SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Today's scripture reading comes from Psalms chapter 121.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Emma.
SPEAKER_01: I serve on the Connections team, and it is my joy to read God's Word in our gathering this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Once again, this is Psalm 121.
SPEAKER_01: I lift up my eyes to the hills.
SPEAKER_01: From where does my help come?
SPEAKER_01: My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: He will not let your foot be moved.
SPEAKER_01: He who keeps you will not slumber.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is your keeper.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
SPEAKER_01: The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord will keep you from all evil.
SPEAKER_01: He will keep your life.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Emma.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Like Trevor said, it is my privilege to get to preach to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Stepping way outside my comfort zone, as Trevor mentioned, I'm usually on stage leading worship.
SPEAKER_00: And the thing that I love about leading worship is there are planned and prepared and memorized songs with melodies that I know, lyrics that are set in front of me, and I have a guitar in my hands and I know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a boat in the middle of the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're nervous, if you're nervous, if you're on edge, I want you to know that I'm confident I am more nervous and on edge than you are.
SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna make it through.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the theme is that the Lord is our help.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure uh that God will be glorified through the preaching and teaching of his word.
SPEAKER_00: Um as I said, my name's Joe.
SPEAKER_00: If I haven't met you yet, I hope uh to get a chance to do that.
SPEAKER_00: If there's one thing you should know about me, it's my wife, Abby, who is a joy to know, so you should get a chance to get to meet her, as well as my three kids, Evangeline, who's five, Esther, who's two, and ASAF is just five months old.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you get to meet them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they are a joy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh lastly, I want to say thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: As Pastor Trevor said, it is it is my desire, it's our desire as a church to raise up preachers and teachers, and that comes at a cost, and that's having someone in a position where they're not quite ready, but they need to get reps.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I do desire to become good and equipped at teaching God's word someday.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not there yet, uh, but this is a good opportunity for me to get to get there.
SPEAKER_00: So I am grateful.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining, part of the process, thank you for your grace along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm super excited.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned uh before, uh my son ASAF, he was born five months ago.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this was the middle of winter, so end of January.
SPEAKER_00: He's born, everything goes great, uh, which was which was fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: It was an answer to prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We got him home.
SPEAKER_00: He's safe and sound, we're all cozied up.
SPEAKER_00: I have a week off of work, so as usual, I think uh what could I get done in a week off of work?
SPEAKER_00: Um so I get my my hands to work with some house projects, and one of those projects was uh to switch out our thermostat for our furnace.
SPEAKER_00: At our old place we had a smart thermostat, and so I wanted we we liked how handy it was, you know, to get the uh uh be able to change the settings any anytime instead of schedule easily from your phone.
SPEAKER_00: And so I went to switch out the thermostat, I got a new one, went to switch it out, took off the old one, and when I went to install the new one, the wiring was not compatible, and I found that out right away.
SPEAKER_00: So then I put the old one back on, put it back on the wall, turned it on, and the furnace did not come on.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I checked everything, rechecked, I did it again, uh, furnace did not come on.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it's the middle of January, it's below freezing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my wife's at home, she just recovered from labor.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my son is at home, he's five days old.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, low cost there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was actually starting to get very nervous.
SPEAKER_00: And so I uh thought, well, what can I do?
SPEAKER_00: And so I started Googling, I started making calls, I texted Pastor Ryan, who knows a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, who do you know that's an HVAC?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I got as much help as I could, and I and I figured out there's a few things that I could check.
SPEAKER_00: So I went to work, I went to checking everything, and meanwhile, brewing up inside of me is just this worry, this fear, this shame that like, why did I even dig into this in the first place?
SPEAKER_00: I had no business messing with HVAC, and so fast forward it is 9:58 p.m.
SPEAKER_00: and I'm driving uh to Minard's to pick up a new old model thermostat because I thought I had broken the old one to install Minard's clothes, so then I'm going to Walmart, get one.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: And I we got space heaters in the room, the whole house is asleep, everybody's fine for the night, but the temperature's dropping everywhere else, the rooms, everybody's safe.
SPEAKER_00: But I go to bed and I am uh just completely owned by fear, worry, shame, and uh not sleep.
SPEAKER_00: I don't sleep, and I wake up the next morning to plan and forge a solution.
SPEAKER_00: I needed help.
SPEAKER_00: That's the theme of the uh of the psalm, and even a theme of the psalms of ascent.
SPEAKER_00: I needed help, not just practical help.
SPEAKER_00: I was in distress.
SPEAKER_00: I was being owned, and I needed uh to look to God.
SPEAKER_00: I needed something to cling to.
SPEAKER_00: I needed something to access inside of me that despite my circumstances, I could be reminded of the truth about who God is, that he was for me, that he would help me.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I needed God and let that influence what I was believing and what I was doing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what the Psalms of Ascent are.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms of Ascent were written, there are a uh 15 Psalms that were set as sort of a playlist for the pilgrims, the travelers, uh, the Israelites who would be on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to praise and worship God at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And the journey was hard, and the life of those following the Lord in that day was hard.
SPEAKER_00: And so they wrote these psalms as reminders that they could memorize in song form and package and plant deep in their hearts so that when the journey got hard, they could access easily and be reminded, despite what was happening around them, the truth of who God is and what he's done and what that means for them.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 121, in particular, what we read today, is the second Psalm of Ascent.
SPEAKER_00: And it speaks to both the physical and the practical hardship that one endured on that journey.
SPEAKER_00: But also, in a deeper way, it speaks to the spiritual hardship that one endures while following the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It addresses our need for sustaining help.
SPEAKER_00: Help we need today, this week, throughout our entire life and beyond.
SPEAKER_00: And this matters because we need this kind of help, right?
SPEAKER_00: Without this kind of help, what are our three best options?
SPEAKER_00: Fight, flight, or freeze.
SPEAKER_00: For me personally, I've discovered through the years that I'm a fight guy.
SPEAKER_00: I go to work to uh create more problems while trying to solve the one.
SPEAKER_00: I used to think that fighting was the best of the three options, that is like courageous or something.
SPEAKER_00: I've come to find out that I always cause five problems for every one problem that I solve.
SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely not better.
SPEAKER_00: But that's all we have.
SPEAKER_00: We need to package the knowledge that the Lord is our help and our sustainer and plant it deep into our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we will face in this life is beyond what my mind and my hands can solve.
SPEAKER_00: It's beyond what entertainment or work can distract us from.
SPEAKER_00: In this life, we need a deeper kind of help.
SPEAKER_00: We need soul-level help.
SPEAKER_00: We need help that actually works and actually lasts.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we know that the Lord is keeping us, we don't need to run, hide, or fight.
SPEAKER_00: We can trust because he's helping us.
SPEAKER_00: And this psalmist knows that he needs help.
SPEAKER_00: And he looks up and he remembers who the Lord is, and he finds that he can keep going because the Lord is keeping him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's our big idea for today.
SPEAKER_00: You can keep going.
SPEAKER_00: You can keep going because the Lord is keeping you.
SPEAKER_00: And we see how we can keep going because the Lord is keeping us by doing three things: look up, look back, and then look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the first point.
SPEAKER_00: Look up.
SPEAKER_00: Will you read again with me verses one and two?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I lift my eyes to the hills.
SPEAKER_00: From where does my help come?
SPEAKER_00: My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: First, I want to explain a couple things, a couple language things, word things here before we dig in and apply it deeper.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is the word hills.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do the hills refer to here?
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is poetry, so we're gonna see a lot of uh word picture and symbolism here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the hills uh could mean a couple of different things that commentarians have um suggested that maybe uh they mean.
SPEAKER_00: The first uh idea is that they could stand for uh a sense of false refuge, like let's flee to the hills, or maybe it stands for potential danger, like what is lurking in the hills around me that I should be scared about.
SPEAKER_00: So that's one possibility.
SPEAKER_00: The other possibility that I think is even the most likely based on the context is that the hills stand for the hills of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, where he's going.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jerusalem was situated in hills, and so he's on this path towards his destination.
SPEAKER_00: He looks up and he sees the hills in the different in the distance, and he's reminded of where his help comes from.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how you might interpret the hills and what that means, the conclusion is the same: that our help comes from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the second word that I want us to look at real quick is the word help.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the word help means rescue, saving help.
SPEAKER_00: We have this definition in our language that help sometimes means like assistant or support, but in this context it means salvation, saving.
SPEAKER_00: So what we're looking at here is essentially a catechism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a catechism is a tool that we use to remember things by uh using question and answer form to train and remind our hearts of the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And we do this in our own liturgy in liturgy pretty regularly.
SPEAKER_00: The goal, again, is to package and plant these beliefs deep into our minds and our hearts, so when we need them, they're there for us to fall back to.
SPEAKER_00: So he asks, from where does my help come?
SPEAKER_00: And then the answer, my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: Think of these, uh think of it this way: there's two pilgrims traveling on the road to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: One of them uh starts to experience the sun beating down, the ground is rocky, he's worried about his footing, he's tired.
SPEAKER_00: He looks around and he's he's nervous, he's concerned for the uh potential danger that's around him, and he starts to begin to worry.
SPEAKER_00: And then he looks up.
SPEAKER_00: He looks up and he sees uh the hills, and he's reminded my help comes from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And he gets to experience some calm as a result.
SPEAKER_00: Now the other pilgrim, he's on the same road, same sun is beating down, and the same worry begins to stir.
SPEAKER_00: Sees the potential danger, and he gets scared.
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts to get nervous, and those nerves work to his feet, and his feet get a little shaky, and he trips on a rock and he and he and he bumps his shin.
SPEAKER_00: And then by that point, he's like, Oh, this is it's really setting in.
SPEAKER_00: The fear has gripped him, and so he starts looking around for other options for help.
SPEAKER_00: And by then he's he's totally lost it.
SPEAKER_00: He's totally gripped with fear and worry.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of these two pilgrims, which one does the Lord help or rescue?
SPEAKER_00: Of these two pilgrims, which does the Lord save?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer, of course, we know even from this text, is both.
SPEAKER_00: But who experiences the peace and the presence of God?
SPEAKER_00: Who experiences the shade from the sun and the blessing of walking with the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And is the one who remembered to look up to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So then we can apply that and ask ourselves, which of these two pilgrims describes me or you?
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, if you're like me, probably both, depending on the circumstances of the situation.
SPEAKER_00: If you're like the first, you're resting in the help and the care of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And praise God for that.
SPEAKER_00: I can think of even a couple examples from the last week or two of witnessing other uh harbor members who have been a good example of this to me, of looking to God and experiencing peace despite their circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful for that example.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe though, if you're like me, you identify with a second pilgrim at times.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you look?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you look?
SPEAKER_00: What where do your eyes go when you're experiencing distress or hardship?
SPEAKER_00: Where do you turn when life gets hard?
SPEAKER_00: What occupies your eyes?
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, I want to encourage you to look up.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this psalmist does.
SPEAKER_00: Look up, turn to the Lord for help.
SPEAKER_00: Only he can help you.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of complaining to a friend at first, pray and complain to God.
SPEAKER_00: Ask him for help.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of numbing or disassociating on your phone or with entertainment, go to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Plant it deep in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Let it be a nourishment for you.
SPEAKER_00: For me, what I've learned is my day is absolutely made or broken by spending time in God's word or prayer in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: That if I don't take, you know, at best 45 minutes to an hour of reading and praying, spending time with the Lord, or even just five minutes if the kids woke up early, uh, that can make or break my day.
SPEAKER_00: I have certainly not perfected this practice yet, uh, but that's something that I've learned.
SPEAKER_00: So, what might that be for you?
SPEAKER_00: This psalmist looked up to the hills and he was reminded.
SPEAKER_00: So, what reminders, what hills can you place in your life?
SPEAKER_00: I've seen from some people sticky notes of scripture on their uh mirror in the bathroom or on the inside of their cupboard in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I know personally and and with others that maybe there's a specific worship song that always draws your attention back to the Lord that you can play under your way to or from work.
SPEAKER_00: Fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: What is that for you?
SPEAKER_00: Whatever may serve as a reminder to look up because the Lord is your helper.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, Harbor.
SPEAKER_00: If there is if there's one thing I hope you can take away from this passage of Scripture and this morning, it is this.
SPEAKER_00: It is one of the most profound and massive statements, two statements ever said side by side in scripture that has been absolutely wrecking me for the last week or two.
SPEAKER_00: My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: That verse alone, consider that.
SPEAKER_00: Consider what that means.
SPEAKER_00: The one who made heaven and earth, the one who made everything, who split the sky and the sea and put the animals on the earth, the one who made us.
SPEAKER_00: Look up and see that God is your help.
SPEAKER_00: You are saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
SPEAKER_00: Look up.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second thing you can do.
SPEAKER_00: You can look back.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read verse three through six again.
SPEAKER_00: Verse three says, He will not let your foot be moved.
SPEAKER_00: He who keeps you will not slumber.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
SPEAKER_00: The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, I want to dig into a couple of language things that are significant here before we begin to apply.
SPEAKER_00: The first is notice how the psalmist switches from the first stanza, now in the second two stanzas, he switches from first person to second person.
SPEAKER_00: Before he was saying I and my language, and now he's saying you and your language.
SPEAKER_00: While the in the first section, he's speaking to himself, reminding himself of something.
SPEAKER_00: In the second section, he's drawing on outside knowledge or wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's him writing down something that an older, wiser pilgrim taught him, or maybe he's drawing on the wisdom of the party that he's with.
SPEAKER_00: Either way, we see this as maybe even a good model that we can do.
SPEAKER_00: Recite and then invite.
SPEAKER_00: Recite what we know that is true and then invite outside wisdom, whether that's the counsel of God's word or the counsel of a brother or sister in the church with God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Recite and then invite.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing I want us to pay attention to, that's a language shift here, so we should always pay attention to those, is that in the first stanza, the key theme is the word help, that the Lord is our help.
SPEAKER_00: My help comes from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And then now, starting in the second stanza and throughout the remainder of the psalm, everything hinges on this one word, keep.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: This for us is such a crucial word to pay attention to.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't always use this word in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: The original word, because remember the Bible wasn't written in English, and so it's translated into English, and so keep is kind of the best word that we can use here.
SPEAKER_00: But the original word means to uh to guard, protect, watch over, preserve.
SPEAKER_00: And the ambiguity of the word keep that we use in the English language is so helpful for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you think about the word protect, for example, protect might mean to prevent the experience of harm altogether.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the word keep implies that harm will not prevail against you, that you will be kept through the storm.
SPEAKER_00: We see specifically in verse 6 that the Lord doesn't prevent the sun, he provides the shade.
SPEAKER_00: So when you face hardship and suffering and affliction, he will keep you through it.
SPEAKER_00: He will not prevent you from reaching Jerusalem in this example.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the thing that you need to hold on today.
SPEAKER_00: In this section, we see a lot of big claims and statements.
SPEAKER_00: Some of these phrases and terms make sense, and some maybe don't at first.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, this is poetic imagery.
SPEAKER_00: This is word pictures for us to understand a deeper truth.
SPEAKER_00: In this section, we can fit everything we learn, all of these claims and statements about God, into two categories: what we know and why we know it.
SPEAKER_00: What we know and why we know it.
SPEAKER_00: So first let's look at what we know.
SPEAKER_00: What do we know about God from this section?
SPEAKER_00: We see that God's keeping is comprehensive, constant, and close.
SPEAKER_00: God's keeping is comprehensive, constant, and close.
SPEAKER_00: So first let's look at comprehensive.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we see that?
SPEAKER_00: What do I mean by that, and then where do we see it?
SPEAKER_00: So comprehensive, what I mean by that is it is through sin and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: It covers all the things.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps us through everything, through sin and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 3, we see stumbling.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 6, we see shade from the sun.
SPEAKER_00: His keeping is comprehensive through sin and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: His keeping is also constant, both day and night.
SPEAKER_00: He does not slumber nor sleep.
SPEAKER_00: And the moon will not strike you by night.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I've never gotten a burn from the moon.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is poetic imagery.
SPEAKER_00: We we're worried about the sunburn during the day, and he's like, Yeah, I'll protect you from the sun.
SPEAKER_00: I'll also protect you from the moon.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's constant.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a time that we need to worry about God's protection because of how constant it is.
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, God's keeping is close.
SPEAKER_00: He is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just the church's keeper or Israel's keeper.
SPEAKER_00: He is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: He's at your right hand, another symbol of closeness.
SPEAKER_00: So we can ask ourselves, what can the Lord keep me through?
SPEAKER_00: Everything is the answer.
SPEAKER_00: His keeping is comprehensive.
SPEAKER_00: When?
SPEAKER_00: When will the Lord be able to keep me?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is all the time, in every circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: But what about me?
SPEAKER_00: Will the Lord keep me?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: He is with you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we know.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why do we know it?
SPEAKER_00: The author inserts one phrase into this whole section as an answer for why we know, as a means for the claims.
SPEAKER_00: He substantiates all of these statements about who God is and his keeping power in one phrase.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, he says, Behold he who keeps Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist knows that God will keep him because he kept Israel before.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking back and recalling something that means something to these listeners, to these singers.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe it doesn't for us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we don't quite remember what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's do a brief recap.
SPEAKER_00: So Israel and this nation, when they would look back, when they would look back and consider God's saving power, the primary event that they would look back and recall, like, remember when that happened?
SPEAKER_00: That was God showing up.
SPEAKER_00: That was God saving us?
SPEAKER_00: That was the Exodus for them.
SPEAKER_00: They were held captive, captive in Egypt, and they were slaves to Egypt, and they were crying out to God, asking for deliverance from slavery, and God sent a man named Moses to say, The Lord is going to deliver you from slavery, and then through miraculous means he did.
SPEAKER_00: So in a big way, when we apply this to ourselves, we receive a blessing that far outweighs what the original readers and singers of this song received.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we look back, we don't see the Exodus, we see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We see the once and for all finished work of God's own Son taking on the penalty of sin and giving us his perfect, righteous works and the gift of the um of uh coming back to life, of being born again.
SPEAKER_00: We see an expression of love from God to us through his son Jesus, an expression of love that changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: So when we see sing this song, when we encounter Psalm 121, when we lift our eyes and know that the Lord is keeping us, we remember the cross.
SPEAKER_00: As if this psalmist is telling us, Jesus, who died for you, Jesus who crossed heaven and earth to save you, he cares about you and where you are and what you're going through, and he is going to keep you through it.
SPEAKER_00: So whether you're in the middle of marital conflict, stressed out by the demands and pressures of your work, your daily job, or maybe it's just been another long, hard week with the kids, he will keep you.
SPEAKER_00: Look back and see the story that changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to this story that I told in the beginning, and uh I want to share you what this looks like walking through and applying this good news, the look back to your own story.
SPEAKER_00: So I become owned by worry and stress and was problem solving as a means of coping with my distress.
SPEAKER_00: So my behavior, what you saw on the outside, was I was not sleeping, I was panicked, and I was problem solving.
SPEAKER_00: Which might even seem like an overreaction.
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you're cool under pressure, you're like, it's just thermo, you guys are fine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that's what how I was on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: My emotions below that, so what was causing my behavior was fear and anger and worry and even shame because I caused the problem.
SPEAKER_00: What was behind those emotions was what I was believing.
SPEAKER_00: I was believing that I had to figure out something because even if God was capable of helping me, I didn't think that he would.
SPEAKER_00: Probably because I didn't deserve his help, or maybe because I thought this was not really a God-sized problem.
SPEAKER_00: Behind that belief is story, something that I lived through.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned I have three kids.
SPEAKER_00: When my first daughter was born, uh, everything was great.
SPEAKER_00: Answer to prayer, we didn't know if we could have kids, and then we did, and it was a miracle, and it was amazing, and we brought her home, and everything was perfect.
SPEAKER_00: And then nine days later, we ended up back in the ER.
SPEAKER_00: My wife was in a critical condition, a complication of the delivery.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and in a very short amount of time, uh her life was in pretty severe danger.
SPEAKER_00: We made it out of that okay.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then fast forward, our our second child is born.
SPEAKER_00: I'm already getting a little nervous.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then before I had time to fully get nervous and fully prepare, she came early, six weeks early, surprised us, and boom, we were in the NICU for a month.
SPEAKER_00: That was not planned.
SPEAKER_00: And that was one of the most stressful times that my family lived through.
SPEAKER_00: So, in both of these experiences, I began to form this belief.
SPEAKER_00: This is a false belief, but I began to form this from my story, from my experiences, that when something good happens, pretty soon after, the other shoe's gonna drop.
SPEAKER_00: That when I receive a blessing from God, it's about to cost me.
SPEAKER_00: Story forms what we believe, how we feel, and what we do.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why looking back to the story of Jesus entering into our condition to save and redeem us changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: When I look back and see what God has done for me in Christ, I can remember myself and rewrite my flawed belief.
SPEAKER_00: Those things aren't actually true about God.
SPEAKER_00: And then when I look back and I see the story of Jesus and I begin to rewrite, so what does that mean for me?
SPEAKER_00: What is actually true about God?
SPEAKER_00: That begins to form new beliefs, which form new emotions, which form new behavior.
SPEAKER_00: When I grab onto that reformed belief, that fear changes to peace.
SPEAKER_00: That worry changes to dependence, and that shame turns into adoration for the one who took on my shame and put it to death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, I am calm.
SPEAKER_00: I can sleep because the one who doesn't sleep is watching over me.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it means to look back.
SPEAKER_00: What story are you living from that hasn't been rewritten by the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: And this psalmist is inviting you to do that now.
SPEAKER_00: Look back and see how Jesus changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you recently started following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're a new believer, but the newness is starting to wear off.
SPEAKER_00: The memory of your baptism is starting to get a little older, and the excitement of your conversion is starting to wear off.
SPEAKER_00: If so, look back.
SPEAKER_00: See that the one who saved you will keep you to the end.
SPEAKER_00: If you're suffering or you're in hardship right now, if you're grieving, and that's hit you in a way that you never expected, and you're in the thick of it right now, don't turn to false saviors.
SPEAKER_00: Look back.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord who died for you, cares for you, and where you are and what you're going through, and he will keep you through it all.
SPEAKER_00: Only he can keep you through it all.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you don't have much to say about your journey as a follower of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your faith has kind of grown stale and you're having a hard time even looking and praying to God anymore.
SPEAKER_00: If so, look back, don't forget.
SPEAKER_00: See what he's done for you.
SPEAKER_00: See that he's with you, he's at your right hand, and he is keeping you.
SPEAKER_00: Look back, the Lord keeps.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second way that we can know that God is keeping us.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the third: look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at verse 7 and 8 to see this.
SPEAKER_00: 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 forth and forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: So here we see the psalmist reflect on the Lord's ability to not only keep you day and night or next year, but forevermore throughout eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Because we see the psalmist begin by looking to the hills to remember the Lord's faithfulness to keep him.
SPEAKER_00: And then he closes this psalm once again by looking ahead to the spiritual hills, if you will, the forevermore, to solidify his faith in the Lord who will sustain him into the end and beyond.
SPEAKER_00: So, likewise, if you're a Christian, if you're following Christ, you're on this journey too, you need to remember where you're going.
SPEAKER_00: Remember where you're going.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to the heavenly Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to heaven to be with God forevermore in God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 8 also tells us that the Lord will keep us in our going out and our coming in.
SPEAKER_00: So you're going to be with God, and the Lord is going to keep you in that journey.
SPEAKER_00: So in this, we see that the presence of God is both the goal and the guide.
SPEAKER_00: God's presence is both the goal and the guide.
SPEAKER_00: We are kept by both anticipating and experiencing his presence now.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it this way: God is where you're going, and God is how you're going to get there.
SPEAKER_00: Which is an amazing miracle and blessing and gift in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: This brings to mind the story of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have read or heard this story, or even just a version of this story.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up with this story, and now we read an abridged kids' version of this to our kids, where Christian is not a man but a boy.
SPEAKER_00: But it's about the main character of the story is a man named Christian, and uh he gets invited or called by God to, or sorry, spoiler, uh it's it's a it's an allegory of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so he gets invited or called by the king to the celestial city.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is a representation of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: The celestial city uh is a symbol for the heavenly Jerusalem or heaven, and the king is a symbol for God.
SPEAKER_00: And so he begins this journey.
SPEAKER_00: He begins this long journey where he is on his way to get to the celestial city, and that's where he's going, and that's where he wants to be, but the journey is hard.
SPEAKER_00: At one point he ends up in a swamp, at one point he veers off the path, he's attacked by enemies.
SPEAKER_00: All along the way, the Lord sends help, the Lord sends ways to bring him back to the path, to save him from harm and from enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And all along the way we see in this story one thing that helps to keep him going, and that is his eyes are fixed on the celestial city.
SPEAKER_00: He is looking ahead to where he's going.
SPEAKER_00: So even when he veers off the path, even when he gets knocked down, even when he falls asleep, when he comes back to, he looks to the celestial city and it gives him strength to keep going.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this psalmist is doing here.
SPEAKER_00: By looking ahead to where he's going, to the presence of God, and by looking ahead and remembering that it is the Lord who is faithful to bring him there, he is refreshed and he perseveres.
SPEAKER_00: So, like the first singers of this song, you are a pilgrim on your way to the heavenly Jerusalem, where you're going to worship God forever.
SPEAKER_00: Along the way, you will be met with hardship and pain, distraction, affliction, suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And when you feel like giving up, God is there.
SPEAKER_00: God is keeping you every step of the way.
SPEAKER_00: And by his grace, you'll make it safely home.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna make it because God is keeping us.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of how well we keep the faith, but because God is keeping you.
SPEAKER_00: So when you face hardship and opposition, insecurity, anxiety, and failure, look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Look ahead to where the Lord is bringing you.
SPEAKER_00: Joyfully anticipate an eternity in the presence of God and know that He will keep your life, your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: Lift your eyes, lift your eyes and look to the destination and let it strengthen you for today.
SPEAKER_00: When you look at Psalm 121 as a whole, you see the same God who saves his people is the same God who keeps his people every step of the way through this life and into the heavenly Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This reminds us that it is the Lord who helps, so we are safe.
SPEAKER_00: It is the Lord who keeps, so we are not shaken.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the Lord who sustains, so we persevere to the end.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in this room today and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, or you're not sure what you think about this whole Christianity thing.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not following Jesus, and if you don't know Jesus, if you've never trusted him for salvation, maybe you've already begun to experience that you're walking this journey a little bit alone, that your future is uncertain, and that you're not sure what is going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you experience the pain and the good things in this life, and you think that this life is as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: Where the truth is, for those who are following Jesus, this life is as bad as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: This suffering that precedes an eternal glory with Jesus in heaven, this life is as bad as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know Jesus, there's nothing beyond, and this life is as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe you're scrambling to make it count, and maybe you're feeling that fall short.
SPEAKER_00: If this is you, you already know that the road is hard.
SPEAKER_00: And if this is you, I invite you to look up and see a God who loves you.
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to look up and see a God who is inviting you.
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to look back and see how the person and work of Jesus has rewritten a new story that can redeem your story and bring you into an eternity with God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: And I invite you to look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Look ahead to something that counts.
SPEAKER_00: Look ahead that is something far greater than we could ever imagine based on what we experience in this life.
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, the invitation is turn to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's calling you to the heavenly Jerusalem, and he will keep you until the very end when you turn to him and trust him.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are a believer, maybe you are following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Christian, hear this: no one, no one and nothing can keep you from reaching your destination.
SPEAKER_00: You are going to make it.
SPEAKER_00: But God is keeping you and He will faithfully keep you through to the end every step of the way.
SPEAKER_00: No problem is too small for him, and nothing that you have done will keep him from loving or helping you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're facing a hard thing, or if you've grown stale in your faith, look up.
SPEAKER_00: Look up.
SPEAKER_00: It is only in the Lord that you will find help.
SPEAKER_00: Then look back.
SPEAKER_00: Remember who he is and what he's done.
SPEAKER_00: He is your keeper.
SPEAKER_00: He is the keeper, the savior, the one who made the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He died for you, and he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Only he can keep you through to the end.
SPEAKER_00: And then look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: God has promised to safely deliver you through this journey and beyond.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else will soon perish, but the Lord will keep your life.
SPEAKER_00: And the God who kept Israel, then for this psalmist, is keeping you now through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So look up, look back, and look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for this massive truth that you've delivered in song form to us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for the hope that we can keep going because you have kept us, because you are keeping us.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord, would you draw our eyes up now?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we confess that we have so many other things that we turn to.
SPEAKER_00: We confess that we look to other things for hope.
SPEAKER_00: We look to other things for distraction.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't turn to you.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord, would you help us to turn to you?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, that you are a God that we can turn to and receive true help.
SPEAKER_00: Would you help us to look up?
SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for sending your son for us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sending your son to enter into our condition, to lay down his life for us, to give us the gift of the resurrection, to paint for us a new story, to write for us a new song.
SPEAKER_00: That in you we persevere.
SPEAKER_00: In you we are not shaken because of who you are and what you've done.
SPEAKER_00: That our story, though it's broken with our own sin, with the sin of others, and the brokenness of the world, it can be rewritten, it can be restored.
SPEAKER_00: You make it into something beautiful because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God, cause us to look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, ahead is where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: We long to be in your presence, and we thank you for your presence that we get to experience even now.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us on our journey.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to look ahead, to not be confused or distracted thinking that this is all there is, but help us to remember this is as bad as it gets.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have made a new place for us.
SPEAKER_00: You have made a new way in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for these good gifts.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for these blessings that we receive in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in your name that we pray and we believe.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.