The Lord, My Shepherd

Well, I'm going to reserve our confession tonight to just be writes out of the word.

And now is your chance to show off how holy and special you are.

If you happen to know Psalm 23 because we're going to say Psalm 23 together and if you don't know it, just mouth the words like my kids do and act like when mom says it, you just say it with me.

And it goes like this the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He leads me beside the still waters.

He now I can't even say it he makes me to lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness.

For his name's sake, yea, 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 comfort me.

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

You anoint my head with oil.

My cup runs over Surely.

Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, forever, forever, forever.

So I began a series of the names of God, and we've been talking about those.

I don't know how long I'll get onto this one, but I just could not resist tonight just doing Jehovah Rohe, the Lord, our shepherd.

It is one of the names of God, you know.

In Daniel it says those who do know their God will be strong and carry out great exploits, miracles, miracle, working power comes from knowing.

Intimate knowledge of God, and we can know about him in our head and we can have a working knowledge of him day to day, where the rubber meets the road, and a pastor had such a wonderful message on that this morning, just communing with the Holy Ghost.

And so I, just I learned.

You know as much as I love this scripture.

I've shared it so many times, so many situations.

I've shared it at funerals, when a patriarch or matriarch goes home to be with the Lord.

You know the Lord is your shepherd, he's going to unite you, he's going to take care of you.

I've shared it to my kids.

I've said it over them countless times before they go to bed.

I have said it to myself in times of my own temptation, to anxiety, and then lately, as James has been sharing, we've been walking through this thing personally and we've needed God every step of that way.

The Lord is our shepherd.

I shall not lack, decrease or fail.

I shall not lack decrease or fail.

You know God doesn't have a plan for you to go down.

He has a plan for you to go up.

He has a plan, and so we shall not lack, decrease or fail.

I use it in that way.

I felt you know it talks about your thy rod and my staff comfort me.

I felt we were on a certain path.

We thought it was a good path.

It looked nice, our kids were going to a certain school, everything was good, and I felt the staff of the Holy Ghost yank us.

I mean hard.

It was a sudden thing and normally things are just very easy and very you know, but this was a, this was a hard.

Yeah, we were going to rip our kids out of the roots that they built at that school, and so then all of these other decisions just followed that, and then it just made sense that the Lord is leading all of us.

If they're over there, then we need to be over there, and then, and all of that, and there's new connections being made, and then we're just following right after it.

But it was that wonderful staff of God that we, we, we just followed it and there's green pastures, there's still and peaceful and quiet waters, amen.

So anyway, I thought I knew the Psalm, but I did dug in a little bit more and I learned some more stuff that I'm going to share with you tonight.

First of all, psalm 23 is one of a series of three Psalms that are all called the shepherd Psalms.

I thought Psalm 23 all stood by itself, but Psalm 22, if you look at Psalm 22, 23 and 24 are the shepherd Psalms.

Psalm 22 talks about Jesus well, and it doesn't use the word.

It's very subtle, but it does enumerate Jesus the good shepherd.

Why is it about Jesus the good shepherd, claire?

It describes.

What Psalm 22 is describing is the most detailed description of the crucifixion that you would ever see.

It is very my guy starts out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Does that sound familiar?

Jesus said that on the cross, didn't he?

And it gives very specific details about the crucifixion that then played out in Jesus' own experience later in the Gospels and so.

But it's a shepherd's Psalm.

Why is it a shepherd's Psalm?

Because if you go to John 10, and we're very fond of saying John 10, 10, that thief comes not but to steal, kill and destroy.

But I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.

And then John 10, 11 is the very next verse.

Jesus said I am the good shepherd.

And the good shepherd does what gives his life or lays down his life for the sheep.

A hireling won't do it.

Somebody who's just in it for the money, religion won't do it.

Religion's in it for the look, for how it, for the facade, for what it looks like on the outside.

But Jesus is there.

When a rubber meets the road, he's gonna lay it down.

And so he's the good shepherd.

He laid down his life for the sheep, and so there you have Psalm 22.

That describes every detail of that, and we won't read directly.

Let me see, I got two Bibles up here tonight.

But he's the good shepherd because he will give.

He gave everything for you.

He gave everything for you so you could have everything he has, so you could be everything he is, so we could be a member of his family.

And so it has many details of the resurrection.

And it even ends if you read the very last verse After it describes many have surrounded me, verse 12.

Many bulls have surrounded me.

Strong bulls of Bayesian have encircled me.

That's demonic powers.

They gap at me with their mouths like a raging lion.

I'm poured out like water.

All my bones are out of joint.

My heart is like wax.

It's melted within me.

I'm dried up.

My tongue clings to me, to my jaws, and you've given me to the dust of death.

It is Jesus on the cross, but then he beats.

If you read it, then he gets over into an area of victory and by verse 31, verse 30, it says a posterity shall serve him.

It will be recounted to the Lord for the next generation, they will come and declare his righteousness to a people who will be born.

That he has done this.

Now it's hidden right here in the King James, but the Hebrew, that he has done this, that it is done, it actually.

This Psalm actually ends with it is finished.

It is finished.

Jesus did everything necessary to secure our redemption from sin, from sickness, from poverty and lack, from every malady.

He has done it and it is finished.

And this Psalm ends with it is finished.

And so just our God is so awesome how he orchestrates every detail, and I've been wanting to share this with you when I first started this series about Jehovah this and Jehovah that and Jehovah, jehovah, jehovah.

I've heard those names of God all my life and I don't quibble with them.

I'm not a Jew, I'm a spiritual Jew, I'm a daughter of Abraham because of what Jesus did.

But the word Jehovah is actually some people think it's actually like a typo that is described in Germany, maybe made back in some century past Jehovah because and if you have a pen or a pencil, this is totally.

This is worth it, this is really worth it.

God cares about details.

He cares about details.

So the holy name of God in the Jewish culture is Yahweh.

That is his name, that is his holy name, not Jehovah.

They don't say Jehovah, they say Yahweh.

And in the Hebrew scrolls and texts they used to have to write on a scroll.

They didn't have paper, there was no paper yet, scrolls were heavy, they were long, and so they took out the vowels.

Everybody said they took out the vowels.

There's no vowels.

You know why there's a first and second kings and a first and second, samuel First and second, some other stuff.

Because the scroll got too heavy and they had to cut it in half, and they had to.

It's literally.

It's just that.

So they took out the vowels for that same reason.

It made it shorter to read and, people, it was more accessible for the scribes to carry it around.

And so God's name, yahweh, was spelled like this Y-H-W-H.

Write that down.

Y-h-w-h.

All right, so that is what the Jews, and it was so holy they would barely ever even write it.

It was so it is God's name.

It's like we value the name of Jesus.

This is the name of the Father, god Yahweh.

His name is Yahweh, and so y'all remember, since we're talking about the crucifixion, you remember that Pilate insisted that there be a sign placed over Jesus' head, and you remember that that sign over Jesus' head was supposed to say well, I'll just read it right out of John 19.

In verse 17 it says Jesus carried his own cross out of the city to a place called the Skull, which is an Aramaic Golgotha, and there they nailed him to the cross.

He was crucified along with two others, one on each side, with Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had them post a sign over the cross which was written in three languages.

Three languages Aramaic, latin and Greek.

Many of the people of Jerusalem read the sign, for he was crucified near the city, so everybody, pilate wanted to make sure, I guess, that everybody could read this sign.

And the sign stated Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.

But you remember, the chief priests didn't like that sign.

They said you got to change it.

Don't let it say King of the Jews, rather say he claimed to be King of the Jews.

Remember, pilate said no.

No, what I've written it will remain.

Why were they so incensed about that sign?

Why, because a bloody savior, just a bloody man hanging on a cross.

Why would they be so incensed?

Well, this lit me up.

So Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire, so they had to be in Latin.

The inscription was also in Greek for the Alexandrian Jews who'd come to observe the Passover in Jerusalem.

They wouldn't be able to read Aramaic, so they had to read it, and the words were Jesus, the Nazarene, king of the Jews.

The first that's four words is in Hebrew, and each of those words starts with Y-H-W-H.

Jesus, yeshua of Nazareth, y'all are going to I'm not going to spit on anybody Yeshua, hannah, razi, womalach, iyachidum, yaharin, all right.

So when they wrote that sign, they thought they were writing another language.

But in Hebrew it said Yahweh.

Yahweh hung on that cross and bought our salvation, and so I mean what a powerful thing.

So no wonder they wanted that sign ripped down.

But I'm telling you that is love that bled and died for us, and so that's described right here in Psalm 22, all of the details of the crucifixion.

Of course, all four gospels also describe it.

But the shepherding relationship, the shepherding relationship is primarily about love and about care.

And so then you get into Psalm 23.

Psalm 23 was written, one of the first Psalms that David ever wrote.

It was a young David.

Now, david went on to write all kinds of other Psalms when he was an old man.

He was still writing Psalms, but this and Psalm 19, are the Psalms he wrote when he was a giant killer, when he was young, when he was a worshipper on the mountain, before God had done all of these other things in his life.

The man who would someday be King David wrote Psalm 23 because he understood what it was like to be a shepherd, and before he ever killed Goliath, that was the case he made to Saul.

Saul said why should I send you?

You're a boy, and why should I send you to be our one warrior against this huge man who is?

He's been a warrior and you're just a shepherd.

He's a man of war for years and you were just born.

You still you're not qualified to fight him.

And do you remember what David told him?

You can find it in 1 Samuel.

Let's see about it.

1734,.

He said David said to Saul your servant used to keep his father's sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it and I struck it and delivered the lamb from its mouth, and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard and struck it and killed it.

Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing how he has defied the armies of the living God.

This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them because he didn't defy.

He didn't defy you, king Saul.

He defied the armies of the living God by his blasphemy.

When the devil comes against you, when the devil says those, you can't, you are too small, I'm going to take everything you have.

The devil isn't just.

He's not coming against you, you're in Christ.

He's coming against.

He's coming against the shepherd, and so your shepherd, as we just said earlier in Psalm 23,.

He's got a rod and he's got a staff.

The staff is for gently yanking the sheep back on track, and we do, we get off.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray and Jesus has to bring us on track.

But he's got that rod that he can beat off the enemy off of you.

The rod is for the enemy.

It is not for disciplining the sheep.

The staff is for correcting and bringing them back on.

But the rod is for beating off the enemy.

And David knew how to beat off the enemy.

He knew that, to be a good shepherd, you loved and cared for your sheep and the very first thing they needed was well, the very first thing they needed was he leads me beside still waters and a green pastures Green pastures and still waters.

They need food and water, and so the very first thing is provision.

Your shepherd will lead you.

There's a place of provision for you, and the spiritual provision comes first and then the physical will follow.

So you're in church on a Sunday night when your flesh is tired, but you're hearing the word, and the word that you hear and the word that you build up and the word that you continually say is that's that word, it is life.

It is bread and water to you and it will produce a physical crop in your finances, in your relationships that are nourishing.

You will be nourished physically, emotionally.

Your needs will be met, but it happens first in the word.

He, our shepherd, leads us in that, and so he knew that you need provision.

He restores your soul.

He restores your soul when you're tired, when you're tempted to be disappointed.

The Lord restores your soul.

It's a refreshing anointing that God had.

And then the safety that we just talked about.

He can beat off the enemy.

David knew this.

And when we are, there is no enemy, there is no wolf, there is no lion or bear that could come against us, when we understand and know and trust in the Lord, our shepherd.

Amen.

But it's about love primarily, and you'll hear the love in that Psalm, which is why it's one of the most favorite ones that everybody knows.

Listen to the way it says it in the message Bible the Lord is my best friend and my shepherd, because shepherd and best friend come from the same Hebrew root word Best friend.

The Lord is my best friend and my shepherd.

I always have more than enough.

He offers a resting place for me in his luxurious love.

His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss.

That's where he restores and revives my life.

He opens before me pathways to God's pleasure and leads me along in his footsteps of righteousness, so I can bring honor to his name.

I'm going to stop there for a minute.

The footsteps of righteousness, the footsteps of righteousness, the paths of righteousness, the paths of righteousness.

So Bible times, ancient shepherds.

They had to lead the sheep from pasture to pasture.

If you had a lot of sheep, they'd eat up all the green stuff and you'd have to go find more green stuff.

Shepherding was all about walking, all about walking, walking, walking, walking.

All day walking and then waiting for the sheep to eat, and then walking some more.

And if you were on a hilltop or a hillside, if the green pasture was up there and you were down here?

The sheep can't make a sharp incline, they can't climb, they're not goats, they have to go slow.

So what they would do is they would walk in a circle.

And so the paths of righteousness that he's talking about is actually a circular path.

It's a circular path, and when I read that today, I've never seen that before.

Does the devil ever tell you that you're repeating the same pattern over and over and over again and does he make you think that you're never, ever going to get out of it?

Does he make you think that it's all for nothing, that you already went there and you saw that before, you've already been here before and you're supposed to be somewhere else, but you're seeing it all over again and it's just so discouraging, it's so deflating.

Has anybody ever felt like that?

Am I the only one who has ever felt like that?

But the paths of righteousness are circular and sometimes I mean we are going up.

We might see some familiar scenery before, but we're not saying at the same level, god is taking us up, he's taking us up, he's taking us up.

Like James said, sometimes if we saw the path, we wouldn't have the guts to climb it.

We wouldn't have the guts to take that way.

But his way was in the sea.

His path was in the great waters the Bible says about the Israelites through the Red Sea.

His way was in the.

It was a glorious way.

It was a way you wouldn't have gone If you wouldn't have noticed it.

You wouldn't have seen it.

It was hidden to your eyes.

But it was a glorious way, and sometimes the path of righteousness is a circuitous route.

It is circular and we are not going down.

This is not a toilet bowl, this is a mountaintop.

We are going up.

Everybody say I'm going up, alright.

So, continuing on now in the message, footsteps of righteousness, I can bring honor to this name, lord, even when your paths take me through the valley of deepest darkness.

Another version says when I veer of my own accord into the shadow of death the value of the shadow of death.

Fear will never conquer me, for you already have.

You remain close to me and lead me through it all the way.

Your authority is my strength and my peace.

The comfort of your love takes away my fear.

I'll never be lonely, for you are near to me.

See, that's how real we can be with God.

That's how real he wants to be with us, such that we don't even get lonely.

Everybody needs human contact, everybody needs that, but there are times in our lives when we just have to stand alone in some things.

Somebody says you become my delicious feast, even when my enemy is there to fight.

You anoint me with the fragrance of your Holy Spirit.

Hallelujah, we smell good, we smell like the Holy Ghost.

We did not smell, like all the junk we had to pass through and the skunk that we had to run over on the way.

Here we smell.

Jesus already removed that.

He bled.

Yahweh hung on the cross and paid for all of that.

And we are now in the zone of caring, right here, where God, he, has anointed us with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit.

You give me all.

I can drink of you until my heart overflows.

So why would I fear the future?

For your goodness and love pursue me all the days of my life.

Then, afterwards, when my life is through, I'll return to your glorious presence to be forever with you.

We have what in the world can even conquer us in this life?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And Jesus in John 10 later also in John 10, the great shepherd, jesus, the good shepherd, jesus, the great shepherd, verse 25, john 10, 25, he says I told you, and you didn't believe, the works that I do in my Father's name.

They bear witness of me.

Now he's talking to the unbelievers.

He's trying to tell them look, I've done all these miracles and you still don't believe.

Why don't you believe?

It's because you're not my sheep.

Jesus was spending his time.

He had to be fair.

He had to do all the miracles in front of everybody, but there were just some people that were not his sheep, they were not going to ever hear.

But he said my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them.

He said it again no one is able to snatch them out of my hand, my Father's hand.

I and my Father are one.

So Jesus has a plan.

He is our great shepherd and he gives us life for the sheep.

He cares for us daily.

He gives us all of these benefits.

And then in Psalm 24, I'll close with this, and I don't have a lot to say about this, but it is a neat factoid here and I'm going you know our goal is to get out by 7.45 tonight to give y'all some rest time.

We know we had a lot of big parties today, but in Psalm 24, this is now we've heard about the good shepherd who gives us life.

We heard about the great shepherd who cares for the sheep.

Now we're going to hear about the chief shepherd, the Lord of glory, who is the coming King, who comes back in all of his splendor.

He's not just a simple shepherd anymore now.

He is the Lord of hosts, mighty in battle.

And so, when you read Psalm 24, the God claim oh wait, let me read it in the normal version.

Okay, I'm New King James.

The earth is the Lord in His fullness, the world in those who dwell therein.

He has founded upon the seas, established upon the waters.

I mean, he's coming to claim all of this and we've already claimed it for Him.

By the time he comes back, we're going to be occupying till he comes, amen.

So then it says who may ascend to the hill of the Lord, who may stand in His holy place?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, he who has not lifted up His soul to an idol swarmed deceitfully, he shall receive blessing from the Lord.

Then later it says lift up your heads, o ye gates, and be lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.

Who is this King of glory?

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

And so it repeats that over again the Lord mighty in battle he is, he doesn't stay humble, he is leading us into victory.

He is so the imagery changes from something you know, fat little sheep skimping through the, to the different pastures, and you know, and now he's leading us as mighty warriors in battle, in a great victory, those of us who have clean hands and a pure heart who will serve him with all our heart.

So Psalm 24 is a special.

I don't see the Carlson's here tonight.

I think they were here this morning, but Lee, lee and Natalia Carlson are the.

Lee is the son of Keith and Claudia, who sit right over there.

How many of y'all know Keith and Claudia?

Sweet, sweet, all right.

So their son, lee, is a mighty man of God, missionary in, in I can't say the islands of the sea, because what they do is dangerous and they put their lives on the line and it's illegal to preach the gospel where they are, and so anyway, but they are, they're a blessing and they and they based their ministry off of this song.

They God gave them a name for their ministry and and just talking about the leading of God, and God leading us and guiding us, and and so they'll, they'll see, they'll see pictures, they'll see like Natalia was praying, where should they have, where should they open their neck?

Their building, where, where should they meet for their, for their underground church?

And God showed her a building, and a dream showed her a building with a blue stripe on it.

So she drove around town and one day she was passing a building with a blue stripe on the outside.

She said that's our building.

And so, sure enough, they began to negotiate with the owner.

He said no, oh no, no.

And they told him the story and then he, oh well, maybe you know.

And then they just, but they, they knew, they persisted, and God gave them that building.

And so then they were remodeling.

I mean, it's amazing, it's amazing, I said they were remodeling and God gives them little pictures like that and they'll just go on that one little thing and they'll just pray and pray.

And so they have an upper room in that building with the blue stripe on the outside and it's got a prayer room on the, on the upstairs.

And they have done so much work in this building.

It is beautiful, they have, it is.

It doesn't look like an old, decrepit building.

But you're going to think that when I say what, I say next.

But there's an upper room and they pray and they have just a few people right now that join them, but God's done mighty things for their few little people and we, we support them monthly.

They're wonderful and here they are praying and praying in their upper room, and that that second floor is built on a five.

There's five inches of concrete on the second floor and and somehow through the five inches of concrete in an area where there's no sunlight coming in, even though there are windows other places in the building.

That's one little part.

There was one little sprout of a little like it looks like a little bean sprout, with a little leaf and a little tendril that kind of opened up in the concrete on the floor.

And that little leaf was very meaningful to them because it was exactly the the logo of a particular prayer ministry that they had just visited in Germany or something where they this group that they're a part of, and it's it's hard to explain to you, but this was a logo that came up in five inches of concrete on their upper room prayer.

I never knew that a plant could grow in concrete, did you?

There wasn't a crack that I know of.

I she showed me a picture.

It was the neatest little thing and I just and so to them.

It was, you know, god, just saying you're on the right track, you're on the right track, you're on the right track, you have victory and and so that's spectacular guidance.

And they need that kind of spectacular guidance because they are in a hard and heavy place and and sometimes they're friends.

They have friends in a different city that have gotten broken into twice and sometimes their things are stolen.

Sometimes they're home with their little kids when the things happen.

But they're just.

But Lee and Natalia are just strong in the Lord.

They persist.

I know our prayer team prays for them, but it's just awesome to see God's work going forth in a hard place.

So God, so God, he's able to look at God tonight, how he does all those details.

He gave them a bean sprout.

He put the four right letters above Jesus' head.

If he has all these details, he can coordinate all of this stuff.

Don't you think he can coordinate that crazy thing going on in your life?

Don't you think you can trust him to bring it all together and bring you into a safe landing and lead you into your desired haven?

Psalm 107, beside the still waters, and he can prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemy.

Amen, even whatever's going on around you, god's got a table for you and we're going to eat of it and be glad.

Amen, amen.

And that's all I have tonight.

That is Jehovah Rohe, our OHI, jehovah Rohe, our shepherd, hallelujah.

Praise God, wasn't that rich?

Hallelujah the good shepherd.

Praise God, the chief shepherd, the great shepherd.

I tell you, we're in the dispensation of the chief shepherd.

He's coming back for not sheep, warriors, he's coming back as the warrior, the warrior shepherd.

Amen.

Let's all stand together.

So let's get ourselves ready.

Let's not look at ourselves as little sheep.

We're growing up.

Book of Ephesians says for us to grow up into him, and that's the dispensation we're in.

We're warriors now.

We endure hardness as good soldiers.

Father, we thank you for what we've heard about our shepherd.

We thank you for the love and the faithfulness that our shepherd exhibited and still does.

And, father, we just thank you that we relate to our shepherd.

We relate to him through the Holy Ghost and we're determined, you know, to fulfill our destinies and fulfill our ministries on the earth.

We thank you, father, that you chose us to live at this time and we thank you that we have ears to hear what you're saying to us.

In Jesus' name, amen.