The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Lack Nothing | Psalm 23:1-6

You're listening to the Bible guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible guys.

It's good to be here.

It is. It's very good, Jeff. In fact, it's so

good that I wish I were nowhere.

Else, only here, only here, only here, with with all

of our listeners, and with all of our listeners stright

just riding along in their car with the Lord. Yes.

Oh, how do you know they're in the car?

I don't know. I don't know. Uh, sitting on the couch.

Do you think most people listen in the morning.

I don't know.

You have no idea?

I have?

You know where to track that?

Yeah? There is. I can look it up. You keep

talking and all you can look it up right now?

Look it up right now?

Wow. I wonder if anybody's curious?

Yeah?

Are they more like? Why are you wasting our time?

Thirty seconds I could have gotten back from my life.

Did you ever watch something and say I just wasted

three minutes of my life.

Yes, so I've listened to podcasts before, But.

Up there it is.

Let's see right while you're doing that, keep going.

Let me just go ahead and say we're in a theme.

This week we're talking about God's promises, and this week

we're focusing God's provision. And today we're gonna go ahead

and talk about Psalm twenty three, which is a very

very very famous passage of scripture. Yes, a lot of

people have this memorized. And before we do, we have

a segment called Who's most Likely? Okay, all right, so

it's Who's most likely and we're supposed to read it

and then decide whether it's Chris or Jeff.

Excellent. Yeah, so here you go. Look at Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

it looks like they watch us mostly mostly in the evenings.

Holy Christmas, you see that.

Yeah, after lunch people are watching us. In the middle

of the day at work. It looks like.

We're at home at Thursday at home people. Wow.

Yeah, yeah, isn't that amazing?

No, is there any more? Graft is a slide.

Let me see how it goes?

No, that's it, huh yeah, but it goes all the

way to like at the end there. Yeah. So wow.

So you know, we have a lot of evening people

after six pm, but we've got a bunch of two,

three and four o'clockers too. Yeah, Friday, and then we've

got a ton of just regular morning people Friday mornings.

Huh, there's more people that watch us in the mornings.

We have lots of So the episodes come out at

like six am, right, sure, isn't it when they come out,

and so we have a lot in the morning. But

it's surprising how dense it is right there in that

four five o'clock people are listening to us on the

way home from work.

Five six, seven. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.

Man. Well, well, then, good afternoon, good afternoon.

Yes, that's funny. Do you ever see Spirited with Will Ferrell?

And yes, Ryan and he says, good afternoon, good afternoon.

He says, oh that was that was a doozy back

in the day. Okay, So who's most likely here go

Jeff number one? Okay, who's most likely to start a

story and forget how it ends halfway through?

Not me? I do it regularly. You're a story guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

and then I'm a storyteller. But I get I get

in the as on all the details and then forget

where I was going.

That's so funny. Yeah, I agree you, I don't. I

usually now, I'd done that with jokes before, where I'll

started joking I said, oh, I remember this joke, and

then then I'll start, Hey, there was this guy, and

then I said, I go, wait a minute, let me

stop here, let me let me make sure I got

this right. I did that the other day. I've done

that with jokes before. All right, Number two.

Who's most likely to text someone while standing right next

to them?

I did it in DLT when I was talking to

Dave Wilson.

I was going to say, I think it's you.

Yeah, I think so too.

Yeah, yeah, you You are very dialed into your phone.

You're on your phone too much all the time, and

very much. And by the way, do you do you're

connected to text text immediately.

I'm going to give you props on this. So, so

you are very polite to me when you probably could

probably tell me, hey, listen, I need you to put

your phone down. You're very tolerant, very polite, because I do.

I abuse it meetings sometimes and and I should just

put it away.

So and it's not that I have good manners or anything.

It's just I hate having a leash. Yeah, and I

feel like texting is a little bit of a leash

listen to me right now, as opposed to, Hey, when

you're done doing what you're doing, would you give me

some attention just instead, it's everybody has this insistence that

you apply right now. So I just don't ever for

anybody make a promise I'm going to reply to a

text right away, and so I get to it when

it's my next time. But I also just put my

phone down if I'm in a meeting. I don't always

be I'm not always up there.

Yeah, several hours before you even pick it up.

Yeah, I just avoid not paying attention to it. So okay,

it's just because that leash, all right.

So that's me number three. Who's most likely to say

you too to a waiter who says, enjoy your meal.

I've done it.

I kid you not. This just happened. This just happened

to me. I went to the airport and I was

getting Chick fil A breakfast, oh huh. And I went

through the line and she gave me the bag and

she said, enjoy your food. I said you doo. Yeah,

And I said I mean thank you, and I walked away.

Yeah, that's funny. Brian Reagan has that you.

Yes, you do enjoy your movie. You too the next

time you see a movie.

If you're read to have a chance too. It was

most likely to open the fridge, star inside, and then

close it with no plan. That is me, just did it,

Just did it? Just did it? Yep. Open the frigerator

and I'm standing there and it dawns me. I don't

know why I'm looking in the fridge. I just was

walking past and they open the fridge looking.

Yeah, well you have a fancy fridge where you can

see what's inside.

Yeah, on my phone right now. Yeah, I can see

what's on my fridge right now.

In your fridge.

Yeah.

And by the way, just to be clear, you inherited

that fridge.

Yeah, when we bought the house, it came with it.

Yeah. So you didn't seek this feature. This, this feature

fell upon you. No.

But now that I have it, I.

Don't understand why anybody would need ye.

I don't know why anybody other than other than hey.

I'm at Kroger. Do we have milk?

That's what happens sometimes, is that then.

Sometimes you have containers or you can't see really yeah,

you're like it looks like we have milk, but I

didn't know that. We can't just tell that it's half

an inch of milk.

Yeah, you can.

Look at fridge.

Yeah, so right now my fridge is telling me that

the door is closed, which is really good, and then

I can turn it up and down. Yeah. See, there's

everything in my fridge. So I got some salad there

that needs to be fixed. We have some it's in there.

There's some hot dogs down there. I can't believe we're

got eggs.

I can't believe we're using people's minutes for the it's

but it's fascinating. I can't I can't turn away.

I can't look at it. What's having the look? You

know we could we could do a live cam from

our listeners. Yeah, just so they can watch what's in

my fridge all day every day and then you see

how many times the doors go open.

Okay, number five here and this is the last. Okay, Okay,

who's most likely to leave the house and realize halfway

they forgot their keys again?

Yeah? I do it, do you? Yeah? I'm a forgetful person.

Yeah, I do forget things. But by the way, keys,

I only have car keys. I don't have any other keys.

So I can't forget my keys because I can't start

my car without my keys, right, I don't have keys

for anything else.

Yeah, so I forget stuff all the time.

Yeah, I do forget things. So there's plenty of times

where I'll be like bye, guys, and I'll leave, and

then three minutes later, the door opens and they don't

even ask, they don't say, hey, Dad, is that you.

They're just like, oh, you forgot something, right, run in

and grab something, and then go back out.

So I went out to my truck. This just just happened.

When out my truck, same thing. I can't start my

truck without my keys.

Yeah.

I go out and it's really really bright, and I

have light colored eyes, right, so bluish eyes. So and

then I had some trouble a number of years ago,

and some really affected by outdoor light. Bright outdoor light.

So walk out and I'm squinting. I'm get my sunglasses

and so I jump up in the truck. See my sunglasses.

They're not there. And then I realized, oh, I don't

have my keys. So I run in the house. I

run all the way upstairs, all the way down the

hallway to our bedroom. I run in, I grab my sunglasses,

run all the way back down and get back in

the truck, go to start the truck. Don't have my keys.

I just told myself I need to get my key right,

and then they said I had to run all the

way back upstairs. So it just happened.

That's double level.

This just happened.

Yeah, that's a new level there.

Yeah, so I think you win me that one for sure. Okay, Well, hey,

that's just a little bit about us, that's it in

case you were curious. Yes, yes, yes, so talking about curious,

I don't know. I don't have anything something about me.

I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this. Uh, you know,

the only thing more fascinating than what's in your fridge?

What's that saw?

I'm twenty three? No, well it is bad transition.

Oh that's a terrible transition. Yeah. That's what we're always

trying to do is have the worst possible transition.

Oh how about this one? How about this one? Okay,

there's only six verses, and so I'm twenty three, and

each one of them stand on their own like different ingredients,

just like in.

Your in my fridge.

Yeah yeah, okay, that was worse.

Yeah, that was terrible.

It was terrible.

Hey, can I tell you about something? I guess you're

just just had some people over at our house the

other day, you know, Yes, And I decided to grill

for them. Yes, And I was going to I've got

you've been in my office. In my house, I have yeah,

forty fifty cookbooks that just weird, so I like reading recipes.

I could not find what I wanted to make for them,

and I was I kept thinking in my mind, I

want to make something for fall. Yeah, I couldn't think

of anything, couldn't think anything. All of a sudden, I

had this brain explosion and I'm all excited, and I

decided I was going to make and I didn't have

a recipe for it. I was going to make a cider,

a cider braised or what's marinated? A cider marinated chicken breasts.

And then I started digging in. I finally come up

with this recipe for cider and sage and all this

stuff is really really good. And then I went to sleep,

and I was really proud of myself. And while I

was sleeping, I thought, you know what I should do.

I should smoke those on a cedar plank. So they

were smoked cider and sage chicken.

Breast chicken bread.

They were so good, yes, very much. Fall. I wouldn't

want it in the spring, but it was so good

for fall, and those things were in my fridge. So

that's what was in there. Full circle, here we go.

Let's get the song. Twenty three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Psalm

twenty three is probably, as far as chapters go, the

most famous chapter and one of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's

so many favorites, but Psalm twenty three is probably most

famous chapter in the Bible, don't you think.

I definitely think so. Yeah, yeah, because it's a whole chapter.

It's only six verses, and people have heard it mostly

at funerals.

Yeah, that's right, and most people have heard it King James,

that's right, right, yep. So in the King James it says,

the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He

maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth

me beside still waters, He restoreth my soul. He leadeth

me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. And yea,

though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil. For thou art with me,

thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest

a table before me in the midst of in the

presence of mine enemies. Now annoying is my head with

oil my cup runneth 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. So

that's the King, James.

So, I was so fascinated by Psalm twenty three that

I read this book called Shepherd's Guide or Shepherd's View

whatever it's called Psalm twenty three, and the whole book

broke down every verse. Oh.

I had somebody give me that book.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a small book. Yeah, And I

was so fascinated with it that it says, oh, every

shepherd knows this, Every shepherd knows this, Every shepherd knows this.

And I left to myself, do they though, because I'm

a skeptic and so uh, And I was fascinated with

the applications of all these things. I mean, they're they're

so insightful that every time I mentioned them, even reference

mentioned them, people go no way, right, And so, but

then when I was in Israel, we were driving from

the north to the south. We're coming from Nazareth down

to Jerusalem, and then there's like a stretch there where

it's like it's it starts to get more barren. Right,

So there's like it's it's it's it's greener up north

northern Israel, it is greener, and then as you come

down it gets it gets more barren, which means you

have to go down into the valleys to get the grass. Right.

And so anyway, so I'm walking riding down this road

and I see a shepherd and I said, pull over,

pull over. So they pulled over. We flagged this guy down,

convinced them that we weren't going to harm him. And

then I just said, hey, here's a Bible. And I said,

I don't know if you're a Christian or not, but

I said, let me just show you Psalomon. He said,

I'm familiar with this. And I said, I just have

a question. I said, does every shepherd have a rod,

a staff, and a cup? And he showed me everything.

He said, here's here's the rod, here's the staff. And

he had a bag on his on his like a

satchel thing, and he opened the bag and he had

actually it was like a you know, in my mind

it's a goblet. It's the it's the Riders of the

Arc goblet.

Right.

But but he had a he had a flip cup

like this, right, hit a cup and it's made for medicine.

Did you know that? Oh? So, so every shepherd when

they when they take there, some of some of them

will if the herd's big enough, what they'll do is

they can only graze in a spot long enough, right,

So they if they can't overgraze on a spot. And

if you overgraze a spot, that spot will be dead

for a year.

Yeah, because sheep grab and pull up by the roots. Yes,

cow's bite grass off at the top, but the sheep

will pull it up by the roots. If you overgraze,

it won't ever grow back.

So what happens is a person with a big, huge herd,

what they'll do is they'll actually go on a journey.

And and if it's a big enough you know, herd,

and it's a big enough journey and it's scarce enough,

they can go on a year's journey. They'll they'll literally

go away from their home and they'll take care of

the sheep and they'll be in different sectors before they

make their way all the way back home. And so

what happens is every shepherd, if they go, you know,

just for a week or a month or whatever, they

try to take just enough medicine with them on the journey.

And then what ends up happening is when a sheep

does need something and a sheep is sick, or oil

or whatever it is for their head or whatever, they

pull out and they try to think to themselves, I

wonder how many sheep are going to get sick. So

what they do is they always apply in scarcity. It's

always minimum amount, always because they say, I don't know,

I don't know what I don't know what this journey

is going to bring, so I'm gonna I'm not going

to overuse. I'm gonna give just enough. So the idea

of a cup that a shepherd has is always minimum provision. Always.

And so when David, who grew up as a shepherd, says, yeah,

I get emotional thinking about it. He says, my cup overflows.

In other words, there's no minimum, there's nothing held back,

right because the Lord is my shepherd.

Got everything I need from all that.

I need, I have all that I want and so

and so so each one, each of these verses carries

this huge shepherd truth and it's like, wow, we don't

we don't because we didn't you know, we don't raise

as shepherds. So so we don't understand how rich this is.

And there's only a few I mean, you think about it.

You know, God carries the theme of clay in the

potter's hand right all the way from the Old Testament

Jeremiah all the way to Romans right, So it's a

theme that goes throughout the Bible. And of course you

know the comparisons are just deep and rich and wide, right,

and then and then I would say, this is the

other strong theme. We're we're shepherds. Jesus says, I'm the gate,

I'm the shepherd. They know my voice. You know. The

Pastords called a shepherd, right, the sheep or the flock.

I mean, it's a rich comparison. And uh and it's

and it's a great comparison.

So what is the job of the sheep?

The job of the sheep, Well, the job of the

sheep is to live and be taken care of and

then provide wool I guess, right, but to give back

to the shepherd, right.

Produce produce purpose that either you're going to produce wool

or food milk, right, So yeah, but that the job

of the sheep is to produce. So the shepherd's job

is to provide the environment to be able to help

the sheep produce everything that needs to be produced. So leading, protecting, feeding,

all those things, those are tasks. They're not the purpose

of the shepherd. They're the tasks of the shepherd because

his purpose is to help the sheep produce for the king, right,

And that's our job as pastors. A lot of people think,

you know, they they think of their pastor as like

their personal family. Chaplain right, you know, I need you

to lead me and needs you to feed me. I

need you to protect me spiritually. I need you to

take care of me. And those are tasks that we have.

But our primary purpose is to help the sheep in

the church produce for God's kingdom. That's great, right for

the king. So anyways, this the Lord is my shepherd, right,

and I have nothing that I need. The promise is

that that's the promise. Is I have all that I need?

That's right?

Now? Hey, check it out this book. It started out

with that sentence, and it said, you know who owns

the sheep based on the quality of sheep. So this

shepherd talked about like like they all know this. If

they see a scrawny sheep filled with thistles and and

all these kinds of things, they're like, oh, that belongs.

To that guy, right, because he doesn't take every he.

Didn't take care of sheep. And sometimes there's a brand

on a sheep, and so they'll know sometimes there's a tag,

and if the tag is a certain color, right, And

but technically the book talked about how you can know, oh,

if a sheep is well taken care of, groomed properly,

they're healthy, they behave and they all stay together and

there and they're so there's his model sheep. He is

Every shepherd can think to themselves, oh, that sheep belongs

to either that guy or that guy or that family

or that family, right, right. And so when he says

the Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.

What David is really saying is my brand is the Lord, right,

And so everybody knows that if God's my shepherd, I'm.

Taking care of that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's

the direct. So I love this. You know, in the

last one yesterday when we were reading in the Philippians,

Paul says the context, you know, he's going to provide

everything you need. He's talking first of all, from a

place of contentment. Yeah, and provision. Right, I'm content. Doesn't

matter that I'm in prison, doesn't matter all these things.

I'm content. God's gonna take care of me. God's gonna

take care of you too. And I can do all

things through christis strength is me. And then today two

times right, the Lord is my shepherd. I have all

I need. And then, as you mentioned, my cup overflows.

Yes, right, yes, because more than enough, because that's God giving. Right.

And I've been reading this book. It's sitting on my

table and my office called the Gap in the Game.

I don't know if you've seen it. So the premise

we met, I mentioned it in this week's message, just briefly,

one of the points. But so, most people don't feel

content in Western society. There's a lack of contentment. Part

of that is we're so unbelievably rich. We have the

opportunity to contemplate and the time to contemplate. Am I

really content? Most people are scrambling for food and for

life in most of the rest of the world, and

so contentment's not even an option. It's just right survival.

But here's the thing. So in our system in the US,

Thomas Jefferson wrote that you know, in our founding documents life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness. So most of human history

people have been been striving for life, and most of

human history people have been striving for liberty. Right, those

two things are important. But the idea of the pursuit

of happiness, not happiness, the pursuit of it. We have

it so baked into our culture that we genuinely believe

happiness is out there. And then we have an entire

social media system that tells us everybody we know is

happier than we are. Right, everybody you scroll through and

all your friends are on vacation in the Bahamas. They're

only eating lobster, they're only laughing, they're only wear the

fanciest clothes. They all just got a brand new purse,

they all just got a new thing, and they only

ever go to parties. And your life stinks. All you

have is laundry, is screaming kids, Right, right, that's all

you got.

So somebody once said that social media, everybody posts the

highlight reels, not they're blueper reels.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so we've got this desire

for pursuit of happiness. And so there's two ways to

live your life. And I think Paul teaches us this,

and I think that David, because of his walk with God,

is picking up on this. If you have an ideal

that you're trying to live up to, this pursuit of

happiness thing, you're always measuring it by your reality and

there's a gap between your reality and your ideal, and

so you spend most of your time not content. You're

not really thrilled. Things should be better. Oh, I know

other people who have more. It's why as wealthy as

we are, you know, Americans on average, just the average

American is in the top two percent wealthiest people in

the history of the world, not just the world, the

history of the world, right, right, that's what I say,

in the history of the world. And so we're right

now there's eight billion, but there were more billions before us.

But we are fat, blessly wealthy, and yet we're not

very content, right, And it's because we're living in the

gap between our reality and some ideal of the pursuit

of happiness. We have this weird idea that there's something

more for us out there that's going to be more happy. Finally,

all my wildest dreams have come true. As opposed to

the gain drives me to this idea of look how much,

Look how far we came, and especially from a shepherd's perspective, right,

looking back, Well, we've come a long way. Right, we

started at that end of the valley, or we started

a way over there, and look how far we've come.

When you start measuring how far you've come, you can

be very content, saying, God, you have really blessed me

right where I started, in poverty, where I started, in struggle,

where I started all these things. Look how far you

brought me? God, Right, look how far he's brought our nation.

We don't have a perfect nation, but we've come a

long way. Right, look at what he's done to just

bring in how far humanity has come. And so we

have some opportunities to improve. So I'm inspired to continue

to improve. But God, I am very content because you

brought me so far. And so it's interesting with Paul.

He goes, it doesn't matter whether I'm in chains or

whether I'm free, whether I have a lot or a

little bit. Yesterday, He's like, God's brought me a long way.

And I think it's the same thing. You've got a

shepherd talking about the good shepherd who continues You lead me.

Besides still waters, you make me rest right, all those things,

you guide me along the right path. And so he's

really seeing the journey is where I'm finding my satisfaction.

There's a lot of contentment knowing, Hey, we're going somewhere.

The Shepherd's taking me the right place. Now I can

have contentment knowing he's taking me to the right place

rather than some fake ideal that I think I'm supposed

to live up to because all my friends are doing it, yeah,

and they're not satisfied.

And I don't have time to regurgitate this whole book

that I read. But I just want to say one statement,

which is, each of these together is the journey, right,

just like you said. But at the same time, each

verse is also a very detailed and meaningful picture of

God's provision and protection all in the way right. So

in other words, in other words, it's always God giving, right,

So so if you think about the six verses, it

sort of it sort of lines up by David saying, Okay,

God's my shepherd. I have everything I need and let

me tell you how. And he says he does this

for me. He does this for me. Yeah. Yeah, And

that has to do with protection because sheep can't swim,

so so you know, I mean there again, there's there's

nuggets in here, right, we don't have time to talk

about it, but like what the heck I brought it up.

A sheep won't go near running water because it's definitely afraid.

So the shepherd will always I mean always maybe. But

what he'll do is, in order to drink, you used

the end of the crook of his staff, and he'll

make like a stack so that they so it says,

he leaves me beside still waters. It's a form of provision, right,

so so it's think it's about still God getting.

He'll make a uh uh, he'll pull water out of

the moving stream, that's right, create a soft pool or

a gentle pool.

And what's so funny as we hear this at funerals

a lot because it says, and I will dwell in

the House of the Lord forever. Right, and it's also

a beautiful postcard scene, you know, like still waters and green.

Meadows, even though I walk through the valley of the

Shadow of Death.

We have we have that piece too, Yeah, we have

that piece right, right, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.

But but the idea is is that each step of

the journey for the sheep is God giving and God providing,

which is why the promise that we're focusing on today

is verse number one. I have all that I need,

So that's our time for sure.

That's fantastic. Yes, good stuff, all.

Right, So hey, hopefully we will see you next time

on the Bible.

Guys,