Psalm 23: Jesus Always | Guest Speaker: Al Perreca

Well, good morning.

My name is Al Pereca.

I'm one of the elders here at Christ the Redeemer.

We're going to be continuing our kind of mini-series this morning on Jesus in the Old Testament, right?

So Jesus, when he was walking with his disciples after the resurrection, explained to them everything in the Old Testament that pointed to him.

So we decided when we knew Russ was going on sabbatical that we would look at a few of these passages and what it teaches us about Christ from the Old Testament.

This morning, as you can probably tell, we're going to look at a few different Psalms.

So we read Psalm 23, but we're also going to look at Psalms 22 and 24, and I'll jump into a couple of passages in the New Testament as well.

So just follow along, or you don't have to turn to everything, but I'll be reading from a few different places.

When we looked at these three Psalms, we we labeled them Jesus yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

As I studied them, and we're going to use that structure as we look at these passages, but I think it goes even beyond that.

And in my mind, what I came back to was it's Jesus always, because it's outside of time.

He encompasses more than just yesterday and tomorrow.

He encompasses all aspects of our lives, and not just our lives, of all of creation.

So I know we read Psalm 23, but we're going to start in Psalm 22, and I'm just going to read the first verse of that psalm.

David says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me?

So far from the words of my groaning.

Sorry, in verse 2.

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer.

By night, but I find no rest.

My goodness, this has gotten pretty serious pretty quickly, maybe a little bit dark, but I think we need to start here with these couple of verses and see the forsaken shepherd before we get to the comforting shepherd in Psalm 23.

We find in Psalm 22, and keep in mind, these are the words that Jesus quoted on the cross, as we see from the Gospels that tell us what happened.

Spurgeon, who is a 18th, 19th century British pastor, one of his most famous works is his commentaries on the Psalms, says about this verse, Christ's desertion is preventative of your final desertion.

Because he was forsaken for a time, you shall not be forsaken forever.

And Paul picks up on this theme in Galatians 3.13.

He says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

It is through this forsakenness that we are made whole, through the work of Christ that we are made whole, and not just us, but all of creation is made whole.

Later in Psalm 22, starting in verse 20 26, David says this.

It is through this faithfulness of the shepherd of Christ, through that suffering, that our salvation is secured.

It's not by the strength of our own faith.

We bring nothing to the table when it comes to our salvation.

Again, in Galatians and Galatians 2, Paul says, I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Now, those of you who know that verse may have noticed that there's a couple of different ways you can translate the end of it.

A lot of translations say, I live by faith in the Son of God.

I'm not a Greek scholar, but looking at various opinions, I think the better way to translate it is, I live by the faith or the faithfulness of the Son of God.

It's not us bringing anything to the table, it is the faithfulness of Christ by which we live.

Is I think a good illustration, because sometimes we do get this mixed up.

If you think about the parable of the good Samaritan, which we don't have time to read that, but I think most of you are familiar with that.

A lot of times we are we want to equate ourselves with the Samaritan, or maybe even the priest or the Levite, depending on the day.

The reality is we're the person in the ditch that needs the saving, that needs the rescuing.

And this shepherd, Christ, in Psalm 22, is the one through his suffering that does that.

So what does that mean for today?

What does that mean as we look at Psalm 23?

So, going now to what we actually read in Psalm 23, the first verse, and I I think the translation uh in the bulletin was um England ESV.

In the NIV, which I hadn't really noticed this before, maybe it's because I read it so much, but I think the translation is a bit more clear for us.

It says, The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

And I read that as I was parenting this and thought, there's never been a day in my life where I've said I lack nothing.

You know, I think whether it's in my mind spiritual things or material things, it's just not true of me.

Maybe it's true of others, it's not true of me.

You know, one funny example of this.

Uh, my wife and I have been married for 19 years, uh, known each other for 21 years.

And in those 21 years, I counted it up.

We've owned 16 different cars.

I have a problem.

Uh and it was not my wife who made the decision to purchase those cars.

And in the past five years or so, we've really slowed down.

So if you look at it, it's basically one car for every year for the first 16 or so years, or you know, one car every two years if you count one car for each of us.

And that doesn't count the three motorcycles along the way as well, as well as some other things.

Um, it's kind of a benign example, but I think it illustrates well that we are constantly seeking that thing that will make us feel enough.

We don't come back to the Lord is my shepherd, this forsaken shepherd, I lack nothing.

We go to, if I just this one other thing, if I have one other thing, then, then that will be enough.

Then I will be enough.

Then others will view me as enough.

David Zal from Mockingbird Ministries, uh, some of you actually know him.

He wrote a book recently called Seculosity, talking about this idea of secular piety and enoughness in our society.

In the intro, he says this listen carefully, and you'll hear that word enough everywhere, especially when it comes to the anxiety, loneliness, exhaustion, and division that plague our moment to such tragic proportions.

You'll hear about people scrambling to be successful enough, happy enough, thin enough, wealthy enough, influential enough, desired enough, charitable enough, woke enough, good enough.

We believe instinctively that were we to reach some benchmark in our minds, then value, vindication, and love would be ours.

That if we got enough, we would be enough.

But here's the wrinkle, one so well worn it hardly bears mentioning.

No matter how close we get or how much we achieve, we never quite arrive at enough.

Our lives attest that the threshold does not exist, at least not where fallible and finite beings are concerned.

So what else does Psalm 23 say to this?

David goes on to say, after he says, I lack nothing, and keep in mind, this is the same David who did not necessarily view himself as lacking nothing when he saw Bathsheba on the rooftop and had her husband killed.

Clearly, he was looking for things to be enough.

But he goes on to say, he makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me besides quiet waters.

This idea of green pastures, in Israel, it was only the winter and the spring that the pastures would be green.

So the shepherd would have to lead his sheep elsewhere to bring them to green pastures.

With the psalmist, what David is saying to us is that this provision for us, what this shepherd provides for us, is not seasonal.

It's not temporary, it's not here and there, it's not coming and going, that it's constant and it's abundant.

It doesn't run out.

And that sounds so simple to say, but in our day-to-day reality, I think we struggle with it.

Now, you know, as David spoke about last week, there are things that we're not content about, whether it be injustice or lack of equity, those forgotten in poverty.

But I think what this is speaking to is we know we could be content because we don't have to strive to show ourselves to others that we are enough.

We don't have to long for anything because in Christ we lack nothing.

The psalmist goes on to say in verse 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley or the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

So what about, again, speaking about Jesus in today?

So we had Jesus in our discontentment.

I think the other thing the Psalm speaks to is Jesus in our anxiety and our suffering.

And to be clear, I'm not going to present a solution to the problem of evil and suffering today.

So you came to the wrong place, if that's what you're thinking.

We all have questions when it comes to our own and others' suffering.

But I think this Psalm does give us something more real, more palpable than any philosophical discussion.

So, as many of you know, I have a genetic lung disease.

Um, I've been diagnosed for uh, I don't know, 15 years or so now, and for several years, they didn't quite understand what was causing the damage to my lungs.

They had guesses, and they were trying different medications along the way.

They have now figured out specifically what the genetic variant is.

But as they were trying different medications, they they came to one round of medications that had to be given via infusion four times a year.

For those of you who haven't been, an infusion center in a hospital is not a really happy place.

Despite the somewhat mediocre condition of my own lungs, I was by far the healthiest person most days that I was there.

Usually, you know, the room, there's about eight or ten chairs, everyone hooked up to their IV in some state of grogginess or or just sickness.

Uh for myself, besides the medicine, I would get pumped full of Benadryl because the you know you're it was shutting down part of my immune system, so my body didn't like that.

So I was sort of in this groggy state for part of the time.

So I'm sitting there, and I happen to be in the chair near the door, and and this woman walks in with this big box.

And I thought, what's going on here?

And she goes and sits down.

I start, and again, remember, I'm somewhat groggy.

I hear people going, Oh, there's the candy lady.

And I thought, what's gonna happen?

Yeah, this is a little bit strange.

Sure enough, she opens this big box and she's got bags of candy, and she starts handing out candy to all the people sitting in the chairs.

And it's you know, in sort of that midst of suffering, you get this glimmer of hope, this glimmer of grace there uh with us.

I think something similar can be seen in this psalm today.

You know, when the psalmist talks about walking through a dark valley, it the idea is you know, you're at the bottom of this valley with the canyon walls coming up next to you or lights not coming in.

You know, a scary place.

But he says the shepherd is with us.

I think when we come to suffering, we may not have the answers, but this shepherd, this forsaken shepherd is the one who is with us in that anxiety and suffering.

And not only is he with us, but we find from Psalm 22 that he himself suffered.

He knows what it's like to suffer.

You know, Josh talked last week from John chapter 1, that this is Jesus who was in the beginning, through whom everything was made, without him nothing came into being, was the one that chose to leave that and suffer for us.

John 1 · chapter mention

Right?

From Psalm 22, we find he knows rejection, he knows unanswered prayer, he knows what it's like to be despised and abandoned.

Francis Spofford, I'm not sure how to say his last name, another British author, he wrote a book titled Unapologetic.

Very quick disclaimer.

The book is sometimes rambling.

He does curse and it's a little crass.

So if you read it, just keep that in mind.

But he has some interesting things to say about suffering, and he has a chapter titled Hello, Cruel World.

And when he talks about suffering, he says other religions have their numerous comforts, but in the end they prove to be inadequate.

He then goes on to contrast that for Christians in the following.

He says, But our main comfort in the face of unjustifiable suffering is very different.

It's not an investment in order we're asked to make, it's a gamble on change.

Our hope is not in time cycling on predictably and benevolently under an almighty hand.

Our hope is in time interrupt it, disrupt it, abruptly altering from moment to moment.

We don't say that God's in his heaven and all's well with the world, not deep down.

We say all is not well with the world, but at least God is here in it with us.

We don't have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.

And so in the midst of all of us, all of this, Christ is here with us, knowing the same physical, emotional, psychological distress that we know.

And there in that, like the candy, which somewhat trivializes this.

But there in that, in the midst of that suffering, he's with us.

So that's Jesus yesterday, right?

Forsaking suffering for our salvation.

Jesus today, in our discontentment and our anxiety and suffering.

So last, let's talk about Jesus tomorrow.

And specifically, I want to talk about death.

Again, sorry, it got a little dark there, I guess.

But in Psalm 24, which is basically a coronation psalm, right?

The crowning of a king, verses 7 through 10, the psalmist says, Lift up your heads, you gates, be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

Who is this king of glory?

The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, you gates, lift them up, you ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

Who is he, this king of glory?

The Lord Almighty.

He is the King of glory.

So when I when we talk about death in our day and age, we kind of have two ends of the spectrum a lot of times in popular culture.

We either have those that are trying to postpone death for as long as possible through whatever sort of anti-aging concoction they can come up with.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for medical advancements.

I think part of the reason I'm still here is medical advancements.

But a lot of times these anti-aging movements are seeking to do this outside of the context of a Christian God.

They're not recognizing that death is a part of our broken system that is waiting to be redeemed.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have things like death doulas.

Look it up, they exist, or especially funeral homes, and even an app called the We Croak app.

And We Croak says for 99 cents that each day we'll send you five invitations at randomized times to stop and think about death.

I've not tried it yet.

It's an interesting concept.

In my mind, both of these, as I said, take away the acknowledgement that death is part of our brokenness, but that death through the shepherd king has been defeated.

I think in order to fully grasp this, we need to look at the cosmic place of the shepherd king.

Colossians 1 says, the Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rules or authority, all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body of the church.

He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

We see in this Colossians passage that we are ultimately heading towards a reconciliation of all things, which includes defeat of death itself.

I have one more quote.

I realized after I wrote this, I had four quotes, and three of them are from British authors.

The final quotes from N.

T.

Wright in his book Surprised by Hope, which I would strongly recommend without any disclaimers.

He says about this Colossians passage, what I'm proposing is that the New Testament image of the future hope of the whole cosmos, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, gives as a coherent a picture as we need or could have of the future that is promised to the whole world.

A future in which, under the sovereign and wise rule of the Creator God, decay and death will be done away with, and a new creation born, to which the present one will stand as mother to child.

What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution, but rather redemption and renewal.

And this is both promised and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

This is what the whole world's waiting for.

It's through the shepherd king and his resurrection that we find the defeat of death and ultimately making all things right.

This is why he's coronated in Psalm 24.

And that's our hope that that king has defeated death for us.

There's a movie from the late 80s called Babette's Feast.

And the movie, which I watched it many years ago, and I watched it again last week.

The main character is named Babette, and she is a famous uh French chef, and uh it takes place in the late 19th century, and she comes to Denmark as a French refugee.

And she comes to, and there's there's a lot of pieces to the story, so it is a good movie.

Uh she comes to two sisters whose father was the pastor of this small village, and they live a very, the the father has passed away, they live a very simple life.

And she comes to them with nothing, and then they take her in as their housekeeper, cook, don't pay her anything, but she she stays and lives with them.

You know, and they had an extremely Bland diet, very simple life, and she kind of spices things up a little bit.

And she has the only connection back to France is that she has someone playing the French lottery for her every year.

After about a decade, she finds out that she won.

She won 10,000 francs in the French lottery.

And she goes back to the sisters and says, Look, I haven't really asked you for anything the last 10 years.

I'd like to make the dinner to celebrate what would have been your dad's, the pastors, the community pastors' 100th birthday.

I said, Well, you know, reluctantly they agreed.

So she leaves for a week, goes back to France, and comes back with cartloads of all sorts of exotic food.

And the townspeople are looking at it, going, oh my goodness, what would we get into?

And in their piety, they say, we're not going to compliment on the food.

We'll just eat it and be sullen.

So she prepares this extravagant meal.

And as the townspeople are going through the courses, you can see that the grace of this meal, the lavishness of this meal is working on them to the point where you find that they begin to enjoy it towards the end.

So after it's all over and all the guests leave, the two sisters are talking to Babette.

And their concern, they've enjoyed having her all these years.

Their concern is she's going to go back to France because she has this money.

So they say, Well, what are you going to do with the rest of the money?

And she said, the rest of the money?

It was all spent on that meal.

The restaurant where I worked in France, a meal for 12 people would have been 10,000 francs.

I spent it all on you.

The shepherd that we find in these Psalms, the one who is forsaken for us, the one who comforts us, the one who is coronated, crowned king, is similar.

He has spent everything for us.

And Paul tells us in Ephesians, he has spent it in a lavish fashion.

Brothers and sisters, this morning, may you be able to rest, remembering that it is Jesus only.

That this shepherd, whether in our discontentment or in our suffering, is the one who allows us to say that we lack nothing because of his extravagant, abundant grace.

A feast of grace that is neither cheap nor expensive, but free with no conditions.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you for these words, and more we thank you for your actions that, though forsaken, you remained faithful.

You comfort us as we go through life, and ultimately you have defeated the greatest enemy, death.

May we remember that this week and the weeks to come as we face our own uncertainties and struggles.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.