Man, I know last week we did everything we could to bring you into the Vacation Bible school world. And our goal this week is to bring you into middle school and high school camp world. I would've loved to put you in the car with Melissa and I and gone down and been a fly on the wall, uh, with all of you this week. And we know that all of you wanted to be there watching teenagers all week, right? Wink, wink. Um, but you couldn't be. So we wanna just give you a little glimpse into all God did this week. And I've got Chip and I've got Kevin and Seth with me this week, kind of part of the brain trust of student ministry here. And I just want them to be able to share a little bit of how God moved this week. It's important for us to celebrate Chip. Tell us what was different. Um, 'cause Bey's been doing camp forever. Uh, what was different about this year than most of the other years, or all the other years? And where did God land in that?

Yeah, so like Matt said, we've, we've been doing camps for years. Uh, but this year we decided to do it just a little bit different. We decided we were gonna host our own camp In the past, we've typically gone to a camp that maybe someone else was hosting, someone was putting on. Uh, they would bring in their own communicators, their own worship. You'd be there with, you know, tons and tons of other students from other churches. You'd have all these, you know, camp relationships coming from it as well, from kids dating kids in South Carolina, North Carolina

About camp relationships. They knew you gotta

Love those kind of moments that they, you know, like they're gonna last. Um, but um, yeah, we just kept 'em in house this year, so we're better. Um, but it this way we were able to kind of really just hone into where our kids are at. It was really neat because we were designing the, the messages we were designing, the worship experience. We were able to design, uh, everything from rec to where we were staying to really reach our students where they're at, the, the kids and what they're dealing with, their culture that they're coming from, and the community in which we're trying to build amongst our group. And so it was a really powerful moment, uh, to be able to do that and a host that ourselves.

Yeah. And it really was cool just to get to see our students interacting with their, with our students and just getting to watch community happen. Seth, with that being said, how, how did it land, uh, with the high scorer? What's a couple of the biggest walkaways, uh, you took away from the week?

Yeah, because we were able to kind of formulate both the curriculum for small groups and for our morning devotionals as well as our, our messages as well. Uh, we were able to really hit some key points. And so we kind of walked through three Cs really. And the first one was that we're all called the Christ. Like Christ is met us where we're at. He wants to be in a relationship with us, each and every one of us, no matter what we've done. The second one was a really big, especially for a lot of our high school students, was that we're called to a community. Uh, God doesn't enter, we don't enter into a relationship with God and he just kind of leaves us where we're at. Uh, he wants us to be a part of the body of Christ. He wants us to be a part of that community, supporting one another, working with one another, really just being there for one another in the good times and in the bad.
Um, and just kind of supporting and, and walking alongside one of another. And then the last C was that there, we, we all had a calling. God had given us all a calling and it was different than everybody else's. My calling is not the same as anyone else's. God has equipped me in a different way than he has anyone else, but he has equipped me to a calling. And we need to take that. We need to take what we've learned. We need to take what we've gathered from, from church and from our quiet times, from our relationship with the Lord. And we need to take that to the community that we're in.

Come on, that'll priest all of us. Um, Kevin, how, how, um, how did that land in the middle school world? Tell us about that a little bit.

Yeah. For middle school, before I answer that, I do think we need to address our hair really quick. 'cause this isn't my natural hair color, but we had told my hair's fine, actually I'm past that age. That's right. Well, Seth and I and Ryland, we had said that we would bleach our hair and Seth would shave his head if we had registration packed. So that was fun as registration was going along, and obviously we kept our word and we went through with it.

I do regret it though. I do regret it,

But we do, we believe that this week is a unique opportunity to spend with students in Florida, and it was an awesome time. I'm so thankful for all of our students who went and, uh, shout out to our sixth graders who won recreation. Uh, we had sixth grade boys memorized scripture Monday through Thursday, and they took the victory for the week. But it was awesome. The gospel was preached every, every day. The word was taught, and students responded in faith, trusting in Lord their Lord Jesus, uh, for the first time. And it was awesome. So Kevin, this is your first

Year. You're the newbie, um, around here. You're, you're fresh off the left coast as we like to call it, around here, um, and now in the motherland. Um, and, and so Kevin, what, what was kind of some of the biggest takeaways from you this week? Like what, what touched you from this week?

Yeah, I'm, I'm just really thankful, you know, we're staying in these condos, thinky chip for giving middle school the lazy river. And as we're, as we're hanging out, we're talking about God, his word every single day. And there's nothing more rewarding than witnessing students follow Jesus and them, uh, trusting in 'em for the first time. It was awesome. I'm so thankful too. My wife was able to come on this trip and we have an awesome staff. I'm so proud of our team. I've been here since January and it's just been so neat. We have a special group of people that just love middle schoolers, high schoolers, and we stayed up late nights, early mornings, and we got to spend time and have memories that I think we'll remember forever. Yeah.

Kevin kept saying, what's the sticky feeling? Uh, what's

Humidity,

<laugh>, um, Seth, you, uh, you got to, you got to experience camp from a little bit of a different perspective. I mean, you, you grew up here, you went to camp as a student, you went to camp as an intern that was just literally told what to do from morning till night. Um, and, and this time you got to be a part of the leadership. What, what was different about that?

Yeah, so as a student, you're just kind of coming in, you're just having a good time. Like you're, you're seeing what fun you can have, seeing who you can talk to, seeing who you can meet, seeing what girl from South Carolina you can talk to and, um, <laugh>. And then as an intern, you think you know what's going on, but you don't really, like, you have a little bit of a grasp grasp on what's going on. Uh, but there's still a lot under the surface. And so being able to just kind of see it from, from the, the eagle eye and seeing everything that's going on, um, was just an awesome opportunity. And from going from having those late night conversations with guys to having to speak the next, or getting to speak the next morning and just kind of being really tired in it to, uh, still getting to kind of do some of the random tasks like for your high schoolers, hiding the golden and silver chicken every day.
Uh, we had a golden rubber chicken that I hid on the beach every day. And can I just say it's very demoralizing when you spend 30 minutes trying to hide a golden rubber chicken on a beach, only for a senior guy to find it in 15 seconds. All right. It doesn't feel good. But having those things, but also being able to see like, just the overall, having leaders come to you every day and say, Hey, these decisions were made in my room. We had this conversation last night. And just getting all of those different pieces was just such, such an awesome experience.

Wow. Chip, close us up and, and tell us maybe just some stats on, on how God moved. I know we've talked about that he moved and it was evident and being in the room, you could, you could really tell that the Lord was dealing with hearts, but give us a, give us a few stats of what God did this week in, in the lives of students.

Yeah, absolutely. So throughout every night, um, our, our speaker, Chris Lovell, who, uh, came and shared with us, uh, was, was given a gospel presentation. I mean, he was going in deep P was challenging kids. And throughout the week we saw a lot of movement. We saw God really working in some pretty powerful ways. Uh, first night we were there. I mean, it's, it's pretty impressive when the first night in the gospel presentation is given and 25 students step up and walk out the room. Uh, what an amazing,

Yeah. Walk out the room like they're just tired of this place. Or

What does that mean? Like when the invitation was given, they walked out, they met with a leader.

There we go. Okay.

They were discipled, they were getting talked to, and uh,

They walk out the room when I get up to preach too. But it's never a good thing. All

Right, that's at the end of the service,

Just let everyone know.

Um, but uh, it wasn't an amazing thing of seeing that first night that happened. And then as well, throughout the week, we continued to see that happen. Students that were just making decisions, students that were just going, man, I, I need to give this over to the Lord. There was a night where kids were just broken. I mean, you saw students all throughout the room praying with a leader. And it was just amazing to see that, to see that happening, uh, throughout the week. Just a couple of stats, just so you know. Um, one of the things was this, we saw 15 students give their life to Jesus This week I'm home. That's awesome. And so major, major radical life change. On top of that, you probably saw in the video we baptized 15 students at the beach as well, which was really powerful moment there as well. Yeah,

Yeah.

Um, and then on top of that, it was 12 students on as well that just said, you know, I just really need to spend some time getting a little deeper with the, the Lord investing, making some decisions, whether it was just kind of commit my life back to where I've been. And so 42 total decisions were made throughout the week, uh, which is super powerful, uh, just to see where God's moving on top of that, uh, we had 200 gallons of water and lemonade that were served a hundred pounds of meat, 1,760 meals that were cooked and a lot of snacks at breakfast. Okay. So there's a lot of stats that are there as well.

And one bus broke down

And that's right there. It's one bus that broke down. We wanna forget about that one, <laugh>. Um, but it was an amazing week, but we couldn't have done it without our all the leaders. I mean, we had, uh, over 40, uh, chaperones that went with us, that took off time from work that went away from their family and said, I'm gonna go and I'm just gonna pour into students. I know. We joke about it and we go, oh, you know, I'd love to. These guys were invested and they invested in the life of students. And, and I even challenged 'em from the very beginning on the morning of, I said, Hey, you're their D group leader. You're their youth pastor for the week, and I want you to pour everything. And they did, man. They invested in these students. They led small groups for them. Uh, they, they led some of them to Christ. They walked with them, they talked with them. And it was just powerful to see those adults that made that happen as well as our team that was willing, but as well as you guys that prayed for us. Yeah. There was so much prayer that was coming from this place and it was felt because God was moving in a powerful way. So thank you so much for supporting this ministry and what God's doing life with students. Come

On. You know what, parents, if your students are not involved with student ministry, can I just encourage you from the bottom of my heart, if you've got a sixth grader through a 12th grader, you need to plug them in to this focused ministry, to a discipling ministry, to a community of believers and parents. Come on. We really, really need to do this. Would you give these guys a hand and all the volunteers a hand for this week? Man, I can't think of a back to back two weeks that have been as exciting around this place as vacation Bible school last week and then this week camp. It has been a great week for me to literally just stay outta the way and give a bunch of people high fives. Um, it's been great. Well listen, before we jump into the message this morning, um, it's no secret, uh, to probably any of us in this room that, that our world changed a little bit yesterday, um, that we have entered into some times that there's a lot of question, uh, there's a lot of chaos.
Um, there's a lot of wondering how this thing in the Middle East is gonna go and, and there's a lot of brokenness, uh, across our world. And I know that there's tangibly not a lot that we can do. We're not the decision makers. Um, and, and we're not the ones pushing buttons, but what we can do as a praying people that is connected to the one that can do something is that we can offer our prayers to the Lord and we can call upon the Lord that is in control and that is sovereign to move, um, and for his kingdom to come. So I want us to do that this morning. Before we jump into the message, I just want us to pray, uh, for a couple specific things. Number one, for God's kingdom to come Amen, uh, for his will to be done. Um, I want us to pray directly.
I just want us to pray for peace. Um, this morning. I want us to pray for discernment of our leadership and our government that is making decisions, um, on our behalf. Uh, I want us to pray for all of the people that are directly involved, um, in the Middle East. Man, what a, what a time. It is there and has been there and, and I just want us to pray for our military, uh, as well this morning. So would you just join me, um, in prayer this morning, Lord Jesus today, we know that you're sovereign. We know that you're in control. We know that nothing is a surprise to you. We know that you are the author and perfecter of our faith, the creator of the universe. And God, we call upon you Lord Jesus today. We call upon you to move in the Middle East in a mighty, mighty way.
Lord, be with our decision makers. Give them discernment, Lord, give them wisdom. Lord, be with those that are directly in the path of what is happening in Israel, what is happening in Iran. Lord, be with those countries that are deciding what to do about this right now, Jesus. And guide them, Lord, be with us as a people that knows who you are and that knows what you're going to do one day. And Lord, just take control of this situation, Lord Jesus. And it's in your name we pray. Amen and amen. Well, listen, if you're new to Burn Hickory, what we're doing this summer is we are walking through eight of the 150 Psalms in this ancient Israel songbook called Psalms. And what we're doing is we're taking the joy and we're taking the hope and we're taking the love and we're taking the peace that is presented to us in these messages.
And we are hopefully consuming them and allowing God to press them into our souls. So far we've walked in through Psalm one that has told us that God's will is to bless his people, but it's not through circumstances and it's not through earthly things. Through his plan. We walked through Psalm 32 and we said that we're blessed because God, God is a God of second chances. Last week we walked through Psalm 1 28 and we saw that we will be blessed if we do two things. If we fear God by putting him in his rightful place and if we walk out his steps, we walk out his will. Let me remind you that at the beginning of this whole message series, I encouraged you this summer to take time every morning and to read three Psalms a morning so that you could move through this whole book and allow God to just move in your life.
I hope you're doing that. Hope you're taking advantage of that. If you haven't so far, there's still time for you. But what I want you to do today is I want you to turn with me this morning to Psalm 1 21. Alright? I want you to turn to Psalm 1 21 and that's where, that's where we're gonna lands, where we're gonna walk through and pick apart this morning. But as you're doing that, let me remind you that Psalm 1 21 is part of a greater collection of Psalms. There's 15 of 'em, in fact called the Psalms of ascent, the Psalms of ascent. Now, that's a fancy way of saying that these psalms are Psalms, that the, the Jews, the Israelites, as they were walking to the three primary feasts a year at the temple, right, that they would sing these psalms, they would offer these prayers up to God, reminding themselves who God is and what God has done and how God in the past has delivered and how God has promised to deliver them in the future.
If you really get down to it in these psalms, you gotta think about the fact that these would've been the Psalms that, that the, that the good Samaritan remember when he came around and dealt with the guy that was beat up. It would've been on one of these roads, these dangerous roads. These Psalms would've also been the Psalms that in Luke chapter two, when Jesus' parents left him at the temple from being there to celebrate the Passover, there, Jesus and his family would've sang these songs, would've spoken these prayers back to God. Now they're just as relevant today as they were in that time period. And they remind us today that even in today's world that God's hope is worth fighting for and God's love is available to us and he's offering it us to us today in an even greater capacity than he did them.
So what I wanna do is I wanna give you the principle this morning. I wanna read the psalm over us and I want to give you a couple walkaways on what I would just call hope reminders for this morning. But here's the principle I want you to write down this morning. As followers of Jesus, we are never alone. We are never without hope because the God who guards our path and anchors our soul catch this is always with us. Now, I want you to grab hold of that this morning because some of you are at a point in your life where you are just wondering, God, are you really there? God, are you really holding me? And God, I am struggling and have you given up on me? And what you're gonna see this morning is God has not only not given up on you, but God is wanting to walk 100% with you.
Now let me read the Psalm over you and you'll see what I mean by that. Psalm 1 21 starts with this. It says this, verse one, I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Verse five, the Lord watches over you. The Lord is the shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from harm and he will watch over your life. In verse eight, the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forever more. And can I just get an amen right there? Because that is encouraging.
It's encouraging that we have a God that didn't create us and spin this thing into existence and walk away from us. We have a God that wants to be a part of our story. He doesn't always want to be a part of our story. He wants to be our story. He just doesn't wanna be our story. He wants to be the one that is with us every single step. Which actually leads me to my first hope reminder of the morning. Write this down. Number one, God is just as present in the journey is as he is in the destination. Now you say, well Matt, what verse did you get that from? Well, I didn't get it from a specific verse, but I got it from the whole text of this Psalm of ascent as well as the rest of the Psalms of ascent. And here's what that means.
It means that if you can put yourself in the shoes of the original audience of what this was being spoken for, that God is a part of so many of so many of us from all times that are moving in a direction towards him. That's exactly where God wants to be. These people were moving in a direction towards worship, a place of worship, a time of worship. They were moving to the temple, if you would, to where God's presence were. And what God is reminding us in this Psalm is that now that we have the Holy Spirit and now that God was with them, that we are with him not just one day when we get to heaven, but he's with us now. Amen. He's with us in this very moment. And God, here it is, even in the journey He wants to walk with us.
Man, so many people, so many believers I might add, well say things probably not meaning to say it. Well say things like, oh man, can't you just wait till one day that God just does away with all this and we get to walk into glory? Yes. That is really, really a big thing. Amen. It is huge. But listen, God wants to be with us today. He wants to walk with us today. He wants to give us hope today. He wants us to walk in his promises today, God is concerned with eternity. But listen, believer, he's just as concerned with right now for you. And some of you have all but given up on this planet, but God is like, I haven't. And I want you to walk in my hope today. You see these Jews were on their way to God, but God is going, Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Wait a minute. Even on your way to me. Remember me even on your way to my presence. Remember that I am with you. So listen, no matter where life has you right now, believers, listen, God is concerned with where you are in this moment. He is, which leaves me. My second thing, not only is God just as present in the journey as he is in the destination. Number two, write this one down. God is the giver and the sustainer of my help and hope He's the giver and the sustainer. Now I want you to notice both of those sides right there that he gives it and he sustains it, he gives it to us and he holds it up. I know this seems a little bit generic, but I want you to stay with me 'cause it's big due to the fact that we try to find our hope in so many fickle things that will not last.
We try to find it in our money. We try to find it in our relationships, we try to find it in our community, we try to find it in our looks. We try to find it in our one-upping the neighbors on whatever that we have or don't have. But listen, it is God who actually says, I am your hope and I want you to see what he says about it in verse one. Watch what he says about it. He says, I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? And that's the question, right? That's the question. Now watch the answer. He says that my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Now, this is such an incredible statement. Why? Because it's telling us that when we ask the question, where does my help come? It doesn't come from the neighbors, it doesn't come from money, it doesn't come from family heritage, it doesn't come from riches or even my own intellect.
The Bible says that my help comes from the Lord, that our sole source of help, God has an unlimited and an ultimate power that he wants to give us. And watch how the psalmist presents this to us. The language of Psalms is this poetic language that places images in our minds and watch what the psalmist does here, he he basically draws us in by giving us a picture of a mountain. Now, if you drive up 5 75 or, or even if you drive out to the out west to the Rockies or you fly into Jackson Hole, one of the things that's so great about mountains is for some reason they almost take our breath away and they show us how big they are and how small we are, right? Have you ever felt that by just standing at the base of one of these mountains, right?
But the language that is here in this psalm says this. While that is great and it does show you something, it's showing us that as believers in Jesus as people who have given our hearts to the Lord, that I cannot just look to the mountains. I can look through the mountains. Do you know what it's saying to us? It's saying that I can look through the mountains to something bigger that created that mountain and his name is God. And I love how the psalmist does this and how it contrasts the world. You know why? Because here's what the world wants you to do. The world wants you to put your eyes to the ground. The world wants you to put your gaze to the floor, but God wants you to cast your eyes to him to lift your chin and look toward him. Now, no.
Notice this not just a look with your eyes, it's a look with your soul. That's what the psalmist is saying here. The psalmist is saying that his gaze didn't stop just when he looked to the mountains, he looked beyond the mountains. So the one that created it, now this is really big in their land. You say, well Matt, why is it really big? Well, if you're doing a Bible reading plan that's chronological over the last couple of weeks, I can't tell you how many times in that plan you have read something like this. The so and so king did not tear down the high places. Can I get an amen? Anybody that's seen that like a hundred times, right? You're like, you guys just tear the things down already, right? But what these guys would do is on every mountaintop that was available, they would build these little worship structures to Baal, the little G God of Baal, and they would build these structures to worship God.
And what God is saying here is that, hey, your hope is bigger than the mountain. Your hope is bigger than these little structures that you build on the mountain that your hope should be focused on. The one that has made the mountain in his name is Jehovah. And when you do that, some things begin to happen in your life. You see, one of the things about the blessings of God is they always come with this contrasted statement that as a believer in Jesus, there is always a step that I need to make to walk in. And in this one, the step is, is that my focus needs to change from looking down at the world to looking up at the creator of the mountains. But what happens when I look up to the creator of the mountains? What happens? Well, what happens is, is that we begin to walk into the hope that God has given us.
In fact, lemme show you the hope When our gaze changes, look at verse three and four with me. It says this. It says that he, this is what happens when your focus changes. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he wa. He who watches over Israel will never slumber nor sleep. So what does that promise us? It promises us a couple really substantial things. Now I put 'em in your notes for you. It promises us first of all, that when our gaze changes, number one, it is God. Here it is. It is actually God that reaches down and it is God that stands me up. Do you know that it is not your job to stand yourself up. It's not your friend's job to stand you up. It is not your neighbor's job. It is not your spouse's job.
It is God's job. In fact, look at verse three. Look at what it says. It says He God will not let your foot slip. What is that saying about your neighbor? It's not saying anything about your neighbor. Not that they can't help, but God is the ultimate hope giver and God is the ultimate stander upper. And sometimes we've put so much stress and so much tension on all the other people in our lives to stand us up where God is saying, it's my role. First, God's the stander upper. God says, put your gaze on me and I will reach down into your mess and I will pull you up. It is never intended to be your spouse's job. It's God's job. It's never intended to be your parents' job. It's God's job. He's the stander upper and he wants to make you stand. In fact, this idea of standing firm is all over the Bible.
It's all over the Bible. Paul speaks about it so much. In fact, I wanna read a couple verses over you about standing firm. When God stands you up, watch what happens in your life. It says this. Ephesians six, verse 11. It says, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, watch this, you may be able to stand your ground and after you've done everything to stand, stand firm again. But what can we stand in man? We can stand in a gun a bunch of things. Lemme give you a couple of them. First we can stand in the Lord. Look at Philippians four. One says, therefore my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for my joy and crown.
Watch what he says. Stand firm in the Lord and in this way, my dear friends, we stand in the Lord. What else do we stand in? When God stands us up, we stand in his grace. We stand in His grace. Look at this one outta Romans five, it says this, therefore Romans five, one, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith. Watch this into this. What this grace by which we now stand. Do you realize that we stand in the Lord because of his power? We stand in grace because of what he has freely offered to us. This is nothing that we've earned. It's nothing that I can get on my own. It's because God has put me in his grace. But not only is it the Lord and grace, we also stand thirdly in the gospel.
We stand in the gospel. Look at uh, chapter 15 verse one of one Corinthians. It says, now, brothers and sisters, I wanna remind you of the gospel I preach to you which you received and on which you have what taken your stand. Are you seeing how this is building? We stand in the Lord. We stand in grace, we stand in the gospel. What is the gospel? Is the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus that's been freely offered to us? And lastly, we stand in faith. First Corinthians 16, verse 13 says, be on your guard and stand firm in the faith. You see, here's the deal. When God stands us, it's not me. It's not my power. It's not my will. It's not me doing it. It is God lifting me and God standing me in himself and in his grace and in his gospel and in his faith and ultimately it's God that I will stand before him one day with nothing but the blood of Jesus covering me.
You see, God stands us when our gaze moves to him, but he doesn't stop there. He stands us. But secondly, it's God that watches over me. You know, it's one thing for God to just stand us up and leave us and walk away from us. But that's not what the psalmist is saying. It's saying also secondly, that it's God that watches over me. It's watch this in the verse. I love this. In verse three it says this, he will not let your foot slip. He here it is, who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Six times in this psalm, this phrase watches over is presented to us. It's actually the Hebrew word shamar. It's the Hebrew word shamar. 468 times is it used all throughout the Old Testament. That's a lot. Why? Because God not only just stands you up, but God shamar you.
You know what that means? It means that he's your protector. It means that he's your provider. It means that he's your night watchman that's over you and that he shamar your life when your gaze of your soul is on him. In Genesis two, Adam was told to Shamar the garden of Eden and he failed. He didn't watch it. In Genesis chapter 12, it was Abraham that was called to watch over our shamar God's people. And he failed. Every time man is asked to watch over something, they always fail. But when God promises, he always lives out. This promise he always does. Why? 'cause God stands us. God watches over us and write this third one down. It's even better. God shields us. He shields me. Are you seeing these promises when my gaze is fixed? Not on the world, but on him. He stands me.
He watches me and he shields over me. See, Matt, what does that mean? Well look at the verse and it'll, it'll explain it. Look at verse five. It says, the Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. Now, that's a little bit weird for us, the poetic language there, but I want you to think about the fact that what he's trying to communicate here is that we have the protection of the mighty God. What does God do? God shields us. He is the Actually, what did he say? He's the shade at your right hand. Look at the details. 'cause the details matter, right? Shade to us is not a big deal unless you're at beach camp this week, got a little bit of sun, right? It's not a big deal to us. But for them this time period and this place, man, the sun will burn you up.
It will dehydrate you. He is your shade, but he's your shade Where? What did it say at your right hand? Now, sorry, south Pauls, but I want you to think about something as a warrior. Your shield was in your left hand, your sword was in your right hand, and that literally means that God is the shield even on your blind spots. Why you had the shield on the left. Are you seeing what he's saying here? He keeps going though not only is he shade, not only is your right hand, but watch this. Verse five again says, the Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. Now, that's a little weird, right? We kind of get the idea of the sun burning you up. But what about this whole moon thing?
The whole moon thing is awesome. Why? Because in this time, actually in some places today, it's still prevalent. They thought that too much exposure to the full moon would actually drive you mad. It would drive you mad. You say, what are you talking about? I don't know. I'm not making it up. I'm just telling you what they believe in. Actually, it's where we get our word lunatic, right? Lunatic. So if you put all of this together, you're seeing that God is with us at our hottest moments when things seem to be beaten down on us, God is with us. Even in your crazy, can I get an amen to some crazy in the house, even in our crazy God is with us and that God is in front of us and God is behind us and God is with us, and God is shielding us and God is protecting us, and God is walking over us.
This is the hope we have when we take our eyes off of this and we put our eyes onto this, but it doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop with him being just as part of the journey as he is the destination. It doesn't stop with him being the giver and sustainer of our help and hope. Here's the third one, and this one's really short. Write this down. We have hope because God will be with me forever. Forever. Are you feeling this? Look, in fact, I want you to see it in verse seven. It says, the Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. Here it is, verse eight. And the Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forever more. You know what? For the original audience, you know what this meant? It meant that, hey, God is not just concerned with us on our way to the temple, right?
He's not just concerned with us while we're at the temple. He's concerned with us even as we go home to the temple. That's the original audience taking that. But do you know what it means to us? It means that God is with us. And God, from the moment I give my heart to him, from the moment I surrender my control to him, from the moment I come before him and I confess my need for a savior, I invite him to be my Lord. I invite him to forgive me of all my sin and be my savior. Listen to me church. From that moment on, he is sealed you, he has secured you. He has lifted you out of the mire. He becomes your protector. He becomes your shield, he becomes your watchman, and he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. No matter how isolated, no matter how lonely, no matter how downcast, no matter how many times you fall, no matter how many times you blow it, God is our hope.
Deuteronomy 31, 6 says, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them. You can put because of anything if you want to. For the Lord your God, listen to this. Encouragement goes with you and he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. Listen, church, this psalm, this song is something to hold your life on to. You can put your gaze on this earth all you want to. You can put your gaze on your friends. You can put your gaze on your workmates. You can put your gaze on the stuff of this world. But do you know where our hope really comes from? The maker of the heavens and the earth? So here's how I'm closing it this morning. Have you given the maker of the heavens of the earth your life? I'm not talking about did you go to Sunday school once?
I'm not talking about did you go to a camp once? I'm not talking about did you buy a Bible or even got emotional at a worship service. But has there been a moment in your life where you've surrendered all of you, to all of whom I said, yes, Lord Jesus, be my. If not, you can't walk in the hope that he offers. But here's the great part about it. The offer is there of hope today. Jesus is offering himself to you today. Do you need to trust him? Just a minute, we're gonna have an imitation. I'm gonna stand right over here by this next steps banner and, and I think there's some of you in your this, this place, this set, this morning that, that you need to give your heart to Jesus, your life to Jesus. You need him to save you and put his life on yours in just a minute.
If that's you, I want you to stand up as soon as everybody stands up, and as soon as I walk, you walk and let's walk right over here to this next step, banner together and just look at me and go, Hey Matt, I need Jesus today. What do I need to do? I'd love to pray with you. For some of you, you are believers today, but oh boy, have you been trying to find your hope and other things? I got news for you. It might last for a morning. It might last for a season, but only when your eyes are on the maker of the heavens of the earth and your soul is pointed to him, will you find hope?