The LORD is my shepherd (Psalm 23)

Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd.

I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green

pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right

paths for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the

darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of

my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

Which bit of the Bible do you think is probably the best known

in like around your friends and your family and your culture?

If there was a bit of the Bible that you thought was the best

known, have a think what it might be any other than this

bit, Any bits of the Bible people think are really well

known in culture? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Golden Rule as it's called in it, Yeah.

Probably quite well known, yes. Yeah, sort of in the beginning

and all that jazz. Yeah.

OK. I think let's probably feel like

John three. Oh, yeah, go on.

The Lord's Prayer might be pretty well known for certain

generations, particularly I think my generation and younger

less so, I suspect. I think John 316 has always held

upon cards at sporting events in it, at least the references

here. People don't know what it says,

but I think this there, the Bible is probably the best known

in our culture, especially in the Western world of all of the

Bible. It was the theme tune to the

Vicar of Dibley. No one remembers watching that.

The priest reads it out in the film Titanic as the ship sinks.

Spoiler alert, although if you don't know the ship sinks, why

are you watching the film? It's not a documentary.

It was read at the funeral of Whitney Houston and it was read

at the memorial service for 911 by George Bush.

Artists like Coolio, Duke Ellington, Pink Floyd, Tupac,

The Offspring have all used it in their music and their songs

at some point. It's a really, really well known

bit of the Bible and it begins with a really beautiful picture

of what it looks like to be a sheep and the flock of an

extraordinary shepherd. And in the first 3 verses,

David, the person who wrote this Psalm, paints a fantastic

picture of what it is like to be a sheep that's being cared for

by the Lord as their shepherd. And in verse one to three,

exactly what we want life to be like, like God personally caring

and providing for his flock where we can just eat and we can

lie down. Sheep apparently never ever lie

down. They're really skittish animals.

They never rest. So it's quite rare for sheep to

lie down. But this shepherd sheep can lie

down. That sounds brilliant, don't it?

First one to three just sound beauty.

But then there's a plot twist in verse 4.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no

evil, for you are with me, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort

me. Verse 4 is a really horrible

plot twist and what seems a beautiful Psalm so far.

And even more shockingly, if you look at the trance, see that

between verse 3 and verse 4, you see that full stop at the very

end of verse 3. That's not there in the

original. So actually, you could read it.

He guides me along the right path for His name's sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, sometimes the

dark valleys are exactly where the Lord is leading us.

There's a purpose in it. We don't like that, do we?

So we're going to base ourselves, though, in verse 4

this morning to help us see a bit of a flow of the rest of the

Psalm, hopefully to encourage us, to encourage us all as sheep

following this shepherd. Let me pray.

And then we'll spend some time seeing four different things

from this together. Let's pray.

Lord, this is your word. And so as we look at it, we want

it to speak to us rather than us speaking about it.

And so Father, we pray that you would help me to speak truth.

Please help us to hear what you want to say to us.

Please encourage us, please challenge us, please correct us.

We pray, Lord, would you use the word of God with the Spirit of

God to make the people of God look like the Son of God?

We pray, Amen. OK, so 4 things for us to see

from particularly verse 4. But the whole Psalm really will

get the flow of it if you if you catch the drift.

So first one is the valley is dark.

The valley is dark. Now, I grew up in a small town

in the north of England after we moved from Wales, and it was a

pretty rubbish town. There's not a lot going for

Barton upon Humber. I think there's a church there

that's mentioned in the Doomsday Book and one of the artists from

the Beano lived there at some point.

That's about it. But just past the end of the

street where I lived, because it was in the middle of rural

Lincolnshire, there were miles and miles of empty roads and

empty fields, which meant you could go and ride your bike

there and kick a football about there all day long, perfectly

safe. It was a child's dream.

I remember just going out for a whole days at a time with my

mates to just play for the day. But to get to those incredible

fields, you'd have to go through this tunnel.

This subway tunnel looks appealing, right?

I hated this tunnel. It's stank of we, I don't know

why, the bigger boys, the bigger boys would hang out in there and

smoke and do naughty stuff. And it was always dark.

By the way, I've checked every bit of this graffiti.

There was nothing that's inappropriate to show in a

church. The lights, despite being on in

this picture, never ever seemed to work whenever I wanted to go

through it, which meant that even though it's only about 100

meters long, it felt like it went on for miles.

So I would Sprint through this tunnel, or I'll pedal through it

as quickly as I could to just try and get through it.

And you had to go through it because frustratingly, there's a

motorway above it. So if I wanted to get to those

fields, you can't go over it. You can't go under it.

Oh, no, you have to go through it.

And I hated this dark tunnel particularly because it was so

dark. Like, none of us like dark

places, do we? No one thinks, great, I get to

spend some time in the dark. We don't need to cheat.

Teach children to be afraid of the dark.

It comes naturally. Darkness means we don't quite

know how safe we are in it. Nasty things, dangerous things

can hide in darkness. And that's David's experience

right in the middle of this Psalm.

In this verse. He feels like he's in a dark

valley, and he does not like it, and he doesn't tell us what his

specific dark valley is or was. But that's because he's

deliberately written this Psalm so that we put ourselves into

this Psalm as if we were writing it with him.

And we bring our own dark valleys with us, whatever they

may be today. And we do have dark valleys,

right? Sickness, looming diagnosis, or

just the fear of a looming diagnosis.

Relationship breakdowns or breakups, loneliness, abuse,

worries about family members, financial stresses, work

worries, mental health struggles.

And then behind all of those dark valleys, there's that

constant shadow of death. Death of nature and the world

and the environment around us, or death of friends or family or

ourselves. There's no escape from it.

It's going to happen. We try and live like death isn't

going to happen to us, but it will.

It's coming. And the Bible's clear that

behind all of those darknesses is the underlying cause of sin.

Ever since the very first humans rejected, God chose to rule

their own lives, which is what sin is.

They set everything on a one way journey to an appointment with

death that has cast its shadow over every bit of life ever

since. The valleys are dark.

The Bible never, ever tries to downplay that, which means that

we don't need to either. If you're going through a dark

valley when you go through a dark valley, because it'll come

if it hasn't yet, you and I don't need to pretend that we're

not in a dark valley. In fact, the Bible will tell us

that we should be honest about our dark valleys to each other.

They exist and they're real. If David is stiff up, elliptic,

we'd never have the comfort of this Psalm, right?

If he'd been British, this Psalm would not be as great.

I'll say that if he was English, this Psalm would not be as

great. We're good at whinging as Welsh.

The Bible, and the Psalms especially, are honest about the

dark valleys of life. Nearly half of the Psalms are

lament, crying out in pain and sadness to God.

Nearly half of the Psalms the Bible doesn't try and gloss over

pain or tell us to have a stiff upper lip and pretend

everything's OK so we don't lose face.

And if we try and deny that we have dark valleys when we have

them, then we're trying to live our life in a way that we were

never designed to live. And worse, we're acting like

we're better than Jesus because he never denied dark valleys

when he went through them on the night he was betrayed, for

example, knowing what was about to happen, He didn't hide his

dark valley and his fears from his friends, and in fact, he

showed them in an unflinching honesty how scary his dark

valley was. Which means it is good for us to

do the same as well. And it is bad for us and for

people around us when we hide our pain and hurt and fears and

dark valleys because we're missing out on getting and other

people are getting out, missing out on showing what Jesus wants

from his people. If you read the later bit of

John's gospel, when he's speaking to his disciples just

before his dies, he dies. Jesus says, I'm going to go

away, but you'll keep seeing me. And the disciples,

understandably, are quite baffled.

But if you read that, the way the disciples are going to keep

seeing Jesus, the way that we and I will come to Jesus as we

sang in our second song, is by telling each other.

You get to be Jesus to suffering people when they come to you and

talk about their dark valleys with you.

You get to be ministers for and of Jesus to each other when

people are in their dark valleys.

It is really good for us to be honest about our dark valleys.

And the Bible would say it is bad for us to hide it because

the valley is dark. Be honest about that.

Don't lie about it. And there are loads of really

good reasons along with all this why it's good for us to be

honest. But this Psalm has got a

particular reason it wants us to see, and it's David's focus not

just in this verse, but actually the focus in the whole Psalm,

because we need to be reminded of a truth in Hebrew poetry,

which is what this Psalm is. The middle of the poem is very

often the main point of the whole poem.

Like in English poetry, we start with our theme and maybe end

with the theme, and the stuff in between is that fluff.

But that's not the literal way of describing it.

But in Hebrew poetry, often everything builds up to the

middle, which is the main point, and then everything flows out of

it towards the very end. The middle line is the most

important one, and the exact middle of Psalm 23 tells us our

second encouragement. The shepherd is close.

The shepherd is close. This is the middle line of the

poem in the original Hebrew For you are with me.

This is what David wants us to focus on more than any valley.

For you are with me. Scary situations are much less

scary when we're not on our own right?

And in this dark valley, David's comfort is that he is not alone.

The shepherd is close, which means David can not be afraid

because he knows he isn't walking alone.

The shepherd is close. In fact, the darkness has

brought the shepherd closer. Have a look down.

In verses 1 to 3, David talks about the shepherd, doesn't he?

In verses one to three, he, he, he four times he talking about

the shepherd. But now in verse 4, what

happens? He starts talking directly to

the shepherd. You are with me, Your rod, your

staff, come for me. He's not just telling himself

no, he's speaking directly to the shepherd.

The darkness has brought the shepherd closer.

Thanks to the darkness, he doesn't just know the good news

of being part of the shepherd's flock, although that is good

news now. He now knows the shepherd

personally. It's like in this valley it's

just him and the shepherd, and his greatest comfort is that his

shepherd is with him personally. Now, just to be really clear,

David is not saying now that the darkness is good.

David is not saying that at all. Saying you are with me doesn't

somehow make the valley filled with light and a happy place to

be. No, it's genuinely A terrifying

and dark valley. The Psalm is not telling us that

dark valleys are good things. Now.

Evil is evil. Cancer, abuse, relationship

breakdowns, war, depression, death, They are bad things.

They are not good things in themselves.

And it's OK to be honest about that.

David is not saying that the darkness is good, but he is

saying that the reason we don't need to fear this very scary and

horrible darkness is because of who's with us.

Because you, the sovereign, powerful, covenant God of the

universe, because you are with me, I don't need to be afraid of

the very real darkness and the very real evil that I'm facing,

whatever it is. The comfort is the presence of

the Shepherd in the darkness, not the removal of darkness.

And sometimes the only good thing that we can see in dark

valleys we're LED through is that the Shepherd is right with

us every single step of the way. And in those dark valleys, He

reminds us of just how close He is.

It is not possible for a sheep to go through a dark valley that

is outside of God's leading and His loving care and presence.

He is always with us in every single dark valley.

So if you feel in the dark right now, please be encouraged that

your Shepherd isn't scratching his head wondering what to do

with you or where you are. No, he's with you.

He's not ahead of you, leading you from a distance, saying,

hurry up, children, come on. He doesn't drop you off at the

scary bit and say, I'll see you later.

Now he's with you. He's next to you every single

step of the way. And that changes everything.

And we're meant to see that it always has changed everything in

the Bible. I am with you is one of the

great repeated promises that you find in the Bible.

As you read it, look out for it. You'll see it all over the place

in different ways or other. Here's just a few examples for

us for this morning in Joshua, one on the edge of the promised

land with their enemies ahead of them.

God says do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.

For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

A few 100 years later, facing exile, being taken to foreign

lands, terrified, God says to his people, do not fear, for I

am with you. When Jeremiah doubts whether

he's able to do what God's asked him to do, God says, do not be

afraid of them, for I am with you.

When Jesus sends out his followers in Matthew 28, he

sends them out with the promise. And surely I'm with you always

to the very end of the age, in Acts 18, when the apostle Paul

faced threats and attack and potential death, God says to

him, do not be afraid, keep on speaking, do not be silent, for

I am with you. God with us is the great hope of

the whole Bible. That's the massive promise the

whole Bible is looking to answer.

How can sinful people make it through life?

Because God is with them. Whatever dark valleys, wherever,

in whatever situation makes your chest tighten right now in your

mind race. God says to you today what he

said to his people throughout all time.

I am with you. That's why Christmas is such a

big deal. Remember the name for Jesus that

we think about Emmanuel Christmas a lot.

Emmanuel, what does that mean? God with us, it's a big deal,

right? That is the story of the Bible

that in Jesus God has come to us so that we can now say you are

with me. Like Psalm 23 verse 4 manages to

Psalms 23:4

summarise the whole Bible that Jesus our shepherd, King and

Saviour is with us in every valley and he will never leave

us or abandoned us. And not just some future better

version of you in the valley in the future you go through right

now. And not just a past cleaner,

nicer version of you that used to exist.

Whatever valley you're in right now, your shepherd is with you.

He's with you now as you sit in that chair.

If you are a Christian here today, that means you can

confidently say if I die tomorrow, I'll go and be with

Jesus. And if I don't, he'll be with

me. But only if you are one of his

sheep. If, as verse one says, the Lord

is your shepherd, and that is far more important than any

valley you're walking through, do you know the Lord is your

shepherd? Do you know that he's with you?

Are you following him? Are you obeying him not just as

your shepherd but also as your king?

Can you call yourself part of this flock?

If not, then the Bible says that the dark valleys you walk

through are actually invitations to see just how dark your valley

is and to see your need to follow a better shepherd.

Because we're all following some shepherd or other, only one of

them is a comfort to be with us in the valley.

So your dark valley, if you're not yet today a Christian, is an

invitation to come and join a better flock, to ask for the

forgiveness only God can give, and then follow the sheep of the

shepherd with the rest of the sheep.

If you can say you've done that, then whatever valley you are

ever in, you can fear no danger because our shepherd is with us.

And that is even better news than it might feel, because as

well as being close, David also wants us to see that our

shepherd is strong. The shepherd is strong.

If you walk out of here and you meet somebody and they're

wearing scrubs and a stethoscope, who are they and

what do they do? Yeah.

So I don't do rhetorical questions yet.

Who are? They're a doctor or a nurse,

right. OK.

And they, they're in the medical profession because who they are

and what they do is shown by how they're dressed, right.

And the the tools they're carrying with them.

And the same is true of our shepherd.

Our shepherd carries a rod and a staff, two different things

which show us that he is perfectly equipped for even the

darkest of valleys. Now, I don't know about you, but

my view of shepherds has been far too tarnished by primary

school nativities and kids with tea towels on their head.

And so I often it's easy to picture a shepherd as like a

little child or gentle and oh, that's nice.

But somebody met some Middle Eastern shepherds, described

them like this, as like warriors marching to the battlefield with

guns and daggers and pistols and battle axes or iron headed clubs

and prepared to use their weapons at any moment.

That paints a very different picture of a shepherd, doesn't

it? Like the shepherd who's with us

is great. But you know what?

He's not a weakling, he's a warrior.

Our shepherd's not a weakling. He is a warrior, as all

shepherds had to be, and that is shown by the tools he carries,

the rod and the staff. The rod would be the shepherd's

weapon to protect his sheep from wild animals or thieves.

It'd be about 2 1/2 feet long with a big ball on the end of

it, and there'd have bits of iron or metal like buried into

it to smack things with. It was a perfect weapon.

So good, in fact, that David himself, when he talks about his

own experience of being a shepherd, said he's able to

fight off lions and bears with them.

It's quite a good weapon, but they were also used a bit like a

car park barrier when they were bringing their sheep in at night

to count the sheep in because the shepherd would know exactly

how many sheep they had and so they count them in at night to

make sure they're all there so if anyone missing they could go

off and find them. The weapon to fight was also a

symbol of protection and care for the sheep, and our shepherd

is equipped and strong enough to both defeat our enemies and

protect us sheep, which means there will be things that try

and attack us. That's why he needs the weapon.

But we don't need to be afraid because the weapon's shaping

ourselves in our the weapon is safe in our shepherd's hands.

Maybe some of you feel quite bad today.

Well please let verse 4 remind you that the rod really is in

Jesus hands, not yours. So you don't need to confuse his

tenderness for weakness or his care for you for carelessness

about things that threaten you. That is not what our shepherd is

like. So you can join this psalmist

today in saying to the shepherd, I will fear no evil, for your

rod is in your hand to protect me.

But he's also got a staff and the staff was used to direct and

round up the sheep and to give him a bit of a slap and a tap

and pull them along when they went the wrong way.

It's a bit like a lead for a dog.

It's our dog Remy, just an excuse to show pictures.

And he's really great when we go for walks.

He doesn't really need a lead unless there's some dirty water

we don't want him to go in, then he needs a lead because he'll

try and go in it. We only really put the lead on

him to keep him on the right path and away from the bad

places. And that's how a shepherd would

use a staff like a lead for a dog for correcting them and

stopping them from going the wrong way.

The rod will be for defending and a staff will be for

correcting and leading. And the truth is, as sheep of

this shepherd, we need both. We need our shepherd to protect

us from our enemies with his rod, but we also need him to

protect us from ourselves with his staff.

Because you're my biggest enemy is our own stupid, sinful

hearts, our love of ourselves and our own comfort, our self

pity, our belief in the lies, that the grass is greener

somewhere else. That this dark valley is clearly

a mistake and we all need our shepherd staff to continually

pull us back to him. Maybe this morning you've

wandered off. Yeah, you know, you're a sheep

of the shepherd. But you've realised you've

wandered away. Maybe the valley was too dark,

so actually you're grazing in fields that you really know you

shouldn't be in. Maybe you've prioritised easier,

less dark paths. And actually you can feel a

distance between you and the shepherd, and between US and the

other sheep. Because actually we've been

slowly but surely putting ourselves beyond the reach or

beyond the sound of our shepherd's staff.

And the sound is important because in dark valleys,

shepherds would walk along ahead because they're often quite

narrow, and they'd bang their Staffs against the wall as they

went so that the sheep knew he was still there by the sound of

his staff. Maybe we've stopped listening to

our shepherd's staff in his word, or maybe we're ducking and

diving to try and keep ourselves out of reach of the hook and the

sound of the shepherd's staff. Well, today this verse is an

invitation as well, to stop that, to reset, to restart, to

come home, to look up and see how far off from the shepherd

you've wandered, but also to see the shepherd who's waiting to

walk right close next to you again.

Maybe it's time for somebody here to speak to someone else

and to start listening to His voice and belonging to the flock

again. Or maybe this is just a reminder

to keep on going, but what we're doing is the right thing.

It's hard, the Valley's dark, and I'm tired, but this is the

right thing. Keep listening to God's Word,

keep obeying, keep following even when it looks scary.

With the shepherd walking with us every step.

Because in the dark valley, our shepherd is close, but he's also

strong, which is even better news.

The only time I wouldn't dash through this subway was when I

was with my dad. My dad at the time was bigger

than me. Not now, but he was ripped.

He was an athlete, he was strong, and he loved me.

He'd look after me. So when we walk through this

together, I wouldn't need to run.

Even if the bigger boys were there, they'd be more afraid of

him than I was of them. So I could freewheel on my bike

or just stroll next to him. Because my dad was with me.

He was close and he was strong and he cared about me.

Still does. There wasn't many past tense

there. We just don't live there anymore

anyway. But that's why David can walk

through this dark valley. You spot that in verse 4.

Even though I walk through the darkest final, I'd be sprinting

on my own. He can walk because his big

strong shepherd is with him and near him.

So he doesn't need to be afraid. And we can trust this shepherd

in our dark valleys also because he's been there.

You see, Jesus, our Good Shepherd, he walked straight

into the darkest valley on the cross.

He went through a darkness that you and I will never have to

face. If we're his sheep, He's

forsaken by his Father. He drank a cup of judgement that

should have been ours. And he walked through death

itself, so that for everybody who follows him, death has lost

its sting. The Valley's been conquered from

the inside, and we're following Him, and He knows the way out,

which means that when we walk through our dark valleys, we're

following a shepherd who's already been through the worst

of it, and he's burst out the other side, victoriously alive.

That's why we can fear no evil, not just because he's with us,

but because he's already beaten it.

And if you're not yet following the shepherd, he is calling you

to follow him today. Which reminds us of the final

comfort we're going to see very briefly.

I promise that the valley isn't the end.

It's not the end. The valley isn't a destination.

Even death itself is not the destination, as Jesus proved by

rising from the dead. Now there is only glory to come,

which if we had time, we could see in the final few verses.

But we don't, so we won't. But for now, please be

encouraged that when you're going through dark valleys, do

not forget and not the end. There is only brilliance and

glory and wonder ahead, which doesn't mean you just grit your

teeth and endure it until it comes.

Now David says in verse 6 that all the days of his life, even

in the valley, God's goodness and love will follow him, will

pursue him like sheepdogs around him.

Which is his way of saying that even in the darkest valley, God

himself is still pursuing you and with you even when you can't

see it. But it's all heading somewhere

better than we could ever imagine.

We sang about the cup overflowing and all that jazz

again. I'd love to go into.

I won't. But that means we're lending and

unending peace and joy and happiness and glory.

And if you hear about heaven in the New Testament, the way Jesus

describes it, it's mainly a party, but a really good party,

see. And when the Bible finishes, it

describes the future of everybody who follows this

shepherd. And the Book of Revelation

describes it like this in Revelation 21, verse 3, showing

Revelation 21:3

us what is at the end of our valley, even if that lasts all

the way till we die. It says this.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's

dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with

them. They'll be his people and God

himself will be with them and be their God.

No more distance, no more darkness clouding our vision.

No, God will once and for all be with us in a way that we can

never forget or never imagine. And the fact the chapter goes on

to say that there won't be any sun or moon anymore because God

himself will be the light, which means dark valleys are gone

because God is there and he is the light.

All suffering and all pain and everything that you feel

threatens you today, gone. But God with us is not gone.

It'll just carry on for eternity in a way we can't even imagine

where we'll live with our Shepherd once and for all and

forever. So this week, remember, the

Valley's dark and it is OK and good and it is healthy to admit

that. But remember, the Shepherd is

close and he's strong, and the valley won't last forever

because it's not the destination God is.

And that's going to be far greater than we can even

possibly imagine. Let's pray.

The apostle Paul, when he's writing to the church in Rome in

chapter 8, verse 18 says, I consider that our presence,

present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that

will be revealed in US. Lord, that feels really hard to

imagine for some of us here today.

Our valleys feel really dark, really horrible, and we can't

imagine anything eclipsing it. And yet, Father, Your Word

promises us that even in those dark valleys, you are with us.

Please help us to remember that. Please help us to be honest

about our dark valley so we can be reminded of just how close

and strong you are to us, and we can be reminded that the valley

is not the end. Please help us to be people

who've got our eyes fixed on the glory at the end, but who also

remember You're with us and you are strong, and you'll never

leave us or forsake us. So please help us to help each

other, to not fear any danger, but to trust in the God who's

leading us all the way home. Amen.