Musings and Contemplations

Journey with us, O holy God,as we continue our way to the cross. Sharpen our focus, that our attention may center more on you than ourselves. Lead us through the shadows of darkness and prepare our hearts, that we might be a people of prayer, ready to perceive and respond to your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, Amen.[1]

Divine Sufficiency

Psalm 121 NRSV
I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 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 on and forevermore.

Charles Spurgeon
What we need is help – help powerful, efficient, constant. We need a very present help in trouble. What a mercy that we have it in our God. Our hope is in Jehovah, for our help comes from him. Help is on the road and will not fail to reach us in due time, for he who sends it to us was never known to be too late. Jehovah who created all things is equal to every emergency; heaven and earth are at the disposal of him who made them. Therefore, let us be very joyful in our infinite helper. He will sooner destroy heaven and earth than permit his people to be destroyed, and the perpetual hills themselves shall bow rather than he shall fail whose ways are everlasting. We are bound to look beyond heaven and earth to him who made them both. It is vain to trust the creatures; it is wise to trust the Creator.[2]

Matthew Henry
Wherever we are, at home or abroad, we are exposed to danger more than we are aware of; and this psalm directs and encourages us to repose ourselves and our confidence in God, and by faith to put ourselves under his protection and commit ourselves to his care, which we must do, with an entire resignation and satisfaction, in singing this psalm.^[3]

Heidelberg Catechism Question #37
What does it mean (in the Apostle’s Creed) that He (Christ) suffered?
That all the time He lived on earth, but especially at the end of His life, He bore, in body and soul, the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race, in order that by His passion, as the only atoning sacrifice, He might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation and obtain for us the grace of God, righteousness, and eternal life.

O Heavenly Father, Creator of heaven and earth, Who has received us into Thy protection; Suffer not our afflictions so overcome us that we cast off all confidence in Thee; but rather prosper and conduct all our enterprises, and give a happy end and completion to all our businesses that we may continually be more and more assured that we are of the number of them whom You have chosen to salvation; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son. Amen.[4]

A Sovereign Protector I Have

[1] The Worship Sourcebook, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 2004, p. 557.
[2] C. H. Spurgeon, “Treasury of David,” Psalm 121:1-2; from Psalms of Grace, 2022, The Master’s Seminary.
^[3] Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 929.
[4] From Psalms of Grace, 2022, The Master’s Seminary, Psalm 121.