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Ask Pastor John
Why God’s Protection Still Hurts
00:14:18
How can we reconcile the pain we feel in this fallen world with God’s promise to keep us from all evil? Pastor John applies Psalm 121 to this life.
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welcome back to Ask Pastor John with longtime author and pastor John Piper. As some of you know, we launched our next generation vision to aggressively spread great joy in a big God to the next generation. We did that this year, this fiscal year. And to accomplish it, we are in the process of upgrading our technology and expanding the distribution of our resources far and wide, all of it free of charge. And as we end our fiscal year here in just a couple of days, please consider joining us by giving a monthly or a one time gift to help offset the cost of free for thousands. Just like you go to desiringgod.org give today, that's desiring God.org give and if you already give, if you already support us, thank you very much for your partnership with us. Okay, you open your Bible in the morning. Maybe you're reading the Navigator's Bible reading plan with us this year. I hope you're doing so. And if you do, you just met a huge promise from God right there in black and white on the page. It said that you, you Christian, you will be kept from all evil. We just read it yesterday in Psalm 121. I hope you saw it. I hope you underlined it because it's a huge promise. And it's a huge promise you should claim. But then you'll look around. You will see Christians who are sick believers experiencing serious accidents. You will see tragedies in the lives of the friends that you have at church. And you will see the ways that Christians have been sinned against. The math doesn't add up. We are not kept from all evil today on Ask Pastor John why God's protection still hurts and we dealt with murder last time. Pastor JOHN so we are freshly aware of the darkness of this sinful world. Here's today's question from an anonymous listener. Pastor John hello. Can you explain Psalm 121 to me? It boldly declares to us that we have God's protective care. He who keeps you will not slumber. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. That's in verses three and seven. Yet many believers still experience suffering, danger and hardships. Does the Lord is your keeper? The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. In verses 5 and 6. Does that mean we will never face harm or loss? Or does this psalm offer deeper assurances?
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It's really good to return to this issue repeatedly because we all love the Psalms. We love them. My wife would rather read Psalms than any other book in the Bible. They are so full of Practical wrestlings with real life issues that we all deal with. We love the Psalms, and yet all of us pause and ponder when we come to these seemingly absolute promises that God won't let anything bad happen to us. So even though we have dealt with this issue on this podcast repeatedly, we've never dealt with Psalm 121 that I can see. We've dealt with Psalm 91 that has the amazing statement that the arrow that flies by day will not come near you. And we talked about, why did Elizabeth Elliot name the biography of her murdered husband in the Shadow of the Almighty, which is the first verse of Psalm 91, when in fact he did get hit by one of those arrows or a spear that would not come near him, according to Psalm 91. What was she thinking? And we wrestled with that. That was episode 1692. And we dealt with Psalm 34:20, which says that God keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. And I was reciting that text as the little boy eight feet in front of me had a cast on his arm. I had to walk right up to him and say, okay, young man, that was episode 1885, in case anybody curious, what did he say to that kid? And we looked at Psalm 103 which says that God heals all your diseases. Really? How? When? That was episode 2148. So we've been there and now I'm really happy to do this again and think through it again. And I think there are some remarkable clues in Psalm 121. What about this psalm? I love this psalm. I've memorized it and rememberized it. It has a very special place in our family. I mean, I used to travel a lot more than I do now. So Noel and I have said a lot of goodbyes and a lot of hellos. I'm gone, I'm back. Which is a paraphrase of Psalm 121. I'm gone, I'm back. And I want to say in most of those farewells, I think most of them we quoted this psalm, we laid hold on this psalm. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for forevermore. So what do Noel and I mean, what are we banking on when we say that in the middle of the psalm he says, the sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. He will keep you from all evil. What does that mean? Does it mean that if you truly believe in, if you truly obey God, you'll never suffer anything hurtful. Now, we know from the Psalms themselves, not just somewhere else, but the Psalms, and we know from the New Testament that's not true. It's not true about God, and it's not what the psalm writers believed was true. The psalmist can say, and Paul quotes this in Romans 8. This is Psalm 44. We are being killed all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. That's from the Psalms, not just Romans 8. That's Psalm 44, 22. And besides that, the psalmists are always in some kind of suffering and pain and affliction, and over and over again it comes out. So I think what Psalm 121 means when it says, the Lord will keep you from all evil, is that when evil befalls you, God will keep you from its condemning, destroying effects. That's what I think it means. God will use his power to keep evil from touching you in a thousand ways. Now, yes, he has. I mean, I've come home, I'm still alive. No airplane crashes. I just got platinum status from Delta because, not because I earned it, but because I got so close. They felt sorry for me because I'm a million miler.
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Something Delta did exactly right. Wow. At any rate, no crashes, no crashes for a million miles. And then when it seems wise to God, he will let evil touch you, but he will protect you from it, that is, from its destructive effects. And finally, he will bring you to an eternal experience where you will never taste that evil of any kind again. Now, here's some clues in the Psalm itself that suggest we should read it that way. Verse 8 says that the Lord will keep us forevermore. He will keep us forevermore. So we know that this psalm reaches beyond death, which means that when death happens, and it will, and that's going to be a painful thing, God has not let this psalm fall to the ground. He already says, you're going to make it beyond death, so you're going to go through death. And he won't let any evil touch you through death, so he will keep you from all evil does not mean he'll keep you from death. It means he will keep you through death so that death will not have its condemning, destructive effect and you will come out into eternal life where this song will have its perfect fulfillment. And there's a confirmation of this that we're on the right track when we think that way. Because if you read in Revelation 7:16, the description of the age to come, it goes like this. This is, yes, 7, 16, revelation. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them. Now, that's a quote from Psalm 121, verse 6. The sun will not strike you by day. In other words, that verse is going to have its final fulfillment in the age to come when all evil is done away. Another clue is verses two through four, where the writer combines the sovereignty of God as the maker of heaven and earth with the fact that God never slumbers. In other words, God is so powerful and so attentive around the clock, never goes to sleep, that anything that happens to you has to be according to his sovereign will. Nothing sneaks up on God because He's never asleep. And nothing is too hard for God because He made heaven and earth. So we know that whatever happens to his beloved happens according to his goodness. He wasn't sleeping when this happened. He wasn't weak when this happened. He was good. He was wise. He was strong. So when Noel and I say goodbye, we still do. We do not assume when we quote this psalm that I will not die in a plane crash. We don't assume that. We assume that God will not let our foot slip into unbelief. And we assume that if the plane crashes, he will keep me from destruction and damnation. He will keep my going out of this world, and he will keep my coming in to the presence of christ. I turned 80 this year, back in January. And when everybody had gone home that day, I sat in my chair and I let it sink in how good God has been to me to keep me. He has kept me through blood clots and prostate cancer and heart attack and endless close calls and on and on. I was simply overwhelmed as I sat there at the mercy of being kept by the sovereign goodness of God. And so, Tony, you know what I do when I. When I feel something strongly? I write a poem about it. So I'm going to read it. I said, mike, I'm just closing with this song, this. This poem that I wrote. It's a sonnet, if that means anything to anybody. But it's titled. On turning 80. Goes like this. What do I have that I did not receive? What breath, what sight, what thought or will, what energy to do or to achieve, what hope, what taste of holiness or thrill? And shall I boast as if a bird should claim to form the wind, an ant to forge the earth? As if I gave myself a parent or a name, or brought about my first or second birth? No, it lies not within my fallen power to seize the gift of life or even weep that I cannot, but rather every hour. My hope was not myself or soul to keep, but this to bow and joyfully accept that for these 80 years I have been kept. I love Psalm 121.
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Yeah, I can see why. Thank you for that sonnet, Pastor John. This promise in Psalm 121 that the Lord will keep you from all evil is not a magic shield against all the pains of life. There's no guarantee that we will never get sick or be sinned against or experience real lost. There's going to be delayed flights and turbulence in the skies, and there's going to be broken arms and casts on earth. The promise means that God is guarding the very core of who you are, your faith, guarding your faith all the way to the end. So good. That explains why Psalm 121 is one of your four Psalms, Pastor John, that you've memorized in order to serve others with. Because it's just so useful as a psalm to serve other people. As a list that also includes Psalm 16, Psalm 46, and Psalm 130, you can see in the APJ book on page 41 for more on those four Psalms and how Pastor John uses them. And obviously there's always that, that question that lingers after an episode like this, and that is over whether God will give me more than I can handle. Will God give me more than I can handle? See that in the APJ book on pages 365 and 366, because that's very important as well. And of course, once again, please consider joining us by giving a monthly or a one time gift to help offset the cost of free for thousands. Just like you go to desiringgod.org give. That's desiringgod.org give. Much appreciated. Well, Psalm 121 reminds us that what feels like loss is not really loss. We explore that theme again next time when we look at why doing the right thing will never ruin your life. I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Monday.