Psalm 23: Feasting in the High Country

This fall we're contemplating our way through Psalm 23.

And so we are in verse 5a this morning, the first part of verse 5.

Let me read verse 4, going into 5.

Last week we talked about verse 4 being in the valley, and then we're going to see ourselves being taken up to the high country today.

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.

And 23, verse 5 for today.

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

So point number one is this God is provider for our hearts through all of life.

So if we think about verse 4 and we think about verse 5, this kind of covers the realm of life that we all experience.

Low country and high country.

Suffering, disappointment, and hurt, and then victory and hope and all the good stuff and the blessings.

The author, King David, he used this language of table to speak of provision.

So he was thinking about the high country when he used the word table.

He wasn't thinking about your kitchen table or chilies or longhorns or he's thinking mountains.

He's thinking the high country, or we could sometimes we'll use words like mesa or tables at the top of the mountaintops.

This summer I hiked a ridgeline in North Carolina called Roan Mountain.

Here's a picture of me up at the top.

There I am, time of alive, happy as a lark, all by myself, up on top of this ridgeline.

And this ridgeline is it's a table.

It's high above the valleys, it's flat, it's bald, it's a table.

And it's a table up above these valleys.

It's beautiful.

It's five or six miles, you hike out and back, it's wonderful.

And that morning, as I drove up through the valley to get up to that table, from the valley up, there's a 10-degree change.

Have you ever done that?

You ever driven somewhere and you start down and you work your way up?

By the time you get up, it's just all of a sudden 10 degrees, maybe 15 degrees colder.

High country.

Isn't that amazing?

It's such a great feeling, especially in the summertime when you do that.

It's an amazing feeling.

Now, here's an image of the tables of the cool tables, the high country of Israel.

So this would have been in the high country of Israel.

This is what David is thinking about.

This is where David took his sheep in the summer to survive, to have provision, to have relief from the heat.

So a thoughtful shepherd would know he needs to take his sheep to the table, to the high country.

And the shepherds would always go first.

They would scout it out, and then they'd come back for their sheep.

Where would be a good spot?

Where can we camp?

Is there too many weeds?

Is the grass plentiful?

They go and clear the springs of the overgrowth.

Because a good shepherd prepares for his sheep.

This week it got me thinking about God's provision.

Flashback to the story in John 8.

It's one of my favorite stories in the New Testament.

The Pharisees wanted to discredit Jesus.

So there's a bit of the setup that happens.

They find this woman, they catch her in adultery.

Who knows where the man went?

They didn't really care because this woman was expendable to these men.

And so they catch her in adultery.

They drag her in front of Jesus.

All these religious men get her, drag her in front of Jesus, in front of a crowd of people.

We don't know her story.

We don't get it.

We don't know her story, her background, how many failures she has.

We don't know her story of hurt or woundedness.

We don't know any of it.

But we do know she has been caught in a failure, something she would not be proud of.

She's being exposed, she's being belittled.

And I guarantee you, she is just feeling the weight and the crushing weight of the world and religion on her.

And these religious leaders want to stone her.

And they want to stone her because the law says that someone caught in adultery should be stoned.

So they're all ready with their rocks.

But then they ask Jesus, hey, what should we do?

Trying to set him up.

What's he gonna do here?

Law or compassion?

What's he gonna do?

But Jesus fulfills the law.

He is our righteousness.

He's the righteousness we don't live up to.

God's justice is met in Christ, so we experience, and this woman experiences the compassion of Christ.

Jesus stoops to the ground.

Remember that part of the story?

It's so strange.

He stoops to the ground.

He starts, he's writing something, he's drawing something.

We don't know what he's doing, right?

He's writing, you know, calling them names, drawing pictures.

We don't know.

We don't know what he's doing.

No idea.

But it's odd.

It's a really weird moment in the story because he's just been asked a question.

There's all these people, this woman's kind of exposed, she might get stoned, guys are ready to throw stone.

And he bends down, starts writing in the dirt, and you can only imagine all the attention that had been on the woman shifts to Jesus.

And that's a good moment for anybody who's exposed.

And then he says, Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.

And did you remember what happened?

First it's the older ones that drop their stones and walk away, and then the younger ones.

And then it's just the woman and Jesus.

So she's relieved, but she's not quite sure.

Is she loved?

Is she accepted?

And then Jesus just says to her, Who is left to condemn you?

Isn't that amazing?

Something for us to consider?

Everybody's left.

Just Jesus and her.

And basically he's saying, I'm not even here to condemn you.

He's there to love her and free her.

The story's amazing because Jesus is the provider of relief to the rebellious, to the woman, but then also to the self-righteous, to the religious men, to both.

See, that's a feast of grace for us and for them, for the woman and the religious men.

In Christ, we don't have to live rebellious and condemned, nor do we have to live self-righteous and judgmental.

We're freed from both those paths to rest in the gospel, what Jesus gives to us.

So we get to live grateful and in love to others out of what he gives to us.

Back to verse 5.

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

So point number two is this God's provision is lavish even as enemies remain.

So let's kind of dive deep here for a few minutes.

Who are our enemies?

Just a few thoughts, a framework of who are our enemies when we say something like that.

What are we actually talking about?

I mean, my first thought is Brandon in the eighth grade who called me nasty names.

I mean, he was mean, he was mean as a snake, and that was his name, Brandon.

If I knew his last name, I'd use his last name right now.

I'm still holding that inside of me.

It's real.

You have a Brandon, and you're like, oh, I still hate him.

Still hate him.

Okay, well, Brandon's not in the list of five, but he could be.

He could be number six for me.

You have your number six.

All right, first one is this the inner enemy.

We begin with ourselves, our deceitful hearts.

We don't begin with those other people and that other group and that other person.

We begin with us.

Matthew 15, 18 through 20.

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

And this defiles a person.

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what defile a person.

But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.

They're in a conversation about food and the law, and it's a bigger conversation.

But Jesus is saying it's about your heart.

And we have deceitful hearts.

Beautiful at times and deceitful at times.

Have you ever wanted something and you shouldn't want it?

Yeah, I mean, you don't have to raise your hand.

Yes.

The answer is yes.

You ever done something?

You shouldn't have done it.

Yeah.

Probably this morning.

You ever said something?

You shouldn't have said it?

Yes, of course.

Right?

We can't seem to get it all together.

We're plagued by an inner battle.

That's real.

That's the deceitfulness of the heart.

And it explains why you can't get it all together.

Created beautiful in the image of God, yet sinners in need of grace.

Yet sinners, that's real.

That explains you and it explains me.

It's our beginning point.

But there's another enemy.

Number two, the outer enemy, worldly values.

That's real.

1 John 2.15.

Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Now that word world in this verse is the pull of your heart and mind by systems of merit, performancism, and escape.

See how that ties into John 8?

You got the woman and the self-righteous religious men?

That's what the world does.

Try to get you to any other path other than gospel in this present life.

To form an identity or forgiveness or wholeness on your own without God.

To be your own savior, be your own God.

The outer enemy.

Number three, the stubborn enemy, which is the devil.

John 10, 10.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

So at the core, the devil, the thief, it simply means liar.

We don't have to get caught up in like a cartoon character version of the devil.

The devil is the force and personality of evil in the world.

If you believe in evil, you can believe in the devil.

You don't have to believe in a cartoon character.

It's the force and personality of evil in the world.

And even though we just we begin with our hearts, it doesn't mean that we don't have the reality of the devil in the world.

Number four, the religious enemy, the misuse of the law.

2 Corinthians 3, 4 through 8.

Here's Paul writings: such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.

Okay?

New covenant, grace.

Not of the letter, but of the spirit.

So when he's talking about letter, he's talking about the law.

What we should be: the law, the holy law.

For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even given more glory?

So Paul is saying, he's referring back to letters on stone, Ten Commandments, he's talking about the law, everything we should be holy.

It is holy.

But the law is the way of demand.

It always works in an if-then construct, if-then language.

If you obey, you will be accepted.

If you do whatever, whatever, doesn't matter.

Fill in the blank.

You can create your own law.

It doesn't have to be religious law, it could be worldly law.

If you do whatever, then I will be godly, then I will be okay, then I'll be whole, then I'll be enough, then I'll be forgiven.

As soon as we enter that, we are under law, the language of demand, not grace.

What the law does for us, the holy law guides us what is right.

And then it crushes us.

Because we do not always live righteous.

So we are crushed into our need of God's grace.

This is the new covenant to live by the Spirit under grace.

And if you're wondering if you're living under grace or under law, all you have to do is take a little temperature of your heart.

How exhausted am I and how condemned do I feel?

Because the law will produce exhaustion and condemnation.

The ministry of the new covenant, the spirit in you, it produces relief.

Number five.

A bit of a mouthful here.

The unstewarded trauma enemy.

Not just trauma, but it being unstewarded.

This is talking about our disappointment and our pain.

Imagine this woman in John 8.

I mean, she leaves forgiven.

She knows she's forgiven.

She knows she's accepted by Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Like so many of us.

The trauma of this event.

She was pulled out of a situation where she was making a huge mistake, and she is put in front of a crowd of religious people by religious people, by people she should have been able to trust.

They are ready to kill her, and only when somebody else steps in do they let go of their stones and walk away.

So she has been manipulated by people she should be able to trust, belittled publicly, exposed in front of a crowd.

That is traumatic.

That would stick with her.

Even as a forgiven person, that would stick with her.

The trauma of it.

Perhaps she would go on, just projecting at this point, perhaps she would go on with distrust of religious people, of religious leaders.

Perhaps she would go on and have huge anxiety in crowds.

Maybe she would have anxiety anytime she walked into a religious setting.

It could be very possible.

Ignored trauma never goes away.

Your ignored trauma, it doesn't go away.

It stays inside of you.

And it pops up here and there and there and there.

We have to steward our wounds to become healed and have our wounds move from eating us up to being sacred.

In Jesus, we're so secure that we're already forgiven and love that we can dare to actually feel, name, and process the pain that we thought would destroy us, but it won't.

Jesus has endeared himself to us in our weakness.

He endears himself to this woman in her failure, in her sin, and in her trauma.

And as a church, we want to listen to you.

We want to pray for you.

And if you want counseling, we're going to help you do that.

Now I can't claim David had all that in mind in Psalm 23.

Bible nerds, you're already thinking that.

Like, mayor, he has really gone on tangent here, right?

I can't claim that David had all that in mind.

I can't.

But all that is true for our lives.

Those are enemies.

We do know this.

We know that all the animals would be moving up to the high country in the summer.

Not just the sheep.

It's not like as soon as the sheep got up to the high country to that provision and relief and the cool weather and the grass and the water.

No.

Their enemies would be up there too.

See, even in the abundance of provision, the sheep are still needy.

It's a subtlety in the passage that keeps showing back up that David places the shepherd as the one to deal with the enemies.

Here's what that means for us it means that we don't deal with our enemies by ourselves.

We have God's Spirit inside of us.

We are never alone.

And so we deal with our enemies with God.

Point number three.

We live victoriously while still sinners through the provision already given to us in Christ.

We live victoriously while sinners, still sinners, sinners and saints, through the provision already given to us in Christ.

In case you have lived in a cave this week on Thursday, Queen Elizabeth passed away.

I think in a 45-minute time span, five people said to me, Did you hear Queen Elizabeth died?

Five people, I'm not kidding.

In 45 minutes, say, Yes, I did.

I heard it, you know, yes, I did, yes, I did, yeah, I got it.

70 years as Queen of England, and now Charles is king.

King Charles III.

So I nerd out on some of this stuff.

I'm like, what does that mean?

You know, like I want to get into some details.

So he's now the sovereign monarch of a thousand-year-old monarchy.

Most of the Queen's personal assets,$500 million of personal money, most of it transfers to him.

Plus, now he's the benefactor of a trust that owns Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, land and castles and properties all over Great Britain, the Royal Art Collection, plus the monarch brand.

It's a brand.

I never thought about that.

They actually sell merchandise, and he now is the benefactor of that.

Tens and tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars of assets.

Overnight, Charles became one of the wealthiest men in Britain.

And what did he do?

What did he do to have all this lavish provision, all this security, this position?

What did he do?

Here's what he did.

Right here.

He was born.

He didn't do anything.

He was just born.

He was in the family.

It's imputed to him.

Right?

We talked about this word imputation, how beautiful this is for us as Christians.

That we have a victory, we have forgiveness, we have righteousness that's imputed to us, not because of something we do, but because we're in the family of faith.

Let me just remind us of the feast of provision that we have in Christ.

I know maybe you wish it was for your bank account, but I can assure you it's not.

Some of us wish it was, but it's not.

It's a feast of provision for our inner life.

In Christ, there's a whole list of these.

I'm just gonna read through them.

In Christ, we are always forgiven and always righteous.

Jesus is your righteousness.

In Christ, we have secure, forever acceptance and peace with God.

Jesus is your peace.

In Christ, we are never alone and have endless companionship.

Jesus is your friend.

In Christ, we are liberated from performancism to live by the Spirit and freedom and love.

Jesus is your freedom.

In Christ, we are relieved of judgmentalism and empowered to live with love toward others.

Jesus is your source of love.

In Christ, we are both deemed godly and becoming godly.

Jesus is your empowerment toward holiness.

In Christ, we have a heavenly home prepared for us when our days on earth are over.

Jesus is your home.

Now, beloved, that is a position and provision that is lavish in the high country.

That is a table to feast on, even while we still have enemies in this world.

That's a huge provision for our hearts.

There's a story in the New Testament, another table.

It's just before Jesus is arrested, beaten, crucified, resurrected.

Jesus having dinner with his disciples.

Now all of the disciples at this point, provision is provided for them.

Their physical needs are being taken care of.

They have shelter, they have food, they have water.

And they're having this meal, and Jesus uses this physical provision, this table of food and wine, to speak of deeper needs that we all have.

Matthew 26, 26 through 28.

Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, he broke it.

And he gave it to his disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body.

And he took a cup.

And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

And so that's what we do each week when we come to this table.

This high country of provision.

Of what we have in Christ, what's given to us in God's grace.

It's a feast given to us in the form of a symbol when we come forward for communion.

The new covenant of grace, the law fulfilled, Christ is our forgiveness, Christ is our righteousness, we are secure, and we do the we don't get it because we do anything.

We do it because we're in the family of faith.

And we feast on it, not because we're strong enough or we're good enough.

We feast on it because we come forward the poor with open hands.

An open heart and open hands.

So we come forward to feast on the one who will never stop loving us and who has fully redeemed us.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this feast of provision.

We thank you that verse 4 is true and verse 5 is true, that you are with us in the valley, in our disappointment and our hurt, and that you have provided for us in this high country such a feast of provision for our hearts, and that we are sheep.

We are weary and we are needy.

We're more exhausted than we want to admit.

We feel condemnation that we haven't even told anybody about.

And we thank you that your provision speaks to all of it.

Help us to trust in you in greater ways to know this feast of provision.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.