Sermon Text: Psalm 121
Date: December 28, 2025
Event: New Year’s Eve (Observed)

Psalm 121 (EHV)

I lift up my eyes to the mountains.
Where does my help come from?
2My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot stumble.
He who watches over you will not slumber.
4Yes, he who watches over Israel will not slumber.
He will not sleep.
5The LORD watches over you.
The LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6The sun will not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7The LORD will watch to keep you from all harm.
He will watch over your life.
8The LORD will watch over your going and your coming
from now to eternity.

This End Is a Beginning

A new year naturally allows for some looking back and looking ahead. What were the challenges of 2025? What were the blessings? Where did things go as you hoped and wanted; where did they not? And what are the plans and goals for 2026? Are you rolling any plans over that just didn’t happen (or weren’t completed) in 2025, or is this a year of new plans and fresh starts? Or, do you anticipate things mostly going as they have been?

It’s a little bit strange to consider years from God’s perspective. After all, God is outside of time. He doesn’t experience things the way we do as a chain of events. As Moses observed in Psalm 90, “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day, like yesterday that has gone by, or like a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). So, how does God want us to view the end of one year and the beginning of another? With God, all endings are just beginnings. No matter what end he brings about, he is setting the stage for the next chapter, whether that be something familiar or something brand new. Regardless of what it ends up looking like, we know that the events of this past year and those that will happen next year will be under his protection and blessing.

Like Psalm 130, which we meditated on for our sermon a few weeks ago, Psalm 121 is also one of the songs of ascent, one of the songs clearly linked to people’s travel to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. Psalm 121 focuses on the journey rather than the destination. Even today, in our era of adaptive cruise control and automatic braking in our cars, we know that each time we get into the car to make a trip to the store or across the country, there’s some amount of risk involved. It’s the reason we pray for safe travel for ourselves and others. Travel brings some amount of danger.

That would have been even more true for people traveling on foot across the region, or practically across the world, to reach Jerusalem. And we run into that acknowledgment of danger right away at the start of the psalm: I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? This is not the psalm writer standing in awe at the grandeur and majesty of these hills and mountains. This type of terrain would have been a real problem on the trip because it was much more challenging to move through than flat ground, and the hills and mountains offered many places for dangers to hide, whether wild animals or other people seeking to harm the person passing through.

So, in v. 1, the psalm writer is essentially asking, “How am I going to get through that?” But he answers his own question right away. My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Was 2025 a year that felt like you were traveling through the mountains with potential danger all around? Did it feel like an exhausting slog that you weren’t sure you were going to finish, or if you did, what shape you’d be in at the end? Did you feel trapped and oppressed at all this year? Did you feel like the rug had been pulled out from underneath you? Did you face a situation (or a series of situations) that seemed entirely hopeless? Did it seem like nothing could help you, no deliverance could come, no good could be worked from any of this?

Yet, here you are. You made it to the end of this year. How did you do it? How did you make it through to be here this morning? Because your help and support were the same as the psalmist’s; [your] help [came] from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. How did you make it through? God. God brought you out of the turmoil. God sent you the help to at least survive, if not thrive, under challenging circumstances. God is the one who brought blessing out of what could have been a total disaster.

The promises of God are sure and all-encompassing. The psalmist continues, “He will not let your foot stumble. He who watches over you will not slumber. Yes, he who watches over Israel will not slumber. He will not sleep.” In other words, no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, God will not give up on you. Maybe, though, even as this year draws to an end, there are still problems, still things weighing on your heart. In some ways, maybe it does feel like God has given up on you. “If he loves me so much, if he’s so intent on watching out for me and never falling asleep at the wheel, then why are things going like this?!”

Take a step back. Consider how bad things used to be, when you were estranged from God because of your sins, when God was not able to listen to your prayers because that wall of offenses between you and him silenced those petitions. Even then, just because you were divided from him didn’t mean that God didn’t care for you. Just because you were estranged didn’t mean that God wasn’t watching out for you.

In the way that only that amazing Christmas story can, we’ve been recently reminded about the extent of the love that God has for us. Love so amazing, so profound, so watchful and attentive, so incredibly shocking, that it sent his own Son to be born a human being. That love then compelled the God-man, Immanuel, to shoulder the burdens of every sinner who has ever lived and pay the penalty for it all. So great is the love of God that he rescued us from sin; Jesus rescued us even from ourselves.

With that context, which is so easy to miss when things are harried and difficult, we then begin to understand just what God has done and is continuing to do for us! The LORD watches over you. The LORD is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will watch to keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord is guiding all things for your good, even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when it doesn’t look like it, even when you feel like there is no hope or help or anything positive that’s ever going to return to your life. Our challenge is to stop fretting and worrying and trying to fix everything ourselves, and to bring our hardships and heartaches to the eternal one who loves us and provides for us. It would make good sense to ask God for strength of faith in this new year, to be able to face the challenges that you know will come with his strength, not just your own.

God does nothing without purpose. He doesn’t allow meaningless suffering. He doesn’t allow pain for pain’s sake. No, he sees beyond the here and now and uses all things, good and bad, to work toward his end-goal. And that goal is greater than peace and comfort in the here and now. That comfort is, as the psalmist writes, forever. He promises, “The LORD will watch over your going and your coming from now to eternity.”

There is the most amazing end that works the greatest new beginning. God’s promises to watch over us, take care of us, guard us, and protect us are all wonderful. But they all have but one goal: to get us through the turmoil of this life, to bring the insanity of this sinful world to an end, and to bring us to that joyous beginning that will have no end, the beginning of everlasting life in the perfection of heaven.

Every end is simply a beginning. And with God, even if the good seems to end and the troublesome seems to start, we know that he will work everything in that for our good. Look with confidence to this new year, that as 2025 ends, God’s love doesn’t. That love is what is going to bring about blessings beyond imagining, both in the coming year and throughout eternity.

My dear brothers and sisters, have an incredibly happy new year, swaddled in the love of your Creator and Savior! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria