Brad's Bistro

Suggestions for leading a study:

Familiarize yourself with the passage in context, including the book itself. Who wrote it to whom, and why?
Read through the study guide a couple times to get the “big idea” as well as the flow of the argument
Have the group read through the passage in it’s entirety before beginning the study. One of the goals is to try to get your members to learn how to study Scripture methodically, and this is an important step.
Be prayed up
Have fun!

Looking Up

Psalm 121

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?

² My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;

⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

⁷ The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;

⁸ the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Discussion Questions

-Have someone read through this Psalm out loud. Describe a possible situation that the author may have been in and one from your own life that is similar.

-vv 1 and 2 specify a place where the Psalmist looked for help, and then where he actually found it. Do we have a tendency to look somewhere other than God for help, and then use him as a last resort? How can we make God our first option?

-If you were to tell someone that “God is always watching you”, do you think they would consider that a good thing or a bad thing?

-According to verses 3 and 4, God has to “stay on the alert” to keep us from slipping. What kinds of things might cause us to lose our spiritual balance, and how does knowing that we have a constantly vigilant God help us with that?

-Verses 5 and 6 promise that God is watching over us to help us with something else beside our “slip ups.” What do you think the psalmist is referring to with these images (sunburn?)

-Clearly God does not keep bad things from happening to us (sometimes they’re his idea!). Given that, what does verse 7 mean to you?

-Verse 8 probably refers to the rest of our existence: where we live, plus whatever we do when we’re not there. In what ways can you allow God to “oversee” these things?

Leaders' Guide

Looking Up

Psalm 121

This lesson attempts to get us to understand the value of God watching over every aspect of our existence. That he is there not as a judgmental and controlling “overseer”, but to help us be safe: from our own bad choices, external forces that would draw us away from him, and a lifestyle that is not fully healthy and productive.

-Have someone read through this Psalm out loud. Describe a possible situation that the author may have been in and one from your own life that is similar.

As poems (or songs), Psalms are not really meant to be picked apart verse by verse to discover specific theological information or instructions, but read as a whole and meditated over. This question is meant to be a way of practicing that. You can’t tell, of course, what specific life situation the Psalmist was in which motivated this psalm, but there are certainly a whole variety of options available which would cause someone to affirm the watchful care of God over their lives. If you want to prompt your group in a way that sets the stage for the lesson, you can ask if they have had a situation where they have been tempted to do something wrong, felt under spiritual attack, or needed God’s guidance in a life decision and would have liked the assurance that God was watching over them during those times to keep them safe from a bad outcome.

He looked up to the hills, but ultimately went far beyond them to the one who created them. This speaks to our tendency we have to try to deal with our own issues, or resolve them in ways that are immediately available to us, and then look to God when and if those don’t work out. Scripture affirms, of course, that we need to take responsibility for own life and not expect God to just fix everything, but at the same time he wants to be involved in all of that right from the start rather than be seen as a last resort. This Psalm is one more (of many) pictures in the Psalms of a vital, intimate association with a loving God who really cares about all the details of our lives.

-If you were to tell someone that “God is always watching you”, do you think they would consider that a good thing or a bad thing?

This is a secondary discussion question to set the stage for what follows. It is obvious that the writer of the Psalm considers it an OK thing for God to be watching, but on the other hand many people would automatically associate that with a God who just wants to always be judging our lives so he can punish us when we get out of line. To get at that way of thinking, you can ask your group to go back to their childhood and how they thought of God at that time. Many people today who are outside of Christ are in that same immature position spiritually. The last thing they would want is to have God see everything about their lives.

Since this Psalm is about a relationship with God, it is fair to presume that to “slip” is to be in danger of falling out of that, or at least getting spiritually off balance. It is what we are tempted to do that would jeopardize our relationship with God, of course, that does that. Knowing that God is always watching is something that is actually a positive thing if it keeps us from doing those things that are ultimately self-destructive. The accountability of not being able to hide from God is a good thing because he wants to keep us safe, not just vindictively punish us because we don’t do what he wants.

-Verses 5 and 6 promise that God is watching over us to help us with something else besides our “slip ups.” What do you think the psalmist is referring to with these images (sunburn?)

This is where you need to make your group do a little work at interpreting the imagery of the Psalms. Let them think about it and come up with ideas. Clearly he isn’t talking about getting sunburned, since the moon can’t do that. The big picture is that he is going beyond internal forces which can harm us (the bad choices discussed in the former question) to anything that is external. It could be any natural calamity that we might experience (disease, financial problems, natural disaster, etc.) so almost any answer can be affirmed. But it is possible that he is referring to the alternate deities represented in that culture by the sun and the moon, in which case the reference would be to spiritual attacks. This would fit well with the overall biblical understanding that the things which draw us away from God can come from our own sinful natures, or from external spiritual forces at work in our lives. God sees it all—the natural calamities which strike us and the spiritual battles that we wage, so we don’t go through any of them alone.

-Clearly God does not keep bad things from happening to us (sometimes they’re his idea!). Given that, what does verse 7 mean to you?

The poetic statement that God will “keep you from all harm” is obviously not referring to the lack of any difficulties in our lives. Bad things happen to God’s people throughout Scripture (as is evident in many other Psalms, by the way), and they are not only assumed to be inevitable, but also in many cases beneficial. The point here is similar to Psalm 23 when the good shepherd doesn’t keep us from the dark valleys, but walks through them with us. God is watching over us to ensure that no ultimate harm will befall us. If we allow him to keep us from “slipping” in our relationship to him, and to keep us from losing our spiritual battles, then even death itself is ultimately a victory.

-Verse 8 probably refers to the rest of our existence: where we live, plus whatever we do when we’re not there. In what ways can you allow God to “oversee” these things?

Help your people see the poetic trajectory that is completed with the end of this Psalm. From internal forces, to external forces, and finally to just all of life—God is there as a watchful protector.

Practically, this discussion could center on home life and vocational life (one way to think of the “coming and going” spoken of here). If we allow that God is watching over us; not just as an onlooker, but as someone whom we allow to “oversee” every aspect of our lives as we subordinate them to his values and goals for us, then that is when we truly allow God to care for us. Living out our everyday lives according to his principles is what gets us beyond superficial, self-serving lives and on to lives that really count for something in this world and the next as we learn to serve others and the kingdom of God under God’s watchful eye. Helping us to avoid a meaningless existence and achieve real significance in this world with our everyday activities may be one of the best ways that God truly is watching over us.

A way to end this lesson might be to remind your group that it started with the Psalmist “looking up,” even though most of it was about God “looking down” on us. God is always watching, but we are not always meeting his gaze, because we are afraid of letting him see something or we just don’t think about him all the time. Ask if there is any specific part of their lives where they need to be looking up to God so that he can care for them in that area in the way that he wants to.