[God’s] got you now, present tense. But he’s got you in the future too. He will keep you from evil. He will keep your life. He will keep your going out and coming in not just now but into eternity. It’s not just a promise for this life but for all time. God has promised good to his people throughout eternity.

We’ve been looking at psalms of courage this summer, and we’re finally at the end. We’re also at one of my favorite psalms of all.
The question is: where will you turn for help when life gets hard?
This is a question that’s highly relevant to some of you, because you need help, and you need it yesterday. You have bills you can’t pay, problems you can’t solve, relationships that need help. There’s a group of us here that are at the end of our resources, and we know we need help, and we’re not afraid to admit it. When I ask you where you turn for help, you’re not really surprised. You know you need to turn somewhere.
There’s a whole other group here, though, that is going to be surprised by this question. Most of us go through life not knowing that we need help. Even if we did, we’re like the proverbial guy that won’t stop for directions. We may know we need help, but we’re not prepared to admit it to anyone else. When I ask you where you turn for help, you’re a little bit surprised.
But the truth is, we all need help. And the psalmist asks: where will you turn for the help you need?
Thousands of years ago, this question was asked on a fairly regular basis. Psalm 121 is one of the Songs of Ascent. These are songs of pilgrims who sang them during their journey to Jerusalem for one of the three yearly festivals. They’re songs that are meant to help God’s people as they travel to worship.
The trip was sometimes dangerous. You had to walk or ride for miles. There were no real roads—those came later—but just well-worn paths across the valleys.
God had told them to go—to come where his presence was (1 Kings 8:10–11)—but the road was dangerous and uncertain.
Along the road, the people met threats above and threats below, most of which they could not see or predict. They were fully exposed to scorching heat and volatile weather. Robbers hid in the caves and hills, knowing exactly when to expect their victims. The people knew they had to go, but they did not know if they would all make it. Surely, some didn’t. So, they felt fragile, vulnerable, unsafe.Marshall Segal
Jesus himself would have taken this trip many times. This is a song for rough roads, both back then on the way to Jerusalem, and for us as well.
The Question and Answer
And the psalm begins with a question that the psalmist asks of himself.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.From where does my help come?
It’s possible that the speaker is looking to the hills in fear, scared of robbers who might be lurking there. But the term “lift up my eyes” is generally a positive one, as shown in Psalm 123: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!” So it’s possible that the pilgrim is approaching Jerusalem. And he asks himself the question as he gets closer: where does my help come from?
This is an important question for all of us to answer. Where does your help come from? Where do you get the help you need as you travel on dangerous paths on the way to your eternal home?
We need to do an honesty check here. I recently read a quote that really got me. Family therapist Jay Haley famously told his clients, “I don’t address problems; I address attempted solutions.” What are the attempted solutions that you turn to for help? What friends and coping mechanisms and strategies help you when you experience danger or trouble or need help?
I want you to think about this. How would you answer the question, “From where does my help come from?” The answer really matters.
The truth is, when we get into trouble, our first response is not usually to turn to God for help. We have all kinds of other places we turn for the help we need. Where will you turn when your life falls apart, or you feel discouraged or despondent, or you face a problem you just can’t solve on your own?
Here’s how the psalmist answered: “My help comes from the LORD.” That is a good answer! But what I love about the psalm is that he doesn’t stop there. This psalm is a meditation on why the Lord is so qualified to be the source of the help that we need. He doesn’t just give us the answer; he gives us the reasons why it’s good to turn to God for help.
It’s important we learn the answer. Where does our help come from? The Lord. Jesus is the helper of his people now and for eternity.
But it’s also good to learn the reasons for the answer. And the psalmist gives us three.
The Reasons
Why does our help come from the Lord? Because the Lord is a good helper for three reasons:
He is a good helper because he is the Creator.
Verse 2 says:
My help comes from the LORD,who made heaven and earth.
What qualifies the LORD to be our helper? He is the maker of heaven and earth. He is the Creator, and that makes him uniquely qualified to help us.
The Lord is not some tribal deity. He’s not just some minor god with limited power. Think about who God is.
As far as we know, the observable universe is some 90 billion light years wide, but we don’t even know. The Milky Way Galaxy alone has some 100 billion to 400 billion stars. God created all of it. How powerful is the Lord? We can’t even comprehend his power. He is very qualified to help you.
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In ‘Street Smarts’, Koukl teaches the kinds of questions that are most effective while also providing sample conversations on the most common topics, which is another very important contribution of this book. In addition to answering the misconceptions about faith that people often have—from God’s existence to the divinity of Jesus—Street Smarts helps believers engage others on the moral and social issues at the center of our cultural discourse, such as abortion and gender and the many topics related to human sexuality. Koukl provides the questions, the talking points, and the examples that can open up significant conversations, invite skeptics in, and challenge presuppositions. In the process, Christians will develop confidence in what is true.

For over 30 years, my friend Greg Koukl has taught Christians how to engage with people across worldview lines by asking questions. His first book Tactics has equipped thousands of Christians to communicate with wisdom and passion. This month, Koukl is releasing a follow-up to that book, entitled Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity’s Toughest Challenges. 
Among the goals of the book is to make evangelism a less intimidating and more successful endeavor: 
There are few things that cause more nagging guilt for Christians than sharing their faith. They feel guilt because they don’t witness enough. They don’t witness enough because they’re scared. And they’re scared for good reason. Sharing the gospel and defending it—apologetics—often feels like navigating a minefield these days. For most of us, engaging others on spiritual matters does not come easy, especially when people are hostile. 
Koukl helpfully distinguishes what he calls “harvesting,” and “gardening.” Because God brings the harvest, our goal is simply faithfulness to what is true about the world and about people. According to John’s Gospel, some Christians harvest and others sow, so “that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”  
A singular focus only on “harvesting,” Koukl argues, leads to a number of problems. For example, the very important “gardeners” are encouraged to sit out the evangelism process, in favor of the “harvesters.” This is often the case when Christians fail to understand the power of the cultural forces shaping the worldview of non-believers, one reason our Gospel seeds seem to only bounce off “hard soil.” Christians, therefore, must also commit to “spadework,” or digging up the faulty preconceptions about life, God, and humanity that people hold, often unknowingly. One great way to do this “spadework” is by asking questions.  
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If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, in the whole truth of God, we muse show forth the joy of gospel grace, of the eternal blessings which we experience now and in the future in Christ. We are to speak boldly, with surety and without fear of man, yet in a spirit which shows the gentleness of a dove.

One of the downsides of being a Christian is that we do not have the freedom to let the truth work for us. We live in a world where most people don’t really have much compunction shading things toward their point of view. A little touch here and there so that the story becomes one where they are the champion and everyone else comes short. These are things which can frustrate believers as we live and breathe in a world soaked in sin. There are times when our faith in the risen Christ and love of those things that are good can get in the way of advancement at work, opportunities for extracurricular fun, whether that be sport, hobbies, competitions, or whatever.
Much temptation awaits.
For today’s prayer and worship help I want to come at this question with a positive message. Telling the truth, maintaining the truth, and accepting the truth should be a central part of the identity of every single believer in the Lord Jesus. The church shouldn’t be a place where we struggle to deal with the same fight against untrustworthiness and vanity that we do out in the domain of the prince of the power of the air. I’m not naïve enough not to recognize that we have sinners in the body of Christ. However, as Paul writes in Romans 6 we are to be found as those who love the word, and who seek to put to death the old man, and be conformed to the image of our Savior. Our fallibleness is not something we should lean into, rather we who rest in the grace of Jesus should more readily deal with sin and turn away from its lies. It is in the hope of the gospel that we live and move and have our being. The way this works itself out in the subject at hand is that as Christians we are to be those who value truth above all things primarily because we live in the household of the God of truth. It is the currency of our faith. We live in the full assurance of redemption because the Lord’s word is always yeah and amen in Himself.
Living in complete integrity is one way that we express the second table of the law to our neighbor. You’ve heard me say before that we cannot love our neighbor until we love ourselves first. At first glance that sounds kind of arrogant bordering on selfish. However, the more we learn to center our own soul in the covenant promises the more we are drawn to see the blessing of Christ’s words to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. Truly His grace is sufficient for all of our needs.
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