I. God Provided 00:01
…that we can trust in you. And so, Lord, as we hear the words of your Scripture, I pray that you would encourage our hearts with hope and with deeper trust, and that you’d invite us into the place that you’re taking us this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
A few weeks ago I got up here and I said that we were struggling to find a place to live, and that the devil Zillow was getting us down. The price in the area was just overwhelming. And I come before you today to say that we have a place to live. Praise God! It is a miracle. It’s so funny; God showed up in so many ways. I’d love to tell the story, but we’re not going to go there today. But I will just tell you that there’s no way that Haley or I could have made it happen. Even with Mackenzie’s help, there was no way we could have made it happen. And God provided a way, and we have this wonderful house to live in. So I am feeling that song this morning, “The Goodness of God.” It surrounds us in the midst of all of the circumstances of our life.
II. The Thief and the Shepherd 01:05
Well, today we have this Gospel that you’ve probably heard a million times: “I am the shepherd; the sheep know my voice.” Or that great verse that’s quoted often, John 10:10, which is where we’re going to start:
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10.10
There’s something really fascinating going on in this verse. We often say, “Yeah, duh, the devil’s out to get us, but God’s out for our benefit.” And maybe in your mind you think there’s this heroic war going on. Maybe you have pictures of the Disney Hercules movie, where you have Hades and his minions, and he releases the Titans and they assault Mount Olympus, and Zeus is trying to hold him off, and all of that story. That’s not the picture we’re actually talking about here. Believe it or not, that’s not what the enemy is like. And the hint comes in this next verse I’m going to read, which actually came two verses earlier, verse 8:
8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. John 10.8
That’s a weird verse. If you were a sheep thief and you get into a pasture and the sheep aren’t listening to you, what do you care? You just take them. What do you mean, the sheep aren’t listening to them? What is he talking about here? Well, he’s saying that God, the Creator of the universe, the Lord of all creation, who not only bought you with a price by Jesus, but by whose grace and power everything that exists is, cannot be stolen from. The only way that the sheep follow the thief and the robber is if they listen to him.
So the enemy is more like a seductive whisperer who says, “Look over here. Go this way,” when God says, “We’re going this way.” The only weapon that the enemy has is to convince you that his way is actually the one that leads to abundant life. That’s the only weapon. And Jesus is telling us his way leads to death and destruction. All he can do is try and convince us otherwise. If you don’t fall for that lie, then you win. Why is that? Because Jesus is the truth, and if you hold to the truth in Jesus Christ, by the power of his blood, nothing can stand against you. Not a single thing.
III. Sheep, Not Captain America 03:22
And so as we talk about this, we’re thinking, in the season of Easter, of resurrection. We have this drama play out of the crucifixion, where Jesus died that we might be set free, and rose that we might live with him in resurrected life. Well, what does that look like? Death has been conquered. We join with Christ in his resurrection, and he’s taking us from glory to glory.
Well, maybe in your mind you have this image of Chris Evans CGI’d as a very small person. Let me explain: Captain America. In the first movie they had this little wimpy kid, and he’s tough. He’s like, “I can do this all day,” but he’s getting the tar beat out of him. And then they inject him with this super serum, and he goes through this transformative process, and he ends up coming out looking like Chris Evans, as we all know: this muscular, just wonderful physique, Herculean person. And maybe that’s what you think the Christian life should look like. You accept Jesus, and then you go through this transformative process, and all of a sudden you’re Captain America, kicking Nazis in the face. We get this triumphalist idea: “Well, we accept Jesus. Why am I not kicking butt? I have the victory. What went wrong?”
Well, let me just show you what the Bible calls the people who follow Jesus. It calls us sheep. That’s a very different image than Captain America kicking butt. In fact, I’ve got a quick video to show you why maybe the Bible uses this imagery of sheep. If you want to just look at this real quick (sorry, there’s no sound): that’s us. Is that not us? Jesus the Good Shepherd reaches down and pulls us out of a pit, and we go running and jump right back into the pit. We’re sheep. We’re not Captain America, as much as we want to be.
So what does it mean, then, to live in the resurrected life? Because it can’t just mean sheep who keep jumping back into the pit. That is not the goal. Believe it or not, we can change. We can be transformed. While sheep are dumb, stubborn, and self-destructive, as are we all, we can actually be transformed to be like Christ, our very own Captain America. Okay, maybe not. I don’t want to get the images mixed up here. He’s a little better than Captain America. But spiritually, let me tell you, there’s no one buffer than Jesus. Okay, okay, I’m not going to lean on that. We’re not going to go there.
My point is, you can actually be transformed, but it’s not some magic process where a super serum injects you and you come out like Hercules. You actually have to do the work of walking with your Shepherd, of following your Shepherd.
IV. The Lord Is My Shepherd 07:03
And so today we’re going to dive into the shepherd psalm, the psalm we read this morning, Psalm 23. Now, I was thinking, “Should I go back to Psalm 23? Everybody knows this psalm. We’ve heard it a million times. I’ve even preached on it a couple of times. Should I go back to Psalm 23?” But a couple of weeks ago (actually, I guess it was last week; time’s been a little crazy), in the midst of trying to figure out all of this process of how to get into the house, how to make the money work, how to do this, how to do that, one of my spiritual counselors said, “Hey, I think God wants to meet you in Psalm 23. You should go there.”
And so I was like, “Okay, well, I know it. I could say it right now.” So I said it, and I didn’t feel any better. I just recited it. But later on that night I was just feeling the burden of everything, and it came to mind, and God said, “Hey, did you meet me in Psalm 23?” And it’s like, “Well, I said it.” He’s like, “No, did you meet me in it?” And I just started praying that over my life.
I don’t know if you know this, but the Psalms are unlike the other parts of Scripture. They’re not there to tell you a story. They’re there to be your prayer book. They’re there to teach you how to commune and communicate with God. They have prophetic things in them; they have promises and prophecies. But really the Psalms were written as a prayer book: how do you talk to God? And so I started praying that as though I were the psalmist: “The Lord is my shepherd.” And for whatever reason (I’ve prayed it a million times), at that moment, just out of that simple act of obedience, God met me. And at that point I said, “Well, I guess I’ve got to preach it.”
And so we’re going to talk through some of what’s going on in this psalm. First of all, we’re going to start at verse 1, as one should: “The LORD is my shepherd” (Ps 23.1). Okay, so we see the shepherd analogy pulling out. And the first thing I’m struck with in this psalm is the humility of our God. You don’t read about Baal or Mithras or the Roman god of war, or any of these people, saying, “Our God is a shepherd.” That’s not how you relate to pagan gods. You relate to them in fear and trembling, and if they show up as a shepherd, watch your back, because they’re trying to trick you. No, our God identifies with us as a humble shepherd. That is remarkable. There’s an understanding of God’s nearness, of his care, how he guides us day by day, walking and leading.
You know that being a shepherd is actually all about the sheep. You’re not doing anything else. You’re just making sure the sheep eat, that the sheep don’t wander into a pit, that the sheep don’t get killed by rabid animals. There are a thousand things you do, but they’re all about the sheep. The God of the universe, who created all that is, is actually that concerned with you, day in and day out. And it goes even further, because what Jesus told us today in the Gospel is that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10.11). And in our New Testament, Peter’s explaining some of this. I’m just going to read some of this to you; I don’t think I have it on the screens. It says:
24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 1 Pet 2.24–25
Maybe you’ve seen the picture of the Caucasian Jesus holding the lamb on his shoulders, walking around with a benevolent smile on his face: “Ah, the Good Shepherd.” No. Our picture of the Shepherd is actually on the cross: the one who bore the wounds that the sheep earned, the one who not only pulled us out of the pit but went into the pit and rescued all those who had fallen away. He went in and he entered into our difficulties, and he took on him our sins and the wounds of us all. That is the Shepherd that I would follow.
It reminds me of when my children are first learning to walk. I’ve used this analogy before. We often think of God as the judge who’s watching and saying, “Oh, you messed up there. Oh, I can’t believe you didn’t get this right.” And maybe we get that from our own parents. Not pointing any fingers here; there were a couple of times my dad had to have that conversation with me. But I do think there’s something real in this connection, especially when you think of a toddler who falls a thousand times. If we were holding a toddler to the same standard that we hold ourselves to spiritually, we would just completely lose patience: “How dumb are you, one-year-old? You don’t even know that a wall isn’t meant to be walked into.” I mean, I’ve seen everything with these kids. They will just walk off of a bed and onto the floor, and they’d have no idea. A lot like the sheep.
But as a father, was there ever a moment where I got impatient with my son or daughter when they were learning to walk? I can proudly say no. Because you know what? You don’t expect a one-year-old to know how to walk. You don’t expect a two-year-old to do it all that well. And Rhys is going on three, and he’s still working it out. There are things that maybe I struggle with, having disappointment with my kids, like when they hurt one another. But when it comes to learning how to live and how to walk, there’s something in your heart that just has infinite love and patience for them. And that’s how God views us. We’re just learning this spiritual life.
In fact, if we use the Captain America analogy one more time, it’s more like that wimpy kid started going to the gym and started working out to bulk up. I know there were physical limitations there, but think about it more like that. The spiritual walk is more like that. How long would it take that wimpy kid to become Captain America? A lifetime. And the same thing for us spiritually. We start as that wimpy little kid, and when you walk with God day by day, it’s like moving up from the 5-pounders to the 10-pounders to the 15-pounders. When I first went to a gym in high school and they were teaching me how to weightlift, you start with the bar. There’s no weight on it; you just start with the bar. That’s like us in Christianity. God’s like, “Just read some Scriptures. Talk to me every once in a while.” He will bring you through that. So when we talk about “The Lord is my shepherd,” it’s not just this boring image of a benevolent Jesus holding a lamb. There’s so much more than that.
V. I Shall Not Want 14:23
And then it says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” I’ve made this point before, but it always rings true. Growing up, I honestly thought that meant, “The Lord is my shepherd, who I don’t want,” because I was pretty rebellious as a kid, and I was pretty often coming into conflict with those who were in authority over me. And so that made perfect sense. That’s not what it means. It’s a lot better than that. Yes, sometimes we rebel against God, and that’s dealt with elsewhere. But there’s something really deep in this. David is praying this over his life: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
He is not a naive optimist who is delusional, because then he would have prayed, “The Lord is my shepherd; I do not want.” No, he acknowledges his need. In fact, in the psalm before, he’s crying out to God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22.1). He’s willing to cry out in his need, but he’s also going to pray the promises of God over his life, because “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” He’s holding on to hope that God will fulfill his promises, that God will fulfill the desires of his heart. That’s what we do when we pray: we declare the goodness of God over our life. Yes, please tell God when you’re angry, when you’re upset. He wants to talk to you. But don’t forget to look forward and pray with hope that he will come through. Transform that pain into trust and hope through prayer.
VI. Green Pastures and Still Waters 15:03
So what else does this Shepherd do? Well, verse 2:
2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. 3 He restores my soul; Ps 23.2–3
Now, I love this. If you read about sheep, you actually have to make them lie down. They just don’t do it. They will wander into the worst possible place. They are just like the video: back into the pit. That is not an anomaly. That wasn’t the dumb sheep; that was the normal sheep. They’re all like that. If you lead them to a river, they will walk into the middle and drown. I’m not kidding you. But our Shepherd makes us to lie down in green pastures. And you’re crying out, “God, but I wanted that promotion. But God, I wanted that relationship. But God, I wanted that money. But God, I wanted that car.” And God says, “No. I’m making you lie down in the green pastures that I prepared for you.” We run after things that could lead to our death and destruction without even knowing it, and we’re so angry because God puts a roadblock in front of us.
I’m not saying that all the time. We don’t need to walk around being like, “Oh, I didn’t get that. Must be God.” There are sometimes you just needed to be better in order to get the job. But you will never know unless you ask God, “What is going on in this situation? Is this where you want me to slow down and just be where you’ve planted me? Or do I need to go out and learn to be better, to do the things that you’ve called me to do, to be equipped to engage with the world the way you’ve called me to engage with the world?” If you’re looking toward the Shepherd to lead you, then he will lead you.
So he leads us beside still waters. I think that there’s a place in this where we are so busy in our life, especially in Orange County and the modern day, or at least that’s what I’ve heard a thousand times. I think it’s always been a problem, but I do think that with our access to technology and everything else, we feel the weight of our productivity. We have to constantly be accomplishing things. If there’s a place where God wants us to just stop by the still waters, you’re going to miss that thing. It says, “He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.” Well, if you can’t stop and accept and receive what God has for you, you’re going to miss that restoration, and you’re going to burn out. Everybody knows the phrase “burnout” right now, because our culture has wired us to be such go-getters: “I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.” We’re commonly seeing people just completely break down and burn out of things that maybe even God called them to do, because they didn’t go to the green pastures and the still waters.
Look to your Shepherd and ask him where he’s bringing you. Yes, absolutely, sometimes he’s like, “Go do more. Do better.” That’s huge. Abraham: we read about that. He was sitting in his father’s house. What was he doing? He’s 75 years old, and he’s in his father’s house. He hasn’t done anything worthy of note, at least nothing the Bible talks about. And then God says, “Go. Get out of here. This isn’t the green pastures anymore” (Gen 12.1–4). And he leads them out. So I want to balance these things. Is God telling you to stop, or is God telling you to go? And sometimes he’s telling you to stop over here and go over there. So just look to the Shepherd. He is good.
VII. Paths of Righteousness 19:23
Okay, what else does he do?
3 He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Ps 23.3
That’s one of my favorite phrases in this whole psalm: “for his name’s sake.” What does it mean? Well, when God makes a promise in the Bible, it says he swears by his own name, because he knows no greater name. What else is he going to swear by? The universe? Well, he made the universe. So he says, “I am a guarantee for you.”
And what is he leading us in? He’s leading us in righteousness. When we die with Christ in our baptism, when we are born again as Christians, we have to learn again to relate to the world, to God, to mankind, and to creation, because we just get it wrong all the time. We’re a fallen people. We’re infected by sin. And so we abuse creation, we use our fellow man, and we ignore our God, and he has to teach us how to do that. So he has to lead us in paths of righteousness. It’s not because he’s upset with you for all those bad things you did. No, it’s because he wants you to be restored, to go to the still waters, to go to the green pastures, to be able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But in order to do that, he has to lead you in the paths of righteousness.
What is righteousness about? Righteousness is not about following the rules. Righteousness is about being positioned in right relationship with God and with mankind and with, I’ll just say, reality. Because what happens? Like this morning, when Ruby bit Rhys. There was a break in the righteousness of their relationship. They felt it; there was a problem. And so I had to take Ruby aside and talk to her, and she had to receive some discipline so that we could restore the rightness of her relationship with her brother. And then I let her back to her brother. And she had to apologize to me, as the authority in her life, as a symbol of God’s fatherly love and authority in her life, and as the real, on-earth authority in her life. She had to apologize and restore that. And then she had to go and apologize and restore that with Rhys. And you know what? Rhys had to forgive her. And then, guess what? Righteousness was restored, and they could go back to making ice cream together in the little pretend ice cream truck. That’s what righteousness is: right relationship. That’s so much better than following a list of rules. The rules can help you get there, but it’s so much deeper than that.
When God leads you in the paths of righteousness, he wants prodigal sons returned. He wants broken relationships restored. He wants you to live in a place of joy, in a place of peace, not only with God but with man, with reality, with everything in our life. And guess what? Just like the puny Captain America (I guess I’m going back to that), it’s going to take you a lifetime to get to that place.
VIII. The Valley of the Shadow of Death 22:43
This is totally a side note, but it’s part of the reason why you need to be around old people, especially people who’ve walked this out in their faith: because they’ve done the work. Or let me say it differently: God has done the work on them. And it’s so important that you aren’t just around a bunch of your same people. You need to see people who are further down the path, to give you hope and courage, to help you see better than you can where you’re at. Okay, side note. Verse 4:
4 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. Ps 23.4
We can really only understand this verse in the context of the crucified God. Because, you know what? At least as a child (and I think I’m still on this journey), it’s hard to understand what that means: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil, for you are with me.” You can get this image in your head, like in these games, Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons. You’ve probably never heard of them. But there are these games where you take on a role and you have to go fight the bad guys, and there are these special magical things, like an Infinity Gauntlet or armor or whatever, that will make you impervious to evil. And so maybe you think, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I’ve got the infinite God on my side, and nothing can touch me.” Well, that’s just not it. Because even God, in Jesus, went and got crucified. He didn’t have some special armor. God was with him in every moment. There was no sundering between Jesus and God, and yet he died.
So when we talk about going through the valley of the shadow of death, what we trust is that we live with a God of resurrection, so that no matter what you experience, no matter what you encounter, he will bring you through to the other side. He will bring restoration to you. “I will fear no evil.” You know how I told you that the enemy’s only trick is to get you to think that his way is the abundant way? There’s a flip side of that trick, and the trick is to get you to think that God’s way leads to death and destruction. That’s what fear does. Fear is when you start thinking that the way that God is bringing you is actually going to destroy you, when you lose sight of the fact that God is a good God who wants to bring you into abundance. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen to you. But it does mean that we can trust the God of resurrection, that we can trust the God who went through it himself in the most graphic way on the cross and came out the other side, for the joy that was set before him.
And then it says, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” There’s a beautiful picture there: the authority of God is also our protection and our comfort. That’s part of why our bishop walks with a crozier. He’s got that staff. It’s a symbol of God’s authority that comforts us and directs us. And my uncle, Father Ken, wrote recently something that goes along with this whole valley of the shadow of death and the comfort of God. He said, “There’s more death in resurrection and more resurrection in death than I had seen.” And I really love that. He’s talking about some experiences he was going through. There’s this idea that we always think, “Well, God, you can’t be leading me there.” And he’s like, “No, there’s resurrection there.” Or, “God, you can’t save this situation.” Or, “God, you’re bringing me to this glorious place, but why are you asking me to die?” Because there’s more death and resurrection than you thought.
That’s when the enemy starts to say, when you’re in the valley of the shadow of death… the enemy says, “Look at my green pastures. Look at my still waters. This is what you were promised. Come over here.” Don’t listen to the lie. Keep your eye on the Good Shepherd. If he’s with you, there’s nothing to fear. Like a child, let’s run to our Father in our pain and in our fear, not away.
IX. A Table, Oil and an Overflowing Cup 27:03
And it says in verse 5:
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; Ps 23.5
I’m just going to say one thing about that. Look at all your enemies, whatever they are, depression, fear, anxiety, financial troubles, and then look for God’s provision. It’s there. Wherever your enemies are, that’s where God’s preparing a table before you. There’s this great prophetic teacher who talks about how he would call his buddy and say, “Man, I’ve got a problem,” and his buddy would say, “Well, I’m really jealous, because that also means you have a provision.”
Okay, let’s keep going:
5 You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Ps 23.5
This is why it’s different than Captain America. They needed to give him the ability to go and do all the things. In Christianity, we need to give our ability to God and trust him to do all the things through us. Yeah, we’ve got to do stuff. Yeah, he calls us to go through the valley of the shadow of death. But we have to rely on the anointing of God, the Spirit of God. He will use anything you give him: your intelligence, your strength, your faithfulness, your skill set. He’ll use whatever you give him, but you have to give it to him.
X. Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me 28:15
Okay, we’re going to wrap this up quickly. So let’s go into the last verse here:
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Ps 23.6
They were figuring out songs, and I was like, “You’ve got to sing ‘The Goodness of God’ this morning.” And they were gracious enough to do it, because of that line in there: “Your goodness is running after me.” Once again, we have this image of God as Zeus Almighty, striking down his enemies, correcting us, or at the very least as a disappointed father. No. God is running after you for your goodness.
Now, C.S. Lewis (love that guy) points out this thing where he says (I’m paraphrasing here) we’re pretty confident in the fact that God will bring about our goodness; we’re just really worried about how painful our goodness will be. We might be able to trust that God has our best at heart, but we’re not very trusting about how painful our best will be. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” David wrote this psalm, and you almost can’t talk about David without talking about the fact that he slept with one of his best friends’ wives and then murdered him. Do you think God’s goodness was following him at that point? Yes. How do I know? Because the prophet came to him and told him, “You did it wrong, David. Repent. Come back to God” (2 Sam 12.1–13). God didn’t give up on David. God went after him. And yes, because he followed the enemy, it led to destruction, because the thief only comes to kill and to destroy. The thief said, “You can take what you want,” and one of his best friends and the child of that union both died. But God’s goodness followed him, and we see repentance in David, and he gets up and he praises the Lord, because he sees the truth clearly: that God, even though he had no right to continue to follow David with goodness, has continued to follow him with goodness.
“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” We just got this house, and it’s really great. We’re renting it, and it’s awesome. But there’s a deeper truth, and that is that everywhere we go, we get to bring the house of the Lord with us. So yesterday Haley’s like, “You know, it’s weird to be in a new house. I’m a little uncomfortable. Everything’s all over the place.” And I just said, “Yeah, but you know what? This is now God’s house. We just give it to him.” We could go through the valley of the shadow of death in this house. We could. But God will be with us, and we will fear no evil. It’s not blind naivete. It’s deep trust. But it takes a lifetime to learn.
When we’re talking about the Lord as a Shepherd, I want you to always think, “Am I walking day by day with my Shepherd?” Because every day he wants to teach you, wants to encourage you, wants to lead you. Amen.