Psalms 121:7-8

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil

Preserved Item all evil

Lawyers, when they are drawing up important documents, frequently con-elude with some general terms to meet any emergency which may possibly occur.

They do this on the principle that what is not in may be supposed to be intentionally left out. In order to guard against this inference, they are not content with inserting a number of particular cases; they conclude with a general statement, which includes everything, whether expressed or not. A similar formula is inserted here. It is of great importance that the feet of travellers be kept front sliding as they pursue their journey. It is of great importance that they be preserved from heat by day and from cold by night. But other dangers await them, from which they require protection; and lest the suspicion be entertained that no provision is made for these being surmounted, they are all introduced in the saving and comprehensive clause. No matter what may be their character, no matter from what quarter they may appear, no matter when they may come, and no matter how long they may continue, the declaration covers them all. Divine grace changes the nature of everything it handles, and transforms everything it touches into gold. Afflictions are overruled for good; and the virtues of the Christian life are developed with unusual lustre. “The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.” (N. McMichael.)

Preservation in unguarded moments

“Guard me when I am off my guard,” prayed one the other day. It was a wise prayer, for it is not the danger against which we have fortified ourselves, the temptations which we know and are watching, which are so likely to compass a fall as some unthought-of point where no peril was suspected. Look back over the days, and you will find that their failures have nearly always been in unexpected places. The task which seemed so easy that you scarcely thought of seeking help for it, the good temper which is yours naturally, the endurance manifested so many times that you were quite confident of finding it ready for any stress--just in these things came surprise and defeat, the weakness that wounded your self-respect and left you heart-sore. You gather your forces for the struggle you foresee, you arm against the enemies whose power you know, but, when human watchfulness has done its utmost, there is still a wide margin for that urgent petition: “Guard me when I am off guard.” (J. R. Miller, D. D.)

He shall preserve thy soul.--

Soul preservation

I. This soul preservation is divine. “The Lord shall preserve,” etc. No one else can preserve it--

1. In the right train of thought. Wrong thoughts are dangerous.

2. In the right objects of sympathy. Wrong affections are dangerous.

3. In the right course of action. One step out of the proper path is dangerous.

II. This soul preservation is complete.

1. It is a preservation guarding from all evil.

2. It is a preservation extending over all activities. In solitude and in society; in business and in recreation; in all engagements and in all scenes; the shield of His protection is over it. He is with it in all its “ins” and “outs” of life.

III. This soul preservation is everlasting. From henceforth “even for evermore.” Who shall tell the events, the ages, the requirements of the soul in that “evermore “?

1. The soul is to live a life of dependence for “evermore.”

2. The Lord will be its support for “evermore.” (Homilist.)

Thy going out and thy coming in.--

The God of the threshold

The title of this psalm, “A song of ascents,” is one which it holds in common with a small group of the Psalms. Its reference is to the ritual usage of the psalm by the pilgrims, as they made their way up to Mount Zion. And yet it is not inappropriate to its spirit. The author’s thoughts are lifted up, and our hearts and eyes rise with them. The whole atmosphere of the poem is homely and domestic. It sees the world framed in a cottage doorway. The mountains are not peaks of vision; they are the boundaries and the horizons of his prospects. The threshold of homo fills the foreground of the picture. “Going out and coming in” are its simple lines of motion. The hearth and the field are thus suggested to us. We see the labourer go out into the light of morning with an uplifting of the heart to the dawn-clad hills. We watch him returning to the homestead in the evening, and pausing with his hand upon the door for a last glance at the mountains, as they gather their grey cloaks upon them, the sentinels of his security. And as the psalm closes, one almost expects to see the light in the cottage window, shutting out that wizard world which is just suggested in the superstitious fear of the rising moon. This psalm might have been the work of some Hebrew Burns, following his plough, in glory and in pride, upon the mountain side. Its religion is very simple, and yet all his creed. “The Lord Himself is thy keeper;” that is the summary of his creed. “He that keepeth Israel shall not slumber nor sleep.” The foot kept from stumbling, the head shielded from the heat of the noonday sun, the blessing and the preservation of the threshold, these are the simple promises of the psalm. And wrought into them there is the recognition of the spiritual dignity of man. The souls of His children are precious in His sight. And my mind dwells with satisfaction upon these elementary and yet large outlines of life, as it is here presented to us. I am fascinated by the thought of the God of the threshold. As I said just now, the home is the centre of the picture. It is the beginning and the end of the daily journey. The motions of it are reckoned not by the points of the compass; its wanderings are not eastward and westward, but homeward, or away from home. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” For we, whose life moves in a somewhat narrow and restricted sphere from day to day, very easily form the habit of prosaic and dull outlooks, regarding our life as an ordinary, common affair. We go out without wonder; we return without surprise. We lose that fine fancy of our childhood, which made a journey into the next street an expedition, and brought us back from the woodlands as travellers from a far country. It is quite true that such a diminished sensitiveness saves Us from many terrors that might otherwise play upon us. But it is equally true that that crippled imagination robs us of half the zest and joy that life might otherwise possess. How much is covered for us by these simple phrases, as we take them in their widest meaning--birth and death, sowing and reaping, expenditure and income, giving and receiving, earning and spending, adventure and peace--all of them may be summed up and expressed for us in those phrases, “our going out,” and “our coming in.” And if we were to take these symbolic suggestions of them, we might find the promise of the text applicable to them all. But let us dwell, at any Fate to begin with, upon the simple and most natural sense of the text. Day by day we do actually and literally go out and come in. The phrase marks the ordered sequence of our ordinary existence--that daily life of the trivial round, and the common task of which we sometimes complain that nothing ever happens; that it is wholly commonplace. And yet the commonplaceness of it is surely in ourselves. The ordinary daily life that most of us live is, if we be spiritually alert, far less certain and far more adventurous than we conceive. It is only while we take a very superficial glance upon our life, that we can speak of ourselves as knowing the daily conditions under which we have to live. To the spiritually alert the street is as hazardous as the wilderness; and the office and the shop are to us as foreign lands. We may not meet a lion in the path, it is true; but we meet, every day, men and women who surprise us with the revelation of unexpected possibilities, and of unhinted thoughts, and whose action is a thousand times more difficult to forecast. We do not all pick up sovereigns in the gutter as we wander forth; but spiritual gold may wait for us at the corner of any street, and the words that alter the destiny of a life be spoken in the clamour and rumble of a railway platform. For the upbuilding and moulding of character the common events of ordinary life have a significance of quite unplumbed possibility. We may meet the spiritual adventure of our existence within a few yards of our own door. And God may come to meet us, supreme, in the street that our feet have trodden every morning. The path where we have enjoyed such quiet communions, may be changed in a moment into the scene of temptation and disaster. Any morning and any hour may bring to us the opportunity of either denying or entering into, and sharing the larger and fuller communion of our Lord. And it is just that which sets an expectation upon the threshold of the morning, and sends a man forth with a thrill that is partly of hope and partly of fear. Everything, anything, the supremest things may happen to-day. His going forth is always momentous. He knows that there is not the remotest likelihood that he will return again in the evening exactly the same man as he went forth. Changes will have come and impressed themselves upon his being; temptations will have been met and battles have been fought. And so he goes forth with trembling, with the awe of his hesitant and uncertain destiny upon him. The question prompts itself in one’s thought whether all of us whom our Christian faith ought to have awakened to the intense possibilities of daily life in spiritual things--whether all of us do live that daily life with a sufficient seriousness, and the sense of its value in the moulding of Our destinies. Do we go out, too, each day as to a spiritual adventure? To go out--as I fear some of us do--to go out day by day without a sense, a zest of hazard in life, to stumble through our daily temptation without the sense of what we are meeting, or what perchance we are avoiding, speaks, as I said just now, a dulled and crippled imagination. On the other hand, to be finely sensitive and responsive to the menaces and suggestions of life, if that were all, might be just as crippling to us. Hope and fear might simply neutralize one another, and the uncertainty of our destiny keep us hesitant and unwilling to adventure ourselves in such a hazardous quest at all. And if I would have you pause upon the threshold, it is not simply that we may correct the thought which has been too carelessly and flippantly going forth to its daily life, but that we may take counsel of the God of the threshold and find our strength and assurance in Him. This word of the psalmist: “The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in”--how rich and heartfelt it is in its quality! It was surely worth our while to pause to gather the richness of such a promise. This promise of the preservation of God over our going forth and our coming in, can only be realized by those whose purposes are in accordance with the will of God. The confidence of God’s presence is not something that we can conjure up at will. It is hot something which by constant reiteration we can impress upon our memory and get into our hearts, except it be confirmed by the testimony of our own conscience and by the assurance that the purposes and plans we have before us are holy in the sight of God. There is no promise of preservation for a Jonah fleeing from the purposes of God; for a Saul who is found to transgress and to fight against God. If we are to reap the rich promise that a text like this holds for us, then we must meet the challenge that it presents to our souls. And only as our purposes are clean and pure in the sight of God can its protection accompany us wherever we go. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” The returns of life are not less momentous than its going forth. There may be something of an over-sensitive morbidness in it, but I confess for one that whenever I have been away a few days from home, it is hardly possible to approach it again through the familiar streets without a vague sense of apprehensiveness. What may have happened in the hours of absence? And it is quite true that in the commonest day of our ordinary life, just as we ourselves do not return the same men that we went forth, so there have been changes in the home in our absence, which mean that the same presences will not wait for us there. The home also has its temptations, its spiritual disciplines, as well as the office and the shop. And it may be that our development during that time has not been upon the same lines, has not been even upon parallel lines; and so when we meet again there is a new point of contact to find. We may be coming home joyous and satisfied from a day in which everything has gone well to a home where the pressure of small tasks has weighed too heavily and has produced irritation and griefs. We have to readjust our relations. And how often is it true that we miss the point of contact. That instead of falling at once into a new harmony our moods strike a discord. So this second half of our text, while it means first of all to me that God, through the absences of our daily life, protects our home for us, and watches over those who dwell there, I think means more subtly that God has to protect our home from us sometimes. As we pass the God of the threshold to get into the street in the morning, we have, as it were, to pass through God on our return at eventide. Some of the things that have irritated, and bruised, and chafed during the day, and that ought not to be carried back into the home with us, have got to be slowed off, that so we may meet in peace, and our peace not return to us as a guest that finds no place. “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.” (W. C. Piggott.)

Preserved in life and in death

It is a promise which should be kept in mind in all our business, in all our movements; amid all the changes and chances of this mortal life. We shall ever more be defended by that ready help, which supposes an eye that cannot close--an arm that cannot fail. But I know of a “going out” and of a “coming in,” where we shall especially need the preserving care of our God; and to these, as to every other, may the promise be extended. There is a “going out” from this world,--there is a “coming in” to the next world: the departure through death from the present scene, and the entering on the unknown futurity. But “the Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in.” Christ Jesus, according to His own declaration, has the keys of death and the invisible world; He, therefore, it must be, who dismisses the spirit from the flesh, and opens to it the separate state. And why should the believer shrink from the act of dissolution, as though it would be something tremendously awful, when he is thus assured that the Redeemer Him-self will officiate (as it were) at the taking down of “the earthly house of this tabernacle”--be with Him at the “going out” and the “coming in,” which he is so ready to invest with terror and dismay? (H. Melvill, B. D.).

Psalms 122:1