If you have traveling plans this summer, there are some helpful sites on the internet. There is Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak. One of my favorite travel sites is called Trip Advisor. Does anybody ever use Trip Advisor? Trip Advisor is a really useful travel site. I have been using it now for a few years. What I like about Trip Advisor is it is a one-stop place. You can go for much of your information travel needs including flight information, restaurants, hotels, and things to do in a given location. People often post their own photographs of their stay at a hotel, which are often less professional than the hotels photos. Sometimes you see the rooms are a mess but they post them anyway so you at least get an idea of what the hotel room actually looks like once it is lived in.
People also post reviews. People give their recommendations as to whether or not it is a good place to stay, a mediocre place to stay, or a place you want to stay away from. Unfortunately, those reviews can be a little bit subjective. You like to think they are all truthful, but apparently some of them are actually posted by the owners of the property so obviously they are not always objective. Then you have guys like me that stay some place and I write my review and hopefully you can trust my opinion. I have reviewed a number of restaurants and hotels over the past few years. Anyway, like anything else when utilizing these travel sites you should heed the phrase “buyer beware” because although they can be helpful sources of information, they can’t always be trusted. But although we can’t always rely on websites for good or accurate information about our earthly travel, when it comes to our spiritual journey through life, we can rely 100% on the advice that we get, as long as we go to the right source. That is what we are going to see today.
If you have your Bibles, please open up to Psalm 121:1. If you have been with us for a while, you know that we started to go through the book of Psalms for the summer. We are not going to go through the entire book. We are going to go through about 12 different Psalms. A few weeks ago we looked at Psalm 1 which was classified as a wisdom Psalm. Did anybody memorize it? Does anybody want to share that Psalm? It is one of the more popular Psalms out there. It talks about “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. Blessed is the man who does not stand in the way of sinners. Blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of mockers, but he delights in the law of the Lord. And on that law he meditates day and night. If he continues to meditate he would be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season.” That is a great Psalm. It is called a wisdom Psalm. Last week, we looked at a Psalm called a Psalm of lament which is really kind of a Psalm of complaint. You might recall it opened up with “How long Lord, how long? Are you going to forget me forever? How long are you going to hide your face from me?” That would be classified as a Psalm of lament, a Psalm of complaint. Today’s Psalm is considered a Psalm of assent. It is really what I would like to call is a Psalm of travel. It is a travel Psalm because what it does in a nutshell is chronicles the assent of the Israelites back up towards Jerusalem for the annual festivals. We are going to look through that particular Psalm. We are going to read completely through it. It is only eight verses and then we are going to talk about select parts. Reading from Psalm 121:1. (Scripture read here.)
Isn’t that a great Psalm? It is a wonderful Psalm if you are looking for a Psalm to memorize it is nice and short and a good Psalm to have available in your heart anytime of the day. This is a Psalm of assent. It was probably either sung or spoken to people before, during, or after their trip up to Jerusalem. The Israelites were required to attend certain festivals in Jerusalem every year like Passover, the Feast of Booths, and even Pentecost. They were required to go up there. A lot of the people didn’t live right in Jerusalem so they had to come in from the outlying areas. Coming in to Jerusalem could be quite dangerous because they had to go through the desert. They had to go through the hill country of Palestine. Consequently, there are all sorts of potential hazards that would be in the way. When you think about the Psalm, you think about the whole idea of your foot stumbling or your foot not falling, they were going through with sandals. They were going through the mountainous region in sandals so, at a minimum, they could stub their toe. They could break a leg. They could possibly fall off a cliff or something like that. This Psalm has real relevance for that. He will not let their foot slip. Then you have the idea of the sun. Obviously, they are going through a desert and if they go through by day that sun is going to be beating down on them. There is a real possibility of getting something like sun stroke. Then you have the idea of protecting them from the moon. Why would they need protection from the moon? Back then there was a legend or idea that the people were afraid of the moon because the more exposure to the moon, it was thought to affect the emotions. It was thought to affect the mind. Most of you are familiar with the term lunatic. It is from the word lunar, moon. They actually thought if they had prolonged exposure to the moon, they would get a little bit crazy. They would get a little bit weird so they wanted protection from that. So what we see in the Psalm, we see this as a little travel Psalm. It is a Psalm that chronicles the assent up to Jerusalem. In fact, when you are reading through your scripture, you might often see that when they refer to going to Jerusalem, they always say up to Jerusalem because Jerusalem was at a higher elevation but more than that it was a spiritual elevation. When the pilgrims thought about their journeys and wrote these Psalms, they weren’t just thinking in physical terms. They were thinking in spiritual terms. They understood that these journeys are not just getting through and trying to just go from here to there. These are journeys designed to bring you closer to God. These Psalms represent the hearts that are ascending up to Christ, or ascending up to God in their case. That is what is going on here.
When you start thinking about the idea of travel, it is all throughout the Bible. Really the entire Bible could be considered God’s travel diary. It is a diary of all these different travels. Starting early with Adam and Eve. You have Abraham who leaves the city of Ur and goes out into a strange land looking for that promise land. Then you have the story of Moses coming down and leading the people from captivity to the Egyptians and crossing through the Red Sea. That is a physical journey, but it also has a spiritual meaning because it is representative of the spiritual bondage the people were in and how God was going to deliver them. God was going to set them free. Then obviously you have in the book of Acts the apostle Paul and his missionary journeys all over Asia as he expands the gospel. Yes those were physical journeys, but they were all filled with all sorts of spiritual things going on. In fact, some would suggest that the acts of the apostles could be called the acts of the Holy Spirit just because you see so much activity there of the spirit of God. What I am saying is that these little Psalms that deal with a physical movement or an assent are designed not just to be something that gives them guidance on this earth as they make their travels to Jerusalem. They are designed to represent a spiritual journey as they make their way back up to God.
When we think about it, just as there are obstacles, potential dangers, barriers, and risks involved in physical travel, we know there is also risk involved in the spiritual travel. We know that we have these obstacles. We have these barriers. We have these risks that come into our life as we try to get closer to God. But the good news that we find in the first two verses here is that we are not without help as we make those travels along. The Psalmist does a great job in his first two verses when he says “I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” I want to stop there for a second and talk about this word hills. Scholars are really not in agreement. The writer sees the hills but why does that prompt him to look up to God or to remember that God is the helper, the maker of heaven and earth. There are actually three views on that. The first view and I think most people subscribe to is the idea when the writer is going through and sees these majestic hills, he sees these mountains it gives him kind of a lofty feeling. If you go out west and visit the Rockies or the Grand Tetons, you look and say wow. What that prompts is a response to the creator. It is a response like wow this reminds me of God.
There is a second possibility why the Psalmist is responding the way he does. It could have to do with the idea that in the hills there are a lot of unknowns. The hills are very dark at night. The hills represent this ominous thing out there. There might be animals lurking out there or even worse there might be bandits out there looking to rob them on their journey to Jerusalem. They look at the hills and say I am a little nervous. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.
The third option that actually I have been more buying into. It is the idea that the hills represent pagan worship. When they looked to the hills, sometimes they could see smoke which means there might be a sacrifice going on. A lot of the pagan rituals were actually held up in the mountains. They were up there doing their sacrifices and doing their rituals up to their gods. That is a possibility that is what is going on there. If you are familiar with the book of Deuteronomy where Moses is telling the people what to do when they come into the Promised Land. He starts telling them to get rid of some stuff. He says “Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains and on the hills and under every spreading tree where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods.” They were in the hills. They were up there.
So there are three possible interpretations here why the word hills actually prompts him to look up to God. It is the idea that there is the majesty out there. The hills represent majesty and God represents majesty. It is the idea that there might be something scary lurking out there and I am afraid so I need some help. Or it could be the idea that there is some pagan worship going on and although I went to pagan worship before to appease the pagan gods, now I get my help from the Lord, the one who made the hills, the maker of heaven and earth. That is a little bit of background on the idea of hills.
Although there could be three options here regarding the word hills, there is really only one answer to the question that says “Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” When you think about the idea of help, what kind of help are they talking about, it is more common sense. They are going to be looking for protection, guidance, and possibly for a blessing. Sometimes you go on a vacation and you go somewhere and you are parked to go into a souvenir shop and you are at a meter and the guy before you left 30 minutes on the meter. That is a blessing. They are walking through the desert and they come across this stream they didn’t know existed. That might be a blessing. They are looking for God’s protection. They are looking for God’s guidance. They are looking for God’s blessing. Just as these things are helpful in the physical journeys, it is very helpful in the spiritual life. Not only for them 3,000 years ago but for us today.
What I want to do in the remaining minutes and all of next week is to begin to explore what that help looks like. If the help comes from the Lord what does it look like and how do we get it and what does it mean? What are some practical ways that the Lord helps us in our spiritual journey? What I want to do is take some modern-day travel illustrations and couple that with some stories from the Old Testament and possibly throw in some personal stories and hopefully you will begin to see over the next two weeks that this Psalm 121 is a Psalm that is very relevant to everyone in this room. It is a Psalm worth memorizing. It is a Psalm worth having on your lips. It is a Psalm worth having in your heart because as you go through the various trials in life, you are going to need to be reminded that your help doesn’t come from the hills. It doesn’t come from those other alternative sources out there. It comes from God. This Psalm that was geared toward people who were trying to go up to Jerusalem is the same Psalm that can lift you up into a tighter, better, closer relationship with God. That is what we are going to do the remainder of today and next week. Today, I am only going to actually look at three ways that the Lord helps us.
First of all, he helps determine our destination. When you start out on a journey, the first thing you have to think about is where are we going to go. Most people that is the first thing they do. Where are we going to go this year for vacation? Are we going to go up to the cabin on the lake and visit that place we have been all these years? Are we going to go to the beach? Are we going to go to the mountains? Some people already know every year where they are going to go. Most people say where do you want to go this year? They sit there and start to strategize. Maybe they go online and they start looking at the different options out there. They start reading about all these places out there. Possibly they may even talk to their family and get their families input with the exception of me. I don’t ask my families opinion because I am paying for it and I am going where I want to go. Just kidding. You have to know your destination. Actually God is kind of like that. He says I know where you are going. You don’t have a lot of options in this. He told us where we are going. Really where we are going is home. Not our physical home. We are going to our spiritual home. Christians believe when you step out of that conversion experience, when you step out of the baptistery, you might as well just keep on walking and keep on walking home because that is where you are going. You are going home. The writers call it the city of God. Call it heaven. Call it whatever you want but the ancient people would call it the city of God.
In fact, Abraham is spoken of in the book of Hebrews and he is part of what they call the gallery of faith. At the end there it starts talking about how Abraham went out from Ur and he went out into a strange land he didn’t know anything about and he pitched his tents there and hung out but he never really settled there. Even though he was in the physical Promised Land, he always knew that he was a stranger living in a foreign land as long as he was on this earth. We see that in Hebrews 11:8. After he talks about the idea that he was a stranger living in tents and just a temporary dwelling, he says “He was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.” That is the city he was looking forward to. That is the city. He was not comfortable in the tents that he lived in on earth. It is the same way with us. We are not permanent here. You know you are not permanent here. We all should be living in tents. In fact, somebody said if you are going to follow Jesus you have to learn to live in a tent. You have to learn to be flexible here on earth because this is not your permanent home. You are always moving forward. Abraham is reminding us of that. He is looking forward to that city on the hill. He is looking forward to the city with foundations. Not the tents that move around. He is looking forward to a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. What is interesting is even though the Bible is technically closed, it is an ongoing story. We are all a part of that story. The Bible is closed as a book but it is open as God’s story. It is HIS-STORY. To have the right perspective on where you are headed, you have to see yourself as part of that story. When Abraham says he is heading off to the city of God, when we come out of the baptistery and we keep on going, we are joining Abraham and all the patriarchs and all the people that went before us and all the saints and we are walking on towards the city of God together. We become part of that history. We become part of History. The redemption story. It is not just a story about going back to heaven. It is not just a story about going back to paradise. That is part of it, but it is more than that. As you know, it is a story of restoration. It is a story of a restoring of a broken relationship between us and God that came because of sin. It is not only that, it is a story of identity. Everybody in this world struggles with identity. Who am I? Who am I going to be? What is my purpose? He says no I have your identity. It is sitting right here. It is stored in that city. It is ready and you can start getting ahold of it right now. When you get there, you are going to have your identity fully restored. You are going to have it all back in one place. It is a story of wholeness. It is a story of what the Hebrews would call the Shalom of God. It is the peace of God that transcends all understanding. It guards your heart and your mind completely. Not just now and not just temporarily but completely for all eternity. You are headed to that city. Yes it is a city whose architect was God. It is a city where you identity is secure. It is a city where you have that Shalom. Most of all, it is a city where you are rejoined with the Father. He is standing there ready to give you that big hug and welcome you back in.
You say Chuck that is a nice place. I think I would like to go there but I really wouldn’t know where to begin. What would I bring? I really don’t know. When you travel, you want to pack and you want to pack according to the climate. If you are going to the beach, you bring your sandals and your swimsuit and your lotion and your Frisbee and beach mat. If you are going to the mountains you bring a heavy coat. You might bring your skis, your mittens, gloves. If you are going camping you are going to bring your tent, your camp stove, your marshmallows and all that kind of stuff. Usually, every one of those trips you bring some basic things like food and underwear and things like that. Unless you are like me and the last trip I made to Charleston I got there and realized I forgot my underwear with the exception of the ones I had on. Thank goodness for Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart was right there and I could go in and get a set of four boxers for $3.99. Debbie wasn’t very fond of them. She thought they made me look like an old man. I was happy that Wal-Mart was there. We have these lists and if you don’t know what to bring, there are lists on the internet. If you don’t know what to bring, just type in the internet what should I bring to the beach or what should I bring to Europe and you will have these nice long lists that somebody has taken the time to make and put it on the internet. You don’t even have to think about it. God, the great trip advisor, he is like that too. He says I have a nice, short list for you and I am going to tell you what the climate is going to be like so you know exactly what to bring. We find that in the book of Ephesians. He says “Put on the full armor of God, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” It is all spelled our right here. Put on the armor of God. Why? Because it is dark out there. It is dark and scary. There are people out there that intentionally try to mess you up. Not just your physical life but your spiritual life. Christians believe it and if you don’t want to believe it that’s your choice, but there are spiritual forces out there that are trying to prevent you from getting to the city of God. There are spiritual forces out there that are trying mess with your walk to keep you from getting to the place where you truly understand your identity. The spiritual forces out there say I don’t want them to have the Shalom of God so I am going to do everything I can to disrupt that person’s life. I am going to make it a living hell on earth. God says right here, Paul says in Ephesians it is tough out there. There is a spiritual war going on out there. To be honest, I think some of the people that are struggling with things is because they don’t acknowledge that. They go outside without their armor. They wonder why their emotional life, their physical life, and all their behaviors are all constantly in this muck and mire. They forgot to put their armor on.
If you don’t know what the armor is, he goes on in chapter 6 to give you all the parts of the armor. We don’t have time to go through it but the armor includes the belt of truth. What is truth? The world is trying to look at what truth is. We know the truth. Jesus says “I am the way, the truth.” You know Jesus, you’ve got the truth. He talks about the breast plate of righteousness. It is the part that would go over your chest to protect your heart, your integrity, your righteousness to realize that you can’t do anything on your own. The righteousness you have comes strictly from the righteousness of Christ. That is going to guard your heart. He talks about the shield of faith. A shield that is going to distinguish all those darts and arrows that are coming at you every single day when you get that phone call that you are getting a lawsuit or when you get that phone call that it is cancer or that your kid was in an accident or whatever. That shield of faith is going to protect you. He talks about making sure you wear good boots in that climate because throughout that journey, you are going to be walking around and you better be sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. You need to have the boots, the readiness to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The two that he ends with, and I think two of the really important ones, he talks about making sure that you take your helmet. He goes on to say “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.” We are talking about a military metaphor here in Ephesians. He is talking about a Roman soldier. If he goes out without his helmet, he is exposed and that is the most vulnerable place on his body. If he gets hit in the head with anything, a rock or a sword or whatever, you have got that soldier. So he says don’t leave that helmet behind. Take it with you. When we think of it in the spiritual realm, where we are most prone to attack is our minds. I think it was Joyce Meyer who wrote a book called “The Battlefield of the Mind”. All the battle takes place in your mind. Everything. Even the physical stuff. All the reactions take place in the mind. That is where the battle goes on. That is where all the worries and the doubts and the fears and the insecurities are. I am not good enough. I am a loser. I am this. I am that. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me and I am going to eat some worms. That is what is going on in your head. If you don’t put on the helmet, you are vulnerable to that. I probably could be fair to say there are probably half the people in this room that don’t have their helmets on. They are dealing with all this muck and junk in their mind that is keeping them from moving forward towards the kingdom of God because they failed to put their helmet on. Then he talks about the sword which is the word of God. It is interesting; this is really the only offensive weapon in the armor. We use the word of God as kind of a defensive mechanism, which it can be. Somebody says something and we say well the Bible says. He says no don’t wait for somebody to say or do something and then you give the word. Spread the word freely because the word is life. When the word goes out, it will never return empty. That goes back to the idea of why you should be memorizing the words. You should have those words memorized and have them on those lips 24/7 so when you come into a situation, you have already figured out the situation, a scripture comes to mind, you speak it and you know what happens? The sword cuts right through that darkness, opens it up and brings the light on into that situation. Whether it be your home. Whether it be your school. Whether it be your work. Whether it be the community. If everybody has their swords out and everybody knows the word of God in this community, I guarantee all the dark, all the muck, all the stuff that you see in this community and communities beyond would begin to go away. The darkness would be pushed away by the light. I think it is a Psalm or Proverb that talks about the word as a “Light unto my path.” That is what is going on here.
So God as the great trip advisor, we see that he is the one who determines our destination. We see him as the one who tells us what to take on this trip. The other thing that we see today is he also tells us what to leave behind. If you go on a trip, the tendency is to over pack. Anybody ever over pack? We get ready to go on a trip and I am looking for a little piece of luggage to put my underwear and toothpaste and stuff and Debbie wants me to find the biggest suitcase in the house and then buy another one too just in case we need it. We pack. We are not always well prepared so we get to the airport and you have to put it on the scale. So you put it on the scale and you are holding your breath…48, 49, 50 is the limit, 51, 52. The nice lady behind the desk says would like to put the service charge on your credit card or would you like to pay the $50 in cash because that is what it is going to be unless you get some of that stuff out of the luggage. So what do you do? You pull it off and start pulling stuff out. In our case we are pulling a stack of magazines and ten pairs of shoes and spreading them out and putting them in the carryon bag and that sort of thing. That is what happens here. We have to be careful that we don’t carry too much baggage. I guess they have those scales now you can include in your luggage so when you are coming back from Dollywood or Branson and you have all these tacky souvenirs, you can weigh it ahead of time to see if you are bringing too much stuff. You can buy one of those scales and stick it in there and weigh it before you get to the airport. What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual. The reality is people are carrying too much baggage. They are always carrying baggage. We have all sorts of baggage. We see that spelled out in Hebrews 12 where God tells us specifically what to leave behind, what to throw off. He says “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” You notice there he uses two words. He says everything that hinds and the sin. Two different things here. When he is saying the word hinders, he is not saying it is really a sin, one of the classic sins. What he is saying is anything that kind of weighs us down. Hinder is the idea of a weight. He is saying this is a race. You have all these people watching. You are getting ready for the big road race. You better get rid of everything. In the Greek races back then, they took off everything. Honestly, some of the races were run in the complete nude. The men would run in the nude. That is what was going on. They say take off everything. They don’t want anything hanging on to me that is hindering. They would strip themselves of everything and get ready to run so they could win that particular race. The problem is we carry these weights. We carry the things that hinder. The things that hinder don’t seem like sin. It could just be friendships. Some people grew up with certain friends. They hang around with friends their entire life, but when they get around them, they get pulled down. The friend is trying to do everything he or she can to keep you back from your walk in God. You say I am supposed to do this. I have to be at this. No, you don’t want to mess with that. I am not saying you shouldn’t hang around with your unsafe friends. You should. But there are some friends, frankly, some of you just have to throw off because they are hindering your walk towards the city of God. You need to cast off some of those relationships. There are other things that hinder just how you spend your time. Some people frankly spend too much time at work. I never heard at a funeral or somebody’s death bed somebody say I really wish I would have spent more time at work. People spend too much time at work. I hate to tell you this, but your employers don’t care. You are just a number on a payroll. You are giving all those hours, 50, 60, 70 hours. You are ignoring your family. You are ignoring your walk with God. Is that a sin? Maybe, maybe not, but it definitely is a hindrance to your walk with God. Some of you spend too much time on Facebook. I sometimes find myself spending too much time on Facebook or the internet or watching TV or reading the junky novels out there. Whatever it is. Those things hinder your walk with God. Those are weights that slow your progress of getting to the city of God. Then he talks about the sin. If I had time, we could just go on and on about all the different sins out there. I thought about it and really they can all be classified by what the Catholics would call the seven deadly sins. Pride, thinking you are better than you are. Materialism or greed, you have this need to keep accumulating stuff. Lust in all its many forms. You have that big green monster called envy. I wish I was doing what that person was doing. I wish I had that particular house. Anger. This anger that comes up out of nowhere. It could be gluttony in all its forms or it could be sloth which is basically just flat out being lazy. Just being mentally, physically lazy when the city of God is out there and all this stuff is waiting for you and for whatever reason, you choose to stay put. These are the sins that we are supposed to get rid of because they trip us up. They entangle us. They keep us from walking forward.
In closing, we think about God as a trip advisor. I think he is pretty good. We gave three examples. Next week, we will give out another half dozen or so, but basically, the three today are simple. He determines our destination. He tells us where we are going. He sets us on that path. He points to it and says now just go. In that process, he says don’t forget to take the right clothes. Take that armor of God because there is a spiritual battle going on out there and you are going to walk right through it so don’t go through it without your armor of God. Then as I just said, he tells us what to leave behind. Throw off those things that hinder. Throw off those friendships that really aren’t building you up but they are pulling you down. Throw off those addictions. Those things where you are spending too much time at work or whatever. Throw those things off. Get rid of all those sins, those seven deadly sins, so that you can begin to walk that path to the city of God. Not only that, like he says here “run the race that is marked out for you.” Thinking again about Psalm 121. “I lifted my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the maker of heaven and earth.” Let us pray.
