On My Way Up | Psalms of Ascent - Week 2

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To learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, including our service times here in Franklin, Tennessee, visit us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

And now, here is this week's message.

So good to be with you guys.

My name is Tori.

I'm the associate pastor here at Gateway.

To those of you who are watching online, wherever you're watching from, so glad that you could be a part of today as well.

Um it is summertime.

There's a lot of travel going on.

I was talking to some friends yesterday who were getting ready to make their way down to Disney World today, uh, my old stomping ground of Orlando.

I uh I wish them good luck.

Um that's all I had for them.

Uh no, but we were talking about it actually got me thinking about a friend of mine who had three kids at the time, but was going to take his kids down to Disney World.

And uh they were making the trip down from uh Chattanooga, Tennessee, down to Orlando.

It's about a nine-hour drive.

And so they were gonna get up really early in the morning, try to get there as early as they could so they could have some of the afternoons in the parks or the hotel pools, all that stuff.

And they stop around Valdosta, uh, which is on 75, it's right at that Georgia, Florida line.

And they decide they're gonna get some food.

And uh they're broke because they bought tickets to the most expensive theme park in America.

Um and so they stop at McDonald's and they let the kids out.

They're running, you know, wild and crazy.

They've been cooped up in the car for about six hours at this point, and uh they're having just a blast, you know, running through the tubes and jumping on all the stuff.

And um, they're there for about 30 minutes, they get their McNugget and Apple Break and you know, sip on their milk and um, you know, having a blast, they say, All right, kids, who's ready to go to Disney World?

And the kids have a meltdown.

They don't want to leave.

They're having so much fun with Ronald McDonald and the hamburglar that they don't have any time for Mickey Mouse and uh Cinderella's Castle.

And, you know, the mom's kind of getting a kick out of this because she thinks it's funny, and dad is looking at his empty bank account saying, We have gone wrong.

You know, we have we have lost it somewhere.

You know, the funny part about this, though, is that the kids they they had no concept of Disney World.

They had no idea where they were headed.

Right?

In their mind, McDonald's was the most fun thing that they could even imagine.

And so the thought of moving on from this place to go to somewhere else seemed only like bad news.

Now, the reason that I tell you this story is because when you don't know what's ahead, it becomes very easy to settle for less.

This summer we're walking through a section of the Psalms called the Songs of Ascent.

This is Psalms 120 through 134, and these Psalms were known as the travel songs of God's people.

They were songs that the people of God would sing uh as they were making their pilgrimage up to Jerusalem.

Uh and when we say up, we mean that in a very literal sense.

Jerusalem sat about 2,500 uh feet above sea level, and it's not very far from the sea.

Okay, so this is some steep terrain.

And three times a year there would be a national and religious celebration in Jerusalem, and people from all over the nation of Israel, they would put their lives on pause and they would journey to Jerusalem to celebrate.

Now, the 15 songs that we're looking at in this series, uh, they were not written by the same author.

They weren't even written at the same time, but they were later gathered and compiled together and put in a particular order, and they became the songs that the travelers would sing so that they could spiritually prepare uh as they made their way to Jerusalem.

And together they mapped out not just a physical long climb, but a spiritual climb.

And psalm by psalm and step by step, they were trying to prepare their hearts as they made their way up to God.

Now, last week Charlie kicked off this series by discussing the difference between a journey and a pilgrimage.

Now, a journey is all about the experience.

You hear people say this from time to time, you know, I'm just I'm going on a journey, and what they mean is I'm not really sure where the road is leading, but I'm excited just to be on the road.

A pilgrimage, on the other hand, is all about a destination.

You see, someone who's on a journey is open to wherever the road may lead.

But a pilgrim, a pilgrim sees the road as simply the cost for arriving at a particular destination.

And the spiritual point for us is that God's people have always been a pilgrim people.

We are taken from a low place, going to a high place, right, moving toward God with God.

Now, last week we started with Psalm 120.

And the whole message of Psalm 120 comes down to one honest sentence.

I'm in a bad place.

Where I'm at is no good.

When we were drawing straws to see who would have to preach that message.

No, I'm just kidding, we didn't do that.

But it is a tough message to preach because there is no positive spin in the psalm.

Unlike a lot of the psalms that start with bad news and end with good news, this one just is bad news all the way through.

And the point of it is to realize that where we're starting is not good.

Right?

The psalmist says he's living in Meshech and Kedar, which doesn't mean a lot to us, but to them they would have understood that we are far from where we're supposed to be.

And not only are we far, but the place that we're living in, it's not necessarily a pleasant place.

It's a violent place, it's a hostile place, it's a place where everybody's always at each other's throats.

And in fact, the psalmist writes, he says, Too long I have lived amongst those who hate peace.

I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

So this is where the pilgrimage starts, not in triumph, but in trouble, with an honest assessment that the place where they're at and where they're starting from is not a good place.

And it's important that we start here.

Like I tend to be an optimist, but I want to make the most out of a bad situation.

I like to look on the bright side.

But the spiritual principle here is that we're never going to get up to God until we realize just how far down here we are.

This is the this is the start of the Sermon on the Mount.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt.

Blessed are those who are completely and totally destitute.

Because until you realize just how far away from God you are, you're never going to be able to make that journey in his direction.

And here's what I found.

In our modern world, it's really easy to kind of cover up a bad situation.

To put lipstick on a pig.

Most of us in the room, we are provided for.

Most of us in the room, our lives are not that bad.

By the world standards, we are one of the wealthiest places on planet Earth.

Things are pretty good.

And it's easy for us to assume that we're not as bad as we think that we are.

But there is a moment when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and puts his finger on what's not working, and it's like the light bulb goes off in your head, and you realize I'm in a bad place.

Not only are things worse than I thought they were, but they're so bad I'm not even sure where to go from here.

And when you realize where you're at, and the weight of that starts to rest on your shoulders, you're gonna have one of two responses.

You're gonna despair, or you're gonna find something to put your hope in.

You're either gonna give up or you're gonna look up.

And if you choose to look up, then the next question is, what are you putting your hope in?

And this is exactly what Psalm 121 opens with.

You see, the truth is there's a lot of things that we can put our hope in.

The world's full of things that that would vie and try to capture our hope.

And what we hope for usually traces back to what it is that we're defining as what's wrong.

Right?

If I feel like my problem in my life is that there's a lack of money, then my hope is gonna get anchored in a better job or a better market, right, or a better number in my account, or my investments doing what I want my investments to do.

If my problem is my health, my hope is going to be anchored in my physical abilities or getting the healing that I'm praying for, or getting positive test results back, or the diagnosis that I'd like to see.

If I think that my problem in my life is really just all about my relationships, that if this person would just stop doing that thing, or if they would change their behavior, or if this person would be removed from my life, or maybe it's a lack of relationship, and you're just waiting for Mr.

or Mrs.

Wright to show up, and you can you're just convinced that if they would just come into your life, then you would get to this place where there's relational harmony and then and then you would be happy.

And honestly, this is why a lot of people find themselves in church.

Or it's not because they're necessarily looking for God, but it's because they're looking for something.

And somewhere along the way, someone said, Hey, have you tried religion?

You gotta meet this guy, Jesus.

He knows how to fix things.

And I don't even say that in like a like a dunking-on way.

Like when you, that's how most of us started.

Something in our life was wrong.

And we went to Jesus and said, We need your help with this.

The gospel is full of stories who come to Jesus because they need something from him, and when he provides for them and does the thing that they're asking, it's like this, their perspective shifts, and they realize that's great, but but if he can do that, maybe it's not that he's just a fixer, maybe he's something more entirely.

And so there's this shift that has to happen in us.

The problem with anchoring our hope in just something getting fixed is on the way up, we're gonna pass a lot of places that promise to provide the same thing God will.

There's a lot of other solutions out there.

There's a lot of golden arches, artists and McNuggets.

And every one of them promises the very thing that you are making this trek to God for.

And what makes it harder is sometimes they give you the thing that you're after.

Sometimes they don't, but but oftentimes they do.

And here's what they all have in common they're closer, they're quicker, and they're easier.

And that presents a problem for us as a culture because our culture is addicted to now, fast, and easy.

But we've been invited on this pilgrimage.

Now, a pilgrimage is by definition later, slow, and hard.

So it's not necessarily something that we want to sign up for.

And so it's important to recognize that the tension that we're all living in is that God has more for us.

But more is hard, and there's always something closer offering us less.

Now, here's how Psalm 121 begins.

He says, I lift my eyes to the hills.

Where does my hope come from?

This is a verse that we've done a really good job at sentimentalizing.

We put it on coffee mugs.

Your grandma probably has this on a needlepoint pillow, right?

Or some mountain sunrise calendar.

Like the hills were this place that we could look to and be inspired by and find comfort in.

But that's not what the psalmist is writing.

Right?

Because to the ancient pilgrim, the hills were not a comforting place.

The hills were dangerous.

The hills are where the the animals were, and the bandits, and those who would seek to do harm.

And as you're navigating this narrow trail, there's lots of creeks and crevices that they would be hiding in, waiting to jump out.

There's lots of shea that they could have been hidden.

There's a hill that you don't know what's on the other side of that hill, but it could be dangerous.

But when you think about the story of the Good Samaritan, the guy who was beaten and left for dead, that was in the hills.

So nobody wanted to go to the hills.

So when he's writing this, he's not writing this as a this as a place of comfort.

He's saying, I don't like where I'm at.

I'm looking at a lot of threats below, and when I fix my eyes up, I see temptation above.

Because atop the hills weren't just um places to gather, places to get water, right?

This is where the pagan shrines would have been built.

So as they're making your way to Jerusalem, to the temple of God, they're no doubt going to pass hundreds of false gods who would promise to do for them what God would.

And so the question becomes for the pilgrim do I want to make the journey, do I want to take the risk, or do I want to settle for what these other gods are offering me?

The Bible called these places high places.

They were altars to the pro um the god Baal and Ashra.

And when the psalmist asks, where does my help come from?

He he he's desperate.

He's anxious.

He's wrestling with the idea of taking the easy way out.

Because what he sees are other sources.

And each one of these high places would have been whispering.

Why keep walking?

Why take the risk?

Why go through all that trouble for something that I can give you?

My way is quicker, my way is easier, my way is safer, you can be back home and back to your normal life faster.

And the truth is we pass our own high places all the time.

We've been called to follow Christ.

And there's a lot of things that we're waiting on God for.

And sometimes we just get tired of waiting.

Sometimes we get tired of walking.

Sometimes we get a little impatient.

Right?

I mean, for the confused and insecure person, there's the high place of information.

Right?

So much of our comfort in modern day security is just centered around knowing everything.

How's the situation at work going to turn out?

What's going on with my health?

So we walk around with wearable tech that tracks her heartbeat and her blood pressure and everything going on.

If we just know what's going on with our life, then we can remain in control.

Then introduce artificial intelligence, which is this demigod we carry around in our pocket and we consult it like the oracle of Delphi ten times a day.

Look, I'm glad I can ask Alexa how long I should microwave food so I don't have to ask Kay anymore.

Right?

But but oftentimes we'll just trust this thing as the infallible word of God.

As opposed to, right, that's that's the short way.

Right?

But the pilgrim way demands that, you know, it's not a substitute for the Holy Spirit.

Somewhere in my life I have to carve out time to get on my knees and open up God's word and pray and fast and seek God and wait on Him to speak.

That's longer, that's slower, that's more difficult.

There's more ambiguity there.

It requires more faith and not sight.

Right?

For the impatient and prideful person, there's the high place of self.

The self-help industry will clear$50 billion this year.

This is an entire marketplace that is based on the premise that you have everything you need to live the life you want if you can just optimize it, manifest it, or hustle your way out of your current situation.

That the problem isn't that there's this need that you have, it's just that you're not doing things right.

And if you can just tweak this, then you'll finally unlock your full potential.

Right?

Rather than waiting on the Lord to transform me and sanctify me and be patient in that process and recognize that even when I'm getting it wrong, he still loves me and he's still providing for me.

That's more difficult.

There's the high place of those who of power, right?

For this appeals to people who, uh, when the world gets out of control, they just want to give responsibility to someone.

Every four years we have this in America, right?

Where there's a tug of war for the election, each side believing that if they can just get their person in power, they'll establish the world order that they want.

Or the high place of money, or the high place of sex, or the what whatever high place that that, whatever void there is in your life, there is a high place for that thing.

The problem is, is the shortcut never satisfies in full.

Now, look, it does satisfy.

Oftentimes it does give you the thing that you want.

They wouldn't be tempting if they didn't do that.

But the disappointment that I think many of us in the room are used to feeling is that we'll go to those things and we'll lay down our life and we'll do the work that it requires to get the thing that this thing is prominent us, only to realize six months later that that thing didn't fill the void in us that we actually needed.

And just because it gave me answers, I have more questions now.

Or just because I have somebody in my life, it doesn't feel the fact that I don't feel whole and I don't feel worthy.

Or maybe I have more money and I have more resources, but I still don't have this sense of purpose in the world to even know how to direct those things so that my life would actually matter.

And the the pattern of these false gods is that they will take your worship but leave you standing right where you started.

Right?

It's the nature of the counterfeit.

So as the psalm continues, the pilgrim asks the question, but then he answers himself.

And when he answers, it's a deliberate redirect of his attention.

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

In other words, my help doesn't come on the hill.

My help comes from the one who made the hill.

My help isn't up on the mountain.

My help is from the mountain mover.

Everywhere on this road, I'm gonna look at something that is created.

My help comes from the creator.

Why am I gonna climb a hill and pray to it when I can pray to the one who set it there?

And there's the shift that happens in the psalmist when he realizes the thing that I'm hoping and longing for isn't found in what those places can provide for me.

My help is found in the one who made it all.

My help is not a what, my help is a who.

Now, if that's true, if God himself is the thing that we're after, then that means we're gonna have to do something really hard.

Which is not take a shortcut, but to keep walking a very long, very difficult, very dangerous road, and trust that he's gonna get us there.

When I was in college, I had the chance to walk part of an actual pilgrimage.

Um it's called the Camino de Santiago or the Way of St.

James.

And the path that we took actually started at the French, the French-Spain border, um, and worked its way across northern Spain all the way to the West Coast, where there was the um cathedral of of the Santiago de Compostela.

And it was a very like one of my one of my all-time favorite experiences.

Um it's one of those things you do, you leave different.

But one of the things I remember most is that when we were on this trek, every morning we had the opportunity to decide whether or not we were going to walk or we were gonna ride the bus.

Now, this was a journey that we did over the course of 21 days.

And uh let me just say day one, a lot of fun to walk.

Day two, not a lot of fun to walk.

All right.

We're putting in 18 to 23 miles a day on foot through some pretty uh gnarly terrain.

Not to mention we had this heat wave coming up from Africa.

Um Africa's hot, if you didn't know.

Um and so a heat wave from there is pretty intense.

And they would ask, do you want to walk?

Do you want to, do you want to ride?

And of course, you know, we've got a bunch of 20-something year old guys, like none of us are getting on the bus, right?

That's that's all pride gone at that point.

And so we we we make this journey.

Now, when you're walking 18 to 23 miles a day, uh, you don't necessarily walk with the person you're with.

Um you can if you'd like to, but you're gonna be doing this for like 12 hours during the day.

So you kind of just figure out what's your own pace and and you walk that.

Some people are are slow and steady.

They like to just kind of hammer it out but keep it low pace.

I, on the other hand, I'd like to like go really fast, get to a spot, take a break, then go really fast, take a break.

Um, so everybody had their own thing.

So me and a buddy, we were the fast movers, and so we're kind of out ahead of everybody, and we realized this.

It's been like 10 hours since we saw our friend.

Um, and we're starting to get worried because usually when we take a break, we knew it was time to go when he finally caught up to us.

And uh, so we had made a couple stops by then.

It's it's getting close to evening time, and all of a sudden we see him come around this corner while we're taking a break in this little village.

And uh, I mean, he just looks like a soulless husk of a man.

I mean, all life is gone from this dude's eyes.

And as he gets closer, I realize that he is carrying his shoes in his hand.

Um, he had bought new hiking boots that were not broken in before the trip.

And uh, as he gets closer, he's got these cloth wraps around his blistered feet, and you can just see the blood coming through the cloth.

And uh, we didn't even say anything, we're just looking at him, and he walks by us and he says, I will never ride the bus.

And we're like, Come on, brother, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

Give him an attaboy.

And uh look, if you're gonna go the way of the pilgrim, you should know what you're signing up for.

But the way of following Jesus, the way of the pilgrim is more difficult.

I don't know why we've sold this idea that following Jesus is the bus and not the path.

That if you can just get in the bus with Jesus, he's gonna drive you to the next destination, you're gonna skip all the hardship along the way, and that you'll be able to reap the fruits of where you're going, but not have to suffer along the.

There is no taking up your cross.

There is no cross.

As a matter of fact, it's a 20-minute bus ride up the road and a dinner when you get there.

Right?

It's not that.

And the psalmist knows that too.

Because after he establishes that his help comes from the Lord, the rest of the psalm is him detailing the threats that he knows that he's going to encounter while he's on this walk.

And the first threat that he addresses is the slipping foot.

He says, He will not let your foot slip.

He who watches over you will not slumber.

The first danger on a mountain trail is obvious that you might lose your footing.

Right?

These were narrow paths that they're walking on.

One loose stone, one misplayed step, and you could go down the side of a cliff.

So there's the physical threat there.

Right?

But what we also see in the Psalms is that a slipping foot is this picture for something much bigger, and that is our own stumbling, our own failures and missteps.

The types of things that happen in our life that we got nobody to blame but us.

You know, I think one of the toughest pills to swallow sometimes is that the biggest threat to me is me.

That I can really make a mess of things when I do it my way.

But notice what he writes.

He says, he keeps your foot.

But the God you're walking toward is also the God who's with you, holding you up every step of the way.

It's like my own toddler when I'm teaching them to walk and they stumble, right?

It's it's me holding their hand that actually keeps them from totally collapsing until they find their footing and they're able to keep walking again.

I mean, this is a word for a young person in the room who who is in the season of transition.

Maybe you're getting ready to go off to school, maybe you're going into senior year, maybe you're in college and you're preparing to graduate.

And you know, one of the scariest parts about this season of your life is you're terrified of making the wrong decision.

What if I pick the wrong school, or what if I go to the wrong job, or should I date this person, or should I marry this person?

And I can remember being in a season of my life where I'm just praying and begging God, like, will you just tell me what to do?

It's not an obedience problem.

If you'll tell me what to do or tell me where to go, I will gladly do that thing.

What a comfort that we have in this verse.

He will not let you slip.

Or you're worried about making a bad choice, and what he's saying is, make a choice, I'm with you.

Right, if it's not a road that you're supposed to go down, I've learned that you can just trust God to close the door.

But in an effort to follow God, right, and you're trying to move in his direction, right, he is with you every step of the way.

That's something we can hold on to.

Here's the second threat it's the sun by day.

It says the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not harm you by day.

If you're in the desert, the sun is not an inconvenience, the sun is lethal.

Right?

The sun will kill you.

And so in this world, shade wasn't just a commodity.

Shade was the difference between life and death.

And notice where the Bible says God stands.

It says He stands at your right hand.

This is the position of a bodyguard.

So what we see is this image where God is your protector, holding your shield, standing in between you and anything that would try to harm you.

Be that exhaustion, be that other people, be that the circumstances of life that just happen to come your way.

That God will protect you from these external threats to ensure that you get to where you're supposed to be going.

And then the third threat, nor the moon by night.

Now, the sun I get, the moon I don't get.

And I've been to the beach and got sunburned, I've never been moon burned.

So what's the moon going to do to me?

Now the ancients believed that the moon could do to your mind what the sun did to your body.

Right?

If the moon struck you, it would derange you.

Now, I thought this was pretty interesting.

This belief, as ancient as it may seem, is actually integrated into our English language.

The Latin word for moon is luna.

And what do we call it when someone's mind comes undone?

Lunacy or lunatic.

Right?

It's this idea that the moon can drive you crazy.

Just as there was sunstroke, there was moonstroke.

And here's why that matters.

Because the psalmist isn't just talking about the threats that come at you in the daylight.

He's talking about the external threats that come in the night.

This is the 2 a.m.

threats.

This is the anxiety that cripples you.

Or the depression that comes out of nowhere and completely flattens you.

Or when your life is overtaken with a sense of dread that you just don't know how to explain or make sense of.

When you're going through life and you feel like everything makes sense, but all of a sudden you find yourself in a place of confusion and you don't know how to discern between right and wrong, and should I do this or should I do that?

And you just feel like everything in your life is unraveling.

This is for the person who's tossing and turning in bed at 2 a.m., begging God just to go to sleep so you can find some rest because you just feel like there's no peace in your life.

And how the sun attacks you in the open, the moon is what unravels you at night when the lights go out.

But notice what he says.

He said, God keeps you there too, day and night.

This is the Hebrew way of saying the whole of time.

There is no hour, neither light nor dark, or any other facet of time that is outside of his watch.

Here's a really cool detail.

Remember the shrines of Baal that we had just talked about.

In the Baal stories and in the pagan religions of that day, they actually believed that their gods slept.

Usually they were sleeping because they had been coming off a bender or a rager.

And so the job of the priest was to go to the God and try to wake them up and convince them to do something for them.

This is why in the Elijah story, when Elijah's having this showdown with the prophets of Baal on the mountain, he starts mocking them.

And he says, shout louder.

Maybe your God is sleeping.

Maybe he needs to be woken up.

And what he's pointing out is that the gods of the hills sleep, but the God of the pilgrim never does.

You don't have to wake him.

You don't have to dance to get his attention.

You don't have to keep yourself through the night.

You don't have to wonder if you can close your eyes and go to sleep because you can trust that he never does.

That he is watching over you.

And the and the Hebrew word that the psalmist keeps hammering throughout this passage is the word shimar, which means to keep or to guard or to watch over.

He uses it six times in eight verses.

He says, keep, keep, keep, keep, keep, and he keeps using it.

And if the word God, it's the word that God uses when he puts Adam in the garden to keep it and to watch over it.

It's also the word and the blessing that we say every week here at Gateway, the Lord bless you and keep you.

The image of this word is to be in attentive and protective custody of someone.

This is a shepherd who is watching over his sheep.

This is a watchman who doesn't slumber when he's protecting his city.

It's a guardian who's aware of threats in every direction and whatever they might, wherever they might come from.

And he builds and builds upon this keeping until he gets to verse 8 and he says, The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

Going out and coming in should sound a little familiar as well.

These words represent the whole of your life.

Whether you're leaving or returning, whether you're working or resting, whether you're going out or you're coming in, both now and forevermore, the Lord is your keeper.

The biggest mistake that we could make when it comes to God's presence is believing that somewhere along the way we would do something that causes him to leave, or that he would get bored with us, or that he would get distracted, or that he would lose interest, or that he would quietly slip away.

Because the promise of this psalm is that he never will.

The Lord is our keeper.

Let me take you back to that trail in Spain.

One of my favorite pastor Charlieisms is we shouldn't frame things through good, bad, we should frame them through easy hard.

The pilgrim's way is hard.

But it's not bad.

Because it's on the path that the formation takes place to make sure that when we get to the place that we're going, that we're prepared to receive it as we should.

It would have been much easier to take the bus, but had I take the taken the bus, there wouldn't have been any shaping in me.

I wouldn't have grown.

I wouldn't have been able to hear God's voice more clearly.

And and when I look back, here's the the great irony is when I look back at my camera roll of that trip, none of my photos are the destinations where we stopped.

Almost all of my memories were made on the road.

And the same applies for us.

It's in the journey that we become the people who God has intended us to become.

And his promise isn't that the road would be easy or that the road would we wouldn't have trouble.

His promise is that we're gonna get it there.

Now this rubs some people the wrong way because I thought the psalm said that I would never slip, and I've been doing some slipping.

I thought it was the sun wouldn't get me, and I've definitely been harmed.

It would be frustrating.

Because it intends to imply that life is more like the bus.

But when we look at the whole of Scripture, there's one message that's clear.

That God's promise to the pilgrim is that you will arrive.

We have to deal with the fact that there were people in the Old Testament who God had promised them something.

And then they got sick and died.

Stephen was chosen by God and then they stoned him.

We talked about some of the Hebrews and uh some sorry, some of the heroes in Hebrews 11 last week, and in the Bible says that they didn't receive the things that they were promised.

So what do we do with that?

Well, the promise is that there is a reward that's free from this earthly world.

And God's promise is that our foot, not that it would never bleed, but that our foot would never finally or fatally slip away from God.

See, the guarantee isn't that you're not gonna have trouble.

The guarantee is that trouble doesn't get the last word.

And that promise that we have isn't backed by something small and insignificant.

It's backed by the blood of Christ.

This time I want to invite the ushers.

We're gonna pass out communion and we're gonna take this together in just a minute.

I've been reading through the Gospel of John recently and been really taking my time moving through John 14 through 17.

This is, or 13 through 17.

This is the time where Jesus is with his disciples on the night before he's crucified, and he's unpacking everything that they're gonna need to know for what's ahead.

And I love the honesty that Jesus addresses them with.

In fact, there's one point where he says, These things that I'm telling you now, I didn't tell you earlier, because if I had told you then, you wouldn't be ready for it.

But we see the reason that he's being so open now is in his prayer in John 17, when he's talking to God, he says, God, Holy Father, I am completely convinced that they know who you are.

When they had fixed their eyes on who God was and they knew what they were signing up for, they were prepared to hear this information.

They weren't staring down something easy, they were staring down imminent crucifixion and martyrdom.

And they know it's around the corner.

And Jesus looks at them in this incredibly difficult season and he says, Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Believe in God and believe also in me.

Guys, you can begin passing them out.

Last week we talked about the heroes in Hebrews 11.

And every one of these people were promised something.

And though many of them didn't see the promise come to fruition with their own eyes, they died in the middle.

We've seen that God made good on his word to do what he said he would.

And the truth for us is there's a lot of things that God is doing in the world that we're not gonna see.

Like the heroes of old, if the if the Lord tarries, we're gonna die in the middle.

But we can trust that God's gonna make good on his word.

And so what do we do?

Well, he follows up this tough reality that people didn't see what the end, right, that the thing that they had been hoping for, with this uh encouragement to the believers of today.

And he says, Well, let us run the race of endurance that's set before us.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our faith.

Right?

And that's what we do.

We fix our eyes on Christ and we run our race well.

And we trust that as long as we put our trust in him, he is our keeper who will ensure that we make it.

That one day we're gonna arrive.

And that no matter what this road may cost me in this life, my life will not be in vain, but it will count for something.

The promises that he will never lose us.

Jesus himself said, I am the good shepherd.

And I will never lose any who the Father give me.

And we can trust this promise because it's backed by his blood.

Together, we're gonna take communion.

I'm just gonna invite everybody to stand on your feet at this time.

Thank you.

This was a story that declared not just the past works of God, but the future promise of God.

And he takes the bread around the table and he breaks it and reinterprets it and says, This is my body broken for you.

Take an eat.

And this cup in the mill represented a cup of redemption.

This was a cup that remembered the salvific work that God did and the people of uh the Hebrews as they were leaving Egypt when he swallowed up the enemy.

And he says, This is my blood.

Just like we sang about earlier, my my blood is what will make me a reigning king.

It's what will dethrone the hostile powers and put me on the throne.

He says, Take and drink.

And according to the tradition of the meal, there would have been one more cup, which would have been the cup of praise, kind of celebrating the work God had done.

But Jesus stops the meal and he holds up the fourth cup, and he says, This cup, I will not drink of this cup, nor will you, until we're together with my Father in heaven.

And here's the promise that while we're in this waiting, we can eat and we can drink to remember the work that Christ has made possible, but we can trust in the promise that one day we're gonna sit around that table with him together as a family, that the shepherd who keeps us and the shepherd who watches over us, no matter how difficult our journey may be, he's gonna get us home.

That we are pilgrims who are gonna get to where we're going.

Not an ounce of his blood will ever be wasted.

And when we're washed with the blood and it covers us, and and when we talk about this, particularly the people who haven't heard this language before, it's it's grotesque and it's awkward and we don't know how to make sense of it.

That's the point.

It's meant to be a reminder of just how great the cost was, how backwards it is.

But that blood is our lifeline.

And that blood we can trust will get us home.

I'm gonna say a prayer and then we're gonna have some time of prayer.

We're gonna have this side of the altar open for those who would like to maybe pray by yourselves, this side of the altar over here.

If you've got something in your life that you're going through, maybe you just want to uh have somebody pray over you this morning, we'd love to have the opportunity to do that.

But together this morning, we trust that no matter what it is that we're going through or how difficult our season is, the Lord is our shepherd.

And we can trust Him.

Heavenly Father, we thank you.

Lord, what an honor it is to be in your house.

Lord, I thank you for the hope that we have.

Lord, I thank you that we walk this road with confidence.

Lord, I thank you that we don't have to be afraid.

Lord, I thank you that no matter what comes our way, Lord, that we have victory in you.

So, Lord, to those who need comfort this morning, I pray that there'd be comfort.

To those who need peace, I pray there'd be peace.

To those who need provision, I pray there'd be provision.

But Lord, I pray that all those things would be found in your presence.

Lord, give us more of you.

We thank you for these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.