Come back to Psalm 121. I titled this message Pilgrim's
Helper and Keeper part two. Last week was Pilgrim's distress
as he was starting his journey. I thought about this today as
I was looking, well, we're looking to Psalm for a few days. and
i thought about naming all these 15 songs of degrees pilgrims
whatever in part two three four five because it's all about his
progress his ascent to the hill of the lord to worship the lord
you see pilgrim as pilgrim starts out his journey in the psalm
120 from Meshach and Kedar, and he's headed to Jerusalem, the
promised land. He's away from the promised land.
Remember I told you last week that three times a year the males
were to make three trips to Jerusalem to worship. And on their way
they would sing, it is said, they would sing these psalms,
these songs of degrees, as they ascended up to Jerusalem. And as Pilgrim here, as he begins
his journey, and this, every believer, this fits everyone
who believes God, everyone who believes God's a pilgrim, you
know that? We're pilgrims, that's all we are. Here we have no continuing
city, we have no continuing place. You know, this night could be
the end of one of our journeys. Could very easily be the end
of a journey for one of us, pilgrim, and go home. The journey could
be over. But until that journey is over,
we realize our need of help. in this journey, in this pilgrimage,
don't we? I need the Lord to help me to
keep my mind on Him. I need the Lord to help me to
think upon Him. Set your heart, your mind, as
it says in Colossians 3 on things above. Set your heart there. I need the Lord to help me do
that. And every believer realizes their need of the Lord's help
as they journey their way home, as they seek to worship God in
spirit and in truth. I need the Lord's help tonight,
don't you? I need the Lord's help to keep my mind, keep my
mind on the subject, keep my mind on the reason, the purpose.
I'm here and you are here is to worship the Lord, not let
myself be distracted by anything. By anything, I came here to worship.
I came to worship. And that's what I want to do.
I want to worship the Lord. I want you to worship the Lord.
I want us to worship the Lord tonight. And here we have the
opportunity. And Satan is so subtle, he'll
just take the least little thing and arrest your attention and
just take it away. Something trivial, it means nothing. It means nothing. So I need the
Lord's help, and you need the Lord's help tonight. This is
part of the journey home. Tonight is just a part of that
journey, that pilgrimage that we're making home. I love studying
this. I just, I became a pilgrim this
week. All over again, I became a pilgrim,
traveling home. The Wayfaring Man, just traveling
home. That's me, and that's you. Now
this is a second song of degrees. The first one started in distress. Look back there in Psalm 120. In my distress, I cried unto
the Lord, and he heard me. He said, deliver my soul, O Lord,
from lying lips and from deceitful tongue. And he goes on down there,
and he said, I'm for peace, and they are for war. This is where
I live. This is the world you and I live
in. We live in an ungodly world.
Now, this is the truth. We live in a world that hates
God. Now, you can walk down the street and you can ask anybody,
do you hate God? They're gonna say, no, I don't hate God. Christ
said, he that's not for me is against me. He's against me. The scripture
says that the natural mind, that's the mind you and I are born with
before God saved us, The natural mind is enmity. You know that
word enmity means hostile? The natural mind is hostile toward
God. The natural mind is not hostile
toward the God of our imaginations as we think He is or as we want
Him to be. But when you take the God of
this Bible and put Him on the throne, I don't like using that
word, but preach Him on the throne, that's the better way to say
it. To preach Him on the throne as the sovereign, it's God's
world, He created it, it's His. That brings out that natural
hostility. It's in every mind. It was in
mind, it was in yours at one time before the Lord made us
willing in the day of His power. God had to make us willing. He
had to make us willing to be saved. He had to save us in order
for us to want to be saved. He had to do that. But notice
here in verse one, Pilgrim makes a holy resolve for his journey. I will lift up mine eyes unto
the hills. the hills I believe he's speaking
here of the promised land the hill of the Lord who shall ascend
the hill of the Lord it says in the Psalms who shall ascend
the hill of the Lord the promised land the hill of Zion from whence
cometh my help you see in Psalm 120 pilgrim was looking he was
looking all around him and distressed and if that's all you do it will
distress you If all you do is look horizontal, it'll be distressing. And Pilgrim was looking around
him, but now he looks up away from his trouble to his help. You know, I've had this habit
since I was a child. I consciously try to break this
habit. I walk looking down all the time.
I walk like this all the time. I'm walking like that. I mean,
I'm short enough without holding my head down. You'd think I'd
keep my head up. But I try to make a conscious
effort to walk with my head up. And I have to make a conscious
effort to do it. I'm so used to walking, looking down. But
that's us by nature. We're either looking horizontal
or looking down. And he tells us here, look up.
Look up. Look up. Now we know that he's
not talking about just natural hills here. Listen to Jeremiah
3 23. Truly in vain is salvation hoped
for from the hills and from the multitude of mountains. Truly
in the Lord our God is a salvation of Israel. That's our salvation. This is a metaphor. He's speaking
here in spiritual language. He's talking here about on his
ascent to Mount Zion, where the Lord dwelt at the temple, where
the sacrifice was, the blood, the priesthood, and all that
represented Christ is there. It's spiritual language. What
he's doing here, he's looking unto the Lord. When Daniel prayed
three times a day, he went to the window and he prayed toward
Jerusalem. He wasn't just praying toward
Jerusalem as Jerusalem, it's the city of the great king. He
was praying to God. That's who he's praying to. He
says here, I will look up. How many times is it written
concerning our Lord? He lifted up his eyes. Our Lord
lifted up his eyes as a man constantly and prayed. and prayed. But I
look up, you see, listen, Spurgeon has a sermon. There's life in
a look at the crucified one. There's life in a look. Isaiah
45, 22, listen. Look unto me and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth. For I am God and there is none
else. Look, there's life in a look.
Isaiah 40, 26, lift up your eyes on high. And behold, who hath
created these things, that bring out their host by number? He
calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for
that he is strong in power." Look to me, he says. He has the
power to save. Jesus Christ is the power of
God unto salvation. He's the Savior. Pilgrim here,
or I could say David, but pilgrim here is resolved to look unto
Jehovah. You see a capital L-O-R-D? That's
Jehovah. That's the self-existing one.
That's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who that is. That's the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's who he's talking about.
And so he's resolved to look to Jehovah who dwells in Mount
Zion, or rather in the highest heaven. We sing a song, we're
gonna sing it closing. My faith looks up to thee, thou
Lamb of Calvary. From the mire and the clay, from
sin and sorrow, Pilgrim looks up away from these things and
into heaven itself. He looks to the Lord, he looks
to Jehovah. That's who he's looking to. Our
Lord said this in Luke 21, 28, and when these things begin to
come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your
redemption draweth nigh. Look up. I'll lift up my eyes. From whence cometh my help? Depending
on where your help comes from determines the strength of your
help, doesn't it? then he answers this in verse 2 he gives us the
answer and here's pilgrims confidence and this is every believers confidence
my help my help cometh arrives it's coming it cometh continually
it cometh continually from the Lord Jehovah Jehovah Jesus which
made heaven and earth. My help starts with the Lord
Jesus Christ. My help is in Him. He's my helper.
The Lord is my help. His power is used for my help. You know that? God's power is
used for our help continually. Continually. In John 17 3, Father,
Christ says this, Father, Thou hast given me power over all
flesh, that I may give eternal life to as many as Thou hast
given me. His power is used for our salvation. He makes all things work together
for our good. Everything you experience today,
everything you have experienced since you've been born, talking
to believers now, has been for your good. It's for your good. His providence is used for our
health. It's used for our health. His angels are used for our health. It says in Hebrews 1 that they
are ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who
are heirs of salvation. The angels, I mean, who can even
count that host? And you know they're set for
our good? They're set for our good. His grace is used for my
help, my good, our good, our help. He said, my grace, he said
this to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. You having trouble?
Are you weighed down, your heart heavy? And you prayed that the Lord
would lift you up and yet you're still going through it? He said,
my grace is sufficient. It'll carry you through it. It'll
carry you through it. And then we have here the credentials
of Pilgrim's Helper. My help cometh from the Lord,
which made heaven and earth. That's his credentials. My help cometh from one who created
all things. And what he's saying is this,
there's no one above the Creator. No one is above Him. And there's
nothing that is outside of His power. Nothing is outside of
the power of the One who created all things. Isaiah 40, 26, Lift
up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created these things? When you're down and out and
you and I feel like everything's against us, lift up your eyes. Lift up your eyes on high and
behold who hath created these things that bringeth out their
hosts by number. He calleth them all by names
by the greatness of his might for that he is strong in power,
not one failure. That's our God. He's strong in
power. There's no one higher than our
Creator. And here it gets even better.
Our Creator is also our Redeemer. Isaiah 43, 1. But now thus saith
the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel,
hear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy
name. I love this thou art mine I created
you I formed you you're mine you're mine he said in Isaiah
44 22 I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions and
as a cloud thy sins return unto me for I have redeemed thee I
have put away your sins now return I put them away. I didn't put
them away. My faith didn't put them away.
You know, my faith, listen, faith, which is a gift of God, it's
the work of God's spirit, but it's our faith. God doesn't believe
for us, we believe God. But my faith does not make what
Jesus Christ did effectual. Who he is makes what he did effectual,
not me believing it. I believe it because God in grace
has quickened me, saved me by his grace, given me life, and
I believe. Dead people don't believe. The
dead don't believe, only the living. And God has to give us
life in order for us to believe. You see, most have this thing
backwards. They have faith as the effecting
salvation, but faith is the evidence of it, not the cause of it. Grace
is the cause of salvation. The love of God in Christ Jesus
is the cause of salvation. Faith is the end result of salvation. It's the result of God doing
the work in me and not just for me. That's the grace of God. that's why jonah said when he
was in the belly of the whale down there in the darkness and
he said salvation of the lord because he knew if he's coming
out of there alive god's gonna have to do it and everyone whom
god saves knows that if they're saved god's gonna have to do
it god's gonna have to do it you and i cannot save ourselves
lord i believe help my unbelief Because I'm full of it. Give
me faith. I pray for that all the time
still. Lord, give me faith. Give me
the blessings of life. Faith and repentance, you know
what they are? The evidence of life. They're not the cause of
it. They are the evidence of it.
When a baby is born, what's the evidence of life? It cries. When you cry unto God for mercy,
for grace, that's the evidence of life, spiritual life. Now here's pilgrim safety in
verse three. He will not suffer thy foot to
be moved. He that keepeth thee will not
slumber. He will not suffer thy foot to
be moved. You know, it wasn't flat, it wasn't smooth sailing.
You know, some of them walked for weeks, days, maybe even weeks
at a time. They walked a long way, and it
wasn't flat ground all the way. And there's some places that
they had to trek over that if their foot slipped, they're a
goner. They're a goner. They could drop hundreds and
hundreds of feet. So as Pilgrim goes up Jerusalem,
he's going on his journey, his footing is assured by God. It's not assured by my stability,
it's assured by His stability. Christ the solid rock. On Christ
the solid rock I stand. Our journey is onward and upward
and we have this promise. This is a promise to all God's
children. He, God, here's something He
will not do. He will not suffer at your foot
to be moved. He won't do it. You see, as the
foot goes, so goes the body and the head. Christ, our head cannot
be moved. We are as stable as our head
is. The other, here about a week
ago, I stepped out on the carport. When that's wet, it's like ice.
That's the hardest I've fallen in a long time. I busted myself,
my foot. My right foot, when I stepped
out, it went out and under me. That iPad, I threw that thing
across the cardboard. I thought, well, that's the end
of that. But it's tough. It endured. But I busted my elbow,
my shoulder, my knee. I got up. I said, I told you,
I said, man, I see why now you don't want to fall when you're
old. It's tough to get over. He'll not suffer thy foot to
be moved. your walk and your arrival is
sure christ sees to it our lord will see to it and we have this
promise to be moved from christ never listen to john 10 20 john
chapter 10 verse 27 through 29 my sheep hear my voice and i
know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My Father, which gave them to
me, is greater than all, and no man
is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. How secure
is that? They can't pluck me out of Christ's
hand, to whom I was given? They and they can't put me on
the father's hand who chose me and put me in Christ chose me
in Christ Brethren, that is eternal security Eternal security is
not that I accept Jesus Christ my personal sake Eternal security
is the fact that God accepted me in Christ And then what he
says it is Ephesians chapter 1 he hath made us accepted in
the beloved. He did it You see, this gospel
here gives him all the glory, doesn't it? And it gives us all
the hope. I can't have a better hope than
that. I can't have it. What we have here is we have
a royal battalion about us, going with us on our way to heaven,
going with us on our way to glory. We have a royal battalion with
us. And then in verse four, we have
pilgrim safety guaranteed. He says, behold, give attention
to this. He that keepeth Israel, now this
is interesting. He says in verse three, he that
keepeth thee will not slumber. And then verse four, he broadens
it out. He that keepeth Israel, that's
the church. That's the whole church of God.
Paul said, we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit
and have no confidence in the flesh. We are the true Israel
of God. We have no confidence in the
flesh. What did they say to our Lord? We be Abraham's seed. That's
what their confidence was in. Our confidence is not that I'm
a seed of Abraham or any family heritage. My confidence is in
Christ, the seed of the woman. So my confidence is that. But
he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. You
see, we are kept individually as if, and only God can do this. Only God can do this. We are
kept individually as if we were the only ones on earth. And yet
we are kept collectively as the body of Christ. We are his body,
the church, Israel. We are Israel. THE TRUE ISRAEL
OF GOD. WE HAVE A CLOUD OF WITNESSES,
IT TELLS US IN HEBREWS 12.1 WE HAVE A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. AND RUNNING THIS RACE THAT'S
SET BEFORE US, WE HAVE A CLOUD OF WITNESSES THAT'S ALREADY RUN
THE RACE. AND I NOTICE WHAT HE SAYS HERE,
AND HE THAT KEEPETH ISRAEL SHALL NEITHER SLUMBER NOR When are
we the most vulnerable? When? When are you the most vulnerable?
When you're asleep. When you're asleep. You don't
know. Somebody walk in that room, you
don't know it. Vicky had one of her nightmares
the other night. Gave me a heart attack. Somebody's in the room
standing there, who is that? Get him out of here. And I mean,
I'm coming up out of there like, good night. I said, I know there's
got to be people who died in their sleep because of this.
These nightmares. That's when we are the most vulnerable. You come up out of your sleep.
I mean, you don't know. I mean, when you're asleep, you
don't know. You don't know what's going on at all. But our Lord is our watchman
that never sleeps. He's the watchman that never
sleeps. He never gets sleepy like we
do. One time, I was working midnight shift. Oh, it about killed me
to work that shift, because it'd get around 6 o'clock in the morning,
and I was dropping off, nodding off. They laid me off, and they called
me back to drive a fork truck and move things around at about
6 o'clock in the morning. Man, I was about dead. I wasn't
just sleeping. I passed out. I drove the truck,
pork truck outside, and I passed out. I was just sitting like
that. And the foreman came out the back door. I found this out
later. He came out the back door, and he saw me. He went in to
get management. He come back out, and I was already
gone. I woke up and I just, I realized, you know, I woke up and I drove
the truck back and went back in. He come out with management
and looking for me. I was gone, but I passed out. I couldn't stay awake. I mean,
I tried. What did the Lord say to the
disciples in the garden of Gethsemane in his greatest hour that he
needed them to, he needed, you know, you know, when you're going
through a real deep, deep valley, it's good to have somebody with
you. And I couldn't watch for an hour. He said, couldn't you
watch for an hour? Not even an hour, Peter. I thought
you weren't going to deny me. You can't even stay awake an
hour. Our Lord is the watchman that
never falls asleep. He watches. When you and I go
to sleep tonight, turn the lights out, we go to sleep. He does
it. He's watching you. He's watching over you. He's
watching you. Our Lord is our watchman that
never sleeps. And then verse 5, we have Pilgrim's
Keeper. The Lord is thy keeper. Now this
is a song to sing on your way to worship, isn't it? This is
what they say. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade
upon thy right hand. Here's divine protection. This
is what we have. Psalm 91 1 he that dwelleth in
the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty Seeing that the Lord is the keeper of all believers
They cannot be more safe You can't be more safe can't They
were kept in Christ before before the world began they were kept
in Christ before they experienced salvation and I was His long before I knew
it. I was His before creation. I was His when I was born. I
was His when I believed. And that's the evidence I was
His. We are kept in Christ before we experience salvation. We are
kept by the power of God through faith as we live out our lives
on this earth. We are kept for God's eternal
glory. We are a kept people. We are a kept people
kept by the power of God through faith through faith he keeps
us believing and he's a shade he says here he's a shade upon
thy right hand the shade is for protection from the blistering
sun and it's for rest you take a rest under the shade don't
you you sit down in the shade on a hot day and rest our lord
is our shade he's our rest jesus christ is our rest And then in
verse six, the Lord gives a promise to Pilgrim here. The sun shall
not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. Many times our
Lord spent the day outside and slept under the moonlight, didn't
he? Our Lord experienced all this we were talking about. But God's creation is for our
good. You know everything, everything's for our good. When God created
the heavens and the earth, he did it for you. Christ, it's
all things were created by him and for him. Now everything is
for the Lord Jesus Christ, it's for his glory. He created it,
he maintains it, it's for his glory. But everything in creation
is for our good. The sun gives us light, gives
us warmth. But he says the sun will not
smite thee by day. You see, Pilgrim's journey may
be long. It may be 90 plus years, 100
years, traveling in the hot sunshine. You see, when he leaves home,
when he left home here to make his journey, his ascent up to
Jerusalem, there's some hot days, and it can get hot over there.
There's some real hot days, and he's saying that the sun's not
gonna smite you. It's his sun. trials are the trials of life
are not going to destroy you they're not going to destroy
you and sleeping under the moon listen i thought of the creeping
things of the night you know they're sleeping outside how
often did our lord sleep outside they're not going to harm you
not going to harm you remember he says over in one of the psalms
the pestilence shall not come near you ten thousand will fall
at your right hand but it won't come near you our lord is our protection it's
his son it's his moon and then verse 7 we have pilgrims all
sufficient helper here the lord shall deliver thee from all evil
all of it don't we live in an evil world picture says the whole
world lies in wickedness There's no more, there's no,
the only other evil place other than this earth is hell, where the wicked are cast. And
there's weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, unleashed
hatred. And he said, the Lord shall preserve
thee, he'll keep you. He'll keep thee from all evil,
evil thoughts. I thought about that today. You
know, an evil thought unchecked breaks out into an evil action
and the Lord checks our thoughts. Aren't you glad he keeps you
from evil thoughts taking over? I'm glad he does. He shall preserve thy soul, your
whole being. You know, when the Lord saves
us, he saves the whole man, the whole woman. That's the reason
why when we are, we, When this is all over with and we stand
on that new earth, we will have a new body. It'll look just like
this one, but it'll just be without sin. But He saved the whole man. We are preserved, listen, from
all evil in Jesus Christ. Jude 1.1, Jude, the servant of
Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by
God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ. And listen to
what it says. called preserved in Christ first then called God
preserved he preserved a whole church in Christ and then through
time and in time he calls them by his grace our souls are safe
in the Lord Jesus Christ it says in Colossians 3 3 for you're
dead and your life is hid with Christ in God That's safe. Your life is hid with Christ
and God. You're preserved from the evil
of sin and the evil of Satan. You're preserved. Satan can't
do anything more than he's allowed to. He had to go to God, you
know this, to get permission to touch Job. And God taught
him exactly what he could do and could not do. And that's exactly the way it
is with every one of God's children. We can assure ourselves upon
the word of God that nothing in heaven, earth, or hell shall
ever separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus,
which Paul wrote in Romans 8. And then last of all, in verse
8, Pilgrim is guaranteed protection throughout life. The Lord shall
preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth,
even forevermore. They've got to leave home. They
gotta leave their home. Some of their wives went with
them, some of their families went with them, some of them didn't,
some stayed home while they went. But God assured their protection. We can, you know, we can die
a thousand ways if the Lord didn't preserve us, couldn't we? We
can die a thousand ways. I mean, it's just amazing how
easy we can die. But what we have here, we are
safe in the activities of this life. Is it arachophobia? Is that the
fear of leaving your home? Lots of spiders, isn't it? Oh,
what is that? What is it? What is it? OK, you
all said, I ain't about to try to say that. The fear of leaving
home. I knew arachophobia wasn't it.
Although I am afraid of spiders, too. However, we are guaranteed, we
are guaranteed safety throughout the activities of our lives. Why worry? Why fret? The Lord shall preserve thy going
out and thy coming in. You're going to leave here in
a little bit. You're going to go out. It's nighttime out there.
The Lord's gonna preserve you. Satan would love to get a hold
of you. Satan would love to take you out of this world and be
one less child of God he has to deal with and be concerned
about giving glory to God. But you have God's word on it
that your activities going in and out are preserved. So safe, safe. And then we have this assurance
going out and coming in, going from youth to old age. Man, when
I was young, I never thought of anything. Unless you experience
something, you really can't think of it. It's like Henry said once,
you can't come back from where you haven't been. When you're
young, you're not old. You've never been old. You don't
know what those years bring. You don't know the worries they
bring and the aches and the pains. The fear that they bring. He
said, I will carry you even to your hoary hairs. I will carry you. We can go from youth to old age,
and he's promised to keep us however long we live on this
earth. His protection is unremitting from this time forth. If you've
never believed it, believe it now. from this time forth, even
forever more, throughout eternity, throughout eternity. I'm gonna
read this to you and I close. Listen to Isaiah 40, verse 27
through 31. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and
speakest, O Israel? My way is hid from the Lord,
and my judgment is passed over from my God. Does God not see
my trouble? Hast thou not known, hast thou
not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. There's no searching of his understanding. I don't understand, but he does,
and that's all that matters. He giveth power to the faint.
And to them that have no might, he increases strength. Paul said,
when I am weak, then am I strong. Then I'm a strong when I'm weak.
And when we are weak in ourselves, he increases our strength in
him. Lord, make us weak that we might
know your strength. Even the youth, youth shall faint
and be weary. And the young men shall utterly
fall. Don't trust in them, don't trust
in their strength. But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings
as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
And they shall walk and not faint. Isn't that a song to sing on
our journey, our pilgrimage home? Isn't this something we ought
to learn to sing? I'll lift up mine eyes unto the
hills, which cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord,
which made heaven and earth. Who's your help? Mine's the Lord. And some of
you can say, it's the Lord. And I hope others here God will
bring to say, the Lord is my help and my strength. All right.