God Is Our Keeper - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, July 20th. If you struggle to understand why God hasn't kept you from pain and heartache, stay with us. You'll hear a reassuring answer today as you learn how God reveals Himself as our keeper. Well, it was December 1977, and I was exhausted, tired, weary, worn, discouraged, and a little bit fearful. And I was taking some time off, in fact, about three months, not because I wanted to, but because I was forced to. I was up in West Virginia, and on this particular morning I woke up and decided I'd take a walk, and it was snowing, and I thought, well, I'm going to walk anyway. I was hurting deep down inside, and I just began to walk. And before I left, I put a little Bible I had in my pocket and my jacket and took off.

And so I'd walked about a mile or so, and I'd pray a little bit and cry a little bit and wonder what in the world was going on and wondering if I'd ever get back to preaching the gospel again and having myself a real difficult time and telling God what I thought and how I thought and asking Him what in the world was going on while this was happening to me. And I stopped, and I pulled out that Bible and opened it up, and when I did, I just opened it up and said, Lord, I need you to speak to my heart. Now, I'm not one to just say, open your Bible and say, aha, this is what you're saying, God, because you can turn to the book of Revelation and talk about the beast, and then you'll be in real trouble. So that's not the way to read the Bible. But on that particular day, God knew that I wasn't particularly interested in reading anything specifically.

I just just say something, God. I opened it up to the passage of scripture that I want us to read this morning. And when I read this chapter in the Psalms, I closed my Bible and I thought to myself, Lord, all of a sudden, my body weighs just as much, I feel just as heavy and just as tired and just as worn out. But somehow I knew that my heart was lighter because God had said something very, very specific to me. Now, I'm not going to tell you what He said to me until the end of this message.

So you got to listen carefully because I'm certain of this. He has a message here for you, no matter who you are and where you are, what you're going through. There is a message here, and I want you to turn to the hundred and twenty-first Psalm. And the title of this message is, God is our keeper. Hundred and twenty-first Psalm that more than likely you've read many, many times. And I want us to see how practical this is because God has something very specific and practical to say to every single one of us, no matter who we are. He begins by saying, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains or to the hills. From whence shall my help come?

That's a question. Well, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul.

The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. Now, more than likely the psalmist when he begins here by saying, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. He could have been thinking one of a number of things, but probably one of the things that he was thinking about was this.

That in the hill country, in the mountains, usually the robbers and the vagabonds and the thieves, they would hang out there and taking advantage of innocent travelers who were going their way, so it may be that he was looking at these mountains with a bit of anxiety and wondering what was there. I wonder how many of us have looked out into our future and what we could see is uncertainty. What we could see was maybe a bit of anxiety within our own heart and wondered the same thing. God, what's there?

What's out there in the future when we can't see it and we don't know what's there? Well, he certainly must have had a little bit of anxiety because he said, Where's my help coming from? And then he says, My help is coming from the Lord.

Just an affirmation of where his real sight was. And so he said, Where's my help coming from? And I wonder how many times you and I have looked around at our circumstances and say, God, how are you going to help me? Who's going to help me?

How are things going to work out in my life at this particular point? Well, the psalmist is certainly clear about that because immediately he says, My help is coming from the Lord. Now, everything he says from that point on rests upon the foundation that he knows who his God is. You see, if I don't know who God is and I don't have a personal relationship with him and I don't know something about the ways of God, how can I claim a promise of God if I'm not certain who he is and how he thinks and how he responds and if I'm not really sure what he thinks about me and how he relates to me and how many of his promises really apply to my life?

That's why it's so very important that you and I understand who is this God whom we serve. What is he like? What are his ways? How does he respond?

What moves the hand of God? What is it that God really and truly thinks about us? How does he feel toward us? How does he respond toward us? Well, the psalmist certainly knew by experience. He says, Jehovah God, Jehovah God is my helper. He is the one who created it all. Therefore, I can trust in him and depend upon him. Now, with that in mind, what I want us to do is to look at the rest of this psalm and apply it to our life in a very practical way because he certainly saw it in a very practical way.

And the terminology he uses and the phrases he uses here, upon first reading you think, well, what in the world is that about? What he's doing, he is simply saying, these are all the ways that God keeps me. He says, he will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

Now, what does he mean by that? Simply this, he's our protector. When we think about the ways in which he is our keeper, he protects us. Now, Satan's attack comes in all forms.

It comes in all directions. Sometimes it comes from a friend, from an enemy, from a family member, whatever it may be. But Satan is always there to attack. He says, God is our shade. That is, God is often called many things in the scripture. God is our salvation. God is our strength.

God is our horn of plenty. God is our shield. God is indeed our shield. And he says, for example, in Ephesians chapter six, he said, when he listed all the armament of the believer, helmet of salvation, breastlet of righteousness, he comes down to say, and above all taking the shield of faith, that is which is able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil. When you, listen, whether we, even before we leave home, during the day, wherever we are, Satan is always treacherously seeking to devour the child of God, seeking to do anything in his power he can to trip us up, to cause us to hurt in some fashion, in some way.

And yet he says, God is indeed our protector. He is always there, listen, warning us. That's why he gave us the Holy Spirit. Living on the inside of us to give us warnings about things that we don't even see. To give us, listen, you'll have what people call an intuition. That is the work of the Spirit of God giving us a warning about something that's coming our way.

Or giving us a warning of something that is close by. When we're not aware of our circumstances, he is always aware. And he stands by our side to protect us in every single circumstance of life. Does that mean that he will keep us from sinning?

Not necessarily. If we choose to sin against him, no he will not. But he certainly is there to warn us and to give us the privilege of avoiding it if at all possible.

Then I want you to notice something else about him. He says he's our shade on our right hand, sun won't smite you by day, noon by night. That means, listen, no matter what's going on, God is always there to protect us. Then he says, he will keep our soul. When he says he will protect us from evil, what is he talking about? Does that mean that he will keep us from sinning against him?

Well, oftentimes he does. When he will protect us from evil, he's talking about, you see, one of the very ideas of keeping is to restrain somebody. For example, how many times in a given day does God restrain you and me?

Only God knows that. He restrains us from thinking things that if we keep thinking we're heading the wrong direction. He restrains us oftentimes from saying things that would cause hurt and pain to someone else. He restrains us from acting in a way that would cause us to lose our testimony or witness for him. God is a keeper.

He says, I'm going to protect you from evil. For example, he says in First Corinthians chapter ten, no temptation taken you but such is as common to man. He says, but these temptations are, listen, common to man. But God, who is faithful, will not allow you to be tempted more than you are able.

What's he doing? He's restraining us. That is, he puts a restraint on temptation. He puts a restraint on the trials that he even allows in our life.

Why? Because he loves us and because he's a caretaker. He knows how to put a limit on what Satan can tempt us with and test us with. So he is a restrainer. He's a restrainer of Satan. And he's oftentimes a restrain in their life.

God can stir up such guilt in us. He can stir up such conviction within us that that conviction and that guilt becomes a restrainer from disobeying him and stepping out of his will for our life. He restrains us. He restricts us. He guards us. He keeps us. Then if you'll notice something else, he says, the Lord will guard your going out and your coming in. One of the ways that he keeps us.

Now watch this. What in the world does he mean by going out and coming in? What he's simply saying by using that terminology is he says, your entire life, every aspect of your life, God is the keeper. He is alert. He is attentive. He is restraining.

He is ministering, protecting in every way. He says, you're going out and you're coming in. Now, no matter where you are and where you're working, where you're playing, who your friends are, no matter what's going on, he says, you can count on me. I'm your keeper. I'm going to keep you. You're going out and your coming's in. Now, when I look at all the things that God has said here, then here's what I have to ask.

I say, no, wait a minute. I hear what you're saying, that you're my keeper. You're my helper. You're watching on me all the time. God, I got some, I have some questions, Lord.

If that's true, I know some Christians who get sick, who are invalids, who go through difficulties and trials and heartaches and storms and life and God. If you're such a big time keeper, why don't you keep them? It looks like you haven't kept them. Because if certainly, if you're a loving father, as they say you are, and you're a loving keeper, why didn't you keep them from this? You didn't have to let them get sick. You didn't have to let this person get cancer.

You didn't have to let this person die at this age. How do you explain that, God? Is that a good question? It is a good question. It's a legitimate question.

Well, what's the answer? Well, listen carefully. God does not say that He will keep me from pain and suffering and heartache and trouble. He promises to keep me in it. He promises to keep me through it. And He promises to take advantage of every single heartache, every difficulty, every trial, every tribulation, every persecution, every hurt, every disappointment. He promises to keep me in it, and He promises to keep me through it. You say, well, now, what's the difference?

Here's the difference. He will enable me to walk through it. He will enable me to step above it. He will enable me to come out on the other side of that more profitable than if I had aborted, for example. If, now think about this for a moment. If troubles, trials, heartaches and tribulations, if those things will draw you into a deeper relationship with God, if you begin to understand who He is better, you begin to experience His love and to feel His love, and you begin to understand the ways of God, and you begin to have an intimate relationship with Him that is warm, that is intimate and satisfying and fulfilling and assuring and comforting.

Let me ask you a question. If avoiding the valleys and the difficulties and the hardships would have kept you from gaining that, which would you have chosen? Remember this, that listen, God not only looks at the circumstances of our life, He looks at the deep inner meaning of those circumstances.

He not only observes the circumstances, He is involved in them. Because you see, oftentimes God creates some of those difficulties and heartaches. He allows that pain.

Why? Not because He has forsaken us, and oftentimes we have pain that's so difficult we don't know how to handle it. We say, God, where are you?

If you loved me, you would not have done this. And the truth is, because He loves us, He does allow us this. But remember this, He's keeping me in it.

Not keeping me from it, keeping me in it. You see, this is what Romans eight twenty-eight's all about. God is engineering all of our circumstances in such a way. They will turn out for our good if we love Him.

I call it according to His purpose. I'll put it this way. He will take every single circumstance of life. And listen, we may be shut up to difficulty and hardship.

We may be stretched beyond anything we can imagine. Persecutors are deceitful friends, one thing for certain. My Father will take every bit of that and work it for my good. My Father will take every bit of that and conform me to the likeness of His Son. My God is in charge of every single solitary thing. You see, He is a keeping God. And what is He doing? While you and I may be hurting with pain and wondering, God, where are you? He's in the awesome process of conforming us to the likeness of His Son.

He's keeping us in it. Now I want to go back to my beginning illustration, the first of this sermon. Walking down that path cold, weary, worn, exhausted, a little bit frightened and anxious. And thinking, God, will I ever get back? Opening His Word, just flipping it open to this passage that said, God is my keeper.

I read that passage and I thought, I said, Lord, what are you saying to me? How can you be keeping me? And I'm away from my family and away from the church, the people I love. And here I am not sure I'm going to ever get back.

What are you doing? And I won't ever forget this long as I just like the Lord said to me, I'm just doing what I said in that passage. I'm just keeping you, keeping me from what?

I'll never forget this. Keeping you from destroying yourself, destroying your body, destroying your ministry, keeping you for what I've called you to do, keeping you so that you can preach the gospel as long as I want you to in the way that I want you to. All I'm doing, Charles, is just keeping you. I tell you, I folded it up and stuck it in my jacket and I walked and I, my body felt the same pain, but my heart was a thousand pounds lighter.

You know why? Because all of a sudden I realized that no matter what I thought I had lost, God was reminding me I hadn't lost anything. All that I complained about, all he was doing was keeping me from my self. And I wonder what he's keeping you from. I wonder if deep down inside you've lost something in your life and you thought, God, how could you do this to me? And he's keeping you from destroying your life. I don't know where you are in life or what you're facing, but one thing I know, you have a loving Heavenly Father who knows you by name. He said, every hair up on your head is numbered.

That's his way of saying, I know everything there is to know about you, past, present, future. I have the best for you. I'm a caretaker.

I'm a keeper. And if you'll let me, if you will allow me, I will give you a life that is exciting, fulfilling, a life of spiritual and emotional growth. And what you'll realize is that all the time you were fretting and fuming, I was just getting you ready for something better. God is a loving Father, but you know what? Until you trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, it won't work. He said, well, let's talk to God, not apart from His Son, Jesus.

You see, He loves you, but listen to this. God cannot do in your life what He wants to do if you deny His only begotten Son, whom He sent to die on a cross and pay your sin debt in full in order that that gap that separated you from Him would be closed up by the cross and make you a child of God. The moment you trust Him as your personal Savior, you know what happens? God takes over as caretaker and keeper of your life. And if you'll remember, He says in this passage, from this time forth and forevermore, God will be your keeper. Thank you for listening to God Is Our Keeper. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.