I. Why Do We Hate Salty? 00:04
So we’re going to start with a little story time. I don’t know if any of you have heard of a children’s show that was all the rage in the ’90s called Salty the Song Book. Basically, a guy would come out, face painted blue, dressed as a songbook. He had a whole book thing, and he would do little Bible lessons and songs with the kids. Kind of like Barney, but the Christianized version. And so we’re little kids, and we love this show so desperately. Me and my sister Kimberly at the time (she’s still my sister, but at the time we were the ones; I know there’s a bunch more that came later), we were the OGs.
At the time, we did not like going home on Wednesday nights after church. It was way past our bedtime. For those of you who are young parents, or thinking about having kids: we used to make all the parents come and bring all their kids on Wednesday nights, in the middle of the week, at 7:30, for an hour-and-a-half Eucharist. And we’re like, “I don’t know if I can do that. My kids’ bedtime is 7.” So, either way, this is a longer, rambling story than I intended. But on the way home, usually me and my sister would be raising holy hell, screaming, crying, whatever. And my mom and dad learned, or at least thought this might possibly work, to sing worship songs the whole way home: “We’re just going to press into Jesus and trust him with this chaos.”
In the midst of that, one of their favorite songs was the song we just sang, “We Exalt Thee.” And they’re singing that, and it goes pretty quiet in the back of the car. And as soon as they’re done singing it, my sister goes, “Why do we hate Salty?” The whole time, she thinks they’re singing, “We hate Salty.” And she is completely perplexed. Her young mind is overwrought with the knowledge that Salty is now hated, and we’re singing about it.
Sorry for the two-minute rambling intro, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s a wonderful story. We have to tell our stories. It’s how we encourage each other in the faith and build our culture.
II. After the Well 02:31
I did want to start, in fact, with what Eric shared in his word: the joy of being Christians who have accepted Jesus, and that God is just so abundantly pleased with us.
We talked last week about the woman at the well, and what a great invitation. It’s classically set up as this marriage proposal place, the well, where they come together. And Jesus is inviting this foolish woman, who has made many errors in her life, into the abundant life in him. In fact, if she will drink the water he gives, she will never thirst again. And we talked last week a lot about denying those things that don’t satisfy and looking to the source of all of our life. And this week we’re going to talk about what it looks like once you’ve accepted Jesus: once you’ve been a part of this Christian project that God is doing in you, once you’ve adopted him, or he’s adopted you, I should say, and you are now living in Christ.
III. The Lord Is My Shepherd 03:19
And we’re going to talk about the most famous psalm that describes the life of the disciple, Psalm 23. I know there’s so much good stuff in all the readings, but I don’t know if I can ever preach, when Psalm 23 comes up, without stopping to preach on it, because it just is so central to what God wants to say to us this morning about the life of discipleship. And it opens:
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Ps 23.1
This actually has a very clear meaning. But to go back to when I was a kid: when I read this, I thought it meant “The Lord is my shepherd, whom I don’t want to be my shepherd.” Which, at the time, I remember, I would pray fervently: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. But I want to want you, God.” That’s not what it means. But that was how I interpreted it as a child.
But it’s this amazing inversion that we are so used to, it can even become trite to us: the image of God as a shepherd. We’re talking about the God who holds all things together, by whom all things exist and subsist. Everything that exists, down to the atoms and the subatomic particles, is held together by the God of all creation. And here we are telling him, “No, you’re our shepherd.” It’s an absurd notion, to teach God as shepherd, that intimate relationship a shepherd has with his sheep, that he should pay attention to you.
Maybe you’ve heard of this guy back in the day, the scientist Carl Sagan, and he talked about us as the pale blue dot: we’re in the middle of this infinite galaxy. How could you think you matter when there’s so much other stuff out there? And yet the revelation of the whole Bible is that you are the center of the universe. And maybe you’re thinking, “I was told I wasn’t the center of the universe my whole life.” I mean this in a little bit of a different way. The point being that God has done all of this for each of you, that you might now put him in his proper place, which is of course the center of all that exists. And so when I say you’re the center of the universe, I mean you matter: that Christ died for you in particular. The God of all creation has designed all this beauty and excess and abundance for you, that you might love him and glorify him and live in communion with him forever. It’s the opposite of what we might mean when we think of ourselves as the center of the universe.
And so in this scandalous revelation of God, the Creator of the universe, the only wise God, being our shepherd, our close caretaker, our leader, our guider, our minder: in the revelation of that, we come to the realization that if God is my shepherd, I shall not want. I’ll have no needs left unmet. Or, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “If you drink this water, you’ll never thirst again.” That’s the center that starts the life of discipleship: a revelation of who God is and what he has done for us. We have no wants or desires outside of his fulfillment. He is right there to take care of us.
In fact, I almost brought it up (I’ve shown this video too many times, so I didn’t put it in the slides), but there’s this great video of a shepherd in the modern-day Middle Eastern area, and this sheep jumps into a hole, and the shepherd pulls the sheep out of the hole, and the sheep jumps around and back into the hole. And that’s kind of this picture of God as our shepherd: he’s actually there at every single moment, pulling us out of our distress and providing exactly what we need.
IV. Green Pastures 07:07
So we start pretty strong: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” But then he goes further with the imagery, and he says:
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. Ps 23.2
You, right now, today, are precisely where God has brought you. That is a scandalous idea, because I know how many times I’ve gotten myself into places I shouldn’t be. And yet God is so good. Even in those moments, he is leading you to green pastures and still waters. There is something you have access to: the fullness of favor. The same favor God gives Jesus at his baptism is on you. Even when you take yourself where you shouldn’t go, even when you find yourself at a place and you say, “How in the world did I get here?”, God is right there. There’s no separation. There’s nothing you can do. In fact, Paul later writes, “What shall separate us from the love of God?” (Rom 8.35). And he lists all these things, and he goes, “Yeah, no, nothing separates us from the love of God.”
So wherever you’re at, you’re beside still waters. Now, maybe your physical circumstances need to change. Maybe you’re in a place you’re not supposed to be. But you always have access to the green pastures, the sustenance God brings. That’s why Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt 4.4). You are always being sustained by the revelation, the active word of God in your life. This is a promise you can hold on to.
In fact, there are times when it looks so inverted, and you should probably just pray this: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.” “Yeah, but you can’t pay your bills.” “Yeah, but your car broke down.” “Yeah, but you’re going to get fired.” “Yeah, but you messed up.” That doesn’t change the truth of God’s provision in your life. No matter where you’re at, the Lord is your shepherd. You shall not want. You are by green pastures and still waters.
Now, the problem we run into more often, maybe, is the one of the greener pastures over there. “Yeah, maybe he led me to green pastures, but look at the green pastures he led them to. I want those green pastures.” What a lie. What a distortion. Don’t you know that your God knows the things you need? He knows you intimately. He knows you well, and he has planned for you to have the fullness of his provision. He is not skimping out in your life. In fact, he is lavishly pouring out good things in your life. When he says green pastures, he means there’s no brown there. He’s not leading you to a dry and barren place. If you find yourself there… no. All you have to do is turn to him to receive the fullness of what he has. We’ll talk a little bit more about what happens when you run into despair. But the thing you need to know is that there are no greener pastures than where God has you right now. You can take hold of his provision right now.
This has to be lived out in daily stresses and pains, joys and sorrows. That’s why I encourage you not to read the Psalms, but to pray the Psalms, because the act of praying these words actually shapes us. We need to be transformed into a trust that says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” That’s actually a transformative thing that happens within us. It’s not something I could convince you of today. I can’t give you an argument that says, “Okay, check the box. My life is now good. Jesse has convinced me.” It’s just not how it works. You actually have to daily choose trust. And you can do that through prayer. You can do that through going to home group, being encouraged with one another. You can do that through filling yourself with good things, like singing worship music on your way to work, or listening to Bishop Jones’s podcast, or whatever you do to fill yourself with the word of God.
Think about the guy who wrote this: David. He wrote this psalm, and his whole life, if you read the book, is full of attack after attack, struggle after struggle. He literally goes from fighting off lions and bears who are attacking his flock, to defeating Goliath, to being hunted by the very king he loved and served. And he says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” And we’re like, “But they didn’t get my order right at Starbucks.” And I make that joke because I fall into the same trap. I stub my toe on the table, and it’s no longer “Praise God.” It’s something way worse. We have these minor incidents…
And I’m not just saying the minor ones. There are difficulties we encounter in our life, and they’re real. They’re not imaginary. We don’t teach a faith that says pretend everything is good even when it doesn’t feel good. We can call out that which is not good and needs to be changed and healed and fixed, while still declaring that my trust is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Later the psalmist writes, “I lift my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help” (Ps 121.1). You can recognize your lack while totally trusting in his provision.
And then you ask yourself, “What do I do to accept the provision of God?” And my argument is that you surrender. Recognizing the green pastures and the still waters means you lay down all the other stuff you’re striving for. That’s the green pasture syndrome. It might not be jealousy of somebody else. It might be that you’re looking so far ahead to what you know you should be, or where you should go, and you make up this picture, and you aren’t able to accept what God has for you right where you’re at, because he’s pouring out provision on you. He has righteousness, peace, and joy for you today. He will also answer all of your needs, all of your circumstances, heal all your brokenness, wipe every tear. He’ll do all that. But there’s righteousness, peace, and joy today.
V. Beside Still Waters 13:21
And I just want to pause on that second line: “He leads me beside still waters.” The world at large has one job, and it’s to stir up your waters. It’s to bring chaos into your life, that you might reach not for Jesus but for the latest product, or “this content that will save me,” or “this teacher that will save me,” or “this Amazon cart that will save me,” or this thing. We are constantly reaching for something to still our waters, as anger and strife and anxiety and despair are being stirred up by the multibillion-dollar industries whose only job is to get you to feel anxious, depressed, scared, or angry, so that they might manipulate you into buying their thing. They spend so much time and effort and money on it that we are completely outgunned.
You think you control this thing [the phone]. It does not come running when you call. You come running when it calls. You think you’re in control. We need to be very aware of the fact that if you are running around like a chicken with your head cut off, somewhere along the line you’ve been manipulated. You have fallen for a trap. Because what I’m told here is that actually I’m by still waters. I have a resource of peace that never runs dry.
If you find yourself engaging with content on your phone (I’m just focusing on this, although it can happen anywhere, but let’s just focus on these glowing rectangles), if you find yourself engaging with content and you’re feeling anxious, depressed, hopeless, angry: you’re being manipulated. In fact, you have been manipulated, let’s say, because they have activated those circuitries that make it much more likely for you to buy their stuff. You think you’re engaging reality, and because reality is so difficult, you have to respond with this anger and fear and anxiety. But in reality you have been duped, because our reality is that we’re beside green pastures and still waters. Now, there are problems in the world, and we’re getting there.
VI. He Restores My Soul 15:51
So let’s move on to this next verse here:
3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Ps 23.3
First of all, “He restores my soul.” I love how active that is. He is restoring my soul. That’s just what he does, always, because we are finite. We get to the end of our rope. Our soul would run out without his constant restoration. He is constantly pouring out upon us his grace, his provision, his restoration.
But we need to be aware of that. If you don’t build into your life rhythms of going to church on Sunday, spending some time with Jesus every day, going to your home groups, getting in the word, listening to worship music, finding ways to encourage yourself, you will get sucked into the pool of the cultural river that says your job is to produce and consume, produce, consume, produce, consume. And you’ll look up and be like, “I’m empty. I’ve run out.” Because you need your soul restored. You need to spend some time with Jesus.
Now, this can also happen with a husband and wife. When you have five, going on six, kids, your life can get so busy that you look up and you’re like, “I don’t know how many words I’ve spoken to my wife today. Or if I have, they’ve been directions, or ‘We’ve got to solve this problem.’” And then you just need to find a time to sit down and enjoy a meal together, and your soul is restored. If that can happen just between a husband and wife who live together, how much more between you and God, who is constantly restoring your soul? He is just pouring out his provision, but we’re so busy we’re not receiving it.
Now, I want to be careful here. You always are sustained by God. But you can enter into a reality where, because you are ignoring or distracted or consumed with all of these things, you are not receiving or experiencing the reality that God is restoring your soul. Does that make sense? Basically, what I’m saying is that there’s so much more peace and joy and goodness in God. It’s just right here. And he’s like, “Come to me, all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11.28).
VII. For His Name's Sake 18:02
“He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” I love that. We’ll start here. I’ve got a bracelet here, and it says “Dad” on it. It’s a little string with some beads, and it says “Dad,” and my daughter gave it to me for Christmas. If I ever forget how to treat my children, I remember my name. I am the dad. It is my job to be a dad right now. Not to be an adult who is inconvenienced. Not to be somebody who needs the kids to stop annoying me. But to be a dad. What does a dad do in this circumstance?
There’s something about these names. Calling God Father means something. It means he has obligations to us, because he adopted us. He took on the obligation of pouring out his love and care on us, like a father. And so when it says he leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, it means that because we say God is love, love means he leads us in the path of righteousness. If you know who God is, then you know that he is faithful, kind, merciful, slow to anger, patient. He is all of these things towards us for his name’s sake.
But furthermore, it’s even better than the psalmist could have imagined, because the way he leads us in the path of righteousness is by living the path of righteousness in Jesus. So when the psalmist says this, he has some revelation of the fact that God is the one who orders our steps. God is the one who leads us into righteousness. But we have the greater revelation. God didn’t only do that. He actually took on our sins and walked the path of righteousness for us. So let’s talk about 2 Corinthians 5:21. He says:
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor 5.21
So right now, currently, whatever path you’re on, if you are in Christ, you are… However, like I was saying with the restoring of your soul, there’s an invitation to actually walk the path, to take up the cross, to be a disciple, to become like him. And if you think, “What about those people who go out and party on the weekends and show up on Sunday morning? Are they even Christian?” They could be Christian. I don’t care what label you put on them. But they’re not living in Christ. They’re trying to live outside him. How depressing.
I don’t know if you have ever made any mistakes in your life, if you’ve ever accidentally tried to do it in your own strength, but it just doesn’t work. Why would I live like that, when I could live in submission to him? When I could walk the path of righteousness? When I could live in the favor that Jesus has purchased for us? Like Bishop Jones always says, there’s only one person who can live the Christian life, and that is Jesus. So why would I live any other life but that which he wants to live in me?
This is what I mean when I say you have all this provision, and yet we still turn away. It’s because we leave the path of righteousness. But he’s always there, mercifully drawing us back. And we always are full of the favor and the purpose and the power of God to walk the path. If you think today about some sin you’re struggling with, some anxiety or pain, and you’re like, “How do I get through this?”: it is not by your strength. It’s by his. So maybe what we need to do, to be led in the path of righteousness, is turn to Jesus, fix our eyes on him. We might need to go to confession. What a wonderful gift God has given us in confession. We might need to call our brother and say, “Hey, I’m really struggling with this. Can you pray with me? I know that I am in Christ, and in Christ, the fullness of God made flesh, I have all the grace and power of God in me, and yet I’m still doing all these things that I know are wrong.”
Even Paul had to say, “I do the things I don’t want to do. I don’t do the things I do want to do” (Rom 7.19). But nevertheless, God’s grace is sufficient (2 Cor 12.9). You don’t have to stay there. God loves you so much that, for his name’s sake, he will pull you into the righteousness of God in Christ, where you belong. And the invitation in this is: you have no idea how good it can be. You have no idea how good your life can be when you walk the path of righteousness.
VIII. The Valley of the Shadow of Death 23:26
And then we get to maybe everyone’s favorite verse. At least it’s mine:
4 Even 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
This morning my kids were watching The Prince of Egypt. Classic. On Sunday mornings they get to watch Bible story cartoons. And that first sequence, “Deliver Us”: I was thinking about all the times in my life when I’ve had the heart cry of “God, deliver me. I don’t know what to do.” There are places we go in our life. There’s pain we encounter in our life where the only cry is “God, have mercy. God, deliver me. I don’t know about this whole walking the path of righteousness. All I know is I’m in the valley of the shadow of death, and I need you.”
What is the invitation when you encounter things that are so evil, so broken, so grief-stricken that you don’t know what to do? The only answer that satisfies is that Jesus is right there with you. “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” And so what do we do in those times? The only answer is just to hold on. Hold on to Christ. There’s no teaching. There’s no “Well, if you do this step and then this step, and you say these affirmations, you’re going to somehow rescue yourself.” There are times when all you can do is say, “Okay, God, I’m just holding on to you. I don’t get it. I’m just waiting.”
But the promise is that in those moments, he is right there. He actually became one of us and then entered into our pain, our brokenness, our suffering. He experienced loss, betrayal, torturous death, so that in anything we go through, we know we can be right there with him. And he is bearing that burden with us. If you’re in the darkest night of your life, the most difficult experience ever, you can turn to Jesus even there. That’s the promise of Christianity. That’s the promise of a disciple.
And it says, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” What does that mean? I don’t know. I don’t remember, as a child, being particularly comforted by the rod. But as a shepherd, you think about the tool of the rod and the staff. What is that? You can trust in God’s protection, and you can trust in his guidance. You can trust him to lead you even when you enter the valley of the shadow of death.
Which, I know, you think about: “He leads me beside the green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters.” In that moment, you have to hold on to the promises. You don’t have to feel really excited about them, because sometimes you’re in a moment of despair and you just can’t muster the energy. You can’t find that enthusiasm that once burned bright. You feel snuffed out. You feel empty. You feel shattered. The promise is that even there, you’re still on the path. You’re still with Jesus. He’s not afraid of the valley of the shadow of death for you. He’s right there with you. And you can trust him. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to be smart enough to figure it out. You don’t even have to be holy and blameless. In fact, in those moments, I’d be shocked if you were. I don’t remember being holy or blameless in those moments. He is strong for you. He understands for you. He is holy and blameless for you. All you have to do is hold on to him. You can bring him anything you have in you. There’s nothing he can’t hold. Just hold on to him.
IX. A Table in the Presence of My Enemies 27:13
And then, as you exit the valley of the shadow of death, you confront your enemies. That’s the path of this thing. It’s like: you lead me beside the still waters, the green pastures, through the valley of death, to my enemies? What? Why don’t we go back to the still waters after that? The enemy seeks to and fro, seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet 5.8). But the promise is that in fact he prepares a table before him in the presence of his enemies (Ps 23.5).
So think about the places in your heart where you’re like, “I don’t know how I’m going to conquer this giant. I don’t know where God is going to come through for me in this moment.” The story here is that the provision is in the trial. It’s in the presence of the enemies. It’s going towards the enemies that you find God’s provision.
It’s an ancient story. I won’t spend a ton of time on it. Don’t worry, we’re getting towards the end of the psalm and of this sermon. But there’s this story that goes throughout all of history. One of the most famous examples is Saint George and the dragon, where Saint George leaves the city to confront the dragon, the enemy. And in the dragon’s cave, in all the depictions, there’s treasure, and there’s a virgin bride. Because that which is needed most, that which revitalizes the city, that which brings life, is through the enemy. That’s where the provision is. It’s when he faces the enemy that he finds the provision.
In fact, one pastor said it this way. He said, “When a trial comes in my life, I call my friend, another pastor, and I tell him about my trial. And this friend always says, ‘Man, I’m so jealous of the provision you’re about to receive.’” Because if you have that big of a problem, imagine how big the provision has to be. It’s amazing what God has done. You can’t actually lose this game if you just hold on to him, if you just go where he leads. The secret to Christianity is this: just don’t give up. Just keep running after him. Go where he leads. The provision is there. There’s not a mountain you find that he has not found a way to move out of your way. He actually knows your life ahead of time, and he looks and says, “Oh, I can’t wait to give him the provision for this.” And we look and say, “Oh God, what have you done?”
X. My Cup Overflows 30:21
He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies for a purpose. He anoints our head with oil. Our cup overflows. So the provision in the presence of the enemies is for the anointing, so that we might overflow into the world to restore all things. We’re actually doing what Jesus did when Jesus came. He made everything new. That’s what he did. He went everywhere. He healed people. He ended up rising from the dead and inviting us to continue that process. And the way it works is that you confront your enemies, God provides the provision, and then he anoints you to heal the land.
Oh, let’s get more specific. The person sitting next to you needs you to experience your provision against your enemies, because the anointing that runs on you is going to impact them. The provision of God in your life is to save each other, and our community, and the world. And it’s not just silly words. You can see what happens when people order their conduct aright. I look at my parents, and I use them all the time because it’s the easiest example. They have nine children who love God and want to be around them. That is a miracle. They confronted a heck of a lot of enemies, received a lot of provision, and the oil on their life has overflowed into their children and into their grandchildren. Imagine hundreds of people doing that. And then they have children, and they have grandchildren, and then it’s thousands, and then it’s millions, and then there are a billion Christians on the planet Earth.
That’s how God is moving. He’s been doing it for thousands of years, changing the world, culture by culture, being completely turned upside down by the revelation of Jesus Christ, because you said yes, and that person said yes, and that person… This is the life of a disciple right here. And if you weren’t encouraged enough, he ends with this:
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Ps 23.6
Praise the Lord. The life of the disciple: provision in the battle, comfort in the valley of the shadow of death, green pastures, still waters, goodness and mercy, and your cup overflows, and you save the world. It’s just too good. So hold on to that this week. Hold on to that today. Think about it. Read Psalm 23 again this week, and remind yourself of the promise and the purpose for which you are called in Jesus Christ. Amen.