Sermon:
January 13, 2002
Sunday Night Alive!  

Scripture:
Psalm 121

Someone wrote, "With all the people in the world, you’d think life would be one great party." Maybe it is for some people, but not for many people. It seems the party is just for some, not for everyone. Have you ever been to a party where no one knew your name, and no one cared to know it?

I’ll never forget a party I went to when I was 17 years old. It was at a hall in one of the copper- colored buildings down Evergreen. I went with my sister Jaema, Tom Ray and Rob Pierce. We went to this girl’s party who was in the youth group, who was turning "sweet sixteen." It was sort of a big deal at her school. The party was huge. Well, she invited us, but she never told us that she was switching "groups" at school and she was going all the way to the top, to the really cool people. The problem for us was that they all had scoped out who they wanted to get to know, and it wasn’t any of the four of us from Seaholm! And I love my sister, but I wasn’t going to dance with her at this girl’s party!

There have been a few other "parties" like that for me. (You’d think I would get the hint, but I don’t!) I wind up going home and asking, "You know my name, don’t you, Lord? I just wish you weren’t the only one."

Why does the world have to be such a lonely place? Why does life have to be such a lonely place? Some people honestly feel as though no one cares whether they live or die. Some people experience this in a chronic way. Anxiety sets in. Charles Spurgeon said, "Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength." And while that may be true, it doesn’t address the issue of how to deal with it.

Have you ever thought about the amazing creation of personalities? How creative God is in the incredible variety and depth and humor and hopes and dreams and caring and uniqueness of every one. And yet how fragile and easily broken those personalities may become. Each one of us needs to love and be loved. Each one of us needs hope. And caring. Billy Graham reminds us that "Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and his will for us." How can we know God’s will? There may be lonely times and some anxious ones, too. But how can we center our hopes on the living God in order to avoid the loneliness and anxiety that God doesn’t want us to experience?

Have you ever done everything you can to prepare for something, knowing all the while that it wouldn’t be enough? I believe God has an answer, even for that.

Tonight I want to look at Psalm 121. It is likely this psalm was written during time of Isaiah, during the reign of good King Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he was in Jerusalem taking a stand against the Assyrians and their King, Sennacherib (Su-NAH-ku-rib). It is a fitting answer to the anxiety and loneliness he must have been going through, waiting for the Assyrian superpower to invade. While he was preparing, he must have known that he had not the human resources for such an attack, a siege, and all the terror and horror that comes with it.

1.  I will lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?

I will lift up my eyes to the hills – the mountains. Sometimes when I hear this, I picture Julie Andrews standing in that field, in the rapture of the moment, singing for joy in the mountains. But could they be mountains of pain? Could they be the looming, ominous, massive shadows of what you may have to face? (Matthew 17:20: Jesus taught "…if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible to you.")

Whether the hills were a potential refuge or whether they were hiding the enemy, the psalmist knew that his eyes had to go higher than the hills. He immediately looks to the God who made the hills.

2.  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

This psalm may have been a dialogue between King Hezekiah and Isaiah. Perhaps Isaiah had shared words that later found their way into his book: "O Jerusalem…be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand…Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked out the heavens with the span, and enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" (Isaiah 40:9-12)

Why be afraid? The Lord is your King, the Lord who made heaven and earth, the Lord who could take all the heavens and earth and (anthropomorphically speaking) hold them between his thumb and little finger. What a God! What a King! Why should he fear a human – even a great and terrible human king? God is for us – who can be against us?

When I was in junior high, it was not perceived as "cool" to be taking piano lessons or going to church. It also wasn’t very cool to do puppets. I was in the Pleasant Street Puppeteers and we got on TV several times on a show called "Deedle-Doors." (This was before cable.) The studio was right next to the newsroom where Bill Bonds was doing his thing. Needless to say, this was very exciting, even though the name of the show was awful. (I had never seen the show because it was on Sunday mornings and I was always here!) This was also just before VCRs (and betas!).

Well, someone saw the show and shared it with the "guys," who relentlessly teased and tormented me. It was then that something really changed my life. My older sister Marci told me that if you’re being what God created you to be and somebody cuts you down, they’re not cutting you down, they’re really cutting God down, because God made you that way. It’s only when I try to be someone I’m not that I can take the credit.

When I realized this, my attitude changed. I began to feel sorry for these guys. They didn’t know who they were messin’ with! I knew that I could make it. Why should I fear others, when I was trying to stand in God’s shadow! Sometime around then I gained the faith that the Lord is able to take care of every problem. My biggest problem simply became having a short memory. I would get overwhelmed and forget God. But even in our weariness, weakness, wickedness and waywardness, God provides for every problem.

THE PROBLEM OF WEARINESS

God knows how easy it is for us to slip. King Hezekiah had taken a bold stand. No other nation that defied the Assyrian king lasted long. Vengeance was swift and savage. The psalmist sings hope that God will not allow Hezekiah to slip, now that he has taken such a stand.

It is so easy to slip. We all know how often we have second thoughts after making some bold commitment to God. You may be plagued with doubting yourself, second-guessing everything you do. It is paralyzing.

I used to be that way when I was learning to sing. There is a series of books from the early ’80s by Tim Gallwey: Inner Golf, The Inner Game of Skiing, The Inner Game of Tennis, and The Inner Game of Music. They are built upon the principle that we have two selfs: one is taking us through what we are doing, the other is criticizing and second-guessing us along the way. (For example, "You blew that note. Your hands are numb. Your knees are shaking.") The books focus on eliminating this second-guessing self. Don’t let your "critiquing self" cause you to hesitate when it comes to acting for or speaking of or praying out to God. It is God’s nature to not let us slip. You have to work hard at not giving God control in order to slip. Who’s really in charge of your life? Is God your co-pilot, or have you given the control over to him? God wants you to have courage no matter what you may be facing. God can give us that, when he’s in control. Be bold for him – whether it is facing a fear, healing a broken relationship, taking a stand, or doing something totally off the wall for him.

4.  He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

God knows how easy it is for us to sleep. It is so easy, having made some commitment to God, to settle down and get nothing done after all. And that can happen to churches as well as people. God is not like a human sentinel who could fall asleep at his post. (As though God could get tired!) There’s no need to worry that whatever might be happening to you is outside of God’s awareness and help. It simply can’t be.

Every star, every galaxy, every sun, is an object lesson in sheer physical energy. Take our sun, a ball of fire that astronomers classify as a moderate star. It has a diameter of 864,000 miles, but it is all gas. Two billion billion billion tons of gas. Over every square inch of the core there presses down a crushing weight of a million million pounds of matter. The only thing that keeps the sun’s core from collapsing is energy, huge floods of energy that raise the sun’s internal temperature to 25 million degrees Fahrenheit. Consuming 657 million tons of hydrogen each second, the sun can still go on burning for another fifty billion years. And that’s just one moderate star. The amount of energy being put out by all the suns and stars in space is beyond human comprehension.

A God who has that kind of energy is not likely to need a nap. So you can forget the problem of weariness. God is always watching out for us. (And it’s not "from a distance," as Bette Midler crooned for us.)

THE PROBLEM OF WEAKNESS

When this was written, the right hand meant the sword hand. The singer sees that God takes his stand on our right hand, so that God’s right hand might be free to defend us. And there is much from which we need defending!

Our weakness is offset by God’s strength. And we never know where the attack will come from – sometimes from our families, sometimes from a friend. Sometimes the enemy attacks along the line of our weakness, which he knows only too well; sometimes he attacks at the point of strength. Many times the enemy attacks from within us, because we can so easily forget how dependent we are on God. We rely on the Lord for our next breath.

Because we are all vulnerable, we all need the Lord to stand on our right hand with his right hand outstretched to defend us and save us.

God is able to keep us by day or by night. It makes no difference to God.

THE PROBLEM OF WICKEDNESS

We need to realize, before we continually point to the "enemy out there," that we are capable of any sin. John Phillips writes, "We carry within us a slumbering volcano." The flesh is utterly depraved. Paul the apostle says in Romans 7:18, "For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it." The only way we can overcome ourselves is by the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, whenever the flesh is mentioned, so is the Spirit: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). "The flesh is against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh…" (Galatians 5:17). "The works of the flesh are…the fruit of the Spirit is…" (Galatians 5:20). When the flesh rises to overthrow us, the Holy Spirit stands against it in our hearts. That is good news. The Lord will keep you from all evil.

A few weeks ago during our senior high Bible study, this next line really got me. "He will keep your soul." Your very soul. You can trust God enough to give him the deepest, most intimate, most precious, most ugly part of you. We should never give our souls to another person. Only God can treasure you and your soul enough for you to give it all to him. Hold nothing back from Jesus. Do you know what this means? We no longer have to be alone. We can give him our all, heart, soul, mind and strength. And it is safe.

God longs for us to share all of ourselves with him. "He will keep your soul." There is a place in God’s heart that only you can fill. And the Lord will provide for every need our souls could have. The God of the universe cares for each of us personally. He cares about every aspect of your life. He loves you with a love that cannot be measured. Take confidence in that! That is why we can rely on God for all these other things. Because the living God himself will "keep your soul." He sent his Son Jesus to show us that. He came to live and die and rise again for our very souls.

Whatever your situation is, God is faithful. Whatever your struggle is, God is faithful. Whatever you’ve done, God is faithful. No matter how you’ve been hurt before, God is faithful. No matter what you may think about yourself, God is faithful. He loves you. He can be trusted. If you give it to him, God will keep your very soul.

THE PROBLEM OF WAYWARDNESS

God promises to take care of you. If you allow God to keep your comings and goings, God will become a part of your daily life. Have you ever thought of taking Jesus with you, wherever you may be heading? Allowing God to keep your coming and going means you take him with you each day. It is a spiritual exercise that will keep us from places where God’s name is dishonored, from places where his ideals and standards are made fun of and disregarded, whether that’s the TV in our living room or people who compete against God’s best for our lives. It will keep us honest in business and pure in our relationships. It will keep us mindful of God to whom we belong, and whom we serve. It will save us from needless hurt.

All that God promises to us, wrapped up in his Word, wrapped up in this beautiful poetic psalm. It’s one of the most beautiful and moving promises of God. Do you believe it? No matter if it be anxiety, or loneliness or a feeling of helplessness or futility,

Amen.