A Kept Person

Psalm 121 - A  Song of Ascents.
 ¹ I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
² My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
³ He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
 ⁵ The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
⁶ The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
⁷ The LORD will ^[a]protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
⁸ The LORD will ^[b]guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.  (NASB)

A Sobering Question - From Where comes my help? 
Who is going to help me in a time of great need or in the face of grave danger. The Psalmist knows where it will not come from - It won’t come from the hills, at least not just any hill.  The old adage,  "Head for the hills," promising safety on the high ground, the safe plateau.   Jeremiah 3:23  Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel. There are a lot of hills that will promise you help but cannot help.  Relationship, marriage, career, government, religion or education will not save you.   From where comes your help?

A  Strong Confession -My help comes from the LORD.  
  This is in the sense of Savior,  not in the sense merely of helping us help ourselves. We probably hear confessions similar to this that are less than genuine.  What I mean is there are all sorts of people who live their lives as practical atheists. They live each day with little thought of the Lord and no thought for His glory.  They do not aim to please the Lord and in fact care little whether he is pleased or not. Yet in a sentimental moment they say The Lord has helped me all these years.   Sometimes they believe the Lord has helped them to continue in sin.  That Is not the help the LORD gives. 

Psalm 70: 4  Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad  in  thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.  5  But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.

The Bold and Strong confession is the one that is desperate.  The one that says there is no other help for me.  I am hopeless without Him.  I am a drowning person and completely incapable of saving myself. I need a Savior. 

A Solid Assurance - The LORD is Your keeper

1. He is careful - He keeps me from slipping, that is, from slipping down the slope of sin.   He is careful when we are not. How often you will be able to look back on the providence of God and say with the Psalmist from Psalm 72 “My feet came close to stumbling."  You will say "If I would have taken another step in that direction I would have had a great fall."  You were warned of it early on in life -  “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great Fall, All the Kings Horses and All the Kinds men could not put humpty together again.”  If only the Lord had been Humpty Dumpty’s Keeper.  The LORD has promised to be a keeper to all who will trust in His Son Jesus Christ and he promises they will never Fall though they may stumble though they may struggle  they will never fall!
2. He is Tireless --  He never slumbers.  The idols and false gods of the Israelite neighbors were thought to be sometimes sleeping… or vacationing or even relieving themselves in the bathroom (cf. Elijah on Mt Carmel with the prophets of Baal).  Your Lord never tires of helping you. 
3. He Protects – Though we are not shielded from difficulty, we are shielded from destruction.  The LORD is my shade.  The psalmist in Psalm 32 speaks of “the fever heat of summer” and in Psalm 63 “being in a dry and weary land where there is no water” -  in middle eastern countries where protection from the sun was hard to find people were known to suffer from heat stroke, a condition that would cause immediate death or long term brain damage, so the promise of protection from the sun is a great comfort! 
4. He is Meek – at my Right hand - Psalm 16: 8  I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
1. The sad state of some -  Psalm 109: 6  Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.;  This is the state of those who live their lives apart from a genuine faith in Christ. 
5. He is Effective  – He will guard me from all evil.  He will not protect me from encountering evil, but  will surround me with His wings and keep me from being overcome by evil.  GREATER IS HE THAT IS IN YOU … THAN He that is in The world (1 John 4:4).  Job 13:15 Though he  slay   me , yet will I trust in him;  -  Daniel 3:  17  If it be [so], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver [us] out of thine hand, O king.  18  But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
6. He is Loving – He will keep my soul.
7. He is consistent – My going out and my coming in.  This is probably meant to include all of life, like the words in Psalm 139 "My sitting down and my rising up."  But,   we might consider the illustration to be one of a traveler who leaves home.  Maybe one who has to leave often to conduct his business.  His family wonders.. will he come home safely this time?  Will he be OK while he is away from us?  The traveler ponders in his own heart  “Will I make it home again?  Will I see my family?  Will a thief overcome me on the road?”   Here the psalmist is assured in his own heart – “He will keep me / guard me / preserve me… in my going out and my coming in!"