Sermon #1,267: Psalm , Confirmation/Easter 7, Bethany-Princeton MN LEARN TO SAY: THE LORD IS MY KEEPER The Text, Psalm 121.

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1 Sermon #1,267: Psalm , Confirmation/Easter 7, Bethany-Princeton MN LEARN TO SAY: THE LORD IS MY KEEPER The Text, Psalm I will lift up my eyes to the hills From whence comes my help? 2 My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is your Keeper; The LORD is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. 8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore. Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. On behalf of these two catechumens we pray: We don t know what lies ahead for them, but we do know they will need to be protected, guarded and kept. We thank You, ahead of time, that You never sleep or slumber in watching over them. We ask You to keep their attention turned to You and when they need help to call on You. Also draw them to Your Word for help, because their greatest dangers are when their faith is under attack. Protect their faith and salvation by Your Word. Amen! Dear fellow redeemed, especially Ben and Carrie as you go forward with the Lord as your Keeper: Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! You both grew up in our Sunday School and also our Lutheran school together, from preschool to the upper grades. You have been every- Sunday church attenders all these years. It s been a very protective envi- 1

2 ronment for both of you, very secure. Lots of personal attention in our one-room school, being immersed in learning the Bible and catechism, going through Bible history day after day, year after year, and lots of care being taken to give you a loving environment in your school. On confirmation day, it s something to look back and see how many people have been watching out for the needs of your soul. The Bible says pastors are those who watch out for your souls (He 13:17). Pastors are the ones who give account to God for this, but they aren t the only ones who watch over your souls; we get a lot of help in this from the rest of the church. That s the beauty of the church. You are not alone. You ve never been alone in this in your young lives. At your baptism the church prayed for you. The church promised to help support your parents raising you in the faith. Now you are raised in the faith, today you come to the Sacrament of Christ s Body and Blood, you publicly confess the faith in its fullness that you were given in Baptism, so now the promises your sponsors made to support your being brought up in the true faith have been fulfilled. Others have been watching over your souls. This prepares us for the words of Psalm 121, which you ve learned by heart. Six times in these eight verses, we hear that the Lord keeps or preserves you. God has done this through the people who surround you in this church. But what about when they no longer surround you? So you have Psalm 121. It starts with a question from someone who feels alone, vulnerable: Whence comes my help? Where does my help come from? The psalm is not very specific about what the trouble is. It uses the picture of the foot being moved whatever makes one stumble or get tripped up and also the sun or moon striking a person when you feel faint, or burdened and weary, from oppressive heat, or when the mind is disordered in some way (the ancients called it moon-sickness ). But it all comes back to that question: Where does my help come from? or Where can I find help? Later in the psalm, it speaks of being kept safe from all evil. That s the real problem: all evil. It s all-encompassing. The psalm isn t real specific because evil always takes a different form. All evil comes from the Evil One, the devil. He is the deceiver, a liar from the beginning, so he will always change the way evil looks. 2

3 The devil doesn t want it to look evil; he wants it to look appealing. Our problem is usually that we don t recognize when we need help, that we aren t crying out and asking where our help comes from, but we look to the world, and various idols of our own making, which we place our love and reliance upon more than the true God. The devil will stop at nothing to separate you from God, often by making you self-reliant and independent of God and His Word. He wants you to believe that you don t need God, or you don t need God s forgiveness until your foot is moved and rather than standing firm you stumble and falter and don t live up to your confession of faith, your soul faints, your faith fails. Then Satan is out to convince you that you are all alone, God does not love you or forgive you, God will not take care of you, that you re abandoned and forsaken, that everything is dark for you, God has forgotten your needs and He is not listening, He isn t coming to help, you have to figure it out yourself, take care of yourself, make your own choices and make your way. The speaker of this psalm says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills. That is sort of right, but not really. The greatness of the mountains and hills is temporary; they can erode. It is the Maker of the hills that matters: My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth, including the hills. The Israelites copied the heathen and made altars to false gods on the hills. Those idols could not help. But God gave His people a place where His name would dwell: Mount Zion, Jerusalem. He said in Psalm 2: I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion, of whom He says: You are My Son, today I have begotten You. This is His only-begotten Son, Jesus, who died on a hill, on the cross on Mount Calvary, outside Jerusalem. Come to Calvary s holy mountain, sinners ruined by the Fall; here a pure and healing fountain flows to you, to me, to all (ELH #412 v. 1). This Jesus is proof that you aren t alone and you aren t without help. But He ascended to heaven; where is He? That s what this psalm is about. Like the disciples in the midst of the storm said: Jesus is here in the boat, but isn t He asleep? we receive the answer in this psalm, in the promise: He who keeps you will neither slumber nor sleep. Jesus did not just come close to the human race for a short while. He did not do the Savior work and then disappear, leaving you to come to Him on your own. 3

4 You are not only saved, Ben and Carrie. You are saved and kept. Six times in this psalm actually six times in six verses it says that the Lord keeps, which means He preserves, guards, protects, watches over. It is saying that He does watch over you, Ben, and He watches over you, Carrie. This is so great. I love some of the things Luther says about this: Our Lord is in every corner and watches every moment (Luther s Family Devotions, ed. Link/Baseley, p. 37) and: What greater comfort can one have in every adversity, every temptation, both temporal and spiritual, than that the Lord keeps an eye on [you,] that [you are] the Lord s concern? (LW 18:288). This keeping or guarding is an activity the Lord does, a doing word, a verb. It is so much what the Lord does, it s what He is. Do you want to know who God is, what He s like? God is the one who does this keeping and preserving thing. Nobody else does it like Him, no parent, no teacher, no pastor, no police officer. The Lord does it best, and perfectly. He does it so continuously and vigorously and determinedly Luther said, It is impossible for Him not to exercise care for us that He is described here as your Keeper and He who keeps. This is Jesus, your Good Shepherd. The Shepherd keeps His sheep, He guards and protects them, He watches over them closely. This is how I want you to think of these words about the Lord being your Keeper, Carrie and Ben: that this is Jesus. Jesus is always keeping you, because He is your Shepherd. Just like you learn to say, The Lord is my Shepherd, learn to say, The Lord is my Keeper! Jesus! He loves you! He died for you, He rose for you, and lives to hold onto you, to keep you and not lose you, as He says: My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and no one is able to snatch them out of My hand (Jn 10:28). You are never out of His hand or out of reach. How does He do this? Through His Word, specifically the Gospel, His words of forgiveness which He speaks at close range, in the church. The words of Jesus, His words of forgiveness that He commands to be spoken to you when you are sorry for your sins; His words in the Lord s Supper in which He says, for you, Ben for you, Carrie, His words of eternal life, this is how He is your Keeper, how He shall protect you from all evil, by His Word forgiving your sins, and this is how He shall preserve your soul, keep it for eternal life. 4

5 Your confirmation verse, Carrie, Romans 1:16, is about how He keeps you through His Word. To be not ashamed of the Gospel is to cling to the Gospel, that is, the forgiving words of Jesus. The devil tries to make you feel ashamed, yet there is no shame that the Gospel does not remove, and you love Jesus even more for it and are drawn to Him to keep close watch over you. This is the unassailable power of God to keep you for salvation through keeping you as one who believes. Your confirmation verse, Ben, Romans 5:8, is very clear what words keep you: the words Christ died for us. You verse says that this is how God demonstrates shows you that He loves you. Oh, the devil cannot compete with this power, the power of love, God s love, to keep you by constantly, in the Gospel and the words of the Sacrament, putting before you that Christ died for you, therefore God loves you! One final word: The last verse of the psalm is spoken at the end of every Baptism: The Lord preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore. It means that when you go out into the world where you get soiled with sin and when you come into the church to be cleansed of your sin Christ is with you, watching over you, protecting you with His Word, keeping you by His side and for Himself until the day you come in for good, when He, your Jesus, says to you: Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. We pray for you in these words: Good Shepherd of Thy sheep, Thine own defending, In love Thy children keep To life unending! (ELH #183 v. 3) Amen! 5