SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a copy of God's Word, please turn with me to the book of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: If you need a Bible, you'll see one in the pew in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be looking at Psalm 23 this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to begin this morning with a confession.
SPEAKER_00: I have preached Psalm 23 at funerals.
SPEAKER_00: I've sat at bedsides and worked through this psalm with dying saints.
SPEAKER_00: I've preached two sermons on this psalm a couple of summers ago to the congregation here at Faith.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew this psalm, and then last year I finally needed someone to preach it to me.
SPEAKER_00: It was a hard year, the kind of year that doesn't show up on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: The church was healthy, church is growing, ministry was moving, buildings were going up, money was being raised, but on the inside, I was coming apart.
SPEAKER_00: I was experiencing some pretty significant depression and anxiety in a way that I had never experienced before in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I could not turn my mind off, I could not settle down, and I found myself sitting in a counselor's office trying to figure out how someone who preaches grace every single Sunday had stopped receiving it.
SPEAKER_00: And in the middle of that season, I came back to this Psalm, Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of that season, someone also handed me a book by David Gibson, The Lord of Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_00: Much of that I will share with you, and I owe a lot to him for the things I'll share and his work, the things I'll share with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But that book was like water to a weary soul.
SPEAKER_00: And I suspect that many of you in this room this morning have been there.
SPEAKER_00: Weary on the inside, but everything on the outside looked just fine.
SPEAKER_00: We have given our lives to a calling as ministers of the gospel that is impossible to measure.
SPEAKER_00: There's the criticism that keeps coming.
SPEAKER_00: There's the person who walks away from your church very disappointed in your shepherding, very disappointed in your ministry.
SPEAKER_00: There is the misunderstandings being misunderstood, and you can't correct it.
SPEAKER_00: There's the things at home and the personal struggles that you have that you bring into the pulpit every single Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to everyone else's internal life while quietly we neglect our own.
SPEAKER_00: We spend our lives shepherding others, and oftentimes we're the last ones in the room to admit that the shepherd still needs shepherding themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 23 is for us.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a psalm about death.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a psalm for funerals.
SPEAKER_00: This is a song about life.
SPEAKER_00: This is a psalm about all of life.
SPEAKER_00: David wrote this psalm in the middle of his story, not at the end of his story.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, what I want to do is I want us to let Psalm 23 speak to us, not to our congregation, to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so with that in mind, follow along with me.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's word, Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: I shall not want.
SPEAKER_00: He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters.
SPEAKER_00: He restores my soul.
SPEAKER_00: He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
SPEAKER_00: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
SPEAKER_00: Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
SPEAKER_00: You anoint my head with oil.
SPEAKER_00: My cup overflows.
SPEAKER_00: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray and ask the Lord to come to be with us as we hear the word and with the one who preaches as well this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I want to ask you to do two things this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, I want you to come into this room.
SPEAKER_00: It's no accident that we're here.
SPEAKER_00: You have brought us here to hear this word today.
SPEAKER_00: And in this room, we some of us have this psalm memorized.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have preached on it many, many times.
SPEAKER_00: We know this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to make it fresh.
SPEAKER_00: I want you, Holy Spirit, to put us on the edge of our seats.
SPEAKER_00: As if we're hearing this word for the first time, I pray that you would come and speak, O Lord, speak.
SPEAKER_00: We are listening.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, I pray that we would all have a powerful encounter with Jesus this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Through this word, through your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we we don't want to go through the motions.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be different.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be led to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that you would show us just how good you are, and that it would change us and renew us and strengthen us and nourish our souls.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Three things I want us to look at in this passage, in this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: First, the shepherd, secondly, the valley, lastly, the table.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd, the valley, the table.
SPEAKER_00: Our first heading, the shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verses one through three.
SPEAKER_00: We race past this opening line oftentimes to get to the green pastures.
SPEAKER_00: And we shouldn't do that because really the first word is the most important word of the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You know this, all caps in your English Bible, that is Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: That is the covenant name of God.
SPEAKER_00: The God who thundered on Mount Sinai.
SPEAKER_00: The God who spoke the world into being, the God who created all things and who sustains all things, the God who parted the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this is no weak presence.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: And David says, That God is my shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Not a shepherd, not a shepherd in a general sense.
SPEAKER_00: My shepherd, the great God of the universe, has stooped down to personally shepherd you.
SPEAKER_00: And notice here, really, from start to finish, the language used to describe your shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how active he is.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the passage, he makes, he leads, he restores, he is with me, he prepares, he anoints.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's true, if Yahweh is your shepherd, then what follows makes complete sense and is inevitable.
SPEAKER_00: I shall not want.
SPEAKER_00: Better translated, I shall lack nothing, or as one scholar renders it, if the Lord is my shepherd, well, what more do I need?
SPEAKER_00: And the Psalm assures us here, and what is assumed is that everyone has a shepherd, that everyone is following something.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, everyone is looking for someone to care for them, something to protect them, to give them peace and to give them life.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is never whether you have a shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: The question is which one?
SPEAKER_00: And you see the brutal irony for these of us, those of us who are in ministry is that the thing that most likely draws us away from God is actually and wants to shepherd us, and that we look to to shepherd us, is actually within ministry itself.
SPEAKER_00: The approval of our congregation, or the metrics of our church, or the reputation that we've spent years building.
SPEAKER_00: Those are not bad things, but they are terrible shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: Because they keep you performing long after you have nothing left.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, that performance is crushing.
SPEAKER_00: Performance is a crushing shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that because I've spent most of my ministry following that shepherd without realizing it.
SPEAKER_00: And it looks like faithfulness on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what it feels like on the inside?
SPEAKER_00: It feels like you're suffocating.
SPEAKER_00: When the Lord is your shepherd, it means we can stop.
SPEAKER_00: That we can slow down.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to earn our way to God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to maintain everyone's perceptions of us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to keep all of the plates spinning in order to justify our place in his pasture.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd has done everything to save us.
SPEAKER_00: He has done everything to make us a sheep in his flock.
SPEAKER_00: We already belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: And you see it in the passage, which means we can lie down.
SPEAKER_00: Sheep only lie down when they are free.
SPEAKER_00: Free from conflict and fear and pest and hunger.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd handles all of it.
SPEAKER_00: A good shepherd removes all of those threats so that we can actually lie down.
SPEAKER_00: He makes us lie down.
SPEAKER_00: And he restores our soul.
SPEAKER_00: And the word restore there is very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: It means to bring back, it means to restore or to help someone breathe again.
SPEAKER_00: And so think about that in the context of sheep.
SPEAKER_00: They're found helpless when they're on their back, they're unable to fix themselves, and they are dying a slow death.
SPEAKER_00: And the only one that can fix them is the shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus finds you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus restores you and he brings you back.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there comes a point in ministry when the reserves run dry.
SPEAKER_00: When you've given the sermon, you've made the hospital visit, you've handled the conflict, you've absorbed the criticism, and then somewhere in the middle of all of it, quietly, oftentimes without even noticing, you have wandered off.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not dramatic.
SPEAKER_00: It's not some major crisis of faith.
SPEAKER_00: You've just drifted, and your soul has become and just worn so thin and so frayed, and you're completely exhausted, and your inner life that fuels everything else, we know this, you start running on fumes.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what the shepherd does?
SPEAKER_00: He comes looking.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus, the shepherd, remember, leaves the 99 to go after the one.
SPEAKER_00: The only reason he does it is because you matter.
SPEAKER_00: And that is important, not because of your ministry or how many people show up on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: You matter to him.
SPEAKER_00: We matter to him because we are his.
SPEAKER_00: And so when he finds you weary and depleted and flat, this shepherd doesn't stand over you with a clipboard.
SPEAKER_00: No, he puts you on his shoulders, and he carries you home, rejoicing.
SPEAKER_00: This is your shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: That is who God is towards you.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the valley.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the flow of the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verses one through three.
SPEAKER_00: We get this leading, providing, restoring, guiding.
SPEAKER_00: He's out ahead of the sheep, active, initiating.
SPEAKER_00: And then look at verse four.
SPEAKER_00: The sheep start walking.
SPEAKER_00: And notice where they start walking.
SPEAKER_00: Where are they going?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're going into the valley.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 3, leads directly.
SPEAKER_00: The path of righteousness leads directly into the valley of deep darkness in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a detour from the shepherd's plan.
SPEAKER_00: This is the shepherd's plan.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to think that the valley is the place where God is absent.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this psalm will not let us go there.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in the valley, it is because the shepherd has left you there, because it is there that he has things for us to learn and ways that we can grow that we cannot grow and learn in anywhere anywhere else and in any other way.
SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Elliott tells this story about watching a shepherd with his sheep in North Wales, and she says the shepherd would dip the sheep into this pool of disinfectant in order to kill the parasites and the diseases that are living within the shepherd or within the sheep's wool.
SPEAKER_00: And as she describes it, she talks about how much the sheep actually hate what is happening.
SPEAKER_00: That they're really struggling, they're bleating, they're desperate, they are crying out, they're doing everything in their power to not let this happen.
SPEAKER_00: But the sheep, she said, what was interesting is right when they look like they're getting some relief, the shepherd takes them and one more time pushes them under again the disinfectant.
SPEAKER_00: And then she wrote, I wonder what it feels like to think that your shepherd is trying to kill you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the valley feels like sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like the care has gone away.
SPEAKER_00: That the shepherd's care has stopped, like you are all alone in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: And I lived that in the last year, and the thing that I had preached for 25 years to my students in RUF and to this congregation for 10 years, that God is, He's present in the darkness in that moment was the thing that I was struggling to believe.
SPEAKER_00: And what made it harder was that there is almost no category in the world for a pastor to say out loud, I am not okay.
SPEAKER_00: Because pastors are not supposed to need shepherding.
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones that are supposed to be doing the shepherding.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the pronoun shift in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Up to this point, David has been talking about God, but in the valley, notice what changes gets really, really personal.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes you.
SPEAKER_00: You are with me.
SPEAKER_00: Your rod and your staff are with me.
SPEAKER_00: And the deepest, darkest part of this psalm is when it gets the most personal, and that is not an accident.
SPEAKER_00: The comfort in the valley is not that God removes the darkness, it's that he enters into the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And remember who enters into the darkness with us.
SPEAKER_00: Not a weak God.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, the one who thundered on Sinai and parted the Red Sea, the Lord of hosts, that God is the one who enters in and is in the valley with us, and he stays.
SPEAKER_00: And look at what he's carrying: the rod, his authority, his power, representing his power.
SPEAKER_00: The rod is what he would use to count every single sheep at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: You are accounted for.
SPEAKER_00: It is a hotel.
SPEAKER_00: It is not your home.
SPEAKER_00: You are passing through, and you are not passing through alone.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd is with you.
SPEAKER_00: He has not looked away.
SPEAKER_00: He is not disappointed in you.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord of hosts is with you.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, the table.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse five.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the imagery shifts here.
SPEAKER_00: And we move from the shepherd and sheep to host and guest.
SPEAKER_00: And this little detail stops me every single time when I read this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: You set a table, notice where.
SPEAKER_00: In the presence of my enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Notice it's not when the criticism is stopped, not when the difficult season in your church has passed and things finally start turning a corner.
SPEAKER_00: No, right in the middle of that, when the wolves are still circling, when ministry is still hard, when the results are still invisible, when people misunderstand you and they leave and they never come back, right?
SPEAKER_00: There, in that, God sets a lavish table for you and hosts you in the middle of that mess.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient Near East, anointing a guest with oil was one of the highest privileges that a host could extend.
SPEAKER_00: And God does that for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's that kind of God.
SPEAKER_00: I love David Gibson says here, yes, God has a rod and a staff in his hands, but he also has perfume and oil and wine in his hands as a way to say God is not a tightwad, that he's generous and he's kind and he's full of abundance and he is extravagant towards his people.
SPEAKER_00: And my question for us this morning is: is that what your God is like this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Or has God quietly become someone you worked for rather than someone who is abundant and who is generous and who is kind and who overwhelms you with that kindness and abundance.
SPEAKER_00: Your cup overflows.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't trickle, it overflows.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six.
SPEAKER_00: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss the word surely.
SPEAKER_00: If you follow the footnote in the ESV, you see it can also be translated only.
SPEAKER_00: So think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Only goodness and mercy shall follow me every single day.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is an astonishing claim, not mostly goodness, not goodness just when I deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: Only goodness and only mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And then the word there, follow.
SPEAKER_00: Commentators will tell you that's a pretty weak rendering.
SPEAKER_00: Because at the heart of this, the meaning, it's more pursuit.
SPEAKER_00: And so goodness and mercy are not just trailing along behind you at a polite distance.
SPEAKER_00: No, they are chasing you down and pursuing you.
SPEAKER_00: Every time, think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Every time you look over your shoulder, when you've preached the sermon that didn't quite land the way you wanted it to, you preached the sermon that you knew wasn't ready.
SPEAKER_00: When you led and you led poorly, and you end up making a mess, or you wondered in your honest moments, am I even cut out for this?
SPEAKER_00: Do I even need to be in the ministry at all?
SPEAKER_00: Or when there's a gap, you know the gap in your life?
SPEAKER_00: You feel that?
SPEAKER_00: Between who you want to be and who you actually are?
SPEAKER_00: Every single time that you look back, what is pursuing you is not condemnation and not disappointment.
SPEAKER_00: It is goodness and it is mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord appears, did you notice in the Psalm by name only twice?
SPEAKER_00: Book ends.
SPEAKER_00: That's significant.
SPEAKER_00: Verse one and verse six.
SPEAKER_00: He encompasses the entire psalm.
SPEAKER_00: So think about this.
SPEAKER_00: Verses one through three.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's ahead of us, leading and guiding.
SPEAKER_00: Verse four, he's with you in the valley.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six, he is behind you and pursuing you with goodness and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: There is no direction in your life and in your ministry, no direction in your life and ministry where you can turn and the shepherd is not there.
SPEAKER_00: And then the question is well, how is this possible?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, David had no idea how good and just how merciful God really was when he wrote this song.
SPEAKER_00: Because century later, God would take on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus would come in John chapter 10, and he would say, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And I lay down my life for my sheep, and I lay my no one takes my life from me.
SPEAKER_00: I lay my damn my life down for my sheep on my own accord.
SPEAKER_00: And this shepherd didn't just walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he walked into death itself, absorbing the darkness so that only goodness and mercy would follow his people all the days of their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Who in the world, you know about sheep, you know who they are and how to describe them.
SPEAKER_00: Who in the world would voluntarily die for sheep?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus would.
SPEAKER_00: And if he loved you enough to die for you, Jesus will keep you to the end.
SPEAKER_00: And there is this great passage that's easy to miss in Revelation chapter seven, where the multitudes are gathered around the throne, and it says, The Lamb will be their shepherd, and he will guide them, think about Psalm twenty-three, to streams of living water, and then it says, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, every tear, including the ones that ministry cost you.
SPEAKER_00: Will your reputation do that?
SPEAKER_00: Will buildings do that?
SPEAKER_00: Will your ministry do that in metrics?
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: There was a young Scottish boy, and I'll close with this, who was from the Highlands and he lost his parents very early on.
SPEAKER_00: So he's very young when he moved to stay with his grandfather, and his grandfather was an old man and uneducated.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way he knew how to teach this young boy uh the scriptures was through um him calling out the words on his finger.
SPEAKER_00: So he would take his left hand and we was teaching him Psalm 23, and he had a word.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for every word there was a finger.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord is my shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord, the Lord is my shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: So my here is on the pinky finger.
SPEAKER_00: And then the boy learned this psalm, and as he got older, a little bit older, he was a shepherd himself, and then one day he got swept off this mountain because of a horrible blizzard that came through, and he never came home.
SPEAKER_00: But they found this young boy the next morning, and he was frozen to death, but his right hand was wrapped tightly around the fourth finger of his left hand, like this.
SPEAKER_00: My.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, the gospel that you give to your people every single week and that you preach is the same gospel you need.
SPEAKER_00: It's the gospel I need.
SPEAKER_00: It's the gospel that holds us.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd that is faithful to shepherd your congregation is the same shepherd that will be faithful to shepherd you.
SPEAKER_00: And that goodness and mercy that we look at our people and say it's chasing them down when they fail.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that same goodness and mercy is chasing you down when you fail.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you're not just a shepherd, you're a sheep.
SPEAKER_00: And your shepherd is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for this wonderful psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for answering our prayer and for being with us this morning and meeting us in this place through your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you comfort us with your rod and your staff and that you pursue us only with goodness and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We also thank you for this promise that we will dwell in your house all the days of our life forever.
SPEAKER_00: Be with us now as we come to your table.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.