♪ ♪ ♪ The names of God are important. You know, If I want to get to know you and your husband, I'm going to get to know your names: Vicky and Henry. I'm going to get to know who you are as people, your characteristics, your nature: kind, generous, compassionate. I can begin to add things to your names that I associate with you because that is who you are. Now imagine that much more with God. He has revealed Himself though different names. When we say, “The LORD is my shepherd,” we know when we're reading in Hebrew, we have the name of God, Yahweh and the name for shepherd; they are attached. So we know when we look to God for guidance, “The LORD is my shepherd,” Psalm 23 in the Psalter, when we look to Him for guidance, we know we're calling on a name that He has indeed revealed Himself to be, not just in the Psalter, but through the whole book. In the New Testament, He's called the “great shepherd,” the “Chief Shepherd”; He says of Himself, “I am the good shepherd.” The same words, if you were to take; if you were to take a momentary lapse of language, you'd see the same words transcend Old and New regarding that nature, that particular nature of God. When people say, “Boy, I sure need to be healed,” well, you call on the name that's part; it's not just one, like “I'm only a healer-God,” or “I'm only a shepherd-God.” It's like taking what I've called (this really dates me) the kaleidoscope and looking up and turning the dials a little bit so you see shades of color that are so magnificent; and they change. They're the same colors, but depending on what your focus is, they will come more into view. You're sick and you need healing, you call on that name of God. He revealed Himself as a healing kind of God. And I almost hate to say, “healing kind of God,” because that's one of His natures, that's part of His Being. And if we want to look at that Being unfolded and revealed all we need to do is look at Christ when He came in the flesh. He walked those streets where normal people had their being, sick, diseased; they didn't gather in some super forum to see the super speaker. He came exactly to where they were to meet their needs, to heal them. And the Scripture says wherever He went, every manner of disease, He healed the people. That's part of His nature. Let me go back to that shepherd thought for a minute, because in particular it's not only to shepherd the people, but it's also to warn us of those that come to devour the flock, the danger of wandering sheep and the devourer that waits just craftily. This is why we need the imagery of this. So when I was looking at this Psalm, I saw something that I had missed and I, you know, I think we can live forever here, as long as we live, as long as this life exists here, and never exhaust what is called “the unsearchable riches” that are so neatly embedded in this book. So I found a wonderful name of God, which I don't ever remember really hearing too much on. But right there in Psalm 121, we have “The LORD is thy keeper.” Now it's a strange place for me to start, but I want to, I want to put that in your face as to what this message will be about: the Lord is━it says right there, verse 5, “The LORD is thy keeper.” So we're going to take a look at this and we're going to break it down under categories. And if you're here for the first time or you're relatively new, a lot of people say, “Well, you shouldn't write in a Bible.” I say you should. As long as the notes are legible or you may have to do what I do, which is cover my book in Post-its because there's no more room in the margins, so I have to use Post-its to add to; but make notes. I'm going to give you some header words that I hope you will return to again and again. And each time we do take apart the Scriptures like this, I always think to myself, you know, if it's merely just an exercise; you come to church, “Preacher, preach something good,” and it's not applied, it's wasted. If it's not applied, it's wasted. Now some people spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to apply. Well, then, all I have to do is say, “Keep reading, keep revisiting the message and the principles of the message.” Just to speak for an hour, I'm not interested, just merely to give some discourse and okay, I've done my two, four and━I'm not interested. I'm interested in this having an impact. When I hear other ministries that are not preaching out of the word say, “This is life changing!” I think, in which life? But these are the life transforming truths of God. So, first I want to read. I haven't done this in a long time. I want to read out of, this is actually one of Dr. Scott's favorite people to read from: Dr. James Boice, who is now deceased, but his legacy of his teaching, some of his teaching lives on in a few volume; three volumes of the Psalms. He's done different commentaries and I'll just say a footnote. If you read his work, all you have to do is, if you're familiar with his, the people that came before him, you'll hear shades of Lloyd Jones and Dr. Barnhouse and you'll even hear shreds of G. Campbell Morgan in there, because it was all, that all came out of that same church that for at least for a time they all trickled down into that Tenth Presbyterian Church; I say for a time. But out of this, which is the Volume Three, I want to read what, what he says about this Psalm before I get into it. He says, “All of us have scenes from childhood that we remember gratefully, even if our childhood days were not particularly happy. Mine were. I think back on them with growing thanksgiving as the years go by. Some of the scenes I remember thankfully are when my mother would gather our family together to read Psalm 121, and to pray with us before one of the children left home or the family started on a trip.” What is that Psalm? “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”; I love that. Right there speaks of God's omnipotent force which made heaven and earth. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” “The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” Now I'm going to go back to read Boice, but right now, I want you to circle some words for me, please, through the Psalm, because they're all the same Hebrew word. Each time that you read the following: “He that keepeth,” verse 3, “He that keepeth.” So “keepeth” is our focus; verse 4; “The LORD is thy keeper,” verse 5. Verse 7, “the LORD shall preserve,” the same Hebrew word as keeper; “He shall preserve thy soul,” the same. So in verse 7, twice; and in verse 8, it's all the same Hebrew word, “the LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in,” all the same. We get the three━you know, I'll give you; I will give you language when it is relevant, not just gratuitously. This is quite relevant. So we have here these three Hebrew letters and we'll talk about the definition in a minute of what this means, but I've read the Psalm to you, and then we're going to pick this Psalm apart and we're going to find a lot of good stuff here that we might have just passed by. Now, back to Dr. Boice; he says, “I can close my eyes and see our family seated in a circle in our living room and hear those words now. This was my mother's Psalm for her family, because so many of those going out and coming in were my own, there is a sense in which Psalm 121 became my travel Psalm.” And if you read any commentaries, you'll sometimes here this referred to as “The Travel Psalm.” I really; I'm not really sure that I want to call it that. If there's anything, I don't want it to be something that pertains to us. There is the pilgrimage element, yes, but there's something even greater, which makes everything else pale by comparison. And he goes on and I would like to read this to you to show you, just to kind of give you a touch like a daisy-chain. You know, something that keeps going, it's connected, it keeps going, it keeps going, it━so the source of power and then it just keeps going. And the word of God has done that and refreshed many, many souls through the ages. And he mentions here one of probably the more famous Christians. “David Livingston, famous missionary and explorer of the continent of Africa read Psalm 121 and Psalm 135, which praises God for His sovereign rule over all things, as he worshiped with his father and his sister before setting out for Africa in 1840. His mother-in-law wrote him, wrote to him that Psalm 121 was always in her mind as she thought about and prayed for him. J. S. Watson, a rear admiral in the United States Navy and the successor to Admiral Dewey, who commanded the U. S. fleet in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War wrote, 'My favorite chapter is the travelers Psalm, 121. The seventh and eighth verses mean more to me than any other.'” I could keep going, but I just wanted to give you the snapshot, if you will, of how many have gone to this for refreshment over the course of time. These are the ones we know that are chronicled, but how many thousands, millions have turned to this Psalm? So I first would like to point out two things and I'd like you to make some notes in your Bible. The first thing is that interestingly, verses 1 and 2 are in the first person, singular. And the remainder of the Psalm is in the third person, singular. I want you to see this. “I will lift up mine eyes,” and “I” and “my,” first person: “my help.” So you can see, and then immediately in that 3rd verse we have a change, it goes to the third person: “He will not suffer,” “He that keepeth.” So we have; and commentators are, they're never agreed on anything. It's like married people. But they have this great disagreement about what's going on here. I would like to just say simply that we have a declaration. And whether there are two speakers, or whether it's one speaker who is addressing something and then goes on to say as in a narrative form, I don't know. I just want you to see that there are two different voices, two different; and I think I might even engage in saying two different peoples. Wow, that was a good grammar; good grief; good grammar, all right. So I want to break these up into headings. If we look at verse 1 and 2, simply put, these; this is not part of the heading, this is just to say this is who is doing the doing, who is doing the keeping, who is doing the safeguarding here when the Psalmist says, “I look to the hills.” And the hills, by the way, in this song of degrees or song of ascent; the hills didn't possess any power. It was the concept of looking up. I mean, if you were, and some have debated whether this was written in Hezekiah's day or later. All I can tell you is that the hills themselves did not possess power, but the concept very much Jewish in nature, the hill of God or the mount of God, always referring to the upward look, if you will. That specific mount, I can tell you that the hills don't possess the power, but the power comes from the One who made the hills, who made heaven and earth. Now I'd like you to begin by putting some; here at the 3rd verse, we'll put some headings down here. First, we're going to encounter the problem of weariness. You might say, “Well, where? I don't see that.” Well, you will in a minute, of weariness. And there are two things that I would like to say when it says, “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Just stop right there, because we're going to only look at that momentarily. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Now when we treat the Scripture and we do something like this, we have to be very careful. That's why the language comes in handy. I want you to make sure that you put somewhere that in the Hebrew, “He will not” the word, the negative “not” is not an absolute definitive like 'lo.' Remember that teaching on lo-ammi, “not my people,” definitively not. This is a different particle that says, “Perhaps,” there; there's a little wiggle room right there: “may not.” It's not a definitive, unequivocal and that's important, because people will say, “Well, but I; but I went to this and thus-and-so happened.” Now there are no contradictions in God's word and I'm going to show you one place today where some will have an argument with me, but that's your problem, not mine. The problem of weariness: “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Now let's talk about this. First of all, the concept of moving. I had to pick this apart in pieces to make it make sense, so you're going to have to indulge me to go through this. You know, when people say, “Well, I read this: 'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved,' does that mean like; like ah-?” "Like that?" No. It means like this: if we were using this word as a verb, it would mean “to remove, to retire, to deviate from a right path, to dwindle, to diminish, to grow weak,” but as a noun, it means “shaken” and is used as a figure of oppression. Now I want you to kind of put that in your mind, because sometimes we read those Psalms, “I shall not be moved,” but we don't understand that that word as a noun connotes a figure of oppression. Now how many of you know it's the lot of the Christian, it's the lot of the believer to be attacked, oppressed, burdened down? So this should be the Psalm that everybody grabs hold of immediately, because it describes us right at the get-go, so that's number one. Number two, it's interesting that if you go through the Scriptures, you find the feet; de feet, not de victory; de feet; no, you find the feet are attached to many things and here's what's interesting. I had to make a plethora of notes here to make sure that I got them all, because it's; there's a lot of them. In terms of spiritual weakness, remember, I'm going to talk about the fact that the foot, God knows in our walk, our proneness to slip. Please put that somewhere, even if it just becomes a Post-it. He knows our proneness to slip. I think people come into the church and they think, “I'm saved! And I'll never slip again.” Tell that to satan and then look out. You know the hardest part of being a believer is when you do slip, because you expected not to. And I'd ask you if you are like one of those who's slipped just a little bit, maybe it's in a transgression or something that you've done that you look at and you say, “Boy!” I'm not talking about the condition, our condition of sin, I'm talking about things that then become the burden of guilt on your conscience; that type of slipping. I want to ask you are you any better than the apostle Peter, who was with the Lord, who was given a specific charge and yet failed? It was predicted for him to fail. I hate to say it that way, because I'm not into wind up everything, but it was predicted for him to fail. It was also predicted that he would be restored. And that's the beauty of that that we read in the New Testament. That slipping saints; and, forgive me for saying it that way, but that's the best way to put it; we have a pattern to look to. What do you think? That once Peter, after the day of Pentecost, he never slipped again? Well, then you'd better read the book of Acts. He made a couple of blunders along the way there, too, and I'm sure things that are not recorded for us. You can't be perfect. Neither can I. Just remember that when the next time you slip and you begin to crucify yourself for your slipping, take it to the cross. If what we know about Jesus is true, it says, “The LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all, and all we like sheep have gone astray,” and we do. We stray all the daylong I think in our minds; some of us minds, some of us action, but Jesus said, “If you think the thought, it's as bad as the deed.” What God wants you to do is He wants you to trust Him. And you let the Perfect One perfect you eventually when you stand in His presence. Along the way, expect to slip. Then you can say, “Well, she said so.” Now, that's not license then to say, “Well, if I know I'm going to slip, then I can slip all the more,” Romans 6. No. Just recognize God's grace and accept it today. Now I like this, because the problem of weariness and talking about the foot, the foot is how we make our pilgrimage, our Christian walk people refer to. And I'm now underneath that heading of weakness, so under the heading of “the problem of weariness,” I want you to put “weakness.” And I wrote down a few Psalms. All you have to do is write down the numbers and you can go read them later. I will read them to you. Psalm 73 and verse 2 says, “But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.” You know, if you read these things just randomly, “My feet were almost gone,” “Your feet shall not be taken,” “Your feet shall not be moved,” you'd think somebody's walking around with a big machete. And you know what? There is somebody walking around with a big machete. His name is satan, if he can stop your walk; and some have been hindered that way. But these are just in weakness; Psalm 94 and verse 18, “When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up,” that's in weakness. These are all under the heading of “the problem of weariness.” The next one is “worship.” You'd never think that, but the foot is also required. When we speak of “the feet shod with the gospel of peace,” we don't equate that necessarily to worship, but it takes your feet, if you came into the sanctuary by some method, even if you're in a wheelchair by wheels, it still took the method of movement to get you here today in worship. Speaking of the sanctuary, Isaiah 60 and verse 13 says, I will, “I will make the place of my feet glorious.” That is speaking of the place of worship: the sanctuary. People can get weary and weak in regards to coming into the sanctuary. They get lazy, but specifically, if you think about it, this should be a glorious place. This should be a place where God is; His name is lifted up, we give Him praise, we; we're getting equipped. Some don't see it that way, so there's the weariness factor in worship. And also from Ecclesiastes; you just write these down, later you can go check them out. Ecclesiastes 5:1 says, “Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of the God, and be more ready to hear.” Now there's other stuff that comes after that, but I like that one. You know why? Because on your way here the devil may actually try and stop you from coming in or getting here; never had a flat tire except on a Sunday morning. I never had stomach flu or food poisoning except from Saturday night that affected me Sunday morning. You think about all those little, we'll call them the nitpicking things that if you start looking at them you say, well, somebody tried to hinder you, so I like that Ecclesiastes 5:1, “Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of God, and be more ready to hear.” Don't just come in here weary from the week and weak from the week, but “more ready to hear.” That's pretty good. Well, I still have more under this heading and there's a few headings, so this is like; the big heading is “the problem of weariness.” And these are all A, B, C, D underneath it. The next one is warfare. You know, we get tired after awhile because unless somebody says that the Christian walk is a battlefield for your soul you get tired. “Oh, you don't want to know what type of a week I had. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ho!” That much, I had to add the extra one at the end there because it was so bad. It's warfare! This is why I have no sympathy for people who will not educate themselves on what Paul writes so profoundly regarding the wiles of the devil. We are not ignorant of his devices. He uses many means and warfare, attacking the saints, so I like the fact I took two out Proverbs, believe it or not that I'm going to read. Put them down somewhere and you can read them later. One is Proverbs 3:26, “The LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep” thee or, “keep thy foot from being taken.” That's, you know, if you read that out of context, just randomly, “Whoa! Who wants my foot?” You know, when you see those mannequins in the window and they, they remove the foot, it's like in a socket; who wants the foot? “The LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” Wait! Stop! Thief! But isn't that how satan comes anyway, as a thief? And Proverbs 4:27 says, “Remove thy foot from evil.” And I want you to think in the realm of being weary in spiritual warfare, then, “remove thy foot from evil.” Don't, you know, you can talk about good company and bad company, but if you're placing yourself in the realm of what I call toxic acquaintances, you will become toxic too over time. And don't think that toxic people actually will, you will clean them. You know that picture we've used many times of a little bit of ink into clean water, it taints the whole thing. And I've got; I could go down the Scriptures to back up what I'm saying, but I don't think I need to. I think you understand. Now all of this being said under this heading for verse 3, “He will not suffer thy foot,” that is not “This is never going to happen” type of “not.” This is the possibility, the preventive factor if you will, but not absolute. That means you still might slip. I'm not preaching “once saved, always saved” here. And by the way, this church should be the banner for that, because I've seen people fall away who were strong professors and “You've got to have faith! And no matter what, we're uncommon,” and yeah, they're just like other common people: they fell away. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Now if you're, if you're a Hebrew scholar or if you're learning Hebrew with me, I just want to point out one thing. This is the fun pun with words. I had to put this somewhere. That word for mowt, which I described for you, “remove, retire,” not to be confused with moot, which is death: “I will not suffer your foot to die,” mm, no. It's not saying that. Now, I'm still under that heading, “He that keepeth thee will not slumber.” Now, put the whole thing together. We're referring to slipping saints and slumbering saints. He will not slumber, but you may. That is a possibility. In fact, it's a reality if you're a human being. You will actually go to sleep eventually, even if you think you suffer from insomnia, eventually you will go to sleep. And I love the fact that it's like he's saying, “He knows our frame.” So then, let me in discussing this, say a few things. “He that keepeth thee will not slumber,” Let's talk about that Hebrew word, “keepeth.” Because as you see, “keepeth,” “keepeth,” “keeper,” “preserve”; it's all the same word and in the Hebrew, we have vast uses for this particular word. The first occurrence of it, for the same Hebrew word, if you're a Strong's person, you can look it up in the Strong's for yourself under 8104. I like to give you the tools and say check it out if you want. I've done my homework, if you don't believe me; you can go check it out for yourselves. I don't care. So, that word is first used in Genesis 2:15, where God says that Adam was given charge of the garden, to dress it and to keep it. And I want you to think carefully about the shades of meaning we're going to put down here as to how they may apply to God towards us in the use in this Psalm. So, in Genesis 2:15, we have Adam given the charge regarding the garden, to dress it and keep it. And I want you to think of tending with care. If you were reading from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation, 2nd, 3rd century B.C, and I'll come back to say a few more words on that translation in a minute, you would see the words make more sense, “dress it and keep it,” one is “to work it,” and the other one is to essentially “guard, tend and care for.” So we have the guarding and the tending, and the caring for, first time it's used. The second time it's used, same place in the book of Genesis, where God places that flaming sword right there with the Cherubim, to guard or to keep the way of the tree of life, that is to protect; to safeguard. Think of it as a watchman, a sentinel on duty. I want you to see the shades of meanings that this will carry in its use to better make the application into the Psalm when we talk about “the LORD is our keeper.” I want you to attach all of these things, that the Lord is tending, like this is His garden or the fruit that may come up there from or out of it, is His, He is; go to John, I hate to say it, John 15, He's the, He's the vinedresser and Jesus, the true Vine. See, I love the way you cannot escape certain things from the Bible, they are so masterfully; no, no human person could have done this. That's why I say people who don't read the Bible I feel sorry for you, you're missing out on something incredible. So, the next place, as I said, Genesis 3:24, to keep the tree of life, “to keep the way of the tree of life,” that is to protect or to guard. Next we have God saying, “Keep the sabbath.” Same word again, same Hebrew word, every time I'm giving you this except it has shades of meaning, “to observe, to uphold”: keep the sabbath. Another place in Exodus, in Exodus 22, I believe it is, we had some fun with this on Festival, because I got the information from one of my dictionaries that had a mistake in it, but in Exodus 22 it speaks of when a person leaves their property in trust with somebody else and it is stolen, the person to whom it was entrusted must pay back, or pay twice restitution, twofold. But the word is used there for property in trust. In the New Testament it says we have received the arrabon, the part payment, the deposit, that's what is in trust, if you will. So all of these come back to that word “to keep: to keep, to protect, to guard,” there are many more by the way. I love the fact that we could talk of the way God, it says He'll keep you as the apple of His eye; something precious. And elsewhere we're told in the book of Malachi, it says when He makes up His, when He makes up His jewels, when He takes His jewels at the last, that's Malachi 3:17. Don't turn there. I might as while check out the Scripture reference I'm giving you, I think its Malachi 3 and 17, “They shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.” He calls you precious treasures somewhere else. In the New Testament, in fact, out of 1 Peter, “peculiar,” but treasure: jewels! Now I want you to think if only in the fleshly realm, let's talk about the most famous jewels that are guarded in Buckingham Palace, and guards guard those stones. Their; their whole assignment is to stand on guard. By the way, these things are locked away in a vault, inside another vault, inside another vault, but they're standing there on watch protecting the door of that door, of that door, of that door. Precious jewels; how much more the people of God? And I'm taking that page out of Malachi to say, when he says “When I make up my jewels,” you are His treasure people. I'm mixing Old and New, if you know the Scripture, you know what Scriptures I'm pulling from. So I want you to think about that. That concept “to keep” goes a long, long way. Now interestingly enough, I want you to put this somewhere that when it says, “He that keepeth thee”" and I've just given you all the shades of possibility through the Scripture, and I'm sure there are many, many more, “will not slumber.” If you were to look up the word for “slumber,” yes, it indeed means what it means, the way we understand it, but it also is a figure of inactivity. So He that watches you, protects you, preserves you, cares for you; we say the imagery of sheep through the Bible, and He is our Chief and Great Shepherd, He calls Himself the good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. Think of that, “will not slumber,” figure of inactivity. God is not inactive. “Well, I don't see Him doing anything.” Did He have to ask your permission to begin to put things in motion that you cannot yet see? No! “Well I sure wish He'd hurry up so I could see it. If I could see it, it would help; it would encourage me!” Well that's why we teach you about faith, because the minute you can see and you can latch on to it, you don't need any more faith; you don't need any more faith! That's why you're given these, you know, this, it's like could somebody please educate people about the life of faith? It's not “Well, I have faith and the faith that I had yesterday will just, we're just smooth sailing until we get there.” No! Because the minute you grab hold of something that God said, that you waited for, that becomes a fact, which was not yet realized, if you don't grab hold of another thing to faithe on, it's like dying on the vine. There's not fruit coming out of that, which is laboring to enter into, as the book of Hebrews talks so profoundly about. So, I want you to just keep all of this. “Behold he that keepeth,” same word again, “Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. For the LORD is thy keeper.” I want you to, I want you to take this word, put it somewhere where you can, even if you don't, if you're not taking Hebrew with me, that's the word for Yahweh, Ya-ha-weh, and we have here; I love this; we have here, sho, sho, this signifying “He is your,” and we have here “keeper,” and we have this active━I'm going to do this whether you like it or not━we have this active participle right here, which tells me something about, in Hebrew we have voice, we either have passive or active. Passive is, I stand still and I'm the recipient. Here God is the subject, and He is actively carrying out the action on you: He, He is tending you, He is preserving you, He is watching you, He is guarding you. I can't think of a name of God, thus far that encompasses so many different things that you need those shades of Scripture to really put it, to wrap your mind around it. But, Yahweh Shomrecha. And I love the fact that He does that active work; He's not inactive. Now that's us. We tend to get very zealous and then after a while you get tired; not God. This is why this Psalm has taken on its own, for me, there's so much, so much going on in here. So we have the first heading, we used “the problem of weariness,” the second one I want you to put down somewhere, which is, which is under its own heading, “the problem of weakness.” We mentioned weakness under weariness, but the problem of weakness, that is: what does and can happen, “The LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.” It's kind of a strange saying, if you will, but not strange if you understand. Now there's some people who believe, like this Pulpit Commentary, and the commentators, this is old timey stuff here. They believe that “thy shade,” “The LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand,” is, means━I'm reading from the Pulpit Commentary, means, “thy protection,” “thy shade means thy protection, thy defense. Protection was especially needed on the right hand, as the side which no shield guarded.” Now I'm not so certain about that, but I am going to say this, that in attaching it to the next verse it kind of makes sense, the problem of weakness: “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” I want you to put down here, “times and seasons.” That's probably the best way I want us to make an application. You know if you can't apply it, it's great to understand something, but if you can't apply it, it just, there's a disconnect somewhere. I want you to put down, 'times and seasons." You know, I can say this, like we'll just put it colloquially, what may happen in broad daylight or what may happen at night. I want you to put it in that frame. So, the problem of weakness, sometimes I think, when it's daytime, as long as you can look out the window and it's sunny, or it's even partly cloudy but it's light, some of us don't think about the issues, but it's when it comes to nighttime, the mind starts going, it's like crank up the volume inside the head, because there you go: “It's nighttime: da, da, da, da, da, da, da”━it's like one of those of those, you know, and then if you're really lucky it is like jack-in-the-box, because it's so cranked up, that by the time you lay your head down and you think you're going to fall asleep, you go gasp! You wake up and it's like; it is; it's like that clown popping out of the box. So, I'm going to say what Corrie ten Boom said, “You go to sleep at night, knowing while you're sleeping, He's not.” I love some of her very simple expressions and things that she said; “While you're asleep, He's not.” So day or night; seasons, “times and seasons.” Then, that's a very short header right there. The next one; I'm keeping them all in the W's so you can just keep track of them. We have “weariness,” “the problem of weakness,” here's “the problem of wickedness.” “The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil.” You know when I read that I thought to myself, isn't that incredible, that you can read this here, “The LORD preserve thee,” He'll guard, He'll protect, He'll tend, He'll care “from all evil.” And I think there should be a condition to all this: you are connected by faith. This is not a promise that no ill will befall you. There's nothing here that says, “God's going to prevent you,” in fact, I, I'm tempted to jump to this passage right here, out of Boice. He has something that he's quoting, the translator, believe it or not, of the Message Bible, I believe it is who made a quote, but it's pretty good, regarding this Psalm. But this not, this whole Psalm is not a promise that God now is going to is make sure that nothing happens to you. Let me read this, again from Dr. Boice, but he is quoting, and I'm pretty sure that this is the fellow who did the Message Bible, Eugene Peterson. If I'm wrong, somebody can tell me later. That name just is attached to that for some reason. “The Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord, nor a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare blue ribbons and gold medals with others who've made it, into the winner's circle.” There's a couple of churches like that. “The Christian life is going to God. In going to God, Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air,” not in some churches, “drink the same water, shop in the same stores,” not in some churches, “read the same newspapers,” oh, that's a sin, “are citizens under the same governments, paying the same prices for their grocery and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses and are buried in the same ground.” That's probably the most correct thing to put a period after. “The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil; He will keep our life.” Now I like that because it puts it to the place very succinctly to say, this isn't a promise against nothing that's, you know, now that you, “Now that you're in folks. . .” No, I say that you're here, look out. Make this a part of the equation that He's watching you. He is keeping you. You know, we did a big study on Psalm 91, where it says “He will give his angels charge.” And I think there's nothing that the angels do without God saying, “Go!” He'll give them; they don't just go independantly and say, “Hey, you know I think we're going to help out that guy over there today, because he looks pretty bad.” God says, “Go.” He assigns, all right. So, and this may be, honestly this may be, because I'm going to, I need to bring this to a close, this may be the last one that I find as maybe the most powerful one in my opinion. “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, even for evermore.” I want you to put somewhere "the problem of waywardness.” Now if you read this you might think that what its saying is, “As you, as you skip and doodle and daddle through the passages of life, your comings and goings and,” yeah? But I want you to see something nestled in there that only the language could point out. I had to look to the Septuagint translation of this to find what I knew was there. The Septuagint, if you're interested, because I mention things and there are new people listening who, ah. They don't even━“What? What is she saying? The Septua-what?” The Septuagint was that translation made in the 2nd, 3rd century BC. To make a short version of this, it was the Greek translation of the Hebrew text. There was no New Testament yet. And it was put into Greek for, primarily for, the Jews at Alexandra and this was done because back there in the 323's, about the time of Alexander the Great when he conquered the then known world, Greek became the language, the lingua franca, as the scholars like to put it, the language that was spoken in those territories. In those places, Greek was the language. I know this is hard to believe, for English speakers, my goodness, but Greek was the language of the then known world at that time. So Jews living at Alexandria needed to have the ability to read the Scriptures in the Greek tongue. People who were born at Alexandria and were raised would not have any frame of reference with Hebrew; they associated with Greek growing up then. So, here we have the translation, which, if you want to go check that out you can look in reference books. You'll find Josephus mentions it, the, some of the Tractates and other places will mention the Septuagint, which is nothing but the Greek letters, LXX, which is Roman letters for seventy. Reportedly 70 or 72 scholars made the translation of the Hebrew Bible/text into the Greek tongue. Now, this is what I love about this. When I read verse 8 in the Hebrew, I just thought how beautiful, how very beautiful that the Lord will preserve, He will guard, He will; He will tend, He will protect. But then I had to go, as I said, to the Greek and I like this. “Thy goings out,” it comes first in the text and there's a good reason for that. In the Greek, in the Septuagint that word is: Exodon, from where we have gotten the word for the book Exodus. I just want you to think of that as such a gentle peace that comes upon me when I think about the fact, when it says “The LORD shall keep you in your going out.” It's not just the goings out of life, but in the Exodus, like the children of Israel who were led out of Egypt's bondage and God led them all the way. The exodus is the telling of God freeing His people and putting them into the land He promised, except we have a little bit different frame of reference. Unlike the children of Israel who would not listen, they murmured and complained, we know of the land of which He speaks of to us through His word: eternity, heaven. So I want you to think of this, that, I love the fact that it didn't say, “From your coming in and your going out,” but the going out word is first: from your exodus, your personal exodus, the beginning of you being freed. As the Scripture tells us we were aliens, we were dead in trespasses and sins. From your exodus out of that life to becoming a new creature in Christ, from your, from your exodus to your coming in. And I, I look at that word coming in and it doesn't really register anything particularly special in the Greek except with that exodon being in the front, I think the coming in is the final place where I stand before Him and He looks at me and He looks at you and He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter in.” I love this because it just has such a profoundness to it. Now, I said “the problem of waywardness,” because I want you to, as a reminder remember this: your lifelong journey, much like the children of Israel, it began at the point where you understood; not when you said a prayer or when somebody gave you beads or━it began at the point where you recognized, I'm a sinner. And I'm not a sinner because of one specific sin. I'm not a sinner because of the lifestyle I led or I lead or I choose to live. But rather I'm a sinner trapped in this clay body, made in the image and likeness of Adam, who was and became the picture or the blueprint for all mankind. The waywardness, the possibilities; we think we have been liberated from that and I kind of think it's like, we begin to walk and we forget about the dangers. And as I mentioned at the first, we need a Great Shepherd, a Chief Shepherd. Why? Because there's both the danger of the sheep that wander and of the ravenous wolves that come to consume. And waywardness, by the way, is not a mark; that's why I talked about slipping saints; it's not a mark that something's wrong with you. That's woven into the tapestry, the fabric of our human nature. That's why we need to stay in the word; we need to keep coming back to the word. So, I would just want to leave you with this thought: “The LORD shall preserve thy going out” from your exodus until the time you set foot in His presence. You know, I'll paint a picture that is just simply a poetic one where the door opens and the door closes. And the door that closes behind you is the entrance to eternity that begins the rest of your life. Forgive the poetry, but that's how I envision this all: “for evermore." Now, you might think it a strange thing, but how many of you have walked into a home where you've seen a Mezuzah? Jewish people put something on the side of their door, it's at an angle; you ever see that? It's called a Mezuzah. And inside the Mezuzah is a Scripture, actually two; one out of Deuteronomy. You might like to know this and you can impress your Jewish friends. But, because the Scripture says, “You shall put my word on your doorpost,” first of all why it's at an angle, believe it or not, the rabbis, the scholars couldn't agree whether it should be this way or that way, so they compromised and put it at a slant. They'll tell you all kinds of stuff, but if you really look, you research it you'll find that yourself. The second thing is that if you look you'll find a Hebrew letter on the very cover usually, and it's this one with the dot right there. And why? Because the first word inside the scroll, which is called the shema, from the prayer, “Oh hear, oh Israel.” And there are two Scriptures inside. One of them is out of Deuteronomy, the second Scripture and traditionally, this is traditionally how it was that what was inside there, that little scroll, as people came and went they would kiss that doorpost and they would recite the last words of our Psalm, “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” That's how they understood it, to kiss the word and the word would touch your lips. Now you know I'm, I look at different forms of worship, when I speak of Catholics that take beads or Jews that have their Mezuzah, but there's something behind all this that I find fascinating that they did understand that was to keep God's word on your lips will guard you, will keep you from waywardness. You know if your mind is stayed on Him; now I'm not suggesting that you go out and buy a Mezuzah and affix it to your doorpost, but I am saying that's the beauty of all this. That even the Jews taking this as a frame of reference, they understood that particular beauty, that in their concept it was the comings and the goings out of their home. I look at our house as the tabernacle that we live in now until the time comes that we are clothed in His righteousness and in His glory. Until that time He shall watch you, guard you, keep you: the Lord is our Keeper. Just remember that, nestle that somewhere: the Lord is our Keeper. There's that beautiful name attached to this incredible Psalm. I hope that when you start to think about all the ways that this could be attached, you could even take this into the New Testament. You want to plug it into the New Testament? Read John 17, where Jesus says, “I have kept these”" If you were reading the Septuagint from this and you were reading the Greek it's the same word: “I have kept these, Father, that thou hast given me.” It's like God is saying the same thing, over and over again, if you'll look to Him. That's where my help comes from. That's where my, when I lose my way, when I need the reassurance, look to this Psalm, it'll give you some clue that all of these actions of God are for you, the frame of reference and the focus: the Lord is our Keeper. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you'd like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
