We want to read now from the New Testament from Romans chapter 8. It's page 1138 in the ESV that I'm using here in the pulpit. Romans 8 and verse 31. In the opening chapters, the apostle has laid out the wonder of salvation that is needed by Jew and Gentile. And he's shown how that is provided, that righteousness that we don't have, but we need is provided by Christ. And then from chapter five on, he's speaking about the blessings and the benefits of belonging to the Lord's people. So now in chapter eight, he's talking about our blessings in the midst of even suffering. So let's read from verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Know in all these things. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Let's turn in the Old Testament to Psalm 121, page 621 in the ESV Church Bible. Psalm 121, the second of 15 songs of ascent or degrees as they're sometimes called. I lift up my eyes 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 or your soul. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Amen. Well, please keep this open. We want to think about it this evening and learn for our encouragement the things that the Lord wants to teach us through it. The Bible uses different pictures to describe the Christian life. So we're all familiar with the picture of the race. that the Christian life is a race, not a sprint, but more like a marathon. And we are to run the race that Christ has set out for us. The idea that it is individually tailored and designed for whom he has made us to be. Wonderful illustration of the Christian life. Then Paul also talks about the Christian life being a fight. Not that we're to go round picking fights with people. We are to seek to be peaceable with all men insofar as we can. But we are involved in a struggle with powers that are beyond this earth, powers of the cosmic realm, spiritual forces. And so Paul says, fight the good fight of faith. Well here in Psalm 121 we have another one of those metaphors or pictures or illustrations of the Christian life. And here it is likened to a journey, a journey from our point of view. It may well have been written in the light of an actual journey that the psalmist and the people of God were making in the age of the Old Testament when it was written. We're not told who wrote this psalm. We have no real clues, I believe, in the rest of the Old Testament to the setting of the psalm. It has generally been thought that these 15 Psalms from 120 to 134 are the Psalms that were used by the pilgrims as they traveled from the north and south and east and west of the land, converging upon Jerusalem for the three annual feasts. And people made that journey, not by bus, not by train, or by any form of transport. They made it by foot. And so we can see how that would fit in. I will lift up my eyes to the hills and He's not thinking here that the hills give him inspiration or strength. Sadly, there are those today, and we have them in County for Man as well, who say, well, I meet God when I go to the hills and go to the mountains. Well, we can experience the majesty and the glory and the wisdom and the power of God in the hills. But on the Sabbath day, we experience the power and the wisdom and the glory of God in his church. So, he's thinking, of course, of Jerusalem. As I said this morning, somewhere the city that was surrounded by hills, comes out in Psalm 125 that we sang this morning as well. And so, when they were traveling to Jerusalem, they could see the city usually from a distance. And the joy which is described in Psalm 122 is what began to rise within their hearts as they came closer and closer to Jerusalem. So it may be that that is the background. But there is another possible background to this and I've never really thought about this much before until recently. And it is also a very possible and appropriate background and it is this. This is not the pilgrims traveling within the land of Canaan or Palestine as we know it, going up to a Jerusalem that is standing there intact and where they're going to be able to worship God. No, this is Jerusalem in ruins. And the people are in Babylon. And the people are traveling this thousand plus miles from the east back to the west and they're making a journey which is going to take them five months or thereabouts. And I think this is something that leans my heart towards this context for this reason. The same word going up or ascents is found in Ezra chapter 7 and verse 9, where Ezra sets his face to leave Babylon and he's going up. He's leading a group, he's leading a crowd of people back to Jerusalem, back to the land that was conquered by Babylon, the city destroyed, the place of worship ruins but still they believe that now in the providence of God at the end of 70 years of captivity the Lord is indeed bringing blessing to them and that would tie in with the other Psalms some of the others for example Psalm 126 when the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion we were like those who dream So that may well be its context. And they're making the journey from the west to the east. And they are excited at the prospect of being back in the Lord's land, back where the Lord meets with his people. But boy, what work they've got to do when they get back there. The city's been in ruins, the temple's in ruins. Imagine if you leave somewhere for 70 years untended. The trees, the grass, through the rubble and everything else. But, in any case, they're on a journey. And so, the question is asked at the beginning of the psalm, and now we get into our points for this evening, from where comes my help? And the psalmist answers the question immediately. The first two verses are in the words of an individual, the writer. And then verse three and following are others it would seem looking on. Perhaps it was the like of Daniel. who was staying in Babylon and others saying, the Lord will go with you as you make this journey. So our title this evening is Help for Life's Journey. Because we are on a journey and life is a journey. Our lives are a journey and I also find it helpful to think of the life of the non-christian as a journey. A journey over which God is sovereign and sometimes people get all anxious about witness and talking to people and I can't speak and I can't remember Bible verses And I think the most helpful thing that we can say to ourselves when we feel like that is, everyone has a story to tell of their life journey. And actually all we need to do is to listen, is to listen. And as we listen, the Lord will give us opportunity to speak for Him. So, our lives are a journey, help for life's journey. The psalmist is clear here that his confidence, his hope, his salvation is in the Lord. Verse two, my help comes from the Lord. This beautiful covenant name that sums up the relationship between the Lord God and his redeemed people. It's the same relationship as a husband has with his wife, that of steadfast love and commitment one to the other through thick and through thin. That's the kind of saviour we have. And this name Lord is fulfilled of course in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. bridegroom, the one who saves us, the one who brings us into the church, the one who is our help. And this word help, it's a very common word in the Old Testament. It's used as a verb and it's used also as a noun. And it means that the Lord comes alongside us and he helps us in our weakness. He comforts us in our sorrows. He encourages us in our fears. And how beautiful is his help? It's a help that's always tailored to what your needs are and what my needs are. There's three simple things that we want to see then about his help. First of all, it's a powerful help. It's powerful. This is not the help of someone who's wanting to do their best, but they actually can't do it. Those of us who are fathers or grandfathers, mothers or grandmothers, we'll have experienced this with our children. We're doing something. A mother's baking, a father's digging with a spade. And of course, when we were children, or when our children were small, or your children, The adult made it look so easy. And they said, mommy, can I do that? Daddy, can I do that? And they get down and they try to lift something that's heavy or they try to do something. Yes, they are. They're the best intentions. And they eagerly want to help us, but they don't have the resource within them to help us. Well, that is not the help of our Lord. He is never one who finds himself eager to help, but unable to help because he doesn't have the resource. Remember what we saw earlier, he's the Lord of hosts. The one whose resources never run done. And you see the reality is that even in your life and my life, when things are going well, Then we can coast along, but when there are times in our lives when things begin to break down, challenges come in, difficulties, and it's then that we're reminded of our weakness. And it's good for us when the Lord allows us to come into weakness and need. because it reminds us to keep our attention always upon Him. Because we are able to do so little. And when we think of the spiritual dimension of our lives, we cannot really do anything without the Lord's help. And how wonderful it is that his help is powerful. Look at how it's described here by the psalmist. He made heaven and earth. Made heaven and earth. And those times when we find ourselves drawing back into ourselves and wanting to curl up in ourselves. We need to lift our eyes and we need to look up to the sky, the night sky, or we need to look at the sunrise, the sunset, or the cloudy sky that's never the same twice. And we've got to say, that's the work of the Lord today. He's given us that sky, and if he's done that for inanimate, for lifeless material things, then as Jesus himself said, he does it for the birds, but even the birds that are living things, you're far more valuable than they are. A powerful help. And Paul, I believe, may well have Psalm 121 in his mind when he's writing there in Romans chapter 8. And this church in Rome, Paul's never been there. He wants to go and see them. But he's learned enough about them and he knows enough as a Christian himself and as an apostle to know that the Lord's people always have challenges. And he describes how they're offered up like sheep all day long. But then he says, look, let's think about the worst that can happen to us in the world. Let's think about the worst that Satan can do to you or me through other people. And he says, will not separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Absolutely not. There is nothing Nothing material in this world. There's no person in this world. There's no government in this world. Boys and girls, there's no bigger boy or girl that you're afraid of who can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. He loves you with a love that will not let you go. He loves you for you are the apple of his eye. Yes, even with our daily failures and faults and stumblings and stutterings in the Christian life. And so how we ought to be encouraged tonight, whatever stage you're at in the journey of life and whatever looms ahead that seems like a huge mountain to you, And that will be different for different people. For the boys and girls, it will be things of everyday life that they're facing in school or concerns that they have maybe for somebody in their family who's not very well. For us who are adults, that situation in your workplace, that concern about redundancy or the pressures that are being piled upon you in the workplace as people are asked to do more and more in the workplace. It seems in this day and generation. Or perhaps you're at the end of your life. Or you're in the, not the end of your life, but in the final stage of your life. And you're wondering at times, you're now on your own, you're wondering, well actually what lies ahead? How will my life pan out in the next 5, 10 or whatever years the Lord gives me? I don't know the answer to that, but I know this. You in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his heavenly father and in the indwelling spirit, you have the all powerful God on your side. He is watching out for you each day and he will give you all that you need to be all that he wants you to be. and to do all that he wants you to do until you draw that final breath and you stand in his presence and he says, well done, good and faithful servant. My help comes from the Lord. He made the heavens and the earth. What an incentive for the journey of life. with all its ups and downs and twists and turns, its joys and sorrows. We have in him a powerful help. But then I want us to see, secondly, we have in him a permanent help, a permanent help. And this is really full of encouragement for us as well, We all know what it is for somebody to say to us in a time of need. Maybe we're just doing a project and somebody says, I'll come and help you on Saturday. And so they come and they help you and you get a great day's work done. Or perhaps there's some physical need in your life and somebody comes in to see you and they come and they visit you and they talk to you and they encourage you, make a cup of tea or whatever and you spend time together and it's a precious, precious hour. But there's the other 23 hours of the day. And there's those kind, the reality is that no person can be our help 24-7, 365 days, even if we're married and we have our family around us. There can be those nights when we wake in the middle of the night and our spouse is dead to the world, as we would say, and you could hear a pin drop and your mind goes active immediately and you begin to think of this and that and the other situation. Well, you see, I can't waken my wife. She's got to cope with tomorrow. There's no point in two of us stumbling through tomorrow. Let her or my husband sleep. And we're not going to waken our children. We're not going to phone up our pastor or our elders unless it's a matter of life and death. And so there's those moments, there's those times that can seem when we can seem so isolated. Actually even sometimes people feel isolated when the people all around them. Because there's things that are happening in them. But you see the Lord, look at what it shows us here. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. And then he goes on to speak of how the Lord is with him. Or the others looking on say the Lord will be with you. He does not slumber. He does not sleep. Wonderful, isn't it? When we have no one else to talk to. As the Psalmist says in other places, we can pour out our hearts to the Lord. Or perhaps there are things that we can't talk to anybody else about. They're too raw, too personal, too painful, maybe too embarrassing for us. But we can talk to the Lord about them, and he's there in the night with us. He does not slumber. He does not sleep. And look at what the psalmist says then in the verses that follow. He talks about the Lord being the keeper five times. He uses this verb, keep, keep, keep, keep. That's the reality the psalmist says. Whether it's day or whether it's night, whatever the danger is, whatever the difficulty is, he's the one who keeps. And I love the sense of verse five because here the Psalmist and perhaps it's the people that are traveling with him back from Babylon and they're traveling to Jerusalem and not only do they have potentially enemies who could attack them, verses three and four, but remember the kind of climate they're traveling in. It's not Northern Ireland. Not Northern Ireland, where it's more likely to be, where it's the rain. that comes and is there by day and by night. But in the Eastern culture, it's the sun that beats down with that intense heat and the danger, I think, that he has in mind here is sunstroke. But then there also seems to be some evidence, and I claim Charles Spurgeon in my defence here, that there's such a thing as moonstroke. that at certain times of the month, the moon, whatever stage it's at, and somebody confirmed this to me at a wedding, because they had grown up in a country where they slept outdoors at night, and they said that at certain times of the month, when they were sleeping outdoors in a hammock, their parents would have come and covered their head by night, because if they didn't, the children would have been in a foul temper. The next day, they'd obviously work this out as missionaries in that culture. And you see, the reality here is, here we have features of life that you and I can't do anything about. These people traveling, they could not stop the sun shining by day or the moon by night. But look at what he says. He says, the Lord is, or what's said to him, the Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. It's a bit like the parasol that you put up to protect you from the sun or the umbrella from the rain. And we're to think that's the Lord. So here's these people, they hadn't umbrellas, they hadn't parasols, they were exposed to the routine, the elements of life that they couldn't change. and they're reminded the Lord keeps you in the midst of those. Now for us, it's not the sun shining by day or by night, but is it not the situation where there's the empty chair in our homes, the loved one that's no longer there, the birthday that's no longer celebrated, And that's a daily event, and you can think of the daily event, it could be that it's ill health, and you've ill health at a stage in life when you still expect it to have health and strength, and every day you get up to that, and every day you go to bed to that. Or it could be that your life is in the throes of family life. And first thing in the morning, you hear the cry of a child. Last thing at night, you're checking on your children. And the next day, you get up and the round starts again. And you think, how am I going to cope? My husband's at work, and so on. And the psalmist says, there's a permanent help in the Lord. when we have no one else there. And those things that would threaten you and threaten me because we have got to live through them and go through them, the Lord keeps us in the midst of them. What a Lord. What help for the journey. And I want to encourage you this evening If you are in one of those situations where there's a daily round of the equivalent of the sun and the moon, day and night, there's that void, there's that weakness, there's that challenge in your life to keep looking up and saying, my help comes from the Lord. So he is a powerful help. He made the heavens and the earth. To look after us is a small thing. He's a permanent help. Able to be there, he is there, everywhere, all the time, in all circumstances, no challenges. But then notice thirdly, he is a personal help. Personal help. You see, sometimes people who are not Christians, they really struggle to get their minds around the fact that the God, they say, if there's a God who's made this world and is in charge of this world, well then, why would he be interested in me? He's more important things to do, more important people to look after. But you see, such is the greatness of our God that it's not a problem for him to look after the whole universe. provide for every part of it, and then to look after the big things, his kingdom, but also to have an eye to the small detail, to the individual. It's one of the things, is it not, that is the sad feature of our modern day society, that the personal touch has gone out of much of life. You phone up some government body, and they're not really interested in your name, they're interested in your reference number, or your national insurance number, or whatever, because that's how they identify you, how impersonal. Well, we thank God that that's not the way he operates, that he's the Lord God, Almighty, all-powerful and he's the God who's involved with individuals. That's his great purpose. His church is not made up of so many numbers. He knows your name. He knows your face. He knows your needs. He knows absolutely everything. Where comes my help? My help comes from the Lord. And as someone once said, it might have been Spurgeon, I can't be absolutely sure about that, but the gospel is in the personal pronouns. I, my Saviour, my Lord, my help. This great, eternal, glorious God, He needs nothing, He needs no one, and yet He has taken a people to Himself, and He loves us. And it's as if you are the only son or daughter that he has. That's a tall, we would say that's an impossible task. It's impossible for us to do that in our families, no matter how hard we try. But such is the power of God, the knowledge of God, the presence of God with his people. That is as if you are the only child that he has beyond his eternal son. And he delights to help his people. And our great problem is not a lack of help in the Lord. Our great problem is in our willingness to ask for that help. and to depend upon that help, and to live out our lives in the light of that help. And so, what an encouragement to us. As we go into this week, as we go forward in our lives, as they are now, as they unfold into the future, you don't need to be afraid. You don't need to be anxious. Don't need to lie awake at night thinking about, well, what about this? What about that? What about the other thing? And working out the best strategy. Yes, we do need to think about things. We do need to plan. But we do that in the knowledge that we have a God who guides us and who keeps us and who blesses us in his son, Jesus Christ, and whose help to us is powerful, and it's permanent and it's personal. And so we give him the praise. Amen. Well, let's pray as we remain seated. We thank you, almighty God, that you are such a great and glorious God. Our minds cannot take in the full extent of who you are, And therefore, at times we allow fear and doubts and circumstances and challenges and situations to overwhelm us. O Lord, we pray that we would allow ourselves not to be overwhelmed by anything that's happening to us or around us, but to be overwhelmed by your love for us in Christ, that nothing will separate your people from your love in Christ Jesus. And so we pray this evening that as we sit here in church at the end of this Lord's Day, and as we think about our lives and think about our lives in the light of your word, in the light of what's happening tomorrow, next week, next month, help us to know that you are our help, a very present help. and you will make us glad. And so help us to know that your help is powerful, your help is permanent, and your help is personal. And so let us go forth in the strength of God the Lord, to the praise of the glory of your name, in Jesus' name, amen.