Viola Solid Rock Assembly
Our Help Comes From the Lord
(audience applauding) All right, good evening, how's everybody doing? All right, you staying dry? No. (laughs) Got a lot of rain out there, we need it, but all right. So tonight we're gonna be looking at God's word, it's Psalm 121. So if you wanna turn with me there, we're looking at Psalm 121. I am gonna read out of the NIV tonight. I just like the way it translates this Psalm a little bit better. So we're gonna be reading Psalm 121 together. I'll give you a minute to turn there in your Bible, your phone, we'll also have it on the screen. And this is one of my favorite Psalms. I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. A Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forever more. I'll just pray over to God's word tonight. God, we just thank you for this word. And as we come before you ask that, you just speak to our hearts. God, open us up to whatever you want us to hear tonight. Change our lives, challenge us, move us in the direction that you want us to move in and God just place things in us that we need to hear and live by tonight and do your work after that in the authors in the name of Jesus, amen. All right, so Psalm 121, this is one of the Psalms of a sense. So not sense like smell or sense like coins, but a sense like traveling up. And so the Psalm of a sense are Psalm 120 to 134. And these were songs that were saying as Jewish people traveled to Jerusalem for one of their three annual festivals that they had to go to. So to get there, they would have to travel up or send up to Jerusalem from where they were. And so hence the name, the song of a sense. As they were going on that pilgrimage three times a year, they would sing these songs and that would give them important things to remember about God, both for like the journey they're on, like traveling then and also just about life in general, traveling closer to Jesus. So as part of the scripture in Psalms, it's also intended to be for us, right? The same thing for us. We travel through life. We got things going on. We're on this journey. And God wants us to have these important truths. So that's kind of the Psalm of a sense. It's important to know that going in to breaking this down tonight. And so we're gonna break down this Psalm verse by verse. So the first verse begins with this phrase, I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? And to wrap our minds around that statement, we have to understand hills, hills in that timeframe and what it meant, the significance of that. And in biblical times, if you were in a valley, you would be vulnerable to attacks from people who were higher up. So just imagine that. Safer place, a lot of times is in a mountain or the hills and you're vulnerable in the valley. So these people, as they were traveling up, going up to Jerusalem, the psalmist, as he writes this, he's looking up and he's saying, I'm looking up there and my danger can come from there. Potential danger, right? Where does my help come from? So I lift my eyes to the hills because basically it's saying I am looking up and noticing that I'm up against something that is bigger than me. Whatever is coming down to the valley where I am, where I'm safe, could be larger than I am, could be destructive to me, could be dangerous to me. And so that's what that means. So if you're like me, you've had various points in times in life where things are going okay, they're sailing along and then the next thing you know, bam, you're hit by something difficult, right? And so sometimes it's our own fault. Sometimes we get ourself in a mess. Sometimes it's things beyond our control, but either way the rug can get pulled out from under us. And suddenly you look in front of you and feels like a mountain. Don't know if you've ever been there. I'm sure we all have been there. And you know, this wasn't in my notes, but I just felt as I was in worship just now, I just really felt that this message is gonna be for many of us, but I think in particular, I feel like, you know, there's somebody here struggling with going through the same thing over and over again, the same battle over and over again that God wants to free you of. The same hill and that mountain that's in front of you that God is trying to pull you about. He loves you trying to pull you out of it, but you find yourself back there over and over again. The same temptation, the same mindset, the same fear and anxiety, whatever it might be. And I feel like I really want everybody to lock in on this, especially if that's you, as we talk about it tonight. Because Asama says, I lift up my eyes to those hills that are bigger than me. We're all gonna have mountains bigger than us. And so let's take heed tonight. So I lift my eyes to the mountains or the hills that are bigger than me. That can come in many forms, right? Financial stress, depression, fear, addiction, trouble in the marriage, pressure at work, panic attacks, loss of a loved one. You could have physical or mental illness. A list can go on and on and on. But when we're in that spot and we're facing something like that, we see that that mountain is bigger than we are. You know, it's funny in kids' church today. I threw this question out there and I asked the kids. I said, hey, what are some things that kids your age go through? And I got some responses you would imagine, like homework. Homework was one, like, hey, I get that, yeah. School in general is something that is a challenge. We had one girl who I think probably was the youngest there. She said, going to work was a big challenge. Going to work was a big challenge. And then somebody raised her hand, I wish I could remember who it was, and they said life. That was, I thought that was cool. I thought that was you, life. And I thought about that, and at first I was like, you need to be more specific. And then I was like, you know what? No, yeah, that's a good answer. Like, what are the challenges you face? Life, a life, life has so many challenges. And as you go on from the age that you're at, from the age of all the way up, it's going to be life, right? It's going to be all kinds of things. And life is beautiful, life is great, life is incredible. But you have all these different challenges and all these different areas you can get hit from. So what are the challenges that we go through? Life, good answer, good answer. Family Feud, good answer, good answer. Survey says, all right, so I lift my eyes to the hills, right? I lift my eyes to the mountain to the challenge. Another way you could say that is I take a look up and I see all the challenges around me. We could say that we look around my life. You could rephrase that to say, I look around my life and I see all the challenges going on. So just like the psalmist says, like when we think about that, we think about all the challenges we face, the next question is how do I get through this? And so the next thing we see is where does my help come from? I think that's a logical next thing to ask, right? And so we could also rephrase that. Like how am I going to make it financially? I see this pile of bills, how am I going to navigate this? How am I going to make ends meet? I got this diagnosis, God, how am I going to take care of my healthcare? What do I need to do to take care of that? We see a family member going through a crisis, God, how are we going to get them out? The psalmist says this, where does my help come from, right? We tend to ask that. And I think just that question itself, it kind of leads us to know, like by nature, we understand where does my help come from with the fact we need help, right? And sometimes we tend to look at those things ourselves and be like, well, I think I can power through this, think I can muscle through it. The psalmist knew differently. The psalmist knew differently when they stepped outside, they had to travel to Jerusalem, that they need help. They see a mountain, they need help. Where does my help come from? I can't do it without help. And aren't you glad that we have help tonight? All right, the next phrase says, our help comes from the Lord. And then I love this phrase, the maker of heaven and earth. Our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. You know, I was just talking to Cody back there, and saying, dude, you're pretty good in pro-presenter. So pro-presenter is a program that the church uses, it gets the slides on the screen. Cody's pretty good at it. And I'm like, man, sometimes I struggle with this thing. And what I do when I can't figure pro-presenter out, I look at their website, they have like a support site, and they have a YouTube channel. And so when I am stuck, I go to the manufacturer of the program because they're gonna know all the ins and outs. They're gonna know how it operates, they're gonna know what to do when it breaks. And let me tell you, in life, we have a manufacturer. We have one who manufactured the heavens and the earth. He made everything. He made you intricately, right? He knows everything you go through. He sees everything you're gonna battle. He knows every resource you need. He is the ultimate manufacturer. And so when we have trouble, when we have issues, let's go to the manufacturer. Let's go to the maker of heaven and earth. That's God, right? Let's go to him who knows how to navigate it. He's the maker of heaven and earth. So the first section of this song that establishes two major things here. And if you're gonna leave tonight just remembering one thing, I would say it's probably this, that we're all gonna face trouble that is bigger than us, but our God is bigger than every trouble. So we're gonna face trouble bigger than us, but God's bigger than any trouble we face. All right, and then the song keeps going. So verses three and four show us this. And really this next few verses, it tells us who God is and what he can do to help. Verse three and four show this. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. And so that first phrase, he will not let your foot slip. So if you're climbing up something, you're going up a hill or up a mountain, you need something with good traction. You need some shoes that can help your foot not slip. I got this one pair of shoes at home and I've had them for so long, at the bottom of them is slick. Like it's completely, there's no traction left on these shoes. And I'll know it, if I'm going to play ball with the kids, I throw these old nasty shoes on, on the baseball field. And I can't run on these things at all. And I'll slip or whatever. And so we need good traction. Same thing, if you're going up a hill, you need good traction. And so the psalmist knowing that their ascent and their journey to Jerusalem was going to have hills to climb, right? Mountains to climb, they needed to have good footing. And so that's why it's symbolic, right? That our lives are filled with ups and downs and we can lose our footing. But thankfully, we serve a guy who can keep our feet stable. If you feel like you're slipping and falling, he can keep your feet stable. Listen, if you wouldn't go to your car right now with all this rain outside, you wouldn't go to your car now and take off your brand new tires or good tires and find the worst pair of ball traction tires you can't put them on your car and then take the turns around here, right? You wouldn't do that. But sometimes when we want to take on our own problems, it's like we're putting ball tires on our car and driving in the rain down hills and curves and we're trying to make it on our own. I mean, God is saying, lean on me. I've got the traction you need. God has the traction you need to help your foot not to slip. That's what the psalmist says. When they're thinking about going up hills and going up there, thinking of their foot not slipping and then stumbling down the side of a mountain, that's the way God can protect you and can keep your feet from slipping and falling. We need that. We need that help in life, don't we? We need that help when trouble faces us. We need our help for our foot to not slip. It also goes on to say this. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Listen, God's available to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. He will never get too tired or too weak to hear from you. Anna has a dog at home. Her name is Cookie. And Cookie is a blue healer that is about a year or a little over a year old. And Cookie has a lot of energy. Cookie has a lot of energy. And so I'll get home and she has the thing. She has squiggles. So she'll squiggle when she gets excited and she'll do that. And we make fun of her for it. But that's how she gets so excited. She can't maintain her energy. She can't contain it. And so I'll pet her and I'll play with her for a few minutes. And I just get tired of doing it. I don't have energy to play with her all day. And when I quit, she'll just stop and look at me like, how could you possibly quit playing with me? How could you quit that? But I get tired, right? We get tired. We don't have an endless tank of energy that we can just spend on everything all the time. Well, listen, God's not like that when we go to him. God is not like that. When you go to God and you take your problems to him and you take the things that you're going through to him and you offer it up to him and surrender it, he doesn't get tired of hearing from you. It says he doesn't slumber nor sleep. It gives us this idea that we have a God who has endless amounts of ability to hear from you. And so when you have the thing you're going through and it is weighing on your heart, don't get tired of bringing it up to him 'cause he wants to hear it from you over and over again. He wants, that pulls your heart in closer to his heart. The one who watches over us, he doesn't slumber nor sleep. And so this Psalm goes on in verse five and six, it says this, the Lord watches over you. The Lord is you shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. He belts his note, it gets hot in Arkansas. It's really hot, thankfully we're not. I've got the rain, we don't have to heat today. But Israel, we get pretty hot too. So Israel gets up to 95 degrees and you got the desert and then thousands of years ago when this is written, you did not have air conditioning. And so when this was originally written, it was written in that context of this journey that could take days to get to Jerusalem. You're going up hills and down hills. You're trying to get there, you need traction for your shoes, you don't want to slip. But then you got the sun beaming down on you and scorching down on you. You can't like get in your car and turn on the AC. There's nothing like that, you're exposed to it. And so you get scorched. And so for me, something I love to do is I love to coach baseball. And so during the summer, you can find me out there coaching baseball for Levi and for Jacob and then in helping out in and softball when we go to the fields. Even when I'm not coaching, we'll be out in the fields playing. So during the summer, I'm outside a lot on the ball fields. And I always wear these socks that go up right above my ankle. And so while it ends up happening, I'll get the world's worst farmer tan. Like under the sockets, like the color of a sheet of paper. And then above that, it's red. I mean, it's just such a strong tan line. And so it's funny in a day and age, when we have the AC and we've got indoors, we can go to. And sunscreen, the sun can still scorch us, right? Imagine back then having very exposed to the sun. They could get incredibly scorched by the sun. But the psalmist is telling us that God is our personal protector from even the most basic thing like the sun, even the most powerful thing that we can't control the sun, right? We can't control what it does, but God can protect us from it. And so the message there in that is the fact that no matter what challenge you face, no matter how big it is, even something as big as the sun, God has power over that. If he's the maker of heaven and earth, then the sun is at his command. The sun's ability to scorch you is something he can protect you from. If he can protect you from that, he can protect you from anything. That's what the psalmist wants us to know here. That's what God wants us to know here. And so then finally, we come to verse eight and it says, "The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore." That word, the phrase coming and going, it was an expression used in Bible times to describe your everyday life, everyday routines, basically talking about when you wake up, when you go to sleep, your job, whether you go to school, whatever it might be. For us, think about that. If you're going, getting up and getting in the morning, whatever you have to do, your morning routine, driving kids to school, or whatever it might be, getting to work, and then everything in between when you take your lunch break, when you get off work. The things you do after that, all your little routines, everything going on, every detail of your life. That's what it's saying here, is that, the Lord will watch over every single detail of your life. And it's just funny, the fact that we read in that first or second verse, the maker of heaven and earth, he's big enough and strong enough to make everything. And yet he loves you enough to watch every detail. You're coming and going both now and forever more. And so there isn't, about now and forever more. I love that part too. It's not just some temporary interest that he has in you. It's not just something that he's gonna get in the mood and stop liking you. You're not gonna annoy him enough to stop liking you, right? It's both now and forever more. It's a choice he makes. He chooses to love you every single day, no matter what. He chooses to love you. All right, so I wanna share this story. And years ago, I'll just read it to you. It's probably easier if I read it. A missionary on furlough told this true story while visiting his home church in Michigan. While serving at a small field in hospital in Africa, every two weeks I traveled by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies. There was a journey, this was a journey of two days and required camping overnight at the halfway point. On one of these journeys, I arrived in the city where I planned to collect money from a bank, purchased medical supplies, and then began my two day journey back to the field hospital. Upon arrival in the city, I saw two men fighting. One of those had been seriously injured. So I treated him for his injuries and at the same time, I talked to him about the Lord Jesus Christ. I then traveled two days, camping overnight, and arrived back home without any incident. Two weeks later, I repeated this journey. And upon getting to the city, I was approached by the young man I treated. He told me that he had known I carried money in medicine. He said, "Some friends and I followed you "into the jungle, knowing you would camp overnight. "We plan to kill you and take your money in medicine. "But just as we were about to move into your camp, "we saw that you were surrounded by 26 armed guards. "At this I laughed and I said, "I was certainly alone in the jungle that night. "And the young man pressed the point. "However I said, no, listen, no sir, listen, understand, "I was the only person there. "And so my five friends also saw them and counted them. "It was only because of those guards "that we didn't attack you." So then fast forward and he's telling this in a sermon, the story, and at this point in a sermon, one of the men in a congregation jumped to his feet and interrupted the missionary and asked if he could tell him the exact date that this happened. The missionary told the congregation the date and the man who interrupted the story told him his own story. He said, "On the night of your incident in Africa, "it was morning here and I was preparing to go play golf "and I was about to putt and I felt the urge "to pray for you. "In fact, the urging of the Lord was so strong, "I called men in this church to meet with me here "in the sanctuary to pray with you. "Would all this man who prayed with me on that day "please stand up? "The man who met together to pray that day stood up, "the missionary wasn't concerned with who they were. "He was too busy counting the man that he saw. "There were 26 men, the same number of angels "that had camped about that missionary that night. "So I lift my eyes to the mountains. "Where does my help come from? "My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. "He will not let your foot slip. "He who watches over you will not slumber. "Indeed, he who watches over Israel "will not slumber nor sleep. "The Lord watches over you. "The Lord is your shade at your right hand. "The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. "O Lord will keep you from all harm. "He will watch over your life. "O Lord will watch over your coming and going, "both now and forevermore." Listen guys, the message for Israel then is the same message for us today. There is trouble that's always gonna be bigger than us. But we have a God that is bigger than any trouble we face. And so with that, let's just stand together tonight. And God, we're just thankful to you, that you are a God who is bigger than any trouble that we're up against. And God, there are all kinds of things that we can face. God, there are so many things that we battle. And the thing we battle today might be a different thing that we battle tomorrow. And God, we need to be ready for the battles to come, as well as the battles today. And so God, we come to you tonight. We just surrender our lives, we surrender our hearts. And we're thankful that you are God who loves us enough to protect us. You love us enough to be the shade at our right hand. You love us enough to be our present help in time of trouble. You love us enough God to protect us and keep us. And tonight, God, there are people here who feel there is trouble all around them. It may be financial, it may be mental and psychological or whatever it might be in nature. It could be things that have going on that they just can't sort out, maybe anxiety. God, it may be that the behavior that they find themselves in over and over again, and they just find themselves going back to the same things that they wish they didn't go back to. And tonight, God, we lift our eyes to the hills, knowing it's bigger than us, but God, knowing that our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And I, it's tonight, God, that maker of heaven and earth, you, Lord, that you would feel this room, that you would move on people's hearts who need to come up here for prayer, that pride wouldn't keep them back, that shame wouldn't keep them back, but God, that they would be at a place of surrender, where they're just saying, God, I'm coming up if I need it. And so believers, if that's you today, I'm gonna have a couple of different ways, a couple of different altar calls. If you're in that first group that I talked about and you have something that you are going through, a mountain that you continually find yourself up against, and the sun is scorching you. But a day goes by and the sun scorches you with this problem you have, with maybe a sin issue, it may be something you're running to that you shouldn't, maybe your relationship you're running to, it may be a substance you're running to, the sun scorches you by day, you gas for God's help, he helps you, but you go back to it. And you're in this cycle, this cycle that you just can't break out of, if that is you, I just want you to come on down. You're not gonna be seen with judgment, you're gonna be seen with love here. If that's you, come on down, we're here to love you. God is here to free you tonight. God is here to free you tonight. Come on down, thank you Jesus. And then I'm gonna open it up also for anybody else, for all of us who wanna come and pray. For all of us who just wanna sit at the Lord's feet, the maker of heaven and earth who is our help, and you just want his help for anything and everything, maybe even standing in for somebody else, I invite you to find a place to pray, prayer where you are, just come on down. Jesus, as people make their way down, surround us. God, I ask for a prayer time tonight, for God, you just do your work. God, do what only you can do tonight in these altars. And we believe you for that. We anticipate and expect for freedom to happen and for help to be found in Jesus' name. 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