the distress that the
Jewish people felt
as their enemies were threatening them.
The word “ascent” means to go up in elevation.
Jerusalem is higher in elevation
than the
surrounding area.
Most experts agree that
these were the
Psalms
that
the
biblical Jewish worshippers
sang
as they journeyed up
in elevation
to the town of Jerusalem.
The Bible tells us that
three times a year,
all the Jewish males
who lived outside of Jerusalem
were required to journey to Jerusalem.
Women and children were welcome,
but men were required.
These psalms were especially important
as
songs to sing for the journey
up to Jerusalem for these three feast times.
The three times a year occurred on
Passover, Pentecost, and the third feast was
the Feast of Tabernacles.
The Book of Psalms
God wrote the book of Psalms
to minister to our mind and to our emotions.
Psalms is a poetic book.
God’s poetry frequently uses word pictures
to help give understanding
and
stir our emotions in the right direction.
For all our Psalm pages click: Here
To see what other Bible studies we have available,
go to Bible Devotions.
Back to the top of Psalm 121
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