and it has been a special blessing to you. All right, can I have you look up here without a lot of noise? All right, can we keep it down? Can we do that? That way we can all enjoy what God has for us, all right? Appreciate you being a little bit energetic. I know it's a long afternoon, but if we can just keep it down so we can all listen, all right? Can we do that? All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Psalm 121, Psalm 121. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Verse number one is actually going to end with a question. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills From whence cometh my help? From where does my help come from? Now, I love Indiana. I know I sometimes get teased about that. There were times where I thought God was gonna call me out west to the land of my nativity. For a while there, I was pursuing that, and I thought for sure that somehow, someway, God was going to allow me to go to California and preach the gospel, and I was pursuing it even up into my senior year, and then God shut that door in a providential way, and I'm thankful. I'm thankful the people of California need the gospel. There's some good ministries out there. I still follow some of those ministries. I love Dr. Ennis at Hamilton Square Baptist Church there in San Francisco. Incredible ministry that he has had there for many, many years, right there in the heart of San Francisco. We had a chance to visit there in 2015, and Dr. Vendis has been a blessing in my life, it helped me tremendously, but I thought for sure that God was going to allow me to go back out to where I was born, and I just thought that's where God was leading me, and he shut that door, and I began to look for other opportunities that the Lord had for me, and he just kept bringing me back to Indiana. And for a while there, I thought, Indiana, corn, soybeans, More corn, more soybeans, flat land. But you know what? I have just grown to love Indiana. And I joke about I'm an adopted Hoosier, but I'm really a boiler at heart, because I love Lafayette. I love this area here. And I just enjoy Lafayette tremendously. I'm a big city kid, but there's something unique about Lafayette. I really like it. And I really like the small town, but yet it's a city. Some of you are like, Lafayette is just too many people. It's too busy. I love it. But anyway, it's just like perfect. You know, I went to college down in the hills of South Carolina. The people from out west that I met, they would call them hills in South Carolina. I called them, being from Indiana, I called them mountains. But then I would meet people from out west, as in like Colorado, and the Rockies were the mountains. What Greenville, South Carolina had were hills. But for me, an Indiana boy, they were still mountains to me. And we look out, as we were down a few weeks ago visiting Emily and Chandler, and we drove through the mountains, and as we were at times coming up out of Greenville and up into the Smoky Mountains there, and you see out and across, and you look up and you see the beauty and the grandeur of the mountains. The Clines, I think, are going to be heading out west. You're going to see some incredible sights as you head back out west. Some of you have been out west on trips. I remember when we lived in California, just some of my earliest memories, we would go to Yosemite National Park and we would camp out at Yosemite National Park. I remember seeing the mountains. One of the things my dad always liked is we could drive up into the snow. and then turn around and drive back out of the snow. And we would be able to see the change in temperatures and climate just in a couple hundred miles because of the terrain there. But you look at the mountains, you look at the hills, you look out like Yosemite, and you look out across the Sierra Nevada, and you think, how majestic. And you see the glory of God's creation, what really oftentimes is the result of the flood, and the way that God carved out those mountains and those ravines and those waterfalls as the floodwaters subsided. But you look at the mountains and you think big, you think huge, powerful, majestic, but does our help come from the mountains? Does our strength come from the rocks of the mountains, the trees and the forests of the mountains? No, they don't. Our help comes from where, verse two says, my help cometh from the Lord. As big as the mountains are, as big as the rocks are, and as grand as the forests, and all that the mountains and their beauty and their grandeur and all that they provide for us in so many different ways and as strong as they look, that is not where our help comes from. Our help comes from the Lord. You'll notice at the beginning of the psalm, the subtitle is a song of what? Maybe your subtitle has that in your Bible. What does it say? A song of degrees, because this psalm was sung as they would march up into Jerusalem for one of the feast days. It was a psalm of ascent, of degrees, degrees going up. So they would be reciting, singing this Psalm, and it would remind them as they went up to Jerusalem, which was on a mountain, is on a mountain, is on high ground, they would be reminded that their help ultimately comes from the Lord. We continue in verses 3 and 4, Now in our culture today, we have a little bit of a I don't know if it would be called a return or maybe a renewed interest in some of the Roman gods and goddesses and some of the Greek gods and goddesses. There's book series that talk about the various mythological gods from Rome and from Greece. And what were the Greek gods and the Roman gods? They were nothing but superhuman, deities that had all the faults, all the failures, all the weaknesses, all of the sins, but in a superhuman capacity. So all of that stuff is maybe neat for literary interest, for reading maybe. There might be some literary value to it, but the spiritual dimension of those mythological gods is empty. There is absolute futility in those gods. They can't do a thing for us. They would do all kinds of types of sacrifices and service and try to do various things to appease those gods. But none of them, none of those offerings, none of those sacrifices, none of those efforts made on man's part to try to appease the gods, to try to get the gods to do something favorable for them, none of that was effective. If anything, they would give their souls over, they would give their minds over to false teaching and to demonic powers at the worst. But look at what we see in Psalm 121. He that, he will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. There'd be times where the Greek and Roman gods, they would not even be paying attention. They'd be so busy with their wars and their fights and all the things that they were doing in their spiritual dimension, they would have no interest in what was going on here in people land, in human land. They were constantly trying to find a way to get the gods to work in their favor, to grow their crops, to provide water, to prevent drought, to maybe do something to bring favor to their homes, to their land, to their armies for victory, for conquest, all these different ways. Now, some of those Greek gods and Roman gods have not just come back in literary form, in the form of book series, But some of them have returned in movie series, comic books, that we sometimes refer to as Marvel and DC. Now I'm not saying that if you are a Marvel or a DC fan that you are... committing demon worship or something like that. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I'm saying that that's the mythological idea of superhuman ability, but all the fallen characteristics of man still being part of their character. And there's this way of trying to get the gods to work in your favor. But God is saying he is not a God like that. He is not a God that is, by referencing slumber and sleep, he is not a God who is tainted or affected by the fatigue, the sins, the faults, the failures of man. He is a holy God, a righteous God, an omnipotent God, an omnipresent God, omniscient God. God is not going to slumber or sleep. We need slumber and sleep, especially as we get older. I am learning as I've gotten older. I don't recover as well. I'm still paying for working in the yard on Tuesday. I'm like, what is wrong with me? I did all that work on Tuesday and my back's still sore and I still have joints in my knees that ache. This is just not right. I can't believe I'm still sore after all these days. And it's like, we get older, we have different aches and pains, different ailments, we fatigue. We get home at night and eight o'clock sounds like a good bedtime now. Whereas eight o'clock for a teenager and a young adult, eight o'clock is just getting started, right? And being up till one or two in the morning, Emily will sometimes talk about pulling an all-nighter to study for a test or being up till one, two o'clock in the morning to study for a test. I mean, even when I was her age, I couldn't do that. But anyway, you know, some people are night owls like that, but we need rest. Sleep is a extremely important part of our bodies for all the different reasons that I can't even understand myself, but the way that our cells replenish themselves and all the different things that happen while we sleep, extremely important. But God never needs to sleep. He never needs to rest. Now, he took the seventh day as an example to man, knowing that we would need rest. He rested on the seventh day. But after six days of creation, was God sitting there saying, oh, I'm so tired, I'm so exhausted? No, he spoke, and the world came into existence. The universe came into existence. That's hard for us to fathom. He is not a God that is affected by fatigue, illness, pain, sickness. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. Verse 5, the Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. Has to do with protection. Has to do even with shade being a protection from the sun, from the heat of the day. "'The sun shall not smite thee by day, "'nor the moon by night.'" That's elaborated in verse number six. And then verse seven, "'The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. "'He shall preserve thy soul.'" How ultimately does God preserve us from all evil and preserve our soul? Through salvation, through redemption. There are times where we have God's protection physically and prevents an accident, an injury. We are healed from some sickness, from some disease, we get better, we get well, but ultimately our healing, our preservation, and the preserving ultimately of our soul is in heaven. It's in glory. And that's a promise to all who know Christ as their personal Savior. And isn't that an assuring promise during these days when there's wars all across the world, when there's crime running rampant, when there's politics that's corrupt? Isn't it good to know that ultimately our preservation isn't by the hand of some government from some policy? from some Supreme Court decision, by some law enforcement, as good as some of those things may be, and as good as some people are in those places, though we need more good ones, right? But ultimately, that is not where our preservation, where our redemption, where our protection comes from. The preserving of our soul comes from God. He is the one that ultimately we trust. And knowing Christ as our Savior gives us that promise that He will preserve us from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. And then verse eight, the Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even for evermore. What is the going out and the coming in? It has to do with our daily activities. It has to do with all those routines of life. You know what, sometimes the routines of life, they seem to get old, they get boring, they become mundane, they become routine. They become dutiful. But you know what? God blesses in the routines of life. There's no menial task when it's done for God's glory. Changing a diaper can be done for God's glory. Cooking a meal. tying our shoes, going to that nine to five job, all of the different academic routines, the tests and the quizzes and the research papers and the projects, all of these various things, whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. God blesses in the routines of life. He desires to preserve us and to make those routines of life part of our preservation, part of our joy, part of the blessings and the grace of God in our lives. We get Vacations, we get days off, we get holidays, and we are thankful for them. They are nice to have, aren't they? Fall breaks and spring breaks and the Christmas holidays and Thanksgiving and all that. We're thankful for all of those holidays. But we sometimes think that the holidays, the breaks, that's where we really have the joys. But how many times have we come back from vacation, as much as we enjoyed it, and we were like, hmm, I just put so much money on my credit card, now I gotta spend the next six months working it off. Oh, I just put, you know, I had a great time, it was wonderful memories, but there's something fulfilling about work. There's something about the home and the routines. And sometimes I'm thankful, and we've done this with our kids, but I remember growing up, and sometimes it was just going down to Southern Indiana to a state park for a day, and then spending the night at a hotel and getting to swim in a swimming pool. Because that's all we could afford. But you know what? It was family. It was some of the greatest memories. And we had to do that for many years with our kids before we could ever afford a three or four day vacation. But I'm thankful, thankful for those. And that going out and that coming in, even the routines and the cycles of life that sometimes seem mundane and just seem kind of routine, they are part of God's blessings when they are done. for the Lord, and they're done in the realization that this is part of what God has for us. This is part of his blessings in our life, and especially when they are done in purity, they're done in the way that God would want us to do them, those routines of life, those family get-togethers and back and forth, and sometimes it's like Grand Central Station, when you have three kids in sports, and they have multiple sports, and then there's all the schedules of all the other activities, and you gotta somehow fit in grocery shopping, and you gotta fit in all the doctor's appointments and dental appointments, and on and on it goes, and sometimes we're just like, oh, there's so much, and we get frustrated, and what does the world do? What does the world do? They don't turn to God and see the going out and the coming in as from the Lord and part of his preservation and his protection and his blessing. What does the world see that as? The world sees that as, oh, this is all the burden. Work is such a burden. And they begin to turn that and they begin to think that the parties and the alcohol and the drugs and the immorality and all of those things, that's where you get your gusto. That's where life is really lived. And that's a lie. That's a lie, and we need to be thankful for the help that comes from our Savior, our help coming from the Lord who made heaven and earth, and he preserves us, even down to our very souls as we trust him for our salvation, and he preserves our going out and our coming in, and he blesses those, and then that prepares us even forevermore for when we will one day go out from this world, and we will go in to his presence. and be there forevermore. And we thank the Lord for that. Psalm 121. What a wonderful psalm that is. That is the conclusion of our devotional time. We have one more song. Derek's going to come. And this is a song that may not be as familiar to us. We know the Lord's Prayer, but this has been put to music. 496. We may have Emily maybe play through at one time just to help us get the tune. And then