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- finds you in good health, in good spirits, and full of good hope.
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- Well, regarding hope, I suppose you look on the news and you might feel like there's not much to be hopeful about.
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- In fact, I just saw on Facebook a little while ago that someone had posted that a bunch of buses were leaving the
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- Chicago area, buses filled with these Antifa anarchists. They were filled with these people, and they were leaving the
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- Chicago area and heading for Illinois farm country. Supposedly they were going to come out into the farm country of Illinois and wreak terror in the hearts of common farm folk all over the state, lighting fires, burning barns, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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- I read that and I kind of wondered, have these people done their research? Do they know what it's going to look like when they're staring down the the long barrel of a 12 gauge?
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- I don't know. I don't put a whole lot of stock in that anyway, but nevertheless, interesting stuff, interesting days that we're living in.
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- A lot of things to keep your attention when you're paying attention to the news.
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- Keep your focus on all kinds of dangerous stuff. Yesterday, speaking of the news, we discussed what we see when we're watching the crowds protesting and the rioters and so forth on the news.
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- Today, kind of like along the same theme, let's consider the question, where are you looking?
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- Where are you looking? Now there are a couple of possibilities that are brought up in the songs of ascent.
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- You know what those are? Those are 15 of the psalms in the Bible, Psalms 120 through 134, that comprised a songbook, if you will, that was the songbook of pilgrims as they made their way to Jerusalem three times a year for what are called the pilgrim festivals.
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- Wherever the people lived in Israel, at least the men, and many times this was a family outing, they would make these journeys from their home to Jerusalem.
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- So you remember when Jesus was 12 years old, he was living back in Jerusalem, we read in Luke chapter 2 that every year they would, at the
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- Feast of Passover, they would make the journey to Jerusalem for the festival, for the
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- Feast of Passover. And typically these people, the people in particular community would travel in a caravan, maybe extended families would travel together and so forth.
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- And that's why when Jesus' family went to Jerusalem, when they went home, they're traveling in a caravan and they typically would travel in groups by gender.
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- So the men would travel together, the women would travel in another group together, and they just have a good time of fellowship and so on and so forth.
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- And the children, if they were under age 13, they would travel with the moms.
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- If they were 13 or older, they would travel with the dads. And Jesus was right on that bubble, and so dad thought he was traveling with mom, mom thought he was traveling with dad, and that kind of a thing.
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- Well anyway, they were pilgrims on this journey. And so typically the travelers, the pilgrims, would sing these songs of ascent as they were heading up to Jerusalem.
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- Now because these songs are brief, very few verses long, they could easily be memorized, and that made it easy for them to sing.
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- So imagine a small caravan traveling along and and the guys are talking, they're having a good time, and then all of a sudden one of the people just starts singing
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- Psalm 120. In my distress I called to the Lord and he answered me.
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- And as he starts to sing, the rest of the group then joins in. Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue.
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- And they go on singing through Psalm 120. So they finish the song and an hour or so goes by, and then someone else starts up with the next psalm in the hymn book, and that next psalm in their hymn book gives us one of the optional places to focus our attention.
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- The next psalm begins, I lift up my eyes unto the hills. From where does my help come?
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- Why the hills? What's so significant about lifting up the eyes to the hills?
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- Was this, were they saying that they expected their help to come from the hills? No, it was something altogether different.
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- Let me illustrate it like this. Several years ago when we were still living in Vermont, so it would have been at least 20 years ago now,
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- Chris and I visited New York City between Christmas and New Year's Day. It was a
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- Christmas gift that I'd given to her. We went down to New York City. I'd got her tickets to go see a musical on Broadway that she wanted to see.
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- And we stayed at a hotel on 34th Street, not too awfully far from the Empire State Building.
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- And the theater was several blocks away. It was easy walking distance actually, but you know, it was far enough away.
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- And so we got ready for that evening out and we were going to go get a nice dinner. Took a cab to the restaurant, which wasn't too far from the theater.
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- Had dinner together, then went to see the show. And then the show was over.
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- After the show was over, probably about 10 30, we decided, you know, rather than drop another 20 bucks for a cab just to go,
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- I don't know, 15 blocks, we just walked back to the hotel. Wasn't really all that far. So off we went.
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- But the farther we walked from the theater, the fewer the people, the crowd thinned out.
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- And the streets were kind of dark and not a whole lot of people around.
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- So then I started finding myself, you know, looking everywhere, anywhere where there could be a potential threat.
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- I'd see somebody coming up the street and I'd kind of size them up as maybe a potential mugger.
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- I was looking to the hills. You see, to the Jewish pilgrims, the hills represented potential danger, threats to their well -being and to the safety of their caravan.
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- The hills were the haunts of the highwaymen, the robbers that were looking to assault vulnerable travelers and plunder them of anything of value.
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- You remember that parable of Jesus of the Good Samaritan told about the guy who was heading back to Jericho from Jerusalem and he was abused and robbed by one of these high women.
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- He appeared out of the hills, robbed and beat the man, and then took off back into the the hiding places in the hills.
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- So one option, you can look at the hills, the threats, the danger, the potential assaults that would make you another victim like those that you're seeing on the news.
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- Looking at the hills and wondering, where is my help going to come from? That can paralyze you, can't it?
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- Has it? Do you find yourself in a constant state of anxiety these days?
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- Perhaps maybe for the last two and a half months, first COVID, now riots,
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- Antifa. Looking at the hills can do that to you. But the
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- Jewish pilgrims have an answer to that question. They saw all the news stories, they heard eyewitness testimonies of those who had been pilgrims on journeys before and ended up being attacked by highwaymen and they lost all their money and their provisions and that potentially paralyzing fear crept into their hearts.
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- Where is my help coming from? The song asks. But then the poet in song answered that fear -filled question.
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- Can you hear the confidence swell as they raise their voices in the next line of the song?
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- My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Where is your help going to come from?
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- From the personal covenant -keeping God, the Lord, who made covenant with you if you've received
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- Jesus as your Lord and Savior. From the mighty Almighty Creator, the one who made heaven and earth and everything in it, including the hills.
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- So from this confident faith -filled affirmation, the song then further encourages the pilgrim.
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- Your helper won't go to sleep on the job. Your helper is your keeper, keeping you from calamity of any kind, keeping your life, keeping your going out and your coming in forever.
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- In other words, blessed pilgrim, your Savior and Lord is sovereignly guarding to ensure that all of his plans for you for the duration of your life that he has marked out for you, that those plans will come to pass.
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- So if you're looking at the hills, wondering where in the world help is going to come from, remind yourself your help comes from out of this world, from the one who made it.
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- Tomorrow we'll look at another one of these songs of ascent to see an alternative to just always looking at the hills.
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- In the meantime, let's pray and ask God to give us a good day today and be looking away from the hills, be trusting in our
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- God who made them. So Heavenly Father, I pray that today as we look at the hills, we see the areas of potential danger and threat that could come our way.
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- I pray that we would remember that our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
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- This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Well, all right,
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- I hope that encourages you as you do look to look at the hills. You see them, you can't escape them if you watch the news or anything like that, read the newspaper and know what's going on in this world.
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- I trust that you'll just remember your help comes from the Lord. Have a good day and God bless.
