The Lord is my Shepherd

Welcome to Crowd Church, a digital space where faith is explored, hearts are

inspired, and everyone is welcome to discover the meaningful life Jesus lives.

brings us.

Now this month, this August, we are going to be doing things

just a little bit differently.

If you've been to one of our live streams before, you will have seen hosts buzzing

with energy and doing real time engagement in the comments, doing something

that we call Conversation Street.

Oh yes, we like live streaming, we like Conversation Street.

But for this August, our usual live stream will be taking a little sabbatical.

The members of the crowd team, just like many of you, We'll be taking

this time to rest, recover, and recharge with our loved ones, just

as God rested on the seventh day.

We believe in the importance of Sabbath, of taking rest, of taking time off.

To renew our spirits and regain our strength.

So during this time, what's going to happen?

Well, you'll still see a scheduled video going out each week as usual, what we call

the non live Livestream, but instead of our regular real time hosts, you know, the

live thing, we'll be taking a step back.

We won't be doing Conversation Street.

Mind you, that said, there is a chance we'll be joining you in the comments.

Uh, as each live stream goes on, and to make this period a little bit more

special, we've invited four, yes that's right, four fantastic guest speakers

who will take you on a unique journey exploring their favourite psalm each.

Now these psalms have spoken into their lives and they're excited to

share their insights and reflections.

If this is your first time with us, a huge welcome to you.

You can find out more information about Crowd Church on our website at www.

crowd.

church.

So, I hope you're excited.

We are looking forward to this time of renewal and hope that the powerful words

of the Psalms will bring you peace.

Comfort and a little bit of inspiration for your life.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for being part of the crowd family.

We can't wait to reconnect with you live, refreshed and ready to continue on the

faith journey together in September.

But remember...

At Crowd Church, you are always welcome here, and we will see you in the comments.

So let's get into the Psalms.

Psalm 23.

It's a beautiful, poetic, powerful psalm that helps us to understand

something profound about who God is, and something profound About who we are.

The Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord God, He is my shepherd.

I love this psalm.

It is a psalm I committed to memory many, many years ago.

It's a psalm I often recite and pray through the day.

Sometimes I pray in the darkest hours of the night.

It is a great psalm.

To memorise and meditate on.

For example, you could, if you wanted, just go through the psalm,

each verse emphasising a different word each time, and see how

God speaks to you through that.

The Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is.

It's a certainty, it's not a might be.

He is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

Just an idea if you're wanting to meditate on the Psalms.

Another thing I love to do when reading the Bible and the Psalms is to

highlight what I call the God Verbs.

Verbs are doing words.

What are the God Verbs?

What is it that God, the Lord our Shepherd, does in this Psalm, Psalm 23?

He leads, He restores, He guides, He is with us, He comforts us, He prepares

a table, He anoints us, He pursues us.

There's so much in this psalm that God is doing.

But what I want to focus on today is how this psalm helps us to understand

our relationship with God because there are lots of ways of understanding and

articulating God's relationship with us.

There's lots of different metaphors that try and use our limited...

Human vocabulary to try and express the relationship between

Almighty God and little old us.

For example, some people think of God as like the big boss

and themselves as the workers.

And so they're always trying to work out what they need to do for God.

A far better, healthier picture is that of God as Father.

And we're his children, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, when

God wants to articulate his great love and passion for his people, he

is described as the groom, and we as people as the bride, the bride and

groom, a metaphor of love and union.

There are lots of different ways we can think about who God is and

how we relate to him, but here in Psalm 23 we discover that God is

the shepherd and we are his flock.

You and I are the sheep of his pasture.

And Jesus used that language all the time to describe himself as the

good shepherd and us as his sheep.

Just a couple of quick caveats here before we dig into this text more deeply.

Firstly...

Anyone, absolutely anyone can make God their shepherd.

Anyone can become one of his sheep, his flock.

You simply need to ask him to cleanse you and forgive you of your sins.

God is holy, God is pure and our unholiness separates us from him.

So we come to him and we come to Jesus and we ask him to cleanse us and

forgive us and that's what he does.

And then we get welcomed into his family, into his flock, we take on

a new identity, we belong to him.

That's the first little caveat, anyone can be part of this flock.

Secondly, sometimes you hear people say, oh well, you know,

Jesus never claimed to be God.

He was just some nice moral teacher, some rabbi, some guru like everyone else.

Yes, he did claim to be God.

All of the time, if you understand the language and the

culture of what he's saying.

When he says, uh, for example, he's a good shepherd, the

religious leaders were outraged.

Because only God was the shepherd.

And just like C.

S.

Lewis famously says of this, he says that Jesus is either God, as he claimed,

Or some madman, or lunatic, or liar.

They're the options.

So anyone can be part of Jesus flock, and Jesus is our good shepherd.

He's God.

Just one example of how he talks about himself as God.

The final little caveat...

Before we dig into the text is this, that I've got teenage boys, so I am well aware

from their insults that to call someone a sheep is not a good thing, it's an

insult, you sheep, you sheeple, it's meant negatively, those who blindly, mindlessly

go with the flow and with the crowd and Have no need to think for themselves.

But you know, when we're described here in Psalm 23 and in the Bible

as sheep and God as our shepherd, that is such a positive thing.

It's such a good thing.

It means we belong to Him.

It means we are precious to Him.

It means that He will look after us and protect us and provide for us.

All of those promises in Psalm 23 of guidance and restoration and

rest are ours because we're His.

We are the sheep of his pasture.

So you might think, I'm no sheep, I'm a free thinker, I'm the master of my own

destiny, I do things my way, well...

And good luck with that.

How is that working out for you?

I used to think of myself as some deep, academic, philosophical, big thinker.

But that led me to the conclusion, A, there must be a God.

B, such a God is good and loves me.

And C, that God knows me better than myself and what's best for me.

And as I follow Him and His pattern...

That's when life starts to work.

I'm so glad to be one of his sheep.

So we're thinking about God's relationship with us.

That he is the shepherd, and that we are his sheep.

And, and that actually means, uh, the Hebrew here, it's the Lord is my shepherd.

It's Jehovah Rohe, or Yahweh Rohe.

Rohe is a bit more than shepherd.

It's a bit more than a hired hand in an employee sense.

It's about...

A livestock owner.

That's what it means when it says he's our shepherd.

We belong to him.

Sheep are precious.

They're valuable to their shepherd.

You are valuable to God.

Sheep are known by their shepherd.

They are marked by their shepherd.

It's about ownership.

Identity, Value.

One way of living life, one theory for smashing life for those who think they

aren't sheep, is to think, well, okay, I've got to make my life work, I've got to

get everything sorted, this existential, ambitious, driven, striving, where it's

all down to me and my effort, I've got to work for this, then I've got to take

the best gym membership out for the best body, then I've got to have some amazing

holiday to recover from all of it.

I feel exhausted just thinking about that way of living.

But there is another way to live.

Jesus is our Good Shepherd.

Just imagine being a sheep for a moment.

Imagine you've got your head down, you're munching on grass.

You hear the shepherd calling in the distance.

You start to follow the voice of the shepherd.

As you look up, you realise the shepherd has led you into green pastures.

The Hebrew for that translates literally as...

An Oasis of Vegetation, and he makes you lie down beside still waters, he begins

to restore your soul, you're refreshed, you're nourished, you're sustained, and

it's all his doing, all you had to do was follow, all the sheep had to do.

Was to lie down.

This is the Christian life.

This is the life of grace.

I often say the effort of grace is surrender.

The effort of grace is to yield.

It's to lie down.

It's to let God be God, to let God do what only God can do to rest in him.

There is an effort in an intentionality to that, but that's how we find true peace.

Now, that does not mean that bad stuff won't happen in life.

It doesn't mean there won't be dark times.

God doesn't say we won't walk through dark valleys.

He says, even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we

will walk through the dark valleys.

You may be walking through a dark valley right now.

You may feel darkness and death are casting their shadow over you.

But there is a promise for us, his sheep.

Jesus, our Good Shepherd, will be with us.

He is with us in the valley, and he has a rod and a staff.

In his hands are a rod and a staff.

People debate the meaning of those.

I tend to think of one, maybe the rod, I don't know.

One he's using to keep me moving forwards.

When I get stuck in darkness, when I get stuck in despair, when I pitch my

tent in the valley of self pity, I'm so thankful that my shepherd gives me a

little nudge, a little prod, to keep me moving through it, and not to live in it.

Of course, there's a rod and there's a staff, because he's our shepherd.

We are precious sheep to him, that means he's fighting for you, he's

protecting you, he's fending off the wolves and those things that might

cause you harm, because you're his sheep, because he's your shepherd.

Verse 5 then says that our shepherd prepares a table for us.

in the presence of our enemies.

He prepares a table in the presence of our enemies.

Now a number of years ago I did a talk, a series of talks on spiritual

warfare and during one of those talks I asked an artist in the church just to

paint whilst I preached on this verse.

And that's what she did, she produced an incredible piece of artwork of a table.

Just imagine a dining room table and around this table there's a family,

their They're feasting, they're eating, they're drinking, they're

laughing, they're sharing stories.

Now all around them, in the background, are dark figures.

They're enemies.

But the powers of darkness can't get to them.

The powers of darkness can't touch them.

Because that feasting family is surrounded by God's light.

And I love that imagery, it's so defiant, so confident, as we do the

feasting, God does the fighting.

Again, it's all about the effort of surrender, the effort of yielding, just

to hold your ground, the effort of grace.

I want to finish with a final thought, verse 6 says, Surely goodness and mercy

will follow me all the days of my life.

Some translations say surely blessing and mercy will follow, others goodness

and faithful love will follow.

But the word I want to focus in on is the word follow, the

Hebrew word radaph, radaph.

God, our good shepherd, follows us with his goodness, his

kindness, his faithful love.

But radaph is more powerful than that.

It's better translated as the word pursuit.

God.

Pursues me.

In fact, it's even stronger than that.

The first time the word Radaph is used in the Bible, it's used

of Laban chasing down Jacob.

It's used of Pharaoh chasing the Israelites as they escape Egypt.

It literally means, Radaph means to hunt you down.

God, our good shepherd.

It's pursuing us, it's chasing you, it's hunting you down with all of

his goodness and his mercy and love.

The poet Thomas Francis wrote a poem about this called The Hound of Heaven.

He tried to hide from God how he fled from God, he says how I fled.

Him, down the nights, down the days, I fled him, down the arches

of the years, I fled him, down the labyrinth ways of my own mind, and in

the midst of tears, I hid from him.

He goes on to talk about God's undisturbed pace, deliberate speed,

majestic instancy, the hound of heaven.

Hunting Him down.

God loves you so much.

You are so precious to Him.

You're so valuable to Him.

Uh, so when we stray, when we go our own way, when we get a

bit lost in life, He pursues us.

He goes after us.

Such is His great kindness and mercy towards us.

I heard a story recently about a sheep in New Zealand that had

been lost, I think, for six years.

I think the sheep was called Barak.

I can't quite remember the details of the story.

Google it.

But because this sheep had been lost and hadn't been sheared for six years,

the wool had grown so heavy that this poor sheep could hardly move.

It was weighing it down.

It couldn't see properly for the wool over its eyes.

And they, there were these before and after photos when, when they found

the sheep, I think they, they removed like 75 pounds, 35 kilos of dirty

matted wool off the sheep in the sheep barrack, it could move again, it was

free again, it was light again, it could see again, it could breathe again.

It was brought back into the fold.

Now, for some people listening to this, that is a picture of you.

You, you thought that that freedom, doing your own thing in your own way,

that thing you were pursuing was going to bring you into the life you wanted.

But all it's done is weighed you down.

Today, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is calling you by name.

He's calling out to you, come to me.

He's searching for you, He's pursuing you, He's chasing you, after you with

His grace and His mercy and His kindness.

and His love.

And as you come to Him, ask for His forgiveness, ask for His restoration.

He is going to lift all of that heavy matted stuff off you.

He's going to pasture you besides the waters.

He's going to begin that work of strengthening and

restoring your weary soul.

The Lord is our shepherd.

He's your shepherd.

He pursues you in His love.

And I pray that for every person Listening to this, watching this, that right now

you would know the Good Shepherd with you, standing alongside you, leading you,

guiding you, restoring you, comforting you, anointing your head to equip you to

serve him in life, fighting your battles for you, and pursuing you with his

great loving kindness, mercy, and grace.

Amen.

We hope you found today's exploration of the Psalms insightful and inspiring.

Every psalm has a unique message, a distinct voice that speaks

to the heart and to the soul.

Now we would love to hear your thoughts.

What did you think about today's psalm?

Feel free, if you haven't done so already, to share your thoughts, your reflections

and experiences in the comments below.

I really, really look forward to seeing them.

It's always great to learn from each other.

on our journey of faith.

So do get busy in the comments, do share them.

Now, if you wish to reach out to us, you can find out more information about

us, uh, and how to reach us, how to connect with us on the website at www.

crowd.

church.

And don't forget, come September, we're returning to our regular live

stream services, resuming the Origins series that explores the roots of

the church through the Book of Acts.

We are, we're like part way through it.

We've got a fair bit to go.

It's an exciting journey, so do make sure you are part of that by hitting

that little bell, uh, subscription thing and notification thing if you

haven't done so already on YouTube.

Now remember, at Crowd Church, everyone, including you, is welcome,

and everyone, including you, is valued.

No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, there's a place for you here.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for being with us today.

Until next time, be blessed.

Stay inspired and keep exploring the beauty of faith.

See you in the comments and see you back here next week.

Bye for now.