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The River ChurchSermons

Mitchell Holmes · 5 Jul 2026

Mitchell Holmes · Sunday, 5 July 2026 · 34:53 · 6,006 words

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The sermon reads Psalm 121, a Song of Ascent, and emphasizes the repeated promise that God keeps us and never slumbers. Through images of landscapes and struggles, it reminds listeners that God is present in the journey, not only at the destination. The speaker urges believers to stop carrying life alone and to trust the Keeper who protects them through every valley and mountain. The invitation is to lay down exhaustion and fix eyes on the Creator, confident that He oversees breath and will keep their lives now and forever.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

moon 13 keep 31 psalmist 15 hill 14 shade 9 imagery 9 journey 11 watch 20 hardship 10 stand 21 scenario 6 language 9

Topics

Scripture referenced 17

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Psalms 121 2:36 Psalms 121 2:45 Psalms 121 3:08 Numbers 33:52 8:24 Romans 5:2 16:40 1 Corinthians 15:1 16:44 1 Corinthians 16:13 16:47 2 Corinthians 1:24 16:52 Galatians 5:1 16:54 Philippians 1:27 16:58 Philippians 4:1 17:01 Psalms 121 17:53 1 Kings 18 18:37 1 Kings 18:27 18:37 Psalms 91 24:26 Psalms 91:1 24:26 Romans 8:28 29:54

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 7 lines, 0:35. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Josh, and thanks for checking out one of our sermons today.

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You can also visit our website at theriverchurch.cc to learn more about us and what we have going on as a church.

Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

If you haven't seen it in person, the pictures just aren't the same, you know.

And as you kind of stand, and you're like, oh, that's death right there, you know.

As you stand there, and just kind of look, you know, and it's silent, because there's nothing for sound to ricochet off.

It's just silent, and the wind blows, and you're just like, man, this is massive.

Like, this is so much bigger than me.

Or a different perspective for you.

Not that long ago, my wife and I watched a great movie called Interstellar, and I was like, oh, man, black holes are fast.

So I start just watching stuff about black holes, and my wife could tell you, like, it was just like, oh, black holes are awesome.

I don't get it, but they're awesome, you know.

These massive, huge things that just absorb and suck in everything around them, including light.

And I'm like, man, those are just out there in space.

Like, what is it?

I don't know.

You know, like, and it's just like, it's so much bigger than us, so big that we can't even comprehend, or it's so profound, right?

But as massive as these things are.

As small as they make me feel, really, these are things that we should look past and see the creator behind them.

And if these things, if the Grand Canyon, if black holes can make us feel small, in our lives, practically, there are things that are going to come up that just make us feel small.

Make us want to shrivel into a hole.

Our sufferings, our hardships can make us really, really feel small.

The worship team has already read it, so I'm sorry.

We've got to go through it a second time, though.

We've got to read Psalm 121.

So if you open with me, I'm going to explain real quick, just a brief thing real quick about it as you turn there.

Psalm 121 is the second in a series of psalms called Songs of Ascent.

Now, these songs would be songs that pilgrims would sing on their way to Jerusalem, on their way to the holy city where they're going to worship, they're going to offer sacrifices.

And they would sing these songs and remind themselves who has their back on the way to.

So Psalm 121, here's what it says.

I lift my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

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

He will not let your foot be moved.

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper.

The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He will keep you from all evil.

He 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.

Now, as I said, this is a song of ascent.

And the reason they call it a song of ascent

is because even as you travel right through the desert

to get to Israel, when you finally make it

and you're near to the city, you still have a climb.

You still have a climb to get up the city

so they would sing these songs of ascent.

But the journey even just to get to that point was gruesome.

It was grueling.

The terrain was rocky.

There was a threat of bandits.

Heat stroke, dehydration.

You're traveling with kids.

You're fighting exhaustion.

It is a gruesome battle to get there.

These things are constantly lingering

in the back of the pilgrim's mind.

So they would sing these songs as reminders.

They would sing these songs as affirmation and say,

okay, God is with us as we go.

Now, I don't know about you guys,

but trips are tough, all right?

And we have air conditioning and GPSs

and vehicles that go 85 miles an hour.

And iPads to put in front of the kids.

And can you imagine traveling for days or weeks or more

without any of that stuff?

Like, you know, my wife and I have been, you know,

we were watching TV the other day

and a commercial comes on and it's like,

oh, the trip is so bad.

Enjoy a can of the dry to forget about it.

Like, and it just is this big thing of like chaos and kids

and they're screaming and there's a mess

and the car's messy and everything.

And I'm like, man, yeah, trips are,

driving 20 minutes to get to church with a baby

is a lot of work.

It's a lot of work.

I'm like, we packed the whole house in this truck

and drove to church and it's crazy.

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine what it must have been like

to travel all this time through the desert

to go on this pilgrimage.

So these songs, they were here to remind them.

Now, if you're here today,

you likely didn't walk a literal mountain path to get here,

but you are on a journey.

And if we're honest, many of us arrived here today

feeling exhausted by the terrain of our lives.

We feel the steepness.

We feel the steepness of the climb.

As we take these steps,

we're exhausted by the terrain in our lives.

We feel the steepness of the climb, like I said.

So today, as we dive in a little bit deeper,

there is a message of profound reassurance for us

from God in this.

The main point of the song can be summarized

into one word that's repeated six times in eight verses.

It says six times in these eight verses,

God will keep or he is your keeper.

Now, I know that, you know, the World Cup is going,

is it still going on still or did they end?

Okay, okay.

I thought I saw something where maybe someone had won

and I was like, oh, I thought it was still going.

Anyways, so the World Cup's going on

and you hear the word keeper.

I bet you're thinking goal keeper right now,

but that's not really what it's talking about.

The language that's being used here when it says

God will keep you, God is your keeper,

it's talking about someone who is going to be

watching over, protecting, have a watchful eye on you.

Someone who preserves.

That's what it talks about here when it says

God will keep you.

God will keep you.

He will preserve you.

He will watch over you.

That is the fundamental point that's being made here.

But let's go through it section by section

and kind of break down what this passage

is really explaining to us.

So in going back to verses one and two,

it says this.

The psalmist says,

I lift my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

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

Now, the psalmist opens and he says,

I'm lifting my eyes up to the hills.

This could mean a number.

A number of different things.

On one hand, perhaps he's lifting his eyes

to the top of the hill where he sees a city,

his people, the temple that houses Almighty God.

Perhaps that's what he's looking to.

But on the other hand,

those hills also hold a dangerous secret.

When looking up to the hills,

you know, when studying this,

they talked about some of the commentaries

and things that I was reading.

They talk about how the hills were commonly places

where pagan worship.

They would build altars.

Or high places in these hills

where they would worship things like Baal.

They would worship these false gods

and perform pagan worship

and worship idols in the hills.

This was commonly done by backsliding Jews

or by neighboring nations that worshiped gods

other than Yahweh.

Numbers chapter 33 verse 52 tells us this.

Look at the language here

where they talk about high places.

"You shall drive out all the inhabitants

"of the land from before you,

"destroy all their figured stones,

"and destroy all their idols.

"Destroy all their metal images,

"and demolish all of their high places."

Many of the things that I was studying about

talked about these high places

that were concealed in the hills.

So the psalmist, right,

as they look to the hills,

there's a number of things

that are vying for his attention.

There's a series of choices and decisions

that the psalmist has to make as they look to the hills.

Much like in our lives,

every day as we journey through life,

we have to make decisions

about where we are going to seek aid for our troubles.

The psalmist is looking and he's like,

"Man, am I gonna seek for aid in the temple with my people?

"There's idols looming right over my head, right?"

There's a number of things

that are vying for his attention in our life.

When hardship comes up,

when our life starts to crumble,

when we start to see cracks in it,

are we going to look to our bank account?

Are we going to just put the weight of the world

on our shoulders and be like,

"I can muster this, I can carry this with me?"

Are we going to ask for someone to help us?

Are we gonna call someone and say,

"Hey, my life's falling apart, how can you help me?"

Maybe you're like me,

when life starts to get sideways,

I call either my dad or Pastor Roy.

Pastor Roy is out at our Waterford location.

And I actually called both of them this one time

because I got a phone call from our mortgage company

and they're like, "Hey, we made a mistake."

And I was like, "Oh, okay."

And they're like, "Yeah, you actually were underpaying

"on taxes this whole last year."

I'm like, "Oh, seems to be you, I guess, that's weird."

And they're like, "No, actually you owe us for that too."

I'm like, "What?"

"You guys made a mistake and you didn't charge me enough

"for taxes and now I have to pay?"

They're like, "Yeah, you owe us several thousand dollars,

"so your monthly payment's gonna go up by X amount,

"plus on top of that, until you pay back the other amount,

"it's gonna go up another X amount."

And I'm like, "That's $250.

"I can't afford $250 extra a month."

And I'm like, "Guys, that sounds like a you problem."

And they're like, "No, no, actually that's a you problem."

And I was like, "Hey, Dad, how do I sue the government?

"What's the deal here?"

I'm like, "Surely this is, there's a mistake

"they made, that's their fault, that's not mine."

And then I'm talking to Pastor Roy, like,

"This is crazy, what are my options?"

And he's like, "You don't really have options."

And I'm just like, man, my immediate people I ran to,

I'm sorry, I ran to people before God.

I ran to my dad and I'm like,

"Hey, help me wrap my mind around this.

"What can I do?"

I ran to Pastor Roy, "What are my options?"

It was long after that that all of a sudden I was like,

"You know, I really gotta give this to God.

"I don't know what we're gonna do."

The psalmist has questions.

Where is he going to direct his gaze?

He looks and he's mulling over these things,

the various things that are trying to grab his attention.

And then he looks past them all

and with a declaration of faith, he says,

"My help actually comes from the Lord," he says.

Notice that in the moment with the weight

of everything going on around him,

a long journey, dehydration,

bandits were common in those hills,

pagan worship lingering over his head.

He has a mammoth of a climb up ahead of him with all

of these things looming over him.

He fixes his gaze past everything to heaven.

He says, "I'm gonna focus my eyes on Yahweh.

"I'm gonna focus my gaze on Almighty God."

The point here, church, that's being made

is incredibly liberating.

For us, we don't need to arrive at the destination

to experience God's protective.

God is just as present in the journey

as he is in the destination.

And too often we can get confused by this

and we'll have thoughts like,

"I'll find once, dot, dot, dot.

"I'll find peace once I get out of this financial hole.

"I'll feel secure once that medical report

"comes back clean and clear.

"I'll be happy once I get that job or my promotion."

Now, it's human nature to stress about these things,

but here's the reality.

God is with us in them.

God walks with us through them,

and he'll be there for the next one too.

God doesn't just sit at the finish line like,

"Huh, I hope they make it," you know?

He's walking alongside us as we journey through life.

We get dusty, we get dirty.

As we navigate through life, he walks there with us.

As our life is falling apart in those moments though,

God is right there with us,

and yet, if you're anything like me,

yet so often when life starts to fall apart,

I'm like, "Oh man, what am I gonna do?"

And God's like, "Dude, I'm right here with you.

"I'm walking with you."

God is there with us in the journey,

not just in the destination.

And that is reassuring because if you notice,

the psalmist says, "My help,

"it comes from the Lord,"

and then he prefaces why that is a good help.

The person that created heaven and earth.

The creator is mightier than his creation,

and here is why God is a good help.

And then he takes it a step further.

Let me show you in verse three and four.

Verse three, "He will not let your foot be moved.

"He who keeps you will not slumber.

"Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."

Now on this journey, on this,

on this travel, on this pilgrimage,

a slipping foot may have very well been a death sentence.

A slipping foot could have meant a fracture,

disaster, or falling off a cliff.

But the psalmist notes that God helps his people

and he uses the language that he plants their feet

in a firm foundation.

Our foundation, which is God's power and infinite goodness,

cannot be moved, the psalmist says.

And as long as we have our feet planted on this foundation,

he says, "Your feet will never slip."

The imagery is,

he's brought up numerous other places,

especially in the New Testament.

I love in Ephesians chapter number six, it says this.

It would take me a minute to turn there.

I've got it here.

Ephesians chapter number six says this,

"Put on the whole armor of God,

"that you may be able to stand

"against the schemes of the devil.

"We do not wrestle against flesh and blood,

"but against the rulers, against the authorities,

"against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,

"against the spiritual forces of evil

"in the heavenly places.

"Therefore, take up the whole armor of God,

"that you may be able to, with God,

"withstand in the evil day,

"and having done all, to stand firm."

Verse 14, "Stand therefore,"

and then he goes into the various pieces of armor.

In those sections, he says, "Stand," several times,

and I know I cheated a little bit when I said, "Withstand,"

but he says, "Stand there,"

and the imagery is of a soldier

that as the weight of the world,

as the forces of evil come at him,

he doesn't cower, he doesn't flee,

he puts up his shield, he wields the sword of the spirit,

he stands firm,

'cause he is standing on the rock of Jesus Christ.

Last week, Pastor Yates talked about the imagery of,

the imagery where it talks about

the man who built his house on the rock

versus a man who built his house on the sand.

And he thinks his house is built on a firm foundation,

but if your house is built on the sand,

your life is built on anything other than Jesus.

And if you're hoping to stand firm on a foundation

that is blown away with the winds of this world,

the hardships of the journey of life,

you will get knocked down over and over again.

But there is an alternative, the alternative is to be,

be planted on the rock, on the firm foundation of Jesus.

I'm gonna rapid fire some scriptures,

passages of scripture at you.

Look at what our posture can be.

The New Testament describes it numerous different ways.

Romans chapter 5:2, it says we can stand in grace.

1 Corinthians 15:1, we stand in the gospel.

1 Corinthians 16:13, we stand in courage and in strength.

2 Corinthians 1:24, we stand in faith.

Galatians 5:1, we stand in our Christian liberty.

Philippians 1:27, we stand in unity.

And perhaps the most important, Philippians 4:1,

we stand in the Lord.

The imagery of standing strong, not wavering, not fumbling,

not fighting for a foothold is massively prevalent

in the New Testament.

Why can we stand so firmly?

Why is this?

The answer is because of the character of the watchman.

And you're like, what are you talking about, the watchman?

The language that was used in verse number four, it says,

you will neither sleep nor slumber.

That's talking about the language of someone

who is watching over a city, like city watch, like a guard.

But unlike human guards that need coffee and rotate shifts

and fall asleep on watch, God is not like this.

God never tires, he never sleeps.

In fact, in this passage in Psalm 121,

it says that he doesn't need to sleep twice.

Twice, it reiterates, God does not need rest.

His eye is always open, his gaze is open,

he is always upon you, he is always with you,

looking at you with fierce love and tender care.

I think back to, I'm a big fan of Elijah.

And in 1 Kings chapter number 18,

is one of the funniest passages in all of the Bible,

where Elijah is on Mount Carmel,

he's confronting these prophets of the false god Baal,

and the Baal prophets, they're screaming their heads off,

they're trying to get Baal to show himself.

They're going so far as to physically harm themselves

to show their dedication to Baal.

Elijah mocks them in verse 27 of 1 Kings 18.

"At noon, Elijah mocked them."

He's like, "Hey, cry loud, for he is a god."

Either he's musing or he's relieving himself,

or he's on a journey.

Maybe he's asleep and must be awakened.

This was a humorous, biting insult,

because he's like, this is who you serve?

A god that sleeps that has to go to the restroom?

Like, that's not a god at all, is what Elijah is saying.

That's the point that he's making,

and he's mocking them in doing it, because it is funny.

A god that sleeps is no god at all.

Our god never sleeps.

He's always watching.

He is constantly on guard.

He is vigilant.

He is ever-present.

But let me address the elephant in the room,

and here's the vital truth that gets missed so often.

Just because God is always watching

does not mean that nothing bad will ever happen to us.

The psalmist believes so strongly in the protection of God

that he doesn't even list a single danger in this passage,

but he still knows that they exist.

Like I said, there was bandits to fight,

heat stroke, dehydration, exhaustion, so much more.

And in our lives, there are going to come times

where we face injury, sickness, heartbreak,

and eventually our physical deaths.

But here is the gospel difference,

the difference for people who have Jesus in their lives,

is since we belong to God,

even our worst-case scenario is not actually that bad.

If our worst-case scenario is I get to go home

to be with my heavenly father

a little bit sooner than I expected, okay.

That's why Paul says, hey, if you let me live, it's Christ.

If you kill me, it's gain.

'Cause if you let me live, I'm gonna kill you.

I'm gonna keep preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But if you kill me, I get immense gain

and I go home to be with my father in heaven.

This is what is available to those that belong to Jesus.

If you're here today and you're like, this is new to me.

I'm here today, I don't know who Jesus is.

I don't understand the word gospel.

I wanna, let me just explain that.

This is what is available to those who love Jesus

because the Bible says that all of us have made mistakes.

All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

the Bible says.

Because of our sin, the Bible says that we have earned death.

Not just physical death, but spiritual death as well.

Spiritual death which means separation from God for eternity.

When we die without Jesus,

we will be separated in hell for eternity.

Despite the fact that we were enemies of God,

the Bible says while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us.

Because God looked and said, I know they've made mistakes.

I know that they are enemies of me.

I know they are sinners, but I love them.

And he said, Jesus, I'm gonna send you.

Jesus left perfection behind.

He left heaven to come live here with us

in the dirt, feeling the frustrations that we feel,

feeling hunger, feeling pain.

And he never sinned once.

At the end of his life, they killed him for it.

They killed him for it.

But in so doing, he was able to pay the penalty of sin

that we can't afford.

The Bible says, if you repent and believe, you will be saved.

That is what's available to us.

We can look and say, hey, if I repent of my sin and say,

God, I recognize I can't make it on my own.

I recognize that I am a sinner, that I've made mistakes.

I can't earn heaven on my own.

If we repent of that and say, God, I can't make it on my own.

Say, but I believe, Jesus, you can save me.

I'm a drowning man that can't swim on my own.

Grab my hand and pull me up.

If that is our posture, if that is our heart,

the Bible says, guess what?

You will spend eternity with him in heaven.

So when I talk about this, right, and you're like,

what do you mean the worst-case scenario

still isn't that bad?

That's what I mean.

The worst-case scenario is my 100-year lifespan

here on earth, probably less than 100 years.

I ate a lot of mac and cheese.

But my 100-year lifespan here on earth,

if it gets cut short, oh man, darn, I get to go home

and be with my father in heaven.

If that's the worst-case scenario, man,

we have a good watchman, we have a good protector.

He is watching over us.

And that is what's being talked about here.

It's not saying that we will never experience sickness.

It's not saying that we will never experience heartache.

It's not saying that we will not experience

financial difficulty.

It is saying he is with you and he has you.

He will keep you talking about your soul,

where you are going to spend eternity.

Look to the Lord as my help.

And through him, I am able to stand firm.

The question that would come to my mind naturally

is what aspect of my life does he actually watch over?

Well, verses five and eight tell us,

and then we'll land on our final point.

Verse five says, "The Lord is your keeper.

"The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

"The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.

"The Lord will keep you from all evil.

"He will keep your life.

"The Lord will keep your going out

"and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore."

Now, the psalmist here, he used this figure

of language like day and night.

And really what he's trying to do is it's a fancy way

of saying he is watching over everything.

It's a fancy way of him saying that he has a total scope

on his protective care.

It is 100%.

He describes first, he says, you know,

God watching over you is a shade to you.

In the scorching, brutal heat of the Middle Eastern desert,

shade wasn't just a comfort, it was a literal lifesaver.

And this imagery reminds me of when the Israelites

The exodus out of Egypt, they were sent a pillar,

I'm sorry, a cloud by day that followed Israel

through the wilderness.

It reminds me, it was in Psalm 91, verse one.

It says, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

"will abide in the shadow of the Almighty."

Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

Again, the imagery of something that's looming

and massive standing over us, but this time,

it is our God casting a shade over our life.

When the sun threatens to scorch us

and burn us to the ground, he is there.

He's a shade.

But then the Psalmist talks about, he's like,

hey, he's also watching over day,

and he's watching over the moon by night,

and he's talking about a couple different things here.

You know, the sun represents the visible, obvious,

the present and obvious perils that come during the day.

The hardships that we see coming.

The moon represents the hidden perils of the night.

And in the ancient world especially,

the moon carried immense superstition.

They believed that the moon had a special ability to warp

a human being's mind and trick them into thinking things

that weren't true.

In fact, we have a modern word.

Perhaps you've heard the word lunatic.

Comes from the Latin word referring to Luna, the moon.

The word epileptic.

It originates from a Greek word meaning moon struck.

The moon was very, very synonymous with these things of,

hey, there are things that can warp your mind and twist,

and these crazy superstitions were built around the moon.

In fact, a theologian named,

James Montgomery Boise said this.

What the Psalmist really means is that nothing either

of the day or night can harm us if God is keeping guard.

God is covering against our every calamity.

He is our shade against the visible perils of the day,

as well as the hidden perils of the night.

Now take special note that the Psalmist doesn't say something

like, oh, thank goodness I follow God

because God gives me a different sun to experience, man.

Notice he doesn't say, oh, I'm promised a special moon.

Because I follow Christ.

Notice that he doesn't say, hey,

the shade removes the desert entirely.

No, he doesn't use that language.

We walk under the same exact outward circumstances

as the rest of the world, but instead we have Christ over us.

Despite the fact that we are in the same desert,

we have a shade that will keep us.

We walk under the same outward circumstances

of economic downfall, biological realities,

hardship, heartache, death, sickness, disease, however, under

the divine protection of Yahweh, the ultimate destructive power

of life's hardship is diminished.

The desert will not miraculously vanish

if you give your life to Christ.

In fact, the Bible tells us the opposite.

It says, if the world hates you, it's

because it hated me first.

Now that's using imagery talking about the people of the world.

But the idea is the same, right?

We are promised a harder life under Christ.

But despite hardship, he will keep us.

He will sustain us.

Paul says, I've learned in all things

to be content, because I know Christ is with me.

Charles Spurgeon writes this.

He says, three times in this passage,

we have the phrase, Jehovah shall keep.

It's as if the sacred Trinity thus sealed

the word to make it sure.

Ought not all our fears to be slain

by such a threefold flight of arrows?

What anxiety can survive this triple promise?

And I know Charles Spurgeon uses

some real interesting language, but basically he's like,

hey, three times we're promised the Lord

How are your anxieties supposed to survive a promise like that?

We are not promised an easy life.

We are not promised a life spared from hardship.

But Jesus, through his protection,

through the protection of God, we

are told that the things that God

permits to happen to us in his will, while they may hurt us,

they will not harm.

I think of Joseph, right?

Joseph was given a vision from God

where he is going to be used for mighty things.

And yet, after that vision, he endures the hatred of his brother,

he endures 13 years of slavery, he gets falsely imprisoned,

he gets betrayed by other prisoners.

That hurt Joseph, but it did not harm his soul.

It did not cancel out God's destiny for him.

And at the end of his life, Joseph could look back and say,

hey, what you intended for evil, what you intended to harm me,

God intended it for good.

It hurt.

I wouldn't want to live through what Joseph went through.

I wouldn't want to live through 13 years of imprisonment.

I wouldn't want to live through the hatred of my brothers.

I wouldn't want--

because that hurts.

But it didn't harm him for eternity.

One other commentator, he summarized it beautifully,

and he says this.

He says, "It is a solid fact that nothing

can come into the life of a believer

apart from God's permissive will."

Here's the crazy part.

I've never heard it said so plainly and so profoundly.

There are no random circumstances,

no purposeless accidents, no fatalistic tragedy.

I'm not discounting the fact that those things hurt,

but Romans 8:28 reinforces and confirms for us that God works

together all things for good for those who love him,

what the Bible says.

All things work together for good.

That doesn't change the fact that when we're in the storm,

we can't wait to get to the other side, right?

The psalm concludes and he says, "He watches over our coming

and going, both now and forevermore."

This is, again, another flowery way of saying,

he's watching over everything.

But I also think that he's drawing special attention

with the coming and going, the language there.

He's drawing attention to our birth and our death,

and everything in between has been

orchestrated by God.

The thought here is that every single aspect of our life,

from the moment we wake up to the time we lay our head down,

is in God's hand.

Indeed, every single breath that we breathe comes

because God alone allows it.

God alone allows our every breath.

He watches over every single moment.

He's aware of every single thought.

He is with us in every single frustration.

He's there with us through every hardship in our lives,

from the cataclysmic world-ending events

to the minor headache of dealing with Michigan drivers.

All of it,

he is there through each and every one of those.

Now, the Jewish people, they followed a lunar calendar.

So when the writer here refers to the sun and the moon,

he's talking about the days of the sun,

the moon being a lunar calendar,

he's referring to the months.

And the idea is this.

He's saying, hey, whether it's from day to day,

from month to month, from season to season,

from year to year, our Father is with us.

He's with us through the many challenges

and changes in our lives.

No matter what phase you're in,

no matter what season you're in,

no matter what hardship you're going through,

our Father is with us.

Now, as we wrap up today,

whether you're here today and you say,

yeah, I belong to Jesus, I know that.

Or if you're here today and you're hearing the word Jesus

for the first time today,

there's one thing that I can reliably guess about you.

And that is that your life has mountains in it.

Your life has been a series of mountains and valleys.

And the imagery here, when talking about the mountains,

we're talking about the mountain of Jerusalem,

where you're at a spiritual high point,

where you're at a spiritual high point in your life.

Like, oh, this is, nothing can ever bring me down, right?

God is so good in this moment.

But the valleys are those unexpected plummets

where you ask, I don't know how I'm gonna get up tomorrow.

And in the scheme of those massive mountains

and those deep valleys, when life looms over us,

or we look up and like,

how am I ever gonna climb out of here?

We can feel incredibly, incredibly small.

But I wanna challenge you, look past the mountains,

look up from the valley, do what the Psalmist does here.

He doesn't focus attention on the hills

or the temple or the city.

He looks past all of it, and he looks at almighty God.

He looks for the source of the greatest help

in all of existence.

On your journey that's riddled with anxiety and grief

and fears of the unknown,

you can have an unsleeping watchman

that is working all things together for your good,

the Bible says.

The creator of heaven and earth, back to verse one.

The creator of heaven and earth, all powerful, almighty God,

who knows and sees and can do all things,

wants to walk with you as a friend.

He wants to shadow you during the day.

He wants to guard you by night.

Let's lay down our exhaustion.

Let's stop trying to stay awake and manage the universe.

Let's trust the keeper who never slumbers.

If you're here today and you're like,

"Yeah, I belong to Jesus.

"I'm part of his adopted family."

Then guess what?

Your worst case scenario in this life

is still a glorious homecoming in the next,

'cause he keeps your life both now and forevermore.

Let's pray.

Lord, we love you.

God, and I'm just so thankful

that you are watching over us.

God, since we're so small,

everything feels so massive and so large.

God, it's just our nature to focus on those mountains,

focus on the things that are immediately in front of us.

And just like the Israelites,

we can be so quick to forget the last time that you,

I just pray for myself,

all of your people that are here today, Lord,

that you would bring to our mind, turn to you,

to look past all of the things

and focus our eyes firmly on you.

You are there.

You are good.

In your name we pray.