Lean On Me

Thank you for joining us on the CCW podcast.

Make sure you connect with us on social media to stay up to date on ministries and events happening at CCW.

We hope you're encouraged, inspired, and motivated by today's message.

To find out how to connect with us, keep listening after the message ends.

Good morning, CCW.

Amen.

Happy 4th of July week.

Good to see a lot of our uh red, white, and blue out here.

Everybody looking good.

And uh how many of you got to go out to the big kaboom yesterday?

A lot of hands.

How many of you got some free ice cream from CCW?

We got a couple of excited people.

Amen.

Well, I am thankful for this week and thankful for this country.

I wanted to read to you just a little piece of a reminder of our Declaration of Independence.

It says we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal by their Creator, endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.

I'm thankful today that we can come and worship freely in this center that is attributed to our God and that we still have that freedom and right.

And I'm thankful for men and women and a country that allows us still these freedoms.

So can we for a moment just give a hand clap of praise?

Thank God for those things.

If you looked around this morning and saw some children, welcome to our kids.

We're glad that you're with us.

And every now and then we're gonna have a family worship service and just believe that it's important for the kids to experience some church.

With that being said, kids, I brought a special guest, flew them all the way in from Children'sburg, Alabama to open with a little bit of singing.

Can y'all welcome kids?

Can you give a hand just to kids?

Alright.

Let's get a little clap going.

There we go.

There we go.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Come on.

Somebody too.

Thank you guys.

Do great.

Y'all can be seated.

Thank you, Pastor Joe.

I was gonna try that myself, but decided I wanted you to stay for church.

Psalms 23.

Bill Withers penned the anthem that we just sung.

It soothed hearts for generations, five decades almost.

And when he penned those feelings down to paper, he was penning with the backdrop of his royal upbringing, coming from a tight-knit family community in West Virginia and traversing across the country to a new place and longing for a friend.

Just to call on a friend.

And in 1972, that number one hit is entitled Lean on Me.

When I thought about Psalms 23, I thought about Lean on Me.

Psalms 23 is probably the most famous psalm in the Psalms, and maybe could be debated, one of the most well-known passages in all of Scripture.

John 3.16 is probably the most known passage, but full passages in Scripture, probably Psalm 23.

And the Lord is my shepherd.

Five of the strongest words penned in all the Bible.

And when sung, can you imagine?

The Lord is my shepherd.

I said today, thank God at his word, he says this.

I believe David in this psalm could echo the words of Bill Withers' hymn.

He would say, The Lord is my shepherd, so call on him.

So lean on him.

Today, lean on him.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you.

We thank you for your word and its truth.

We thank you, God, that you are a shepherd who has not left us in the field alone.

God, we're thankful for the moment and moments that you went after us and pulled us away from hurt and harm.

And God, we're thankful that in you we have a promise of green pasture and still waters.

I pray for the one, the ones today that are struggling.

God, we came in maybe tired.

Lord, in the middle of a battle, unrest.

God, I pray that your grace would fall down and soothe any hurting soul.

We love you, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Turn your Bible, Psalm 23.

The first point this morning is this the shepherd is personal.

Psalm 23, verse 1 says, The Lord is my shepherd.

Psalms 23:1

I shall not want.

Letter A is this the shepherd knows his sheep's identity.

I've got a slide that talks about the pronouns that are used in Psalms 23, and I want you to see this slide.

And I want to explain them to you as we go through.

It says, The Lord is, first of all, my shepherd.

You see that?

Everything marked in red is a pronoun.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He makes me.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me, it says again, the passive 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, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of 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.

If you went through and circled all them pronouns, there's seventeen in that passage.

And I want you to know this is a personal shepherd.

The Lord is mine, he is for me.

The Lord is not just a shepherd, church.

David said, He's my shepherd.

If every word is inspired by the word of God, then seventeen times we're told this shepherd is personal to David.

You know, the marketing rule for advertisement, if somebody is looking for something, is that they be attributed to that thing seven times.

David goes ten times above advertisement.

This is this, that the prospects need to hear this message that the Lord is my shepherd.

As early as Genesis chapter 48, verse 15, Jacob attributes this to God.

Genesis 48:15

He says, God is a shepherd.

The shepherd metaphor is easy for God to be linked to because of a couple things about his character.

Need to understand this.

Nobody is always everywhere, all the time present.

So we have a God who is every place.

Proverbs 15.3 says, the eyes of the Lord are beholding the evil and the good.

At all times, God is omnipresent.

He's always there.

He is a personal God.

And God is eternal.

He's always there, but he's always been there.

He's been there at every moment before your birth, before your mother's birth, before your grandmother, and on down the line.

He knows everything that there is to know and will know outside of your life.

God is omnipresent.

He's eternal.

Psalms 139.

I want you to see some of the things David said.

You can turn there if you'd like.

Verse 1, he said this about his personal God.

You've searched me and you know me.

Verse 4, he says, before a word, this is scary for some of us.

Before a word is ever on my tongue, you knew my thought.

Verse 13, in Psalms 139, he said, You created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother's womb.

Verse 16, he says, Your eyes saw my unformed substance, my unformed body.

You want to know what God thinks about conception?

Look at Psalms 139.

He says, You were knit together in your mother's womb.

And before you were formed, God saw our unformed substance.

God knows you.

He knew you before you were born.

God has seen you in every one of your moments.

Your life, church, counts to God.

And then he says, I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

Genesis 1 27 said, God made man in his image.

You today hear me are somebody to God, and he's seen all of it.

He's seen all of it.

He is a personal shepherd.

Well, I've got a picture of a sheep that I want you to see.

Sheep have to be registered.

If you look closely at that picture, every owner that has a sheep has to have a registration of their sheep for it to be legal.

And if you look, that sheep kids today, he's wearing an earring.

Little orange tag.

They have to wear earrings.

That's important.

I want you to keep that thought.

And he keeps that for identification.

Not real long ago, I made about a$250 mistake.

And if any of you have ever lost a phone or keys or a wallet, you know what I went through.

Right?

Anybody lost any of these things?

It's funny to see a grown person.

Kids, it's funny.

If your parents lose their phone or their keys or their wallet, they'll do things they don't normally do or have you do them.

They will be on their knees up under their bed, looking, right?

Trying to find the last place that this could be.

And I'm telling you, for two weeks, I came over to that children's building and I ransacked every place.

I looked at the same places over and over, like all of a sudden God was just gonna send them down.

The keys.

I don't know what I did.

Every time I come here, I place keys down somewhere.

Well, this time I looked and I looked and I looked, and they were not anywhere.

I could not drive my vehicle.

I did not have keys.

And some of you say, Well, that's an easy answer.

You get a replacement key, Pastor.

It's not that easy because that cost money and I didn't want to do that.

So I literally spent about five hours.

I could tell you what that kid's room looks like.

I could tell you things about the music system, I can tell you things about that back wall, and I looked and I looked and I prayed, y'all.

I prayed to God.

A pastor church, and I thank God, I need the keys.

Just let them show up.

And I just knew several times after that prayer they were going to show up.

And they did not show up.

You know what I had to do?

I had to buy a new key, and that man was happy to come service my truck.

$200.

Right?

Well, since then, I have learned a life lesson.

On my keys, I have a tag.

Apple has this product.

It's called an air tag.

I know some of y'all like, I don't like satellites, I don't like people tracking my life, and I don't want to.

Okay.

I understand that.

But if you lost keys and you paid$200, you might pay$20 for an Apple tag like me.

Okay?

So we got a tag on it.

And that tag identifies my keys to me.

If I am out of the room, I get a text on my phone that says Rick's keys are here.

It tells me, it even says the Rick's keys.

That's important.

Some of y'all with kids, you have Life 360.

Right?

Same deal.

You've put a tag on your child.

It's important.

You want to know where them sheep go.

Okay?

It's funny because Wyatt lost his phone one day.

I'm trying to find him in the school parking lot, and I'm watching his phone, and it's going all over the place.

And then I look over and Wyatt's over here and his phone's over there.

I'm like, what is I found Wyatt.

Next thing I know, we're in the car.

We're tracking a fella all the way to Applebee's because he's got his phone in his bag.

I'm like, well, I'm thankful for life 360.

We got the phone.

But I want you to hear something today.

God built his sheep with a tag.

Romans 8 9 says this.

But you are not in the flesh if you're his, but you're in the spirit.

If indeed the spirit of God dwells in you, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he's not his.

We are identified by our shepherd, by the Holy Spirit of God that lives within us.

And so when he looks down for his sheep, he sees the blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit dwelling on us.

Letter B is this the shepherd knows his sheep intimately.

Once you look down at verse 4 and 5.

It's interesting here.

I'm going to read it and then tell you why.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll 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 mine enemies.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over.

So we see these pronouns, but I want you to notice something here for a moment.

David goes from talking about God to talking to God.

He goes from talking about who God is as a shepherd to talking to God.

You have done this for me.

It's important to notice that shepherding is intimate.

In Mid Eastern culture, it required a lot of personal attention to tend to sheep.

On an open range, there was constant dangers, there was weather dangers, wild animal dangers, there was danger of thieves, long hot summers, and it required that a shepherd be very attentive of his sheep.

And this resulted most often in a strong relationship between shepherd and sheep.

David understood this because David himself, you remember, was a shepherd of sheep and watched over sheep.

When he was found to become king, he said, Is there any more?

And David was shepherding in the field.

I, in fact, I don't mean to brag, was at one time, one day, for eight hours, a shepherd.

A farmer in Connorsville, Indiana, was looking for a big, strong man to help him with shepherding.

And he called for Heather's brother, and he was not available.

So I raised my hand.

I said, Yeah, I need to make some money.

I need to go shepherd.

So I got in there at the farm.

Kids, I'm telling you.

It was the hardest day of my life as work is concerned ever.

I got in there with the sheep, and my job that day, he wanted me there to help him be a sheep barber.

Okay?

He was gonna be the sheep barber, and I had to hold the sheep.

And we're talking he had a hundred and something sheep, and we had to pull the sheep by the nap of their wool back on their back legs, and then he would shear them and shear them.

And every time that we got done with the sheep, all the sheep would gather together and run in an opposite corner, and we'd have to chase them over here.

And I'd have to, with my look, I mean, I these are not the biggest hands on planet earth, okay?

And I'm grabbing sheep and I'm pulling them and gotta sit them up and I'm holding hour, eight hours of shearing sheep.

My hands were not right for weeks.

And the man, when he was done, I thought, this is gonna be great.

Working with the people of the church, they're gonna see him.

My pastor today definitely wants to help me.

Cut me a check for$34.

I will never shepherd again.

Sheep.

It was hard work, let me tell you.

I got to know them sheep that day.

I watched a shepherd with his sheep all day long.

And I thought about that after that experience.

Man, that was hard.

It was hard work tending to sheep.

I want you to know John 10, 27.

It says this.

Jesus said, My sheep listen to my voice and I know them and they follow me.

Say that again.

My sheep listen to my voice and I know them and they follow me.

Human beings can hear sounds 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz, and um when they hear something over and over, it becomes like a pattern for us.

My kids used to be, I don't think it works anymore, but we could be across Walmart or across at the end of service when it gets loud, and I would make this noise, ps, psst, and my kids would be in the middle of something and go like this.

In Walmart, they'd be three, four aisles down, and I'd go, ps, instead of yelling, Wyatt, you know, looking like a crazy person in the middle of a store, I'd go, ps, ps, and why would go, that's dad.

It got to the point where every now and then Heather would make a turn, and I'd go, ps.

Dad's calling you, right?

And so after a while, they knew my voice.

They just knew it.

They would turn at that noise.

I didn't even have to say their name.

Heather will say babe in a crowded church at the end of church.

And all the noise that's going on in here, if I hear that babe, well, uh my my whole train of thought goes, Heather needs me.

All the other noises can go silent.

Why?

Because I have loved that sound since September 3rd, 2005.

Not 15, I got it wrong one time.

Okay.

19 years almost.

And we dated for three years.

I thought about that.

That's almost 8,000 days.

If it was just 10 times a day, that'd be 80,000 times that I've heard that word.

I know when she says bae.

Sheep joke, no?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

My daughter's just shaking her head.

Bad jokes.

Christianity is about sheep knowing a shepherd.

So I want to ask you an important question.

Do you know God intimately?

Because how can you lean on something that you do not know?

Not just how, but may I submit to you, you won't lean on something that you do not know.

You will not trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understandings, and all your ways acknowledge him.

You will lean to you or some other source.

So you have to know him intimately, church.

That takes us to the second point this morning.

The shepherd pushes peace.

Go back to verses two and three.

It says, He makes me to lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the still waters.

Letter A is this the shepherd brings rest.

The end of verse one is important for us to highlight before we get to the green pastures and still still waters.

He says, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

What is rest?

I want to submit to you today.

Rest is those words.

I shall not want is rest.

It might be the most surprisingly restful phrase in the Bible.

Want is the word house there, and it means to be devoid.

It says, I shall not want, or I shall not be in lack.

Why?

It goes back to the beginning, strong words.

Because the Lord is my shepherd.

In other words, in my shepherd, I have an abundance of what is needed and necessary.

It's all throughout Scripture.

Philippians 4 4 says, My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory.

Not my job, not my successes, not my bank account.

My God shall supply my needs.

2 Peter 1.3 says, according to his divine power, we have everything for life and godliness.

We have everything.

We've been given everything that we need.

You see, David said, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

And he was saying this, I'm satisfied in my shepherd.

Maybe the biggest problem we have in this country is a lack of satisfaction, a lack of contentment.

And I want you to see Paul's perspective on that.

Philippians 4 13, the most abused scripture in all of passages, because it'll be written, you know, on a boxer's arm, like this is what God really meant.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me, like knock your block off, brother.

This is not what the passage is about.

The passage says, before and post that scripture, I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound.

I know how to have much and I know how to suffer great loss.

Everywhere in all things I have learned whatsoever state I am in to be content.

Which Paul writes sitting in a prison cell.

And after he says, I have learned how to be content, he says, I can do all things through Christ, which gives me the strength.

He said, I can be content.

David was not anxious because of a list of wants or the need of keeping up.

He was at rest.

How many of you would be honest and say, Pastor Rick, I'm tired of keeping up?

I need a break.

It is heavy daily, often, and I'm grinding away, and I just want to rest.

I need a break.

Well, he said this.

He leads me, or he makes me to lie down in green pastures.

He said, Pastor Rick, when you said that the sheep lie down in green pastures, Pastor, I got jealous.

Because I sound like a nap.

I want to be like them sheep, Pastor Rick.

David gives them the secret.

He says, The Lord is my shepherd who makes me lie down in green pastures.

It reveals some things.

For a sheep to lay down, do you know this?

For a sheep to lay down in green pastures, it means this that a sheep has finished eating.

They have fed on something and they've become satisfied enough to lie down.

What about the still waters?

Still waters is important.

I don't know if you knew this, but sheep will not drink from a running stream.

So it says he leads me beside still waters and then fills up their thirst.

Church, this is part of why you're here today.

We have a shepherd who's looking down on you and he wants to feed you so that you can be satisfied in the right thing because you're going to go out from here and the world is going to hit you with every bombardment of all the things that satisfy that do never satisfy.

He says, I just want to feed my sheep.

Come beside these still waters instead of chasing that running water that never stops and never fills.

He said to the woman at the well, I'll give you a drink and you'll never thirst again.

He wants you to be satisfied.

What does that look like for you and me?

Practical.

Number one, it's daily Bible time.

Psalms 119, 165 says, Great peace have they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them.

The peace of God falls on those.

The green pasture falls on those who will find their time with God.

Isaiah 26, 3 says, He whose mind is stayed on thee has perfect peace.

And so he's reminding us it's about that shepherd.

A weekly Sabbath is important.

Oh, we get grinding away at this life and we forget to have this.

I am so glad that you chose to be here today.

Rest in it.

Rest in who he is.

Let me tell you though, you need a daily provision of rest.

You will not just leave here and eat one meal this week, I promise.

You will come back looking so malnourished and be so hungry.

You need more than one meal this week.

Are you hearing me, church?

But the Lord is my shepherd.

He shepherds me daily.

As sheep, we rest in our shepherd.

Well, it takes us to letter B.

The shepherd brought rest, but he also brings restoration.

David knew something about this.

Those green pastures, those still waters.

David brings restoration.

David in Psalms 51, he has committed the act of adultery and cheated with Bathsheba, and he would cry out this phrase, something to this effect, God restore unto me the joy of my salvation.

This is, hear me, this is about deliverance.

David knew God was a shepherd.

He messed up, he fessed up, and he began to walk a road of deliverance.

I want you to know this.

Because you've come to know Christ, it does not destroy sin.

We are prone to need restoration.

The problem for a lot of people is this.

We try to, we're living amidst this mentality of the world.

We're trying to save face, and instead of laying down my pride and saying, I need help.

I don't need just like a moment of help.

I need to be delivered from something.

So I need more than just a prayer.

I need real help.

So many people are walking through that, and I'm not talking about being patched up, I'm not talking about being bandaged or a few weeks.

They need full restoration.

The word restore means to bring something back.

And the good shepherd brings the wayward sheep back.

In a few moments, we're gonna talk about how he does that.

But church, hear me today.

In a lifetime, you will need several bringbacks.

It's just the roller coaster of Christianity, it's just the roller coaster of humanity in life.

You will need several bringbacks, you will need recommitments, you will need restoration, you are gonna need rededication times.

And people say, Well, I already did that, I feel so bad.

That's okay.

Because you woke up today and you were human again.

You didn't become subhuman, you didn't become something out of this world.

You woke up again and you need, and David said, Oh, God, restore unto me the joy of my salvation.

I need to be brought back.

Well, as I was thinking about that this week, it brought me to remembrance of one of my favorite hymns.

One of my favorite hymns.

Benji's gonna come out in a moment, and I wanted him to sing it for you so it could sink in.

But it's Come Thou Fountain.

And it has some piercing lines for me because it reminds me of my bring backs.

Benji, would you come and sing that?

And we'll look at some slides after that about it.

Streams of mercy ever ceasing, call for songs of love, teach me some glory, song by flame, raise the mountain, fix the morning out of the I raise my email.

And I could pleasure safely to private.

Thank you.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.

Think about those words.

That wandering boy that took me back to a 16-year-old version of myself.

And then several other versions of me along the Christian roller coaster, rescued me from danger and interposed his precious blood.

Here, the yearning here, he says, Let the goodness like a fender bind my wandering heart to thee.

And he said, Prone to wonder, we're prone.

Lord, I feel it prone.

Why to leave the good shepherd, to leave the God I love?

And he said, Here's my heart.

Take it and seal it.

It's a crazy interesting story.

The writer of that hymn, his name is Robert Robinson.

And he was traveling in a stagecoach one day.

The person sitting across from him was a young woman that he did not know.

And in the providence of God, she began to hum and then quote, the song Come Thou Fount.

She began to discuss to the man across from her how it had been such an encouragement to her.

And try as he might, he could not get her to change the subject.

She asked what he thought of the hymn, and he responded, Madame, I am the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago.

I would give one thousand words to feel the feelings that I felt upon writing it.

And she looked at him and said, Sir, the streams of mercy are still flowing.

So touched and broken.

Robert Robinson in that stagecoach repented and restored his wandering heart that day.

A man who wrote about his wandering heart, realized and still prone to wander, wandered away, and God pulled him back using the song that he wrote about it.

I want to ask you, church, do you need restoration today?

There's not any shame.

And restoration, rededication, recommitment to God.

The only shame that we would be is to carry the need out those doors and not do anything about it.

The shepherd brings that rest.

Well, that takes us to the third thing this morning.

The shepherd prevents predators.

Look at verse 3 and 4.

In case you guys were keeping count, that leaves only Pastor Dave and Pastor Eli to sing a solo.

The shepherd prevents predators, is the third point.

Verse 3 and 4.

It says, 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, they comfort me.

Letter A is the shepherd steers my path.

The shepherd is in control of my path.

We have no control, church.

It is a mirage for us to think for a moment that our path is controlled by us.

Whether his path leads us through the grass that we talked about in verse 2, or into death valley, which is in verse 4, his path always leads us to the right place, in the best place.

No one in here can say, I always like all the paths that I have to go through in life.

But if you're following the good shepherd, you can be assured he'll always lead you right.

And it's interesting it says that the shepherd has a rod and a staff.

I want to define them for just a moment.

The staff guides becomes because sometimes sheep will get themselves into trouble.

Can I get an amen?

Ever get into trouble, kids?

Any kids here been in trouble this summer?

We got two honest kids, thank goodness.

Sometimes we get into trouble.

We wander.

Isaiah 53, 7 says, all we like sheep have gone astray.

And on that staff, it had a curved end just so that when we get stuck under a rock, when the wool of a sheep gets caught in a fence or a thicket, guess what?

A shepherd can go with that staff and pull and yank until it's away from its problem.

Do you remember the church?

When he wrangled you out of your path?

Staff guides because of wandering.

That staff is used often.

And I bet if you thought real hard, you can think maybe even the last time that it felt like I was heading this way.

And I felt that staff pull on me.

Some of you it was a text, it was a Facebook message, some of you he was about to go off on somebody.

Right?

Some of y'all was in traffic.

And you just out ready to bless them, weren't you?

When I moved to Alabama, it's the first time I heard ever heard the phrase bless them out.

I like, we in such a good, godly place that they can't even say curse them.

They say bless them.

I don't know what this means.

I guess I gotta say something good when somebody cuts me off.

Bless them.

Letter B is this the shepherd stifles my predators.

This is interesting, verse five and six, it says, You prepare a table before me in the presence of 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 shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

But look at this first phrase: you prepare a table before me.

When we're invited to somebody's house, that person is then the host of your invitation, whatever the invitation might be.

And typically, most of you don't go to somebody's house as a guest.

You don't walk in typically and go right to the refrigerator, open up the door and say, hmm, let me see what we're working with tonight.

You don't go from there over to the cupboard and say, ooh, chips, Doritos, yes.

No, because you've been an invited guest to a house and you're counting on the host to feed you for whatever they have invited you for, to provide the meal.

In ancient Middle Eastern times, if you invited somebody as the host, you were not only to give them a meal, but you as a host were to provide safety and protection and obligated to safeguard all visitors that were under your watch at all costs.

I thought about that, you know.

We're not so far from that.

If you asked for your kids to stay at my house, we're gonna feed your kids.

We're gonna make sure your kids have a place to sleep.

We're gonna make sure that your kids are protected, and any emergency or anything needed comes up, they are my guests.

But if you look at this picture, it's interesting.

There's always an enemy outside the gates.

And yet, I understand who my shepherd is, and because I understand my host, he says, I can eat peacefully with the enemy at the door.

Being on this side of an omnipotent God, I love this verse because it feels like for a moment, like God is cold-blooded.

Like he's like the enemy's outside the door.

Y'all just make dinner, set dinner on the table, we're gonna eat, and before we eat, let's all have a laugh that the enemy's out there and we are in here enjoying the feast.

They think they trouble me.

And you can sit comfortably with your host, the shepherd, with a smile on your face having a feast.

Well, how is that?

Well, look at the second weapon.

He uses a staff, but he also uses a rod against the enemy.

A rod, this was a short, heavy club, and it was used to protect.

Just children picture this: your mom with a small bat going kamikaze, right?

You can picture it a little bit.

Okay.

When the wolf is hungry for sheep, sometimes the only thing left between white fang and lamb chops is a rod.

And so that means, picture it, for a rod to be an important piece of weaponry, that means that the enemy has to be close.

So the enemy is close enough that a shepherd, club him, it would hurt him.

That means that the fight sometimes may get close.

But the good shepherd did all that was necessary.

I bet the psalmist would echo the words of Bill Witherly's anthem and tell you, his shepherd.

He said, Lean on me.

When you're not strong, I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on.

Oh, it won't be long.

You're gonna need somebody to lean on.

He said, Just call on me, brother.

When you need a hand, we all need somebody to lean on.

Psalms 68, verse 5 says this.

Psalms 68:5

Hear me, church.

He is a father to the fatherless and to the defender of the widow.

Psalms 103, verse 13 says this, and I want you to picture that great shepherd, a loving father, as a father pities his children.

Psalms 103:13

So the Lord pities those that fear in him.

Not all the kids have heard this, some of the adults here, but I would do most anything that I could think of, and most of you parents would say the same to keep your children protected from harm.

We were in Gatlinburg several years back, and I decided to take the trash out.

It was early in the morning, and I asked Callie, who was very young, I can't remember her age, maybe six, seven, and I said, Do you want to go walk with me?

Like this is a fun activity, to the take the trash out.

She said yes.

So I'm walking her to the trash can, take the trash out.

This is this whole complicated procedure because you got locks and they're afraid of bears and things getting into the trash.

And we get there and I get the trash in and I look up over the ridge and I say, Callie, look, there's a bear.

And she's like, Wow.

And so we look up, and there's a bear, and we watch it like this is an amazing moment.

I get standing here with my little girl watching this bear, and it crawls down.

So amazing.

It walks down to the backside of our cabin.

I'm like, wow.

And it's really awesome to see a bear that close, and then it's walking down, and it's all really awesome until the bear looks at where we are and he does not run.

He stood there and he looked at us, and I looked at him and I looked at my daughter, and I'm like, oh boy.

And so the bear began to take some steps in our direction.

I'm like, this is not good.

And I began to think rapidly about what I could do.

And I said to Callie, I looked down at her, I just happened to be reading a hiking guide that morning.

And in the hiking guide, it told me, what do you do if you encounter a bear in the woods?

And it said these words.

It said, You need to look unto the bear as if you're tall.

So I said, Callie, we gotta look tall.

He did not run.

He was not scared.

Callie just stand there right by me.

And like my last thoughts were, I'm gonna have to open this trash thing, put Callie in, and I'm gonna have to take on the bear.

He's not eating my baby.

I'm gonna have to lock her in the trash and take on this bear.

And so the last thing I look down, because it's taken another few steps, and I'm like, this is crazy.

I mean, at this point, he's from me to Scott, and I'm like, all right, so I get down, I'm looking in the eye, still tall, got my rock, and I throw a rock and totally miss.

Not even close.

But that bear took off running and he ran.

It was funny, he ran on the porch.

And I'm like, that's okay.

Do what you gotta do there.

We are safe, Callie.

Me and you are good.

They can fend for themselves in there.

Anyway, the the bear ran around the porch, ran off and into the woods.

And I looked down at Callie, and I remember talking to her afterwards, and I you can talk to her to this day about it, and she will say these words.

I wasn't scared for one second.

So I didn't know that I wasn't scared.

I said, How is it that you were not scared?

And I like to believe, she may not say it this way, that as long as she was next to her father, everything was gonna be okay.

As long as she was with me, it was gonna be okay.

One of my sons at camp recently was weeping in a service that was powerful.

We had a share group time, and I grabbed and embraced him and I said to him, God has plans for you.

You can do this.

I will do almost anything to keep my children from harm.

I don't want them to experience any pain.

I have caught them from falling several times.

I've stopped them from running across the street, I've smacked a hornet with my bare hand, and I've killed a snake once with a shoe to protect my children.

I don't want any harm to fall.

And I've gone to principals, I've gone to teachers, I've gone to coaches on their behalf, concern of my children.

I want good for them.

I got thinking about that.

Of all the things that I've done to show love to my kids, I've never been beaten.

I've never been whipped.

I've not experienced one nail.

And I've not experienced one minute on an old rugged cross.

But my father gave his only begotten son.

And whosoever would believe on him would not perish but have everlasting life.

CCW, the Lord, is my shepherd.

I'm so glad to tell you today, he's not just a shepherd, he is my shepherd.

Is he yours?

We're excited you joined us for today's message.

Our heart is to connect with others in our community to grow with one another and build a bigger kingdom.

If you accepted Jesus today, we want to hear about it.

Take a moment and text CCW Connect to 94,000.

Thank you again for joining us on the CCW podcast.

We hope you'll make plans to join us in person on Sundays.