Very Present Help in Trouble: God is Our Shepherd (Psalm 23)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to USN Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The Psalm appointed for this morning is Psalm 23, which we will read responsively.

I invite you to respond with the text in bold.

The Lord is my shepherd.

He shall feed me in green pastures.

He shall refresh my soul.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

You shall prepare a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

Lord, regardless of the weeks that we've had, some have come having a good week, some have come having a not so good week.

And Lord, we just ask that you would speak directly to our hearts, that these distractions would just fall away.

Please draw us to yourself.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So as Creighton mentioned, we're uh we're continuing our um sermon series on the Psalms.

And the Psalms are, I think I've said this last week or two weeks ago, and I'll say it again.

The Psalms are a great book to read constantly, week in and week out, to reflect on, to um to meditate on.

Even if you just read part of a psalm every day, they are a great um great uh way to reflect on the gospel, to reflect on what God has done in the lives of his people.

Martin Luther calls it a mini Bible, the gospel in a mini book.

And it is a great truth.

And we are coming to the Psalms of doing a short series on um reflecting on Psalms because the world's crazy at times.

We all know it.

You can look in the news, you can look, um, you can go out in public, and we're looking at it we're looking at the Psalms in a way that they are a very present help in trouble, and they help you trust God in anxious times.

And we're looking at a psalm today that is held so beloved, it is a beloved psalm for many people.

It is a psalm that is often read at a loved one's funeral, it is a psalm that's often read in moments, in low moments of life.

It is also a psalm that's read during stressful and fearful moments.

And it's also a psalm that people just come back to the read over and over again.

And it's also a psalm that's read by our non-Christian friends as well.

It's brought up all the time.

It's in music.

You hear it in music, you hear it in movies, it's always brought up.

The psalm we're looking at today is Psalm 23.

And we're gonna look at it because it is such an important psalm.

It is a psalm that we should always have in our back pocket, meditated on and memorized, because it's a short one, it's easy to memorize, and it's easy to use in moments when we feel very low, and in moments when we feel very high as well, very happy.

And we're gonna look at it in this way.

We're gonna look at it because in this case, we need to look at it as why um why is this that it is such a good psalm that people reflect on and use all the time?

And why can we use it?

Why does it provide lasting comfort?

So turn to Psalm 23 if you haven't.

It's in your bulletin.

Um, it's a different translation in the bulletin.

We're gonna look at the ESV.

Um, and it's helpful to always have your Bible with you because you can see um the full psalm, you can see um that come before and after because sometimes they're linked together.

And we're gonna look at it in three ways.

Who is the shepherd, what does he do, and why do I need him?

So who is the shepherd?

What does he do, and why do I need him?

Who's the shepherd?

We're gonna look at the intro.

I don't think the intro is in the bulletin, but I'll read it.

It just says, a psalm of David.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Now, David, very popular Christian name in the Bible.

Everyone knows him.

He's all through the Bible, he's a great king of the Israelites.

Um but David, before he became a king, was a shepherd boy.

So it's very fitting that he would write this psalm saying, The Lord is my shepherd, because he knows exactly what a shepherd does, what's involved in a shepherd's life, and then he becomes a great king.

And when he calls, um when he says the Lord, the Lord is the covenant name for God.

You notice as you read the Old Testament, sometimes it says God, sometimes it says the Lord.

But the Lord is a more personal name for God.

It's the covenant name.

It's the name that means it reflects back to when God made the covenant with Abraham.

When he when God promised that he would make Abraham's offspring a great nation, that he would provide an heir, and through him there would be a great king that would come.

So David, as he writes this, he writes to the Lord, the personal God is my shepherd.

Not this God that's away, it's a very personal God that walks with him.

David immediately gives away who the Lord is.

The Lord is a shepherd, the Lord is the loving God, and because of this, he can say, I shall not want.

Now, what does he mean by when he says, I shall not want?

Because David is a king.

David has everything when he writes this.

He has all material, he has all the power he wants, but he still says, I shall not want.

What is he talking about?

I remember um, I remember growing up, for some reason this came to my mind when I was writing my sermon.

I remember growing up and always at Christmas time being excited for the Sears catalog for all the toys and everything.

And I remember always thinking to myself, um, if I can just get these things, I will be satisfied.

I won't want anything, I'll be happy.

My friends would look to me and see that I have all this, all these things.

But David is not talking about things here, he's talking about something else.

Because the thing with God's word, God's word may look like something on the surface level, but God's word goes deeper and goes right to the heart, always goes to the heart.

It's always concerned with something that's below the surface.

So what is that?

What is that?

Well, the way that we can see this is by looking at what does a shepherd do?

What does a shepherd do?

So let's look at it.

We're gonna look at it in verses one to three.

A psalm of David, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

So, what does a shepherd do?

A shepherd spends all his time with his sheep.

He lives with them, he walks with them, he guides them, he spends his night with them, protecting them.

He doesn't go off back to his house and leaves his sheep out in the in the wilderness.

He sleeps with them.

He sleeps around to protect them from in this setting would be lions and there's bears that he protects them from.

So a shepherd spends all the time with them, guides them, heals them when they're sick, heals them when they break their leg or cut themselves, and he protects them.

So here we see David describing the Lord as doing these things.

And we see it as he says, when he says, he leads me, he makes me lie down in green pastures.

Now I remember um Amy and I were traveling in the UK once, and it was during a heat wave, and it was the worst heat wave they've ever had.

And uh everything, normally when you think of England or Britain, you think of it just raining all the time.

In all the movies, it's always raining, it's always um wet, but it was very dry, and it was very everything was brown, everything was parched.

But here we see the Lord leads the his his sheep in green pastures, he leads them in um places that prov that provision for them, he leads them in places of life, places that provide life, then he leads them to still waters, to rest.

He leads them to rest, and he restores the soul.

What soul means in the Bible, it's not it's not talking about this outs um thing that's out of the body.

It's your heart, it's your very being.

He restores your very being.

The shepherd does this, and he leads in paths of righteousness.

And what that means is that it's talking about a holy life.

The shepherd is the one who leads you into a holy life.

It's something that's not done on your own.

It's something that the shepherd leads you through.

But he does it, he does it for his namesake.

It's saying that God will do all these things, not for your glory, but for his glory.

Because it brings him glory as he helps his people, those he's chosen, those who follow him.

But how does this happen?

Wait, the way this happens, the thing of Psalms, it's poetry, it's music, and you have to reflect on the lyrics, how they go back and forth.

So here we see a shepherd, and then you got to think about the sheep at the same time.

What do sheep do?

Sheep are helpless.

Sheep will go off the path very easily.

Sheep will stop following and go off towards food.

But sheep will always follow the voice they know, the commanding voice, the one who spends all their time with the sheep.

So the way um we can view this in our own lives is that in times where we struggle with contentment, in times where we struggle in um in great um maybe envy or jealousy or things of that nature, we can look to this and see, we can ask ourselves, whose voice are you listening to?

Is it the good shepherd?

Is he leading you?

Who's shepherding you?

These are all voices that, these are all um questions to ask ourselves.

Because it's very important.

Who is our shepherd?

David clearly says, the Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want.

It's something we always need to ask ourselves and come back to over and over again.

Who is the good shepherd of our lives?

Is it the shepherd of the world or is it the shepherd?

Is it God?

Is it God's word?

Now we now come to the most famous part of the psalm that most people, if they just think about it, they can just repeat it because it's it's um so well known, it's used in so many things.

So verse 4.

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.

Now he's referring to um, he's thinking about a shepherd.

Shepherds protect their sheep, and they do it with a rod, and they do it with um with a staff.

Now a rod is something they would have held on their belt, and it's something they would use to defend the sheep and if predators.

But a staff, you know, this the shepherd staff has the hook.

That's how they hook their sheep that bring them back onto the right path to follow.

And he's reflecting on, when you think about this, in 1 Samuel chapter 17, Samuel, or I'm sorry, um, David is um, it's the classic David and Goliath story.

1 Samuel 17 · chapter mention

And it's when Saul is still king, and David is just a small shepherd boy, a nobody, who's come to serve and help Saul.

And he um he comes in and no one wants to go before Goliath.

No one does.

No one wants to stand before him.

And then David says, I will do it.

And then he reflects back to um to when he was a shepherd, and he says, I defended my sheep against lions and against bears.

And God saw me through it.

So that's what he's referring to.

He knows he can stand against Goliath because God is with him, because he has experienced God protecting him in the past.

See, we live in a world that tells us that we need to escape our problems.

But that's impossible.

It's impossible to do that.

Psalm 23 gives us the grounding to go in and face our problems, but not on our own, with but with the good shepherd.

God is our shepherd.

If you hear his voice and follow him, it's good to just reflect back on the Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

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.

The psalm now changes from a shepherd imagery, it now changes to the imagery of a friend.

When we see this in the next verses, in verses five to six, you prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

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

Now the imagery now switches from a shepherd to a friend, which is actually more significant here in the Psalm, the friend imagery.

Because this imagery shows that God is providing a feast amidst enemies.

So this feast would be a victory feast.

In the time of this psalm would have been written, it's talking about when victory feasts happen.

Normally the enemy would be there, present in the room, shackled, while they feasted in victory.

And that's what's being referred to here is that God provides a feast amidst the enemy in a victory feast.

And he anoints the head with oil, which means hospitality.

He shows great hospitality, and the cup overflows, which means abundance.

And then there's an eternal element here when it says, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

See, this is showing a covenant meal, a victorious covenant meal, because covenants were finalized through a meal.

There's the written part, but then there's also the part that was done with a meal, to show friendship.

The show great friendship between the two people who've made the covenant.

So here it's a covenant meal that's being presented.

So God is a shepherd, and then God is a great friend who makes a covenant meal for his people.

Now, if we ended here, this would be a great sentiment of a sermon, if it had good sentiment sentiment to it.

But there's something about it that's so much deeper.

See, this psalm was written before Christ, but we're coming to the psalm after Christ.

The thing is, the Christian God is a God who walked on this earth, who walked among us.

Now, Jesus, if you remember, calls himself the good shepherd.

We read a portion of John 10, but I'm going to read the beginning of it because he talks about it even more.

In John 10, verses 11 to 15, he says this.

John 10:11–15

Jesus says this.

The shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own his the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd, I know my own, and my own know me.

Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Now Jesus is referring here to the moment when he will lay down his life for his people, when he will go to the cross for those that he's going to call to himself, because that is the gospel.

That is the gospel of the good shepherd, of Jesus who goes to the cross for you and me, for the sins of the whole world.

He comes.

He came and lived a perfect life and then dies on the cross and then rises again.

And he calls himself the good shepherd here, because he's referring right here to Psalm 23.

He links it back.

Now Jesus also talks about a future feast at another time.

And we see it in Revelation.

Jesus is also the one who provides the victory feast in the last day when he will return.

See, Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

He's the one who will walk with you through all moments of your life.

He's the one who will walk with you through the moments of great joy, of good times, when it feels like nothing is going wrong.

But he's also the one who will walk with you in the very low moments, in the moments that where it feels like you're in the shadow of death.

Because there is going to come a time in our lives when we will feel so low.

Because when it says shadow of death, it's not just talking about death.

It's talking about the lowest moments where you feel you cannot move go on any farther.

He's the one who will walk with you.

There are many guides in this life.

There's many things that'll tell you to follow them, to live your life following this or following that.

But you see, Jesus is the only one, as many commentators say, who will walk with you every step of the way, even through death itself.

Because all the other guides of this world will turn back at that moment.

They'll never walk through death with you, because they can't.

Only the one who's gone through death already before you can walk with you through it and call you to himself.

And when you go through that moment, when you go through that moment and you've followed the good shepherd, when you have followed the shepherd that talks about here, you will see him face to face in that moment.

See, Jesus is the good shepherd, the good shepherd that we shall not want.

He will lead us in green pastures, he will lead you beside still waters, he will restore your soul, he will guide you in paths of righteousness for his glory, for his namesake.

And in that moment, at the end, you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your son, your son into the world to live the life that we can never live, to take on death that we can never take on, to take on the victory of the cross.

Lord, help us to always follow the good shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Help us, Lord, to lay down our lives, to be as sheep who hear his voice and not the other voices of this world.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.