00:00:01 When purchasing a vehicle, one of the things we look at is crash ratings, and Volvo cars are among the safest in the world. And this becomes especially important if you\'re a new parent. I remember when Asher was about to be born, and I was looking for cars. I was researching all the crash ratings, even of my old car. And Volvo, they say, uses hot-formed boron steel, the strongest steel they use in vehicles. 00:00:32 And it is extensively used in the roof, in the doors, the pillars, the base, everywhere, so that it forms an extremely rigid passenger safety cage. And so it prevents the cabin from collapsing in the event of a rollover or a major collision, making Volvo one of the best in class. But tragedy struck a family on December 1st, 2024. I remember being in India at that time, and watching the video clips on TV in horror. The family was traveling from Bangalore to their village to visit their sick dad. 00:01:13 And it included a 48-year-old CEO of a software company, and apparently, he had acquired a new company, too, and they had finished all their Puja rituals so that they can move into a new building right after his break. And along with him were five others, including his wife and two children, a 12-year-old and a six-year-old. And they were traveling in a brand-new Volvo XC90 that they had purchased a week ago. 00:01:43 What had happened was on the other side of the road was a truck that was traveling with about 26 tons of aluminum. And a car in front of him suddenly slowed down, making the truck driver to apply the brakes suddenly to avoid the collision. And he lost control of the truck, and it jumped the divider, and it went and struck the Volvo that was traveling in the opposite direction. The weight of the metal crushed the Volvo completely from above. 00:02:17 It took four heavy-duty cranes about three hours to lift the metal from on top of the Volvo and to get to the people. Unfortunately, all six members inside were completely crushed in a tragic accident that they could have neither predicted nor avoided. You see, the Volvo might have been the best in class, but it was no match when 26 tons of aluminum fell on it. Simply put, the Volvo was not meant for that kind of an impact. You see, many times in our life, we face situations like that. 00:03:00 They may not be as tragic as this accident, but they might come upon us suddenly and without warning. I don\'t know your life situation this morning. Maybe you\'re facing a situation just like this, a situation that feels too heavy to bear, that might even crush you completely. It could be a sudden job loss. It could be a routine health checkup, which gave a surprising diagnosis. Could be a conflict at home that blew up into a major relationship crisis. 00:03:34 Could be a prolonged sickness, and you\'ve reached that tipping point. Or it\'s a boss or a coworker who is so overbearing you\'re about to quit. Whatever your situation may be, Psalm 121 speaks directly to you this morning. This Psalm is a favorite of many people and is often read when they embark on journeys. And I heard this was one of my grandmother\'s favorite Psalms, and they would pray this every time they travel. But the reality is that journeys don\'t always end up the way we expect. 00:04:11 As Christians, we are no different. We go through unexpected changes of plans, unforeseen dangers, pain, and suffering just like anybody else. So in this present reality, how do we make sense of this Psalm? Can we have confidence that the Lord will keep us? So I want to unpack this Psalm for us today and show you how it can offer hope. One basic thing we are learning when we read God\'s Word is to look for words and repetitions, right? 00:04:48 And if you observe Psalm 121, you must have seen that the word keeper appears six times, and you might think it means to preserve, to keep something from... But that\'s not what it means. It\'s much more than that. It means someone who protects you or guards you. And secondly, we are dealing with Hebrew poetry here, and a lot of interesting things happen that is not evident in the English language. There are many constructs here that I hope to unpack for us as we go through. 00:05:24 But the psalmist arranged it so beautifully that right in the middle, in verse five, especially the first part, he says, \"The Lord is your keeper.\" And that\'s the title of our sermon today. And I\'ll give you my thesis right at the beginning. It\'s that God\'s people can be confident that the Lord will keep them no matter what life throws at them. God\'s people can be confident that the Lord will keep them no matter what life throws at them. And I have broken the sermon into four points. 00:05:58 Thankfully, Pastor JP also broke it into five points in his sermon, so I feel confident here. The first one is the reason for confidence in the Lord as our keeper. And next, how the Lord keeps us in unexpected times. The third one is how the Lord keeps us in wary times. And finally, how the Lord keeps us in all times. And I\'ll conclude and give a couple of applications for us as a church. First, the reason for confidence in the Lord as our keeper. 00:06:34 Verses one and two are written as a question and answer form, question and response, right? Verse one poses that question, from where does my help come? And verse two answers it by saying, \"My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.\" But it\'s important to note what this person is doing while asking the question. It says, \"I lift up my eyes to the hills.\" This lifting up was in eager anticipation. You see, this Psalm is a Psalm of ascents. 00:07:09 If you see in your Bibles, it would say that in the title or above that. And scholars believe that it was originally written to be used in Jerusalem, and to be used by the king or governor. And verses 3 to 8, though, are a response coming from probably a minister or a priest affirming what he\'s saying. You will see that difference, because the first two verses uses I, and verses 3 to 8 use you. 00:07:39 And the city of Jerusalem was surrounded by hills, and King David uses that in Psalm 125 as well, as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. There was Mount Moriah, where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac. There was Mount Zion. There was Mount of Olives. And so all of these several other mountains surrounded, and you can\'t miss them. 00:08:05 And so as the king who is asking this question looks to these mountains, he\'s asking a rhetorical or reflective question, and there could be only one answer. You see, these mountains were not the helpers, but they were pointing to the one who created them, and heaven and earth. If these mountains were majestic, how much more the one true God, Yahweh himself, who created them, and heaven and earth, and everything in them. Now, there is nothing that He does not see. 00:08:41 There is not an ounce of this creation that is not His. He is the one who created everything out of nothing. He brought order and beauty out of chaos, created light out of darkness, and finally, He\'s the one who created mankind in His own image. He picked a nobody like Abraham, and who didn\'t even have children, and brought many nations out from him. And He chose Israel, his descendants, as his own possession. He redeemed them and brought them to this place. 00:09:18 He is the covenant-making God for everyone who seeks Him. They can have confidence that He will be their helper. But you see, these mountains also speak of a different, darker story. Israel\'s history showed that even though God continued to love and care for them, they were not always faithful. Time and time again, they rejected Him and worshiped other gods. 00:09:48 1 Kings 14:23, we read, \"For they also built for themselves high places, and pillars, and Asherim, on every high hill and under every green tree.\" Verse 24: \"They did according to all the abominations of the nations.\" This was just two generations after King David, the great king of Israel. And we see that they\'re building shrines everywhere, and these hills must have reminded them of their own failure, and sin, and wickedness. So how could that possibly happen? 00:10:25 How could they turn from such a loving God, their creator God, who redeemed them, and turn to other gods for help? So allow me some time to dig deeper into Israel\'s history, so we can understand why this happened and what is the warning for us here. So my first point will be slightly longer than the others. So Deuteronomy 8:11-17. God already talked about what would happen. 00:10:56 So verse 11 says in Deuteronomy 8:11-17, \"Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God, by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes which I command you today. 00:11:08 Lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built good houses, and live in them; and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.\" And then he goes on in verse 17, \"Beware lest you say in your heart, \'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.\'\" You see the progression? 00:11:44 It starts with them experiencing the goodness of God, and then they forgot Him. Next, their heart was lifted up, thinking more about themselves than they ought to. And finally, with corrupted minds saying, \"My power and might have gotten me this.\" You see, it was because their hearts were deceived and their minds were corrupted. John Calvin says that the human mind, so to speak, is a perpetual forge of idols, or you could say a factory of idols. 00:12:22 You see, these gods were not greater than Yahweh himself, but these were something visible, something that could be controlled, gods that they could bargain with so that they could fulfill whatever they desired. We do not merely encounter idols outside ourself. We manufacture substitutes for God because we want help that is visible, controllable, and available on our own terms, isn\'t it? It doesn\'t have to be idols alone. It could be something or someone. These are called functional gods. 00:13:02 It\'s funny how this downward spiral continues in the story of Israel. In Isaiah 7, we hear the story of King Ahaz of Judah, and the king of Syria had come to fight against him with a large army, and Isaiah 7:2 says, \"And their heart shook like trees of heavy wind.\" You see, they were scared. They needed help. So God sends his prophet Isaiah, and here\'s his message. He says, \"The king of Syria is only a smoldering stub of firewood. Don\'t fear him.\" 00:13:41 But you see, Ahaz\'s heart was corrupted already. He wanted to find help by himself. And you know what he did? He went to another nation, an evil nation called Assyria, and he gets their help. Right? And he gets it, and everything is fine, and just a few years later, the plates are switched and Assyria starts oppressing him. And you know what they do now? Then King Hezekiah, he turns to Egypt, the same nation where they were slaves for 430 years, he turns to Egypt for help. 00:14:23 You see, it comes full circle. You see, Israel was not always faithful in looking up to the Lord for help. Time and time again, they rebelled against Him. And while the hills showed them the God of creation, they also stood as a symbol of their sin and stubbornness and failure in searching for other helpers that could not help them. You could be sitting here thinking, \"I don\'t worship other gods, and I always go to God for help.\" 00:14:58 And our vocabulary includes things like we have been praying about something, or that we\'ve been meditating, we are talking to our mentors or something like that. It could be whatever it is, but the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Do you find yourself fully trusting the Lord, or do you functionally trust in something else or somebody else to help you? Who do you believe controls your jobs, your promotions, your college admissions, and whether you have a home, and whatever it is? 00:15:42 What thoughts dominate your mind when you\'re up against a challenge? Is it to escape from them, or a frantic search for how to overcome them, or faith in God? When you think of the future, who or what gives you confidence? The balance in your bank, or how well you do at your work or school, or is it that you are a child of the creator God? 00:16:13 You see, as we return back to this verse and we ask how then is this king or pilgrim who is asking this question and who is saying, \"My help comes from the Lord,\" how is he able to say that? It is because our God is a merciful God. You see, in Deuteronomy 4:31 it says, \"And the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.\" 00:16:46 You see, it\'s not because we look to God, but that He looks at us that we can receive help. It is because the God who created us is the God who also keeps us. We can have confidence not only because He\'s a covenant-making God, but because He\'s a covenant-keeping God. So, how does He keep us? How does He guard us? So we\'ll go to the next point: How the Lord keeps us in unexpected times. As we move to verse 3 to 4, we move to the second person speech, right? The I becomes you. 00:17:24 Now we see the minister or priest responding to this king, and while the English doesn\'t show properly, the response begins with a wish. A closer translation of verse 3 would be, \"May He not let your foot be moved. May He not slumber.\" So what does this mean that their foot will not be moved? Right? You see, as a pilgrim, for a pilgrim who is making his way up to the temple, and there\'s a climb and the terrain is rocky, it is not safe. 00:17:59 There\'s a high chance they can stumble, they can slip, and they can fall. In addition to that, unexpected dangers might have lurked along the way with thieves or robbers trying to steal, ambushing them and causing them harm. Whatever the danger was, it could happen without any warning, suddenly. So in situations like this, they always need to be alert, and so their keeper should be someone who will not take his eyes off of them. 00:18:30 This past week, if you were paying attention to the news in San Francisco, there was an accident and two Muni trains collided. One of them was stationary and the other one had an operator. And there were videos circulating last few days that showed what happened. The operator was probably fatigued, and just before the collision, you see him closing his eyes and nodding off. And just for a moment. Thankfully, there were not many people in the Muni, and no one was injured. 00:19:03 But the video shows that one single moment of dozing off, what it could do. Things could have been a lot different. But verse four, it immediately changes the tone. It changes to that of confidence. In the Hebrew it says, \"Indeed, he will not slumber or sleep,\" because you know why? He is Israel\'s keeper. You see the shift in words? Whereas the Psalm started with the word help, now the response talks about how the Lord is our keeper, our God. 00:19:40 This is in sharp contrast to the gods of the nations around them. Many times, their worshipers sang and danced in front of these deities. They even cut themselves so that these deities can be pacified, or they can entertain them. And we see a story in Elijah, the prophet of Baal in 1 Kings 18. At noon, Elijah began to taunt them. \"Shout louder,\" he said. These were the prophets of Baal who were shouting to Baal. He said, \"Shout louder. Surely he\'s a god. 00:20:12 Perhaps he\'s deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he\'s sleeping and must be awakened.\" But Yahweh God isn\'t like those gods. He doesn\'t need anyone to wake him up because he\'s always watching, he\'s always alert. And that\'s why we can be confident in him. This imagery is very relatable. 00:20:36 We have several parents of young children now, toddlers who are running, and you could meet them in the hallway, and you can say hello to them, and they\'ll appear to be talking to you, but in the corner of their eye, they\'ll always be watching their little one to see whether they\'re stumbling or falling and hurting themselves. And if earthly parents are so watchful and alert, how much more their creator? You see, this Psalm isn\'t saying that nothing bad will happen to you. 00:21:07 In fact, Proverbs 24:16 says, \"For the righteous falls seven times and rises again. But the wicked stumble in times of calamity.\" Similarly unexpected trials might come to the people of God. Things you are not anticipating or that caught you off guard. But God\'s promise is this: though the righteous may fall, their foot will not stumble, or they will not perish forever. In times of calamity, He is the one who will lift them up. 00:21:43 We can have confidence in the Lord as our keeper because we are always under the watchful, loving gaze of our Heavenly Father, who will raise us up when we fall. We next move on to the next point, how the Lord keeps us in wary times. The next two verses is very interesting in Hebrew, verses five and six. They were written as something called an introverted parallelism. I know it might be a new term for you, but this was something that Pastor JP taught long time ago during COVID. 00:22:19 He was teaching how do you interpret the Bible, and one of the sessions was how do you do in the Psalms, so I went back to that. And so this is called an introverted parallelism, and I\'ll explain that. So in verses five and six, there are four parts. There is part one and immediately followed by part two, and then there is part three that actually is related to part one, and then a part four that\'s related to part two. So that is called an introverted parallelism. 00:22:51 And it\'s a beautiful poetic structure. It\'s not clear in the English, so you would be wondering, if you\'re like me, when you read, \"The Lord is your shade on your right hand.\" And I\'m thinking, \"God, I need shade here.\" And so that\'s not what it means. And then there\'s another structure, too, that\'s being used, verse six. It employs something called merism. A merism is a figure of speech which expresses extreme opposites, like sun and moon, day and night. So it basically means all the time. 00:23:25 So if you were to read verses five and six again, a closer meaning would be like this: The Lord is your keeper on your right hand, meaning He\'s close by. And secondly, the Lord is your shade in all situations. For the pilgrims on their journey, there is also a chance of getting tired from heat exhaustion. Sometimes in rugged terrains, temperature can go very high. They can soar pretty high. And unless you are prepared, there is chance of collapsing. 00:23:57 Sometimes the conditions at night are not much friendlier either. It could get extremely cold, exposing great danger to the travelers. Last week, we heard of an incident again of two French travelers that were traveling in Death Valley. While Death Valley has beautiful landscape, it is not necessarily a safe place Apparently, their car broke down and it was extremely hot, and their phones did not work. 00:24:26 And sensing that they need to get to safety soon, they decided in the hot weather that they would start walking. But after about 1.5 miles, one of them could not go on, and he waited while his friend went, and finally he found somebody on the road. He waved that car down and found help, but it was too late. When they arrived, this friend who was waiting, he did not make it. 00:24:52 You see, they set out on their journey, but they completely ignored the warnings, and they were completely unprepared and did not have much water. Many times in our lives, we also find ourselves completely unprepared. Work, relationships, health, whatever it is. And maybe you\'ve reached a point where you feel you can\'t keep going any longer, and you feel weary of continuing. 00:25:23 Psalm 121 encourages us that while you may be unprepared, and there is a chance that you get weary, your keeper, your God, isn\'t. And he\'s the shade for the weary traveler. And this is not something new to the people of Israel. They\'ve seen how God literally protected them on their journey from Egypt to this promised land. 00:25:47 Deuteronomy 1:31 says, \"And in the wilderness, there you saw how the Lord your God carried you as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.\" He is the one who gives shade. He\'s the one who keeps them. And his care and call come to us, even when we rebel against him and go looking for other help. And many times, they grieved his heart by rebelling against him, but like a father, he continues to show mercy on them. Matthew 23:27. 00:26:23 This is Jesus, while he was on Earth, he looks at Jerusalem and he cries, \"Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood to give shade under her wings, and you were not willing.\" That is the heart of our God. We can have confidence in the Lord as our keeper because he shows compassion on those who are weary and carries them. Come to the last point. 00:26:59 How the Lord keeps us at all points. In verses 7 to 8, now the psalmist brings it to a conclusion and makes two final statements that say that Yahweh God, the first statement, Yahweh God will keep them from all evil. He will keep their life. You see, the word life is better translated as inmost being or rather soul. The NASB got it right. 00:27:27 You see, it\'s not saying that there will not be evil at all in the life of his children, but rather that no evil will ever overcome them to destroy their soul. And the second statement says, Yahweh God will keep their going out and their coming from now and forever. That means the Lord will be their keeper when they are in their home, in the city, at their business, wherever they are. Basically, everyday life, now and forever. Now, what do these statements mean? 00:28:02 Is God really saying that nothing bad will ever happen to us? You see, these statements or promises do not make sense if you don\'t understand a bit of Israel\'s history. So, the language used here is borrowed from Deuteronomy chapter 28. It\'s a very famous passage. It talks about the covenant of God, and you see all the blessings he will pour out on them and all the curses he will pour out on them if they don\'t obey. Deuteronomy chapter 28, let me read verses 1 through 5. 00:28:37 \"And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 00:29:01 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle and the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.\" And you know what it says in verse six? \"Blessed shall you be when you come in. Blessed shall you be when you go out.\" You see, this is covenantal language, but it is also conditional. 00:29:26 Verse 1 clearly warns them that unless they faithfully obey the voice of Yahweh God according to all that was written in the law, this is not going to happen to them. And if they don\'t, verses 15 through 68 graphically describe the curses that will overtake them. Instead of being their keeper, the Lord will make these curses overtake them. Verse 19 says, \"Cursed shall you be when you come in. Cursed shall you be when you go out.\" And you want to see what\'s crazy? 00:30:05 Verse 29 says, \"And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you.\" Verse 31, \"But there shall be no one to help you.\" Verse 32, \"But you shall be helpless.\" Instead of being their helper, the Lord will now turn against them to destroy them because of their sin. When you think of who can really sing this psalm, and you look at Israel\'s sinful history, you\'d think nobody would be able to do that. 00:30:47 The only person who could claim this psalm is the one who obeyed 100% of the law 100% of the time, and that was Jesus, the Son of God. He was born of the virgin by the Holy Spirit and lived a perfect life. No sin was ever found in him. He was the only one who obeyed the Father perfectly. He\'s the only one who could say, \"The Lord is my keeper.\" 00:31:13 You see, friends, many times we think we need help with this, we need help with that, we need help with so many things, but the main problem we need help with is our problem of sin. Psalm 51:5, David writes, \"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.\" In Romans 7:19, we read Paul describing our condition, \"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.\" 00:31:49 And he becomes desperate in this situation, and he cries out in verse 24, \"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?\" You see, friends, we have an incurable disease, and it\'s called sin. We can\'t cure this disease by doing more good works. Israel had so many laws, they could not do it. 00:32:14 You could try to be religious, you could try to follow the Ten Commandments, but you will find that you will be unable to do that because the law is good, but it has no power to offer you as help. Paul summarizes the result in Romans 6:23: \"For the wages of sin is death.\" That means left to ourself, death will overpower us, evil will overpower us, and that is our condition, my friends. But God, in his mercy, he sent us a helper, his Son, Jesus Christ. 00:32:53 1 John 2:1 says, \"My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sin, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.\" The word \"advocate\" in the Greek is parakletos. I hope I\'m saying it right. And it also means helper. Jesus Christ, the righteous, is our helper. 00:33:28 He took our sin upon himself, our incurable disease upon himself, died on the cross on our behalf. He lived the life we could not live and died the death we deserved. And he offers his life to everyone who would confess and repent of their sin, and believes that he is the Son of God. And because the Lord was his keeper, and he did not allow death to overpower him, and raised him up on the third day, he will do the same for us. 00:33:59 Now those who believe in Jesus can confidently say, \"The Lord is my keeper.\" In Christ, we can say, \"The Lord is my keeper.\" That is the good news of the gospel. You see, this psalm isn\'t saying nothing bad will ever happen to you. In fact, we should never listen to people who preach that kind of a gospel. That\'s not biblical. But it is encouraging us that God will guard our lives and keep us into eternity in Christ. 00:34:32 The famous benediction that pastors give at the end of the sermon or the service, one of them is Jude verses 24 and 25, and it goes like this: \"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time, now and forever. Amen.\" Not only will he be our keeper, but he will also share his glory and joy with us. 00:35:16 We can be confident in the Lord as our keeper because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. Romans 8 is one of my favorite chapters, and it talks about how we just read right after our communion. \"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.\" And there are a few verses in it that I would like for us to read. Chapter 8, verse 31 through 39. And it says, \"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 00:35:56 He did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God\'s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, Or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 00:36:29 As it is written: \"For your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.\" No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 00:36:59 So friends, whatever your situation is this morning, we can be confident that the Lord is our keeper at all times because he loves us. And as we conclude, I\'d like to take a couple of applications out of this text for us. The first question for us is, and you can do this today if possible: What is one area where you\'re looking for help this morning? What is one functional god you\'re turning to and placing your trust in? 00:37:36 And you can think about that, and you can spend some time, repent, and ask God for help. And the second one is this: If we can be so confident in the Lord as our keeper, if you are confident that God has got your back no matter what, what is one challenge you would like to attempt for him? What is one vain pursuit that you\'d like to stop, or what is one challenge that you would like to take up for him? And I\'ll end with a illustration. 00:38:11 This is the story of someone named Cameron Townsend, and he was the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He was a young man in 1917. He was about to embark on a journey, like go and serve in the World War I, and he heard a message and a challenge at church. And he left a noble duty of serving his country, and he decided to go as a missionary to Guatemala. And while in that place, he wrote a poem talking about trusting in God, and that challenged him. 00:38:47 And as he was trying to see, \"How do I bring the gospel to these people?\" He realized those people don\'t have the Bible in their language. And he comes to the US, and suddenly he notices a new technology that has come on the horizon. He sees an airplane, and the first thing that he thinks is, \"This is an instrument God has designed to fulfill the Great Commission.\" I don\'t know if you and me are thinking that when we think of an airplane. 00:39:18 I don\'t know if you and me are thinking of technology, AI, or whatever new things that are coming, driverless cars, drones. I don\'t know if you and me are thinking whether that can be used for the Kingdom of God, but that\'s what he thought. And he went, and he decided this is what he was going to do. And he died later, he was 80 plus, and he took aviation and the gospel spread to 100 countries. 00:39:46 And he was able to go to Papua New Guinea, Latin America, several places in Africa, and they were able to translate the Bible into hundreds of languages. And his philosophy was this: To attempt things so big that unless God intervenes, they are bound to fail. Attempt things so big that unless God intervenes, they are bound to fail. This reflects a philosophy of total dependence on God to make his mission successful. 00:40:18 If you believe that our God is a God that I can put my confidence in, he\'s got my back, what is one challenge, Spectrum Church, you can pick up, and next week as the new church, you can fulfill? And may God help us