The Pulpit Commentary on Psalms 121:8

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The safety of our days.

"The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in." This expression is evidently borrowed from the blessing on obedience given in Deuteronomy 28:6, "Blessed shall thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shall thou be when thou goest out." Clearly it is but a poetical way of saying, that the defense and guidance and benediction of Jehovah shall rest on the godly man in all the actions and relations of his everyday life. The protection vouchsafed extends to all a man is and all a man does. It might seem as if the salvation of the soul from spiritual death were all we need be anxious about; but God never urges this point upon us. His salvation is not so limited, lie saves the whole man, and bears as real a relation to man's temporal as to his spiritual needs. "With his dear Son he freely gives us all things." The true saving of a man for the life that now is involves the saving of the man for the life that is to come.

I. THE "GOING OUT" OF LIFE MAY INDICATE ITS ACTIVITIES AND ENTERPRISES. We go out in the morning refreshed, vigorous, full of conscious power, and in some peril of stir-reliance. "The Lord shall preserve thy going out." Keeping thee from whatever form of temptation and moral evil may come through the putting forth of human energy in the daily duties of life. Man's enterprise may bring him into situations of bodily danger. God will keep him then. But the very force he puts into life may unduly magnify self; and it is much more to say that God will keep him from ensnaring self.

II. THE "COMING IN" OF LIFE MAY INDICATE ITS PASSIVITIES AND QUIET RELATION-strips. We come in tired. We come in to rest, enjoy; we come in to home relationships and quiet occupations; and we seldom suspect that there is a possible exaggerating of self in our times of passivity, as truly as in our times of activity. There are luxuries, listlessnesses, selfishnesses, of our very resting-times; rod we need God for our coming in lest the self or self-indulgence should gain undue power over us.—R.T.

HOMILIES BY C. SHORT

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