A Psalm of Pilgrimage: Where does your Help come from?

[0:00] Turn now to our reading, which you'll find today in the book of Psalms, the last of our short study in a number of Psalms, and Psalm 121. If you have one of our visitors' Bibles, I think that's page 516.

[0:16] But otherwise, you'll find the book of Psalms pretty near the middle of your Bibles. And this is a short psalm.

[0:32] I've actually preached on this psalm once before, I think, in the Tron, before I actually came to be your minister. I was visiting once, and I see from some notes that I preached on this over 10 years ago. But since I couldn't remember myself, I don't think too many of you will remember.

[0:46] And many of you, of course, weren't here. But it's a psalm certainly worth revisiting. Psalm 121, a song of ascents. I lift my eyes to the hills.

[1:02] From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved.

[1:17] He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper.

[1:30] 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.

[1:43] He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

[1:56] Amen. Amen. May God bless to us. This is his word. Well, if you would turn with me to Psalm 121, as we read.

[2:11] Page 516, if you have one of the church visitors' Bibles. And the last in this little series in the Psalms is undoubtedly a psalm of pilgrimage.

[2:27] You see from the title of the psalm that it's called a song of ascents. And in fact, it's the second of a group of 15 psalms that bear that title, running from number 120 to 134.

[2:46] You'll see that's the title above all of these psalms. And literally, the word ascents means steps or stairs. And although we can't be entirely sure, it does seem very likely that this is a collection of psalms that formed a kind of hymn book of pilgrim praise.

[3:07] It was used very probably by the Israelites as they traveled up on their way to Jerusalem for the various pilgrim festivals each year.

[3:18] You remember in 1 Samuel chapter 1, we read about Elkanah and Hannah going up year by year to the tabernacle of the Lord to worship. You remember in Luke's Gospel chapter 2, we read about Mary and Joseph going up with Jesus, aged about 12, to the temple for the Passover.

[3:38] They were part of that pilgrim band. And it was quite some time when they were journeying home before they realized that Jesus wasn't there. They thought he was among the other pilgrims, but you remember he was left behind in the temple.

[3:51] And you can imagine, can't you, this group of traveling pilgrims singing as they went along, or perhaps as they stopped in the evenings to make camp and to cook and so on, and as they had a time of prayer and praise together.

[4:06] And certainly as you read through these psalms, you can't miss the focus on Jerusalem, on Zion, and on traveling towards the city of God.

[4:22] I'm sure it's probably a favorite psalm of many of us here. Certainly in our family, it's one of our special family psalms. It's one that's often read by family members at a time of parting or journeying.

[4:38] And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's not true for others here as well. And it's natural, isn't it, at times of parting, to feel certain anxieties and fears.

[4:50] That's when we sense a need for help and we want to pray. I think it's probably true of all of us, whatever our beliefs are, that we feel anxiety and need at these kind of times, especially if that parting is a significant one from loved ones.

[5:09] Maybe it's a young child going off to camp for the very first time this summer. That may be true for some here. Maybe it's an older teenager going away from home for the first time to university, or perhaps to a gap year away from home for the first time.

[5:26] Or maybe it's a loved one who's emigrating to a country very far away, across the ocean. Often these kind of partings and these journeyings bring home to us, don't they, the bigness of the world out there and our smallness by comparison.

[5:48] The size and the scope of the threats of this world and the vulnerability and the weakness of our own power to overcome these things, to give protection, to control these things.

[6:03] When we think like that, we realize just how helpless we are. These times often bring the sharp focus of reality that the rest of the time, I suppose, we hide from, don't we?

[6:17] Deep down, I think whatever we believe, all of us know that life is full of uncertainties and hazards and potential dangers. And there are real fears that all of us have in these quiet moments.

[6:32] And there are real fears. And when we have them, we sense, don't we, that we need help on our journey, on our pilgrimage through this mortal coil.

[6:47] And that raises the question, where does your help come from? Well, here in this psalm of pilgrimage, we have an honest appraisal of life in this world with all its hazards and threats.

[7:02] But we also have a clear answer to that question of where true help is to be found. So I want us to look at it together this morning.

[7:12] The psalm, I think, teaches us three very clear things. And it leaves us with a question. It tells us, first, that life is full of hills. Second, that there's a God who made the hills.

[7:27] And third, that this God has a name. And that does indeed raise a question for each of us that I'll come back to later. So I want to look at it under three headings, or four.

[7:42] Three Ps and a Q. Here's the first P. The psalmist addresses a real problem. Life is full of hills. And therefore, we're all looking for help.

[7:55] Verse 1, I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come from? Now, right away, I have to say that for some of us, we may need to rethink what may be our instinctive understanding of these lines.

[8:12] Perhaps those of us who are native Scots in particular tend to have a very instinctive love for the hills. I don't know about you, but every time I fly back into Glasgow Airport, I love to sit on the right-hand side of the plane.

[8:23] It's usually coming that way. And you look out over the campsies. And if it's a clear day, well, occasionally it's a clear day, you might see beyond, up to the Lomond Hills, and Loch Lomond and beyond, and so on.

[8:35] Or, in fact, if you're coming across the Atlantic, it's even more spectacular. And you sit on the left side of the plane then, because you're coming from the west, and you look out and you'll see right up to the Aracar Alps on a clear day with snow.

[8:48] You'll see right up to Glencoe even, right across perhaps to the Cairngorms. And something rises up in your heart. You love to see these Scottish hills.

[8:59] When I lived in London, one of the things that I became so fed up with was the flatness everywhere. People used to talk about such and such a hill, and I would look around and think, well, where's this hill?

[9:11] And I'd realize I just walked up it without noticing. They don't have any proper hills at all. I used to long to see the bonnie hills of Scotland. But I think perhaps for that reason, many of us tend to read this psalm as though verse 1 is expressing a kind of longing for the hills.

[9:30] And if you've been used to singing the second version of the psalm that's in our book, 121b, that hymn tends to reinforce it. Unto the hills around me I lift up my longing eyes.

[9:45] But I'm afraid I've got to tell you that that is a misunderstanding of this verse. We're going to have to change the word of that hymn before we can sing it.

[9:57] Because it's not a wistful longing that the psalmist is expressing here. It's rather a cry of fear and of foreboding. Because for the psalmist, the hills represent a real problem.

[10:11] It's not a wistful look down from an airplane at the sun on the hills. It's much more like something like a hill walker in the Cairngorms with many, many miles still to walk to get back to his car and looking up and seeing dark, dark clouds coming at him over the hills and a threat of cold and rain and being stuck out there in a very nasty and inhospitable place.

[10:37] Or indeed, it's the very thought that somebody shared with Edward. He was just telling me the other day when he was in Nigeria a couple of years ago and he looked at where they were staying and there were wonderful looking hills just nearby.

[10:50] He said to somebody, Oh, I think I'd like this afternoon to go for a walk in those hills. And they looked back at him with horror in their eyes and said, No, no, not the hills. He said, Well, why?

[11:03] Well, they said two things. It's full of snakes. And if the snakes don't get you, it's full of bandits. And the bandits will get you. Now, that is the thought in verse 1 of this psalm.

[11:18] Remember, it's a psalm of essence. The pilgrims are journeying to Jerusalem. They're walking on through a very barren wilderness. And the hills represented many present dangers.

[11:31] So looking to the hills filled your heart with fear and concern. Just think of Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. He was traveling that road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

[11:42] And what happened to him? He was set upon by bandits. Now, the hills are not the pilgrim's friend. The hills are his potential enemy.

[11:53] They are a real problem. And, of course, in many ways, you see, the journey of pilgrims to Jerusalem was an acted parable, if you like, of the whole of life.

[12:06] Journeying towards the city of God to be in his presence and his joy. And the pilgrims understood that. They understood it clearly. And for them, as for us, the whole of their life is full of hills.

[12:22] With many fears, many dangers, much foreboding. That's why he says, I lift my eyes to the hills, and what do I see? Potential danger, trouble, fears everywhere.

[12:37] And that's why he asked the question immediately, where am I going to find help? This psalm is full of realism, you see, about the problems of life. And God's people are not immune from the hills.

[12:52] Believers face all the same kinds of struggles, all the same fears, all the same concerns, all the same potential hazards that everybody else does. And that's what this verse is saying.

[13:06] Of course, there are some so-called Christian groups who want to deny that, want to claim that life can be free from all of these things. But real faith means you have a life of health and wealth and prosperity.

[13:19] No hills will face your pilgrimage. But the Bible is much more realistic. The Bible faces up to the problem squarely.

[13:30] Life is full of hills. The saints in the Old Testament, like this psalmist, knew it fine well. It's expressed in so many of the other psalms.

[13:41] It's quite mistaken to think that the Old Testament is just taken up with the concerns of physical blessings and rewards, whereas in the New Testament, we're taken up just with spiritual things.

[13:55] That's nonsense. Quite plain here that the psalmist is speaking figuratively about much more than just a physical journey to Jerusalem. He's speaking about the whole of life.

[14:08] Verse 8 makes that very clear. He's talking about life going out and coming in from this time forth and, indeed, forever. And life, for the believer, as for everybody else, is full of hills, full of potential threats and harm and danger and fears.

[14:28] And we're all in the same boat as human beings. And therefore, we are all looking for help. From where does my help come from? Well, where does our help come from?

[14:44] I guess for the average person, that answer lies in many places. Often it's in self-help, isn't it? One way or another, looking to our careers, to our money, whatever it might be, for security.

[14:57] Or to a whole host of other kinds of things that people look for, for help, for meditation, for yoga, the latest diet, the latest fitness regime, a personal trainer, goodness knows what.

[15:08] Or it can be an escapism, hiding from the threats, from the hills of life. Sometimes if people desperately need to hide, they take that escapism into use of drugs or alcohol or something else, some other consuming passion.

[15:27] And of course, it can be in religion, can't it? Don't think that we're living in a post-religious world. Richard Dawkins would love to think that, but it's just not true.

[15:38] Religions abound today, conventional and unconventional. Man-made philosophies and religions are everywhere. But you see, for the Christian, for the believer in the God of Scripture, help, real help, comes from only one place.

[15:58] And that's the radical difference between someone who is a Christian and every other person in this world. We all face exactly the same hills in life, but only the Christian believer has the answer that this psalm gives.

[16:17] Because he faces these real problems with, second, a real power. He knows that there's a God who made the hills and that he is the only possible source of real help.

[16:31] And that's what the whole of the rest of this psalm is about, if you look at it. The creator God, verse 2, the maker of heaven and earth. The God who made the whole cosmos.

[16:42] And therefore is sovereign over even the hills, over every fear and danger and toil and snare. Everything that we might confront in this life. The believer's answer to the issue of life is quite clear.

[16:57] My help comes from this God. People are looking for help everywhere in this world, but who or what in this world has the real power to give that help that's needed?

[17:13] Who can control and change the world on the scale that we really need? Only this world's creator.

[17:25] I remember years ago on television watching a documentary about what was then the largest skyscraper of the world that was being built. I think it was in Dubai. And it followed it through, right, through its construction and so on.

[17:37] And towards the end there was an interview with the architect who had overseen the whole project. And the questioner asked him, well, what are you going to do now that you're moving on to other things?

[17:48] He said, well, I will be moving on, but I'll be involved with this building for the whole of the rest of my life, he said. Why? Well, because when problems arise, he said, they'll have to come to me.

[18:02] Because I envisage this in my mind. I designed it on the plans. I oversaw the building of it. I am this building's creator.

[18:13] I'm the one who's got the answers. But you see, all human philosophies and ideas and religions and idols, ourselves, all of our own powers, we're all within this world, aren't we?

[18:29] This created order. We're bounded by it. We are created things. We are in the same category and level as the hills, as all the issues and the problems that we face.

[18:43] And nothing inside this world can possibly help us with this world's problems. Only the God who made the hills. Only the God who controls all of these mountainous issues in our lives.

[18:56] Only he can possibly help us. Only the God who made the hills, as all the people who made the hills, are the people who made the hills, are the people who made the hills.

[19:14] Notice that there's nothing vague about the help that is promised. The psalm tells us that to have this God as your helper means at least three things.

[19:25] Look at verses 3 and 4. It means, first of all, having ceaseless guidance through all the paths of life. He will not let your foot be moved, slip.

[19:38] He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. It might be that verse 3, the first line is to be framed like a question.

[19:51] Will he really let your foot slip? And the answer is decisive. Your foot will not slip. It will not be moved because you, it's a singular, you personally have the tireless attention of a God who made and controls the entire universe surrounding your life.

[20:13] He's always watching. He's always listening. He's always caring for you. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't even slumber. In other words, he's never even half asleep.

[20:25] He's never half asleep so that he might answer your cry and then fall back to sleep and forget ever to do anything about it. But, I am able to slumber but not sleep, especially early in the morning.

[20:40] And so, my wife can ask me something and I will always say yes. Early on in our marriage, she thought this was a good strategy, but quickly she learned that my yes did not mean yes. That later on in the day, she could say, well, did you do what I asked?

[20:54] And I said, what did you ask? Because I was slumbering but not sleeping. Able to have compass mentis conversation, but equally able to forget absolutely all about it.

[21:06] But this God never slumbers or sleeps. He does everything that he promises. And he promises ceaseless guidance for the feet of those who are his.

[21:21] He will not let your foot be moved, lose its footing. What does that mean? It means that your own natural weakness and folly will not derail you in life if this is your God.

[21:39] See, a pilgrim on the path, of course, will often put their foot in the wrong place. They'll often take a foolish risk, perhaps. They'll often get weary and perhaps lose their way. And that's true of all of us in life all the time.

[21:54] Believers like us are often foolish, aren't we? We often get weary. We're often in danger of slipping very badly indeed. But he will not let your foot slip.

[22:07] He will not let you fall to ultimate harm. That's a promise. And friends, that is such a liberating thing for us to know.

[22:18] It liberates us from fear. Some Christians live in total fear all the time of putting their foot in the wrong place with God, of making a mistake in some sort of a decision that will lead them into disaster, that will take them out of God's will, as though some decision that they could make would ruin everything of their future with God.

[22:40] But no, you will not let your foot slip like that. That is impossible if this is your God. Now, that's not an excuse, of course, for disobedience, frank disobedience to God's word in Scripture.

[22:57] Of course it's not. But it is an assurance that if you are trusting God, if you are walking in obedience to him, if you are honestly seeking to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not let you go.

[23:10] You can be liberated from that fear. And it also liberates us for real fruitfulness.

[23:22] Liberates us to have confidence and venturesome faith, because we know that we have God's ceaseless guidance. It means we don't need to be paralyzed. We don't need to be waiting always for some special intervention by God, for some special guidance, for some special feeling of assurance about something before we'll ever act or ever make any decision or ever go forward in something.

[23:45] No. We can know that he is constantly watching over us, that he is constantly guiding our feet on the path.

[23:57] And we can have that peace and that assurance all the time. We've got to walk, of course. God's not going to do our walking for us. We have to step out and get on with things.

[24:09] But God will keep our feet secure. The very hairs on your head are numbered, says Jesus. And that is a great liberation.

[24:23] That's what happened after the Reformation, when our great new discovery of the real sovereignty of God caused believers to have real confidence, launching out in faith, trusting God to be their strength and their state, giving them the liberty to go out in faith and bring the good news of Jesus Christ all over Europe, starting churches, bringing missions, knowing that they didn't have to wait for God to say, go, in some miraculous revelation, but knowing that their God was with them, promising to be their ceaseless guide in all they did.

[25:03] And friends, if this God is your help, then you can be confident of his ceaseless guidance in all the paths of your life too. But it's more than that.

[25:14] Look at verses 5 and 6. This God promises a sure protection in all the trials of life. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

[25:27] The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. What he's saying is that the natural scourges of life that we must all face, that they will never overcome you if this God is our God.

[25:44] Because you have the constant protection of the God who created the whole universe, the whole natural world. Again, the psalmist is not promising immunity from all of these things.

[25:59] The psalmist doesn't think that the sun's heat is somehow banished, that if you're going off to Malaga for your holidays next week, if you're a Christian, you don't need to wear any sun cream. Don't be ridiculous. He's not saying that.

[26:12] Nor is he saying that the darkness won't bring fears to you, just as it will to everybody else. But what he is saying is that he knows that there is a protection from this God in the midst of all these trials for all of God's people.

[26:29] And that is the constant refrain of our Bibles. Isaiah 43, the Lord says to his people, I have redeemed you. You're mine. Fear not. When you walk through the waters, I will be with you.

[26:44] The rivers, they won't overwhelm you. The fire will not engulf you. Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 1, that we're shielded by God's power until Christ's coming.

[26:58] And therefore, amid all kinds of trials which will come and you will face, you can rejoice because you have that knowledge. It's what Paul says in Romans 8.

[27:10] In these things, not by not having them, but in these things, you are more than conquerors because this God watches over you, because you have a sure protection in all the trials of life.

[27:23] Notice verse 5. Notice that he is right there at your right hand. He is with you. He is far nearer to you than any of the threats in those hills.

[27:37] When the heat is on, he's saying, he will be your shade and your shelter. When things are dark, when fears abound, he is there. He is with you at your right hand who made the entire universe.

[27:48] What a difference that makes, doesn't it? When the natural scourges of life bear down on us as they will do in our lives.

[28:02] I was so touched just speaking with Margaret Hare last week after she'd had her diagnosis of cancer and was facing surgery. Just how wonderfully at peace she was.

[28:14] We were repeating these words, the Lord is my keeper. I remember some years ago a Christian minister friend telling me about one of the elders in his church who had a kind of blood cancer and he was being treated by chemotherapy and they had to remove some of his own healthy bone marrow so that they could give him toxic chemotherapy that would knock out all of his own marrow to get rid of all of the cancer.

[28:42] And then what they do, having kept that marrow safe in the freezer, is they bring it back and rescue you by putting that marrow back into your body. But what had happened for some inexplicable reason was that that freezer had gone on the blink and defrosted.

[29:02] And so the marrow that was to be put back into his body upon which his whole life depended was lost and damaged.

[29:14] And therefore it was certain that he would die. But instead of ranting and being angry, instead of threatening the hospital with all kinds of lawsuits and all of these things, he simply told his doctor, well, I'm a Christian believer and I trust the Lord Jesus Christ as my sovereign.

[29:36] And in his hands are all of these things. Or I remember after my own father had a major stroke just sitting with my mother at breakfast the day after.

[29:49] And I'll never forget her just praying and thanking God for his good and perfect and well-pleasing will. Because she knew that we have in this God a sovereign protector in all the natural trials of life.

[30:12] I don't know what you're facing in your life just now, whether it's the scorching sun of illness or sorrow or family worries, or whether it's the deadly fears of night when in those dark and quiet moments you ruminate on all kinds of looming uncertainties in life.

[30:33] But what I do know is that if this God is your God then you have a promise of sure protection in all, all of these trials.

[30:44] The Lord is your shade and he will be at your right hand right there beside you in all of it. And as verses 7 and 8 tell us, I know also that you have a certain promise of unending life.

[31:03] 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.

[31:17] What that means is that even death itself cannot harm you if this God is your God. Your life is in the hands of the eternal God both now and forevermore, he says.

[31:31] He will keep your life for this time forth and forevermore. Isn't that an extraordinary promise? As we get older, well, ill health and thoughts of death, perhaps fear of death, certainly the fear of the process of dying, they can bring a great mountain of fear into our lives.

[31:55] for some, of course, that great enemy will stalk prematurely with a sudden illness in the family or worse.

[32:07] We live in a world, don't we, of violence, of murder. We live in a world where terrorism is a real threat. But for all of us, even if we live a very protected life, all of us will face, in the end, this great evil, death.

[32:29] The Bible calls that the last enemy. And our mortality will cast an ever greater shadow over us as life goes on. It's inescapable. Many of us, we manage to hide from that reality, but it gets harder to hide as the calendar goes on.

[32:47] And as Christian believers, we're not immune from that. To dust, we also will return. But you see, this psalm tells us that if this God is your God, even death, the last enemy, the ultimate evil, shall not overwhelm us.

[33:03] The Lord will keep you safe from all evil. He will keep your life now and always, forever. We're not immune from the physical evil of death so as we don't experience them.

[33:20] But we will be armed against them so that these things can never overwhelm us. So Psalm 23 tells us, we shall not fear the valley of the shadow of death because the Lord is with us.

[33:35] this is real resurrection hope here, right in the heart of the Old Testament, that the believer's life with this God will not cease.

[33:46] It goes on forever more. And though many things may afflict us and indeed will afflict us, we have God's promise that nothing, nothing of ultimate harm can possibly ever befall us.

[34:02] friends, that is a wonderful promise and it's one that we all need because as Jesus says in Luke chapter 21, if we follow him, you will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends.

[34:22] They'll put some of you to death, he says, and all men will hate you because of me. That is great realism, is it not? But he goes on to say, but not a hair on your head will perish.

[34:37] By standing firm, you will win true life. What a great assurance. The Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

[34:53] Some Christians do live their lives in inordinate fear. They worry, will I endure? Will I really be saved? Can I be sure?

[35:06] The answer of this psalm is yes. He will keep you now and always. Simple as that. But you'll say, but what about my sins?

[35:17] I muck up so badly and so often. Look at what it says. The Lord will keep you from all evil. Not even your sins can stop that promise.

[35:30] Do you realize that? That's why that verse Bob quoted the other Sunday evening is, I think, my favorite verse in the whole Bible. 1 John 3 verse 20.

[35:42] When your heart condemns you, God is greater than your heart and he knows everything. you have a certain promise of unending eternal life if this is your God.

[35:58] He is the God of all grace. Here's some words I find in my father's Bible notes on the God of all grace from 1 Peter 5.

[36:11] The one great and glorious reality in a believer's experience is this. The God of all grace has called him. When a man has faith in Christ for salvation, it means that out of the mystery of eternity, there has come a loving and mighty hand that lays hold upon his life, claiming it for an eternity of joy and blessedness, glorious beyond understanding and almost beyond belief.

[36:40] Peter says, set that over and against your trial, whatever it may be, however severe it may become, wherever it may touch you, there is no possible combination of adverse circumstances in which this glorious truth will not make all the difference.

[36:58] This God is your God and a loving and mighty hand has laid hold upon you both now and forever more.

[37:12] You have a certain promise of eternal life. Life is full of hills and we all need help. There is a real problem.

[37:24] But there is a God who made the hills and so there is a real power, the only hope of real help. But the third and vital thing that the psalmist tells us is that he points us not just to a power, but thirdly to a real person.

[37:42] This God you see has a name and so we can find him. Not just talking vaguely about God, G-O-D, an unknown being, a distant creator, an unknowable entity.

[37:57] You see verse 2, this God has a personal name. My help comes from the Lord. It's there again in verse 5, in verse 7, and verse 8. The Lord.

[38:08] And you see it in capitals like that in our Bibles. It means Yahweh, the name of the covenant God of Israel. He and he alone is the God who makes all things.

[38:20] The only God. He's the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He's the God of Moses, the God of David, the God of the psalmists. He is the God who reveals himself all through history to his people so that he can be known.

[38:37] He's the only creator. And he is the only helper, the only savior. That's what he says through the prophet Isaiah. This is what the Lord Yahweh says.

[38:48] He who created the heavens, he is God, he who fashioned and made the earth. I am the Lord, he says, there is no other a righteous God and savior. There is none but me.

[39:01] No Allah, no Buddha, no Krishna, no other gods, none. He alone is God. And he's a God who reveals himself more and more and more all down the ages speaking through the prophets and the law and the psalmists until, as Hebrews chapter 1 tells us, in these last days, he has revealed himself fully and ultimately in his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the radiance of his glory, who is the exact imprint of his nature and through whom he created all things.

[39:47] One that Paul says in Colossians 1, in whom all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. Not the false gods of Mormonism or Jehovah's witnesses or any of these others who explicitly deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[40:10] This God has a name and he can be known. And his whole purpose in creation is that he will be known, that he will be known as the one who gives ceaseless guidance to all who love him, as the one who gives sure protection to all who will take refuge in him, as the one who promises unending life to all who will trust in his promises.

[40:33] He has a name. But he only has one name. He alone is God. There is no other.

[40:45] And he has made himself fully known only through his Son, God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means he can be known only one way, by the name of Jesus Christ, the risen Savior and Lord.

[41:02] It's the risen Jesus who has been highly exalted to receive the name that is above every other name, the name of Lord God. That's why the Apostle Peter says that salvation is found in no one else.

[41:19] There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. No other name than his name.

[41:32] Friends, all human beings have a real problem. Life is full of ominous hills. And we all need help.

[41:44] But there is a real power. There is a God who made the hills and he is the only hope of help. power. That power is a real person.

[41:57] Because this God has a name and he can be known so that we can find all the help that we need. Three Ps. And a Q, a question that we come back to that this psalm surely leaves us with.

[42:14] And it's this. Is this God your God? Where does your help come from? I hope he is your God. Because if he's not then it means, friends, that none of this is yours.

[42:30] None of this can be yours. No ceaseless guidance in all the path of your life. Only anxiety, fear, hesitation. No sure protection in all the trials of life.

[42:43] Only despair and sadness and bitterness. And no certain promise. of unending life, just uncertainty and foreboding and the chill fear of death approaching.

[43:01] If this God made known to our world ultimately and forever and the Lord Jesus Christ isn't your God, then none of these things are yours because it can't be found anywhere else.

[43:15] there's no other name under heaven where you can find ultimate health, ultimate salvation. But why shouldn't this God be your God too?

[43:30] He can be your God. He wants to be your God. That's why he came. Turn to me and be saved. All the ends of the earth, he says, for I am God. There's no other.

[43:41] that's why he came. The brightness of the glory of heaven into this world with all its fearsome hills.

[43:51] The God who made the heavens and the earth came to be a lonely pilgrim walking that road, walking the road to Jerusalem and to the cross. Give his life as a ransom for many so that he might promise to all who love him that he will be their Savior from this time forth and forever more.

[44:18] Where does your help come from? Is it in the name of the God made known in our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, it can be for everyone here this morning because he is the God who says, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, burdened by all the hills of this life.

[44:43] Come to me and I will give you rest and whoever comes to me, he says, I will never under any circumstances cast out. I lift up my eyes to the hills.

[45:00] from where does my help come? Let's pray. Oh, Lord, our God, help of the helpless, Savior of the lost, grant that our answer and our song this day and always may be that of the psalmist.

[45:23] Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And we ask it in the glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[45:36] Amen.