Where Does Your Help Come From? (Psalm 121)

Big Idea: Jesus is the helper of his people now and for eternity.

We’ve been looking at psalms of courage this summer, and we’re finally at the end. We’re also at one of my favorite psalms of all.

The question is: where will you turn for help when life gets hard?

This is a question that’s highly relevant to some of you, because you need help, and you need it yesterday. You have bills you can’t pay, problems you can’t solve, relationships that need help. There’s a group of us here that are at the end of our resources, and we know we need help, and we’re not afraid to admit it. When I ask you where you turn for help, you’re not really surprised. You know you need to turn somewhere.

There’s a whole other group here, though, that is going to be surprised by this question. Most of us go through life not knowing that we need help. Even if we did, we’re like the proverbial guy that won’t stop for directions. We may know we need help, but we’re not prepared to admit it to anyone else. When I ask you where you turn for help, you’re a little bit surprised.

But the truth is, we all need help. And the psalmist asks: where will you turn for the help you need?

Thousands of years ago, this question was asked on a fairly regular basis. Psalm 121 is one of the Songs of Ascent. These are songs of pilgrims who sang them during their journey to Jerusalem for one of the three yearly festivals. They’re songs that are meant to help God’s people as they travel to worship.

The trip was sometimes dangerous. You had to walk or ride for miles. There were no real roads — those came later — but just well-worn paths across the valleys.

God had told them to go — to come where his presence was (1 Kings 8:10–11) — but the road was dangerous and uncertain.
Along the road, the people met threats above and threats below, most of which they could not see or predict. They were fully exposed to scorching heat and volatile weather. Robbers hid in the caves and hills, knowing exactly when to expect their victims. The people knew they had to go, but they did not know if they would all make it. Surely, some didn’t. So, they felt fragile, vulnerable, unsafe. (Marshall Segal)

Jesus himself would have taken this trip many times. This is a song for rough roads, both back then on the way to Jerusalem, and for us as well.

The Question and Answer

And the psalm begins with a question that the psalmist asks of himself.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?

It’s possible that the speaker is looking to the hills in fear, scared of robbers who might be lurking there. But the term “lift up my eyes” is generally a positive one, as shown in Psalm 123: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!” So it’s possible that the pilgrim is approaching Jerusalem. And he asks himself the question as he gets closer: where does my help come from?

This is an important question for all of us to answer. Where does your help come from? Where do you get the help you need as you travel on dangerous paths on the way to your eternal home?

We need to do an honesty check here. I recently read a quote that really got me. Family therapist Jay Haley famously told his clients, “I don’t address problems; I address attempted solutions.” What are the attempted solutions that you turn to for help? What friends and coping mechanisms and strategies help you when you experience danger or trouble or need help?

I want you to think about this. How would you answer the question, “From where does my help come from?” The answer really matters.

The truth is, when we get into trouble, our first response is not usually to turn to God for help. We have all kinds of other places we turn for the help we need. Where will you turn when your life falls apart, or you feel discouraged or despondent, or you face a problem you just can’t solve on your own?

Here’s how the psalmist answered: “My help comes from the LORD.” That is a good answer! But what I love about the psalm is that he doesn’t stop there. This psalm is a meditation on why the Lord is so qualified to be the source of the help that we need. He doesn’t just give us the answer; he gives us the reasons why it’s good to turn to God for help.

It’s important we learn the answer. Where does our help come from? The Lord. Jesus is the helper of his people now and for eternity.

But it’s also good to learn the reasons for the answer. And the psalmist gives us three.

The Reasons

Why does our help come from the Lord? Because the Lord is a good helper for three reasons:

He is a good helper because he is the Creator.

Verse 2 says:

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

What qualifies the LORD to be our helper? He is the maker of heaven and earth. He is the Creator, and that makes him uniquely qualified to help us.

The Lord is not some tribal deity. He’s not just some minor god with limited power. Think about who God is.

As far as we know, the observable universe is some 90 billion light years wide, but we don’t even know. The Milky Way Galaxy alone has some 100 billion to 400 billion stars. God created all of it. How powerful is the Lord? We can’t even comprehend his power. He is very qualified to help you.

We can always turn to the highest power in the universe, the Maker of heaven and earth, when we need help with our small problems. You can get right through to him. You have access to the Creator of galaxies, stars, and everything around you. You have access to the most powerful One in the universe, and he cares for you.

The psalmist lifts our eyes “beyond the hills to the universe; beyond the universe to its Maker. Here is living help: primary, personal, wise, immeasurable” (Derek Kinder). There is no problem too big that God is not qualified to help. There isn’t an area of our lives that he isn’t powerful enough to help.

Need a strong God? How about the one who created the Milky Way? Have medical problems? Doctors and scientists are still unraveling his handiwork as they study the human body. He knows more than they ever will. Need relational help? The Creator is the one who created you for relationship. God can help you in every aspect of your life since he is the Creator of everything you see. The Creator is more than able to help.

Isaiah 40 puts it this way:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.

That is why we can trust the Lord. He is our Creator. We can rely on the One who has the power to meet all our needs in every aspect of our lives.

That’s the first reason why the Lord is a good helper. He is a good helper because he is Creator. Here’s the second reason:

He is a good helper because he is watchful.

Verses 3 and 4 say:

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.

One of the main ideas in this psalm is that God is watchful. The verb for guarding, watching, and protecting occurs six times. His point is clear: there is never a time that God is not watching his people. He pays very careful attention to them.

In verses 3 and 4, the psalmist contrasts God to the gods of the Ancient Near East. In the Ancient Near East, gods were frequently depicted as sleeping. Humans need sleep; gods do too, they believed. One story from 1800 BC describes a god who was awakened by humans. He wasn’t happy that they woke him up, so he cut off their food as punishment. In another story, a god complains about his lack of sleep because of the noise made by his offspring.

That is not the God that we worship! There is never a moment that he stops watching over his people. God never sleeps. He never nods off and stops looking after his people. God has a track record of dependability, of coming through for his people.

He watches over Israel, and all his people, and never falls asleep at the switch. God is faithful to his people.

As John Piper says, “God is a tireless worker… God is working for us around the clock. He does not take days off and he does not sleep.” We can sleep all night because God is up all night caring for us.

God is not forgetful of his people for even one moment. God is able to keep watch over you at all times.

It gets even more personal in verses 5 and 6 can say:

The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

Notice how personal this is getting. The psalmist started with God’s people. Now he’s talking about you. As Spurgeon put it:

He was always thinking upon us; and he is always thinking upon us. The infinite mind of God can think of all things at once. You and I, in thinking of one thing, often forget another; but it is not so with God. He is so great that his centre is everywhere, and his circumference is nowhere; and you, dear brother or sister, may be the very centre of God’s thoughts, and so may I; and all his redeemed may at the same moment have his thoughts fixed upon each one of them. Can you realize the wondrous truth that there never is a moment, night or day, in which the great mind of the Eternal ceases to think of you? Then, how safe you are with God always looking upon you! How happy you ought to be with God always thinking of you! Yea, how joyful you ought to be because, even if others forget you, he never does!

He is not just watchful over his people day and night. He is watchful over you personally day and night. He watches over you day and night, so that nothing happens to you outside his purposes for you, which are good. This doesn’t mean that bad things will never happen. History is full of bad things happening to God’s people.

But it does mean that he will never stop caring for you, never stop watching over you, never stop providing for you according to his will no matter what you go through. And nobody will ever be able to take away what matters most, because God is faithful to his people.

As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it:

Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.

Why is the Lord a good helper? He’s a good helper because he’s the Creator, and because he’s watchful over his people and of you.

But there’s one more reason why the Lord is a good helper:

He is a good helper because his care extends into eternity.

The final verses take us beyond our immediate circumstances and remind us that God will watch over us into the future too:

The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

Here’s what these verses tell us. He’s got you now, present tense. But he’s got you in the future too. He will keep you from evil. He will keep your life. He will keep your going out and coming in not just now but into eternity. It’s not just a promise for this life but for all time. God has promised good to his people throughout eternity.

The God who created this universe, the God who created all things, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses and David and Daniel is the same God who knows you by name. He knows your address. He saw what time you woke up this morning, and he knows what you ate for breakfast. God knows every detail of your life. Not only does he know it, but he cares. He’s interested in you. And he’s promised to go into your future with you, and he’ll never let you down.

Friends, you have a Savior who can help you. We are kept safe by Jesus who will not let us go. Where do you turn to help? There’s only one place to turn. Turn to Jesus, who created all things, who never takes his eye off you, and who will keep you not just now but forever. He is qualified to be your helper.

When we face troubles and trials, we never have to be afraid. We can take courage. He’s got you. Christian: the one who created all things is the one who loves you with an everlasting love, who knows you by name, who died for your sins, and will never let you go. And if you haven’t turned to him for help, you can turn to him today, because he is very qualified to be your helper.