Voice of the Nazarene 10-06-24

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week. Venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle and the voice of the Nazarene Back, and now he's looking a little bit back. And as he looks back in his life, he pins this 23rd Psalm, and you notice that he mentions something about an animal in the Psalm, at least it's inferred there, and that animal is mentioned more than any other animal in all of the Bible, what an eagle in the sky, nor a lion in the jungle, but it was a sheep. All we like sheep, the Bible said, have gone astray. And he not only was a shepherd and the son of a shepherd, and so he understood a little bit about sheep. But as he writes this, he does not write it from the perspective of a shepherd. He writes the 23rd Psalm from the perspective of a sheep. What does that mean, Pastor? It means that he's writing from your and my perspective, because like sheep, we're sheep of his pasture. And as you read through the psalm, you'll see some practical things that he's saying, that the shepherd is to we who are sheep.

He said, I found the Lord to be my provision. Look at what he said. He said, The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. God never promised that he'd meet all of our greed, but he did promise that he'd meet all of our need, our ever need he'd supply. And if you look back over your life, you'll have to admit that God has been faithful when you thought your health was gone, somehow God restored it.

When you thought marriage had no more hope, and somehow God put the romance back in there. When you felt like the kids had gone so far but somehow God pulled them back. God is a good shepherd. He meets our need, and I have found that He is God of enough. He's to be a god of more than enough. And he said here in First Samuel, 21 he said, My men and I were hungry, and we're out in the wilderness, running from Saul, and God provided provisions for us at the tabernacle with bread. Another time, he said in the 25th chapter First Samuel that they were hungry and they're running for their lives, and they had no food, and he met a man by the name of Nabal, and he asked for provisions. And Nabal was a tight wad and very despicable, and he was mean, and he cut him off. No, you can't have anything. But later on, Nabel's wife, I guess she was a good looking lady by the name of Abigail. Later on, David married her after Nabal died, she must have looked pretty good, but she came around and brought bread and and she brought cooked sheep, he said she brought dessert, fresh figs. And he's simply saying that God is the God of provision. Now, in the 29th chapter, First Chronicles, God laid it on his heart to build a temple, and he was saying, God, I don't know where we'll get the resources, but God provided the resources equivalent to our day, $300 billion dollars. That's quite a bit, is it not? You know folk, where God leads, he always feeds, and where God guides, he always provides. That's what I know, and you gotta love it.

David said, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He's saying that God is our source and that God would bankrupt heaven to meet your need and meet my need. The old song said, all I have needed thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto thee. So David, he gets to the end of his life. And in Psalm 37 verse 25 he said, I was young. Now I'm old. David said that I didn't I don't know what you're thinking.

Psalms 37:25

I can read your Old brains. And he said, I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread. And what the Lord is saying to you, I want to be your shepherd. I I don't want you to be in one I want to take care of you. Then something else. As he looks back, he said, he's not only our provision, but he's our peace. For He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, and he leadeth me beside the still waters. Now, David had tried it all. Maybe you have.

David had tried riches. And somewhere in the course of his highest peak equivalent in our dollars, he was worth $200 billion dollars. He could buy anything that money could buy.

But there's some things money can't buy. Money can't buy peace. Money can't buy rest. You can go to bed, but you can't rest unless you have peace.

Money can't buy health. It might buy a doctor, but if it's the bad disease, money can't do much. He tried riches. He even tried recognition. He became the king, the most well known man in all of that part of the world at that time, known was the greatest king that Israel had ever had. Women wrote songs about him. They sang to him. He was well recognized. He also tried relationships and they didn't work out. He even tried an improper relationship, maybe you have. He got involved with a woman that was not his wife. He tried to cover it up, he lied about it, he deceived about it.

He got crazy with that woman. He even had her husband exterminated and killed on a battlefield. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he tried everything to experience peace, but peace only comes through a relationship with the shepherd, because he's the one that makes me to lie down in the green pastures. Now let me tell you something about sheep. Sheep if they're even suspicious there's a wolf nearby or a lion or a bear or danger, they'll not lay down. They'll only stand up.

And he said, My Shepherd maketh me to lie down. But if they're suspicious, there's trouble.

Have you ever had a problem in your life and you stayed up all night and paced the floor and walked and pulled at your hair and wondered if you'd ever survive what you're going through? I don't know why I talk to you. You don't answer anything. Hello, chair. If that chair starts my way, I'm out of here. But I've been there when it just seems like your life is coming apart at the rivets, I mean, at the seams, it's hopeless. And maybe you've gone through an experience where you thought your marriage was done and over and ended, and you didn't want it to go that way, and you couldn't seem to get yourself straightened out. Or the kids weren't turning out right, or you'd lost the job, and you didn't want to tell the spouse. And so you're up all night pacing and he's saying, hey, the Good Shepherd, he can help you to lie down and get some rest and find peace. A peace that the world can't give, even Hollywood can't entertain enough. Even liquor can't drown out all of your problems. Drugs can't psych it out either. But God has a peace, and he said he leadeth me by the still water.

Sheep are terrified of running water. And he's saying he keeps me at peace. I thought of a preacher that you've seen many times, perhaps on television, Adrian Rogers, Bellevue, Baptist Church, one of the great churches down around the Memphis area. He lay dying of cancer.

They said, we're going to put him on a vent. He said, before you do that, I want to say goodbye to my family. And he brought his kids in and brought they brought his wife in, and as they're leaving, Steve Gaines, who had become the next pastor at that church, who himself would die of cancer came in, and he said, Are you okay? And he looked up at him, and he said, Steve, I'm at perfect peace. The world can't give you that kind of peace when you're dying, but I want you to know the good shepherd can, because he'll never leave you nor forsake you.

And here's the third thing he said, to look back He not only was my provision, not only my peace, but He was also my pardon. He said He restoreth my soul. Now I looked up the Hebrew meaning for that word restore, and it means to bring back. So if you've gone away from God, God can help you to find your way back. The Good Shepherd will go out and find you and get you back on your feet again. He brings me back. David said I'd lied, I deceived, I'd committed adultery, I'd been a murderer, but he forgave me and restored me. I'd blown it, I'd messed up bad, it cost me my children, and I lost my family and I lost my wife, but God, in mercy, brought me back. That's what he's saying. If you read that 51st Psalm, he said, God, would you blot out my transgression, Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin? And verse 11, Cast me not away from my presence. Take not thine Holy Spirit from me, Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. I'm trying to tell you, whatever you do, don't drift too far. Don't get beyond the voice of the vision of the master till He doesn't see you or doesn't hear you anymore. You can drift so far that you can lose that joy.

Don't keep going. Restore he said unto me the joy. And you can't do your own thing and experience joy. If you want real joy, you better live for Jesus, the Lamb of glory. He said in Psalm 42 verse five, why are thou cast down. Oh, my soul. Now he's a shepherd, and he's writing about sheep, and if you want to know what he meant when he said, Why are thou cast down?

He's talking about his soul, but he's using a reference to sheep.

And a sheep when it's in a cast position means that it's fallen and it can't get up and it doesn't have a pager. Zoom.

There it went. Zoom, there it went again. So here's a little sheep, and it's got all of this wool that needs shorn, and mud has gotten into that wool, and it's rained and it's heavy, and it's all that little legs can do to hold it up, and briars and sticks have gotten in, and the rain has made the clay slick, and suddenly its feet go out from under it, and it's on its side. When a sheep gets on its side with all that load of wool and mud, it can't get up on its own, and it lays there, prey to any predator, like a wolf or like a vulture. It can't do anything for itself. It cannot restore itself. Can I say to you, we're born from above. You can't be born from beneath. You can't lift yourself up. You can't better yourself. You can't restore yourself. You can't even turn over a new leaf and last very long. Has to be from above, and it takes the shepherd to come. And when the Good Shepherd comes, he finds that little lamb on his side. Gasses have begin to build up in its system. It's shutting off its airways, and if it doesn't get it back on his feet quickly, it's going to die.

And so the shepherd begins to massage its little legs because they've grown numb now and they won't hold the weight of the little sheep. And he'll massage and rub those legs and get life back into it. And he'll pick it up and hold it in such a way that the gas begins to escape the body's hook and breathe again, and finally he puts it on his shoulders. And I wondered, how many times has God found us in that condition, flat on our back? We're blowing it. We messed up. We don't know where to even start to straighten anything up. God, I don't know which way to turn. I messed up.

I've killed my testimony, I've hurt my influence, and God, I've ended a lot of things, but God comes and He pardons and He restores, and you had better be grateful. David looked back and said, he's my provisions, he's my peace, he's my pardon. But he also said H e's my presence for he said, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art what, with me? There He is. The Shepherd's right there with us, even in the darkest moments. Now, I know this is pretty simple little pastoral message. Do you know that he wasn't thinking about death when he wrote this? I don't believe he was David. Knew he was a shepherd. He lived in that area. He knew that between Bethlehem and Jericho, there was a valley called the valley of the shadow of death. That was the name for it, and every winter, the shepherd had to get the sheep from the highlands of Bethlehem down to the lowlands of Jericho. And the only way to get there, to get that grass in the wintertime, they had to go through this narrow passage called the valley of the shadow of death. The Sun would back down its shaft rays and begin to shut off its lights and all you had was shadows, and it was a narrow passage that only a sheep or two could get through at a time, and it took a little while, and the shepherd would lead them to that spot, but it was a place where predators hung out, knowing that sheep would go through there, robbers would hang out, and the shepherd, David, knew that many times the shepherd would be killed and the sheep would be stolen, there in the shadow of the valley of death, but he said, But thou art with me. Thou art with me.

Aren't you glad. I still think of that missionary I don't remember the exact figures I'll just make up some figures, but it's true. The story is true.

And he was sitting there to camp fire, and suddenly something said to him, something's wrong in the shadows. And one of the men that was with him said, I think that we're being surrounded right now by enemy, and they're probably going to kill us. And he said, God, if he ever protected us, would you protect us now? Would you put a shield up around us now? And he said, we slept all night, got up the next morning. And months passed and a group of warriors were converted, and they admitted they had surrounded the missionary on that particular night, was going to kill them, but they said there were 59 angels standing around you. We were afraid to fight them. And when that missionary returned back to Scotland, he was telling that story in a church. And after the service was over, the man that ran the prayer meeting for that local body of men came up to him and he said, What was that night again? And he told him the date, and he got out his little diary and begin to read.

And sure enough, he said, On that night our men had gathered, there were 59 of us, and something told us that your life was on the line. And 59 gathered around the altar, and we begin to pray, and every one of us, he said, Look, there's 59 names of all of us that prayed, and that false King said we saw 59 angels standing around. I want to tell you something. The shepherd said he was with us, all of us, sheep He was with us. I'm glad for his presence, but I not only need his presence. David goes on to say that he gave us his partiality. Look at what he said, Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Can you imagine your enemies all around and you're sitting there eating, boy, that's partiality, isn't it?

That's a pretty good God, isn't it? That's a great shepherd. And I remember, well at our house we have paper plates because if we don't, I'm allowed to end up having to do something about the place. And when I was a boy growing up, mama had no clue what a paper plate was. I don't even know if they had paper plates. I'm not even sure they had airplanes yet. I knew you'd like that. I just said that to wake you up. But once in a while, we'd come in from school and Mama said, get out of the kitchen. I said, Why is that company's coming? What's that got to do with us? She said, I'm fixing supper. You call it dinner, but the real name for the evening meal is supper.

Anybody that's got any bringing ups at all it's supper that lunch times, dinner. And so Mama said, get out. And I turn around, look, and the table had a big tablecloth that covered it, and it hung down, not like the regular evening meals.

And there was China. Mama never put the China out unless company was coming, and there was all the silverware, and it was lined up just right, and there was little napkins and there were special glasses. And when Mama was getting ready to put the chicken on, instead of just sitting down that roaster with the chicken in it, she had taken the chicken out and put it on a meat plate. There's that chicken just sagging on the bones ready to be eaten. And there's the steaming noodles, homemade noodles, all sliced and diced and put in them with that juice.

And there's mashed potatoes. And there's beets. I love pickled beets. That's the only way you ought to eat beets, pickle them.

And Mama said the company's coming. They're special. What God is telling you, and I he's saying that you're special to me. And I'm preparing a table.

I'm getting things ready because you're my guest, right in the presence of your enemy, you're special. And it doesn't quit with just that. He goes on just a little bit further and He says, you're loved. For He said, Thou anointest my head with oil.

And the Middle East custom was when you travel and your hair was dry and your scalp was beginning to flake. People would set you down before the meal, and they would take oil and they'd rub it into your scalp and rub it into your hair. They anointed your head with oil, saying that you're not only special, but you're you're loved. And then he goes just a step further. He said, my cup runneth over. Now, if you had a guest coming in the Middle East custom, if you didn't want them to stay any longer, what you would do, you'd only feel their glass halfway. That way they didn't have so much left to drink. Maybe they'd leave.

You've had that company. They've been to my house too. But if you wanted them to stay, you'd feel that glass to the brim. But if it was somebody you never wanted them to ever leave, you'd make their cup just run over and over. And what God is simply saying to you and I, I don't want you to ever be without me.

You say God's mad at me. No, he's not. He's mad about you.

You've got it wrong. God's crazy about you, and God's preparing a table for us. But last of all, He talks about His paradise, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of the Lord. I'm glad He's my shepherd. I'm glad He's looking out for me. The Bible said that He in John chapter 10, that He's our good shepherd. Verse 11, verse 14, and a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. That's what Jesus did. He went to a cross and died for our sins. He didn't have to. He could have called Angels to his rescue, but he died for you and for me. He's the Good Shepherd.

John 10 · chapter mention

But then the Bible goes on in Hebrews to call Him the Great Shepherd. Chapter 13, verse 20, now the God of peace that brought again from the dead, the Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep. What makes Him great? He rose from the grave.

That's pretty great, isn't it?

How you all doing? I hope you wake up and rise from your dead slumber this morning, you didn't get any sleep last night. It's one of them kind of sermons, isn't it, but it doesn't stop there. Over in First Peter, chapter five, verse four, He's called the chief Shepherd. Now He had given His life as a Good Shepherd, as a Great Shepherd.

He rose from the grave. Now, as the Chief Shepherd, He's coming back, and when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, we are going to receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. As the Good Shepherd, He dealt with the penalty of sin. He died to forgive my sin. As the Great Shepherd, He deals with the power of sin. He breaks the power of death, hell and the grave. He arose. But as the chief Shepherd, he rescues us from the presence of sin. One day, he's coming back to take His Church, His children with Him to glory. Now here's the great thing. The paramount thing is, is He your Shepherd? David said He's my shepherd. That means that I can't get in on granddaddy's coattail. Just because great granddad might have been a preacher, it doesn't do anything for me. That doesn't make Him my shepherd. Joining the church isn't enough. Baptism is not good enough. Walking along the communion rail is not good enough. What college you went to, what degree you have, still not good enough. Is He your Shepherd? David said, The Lord is my shepherd. Boy, we need a shepherd, because the Bible said all we like sheep, had gone astray. Every one of us had gone his own way. And then in verse 10 of Isaiah 53 he said he made his soul an offering for sin, an offering. And it took my mind back to Leviticus, chapter one, where it said, when a man had sinned, he could take a lamb and he could bring it to the temple, and he would put his hands on the head of that lamb and confess his sins. And when he did, the innocence of the lamb is transferred to him, and his sins are transferred to that lamb, and the man can walk away as though he had never sinned.

It's a divine exchange, as they were singing about while ago, a divine transfer. I can't remember how many years ago it's been, but I was in the what we call the old sanctuary we now call the Event Center, as I was preaching, I noticed a couple over here on my left that I didn't recognize man and wife and two boys. They weren't very big boys then. I meant to get acquainted with them after service, but they were gone, and I got caught somewhere and didn't make it to them. Next Sunday, I made up my mind I'm going to get to them sitting about the same area, and I called on somebody to close in prayer, and I darted back to the crowd and they were picking up their things to leave, and I stepped up and stuck out my hand, and he shook my hand, and I put my arm around his shoulder. When I did, I realized I had my hands on shoulder blades. I could literally feel the bones of his shoulder blades. So I dropped my hand and when I did, it just went right down to a bony spinal column.

And as I looked into his eyes, they were so deep set, I could hardly see them. His lips you could tell where each tooth was, and I knew he was very sick. I said, my name is Ray Lasalle. He said, my name is Dave. I said, Dave, what brought you to church? He said, I don't have very long to live. I'm looking for a pastor that will love my boys and be their pastor. And your boy used to be my boy's coach for football, and when I face what I'm facing now, we wanted to find a coach, LaSalle's dad, and check out his church. Would you be my boy's pastor? I said I'd be so honored. I'd be so honored.

During that next week, I'd gotten a call and raced my way north of town and out in the country and off of four and when I arrived, the rescue squad was there, and cars were parked in the yard, and I found a little spot for mine and got out and hurried inside the house. He was on the phone. He's talking to his mother. They're out in California and couldn't come all the way back here. And he was saying, Mama, you don't need to cry, Mom, I'm okay. Goodbye, Mom, then she put his dad on the phone, and he told his dad goodbye. And there were, I think, about eight kids, and he was telling his sisters goodbye and his brothers goodbye. When I finally got a moment, I asked him. I said, Dave, did you make out a will? And he was puzzled by my question. He was gone in just a little bit. He was very puzzled. Said, yes, I've made out a will. Why do you ask? I said, Dave, there's another David in the Bible. And I said, he made out a will. I said, it's in the 23rd Psalm, and I hope your will is similar to his. And he said, What was it? I said, he said, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He he made up his last will and testament.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to dwell with God in his house forever. Now you've made it to the service this morning. Do you want to dwell in His house forever? The only way you can do that, you've got to find a good shepherd that knows the way through the valley of the shadow of death, who will be with you, who will provide for you, who will furnish peace for you, who will give you pardon, who will give you his presence with us and be partial to us, and one day we can live in the paradise of God forever.

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor Ray LaSalle, for more information regarding BNC, visit Bucyrus nazarene.org