Psalm 23 // 2 August 2026

Katie

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I'm sure I'm sure it was Rachel that chose the songs. Uh so I could just sit down now and we could just sing that song again and it would be my sermon, basically, Rachel. So as I'm uh speaking, maybe just also have that song in your mind. I'm gonna say a word to you, just a word. Then I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna ask you some questions. You can answer them in your own mind. Trust. I don't know what you think of when I say that word. It's quite an interesting word. I think often there's complex layers of response or thought attached. And I'm sure for some of us this morning there's an emotional response because of broken trust. And so I know that trusting people isn't always straightforward or simple. It matters what's happened in the past, maybe how our trust has been kept or even not been kept or abused in the past. Matters what we might want to trust someone with. You know, one of the things I hate is those corporate days when you're meant to jump out of a tree or something and trust your team to catch you. I wouldn't do it. I don't know if I'd trust my team. I might hear now at church. So who do you trust? And what do you trust them with? Well, I trust my mum to mend my clothes. Confession time, I don't even sew a button on. That's what mums are for. I do trust her for a lot more than my clothes. Jake, one of our drummers, I would trust him with mending my car. Now I've got some very special roses in my garden. I don't know how they survive because I don't look after them, but I'm going to trust Anna to move them to my new house because she can definitely be trusted with a garden. There's a group of ladies that I meet with each month and I trust them to pray for me, to care for me, to support me. But probably, no, definitely, the person I trust the most is the trumpet player. He just also happens to be my husband. I trust him with my life. In fact, over the years I've said to him, Would you take a bullet for me? And he's always said yes. The only time he wouldn't have that conversation was when I said, If the grandchildren were in front, who would you save, me or them? And he wouldn't answer. But I trust him with my life. And you know, weirdly, I actually trust him with my death. Like decisions that might need to be made. Because I know he'll always protect me and he'll be with me always until my final breath. Because I also trust him not to die first. But the only person that I trust with my life, my death, and my eternity is Jesus, my Saviour and my Lord. You know, this Jesus, my Jesus, is totally trustworthy. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's already paid the price in full for my eternity, and he's with me every moment of every day. So, what about you? Who do you trust with your life, even your death? But most importantly, do you have the assurance that I have, the certainty that I have, that you can trust Jesus with your eternity? So we're going to look at Psalm 23 with those three thoughts in our minds today. Who can I trust with my life? Who can I trust with my death? Who can I trust with my eternity? Now I get it that for most of us, Psalm 23 is really familiar. It's the most read reading at funerals in the UK. It's often read at weddings as well, and it's sung to many different tunes. I think lots of people find comfort in this psalm, maybe just in the sense it's really familiar to them. Maybe it's the actual words themselves. Or maybe some people have been a Christian for a long time and these words hold really special meaning. So we're going to read Psalm 23 now. It's quite short, it's only six verses. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. So even if you didn't know that was Psalm 23, were the words familiar to you? What does it make you think about? See, as I read it, I can see something, and in fact, it's something I place great importance on, and it's the very first sentence. Do you want to say it with me? The Lord is my shepherd. And I think the rest of the psalm is totally dependent on that first line. Because despite its popularity, this psalm can only bring us comfort, can only have that real deep meaning if you can personally say, The Lord is my shepherd. So if you can say this this morning, if you know that, Jesus, the Lord is your shepherd, this psalm is for you. It's about you, it can uplift you, comfort you, reassure you. But maybe you're in the room and you can't yet say the Lord is my shepherd. And so before I talk about the rest of the psalm, I want to tell those people two things. By the way, it doesn't matter how old you are, if you don't yet know the Lord is your shepherd, you can make that choice today. Because the Bible says that Jesus is the good shepherd, and he wants you to be one of his, in this context, one of his sheep. And you know, like shepherds at the time this psalm was written, if it was necessary, they would have actually to save their sheep, they would have given up their own life. And Jesus has done that for us because he wants you to be his, to be your shepherd. But so much more than that, your saviour, your Lord, your friend. And secondly, if Jesus isn't yet my shepherd, you can decide that today. You don't have to go home if you want to make the decision. And at the end of my sermon, there'll be opportunity to come here, someone can talk to you, explain more to you, and pray with you. But once Jesus is my shepherd, we can get lots of truth from the rest of the verses. And we're going to look at that through this lens of our life, our death, and our eternity. So this psalm showing us how the good shepherd blesses us, how our lives are safe in his hands, and that we can trust him. Looking at some of the huge differences that Jesus makes and what provision he brings. So, firstly, we can say, I shall not want. Left to ourselves, we're in need spiritually. You might not think it, but you are. And actually, we're in need, we're not totally fulfilled emotionally, mentally, and many other needs won't be met. When Jesus isn't our saviour, we are lacking the thing that really matters. And so we're like a sheep away from the shepherd. We are a bit helpless, we can't look after ourselves. But the when we belong to Him, the one who is the I am, the one who is all in all, the one who is inexhaustible, the one who's utterly unchanged by time, you can say, I will lack nothing. You can also trust him and find rest in him. There's a book called Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. The author is now with Jesus in heaven, but Philip Keller wrote that book. And he points out how dangerous it is to be a sheep. And that dangers that sheep might face, humanity does too when we're not with Christ. Fear, friction, pain, famine, both maybe natural, but particularly spiritual. But when we're under the care of the shepherd, the good shepherd, none of that matters. He is there to guide us and lead us through life safely. It says in that psalm that he rests us in green pastures. It's like whatever turbulent situation, however hard the waters around us, as it were, might feel, he can bring us to still waters and he gives us living water to drink. One of the names for Jesus in the New Testament is that he is the water, and it says it will never run dry. So you can trust Jesus to give you rest in life's circumstances. And I could say more about that, but instead of that, I'm going to encourage you to go back and listen to the sermon at 4 p.m. last week when Nigel spoke on rest and spoke about that verse here as well, and it's on the YouTube channel. But when we're following our Good Shepherd, we literally receive new life, and our soul is restored. If you look at the original words in the Hebrew for restores my soul, it can read, brings me repentance, or even the word we might use as conversion. But a real literal translation of soul would mean life. Jesus brings new life, he saves us. And I was thinking, I did have to check this with the herdsman, might not be a shepherd, but he did know about sheep. So before accepting Jesus, it's like we're sheep on our backs. Ever seen a sheep on their back? Hope you told someone. Because actual sheep are in real trouble when they're on their back. It's because they're flat backed and they call it being cast, they actually cannot get themselves upright again. Apparently, so I'm told that once they're like that on their back, they can't ruminate anymore. And so they fill up with gas, and that makes the situation worse. Without help, a sheep cast on its back will die. And we're like that spiritually, we're helpless to help ourselves. We can't bring life to our own soul, only Jesus can. So you can trust him with your natural life and your spiritual life. You can trust him to guide you through life. It says Jesus leads us in paths of righteousness for his name's sake, literally showing us the right way. I'll be honest, I'm not sure I always stay on that right way. Maybe you're like that too. We can stray from the path. It might be a deliberate sin. It might just be taking our eyes off of him. Might be that we've not had connection, so we begin to wander aimlessly. But Jesus is our good shepherd. And just like shepherds of sheep, he wants to lead us back to the right path, to live with him, to follow him. He'll find us when we're lost, and he'll keep bringing us back to that right path again and again. So you can trust him with your life always. You can trust him to provide. Even in difficult trials and difficult times, Jesus provides for us. And this psalm talks about him preparing a table for us. There's this image of him just saying, I prepare a table for you in the midst of your enemies. So, like, just say Jez is going through a hard time today. Picture this. Jesus is like, let me through the enemies. I've got a table here. I'm gonna sit with you. I'm gonna feed you. I'm gonna give you water. My presence is with you. And I think at that point, Jez is probably not looking at his enemies. He's probably not looking at the situation. He's probably thinking, wow, Jesus is with me in the middle of this. He's got somewhere for me to sit, he's got something to feed me, his presence is with me. Would that change your perspective in the difficult times or the trials? Knowing his presence is there, knowing he's with us, comforting us. So we can trust Jesus with our life, but we can trust him with our death too. You know, if we have the security of Jesus, then we can understand that we don't need fear of death or even of the fear of dying itself. Now, we might not like the thought of how that happens, that's okay, but we know that Jesus can be trusted with that timing and being with us through that. Psalm 31 says, But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, You are my God, my times are in your hand. There's security and safety in trusting God for the end of our life. I've heard countless Christians say, I know my times are in his hands. And sitting with a Christian at the end of their life is a real privilege, whether it's literally the end or the hours before, and to see that certainty in their eyes that they know where they're going. And often that they're ready, that they're prepared, they want to be with Jesus. Why? Because evil doesn't win, Satan is defeated, and Jesus is with us in life and death. I'm going to just tell you briefly about one such occasion. Remember really well when I was with someone. So I took my daughter Kirsten to see her special friend. They were they'd been friends since just before primary school started, and at this point they're eight. But Kirsten's friend hadn't been at school for a few months, or hardly at all, because she'd got a terminal brain tumour. So on this day, the friend's mum and I we sat on the top of the stairs, tissues in hand, while they sat on the bed and they had this conversation that will never leave me. Because it was beautiful, it was kind, it was amazing, but most of all, it was faith-filled. They did all the normal stuff, but actually, death was only hours away. And so, after that normal stuff, these two little girls moved the conversation on. Kirsten heard her friend tell her that she knew Jesus was coming, and that he was actually her very best friend, and that she was going to be safe with him. Now, it was quite emotional for the adults listening, as I'm sure you can imagine, but there was this absolute certainty and reality for those little girls, and it was so clear that the next part of the conversation was cursed and now you can give up my seat next to you because I'm not going to need it again. You can let someone else sit there. Been saved for months, but now no longer needed to be saved. Why? Because they knew they could trust Jesus with that little girl's death. Do you know that? Because if you are, you can trust him with your eternity. The apostle Paul says that actually life is like a race, maybe a journey. And that story shows us that some journeys are shorter than others. But every life has a destination, an ending. And the Bible says there's only two options. There's the great one, heaven, eternity with Jesus. There's the not great one, hell, eternity in torment, and without Jesus. And yet Jesus says, I wish none to perish. He wants us to be with him. I know that's where I'm going, and I know that's what the Bible teaches me. John 14 says, In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may be also. A direct promise from God. We can trust Him with life, death, and eternity. And more than that, He's already preparing a place for you. Says it's a mansion. I visit Richard's grandma basically every day. She's 94. We talk about heaven a lot. She says, I don't want a mansion, I want a cottage that doesn't need dusting. Every time we speak about heaven, that's what she says. Lord, I just want a cottage that doesn't need dusting. Eternity is a long time, it's forever. But you can trust Jesus with your forever. Then ask the worship team to come up, but also the prayer team, if you wouldn't mind coming and being ready over here, that would be great. So I suppose we've read this familiar psalm, and what is your response to it? Can't answer for you. But today, this psalm could become your psalm. So if you can't say the Lord is my shepherd, you can today. You can trust Jesus with your life, your death, and your eternity. And the prayer team who are being very disobedient aren't not already here. Thank you, Philippa, would love to speak with you. They would love to pray for you. And you can come out to them as Rachel leads us in a song again. But maybe you trust Jesus, but you're going through something really difficult. The team would love to pray with you in that situation. They'd love to remind you of that picture of Jesus sitting with you, feedering, feeding you, ministering to you in the situation. It doesn't matter what the situation is, they would love to pray with you for that because you can trust Jesus. And also, I was slightly flippant there about the cottage with no dust. But if you're not sure of that, or you've just got a fear around the end of life, they'd love to pray with you. They won't think anything of you. They just want to pray with you. Because I promise you, you can trust Jesus with your today, with every one of your tomorrows, and with your eternity.