I lift my eyes up to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Thus reads the words of the Lord, you may be seated. As we come to the Song of Ascent, you'll notice behind me on the PowerPoint slide is Half Dome. And I had the pleasure of climbing Half Dome I believe I was around 12 years old, and I went with my friend Caleb and his dad, and they took me to Yosemite. And it was before all of the crazy lottery tickets that you needed to get in order to go to Half Dome and climb to the very top of that granite peak. And as I was climbing Half Dome, it's about a 12-hour hike from the trailhead all the way up to the top of the mountain and back. I was interested on how in the world are we going to climb that top part, because it looks to me to be sheer granite. And it doesn't look like there's many footholds there. And I was not told when I got there what it would take to get to the very top of Half Dome. And if you've ever been to the top of Half Dome, you know what awaits you as you get to the granite section of the peak, which are two little cables that you hold on to as you climb this mountain all the way to the top with no harness, with no ropes. Just two cables, and on each side of these cables is certain doom. Look at the sheer rock face on that, and some have actually fallen down that. And at 12 years old, I remember I was petrified of going up these cables. And then I saw little squirrels just running up and down the face of the thing with no cables, no harnesses, stealing people's food and then running back. And I thought, well, if the squirrels can do it, I can do it. So when I think about Half Dome, I think about your foot slipping, right? I did research on Half Dome and how many accidents they've had on that granite portion. They've had 13 deaths of those who have fallen off on one of the two sides and over 300 accidents that didn't lead to death. but it's a dangerous climb, and actually, it's dangerous enough that they decided that you had to have, they had to have a lottery for how many people could climb the cables per day, and they have people there to help and to assist if there's needed. And so when we think about slipping, we come to Psalm 121, and he says that he will not let our foot slip. be moved in verse three. My help comes from the Lord. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. And so we have this situation before us when we think about the world, the globe, honestly, in dealing with this pandemic. Many churches are closed today. And what Duane referenced earlier was Hebrews 10, which says, do not forsake gathering together. And we also know that the government gives us guidelines for wisdom. And so we're in a situation where every member of the church has to walk carefully. We have to keep the gathering of the saints in one hand, and we have to keep obeying our government in the other. And our government has given some basic guidelines for how to deal with this, and we want to respect those that God has put in an authority. But one of the things that we talked about downstairs that we cannot give up is the gathering of the saints. That's a command in Scripture. And whether it's here, or whether it's in homes, or whether it's over phone calls, The saints have to continue to minister with one another. They have to continue to encourage one another. And there are no months off of church. We're a body. It's like telling your arm, I'll see you in a couple years, right? I'll see you in a couple weeks. We need each other, especially during times of trial. And we have to trust that the Lord will protect us. And Chris was right earlier when he said we have to be wise. We have to take precautions. There's a verse in scripture that I think is entirely appropriate for this week, and it's, wash your hands, you sinners. That might have been taken out of context. But we want to wash our hands. And we have older folks as well that are struggling with health that aren't here today, and I think we need to remember them, pray for them, call them, and encourage them. So this is a time for the church to really practice Philippians 2, which is to count others' needs as more important than our own. and to think about others and how you might be able to provide for them during this time. But as we come to this now, let's look at Psalm 21 or 121. And you'll notice at the top of Psalm 121 is the phrase, a song of ascents or a song of degrees. And this means to go up, to arise. We see that Psalm 120 all the way to Psalm 134, these are all titled Songs of Ascent. Now, just kind of flip through your Bibles and realize that as you go through these, you see that title phrase over and over again, a Song of Ascent, a Song of Ascent. And you may have never noticed that before, but it's important historical. section of Scripture because as people would ascend to Jerusalem during the three annual either feasts or Passover, as they would go to Jerusalem making their trek from their home all the way to Jerusalem, they would set their eyes on Mount Zion and they would sing these songs. I mentioned downstairs that when we do a long road trip, oftentimes we have our own songs, don't we? We have our own games. I play the license plate game. That's one of my favorite games. As we drove to Los Angeles last year for the Shepherds Conference, which I wouldn't recommend. It's a 15 hour drive. We were all playing the license plate game. And when we got to Vegas, we all just killed it because there were signs everywhere. You know what that game is. But they would sing these songs on the road. Scripture. Reminding themselves of the journey. This is the Pilgrim Psalm when you get to 121 because as the pilgrim is on his path or on her path, they look up to where God is, they look up to his dwelling place. Remember, Zion is where the temple is. And if you were a journeyer, a sojourner back in those days, as you were going from Galilee or you were going from Tyre or wherever it was you lived and as you were making the trek to Jerusalem, Look, if you will, at Psalm 120, just to set the context here. And these are placed in order. These are placed intentionally. And note that these songs of ascent come after Psalm 119, which is all about meditating upon the word of God. And in Psalm 119, you have this kind of repetition and this beautiful poetry to draw you into meditation, filling your mind with the scriptures. That's biblical meditation. And then you get to Psalm 120, and there's this amazing discussion about life outside of Zion. He says, in my distress, I called to the Lord, and he answered me. This is Psalm 120. Deliver me, O Lord, from my lying lips, or from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? A warrior's sharp arrows with glowing coals of the broom tree. Woe to me that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kidar. Too long have I had dwelling in my dwelling place among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war. Notice here in verse five, woe to me that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. What he's saying is that I travel among those who love war rather than peace, those who love wickedness rather than righteousness, that I'm not in the dwelling place of God, that I have to sojourn to the dwelling place of God. And then immediately on the heels of Psalm 120 is Psalm 121. As he's talking about, I am for peace and they are for war, which if you go to the grocery store, you'll see that's true. I am for peace, they are for war. But Psalm 121 follows immediately on the heels of this, and he says, I lift my eyes up to the hills. From where does my help come from? And I love the immediate answer. What's the answer? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. So here this sets us in a proper context, and I want to encourage us that we must lift our eyes up to the hills, up to the Lord, where our help comes from. That's the only place to look. We tend to like to look other places. We tend to like to look within, for courage, for strength. That's the American way. Just pull yourself up. Just buckle down. Grin, just kind of grit through this. You'll make it. That's not what the scripture says. Others look around them for their help. They look to the government. They look to King Soopers and Walmart. They look to their 401ks, their finances, their support systems, their neighbors, their friends. None of those things are bad. But where do your eyes look? in times of trouble, they should look up. And that's what this pilgrim is reminding himself of as he's preaching his own sermon to his own soul. I lift my eyes up to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He's saying that in the first person, this is a sermon to his own soul as he travels and as he sojourns among those who are wicked and love war, who don't put others' needs before their own, who are selfish and hoard and gather for themselves. The psalmist is preaching a sermon to himself. Now just a little context for Psalm 121 as this is a poem. As we see, the Psalms, they're very artistic. And a Psalm is never ever handled appropriately if the genre's not considered. If we just approach the Psalms as doctoral theologians looking for doctrine to build our systems out, and there is tons of doctrine in Psalms, you're missing the main point of the Psalms. The Psalms are worship, they're singing. Meditation. You know, when they teach children the ABCs, they put it to music. Have you ever noticed that before? We're not going to sing that together this morning, because I trust we all know our ABCs. But the reality is, is music helps us remember. And this is the beauty of the Psalms as they are put to music. This is the hymn book of Israel. And a song, especially one in the Song of the Ascents, was sung three times a year, over and over, repeated. One that they meditated on, they thought on. You will never grasp Psalm 121 this morning in 40 minutes. It's gonna take you all week to even begin to just grasp the depths of this psalm. It's gonna take you a lifetime to wrestle with the 150 psalms that God has given us. And the songs of ascent, what I wanna hear our families do from now on is to use these on their road trips, right? to start thinking of teaching our kids these songs. So setting this song in its own context and giving you an understanding of the poetry behind it, we realized that this song is broken up into four strophies, not trophies, strophies. And I did look at Google to make sure I pronounced that correctly, and the Google voice said, it's strophies. So if you have an issue with that pronunciation, go to Google. But here we have four trophies broken up into two verses each. It's very beautiful. It's full of parallelism. It's about stair-stepping. There's this argument that's being built. The first two verses are first person. He's preaching to his own soul. Verses three through eight, the third last trophies, those ones are about just what God does. They're an answer to the confession that he gave in verses one and two. And we see here there's this thing called stair-stepping, where the argument just keeps building and building and building as his argument continues to grow and grow and grow. And we see this phrase over and over again, which is this word shamar in the Hebrew, which is protection, guard, keeper, watcher, used six times throughout this psalm. And you hear it over and over again in the ESV where it says keeper, keeper. Other translations translate it watchers or guards. And the idea here is that God is your guard. God is your safe place. Even in the midst of the unknown like we find ourselves in today, God is your help. God is your hope. God is the one you turn to. So let's look at verses one through two. He says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. Let me ask you, is this just about physical looking up? Is it just the answer is look up? When times get hard physically, just look up. If you do that, you're just gonna see clouds. If you just do it with your eyes, your physical eyes. And in the canyon here, we already are in the hills. So we're surrounded by them, but there are some places like Kansas where they look up and there's nothing. So this has to be more than physical eyes, right? We know what we're talking about here. This is our spiritual eyes. Our eyes, our very being, the I. How do you define I? That's one of the most difficult words to define, isn't it? I, the ego in the Greek. It's all who you are. It's your soul, it's your nefesh, it's your breath, it's what's inside of you. It's that intangible place that defines who you are. In the Hebrew, they would understand this as the seed of emotions and will and logic and reason. This is all-encompassing I. I lift my eyes up to the hills. And some have argued, well, these hills are a reference to trouble. There's two ways to understand this. They would be on the journey to Jerusalem, and they would see the hills, and that's where bandits would stay, and they would pillage, and they would mug those who were on the path to Jerusalem. And so some have argued, here he's saying, when you look up to troubles and you see the troubles that are ahead of you, you have to ask yourself, where's my help in the midst of these trials and troubles? And that might possibly be the interpretation here, but I think it's better to see in the context, in the Songs of Ascent, that this is primarily a reference to Jerusalem, to Zion. And let me ask you, what is in Zion? What makes Zion so important? What makes Jerusalem so important? Why would people pilgrimage three times a year to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem? Well, if you know your Old Testaments, it's because there was a certain building there, the tabernacle. And as they would go to this building, they would encounter God's presence. And we know there was the outer court and the inner court and the holy place and the holy of holies. We know that only one person per year was able to go into the Holy Holies, and that was the high priest. But they would go to the temple knowing that is where God dwelled, and as Jews, that was where their confidence was. In fact, before the Babylonian exile was unfathomable, nailed it, that word's hard to say sometimes, for the Lord to lose, or for the people to lose a battle because God dwelled among them. And then you have the Babylonian exile, where God obviously allows that to happen, and it's very confusing to them, but you have this idea that God dwells on Mount Zion. And so when it says, I lift my eyes to the hills, we see here that this is likely a reference to the hills of Jerusalem. And remember, Jerusalem is up, they go up, they ascend up the hill to Jerusalem. They set their eyes on God's glory, God's dwelling place. They know that's where their help is. Turn to Deuteronomy 33, 29, if you will, just to see this in action. Deuteronomy 33, verse 29. It says, happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help and the sword of your triumph. Your enemies shall come fawning to help and you shall tread upon their backs. Here we see that they look to God for their help. They look to God for their salvation. They look to God for their shield. He says, your enemies, they fawn over you, but you shall tread upon their backs. Here they say, where will my help come from? They have lifted up their eyes to God. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And we see this throughout the Psalms and the Psalms of the ascents. We look to the one who made you. We look to our creator. And let me ask you, where do we look? What mountains do we look to? Psalm 33 verse 29 says, we look to the Lord for our salvation. That word, help, appears 20 times in the Old Testament. 13 of those refer to the Lord's salvation. They look to God for their help. They look to God for their salvation. They look to God in times of troubles. And I have to ask the question, where do we look? I know in my own life, when things get hard, I look to the news to discomfort me. which is never a good place to look. I look, too, in my shame, football, to find some joy. I enjoy sports, and if you're a sports fan right now, it is the end of the world. Sports has been shut down across the board. I heard that the NFL is probably going to be pushing back some of their calendars, and I mourned in sackcloth and ashes. Because I was at least looking forward to that. And I'm being honest, we all have our things we look to. For some of us, it's Facebook. For some of us, it's friends. For some of us, it's just family. We all have our own mountains that we look to. But I'm belaboring verses one and two because you have to set your heart upon God. You have to put your eyes up instead of around you or within before you'll ever get Psalm 121. Let me read you a quote from Charles Spurgeon who says, the purposes of God The divine attributes, the immutable promises, the covenants ordered in all things ensured, the providence, the predestination, the proven faithfulness of the Lord. These are the hills to which we must lift our eyes, for from there our help must come. It is our resolve that we will not be bandaged or blindfolded, but all will lift up our eyes. When you have these moments in your life and these times in your life where you have a decision where you're gonna set your eyes, the only answer is you set your eyes on God's attributes, on God's providence, on God's sovereignty, on God's control. When we look at fear and anxiety, oftentimes those are rooted in an uncertainty. We don't know what's next. And right now, no one knows what's next. But we have to look at the Lord and trust in his sovereign plan, his purposes for us. And now let's look to the rest of Psalm 121. We saw that our helper is God, and now we see his help. And this can be broken up into three different sections. The first is that he holds us, verses three through four. God is our holder. And look at verse three. This is important for you to see. You can't see it in the English, but I'll explain this to you in the Hebrew. Here this is in a, it's called a jessive, and it means like a wish. And verses three are the wish. This is the wish of the psalmist. And let me put it in wish form. May he not let your foot be moved. Notice also that it's gone from the first person to the second. The first person says, I will look to the Lord. He also says that he is my help. And then all of a sudden you see the answers to the psalmist's confession. Verse three, may he not let your, second person, foot be moved. May he keep you. who does not slumber. These are wishes. May he not let your foot be moved. May he keep you, and may he not slumber. Let me ask you, why on earth would there be a request here that he is not slumbering? May he not slumber. Well, if you were downstairs, we should turn to 1 Corinthians 18. We talked about what I think is one of the best verses in the scripture. First Kings 18, turn there if you will. And in First Kings 18, we see this amazing story of Elijah and Baal, the Baal worshippers, the Baal prophets. And as Elijah goes to battle, with the prophets of Baal, you see this amazing kind of story where it's two great forces. It's one versus 450, it's David versus Goliath. You have all of Israel, it seems to be kind of present, you have many in Israel present watching this great battle. And in verses 20 through 40, we have the prophets of Baal versus Elijah standing by himself. In verse 22 he says, then Elijah says to the people, those who have gathered, I, even I alone am left, a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. And so they go into this battle where they create two altars. They put bowls on the altars. No fire. And so, verse 26, listen to this. This is the prophets of Baal. They took the bowl that was given them, and they prepared it, and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, this is the best verse, cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he's musing, or he's relieving himself, or he's on a journey, or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. Here you have an ancient belief about gods. And this is important to realize with Psalm 121, is that many believed in the ancient world that gods needed to sleep. In fact, there are stories, let me read you a quote from one ancient source. Within the larger and ancient Near English tradition, the gods were frequently depicted as sleeping. Here's one story. In Artaeus's epic in 1800 BC, the god Enlil is awakened from his restful slumber by the humans, and he demands that they be cut off from food as punishment for waking him. We see there are many stories of Greek gods, of Roman gods who need their sleep, who need their beauty rest, right? And this God, Enlil, is infuriated that he was awoken by these noisy humans, and so he cuts off food from them. Some today might believe in Enlil, if you've been to the grocery store, not to keep belaboring that. Maybe the gods are cutting off our food from us because they're angry, who knows? But here you come and you see in verse three these questions, these wishes, may he not let our foot be moved, and may he not slumber. And the answer comes in verse four. Look at this. Behold, pay attention, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. He will never slumber, he will never sleep. He never takes a day off, he never takes a minute off, he never takes even a second off. God does not need sleep and God keeps, and there's that word, protects and guards Israel all the time. And sometimes we feel as though God has slumbered. And he slept. And we look at the world and we feel like God's not listening. God's not answering. And our immediate response is, well, if God is not listening and God's not answering, then maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he's sleeping. Maybe he's not listening. And sometimes in response to that, we can feel guilty, like we've done something wrong to earn his displeasure. Sometimes we feel like maybe we don't need him. We'll deal with it on our own. Sometimes maybe we feel like there's fear and anxiety building up in us because we don't know if God's even here, even present. And here the psalmist is preaching to his own soul saying, he will never let my foot be moved. He will never slumber. And he says, behold, he keeps Israel, he guards Israel, and he never sleeps and never slumbers. And so the answer is God's always with us. He's always walking with us. And now we go to the third section where we see that God not only holds us, He keeps us from slipping, we also see that God protects us. The Lord is your keeper. He's your guard. He's your shield. The Lord is the shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. Here's this word keeper again. He's got you, this is you six times over and over again. This is the main thing we're to take away from Psalm 121, that God is always with us, that God is always holding us, that God doesn't let us shake. And if you look at uncertain futures, you know that God is for you. Here we see in this second section, this issue of the right hand. And this is where we need to do some thinking and some studying, because we see that the Lord is your shade on your right hand. And some of us may ask, well, what about our left hand? Is that one not important? And the answer is, in times of war, you would hold your shield, if you were right-handed, with your left hand. So your left side was protected. It was guarded from the enemy. But one side of you was unshielded. It was open. It was vulnerable. And so you would have in a line, in a battle situation, you would have soldiers holding their left shield with their sword in their right hand, but the man next to them would also guard their right side. And so you had a whole line of protected people because someone was standing right beside you protecting your blind side, protecting your side that was open and vulnerable. And so what God is saying here is, I have your blind side, I have your vulnerable side. Those areas that you're worried, those areas that you feel anxious and fearful over, God says that I'm there, I'm holding you, I'm protecting you. I've got you, I'm guarding you. We see this in Psalm 168 and Psalm 109 and Psalm 10. You see this over and over again, that God is a shield for those who find refuge in him. And we all know these verses, but we have to really trust and pray through these verses. We have to continue to meditate and pray them and ruminate over them and think through them and muse over them. And so he moves on and he says, also, the sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Now some have wondered what is this referencing? The sun shall not strike by day, is that talking about heat? Is that talking about the intense sun on a pilgrimage, on a journey? And the answer is maybe. Maybe this is about the journey that we're on and the sun is hard and it's hot. But we also see the moon here. And so there's been a lot of questions about why is the moon brought into this? The moon is not hot. The moon brings chill. But we also see the sun and the moon encapsulate or incorporate the whole day, the sun and the moon. This is called amirism, meaning that this is saying the sun and the moon and everything in between, it's all of the day. That God not only has your vulnerabilities, God not only has your weak side, God has your entire day. He has when the sun's out, He has when the night's out. He has every aspect of your day under His control. He is the one that is guarding us. We see here, too, in Psalm 91, if you will, turn to Psalm 91, verses five through 10. In Psalm 91, verses five through 10, this is a famous psalm. We see that God is our fortress, our strong tower. Follow with me, if you will, in Psalm 91, verses five through 10. He says, you will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrows that fly by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall by your right side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the Most High, who is my refuge. No evil shall be allowed to befall you. No plague come near your tent. Isn't that encouraging words for right now? You know, the fear of the unknown, the fear of darkness, of pestilence, the fear of plagues, the fear of our enemies, We see this over and over again that we need to find rest and comfort in God's refuge, God's fortress. He will protect you. He holds you. He keeps you from slipping. He protects you from the enemy. And then go back to Psalm 21 and we see the third aspect of God. He watches over you. In the final section, the Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out. and you're coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Here we have the Lord who keeps you from all evil. That word in the Hebrew is ra, which can also mean harm. And we talked about earlier, is that true? Because I know Christians who have died. I know Christians who have been persecuted. I know Christians who have experienced great loss. with children dying, with loved ones dying, with cancer. And we see this throughout the Bible, these promises to protect God's people from ra'ah, from evil, from harm. And the question is, what does that mean? And this takes a lot of time. This takes a lot of thinking, a lot of meditation. And the answer to this is that God protects us from all things that would seek to harm us ultimately. all things that would seek to push us off of His path, off of His way. God's ways are sovereign, God's ways are in control, and all things work together for the good of those who love Him according to God's purposes, meaning that nothing can thwart God's plan. We've said this many times throughout the years, that there is no plan B, there's only a plan A, and that God works everything according to the good of those who love Him, according to His purposes, not your purposes. We see this explained in Job, where Job experiences great loss. Job even experiences boils, and he experiences just absolute devastation, to the point where his wife looks at him and says, there's nothing left, just curse God and die. And Job's friends come, we know the story, and they begin to counsel him, and they say, there must be sin in your life, there must be something wrong in your life. And Job looks at them and he says, I don't know of any sin. He says, I need to see God. I need to have court with God. I need to make my case before God. And then we know, he says, but I also need a mediator. I need someone to stand between us. And he talks about his redeemer, and he says, I know that even if I die, that I know that my redeemer lives. And so here's the point about this section of Psalm 121. It says that the Lord will keep you from all evil. It doesn't mean that bad things won't happen. None of us are promised tomorrow. None of us are even promised tonight. The answer is that God will keep every aspect of your life according to his sovereign purposes. And if you're living for this life, you're too nearsighted, aren't we? Aren't we sometimes so nearsighted that we forget that there's so much more beyond this little blip called life? and that God sometimes allows pestilence to take us because it's his time to take us. John Piper once said that God will give you everything you need to fulfill his purposes, even if that's to die in a prison in Iran for his glory. God will give you everything you need to fulfill his purposes, and nothing can thwart them. He'll keep your life, every aspect. And he just adds this on, another merism. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forevermore. So when you leave the house and when you come back, God's got that. And when you go out into the world, God's got that. God's in complete control. He has everything that he needs or we have everything that we need in God. And here's the beauty of all of this. If you actually practice this, if you actually live this, nothing is unplanned in your life. Every single moment of every single day, God has. God has control of. God has purpose for. And so when you think about fear and anxiety, that's rooted in uncertainty. But fear and anxiety is cast out by what? Perfect love. God's love casts out all fear and anxiety. And the question is, well, why does love cast out fear and anxiety? And the answer is because God loves you. God's got a plan for your life. God's prepared your steps before you that you might walk in them. And nothing will thwart that. Nothing will take you off of his path. There is no falling off the side of Half Dome with God. God has you. He's got you protected in those cables. And the answer is that God has you because he what? He loves you. God loves you. Why does God love us? Because he chose us. Why did God choose us? Because he loves us. I could keep going. But the answer is God has you. God loves you. And so when people in this world are freaking out about fear and anxiety, go back to Psalm 121. Root yourself in its truth. And be reminded that you have nothing to lose. When people are cutting you off because they're trying to get something first before you do, when people yell at you and cuss you out because you got the last bag of toilet paper, you need to realize that God loves you. He has you. And that you don't have to worry about tomorrow. You don't have to worry about today. God cares for the birds of the air. He cares for the flowers of the field. How much more precious are you to God? And so when you live in the hope of God's security, nothing can harm you. No evil can befall you. And it's absolute joy to love those who despise you because you know who has you, right? No one can hurt you. outside of God's allowances, and that's only temporal. So, what do we do with all this? Well, first we have to ask, where does our help come from? Let me just cover this real quick. The pilgrim's journey, he lifts his eyes up, he knows that there's potential for slipping, He also realizes that there's danger in the day and the night, but finally he says that I will go there and back again in the sovereignty and the protection of God. He looks up, he realizes there are dangers, and he's on a journey there and back again. A hobbit's tale. What is your journey? Do you look up every day? What do you hold on to? What are you grasping onto to keep you? What watches over you day by night? Who watches over you day by night? Finally, who plans your days, ultimately? We all know the answer to all those questions. It's God. God has us. God has plans for us. He holds our day. He sets our agendas. And we have to trust him. What do we do when we leave here? What I encourage you to do is memorize some psalms. Write this psalm down, put it on your steering wheel, pray through it, think about it, sing it. And then finally, remember that God will hold you.