Help Is On The Way - Psalms of Ascent

Psalm 121 reminds us that we were never meant to walk through life alone. When the road is long, our burdens are heavy, and our strength is limited, our help comes from the Lord. In this message, we are reminded that God is both our Helper and our Keeper—the One who faithfully watches over, protects, and sustains His people every step of the way.

A message from Dr. Bryan Samms, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church Burnet.

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All right, praise the Lord. I appreciate the choir and all the good singing this morning. It was a blessing. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Psalm 121, if you would. Continuing the songs of ascend, at least for a couple more weeks. These songs are great. They're songs of hope, they're songs of trust, they're songs of worship. Remember, they were sang by the children of Israel as they journeyed back to Jerusalem three times a year for their religious festivals. Then it came a bit of a song book, if you will, and some of these are very familiar, and today's psalm is surely that. I've been asked multiple times, are you getting settled in? I said, Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I'm starting to experience all that the Hill Country has to offer. I got to go to Lake Buchanan yesterday. That was my first time. That was awesome. I got to go with the KOZ guys. And of course, I'm experiencing all the wonderful local restaurants in town. I've been a couple guys a couple times with the uh senior brothers to Storms, only for breakfast, but it was great. And uh I got introduced to Trailblazer Grill this week. I got introduced also to El Charo. Uh it was great. But I tell you, the thing I was most excited about coming was uh the Thompson boys had sent my son Brent a welcome video like, hey, we're excited to have you move into Texas to be our friend. And we have this really awesome pizza place called Fratelli's. And so I've been, you know, very excited about doing this. We were getting moved into our house, and we, of course, we didn't have any groceries yet until last week. We've got more groceries like now for the rest of the year. Uh, but we so we were one night we were getting everything packed in and set up, and Angie said, Yeah, what about that pizza place that everybody talks about? So I called and ordered, ordered a couple pizzas and uh went in there. I had the kids with me too. I don't know why, but they were just piled in my truck, and so I just left them out in front. It was a call-in order, so I ran inside. The kids were all outside. I got the two pizzas, I got a few sodas, uh, those styrofoam cups, filled them up with ice and uh and soda, and then I also got a couple other things, and then I saw the packets of um the grated cheese and the red peppers. You know what I'm talking about? So I grabbed a big old handful of those, stacked them on top of the pizza boxes, put the Cokes on top of the pizza boxes. Angie ordered mozzarella sticks, threw those on top of the boxes, and I thought to myself, this is no problem. I got this. Of course, all my kids are no value right now. They're in the truck. And so I start walking. It's my first experience. And of course, I've also learned this. Basically, everywhere I go and burn it, everybody already knows who I am. I'm in the grocery store. Hey, Pastor, I'm I'm at the bank. Hey, Pastor. And I, you know, I walked in, I didn't meet anybody that I thought I knew. There was a teenage girl that checked me out, uh, as far as checked out the uh the trance. That didn't sound right. No teenage girl is checking me out. Uh checked me out, and and and I I walked, got the stuff, and I'm walking to the door, and of course the thought hits me. Yeah, I got a lot, I got a lot of stuff here. And and I gotta swing this door open. And so I thought, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna do this. So I put everything on one hand, and I started balancing it with one hand, and I reached over, staring at the cups, and yep, I spilled those Cokes all over the front door, all over the entryway. Coke is absolutely everywhere. Welcome to Burn It, Brian. Welcome to the most popular pizza place in town. Your first experience there is dumping your coke. And the poor girl, the girl that uh took my order, she just looked at me like, you are the biggest idiot that I have ever seen in my entire life. And she was right. I I had to even look, there was so much soda everywhere that had to pop the door open to like get in the threshold and like clean up in there. And I look over at my truck, my son just looks at me and waves. While I'm on my hands and knees cleaning up this mess, there's a guy sitting down at a table right beside of me, and he looked up at me and said, This, I could have helped you. I thought, I thought, thanks, man. Now, to be fair, he was not obligated to help me, and truth is I didn't ask him. But I am glad to announce to you this morning, I've never one time had God say to me, I could have helped you. Psalm 121 says this, look, I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper, the Lord is your shade on your right hand, the sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. 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. Amen. This is God's word. I want to label the message this morning. Help is on the way. Many people have called this psalm the traveler's psalm. Remember, this psalm would have been sung likely on the beginning of the journey to Israel. And from wherever you were in Israel to get to Jerusalem, you were going up. And so if you looked toward Jerusalem to begin your journey, you would look toward the hills. So when the writer says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills, then he asks a question: Where does my help come from? He's basically asking this as I go on this journey, as I take this pilgrimage, as I move toward Jerusalem, who's going to keep me safe? Who's going to help me? I can't make it on my own. And the answer in verse number one is very encouraging, isn't it? My help comes from the Lord. The same one, he says, who made the heavens and the earth. Now, this is going to be a different sermon because usually you hear a preacher and they always got three points, right? That's the whole thing. Three points in a poem. But today I've only got two. That does not mean it's going to be shorter, okay? It just means I have two. Really, Psalm 121 presents two truths about God that every pilgrim can take on their journey. Two things as you go through this journey, you're not journeying to Jerusalem to worship, but you are journeying to a destination, aren't we all? Every one of us are going to that promised land one day. We're on a journey right now. And the truth of the matter is, every day, every night, we need the Lord's help and we need the Lord to protect us. So let's look at these two truths together. Number one, I want you to see very plainly in verses one and two that the Lord is my helper. Again, I will lift up my eyes to the hill from where does my help come from? Now, if you use the King James translation of the Bible, maybe some of you still have one, it says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my strength. And almost sounds like the songwriter saying, I get my strength from the hills. But folks, we do not get our strength from the hills, we get our strength from the one who made the hills. Psalm 13, verse 6, so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper. Psalm 33 and verse 20, our soul waits for the Lord, for he is our help and our shield. Over and over and over again, the Bible proclaims this truth that if you need help, God has all you need. The word helper here literally means aid or relief or support. The idea is that God is with you, He assists you, and He provides for you everything that you need along your journey. When you look to the hills, if you're not careful, you're going to have questions. But when you look to your helper, you're going to have answers. See, if all you did was look at the hills, look at the valleys, look at the challenges, look at the struggles in your life, your heart's going to be filled with doubts and fears and questions. But if you will lift up your eyes to the one that is beyond the hills, there you will find your answers. So in verse number one, I think when he's saying, I will lift up my eyes to the hills for us today, that just simply means as I look out on this journey, as I look what this week has in front of me, this week of doctor's tests, this week of new school assignments, this week of uh difficulties at jobs and decisions that I have to make, we all are climbing some hills and descending into some valleys. And here's what God wants you to know: whatever you're going through this week, He will help you. One preacher said it like this the journey is long, the road is rough, the burdens are heavy, the climb is steep, the dangers are many. You need help, and you need the Lord's help. Let's look at this a few ways. First of all, I want you to consider God's help in the past. Notice what it says in verse number uh two. It says, My help comes from the Lord who made the heaven and the earth. And here the songwriter is appealing to us that God is able to help us, and quite honestly, his help is unlimited. How do I know that God's help in my life is unlimited? Answer because the one that made the heavens and the earth is the one who is there for my help. Now, folks, I don't know if if you have thought much about what it means that God made the heaven and the earth, but what it means is that God stepped out on nothing, using nothing, needing nothing, and he literally spoke out into nothing and created the heavens and the earth and the stars and the trees and the fish and the cattle all in six literal days. Now, folks, listen, if you can believe the first verse of the Bible, you can believe every verse of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And beyond that, can I say this to you? If you have a God that created the heavens and the earth, that literally used nothing to create it all, can I say this to you? There is nothing that you are facing this week that God cannot help you with. You see his past help, but you also see his present help. The songwriters obviously in verse two using a present tense word, my help comes from the Lord. It's not just what God did in the past, it is what God is doing right now. That's why Psalm 46, verse 1, says this God is our refuge and strength. Hear it, a very present help in time of trouble. So it's one thing to have God help you in the past, it's another thing to realize that God's help is available to you right here and right now. In the Old Testament, in 2 Chronicles 14, there was a king, King Asa of Judah, who was facing us. The Ethiopians came out against Judah with an army of a million men and 300 chariots. This was an overwhelming army. This was an insurmountable odd. This is no way that Israel could have won. But listen to what Asa said to God in verse number 10. And Asa cried out to the Lord his God and said, Lord, it is nothing for you to help us. I think that prayer ought to get etched into the heart of every Christian listening to me preach this morning. Lord, it is nothing for you to help us. How many of you believe that today? How many of you understand that it does not matter how big the obstacle is, it does not matter how hard the decision is, it doesn't matter how large the bill is, it doesn't matter how complicated the circumstances are, it is nothing to God. I mean, if he hung the sun into outer space, if he flung stars out into space out of nothing, if he planted trees out of nothing, if he created dirt out of nothing, if he scooped out that dirt, filled it with water, and called it the sea out of nothing, listen, there's nothing too hard for God. His present help. May I suggest to you that his past help and his present help compel me to believe in his future help. My help is coming from the Lord. The help for this journey that I've not yet gone on is for the Lord, meaning everything in my past was helped by God. What I'm going through now is helped by God, but whatever I'm going to step into tomorrow is certainly helped by God. This is exactly what 1 Samuel chapter 7 and verse 12 says. Remember that? Ebenezer, the word Ezer in Hebrew is the word help here in Psalm 121. So literally, Ebenezer means God is my help. And he translates it for us. He says in 1 Samuel 7, verse 12, I called it Ebenezer, saying, listen to this, thus far the Lord has helped me. He means, up to this point, everything I've needed, God has done. Every battle that I face, God has won for me. So I am confident that God has led me this far. He will lead me and help me on. It's like the old song says, Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. If God has been your help in the past, he will be your help in the future. So number one, the Lord is our helper. But number two, I want you to see the Lord is our keeper. Now I want you to see something in verse number three. In verse verses one and two, the the the key word is help. It's used twice or used once, excuse me. But in verse number three, all the way down through verse eight, there's six different times. One form of the word keep is used. So let me just show them, point them out to you. Verse verse number uh three, he who keeps you will not slumber. Verse four, behold, he who keeps Israel. Verse five, the Lord is your keeper. Verse seven, he will keep you from all evil. See the pattern there? Again, verse seven, he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming forth. So so so the language changes here. In verses one and two, he's saying God is your helper. But in verses three through eight, he's saying God is your keeper. Now, now this is a change of language, but not only that, notice something else here. Uh notice in verse one, I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence, from where does my help come from? Do you see that? That's first person. That's the writer of the psalm saying, I get my help from God. But notice verse, notice verse three. He will not let, what's the next word? Say it with me, everybody. Your. In verses one and two, he's saying, I get my help from God, but in verses three through eight, somebody else is saying to him, the Lord is your keeper. Now, there's two different ways to look at this. One is that God is responding to him and saying this to him, I am your keeper. The other, and I think most people agree with this, and I think this is true, the other is that remember, as they traveled, they traveled with family, they traveled with friends, they traveled with their community. And it's almost like the songwriter says, I get my help from God, but the others that are traveling with him say, and that's right, the Lord is your keeper. Which reminds me this morning to tell you, it is wise to have some good people on the journey with you that will speak truth, will speak life, will speak about Jesus into your experience. You know, so many times, folks, is it not true? We're trying to, we're trying to fight through this journey, we're trying to wrestle our way through, and if we're not careful, we got people around us that are not speaking life and truth into us. We would call those toxic people. Anyone who's not pointing me to Jesus, anybody who's not encouraging my faith. Folks, I need some people in my life saying, Hey, Brian, it's gonna be okay. God's gonna help you out, man. Hey, I know you're going through a tough time. It's okay. God's gonna keep you, he's gonna protect you. You've got nothing to fear. And I just want to say this this morning. I thank God for people like that in my life. I thank God for anybody who's ever stepped into me and encouraged me and said, on this journey, you're going to be okay. Let me point out three things about God being your keeper, which simply means to guard and to protect. There are words in the Bible that describe a keeper of a garden, a keeper of a flock, like a shepherd, as well as somebody who keeps watch over a city, a watchman, like Ezekiel 3 and 33. Each time it speaks about a person whose primary function is to look out for you and to protect you. Folks, I don't know what you needed to hear this morning when you came to church, but I've got some good news for you. There is always somebody watching out for you. There is always somebody on the lookout for you. There's always somebody with his hand on you, protecting you, and that is Jesus Christ. Notice a few thoughts about this. Number one, his watch care is constant. Verse three, he will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither sleep nor slumber. Well, that's encouraging, isn't it? It's saying that God does not only watch me during the day when I am awake. Verse 3 talks about not letting your foot be moved. God makes sure that you stay on the path that He has for you. That's why Jude, verse 24, says this. Now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling. I'm thankful that God did not leave me to myself when I got saved. I like what one preacher said. He said, if you could lose your salvation, you would. How many of you understand? I did not save myself, and I cannot keep myself. I need God to make sure my feet hit the right spot because if I didn't have him, I guarantee I'd be stepping off the path. He sees my feet, my feet would slip. Another Bible verse says it like this God has made my path enlarge so that I don't fall. You know, folks, God's out ahead of you clearing the brush, making sure there's plenty of room for you to walk, making sure that you don't get off the path. He could use a thousand circumstances in your life to make sure that if you are in Christ and you're a believer, he's going to keep you going on the path that you started on. And not only that, watch this. When your life overwhelms you and you are worried yourself sick. God's got the night watch. One old boy said it like this God has eternal insomnia. The old preacher was laid awake three nights in a row. He was worried about a situation in his church. Couldn't believe what he was dealing with. It kept him up all night, three nights in a row. He read Psalm 121, verse number four Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. And he looked up to God and said, God, I'm going to bed now. There's no reason for both of us to stay awake tonight. The Bible is telling you, brothers and sisters, this morning, that you do not need to stay awake, fretting yourself, worried, gnawing down your fingernails, concerned about whatever's on your mind. I want you to know this morning that Jesus is never sleepy, he never slumbers, he never gets tired, he never takes a nap. So you can trust him. This morning I'm telling you that you can lay your head on your pillow at night and knowing that when you fall asleep, you're going to wake up because the Lord kept you. And you can trust him in every circumstance. Not only that, his watch care is also comforting. Notice uh verse 5, it says this He is He is our keeper, but look at what it means specifically. He is the shade on our right hand. Therefore, the sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. His watch care is comforting. Dr. Tony Evans said it like this there is no safer place in the universe than being right where God wants you to be. Because you may be in the middle of the scorching hot sun, or you may be experiencing the terrors of night. But in either case, God is with you. He's your shade by day, he's your protection by night. You know, it's interesting. Have you ever heard the word lunatic? You ever heard that word? Lunatic or moonstruck? There was an ancient belief that weird things happened at night when people were overexposed to the moon. And of course, in the Middle East, that that hot desert blazing sun in the middle of the summer, or did I say burn it? Oh, I mean, I mean in the Middle East. Lord have mercy. It was so hot yesterday, I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking. He says, Look, it's hot out there. And you can't do anything about the sun, but here's what I can do: I can provide shade for you so you don't suffocate. And it's crazy at night, and people do wild things at night, and usually nothing good happens after midnight. But here's the deal I've got you. That's why the old song, many of you know this, the Lord's our rock, in him we hide, a shelter in the time of storm, secure whatever ill betide, a shelter in the time of storm. Here is a shade by day, defense by night, a shelter in the time of storm, no fears alarm, no foes affright, a shelter in the time of storm. You know that chorus, right? Jesus is a rock in a weary land, a shelter in the time of storm. But watch this, verse 7. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. Here it is. He will keep your going out and your coming in. That is a reference to your work day. When you leave your house, you go out. When you're done with work, you come home. He says, I watched you. I watched you when you went to work. It was early. You had to be there. You had a lot to do, but he watched you. He made sure you got everything done you needed to get done. He gave you the strength to fight through it, and then the day came by. Guess what? You came back home. You got home to your wife, you got home to your kids, you got home to your grandbabies, whatever. You got home. God, God kept you. Now what look at the la look at the last phrase. From this time forth and forevermore. Did you know that God not only keeps you every day, He keeps you for all eternity? Do you know that God has never lost something that He found? And I've met people, Christians, even people in Baptist churches that struggled their whole lives. Does God really love me? Does God really care? I mean, I messed up. I don't know what to do. I mean, does a Christian really act like that? And there are people maybe even in this room. You have agonized and struggled over the assurance of your salvation for years. You have no idea whether you're saved or not. You think if you had a good day, God loves you. If you had a bad day, God doesn't love you anymore. Can I tell you this, friend? You cannot do anything to make God love you anymore, and you cannot do anything to make God love you any less. He does not love you because you are good. He loves you because he is good. You are kept. You are kept by the power of God, not your own efforts. The same God who redeemed you is not going to lose you on your journey home. Well, baseball season is coming to an end. Uh-ish. I'm not real interested right now because I'm a Kansas City Royals fan, and well, there's just not a lot to be interested in right now. But there was in 2014 and 2015 when we went to Back-to-Back World Series. Lost the first one, won the second one. And I remember I was living in California at the time. It was an awesome run for two years. Then of course they won the World Series and sold their whole team off. Wonder why they're terrible today. If you come to my office sometime, I'll show you on my on my uh on my cabinet. There's a there's a signed autographed 8x10 of Wade Davis. He was the closing pitcher of the Kansas City Royals during that 2014-2015 run. Davis is one of the all-time playoff greats. He had a microscopic 0.81 ERA. When Wade Davis got on the mound, the game was virtually over. But as amazing as a 0.81 ERA is, he's not the best of all time. The best of all time is inarguable. No serious baseball fan would ever argue that there's anybody greater than Mariano Rivera. The New York Yankees closer had an unbelievable point seven zero in one hundred and forty one innings to be considered without a doubt the greatest closer of all time. Do you realize in 141 innings he only had five blown saves and one loss? Absolutely extraordinary record. The Yankees won five World Series titles during his 19 season career, advancing them to the postseason 17 times. Mariana Rivera is the greatest closing pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. But guess what? He's not perfect. He blew five saves and lost one game. Folks, I want to tell you, God has never blown a save. God does not lose what he kept. God does not get on the mound and fail. Church, I'm trying to encourage you this morning. You might be here and doubts may have filled your mind and you may not be sure of your salvation, but I want to tell you this morning, if you know Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, I'm not talking about religion. I'm not talking about you're a good old boy. I'm talking about you believe Jesus Christ and you have submitted your life to Him, you have trusted Him. I am telling you, He has saved you, and nothing can ever change that. Amen. Because God's the greatest keeper, He's the greatest savor in the history of the world. Let's bow for prayer, Cook.