Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 3, 2020 | He's Still* Got The Whole World In His Hands - Spiritually

Transcript

May 3, 2020 | He's Still* Got The Whole World In His Hands - Spiritually · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How are you this morning?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you've joined us.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll echo Doug's words about the music team, the tech team, all of our volunteers, what a great job they're all doing.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Although I'm a little worried about our leader, Sam, Sam Reed.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: He just asked me this morning, does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just continue washing our hands?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe we shouldn't get back together for another few days.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So our world is just beginning to open up, and uh and that's a good thing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it can't come too soon for this couple, an 89-year-old German man and an 85-year-old Danish woman who found their year-old romance severely challenged these last two months when the border between their two countries, Germany and Denmark, just to the north of it, uh, shut down on March the 11th.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they came up with a solution.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every single day they drive to the border with a cup of coffee, biscuit, and uh, and a chair so they can see each other and spend some time talking.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, love overcomes boundaries.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think, I feel like that's what we're doing this morning.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you and I have each sort of driven to the boundary uh between us, where we have to stay apart with our coffee and maybe biscuit and chair, and we're gonna talk.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk this morning about uh Psalm 121.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's the final episode in our three-week series.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's got, he's still got the whole world in his hands.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a famous psalm.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh many people's very favorite psalm, has been uh the favorite psalm of many people for hundreds of years.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Traveler's Psalm.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the psalm for people leaving the safety of home and going far away.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: When young people in the old country, in Scotland, in Ireland, in England, left uh that country uh in Europe to come to America, they often were bidden farewell with this psalm.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes when soldiers have gone off to war in uh in Civil War, World War I, World War II, this psalm was prayed or sung over them.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And a soldier would carry this psalm or Psalm 91, which we preached on two weeks ago, was the other favorite, this psalm or Psalm 91 into battle, and then we carry it out of battle as he laid there in the hospital recovering from his wounds.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's the perfect psalm, Psalm 121 is for us today, now that we're being told that we can leave home.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: April has been sort of the longest month and strangest month of our entire lives, but now it's May, and now our elected officials are telling us that the stay-at-home orders are being uh loosened a little.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so during this month, we're gonna be uh told that we can leave our homes, we can finally go to the parks to some extent, we can gather in limited numbers and always with six-foot distance, and um and we're happy about that, but we're a little nervous.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're a little nervous because we see that some people are still getting sick, some people are still getting diagnosed.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this is the perfect psalm because it's a leaving home psalm, recited down through history by good and godly people who've left the safety of home and gone out on the road.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about this psalm.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: It uh starts off the first three words, say that it's a psalm of ascent, A-S-C-E-N-T, or of going up.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's the second psalm in a collection of 15 songs or psalms, Psalm 120 through 134.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can see them very easily in your Bible if you have your Bible open.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And these 15 songs or psalms sort of formed a playlist of songs or a little hymnal used by pilgrims traveling by foot up to Jerusalem during the three annual pilgrimage feasts.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the spring, it was the feast of unleavened bread, ending in Passover, which celebrated the Exodus.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the early summer, it was the feast of harvest, which we call New Testament uh church calls the feast of Pentecost.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the uh uh expression of gratitude for the provision of grain.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: In the fall, uh it was the Feast of Tabernacles or in-gathering, which is when they expressed their thanksgiving for the final harvest.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so as the thousands of pilgrims would leave the safety of their home and uh walk that difficult, for there was no four-lane highway, that difficult hike up through the hills and approach Jerusalem, which was called Mount Zion, remember, they would sing these songs or psalms, one of which, number six, Psalm 125, includes the line, as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we're always uh uh suggesting that when you study a passage of scripture, you look for key words that are repeated.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's more important here than perhaps anywhere else in the Bible, because in Psalm 121, there is a definite keyword used six times in the final or in the eight verses of the psalm.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that keyword is protect and protector.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Protect is the word shamar, the verb, and protector is shomer.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so that's why I titled this psalm, Who's Your Protector?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 121.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who's the one that you're trusting in to protect you?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the psalm just falls nicely into two parts based upon the pronouns.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first two verses are all first person, where uh the per the psalmist asks himself, who is my help?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he knows the answer, and his answer is Yahweh or the Lord.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason he says that the Lord's my help is he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: He made this whole thing, heavens and earth.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through 8 moves, he turns and addresses each individual person, second person, and it's singular, so he's addressing you individually.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Who is your protector?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself that question this morning.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who is your protector?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a politician?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a scientist, or is it Yahweh?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's got you in his hands.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the simple message of this psalm.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to walk you through it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Very beautiful, very famous psalm.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in the memorizing stage of your life, I would encourage you to memorize this psalm.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Very easy to memorize.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It'll pay you well.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So verses one and two, for it sort of falls into four pairs of verses, go like this.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I lift up my eyes to the mountains.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the notice there's a choice going on here.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: He makes a volitional choice to lift his eyes up instead of always keeping them down.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: As the pilgrim is traveling to Jerusalem for this feast from a flatter part of Canaan, let's say western Kansas, he resolves, instead of looking down, he resolves to look up, which is great advice, isn't it?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because so many of us are always looking down.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking down at the virus right now, or we're looking around at the frustrating people who are associated with this whole thing, rather than looking upward to God.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So make the resolution, make the choice to look up.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I lift my eyes up to the mountains.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where does my help come from?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or whence cometh my help?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then his answer, my help comes.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So where does my help come from?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a great question.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because back then a whole lot of people actually looked for their help to the mountains themselves, to the hills, because they believed that's where the gods lived, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: They called their mountains sacred, and they they built high places at the tops of the hills and the mountains.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: They built altars and temples, and they would bring food and gifts and sacrifices to those gods.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you're uh when you're in Los Angeles, you look at that hill overlooking LA, and you see that big sign H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't miss it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, no one, I'm sure, in LA actually worships Hollywood.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heavens, nobody would ever do that.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the ancient pagans actually worshiped the mountains and the hills and what was at the top of them.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the pagans, the Canaanites in Israel worshiped the gods that were at the top of Mount Carmel.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, the Greeks famously a few years later believed that the gods uh resided at the top of Mount Olympus, Zeus and Hera and Aphrodite and Apollo and so forth.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that was sacred to them.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hindus at this time, and even uh more recently, worship at the sacred mountain called Meru.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Canaanites, Chinese, Chinese had five sacred mountains.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Navajos in the southwest of America have four sacred mountains in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, but the pilgrims, they knew the right answer to this question: where does my help come?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: They knew it didn't come from the mountains, but from the one who made the mountains.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't those gods of pagan myth who had to be appeased with sacrifices, including child sacrifice.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that their help came from the God who not only made the mountains and the hills, but it came from this God that they called the personal, his personal name was Lord.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And remember when we studied names of God last fall, that this name is used more than any other by far in the Old Testament.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the best sort of meaning that we could draw from it is that this name means the God who is here for us.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the perfect, the perfect name for the God that they were looking to as they hike through the dangerous mountains and the hills up to Jerusalem and move their eyes up from their troubles and their difficulties to Yahweh, the God who is here for us.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they look first to the mountains and then past the mountains, saying, My help comes from Yahweh, the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me, before I leave the first two verses, let me just share that I can't help when I read this, thinking of my childhood and of being an introvert and always being told by my parents to look up.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're really two kinds of kids, I guess you could say, in the world.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're friendly, outgoing kids who walk around, they'll look up and they smile and they're friendly.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And their parents are very happy about this, and they say to themselves, my kid is going someplace in the world.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the second group of kids, a more common group, are the shy kids.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're the introverts.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're always looking down at the ground just in front of their feet, and they're hunched over, and their parents are worried that think that they're gonna, you know, have scoliosis or something like that.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And their kids are always walking into glass doors and to store windows and so forth, banging their heads, and they're always telling their kids to look up.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in an introverted family.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that out of the 12 children in our family as I grew up, uh, maybe 10 out of 12 of us walked around with our heads down.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: We were shy and we were introverted.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Although I had an answer.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: When adults would ask me, how come I always had my head down, I'd say I was looking for empty pot bottles.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because back then they were three cents each, and that was a big deal.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we would ride our bicycles.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: My brothers and I, there were six of us boys in a row, we would ride our bicycles for miles and miles every day, especially in the summer, all over the country.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was okay back then.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Always with our heads down, looking for treasure in the ditches alongside the road.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I still remember the day my brother was so lucky as to discover a$20 bill in the ditch.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But mom and dad were always saying, look up.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And kids, let me say, listen to your dad and mom.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's good advice.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Look up, keep your head up, look people in the eye.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now they tell you to do that for physical reasons and for social reasons, so that for physically that you won't walk into things, but socially so that you will come across as a more friendly uh person.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Psalm 121 tells us to look up for a spiritual reason.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is a spiritual psalm, and it's telling us to stop looking down at the circumstances that depress you, the leaders that deceive you.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Remember our takeaway two weeks ago from Psalm 91.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to experts, but trust in God.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then we move to uh the second half of the psalm.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the who is your protector?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Answer, Yahweh.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who is my help, we said?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, because he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: He made it all.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Who's your protector?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through 8, Yahweh.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we read in verses 3 and 4, he will not allow your foot to slip.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think Jesus' brother, uh, who wrote that famous benediction at the end of uh in Jude 24 in the New Testament, may have read this when he wrote, Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling or stumbling.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same word as is used in the Greek translation here.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he will not allow your foot to slip.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Your protector, here's the key word.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes in the King James it's the one who keeps you.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but what does that mean?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it really means your protector will not slumber.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, Israel's protector, Israel's shomer, this is this word's used twice here, does not slumber or sleep.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a beautiful, beautiful statement?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um here's a rare picture of a giraffe.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's rare because the giraffe is asleep.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And more, uh giraffes have a shorter sleep cycle than any other mammal on earth by far.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: They only sleep about an hour, a little over an hour every day.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why this is a rare picture.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to think that God created the giraffe so that when we walk into the zoo and see those giraffes right in front of us, we can remind ourselves.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, tonight in the middle of the night at 3 a.m., that giraffe is still going to be standing there wide awake.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God is also going to be wide awake in the middle of the night.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like God may be saying, one reason I made the giraffe is to remind you of the fact that I'm staying awake for you.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But even giraffes have to catch catnaps.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't have to.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I never close my eyes, I never sleep.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 150 years ago, uh, the famous Alan Pinkerton Detective Agency was one of the best known, uh, really one of the first uh detective agencies of all time, became very famous in the mid-1800s by solving a series of train robberies and even foiling a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he traveled to his first inauguration.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it gained more prominence when it came out with this ad that everybody saw back then, and that with an I in the middle and the line, we never sleep.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is where the term private eye uh comes from today.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but of course they there, even though they had 2,000 detectives spread all across America, they had to sleep sometimes, but not God.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not God.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this has such practical value, I think, for children, because children are often afraid of the dark.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Love the story about the mother and a four-year-old little girl who was scared of the dark and wasn't letting her mother go.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you hug the child, four-year-old, you know how they cling to your neck.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the lights were off, and then the girl noticed the light of the moon shining in the window.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Mommy, is that God's light up there?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is, the mother replied.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, will he put it out and go to sleep now?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: She asked.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, he never goes to sleep, said Mommy.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And after a few silent moments, the little girl said, Well, as long as God's awake, I'm not scared.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Realizing that God was going to be awake all night watching over her, the reassured little girl released her mother's neck, rolled over, and fell into a peaceful sleep, as if saying, I can sleep now because I know God's awake.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it also, I think, has practical value for adult Christians, especially some of you who are, who are just, you know, you're just you amaze us with your concern and care for people.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: You love to serve God, you love to serve people, you love to help people in need, you love to carry their burdens, as Paul said in Galatians 6.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're good at it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that you work the night shift.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that, like acid, it sort of eats into your night hours.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: You carry those people's burdens to bed with you.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: You toss and turn, unable to let them go.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what you need to do, of course, is what uh one woman said she learned to do is that when she removed her clothes and she laid them aside at night, one at a time, she would remove and lay aside each of her burdens of the day.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and as she laid down, she determined not to work the night shift.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But hear God saying, Listen, I never sleep anyway, I'm up all night.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let me carry those burdens.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So listen, if if if if you have a loved one who's blessing people but ruining their sleep over it, give them a Psalm 121, that uh uh verses three and four, which say very clearly, in fact, three times, that your protector won't slumber.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Israel's protector doesn't slumber and he doesn't sleep.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get to verses five and six, where it's it continues with this key word used six times in six verses here.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is your shower, the Lord is your shade right by your side.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: The sun won't strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and those of you who've been in Israel know it's a little bit like Western Kansas.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It gets really hot.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: The guide's always yelling at you to put your hat on, bring a lot of water.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: You need shade, you're always standing in the shade, and the sun can strike you.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and God's saying here, you know what?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I care about you so much that I want you to look at me as your shade.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm your shade right next to you, right by your side.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, it's at your right hand, as close as you can get.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your movable shade, and I'll go right beside you and protect you.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this part is answering the question: who really is your protector?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you look for to as your protector?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it a politician today?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a scientist who seems to have the answers?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is remember that for every scientist, there's an equal and opposite scientist saying the opposite.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now you need to look to the Lord as your protector.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Husband is leaving on a was leaving on a trip.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: He gathered his wife in his arms and he prayed with her, Dear Lord, please protect my wife and my children while I'm gone.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: He looked up to find his wife smiling and saying, Who do you think protects us when you're here?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Good question.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is God does.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh does.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, and then he says, the sun won't strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: That second line is a little weird.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that the sun can be dangerous by day.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: What we fail to realize is that this is sort of the superstition line.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know how sometimes we are scared, you know, Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte could conquer the world, were scared of nothing, but they were both terrified of black cats.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we can be scared of Friday the 13th or bad luck or superstitions, uh tra uh walking underneath a ladder.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and in the old in the Old Testament times, uh the moon god was the main god in all of Israel and the north.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Egypt, it was the sun god.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you will find far more statues to the moon god in Israel left over by the Assyrians and Babylonians than you will find sun god statues.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: They really did believe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That especially they believed that if you saw somebody with a mental illness, with epilepsy or or anything like that or insanity, that that was due to the moon god.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, even thousands of years later, we used those words luna, which means moon, lunatic and moonstruck to describe someone who's not in their right mind.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: We we too remember sort of this superstition.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God's saying to us, listen, legitimate dangers, I'll protect you from those.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And even the silly, illegitimate superstitions that you have.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Would you let go of those and would you trust me to be your protector please?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this wonderful, wonderful uh verses five and six.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now we move to verses seven and eight.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really neat is these six uses of this word protect and protection fall into three parts.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: In verses three, four, five, and six, he has said three times, I am your shomer, I am your protector.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's who I am.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now he says, watch me work.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Verses seven and eight.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to protect you.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, I will shamar you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am your shomer, I am your shomer, I am your shomer, I will shamar you, I will shamar you, I will shamar you.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's in verses seven and eight.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it right here.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Verse seven, the Lord will shamar, will protect you from all harm.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: He will protect your life.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord will protect your comings and goings from now until forever.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: These are the last two verses of the psalm.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely beautiful.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us can probably point to a time in our lives when we could have and maybe should have died.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, otherwise you wouldn't be watching and listening to this.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow you are here today.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Many of my loved ones have stories that still make my blood curdle of how close they came to death.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I remember myself some years ago I was working here, and I was driving back alone from Oregon to Kansas, and it was during uh the winter, uh late winter, and and and it turned out to be midwinter in the Blue Mountains, about 300 miles this side of Portland, Oregon, as I'm driving back.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going up through the Blue Mountains, which are notoriously treacherous in the middle of winter, and near uh an ominously named place called Deadman Pass.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm alone on the road because the four-lane highway is divided then.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just in so unfortunately uh I'm on two lanes and there's no oncoming traffic, but there was a cliff on the right-hand side, and I suddenly lost complete control of my car.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was a stretch of black ice, uh, and and my car began to slide and had no control of it, and it did a complete 360.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember as I slowly slid to a stop straight ahead in the middle of those two lanes, in the middle of the night.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was midnight, in fact.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I remember just looking to the right and thinking how easily my car could have just slipped over the edge.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and in the middle of as as I was doing that slow 360, I shot up this flare prayer, just Lord help.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and the Lord, the Lord came through.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: As He's come through for you, He's protected you from harm.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've had those experiences, and you, like I, have said thank you, and you've sort of listened to God say back.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've, you know, I'm watching you, I'm protecting you.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the God of Psalm 121.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just share that just this last week, six days ago, my six-year-old granddaughter, whose name is Darcy, uh Doug and Lee are her parents.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Doug works at FBC.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So she's riding her bike right outside her home on the sidewalk.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's an older boy who's riding his bike as well.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking to each other and they suddenly have a mighty collision, and she has her helmet on, but as she flew off and she still got a concussion, she damaged her face.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: She looked, and I'm not showing a picture of her, I don't want to gross you out.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it was all swollen, and there was blood, and uh but kids recover so amazing.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now her teeth are seem to be turning a little dark, and she may have to have them removed, but but still, it could have been so much worse.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and parents and grandparents who are always concerned about the safety of those little children, have to entrust them to the protection of God who says, you know, I'm watching.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I am your shower, and I will protect you from harm.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're doing today.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: We are thanking God for being Darcy's protector.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have this famous last line: the Lord will protect your comings and goings from now until forever.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, literally, I mean, that's the way we would say it today, but literally it goes, the Lord will protect your goings out of your home and your comings in from this time forth and forevermore.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, but it has this going out of your house theme, which of course is the theme of the month of May.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: We are now being released, in a sense, to go out of our house, but we have come some concern about that.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this psalm was saying, listen, God is your protector.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Look to him as you go out of your house.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is um this is a famous, uh, this is a famous line.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: This gets posted by Jewish people in uh delivery rooms uh of their baby, and then in their children's baby's bedroom, and sometimes a card in their in their in their uh in their push crib, and uh, you know, so um, you know, in their baby carriage.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this is just just this famous line.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh in just a moment I'm gonna have you actually bless the person you're sitting next to by giving them this benediction.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: But think about it for just a minute.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: How many, how many goings out and comings in have you had in your life?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And how many will you have this month?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Times you've left home, times you've returned home.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: This last decade, early this last decade, I buried both my mother, she died in her 80s, and my father, who died after hitting his 90s.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: How many goings out and comings in do they have?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, almost uncounted.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, God was looking after them and God protected them, and it's a great comfort for me to know that when each of them went out for the last time, they were, in a sense, singing this favorite psalm of theirs, Psalm 121, when they descended into the valley and traveled home to the other side.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now listen, I want you to bless the person next to you with this last line, the way the Jews love to do, and the way that our Scottish great-grandparents and so forth always did.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that parents have done, have prayed and sung over their soldier boys going forth to war.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you to look at them and say to them, along with me in just a moment, the Lord will protect your comings and goings from now until forever.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Would you do that right now?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Look at them, repeat after me.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord will protect your comings and goings from now until forever.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the first time you've ever blessed someone.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: It felt kind of fun, didn't it?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 38-year-old Nick Brown, a married guy uh with a boy and two little girls, uh, knows all about the coronavirus.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nick is an Ohio farm boy who's uh who thought he just had headaches.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is in March, thought he just had headaches and uh and a fever, but it turned out to be the coronavirus, and and he had immediately uh uh was when he was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic, famous Cleveland clinic there in Ohio.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was clapped into their ICU and he was in a coma.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it appeared as though there wasn't a lot of hope.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: The clinic called his his wife and his son and two daughters in and began uh inquiring, talking with them about end-of-life options.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was in that coma for three days, lying there uh with all kinds of um tubes in him.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's the ventilator and there's all kinds of tubes just to keep him alive.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he was hanging on to a sliver of life.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And after three days, he awoke from his coma, but he was still in a critical condition, was there for a number of days, and for that next week, when he would wake up, when Nick would wake up in the morning, he had evidence that his nurses and his caretakers had not fallen asleep on him in the middle of the night because they wrote special messages to him on the glass door, actually on the glass window that separated his room from them, and they wrote messages like this We're watching over you, we're taking care of you.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at the bottom they wrote, We will get you home.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when the day crew gave way to the night crew and the day crew was leaving, they came by and they left messages on the window as well.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hang in there, you're gonna make it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've got your back.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and they left that message that was on the bottom of the window, we will get you home.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And all day and all through the night, as he woke up, Nick's eyes would turn to that window and he would read and he would reread the messages written there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And gradually, thank God, Nick got better.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he made a complete recovery, and the day that he left the hospital, he himself wrote on that glass, this window has been the most impactful window in my life.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when they interviewed him for Inside Edition, he said, I saw the love of God through those people.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those were just the right words for Nick to use because what those people did for Nick, God does for us.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't go to sleep on us like those nurses and doctors.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: He stays up all night watching over us, he protects us, and he promises to get us home.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he has written that on a window, and that window is called Psalm 121.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'd like to suggest, I'd like to urge you, two weeks ago, uh, I encouraged you to recite Psalm 91 each day that week.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And last week, Psalm 57, I encouraged you to sing that song last week, the Psalm 57 song.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, this week, I'd like to encourage you to take this precious, beautiful, beloved psalm and read it every day out loud, even perhaps read it over and bless your family with it.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: For it's a window on which God writes I've got your back, and I've got your front, I have your head, I have your feet, I won't let you stumble.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go to sleep on you.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your protector.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise to get you home.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the psalm.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 121, eight verses.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who's your protector?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Who is my help?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's Yahweh, because he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Who's your protector?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, because he's got you in his hands, right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's the summary, by the way, as I wrap this up of our three-week series.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's still got the whole world in his hands.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago, shelter in the shadow of Shaddai.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 57 last week.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you're stuck in a cave, emotionally depleted with this isolation, sing.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And today, Psalm 121, look up, look up and see your protector.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason you're able to do that, all three Psalms explain why.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's because God still has the whole world in his hands.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's sovereign, he's in charge of the coronavirus, he's in charge of nations, he's in charge of our leaders, he's handling it all.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: He has absolute sway even over China and over America.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just stop for a minute.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: If this message feels in any way weird or strange or distant to you, then you need to ask yourself, is it even addressed to me?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because this psalm is addressed to the children of God, to those who have believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, and who've trusted him for salvation or not trusting in anyone else for salvation.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because this coronavirus is a merciful wake-up call from God to be ready, to be ready for Christ's return.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: To remember that we're not in charge of our own fate.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're not in charge of our own destiny.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even a tiny little invisible virus can bring this world to a screeching halt, and we need to look up, say, God, I'm not in control.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not self-sufficient.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I need you.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I put my trust in you.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in your son Jesus, I want to be saved.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Be one of those people who says, I came to Christ during the coronavirus.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, if you are a child of God, having put your faith in his son Jesus Christ, then you don't need to live in fear like others.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Choose faith, not fear.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Trust God for help and happiness.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Shelter at home, sure, but shelter in the shadow of Shaddai.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Second, when you feel like you're stuck in an emotional cave, don't freak out or rage.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sing in the cave.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning's message, listen to the experts, but don't expect them to be your protector.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lift your eyes and see your true protector in heaven, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's still got the whole world in his hands.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've invited you the last two weeks to video your family, your kids, your loved ones, whomever, singing that song.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: We said we'd put something together, and we've done that.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our tech people have done that to conclude this series.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's inspiring, it's uplifting.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna love this.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: When it's over, I'll come back, I'll pray with you, I'll explain to you a little more of what we're gonna do for Mother's Day, and I'll let you go.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Watch this video, and you're gonna love it right now.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_10: You've got the whole work.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_06: And it's kind of got you and me tester.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_06: And it's kind of he's got you and me tester.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_06: And it ain't got all things.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_07: And it's head, we've got a friend of the family, and it's got the whole world, and it's head.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: He's got the whole world.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: And his hands, he's got the whole world.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: In his hands, he's got the whole world.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_04: And his hands he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, got the epithet linemen in his hands.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_04: He's got the epithet, in his hands, he's got the epithet line, in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hand.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: He got the little bitty baby in his hand, she's got the mamas and the daddies, in his hand, she's got the nanas and the papas.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: In his hand, she's got the whole T B C family in his hand.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_07: In his hands, he's got the nurses and the doctors.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_07: In his hands, he's got the nurses and the doctors.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_07: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the kids survival ones.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the kids of Bible ones.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_09: He's got me and my brothers.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_09: In his hands, he's got me and my brothers.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got me my breath.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: He's got the teachers and the students.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the teachers and the students.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the teachers and the students.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands, he's got the whole babies.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_08: He's got the grandmas and the papas.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_08: And his hand he's got the grandmas and the papas.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_08: And his baby got the grandmas and the papas.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_09: He's got the teachers and the preachers.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_09: In his sense, he's got the teachers and the preachers.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_09: In his sense, he's got the teachers and the preachers.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_09: In this sense, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_08: He's got all me friends.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got you and me friends.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got you and me friends.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_08: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_05: He's got you and me mother.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: In his hands, he's got you and me mother.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_05: In his hands, he's got you and me mother.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_05: In his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's got the whole world.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: In his hands he's got the world in his hands.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_10: Thank you.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: How awesome was that.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we conclude these three weeks by saying thank you for being our protector.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being the Shaddai in whose shadow we can rest.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for delivering us from the cave of our own fears.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for really for just having the whole world in your hands.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are so happy that we can trust you in this incredible time of uncertainty, and that we can look to the Word of God, which is so filled, every one of our favorite stories and psalms, so filled with this very kind of uncertainty.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yet in every one of these cases and today, you tell us, look to me, for I am strong and I am sovereign, and I have you and the whole world in my hands.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I ask for protection for the people we saw in that video and for the people that we have throughout our fellowship, our church, the people who are watching, who've listened today, I ask that you would protect them and that you would come to them and that you'd show them that you're strong on their behalf and that you love them.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, next week you're gonna like because uh Doug's already mentioned it's Mother's Day, and we really need to honor our mothers.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: They have they knocked it out of the park during this uh coronavirus last two months.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: They've been amazing.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: We really need to honor them and celebrate them.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do something special for your mom, but the service will be held at my home.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Alex and Lindsay, new young adults pastor, and their baby Lachlan are going to be there, and we're gonna do a dialogue sermon on Mother's Day next week.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be loads of fun.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna like it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, and by the way, in uh in just uh looks like about 10 minutes, uh we're gonna I'd encourage you to come for the after party.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have an after party this morning, and you just go to DiscoverTV TVC slash after, I think it is.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and or just go to our website and join the after party.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad, so glad you were here with us today.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you this week.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.