Dwell

The Lord is my shield.

He makes me lie down and create pastures.

He leads me into still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me into graciousness of his name.

Even though I feel like a shadow of death, fear of fear with me, you're right.

Man, it is great to have those of you here in the room with us this morning on this Sunday after celebrating Thanksgiving.

And it's also great to have those of you that are uh worshiping online with us, many of you at home.

Some of you might be visiting uh family and different places.

And also right now, I want to say a special welcome to our social circle campus.

And so so you got to hoop it up here at Walnut Grove.

Would y'all join me in saying good morning to Social Circle?

And so um it is great.

We are broadcasting live right now down at the other campus.

Nathan is there physically, but he gets a little bit of a Sunday off and excited about um being able to speak uh to both campuses at one time this morning as we um celebrate this Sunday after Thanksgiving.

And I'm gonna tell you that this was a different Thanksgiving, I think, for all of us.

It was so different.

Many of us didn't get to spend time with all the family that we're used to spending time with.

As a matter of fact, I thought about this that a lot of people, a lot of people were very, very downtrodden and sad and and upset and said, man, I didn't get to spend time with all of my family.

And then I spoke to a few people that were almost giddy and excited.

They're like, I didn't get to spend time with all of my family.

And so there's different attitudes that people have, right, during Thanksgiving.

And so we're gonna assume that everybody was really upset if you didn't get to spend time with your whole family.

But my my Thanksgiving was different.

We got to spend time with our family, but there were people that weren't there normally.

We ate outside, we did it differently than we would have if it wasn't 2020, if it wasn't for COVID.

But let me tell you this: that every day for the believer should be Thanksgiving.

We enter into his gates and uh with Thanksgiving.

We enter into his courts with praise.

Better is one day in his courts than a thousand days elsewhere.

We should live every day as is as if it is Thanksgiving.

We are thankful for every day.

I am thankful for my church family, even though that some of us are in this building in Walnut Grove, some of us are in the building and social circle, some of us are at home or at different places, spending time with family.

I'm thankful for every day, and we should be thankful for every day.

I'm thankful for this series that we've had where we looked at David's psalm, this 23rd Psalm that many of us are so familiar with, and sometimes we become so familiar, it just becomes common, and we forget the significance of this psalm.

We forget what it what it speaks to us that we are sheep and we have a good shepherd.

And and and so David writes the psalm from the perspective of being a sheep, which is interesting because he was a shepherd boy.

He didn't write it from the perspective of being a shepherd, he writes it from the perspective of being a sheep.

And he starts the psalm out with this one line: the Lord is, you say it with me at both campses, my shepherd.

It's so personal.

It's not the Lord is a shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd.

And then he says, I shall not want.

And another way of saying that is I shall lack nothing.

I I he has met every need that I have.

And I just let me remind you, and I I'm sure that maybe Nathan mentioned this in Social Circle over the last few weeks.

There's these important qualities about sheep.

If if we're understanding that David wrote this psalm from the perspective of being a sheep rather than the shepherd, we need to know some things about sheep, and sheep are not smart.

What did we say?

Sheep are kind of stupid.

They're just not, they're not entertaining animals.

They've never been trained to perform.

You don't go to circuses and see sheep jump through hoops.

They're just not that smart, and then they're dirty.

They're dirty.

Imagine sheep walking through the dusty uh fields of the Middle East and how dirty they get.

And not just dirty, they're just filthy, and they they have insects and infection.

Uh, and then if it wasn't for a shepherd, they they would never be clean, they would never be sheared, and they would be unhealthy.

And then sheep are defenseless.

They need some outside source that will provide for their protection.

They are they are constantly under the threat of predators and danger, and sometimes they don't even know it.

And so we're like sheep.

We are not the smartest animals.

We're plagued by by a lack of uh of ability, to have an intellectual capacity to figure things out in and of ourselves, and we're and we're dirty, we're we're sinful, we need we need cleansing, we need something outside of ourselves to provide for our forgiveness and provide for our hope.

And we're really defenseless.

If it's not for the fact that God being our fortress, God being our protector, God being our provider, we we would we would be defenseless and we would be under the constant um uh uh barrage that the enemy wants to provide and keep us down.

As a matter of fact, we're experiencing a year like that.

We're experiencing a year where the enemy wants to steal our joy, he wants to steal our our hope, he wants to steal our peace, he wants to steal anything good from us, and we're not gonna let him do it.

And so we need God's provision, we need his protection, and here's I want you to hear this, this idea this morning as we get to the last verse that we that we're gonna look at this this week, this verse six, is this we need to know this in and through Jesus, in and through Jesus, I have hope that I will live with God forever.

In and through Jesus, I have hope that I will live with God forever.

And so let's read the whole psalm together.

I know we we've been doing this at Walnut Grove, and maybe you haven't been doing this every week at Social Circle, but I'm gonna ask for all of us at both campuses, if you don't mind, let's all stand and let's read this psalm out loud together.

It's gonna be on the screen.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version.

Just join with me, but read it out loud with me.

Here it is.

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.

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.

You guys have a seat.

God, would you speak to us as we look at this final verse of this psalm?

And as we enter into this season of Advent, anticipating, anticipating the coming of our Lord, as we celebrate this Christmas season, as we we look at these beautiful decorations at both of our campuses that remind us that there is a Lord who has come and a Lord who will come again, and we have hope, and we can have peace and joy.

Speak to us in Jesus' name.

And so here we are at the end of this psalm where David has been speaking and leading us into this beautiful psalm that many of us memorized as children.

And we're looking at this final verse where he says, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And so, verse 5, we we looked at the table.

We looked at the table that God that that is prepared for us in the presence of our enemies.

A table uh in the presence of God always speaks to hope.

And the hope is the hope of salvation.

Even in the midst of enemies, even in the midst of this earthly life, even in the midst of us sharing in common enemies the enemy of COVID, the enemy of injustice, the enemy of tension, the enemy of whatever it is in your life.

We share a table right in the midst of all of that, that that represents hope, that represents salvation, that represents the perfect harmony and relationship that God has for all of us.

And it's a sign of celebration.

He speaks of our cups being filled to the brim, and and that speaks to eternal celebration, eternal salvation.

Oh, the hope that God offers us through the truth of this song.

Jesus promises us that we'll while he's eating and drinking with his disciples, he speaks about uh uh about the hope that we have of a future banquet.

A future banquet that we'll have.

A feast at the end of all times where Jesus will return.

The marriage supper of the Lamb that was speaking, that we see in Revelation chapter 19, verses 7 and 9.

Revelation 19:7

And so we see this in the midst of uh of difficulty, there is hope.

As a matter of fact, listen to what one writer says.

He says, it was sheer joy of the early Christians that broke the persecution of Rome.

It was the sheer joy of the early church that broke the persecution of Rome.

And it was said they knew how to outlive their enemies, and they knew how to outdi their enemies.

Let me say that again.

They knew how to outlive their enemies, and they knew how to outdy their enemies.

See, death, death can be a morbid thing.

Death is a sad thing.

There's a family in our church whose father passed away yesterday morning.

And so it is there there is a there's sadness, there, there's brokenness there, understandably so.

But the reason we can outdy our enemies is because we know that even when we take our last breath here, we will take our first breath in eternity.

Amen?

And so we know how to outdy our enemies.

And so he speaks of the anointing oil that is poured out.

It represents the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And so we we we we see this.

And for those who've trusted Jesus, this celebration will never end.

Let me tell you, Thanksgiving day never ends.

Some of you experience Thanksgiving and you can't wait till it ends.

Please go home.

I'm kind of joking, but but we have a Thanksgiving that we will celebrate and it will never end.

And David affirms this when he says, Surely goodness and mercy will fall of me all the days of my life.

What does he mean by this word goodness?

It's the Hebrew word taub, and and and it's this idea of the fulfillment and the perfection of God's will.

The fulfillment and the perfection of God's will.

It's this idea of what the Holy Spirit does inside of us when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.

He comes and he lives inside of us.

And we still have this old flesh.

We still have the enemies of the flesh.

We have the enemies that we fight against, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

We have the world and we have things that pull at us.

But here's what he does: he puts inside of us, in spite of those enemies, he gives us an aspiration toward holiness.

A holy aspiration.

A desire that is unexplainable.

And even when we struggle with sin, we struggle with temptation, we struggle with something, that old thing that's still tied to us, and pulls at our flesh.

He gives us something that is completely transcendent of that, and it's a holy desire for him.

That's what he means when he says goodness, goodness, sure to goodness and mercy.

What does it mean by mercy?

It's this Hebrew word.

It's probably the most beautiful Hebrew word from the Old Testament.

It's the word Hesed.

And it's this idea of steadfast love, the mercy of God, this never-ending mercy and faithfulness and power, uh, this covenant, joint covenant obligation.

We see it in an earthly sense in the picture of marriage, where a husband and a wife covenantly uh join, in a covenant way, they join together, and they are both equally obligated to keep this covenant.

And so we see the same covenant that is established through us, through our God, ultimately fulfilled through Jesus, where there is a covenant obligation.

He is obligated for his part of the covenant.

God is obligated to fulfill his part of the covenant.

But here's the beautiful part.

Here's how you describe Hesed, here's how you describe the mercy of God, the steadfast love of God, is not only does God assume the responsibility of his part of the covenant, he assumes the responsibility of our part of the covenant.

Because we are incapable in and of ourselves to live up to it.

We are the sheep that are dirty, we're the sheep that are stupid, we're the sheep that are defenseless.

We need a shepherd that will not only assume his responsibility in caring for the sheep, we need a shepherd that will assume our responsibility, our part of the covenant.

And that's what he means, and that's where we have this hope, and then and this steadfast love and mercy gives us hope despite our inability to live up to the covenant standard.

So the goodness of God and the love of God will follow.

It will pursue David throughout his lifetime, and it is a relentless pursuit.

It will pursue David violently beyond even his sin.

You can't help but think of the story of David, and you've got to you've got to know the background.

He's an adulterer and he's a murderer.

And I I've you have conversations with people, you share Christ with people, and you share the hope of the love of Jesus, and here's the common response.

Russ, if you only knew what I did.

Well, I don't know, I don't think it could be any worse than what David did.

He's an adulterer, he's a deceiver, he's a murderer.

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

He ends that verse.

He says, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And obviously, here in this place, house of the Lord would have been referring to the tabernacle, the temple, the physical place where the Spirit of God would have been present.

That represented his presence, the ultimate building, the ultimate location, the ultimate place where the inhabitants of God took place, and he lived in that.

And so David would have had that in his mind.

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

But we we know that all of us are not all the believers in the world are not going to fit in in one little location.

So what does that what does it mean?

Listen, here's a couple of things in your notes that you'll see.

For Christians, the temple is now the risen body of Christ through whom we have direct access into God's presence.

And for us that are believers, now the temple becomes us.

It becomes us.

And so we can't all go to the physical temple.

So God, this is Christmas, this is what we celebrate.

God brings the temple to us.

In and through Jesus, here's your notes.

In and through Jesus, I am promised to live forever in his presence.

Here's what the gospel says: what was broken through sin has been restored through Jesus' life, his death, and his resurrection.

And we the church, listen to this.

We the church become the living representation.

We become the living representation of this reality for those yet to discover his redeeming love, for those that are outside the faith, for those that are our neighbors, for those that live across the street, for those that are around the world, we become the living representation of Jesus.

And their hope is dependent upon stupid, dirty, defenseless sheep.

Who, if it wasn't for the Holy Spirit, would not be able to represent Jesus.

But because of the Holy Spirit, and because of Jesus' life and his death and his resurrection, we have hope.

And we, like David, can say, surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And so we struggle.

We struggle with searching and going in different directions for identity to try to understand how to find hope.

That's why people do the things that they do.

They think they can find hope in all different places.

They look for identity in all types of different places.

They'll resort to changing their names.

In 1934, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church from Atlanta, Georgia, took a trip to the Holy Land.

And he went to visit the Holy Land.

And just like you and I would want to go visit all the places where Jesus walked, and but on the way back from the Holy Land, he stopped in Germany for a meeting, but he also wanted to see.

And to experience the historical places of the Reformation where Martin Luther began his protests and he began to speak and to preach about how we are saved through faith alone.

And so he was so moved.

This Michael Lee was so moved.

His name was Michael.

He was so moved that he had his name legally changed.

From Michael Lee King to Martin Luther King.

And by that time he already had a five-year-old son who was Michael Jr., so he had to do what was what was what was you know what made sense is he changed his son's name from Michael Jr.

to Martin Luther King Jr.

And by the way, this is not this is this has nothing to do with politics or or or any any anything other than just talking about how how desperate sometimes we are to seek identity change.

We will resort to changing our name.

In 1964, a boxer by the name of Cassius Clay was searching for some type of hope, some type of meaning, some type of significance, so so much to the point that he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.

This has happened all through history.

The composer Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.

I should have just said Mozart.

It was known that he changed his name several times.

And one biographer said that it was it was his constant alterations of his name were ways that he would experiment with different identities.

And we see people do that.

We see famous people do that all the time, right?

We see famous people that they want to experiment with their identities.

They want to experiment with what will sound better, what will resonate better.

We could go down the list of Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie Foxx, Whoopi Goldberg, Elton John, you know, uh John Legend.

Who would have named their kid Lady Gaga?

I mean, I mean, this this whole search for names.

It's funny how we even give, we give nicknames to people.

We were talking over Thanksgiving where my father-in-law nicknamed every one of the grandkids.

They all had nicknames, and it was his way of bestowing upon them an identity that he sensed when they were born.

He he began to watch them grow up.

And you had you had sweet P and Pretty Boy and Precious and I might be forgetting one.

I'm sorry, but I but uh all of these sweet and cute nicknames.

But God also, God also is in the business of changing names.

But unlike our human ability, his names really do have the ability to alter identities.

Abram became Abraham.

And it was connected to a promise.

You will be a father of a great nation.

Sarah became Sarah because she would birth at an old age, and it was a sign of God's faithfulness to the promise that he had bestowed upon them.

Oh my goodness, Jacob.

Jacob wrestled with God, and God said, You will be Israel.

And listen, that's not just a name change, that is an entire story, a new identity, a new destiny that would lead to a new nation.

Oh, God will change names.

He told Simon, based upon your your words, your your word of identity upon me, your recognition that I am the Messiah, based upon your confession of who I am, I'm gonna change your name to Peter because it represents the rock, and I am the rock, the foundation of the church and all of the hope that will come to this world through me.

Your name will be Peter, the rock.

Jesus gave nicknames out.

James and John, he lovingly called the Sons of Thunder.

And so we see the power of a name.

There is a name that God will bestow upon you.

We don't know what that name is, but we know this that there's 400 names of God that are all through Scripture.

And the name that God will ultimately bestow upon you is a reflection of all 400 of those names.

The fullness of God's character.

He speaks about it in Revelation 2, 17.

He says, I will give him a white stone and a new name written on that stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.

It's all about identity.

It's all about hope.

It's all about the reality of regardless of what you're experiencing, what we are experiencing, what the world is experiencing, we can rest in the reality that surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Why?

Because he's changed my identity, he's given me hope.

One of the things that I wanted to kind of bring your attention as we close this series is to really understand the fullness and the significance entirely of Psalm 23.

Is you've got to go and look at Psalm 22.

It's just it is what we call good theology and good hermeneutics and good Bible teaching.

You look in the context of what a scripture is.

You look before and you look after.

And in Psalm 22, we see the words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Written by the psalmist.

Jesus quotes those words on the cross in context of the Father pouring out the wrath of God upon his son Jesus in Christ.

The wrath and the punishment that you and I deserve.

What comes after Psalm 23 is Psalm 24.

He says in verse 3, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

Who shall stand in his holy place?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and who does not swear deceitfully, he will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

He's saying, listen, he's saying in Psalm 22, Jesus is quoting and he's saying, I am forsaken.

Why am I forsaken?

I am forsaken so you will not have to be.

Who can ascend the holy hill of God who has clean hands and a pure heart?

I do because He's given me the gift of righteousness.

He has imputed upon me his own perfection.

When you understand those two extremes of Psalm 22 and Psalm 24, it brings Psalm 23 into a new light.

Oh, surely goodness.

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

He's given me a new name, he's given me a new identity.

And where I felt hopeless, I now have hope.

And here's what I want to tell you going into this Christmas season.

Hope has a name.

Hope has a name.

Hope has a name.

And his name, let's say it together, is Jesus.

Social Circle Campus, let's say it together.

Say it with us up here at Walnut Grove.

Hope has a name, and his name is Jesus.

And so what we're gonna do over the next few weeks is we're gonna walk through this Advent season.

Advent means coming, anticipation.

Christ.

We anticipate, we celebrate the coming, the Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, his birth, him becoming a human being, bringing us hope up close and personal.

And here's a couple of things I want you to know about is that Katie and Madison have provided Advent devotionals for every family for you to take home with you.

And you do this once a week.

It's just one devotional a week where you light a candle like we're gonna do in just a second, and you share in an Advent devotional with your kids.

And so they begin to learn that hope has a name and that his name is Jesus.

And so we want to encourage you to grab one of these little containers on the way out.

Each family gets one of those.

And if you're at home and you want to get one of those, we'll make sure to get one to you.

And so today we're gonna light the candle, the first candle of Advent, and it's the candle of hope.

And hope has a name, and it's Jesus.

As I think of that, I think surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Because He has given me the gift of His righteousness, and it will never end, it never stops.

And so, church, I want to encourage you in the midst of what we're experiencing in our culture, let's show the world how to outlive our enemies and how to outdy our enemies.

Because we have hope.

And hope has a name, and his name is Jesus.

Would you pray with me?

Let's pray together as we close this time.

Heavenly Father, we love you.

God, we thank you for the fact that we can read a psalm and study a psalm.

We can study scripture, not in a vacuum, but with confidence, knowing exactly what it means.

That you endure the pain of a cross and you cried out to your heavenly Father, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And in that moment, you're pouring out the wrath that all of us deserve.

All the punishment, all of the retribution of the unholy, dirty living of all humanity.

You poured it out, and we would ask the question who can ascend the holy hill?

Who can attain it?

Who has clean hands and a pure heart?

Father, we can say, we do, we can say, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever because I put my faith in Jesus Christ.

Hope has come to me, and hope has a name.

And if you don't know Jesus, I encourage you to put your faith in him.

All you have to do is call upon the name of Jesus to be saved.

That's what the scripture says.

We would love to know if that's your decision, if that's your step this morning.

Hope has a name.

We're going to sing about it.

So those of you here in Walnut Grove, would you stand with me?

Those of you on the campus in Social Circle, would you stand with me?

Father, we lift up praises and worship.

We enter your gates with thanksgiving, your courts with praise.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand days elsewhere.

And hope has come to us and it has a name.

We celebrate it.

It is Jesus.