Lord—Help! | David Jeremiah

Dr. David Jeremiah helps us find the confidence expressed in the eight verses of Psalm 121 in the grandeur of the psalmist’s vision of God—the Lord, who can be trusted to help us along life’s journey.
“We cannot reinvent our fundamental institutions without going against the created order.
Some Christians are bending God’s rules to satisfy self.
As the fads and trends around us come and go, one person endures: Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Heb. 13:8) He is exalted in the heavens, and the earth is His footstool. from: I Never Thought I’d See the Day”
― Dr. David Jeremiah

Lane mckeel, a senior adult ventured out of his house during the Coronavirus pandemic to get a few supplies at his local grocery store in Georgetown, Tennessee.
He’d been shut in for some time, but his disability check had finally arrived and well, he just needed some food and staples.
And so when he reached the checkout counter, his bill was $173.
As he counted his money, he was surprised to find himself $33 short.
Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. It’s an embarrassing moment.
Well mckeel quickly began grabbing things to put back on the shelf, but the 17 year old cashier stopped him.
Her name was Icon Elizabeth Taylor, reaching for her purse.
The teenager paid mckee’s total bill out of her own money when someone asked her why she did it.
Taylor said it was all essential stuff.
She said we’ve seen a lot of older people and they’re all trying to buy groceries and a lot of places have run out of the stuff.
And so the older people are kind of taking the downfall for that.
I just wanted to give back when I could, you know, life often catches us short.
It’s embarrassing to find ourselves needing help, but we all need all the help we can get.
Especially like in times like now in times of crisis, we all need grace, grace. That’s more than sufficient.
And so many of the Psalms are written for pilgrims needing help on the path of life.
As we have read Psalm 1 21 we can hear the psalmist crying out.
Lord, I need supplies for my journey. I need help. I need guidance. I’ve lost my way.
Can’t you show me the right way to go?
Can’t you meet my needs in this beautiful Psalm of just eight verses.
We’re encouraged to trust God even when life gives us what we haven’t asked for.
The confidence expressed in Psalm 1 21 is rooted in the grandeur of the Psalmist vision of God, the maker of heaven and earth.
The Lord who can be trusted to help us at every point along the journey through the sunny passages as well as the darker treks through forests of night.
The Psalmist lifts his eyes to the hills above and sees the one who is not only the destination of the journey but also the strength for every step of it.
In spite of all the perils we encounter the mountainous Craigs and the desert wastelands.
I want to tell you you can trust the Lord. He’s awesome. We feel small and insignificant.
But the Psalmist assures us that God bridges. The gap.
He is never too great to care and we are never too small for his caring.
The psalm reflects on a God who soothes us in our anxiety and watches over us as a shepherd with his sheep as you hold your Bible open to this wonderful chapter.
You find these important words in superscription at the very top says a song of a sense.
What does that mean? Well, there are 15 of these special psalms and the first of them is Psalm 1 20.
In these ancient days, the Israelites would travel to Jerusalem for feast days at the temple and coming from whatever distant town they called home, the pilgrims would make the long journey by foot walking with their families and friends, enjoying their holiday travel.
They were eager for good times in the holy city, seeing friends again over the feast and making sacrifices to God.
Scholars believe that the songs of a sense were written to be sung along the road from the low lands of Palestine all the way up to Jerusalem.
As the travelers walked up that natural incline, the uphill truck to Jerusalem.
They’d sing another of these joyful psalms at each new level.
In fact, if you read them in order, you can almost see the stages of the journey moving onward and upward toward the temple where the people would arrive for the worship of God.
These psalms are the music of the uphill journey. We’ve seen something of the historical context.
But of course, these psalms are alive not limited to ancient history for us today.
The pilgrimage songs become metaphors for our own spiritual journey. Though we don’t often attend sacred feasts in Jerusalem.
The road we walk takes us from the low lands of our present circumstances to the higher place to which God has called us.
And the songs of a sense contain essential truths for our journey through this life as we make our way to be with God forever.
We can quickly grasp their symbolism and find deep encouragement in these little songs. Let’s begin.
First of all, in the first two verses of this psalm with the possibilities for help on our journey.
The Bible never lies to us by claiming that life is easy. Christianity is no free pass.
There are no shortcuts to bypass the essential human experience.
But somehow people get that mistaken idea and when they eventually face trouble as they always do, they come to the irrational conclusion that the presence of trouble implies the absence of God and a greater mistake could not be imagined.
God’s word reminds us that we are pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land whose roads are filled with hazards.
The road is long and weary and dangerous.
It winds through the veils of tears and acres of muck and mire.
But the long and winding road finally comes to the city of God, the place of joy.
And feasting simply stated, that’s the biblical view of life in the world.
So where do we go to find travelers assistance? Well, first of all, we can look around for help.
The Palma says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
He has prepared for his journey through the mountains to Jerusalem.
And as he enters the road, he takes a moment to gaze up to the horizon, he thinks of the miles ahead, the twists, the turns and the surprises, the old friends and the new ones whose acquaintances he will make.
He thinks of the dust and the heat, the darkness and the thirsty miles.
He admires the graceful line where the mountains embrace the sky.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been intrigued by the prominence of mountains in the Bible.
Many great things happened on mountain tops, the sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Mariah, the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the transfiguration of Christ, the message of Mount Olivet, Elijah’s prophetic showdown on Mount Carmel.
And of course, all of history turns on a crucifixion, one dark Friday on Mount Calvary.
Climactic moments in the biblical narrative always seem to seek higher ground and there’s something grand and majestic about mountains.
They set the landscape and the people in context, something about the majesty of mountains invokes the majesty of God that happens in the Scriptures too.
Listen to Isaiah 55 12 for you shall go out with joy and be led out with peace.
The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you. Or Psalm.
100 and 25 1 and two.
Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever as the mountains surround Jerusalem.
So the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth forever.
There are many passages in the Old Testament that describe the mountains as a place of blessing.
But in ancient times, mountains were also sites of danger and hardship.
Their rocks and caves, hid wild animals and blood thirsty bandon. Pagan cultures built their temples in the mountains.
Yes. Godly pilgrims found a sense of majesty in the high country, but they also found a sense of danger and a fear of the unknown.
The Lord God could be sought there but pagan gods were a shrine enshrined there as well.
So the psalmist must have thought of these things reflecting on the many meanings of mountains.
He gazed upward at the onset of the journey and he said, I will look to the hills, we can look around for help or we can look within read again what the Psalmist writes in the first words of his Psalm, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from once comes my help.
Take a good look at that first verse. The Psalmist says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence comes my help. The new King James version has corrected the punctuation. But I used to misread this.
I used to read it like this.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from what comes my help.
I used to conclude that we look for help from the mountains, but that’s not what the Psalm says at all.
The writer makes this statement. I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
He breaks off and then he asks a question from whence comes my help.
What a difference a dash makes the traveler looks to the hills and then he looks inward and as he looks inward, he asks himself this question, where am I going to find help?
He feels all the hesitancy and concern many of us feel before we set out on a long journey, traveling as a measure of insecurity about it.
We all know that what if something happens while I’m out of town, who can I turn to?
This is what writers call an internal monologue and what you and I call talking to ourselves is that a healthy thing to do?
Well, the fact is we do it all the time. Our psalm 121 traveler is talking to himself.
He feels a little anxiety about getting through the high hills to arrive at the far away Jerusalem.
And he naturally thinks, will anybody help me if I get sick or if I’m attacked or if I run out of money, he looks around and then he looks within, he looks around to the hills.
He looks within to his own heart. And then finally he looks above.
What does it mean to look above?
Well, when you look above, you’re looking at God, you’re looking at God to find out where is your help and where can it come?
How do you find God? It’s not from within.
When you look within, you are going to be disappointed because you don’t have the answers.
You can’t find your way. But if you look above, you will find God, we can look around and we can look within or we can look above.
In the second verse, we find the solid foundation of this psalm.
My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
At last, the psalmist comes to the point that provides the essence of his song.
He’s telling himself, I’ve looked up to the mountains and I find no help.
I’ve looked within and I find no guidance.
But finally I’ve looked up and I’ve realized the source of my help.
It comes from no one but God, what a lesson for life’s travelers on this earth.
My help comes from the Lord. I remember when I was in the hospital uh suffering from cancer.
One night, it was three o’clock actually in the morning, I was just laying there looking up and I was reminded that one of the things hospitals do to you, they, they limit your vision.
The only thing I could do at that moment was to look up. I couldn’t look around.
I was too tired to look within, but I could look up and I didn’t just see the ceiling.
I realized I was a child of God and that he was caring for me.
The Lord is described here in this psalm as the God who made heaven and earth. Isn’t that interesting?
The power of this statement is wrapped up in the idea that since God is the creator of all things, and since all things are his handiwork, his power should never be questioned.
The creator has made everything we can see or touch or imagine when we cast our hopes on him, we’re not only coming to a God who cares but a God who can.
So on that day, when your journey begins, you are face to face with disaster.
You’ll be filled with an unaccustomed sense of helplessness. You’ll cry out Lord, I need help.
And in your moment of deep anxiety, remember this, the one to whom you are praying is the one who made heaven and earth.
He is the creator God. I don’t know what kind of problem you may be facing in the weariness of your journey or in the coronavirus that we face.
But I’m certain it can seem all but insurmountable, but take a deep breath and take a new look in the perspective of the one who created and sustains every atom of the universe that thought renews our strength to carry on the possibilities for help on our journey are not in the hills and they’re not within, they’re from the Lord on high.
And then verses three through eight of our Psalm, give us the promise of help on our journey.
This Psalm is so wonderful because it’s so easy to see the organization of it.
And in this section, the Psalmist uses eight small verses to make three immense points that are so valuable to our journey toward those hills.
We will all stand as He did looking down that road and up those mountains, your heart will cry out to God and here’s what you’ll need to remember.
First of all, the Lord perceives you notice verses three and four.
He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber, behold.
He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
Now, we can’t see God, but you need to know that He sees you always.
He knows you aren’t you glad that God knows who you are?
Isn’t it unbelievable that the God who made heaven and earth knows you by your name?
He knows the very hairs on your head by number.
Jesus assures us of that in Matthew 10 30 that’s a very intimate kind of knowledge.
Believe me, I’ve been up close and personal with that issue.
I lost my hair twice during my battle with cancer and both times it all came back.
I’m so glad someone was keeping inventory. God numbers the hairs on your head.
Don’t you think he’s up to date on the larger issues of your life?
Don’t you think He knows exactly how you feel and cares deeply?
When you say God, I need your help, you need to know that He knows you.
He perceives you Lloyd.
John Ogilvie told a story about Bishop Quale who was a leader in the Methodist church. Years ago.
One night, the bishop worked into the early morning hours trying to finish his work and solve his various problems.
It happened that the Bible on his desk was open to Psalm 100 and 21 and at a moment of intense pressure, quail was feeling tired and frustrated and annoyed.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the startling words that told him God never slumbers that our Lord watches over us on a 24 hour vigil.
Here was bishop quail burning the midnight oil, worrying over so many things.
And God was watching over him as he worried.
Here was Bishop Quail working for God rather than allowing God to work through him.
And it came home to the minister with great impact that such a life was exhausting and ultimately a losing battle.
He reported that in his inner being, he heard the Lord say quail.
There’s no need for both of us to stay up all night. I’m gonna stay up anyway.
Why don’t you go to bed and get a good night’s sleep?
Have you ever paced the floor at night? Because of your kids?
Your financial problems, maybe during this Coronavirus, you’ve lost your job or you have so many problems, maybe you’re sick.
Maybe you have this COVID-19 illness.
If you’re like me, you worry and you wonder who is taking care of all of this.
And then you read in the Bible that the God in whom you have trusted, the one who you ask for help never sleeps.
He never takes a day off. He’s never out of town.
You don’t even need a secret cell phone number or an email address. He’s always right there.
He’s watching you so close that you don’t even need to call out to him.
He’s watching over you even as you sleep because He loves you.
My late friend Ron Mel wrote a book shortly before he died.
And the title of the book is one of my favorite book titles of all time.
Here’s the title God works the Night Shift.
That’s one of the best titles I’ve heard in a long time.
Isn’t it a great thought that God is always there no matter when it is that you need him in the loneliest, darkest hour of the night.
He is there because he doesn’t slumber or sleep. Yes, the Lord perceives you.
But secondly, the psalmist tells us that the Lord protects you notice verses five and six in the Psalm, the Lord is your keeper.
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. And that’s what the scripture says.
God is the pilgrim’s shade on his right hand.
And the word shade is very important because travelers along the ancient roads in this part of the world felt a great deal of anxiety about the desert heat.
Sunstroke was a serious issue. And if you’ve ever visited Israel, as we have many times and traveled up the long road to Masada, which we have done, you know how stifling the heat can be and how dry and oppressive.
I mean, it’s enough to drain away every ounce of your strength.
And the Bible says, God protects us by day, the sun shall not strike you by day.
Then when the day is over, he will protect us by night. Verse six continues.
Nor the moon by night. There are many people that I know and you know who suffer from night fears.
Nearly every child has begged for a night light. Aging people often come to fear the night as well.
The darkness and the loneliness of it hold special terrors for many people and some suffer from insomnia and the long dark night becomes even longer, a difficult time for them to endure for all of us who have struggled or have been struck by fear.
Whether of the sun or the moon or anything else on the horizon. Here’s the message, God is great.
He will provide safety for you in the heat of the day and in the terror of the night, he will never leave your side.
The Lord perceives you. He sees you. He protects you.
And then thirdly, the Lord preserves you listen to verses seven and eight.
The Lord shall preserve you from all evil. He shall preserve your soul.
The Lord shall preserve you going out and you’re coming in from this time forth.
And even forever more, this wonderful promise contains four precious truths. The Lord preserves us from evil.
He will help us make it through when evil and danger rear their ugly heads.
Think about the worst thing that can happen. The most evil thing that could befall you.
Nothing is outside of his control. Think about every kind of disaster that terrifies humanity.
Every one you can name is subject to the God who preserves bad things do happen, but they happen within his supervision and long term purposes.
It’s foolish to believe things have gotten out of the control. It simply cannot happen.
The Lord preserves us from evil and the Lord preserves our existence.
It says He shall preserve your soul.
As our pilgrim narrator reassures us that God will keep our souls from all harm.
He uses a particular word for soul. Hebrew writings usually reach for this word when the meaning is life.
In other words, God is going to keep your life. It doesn’t end when you breathe your last breath.
There is much more to the idea of life than the womb to tomb.
Understanding to which we limit ourselves as we grieve at a funeral.
We know we’ve come to a punctuation mark in someone’s life and that’s what it is.
But that mark is not a period as we assume, but merely a comma.
We need put no question mark on that one.
You are an eternal creature and he is the keeper of your existence, guarding your soul through earthly life and eternity as well.
The traveler looks at the long road before him, the hills above him and reminds himself that this is one short journey in the world set within a joyful journey in God’s eternal world.
That context lifts his spirit. So the Lord preserves us from evil.
He preserves our existence and the Lord preserves us every day.
I love this phrase, the Lord shall preserve you’re going out and you’re coming in sometimes when I rise in the morning and take a good look at the schedule blaring at me from my planner.
I sigh deeply and feel like a slave to the world’s demands. Do you ever feel that way?
Go out, come in, go out, come in, the days begin to look alike as they entangle themselves in urgent appointments, this meeting and the next meeting and yet God promises to preserve us even as we go out and we come in, which is, by the way, a wonderful old testament idiom that expresses the regular routines of life.
This promise extends even deeper into the world of everyday responsibilities. Maybe you have small Children at home.
You look at the day and think, boy, this is just like yesterday and yesterday was like the day before.
All I do is get up in the morning and take care of kids and wash clothes and clean up their messes and prepare them for school and run errands all over town and come home and make dinner and fall in bed, too tired even to sleep.
Then I get up the next morning and I start all over again in your darkest moments.
Ladies, you begin to wonder is God involved in all of this.
Does he care at all about the endless treadmill of my life?
Let me assure you that He does care.
He watches over you and preserves you and you’re going out and, and you’re coming in.
This is a promise that God’s word repeats over and over so that there may be no question about it.
He truly cares. The Lord preserves us from evil. The Lord preserves our existence.
The Lord preserves us every day, are going out and are coming in and the Lord preserves us eternally.
The psalmist proclaims that the Lord will preserve us from this time forth. And even Forevermore verse eight.
God’s care extends not only to every place and to every setting, but it also spans all of time and eternity.
Time plays tricks on us. Don. And I have talked about that recently for the child anticipating Christmas morning.
It moves like molasses and a week might as well be a year for an adult.
The year seems to fly and we can’t believe how quickly each succeeding one whirls by us.
We begin to see time as our enemy. It’s accelerating pace, frightens and discourages us.
If time is cold and uncaring, we think, then God must be too, but don’t ever think such a terrible thought for its not so God cares for us in time and eternity.
Time is only His tool to bring us wisdom and perspective.
The keeper of our lives is God a pious Jew in today’s world keeps certain elements in his home in keeping with the traditions of his faith.
And if you were to visit such a man, you’d come to his door and notice a small metal container on the outside doorway.
And also on the inside, he calls this little metal container a Mousa and it enshrines for him in a physical way.
The words of Deuteronomy chapter six and 11, which tell us that we are to train up our Children in the way they should go and that we are to teach them as they go out and as they come in.
So there at the doorway is the masa.
And as the pious Jew leaves his home to travel to his place of work, he touches this little metal box with his right hand and repeats aloud a few of the words contained within it, asking God to preserve him as he goes out and comes in.
His final words will always be the Lord. Keep you both now and forever more.
Whether we go out to travel around the block or around the world. The Lord is our keeper.
Eugene Peterson writes about God’s watchful care over us.
In these words, he says, the Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord.
Nor is it a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare blue ribbons and gold medals with others who have made it to the winner’s circle.
No. He said the Christian life is going to God and going to God.
Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on.
Christians breathe the same air drink, the same water shop in the same stores and read the same newspapers are citizens under the same government pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline fear the same dangers are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses are hurled into the same ground.
But the difference is that each step we walk each breath we breathe. We know we are preserved by God.
We know we are accompanied by God.
We know we are ruled by God and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil.
He will keep our life when the present time begins to feel treacherous as it has.
For many of us. In recent days, we can smile and look right past it.
We can lift our eyes above and take in the beautiful hills outlined against the horizon and then we can cast our eyes beyond even those past the horizon into the face of our father.
We know he loves us. We know he watches over us over the entire journey here and in the next world and no matter what the future holds, no matter what may lie around the next corner.
Our help comes from the Lord who loves us. Nothing can keep us from his love.
Parkinson’s disease can’t do it, cancer can’t do it.
The coronavirus doesn’t even come close no matter what it is you’re facing, whichever way your road bends whatever obstacle looms before you in your road.
That obstacle can’t do it either.
Here’s how I know that Romans 838 and 39 says it this way in the words of the Apostle Paul, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor Principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creation.
The thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
That is our promise, men and women for what we’re facing now, for what we’re going through for what we shall face in the future.
We serve a God who has an everlasting love for each one of us who cares about us more than we could ever understand and has promised to go with us wherever we go, those promises are given to those who know God.
And so the question that you must ask yourself is if you don’t feel the sense of those promises in your life, if you don’t feel the security that comes from a relationship with God, maybe it’s because you don’t have a relationship with God.
You say Doctor Jeremiah, what does that mean?
What it means is that in order to know God to have a relationship with Him, not just to know about Him, you have to become one of his family, you have to join his family through faith in his son, Jesus Christ.
You have to come to God and say to Him, Lord, God forgive me of my sin, forgive me for violating the, the absolutes of your law.
I want to be forgiven. I want you to let Jesus Christ come into my life.
Lord Jesus come and live within me.
Jesus Christ is God’s only begotten son who died for you on the cross.
And when you invite him to come and live in your life and forgive your sin.
He will come in. He never fails to respond to an honest invitation.
So wherever you are are whatever situation you’re in.
If you want to know the love and protection and assurance of Almighty God in your life, you begin with this first step of putting your trust in Jesus Christ.
I wanna pray a prayer with you right now and help you do that.
So wherever you are, if you’re able to do it, will you bow your head with me and create out of your space, this cathedral where we will worship God dear God.
It is so frustrating that we are so spread around all over.
Some of us are in a group and so many of us are by ourselves.
And there is within us, this hunger and thirst to know you to be able to have the confidence that you are involved in our life and that you care about us.
So as we gather in this place and as we open our hearts to you, it is my prayer that you will grant to those who are listening and watching the faith to believe that God loves them, that Jesus Christ died for them and that they can become Christians by putting their trust in you.
Whoever you are, wherever you are simply pray this prayer dear God, I need you in my life.
I know that you love me. I know that you gave Jesus Christ to be my savior.
I accept Jesus Christ as my savior in this service.
Right now, I invite him to come and live within my heart and in my life, Lord Jesus, come into my life.
I pray and I will seek to live for you in the days ahead.
Father, I thank you that, that prayer which has been prayed millions of times throughout the years has the same efficacy today as it did.
The first time it was ever prayed that you are not willing, that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Thank you for those who prayed this prayer to receive Jesus Christ as their savior.
And if you prayed that prayer, if you look down on your screen, there’s a place where you can check that you’ve prayed this prayer to receive Christ.
If you will check that box and if you will let us send information to you, we’ll be glad to do it.
If you want to do it anonymously, that’s all right too.
But let us know that you’ve prayed and we’ll begin to pray for you that God will give you His grace and show you his strength and bring that sense of security to you even in these uncertain days.