Luke 12:22-34; Psalm 23
Please be seated. Turn in your copy of the scriptures to the 23rd Psalm. We have sung it already and perhaps many of you know it by heart. It’s good to hear the old good ones and to hear it again with a fresh look. Psalm 23. Let’s now give our attention to God’s word. This is a Psalm of King David and he says, the Lord or Yahweh is my shepherd. I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. 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. Amen. May God bless us with both the reading and the preaching of his holy word.
In the 1980s, there was a man named Martin Gore who, after reading the maybe the biography or the autobiography of Priscilla and Elvis Presley. This is going downhill very quickly, isn’t it? wrote a song that was inspired by their relationship called My Own Personal Jesus.
Now, I bumped into this song recently listening to Apple Music and Johnny Cash on his Essentials album, sang this song, I think in 2002, My Own Personal Jesus. But before that, in maybe 1989, way back when I was in middle school and the cool people listened to Depeche Mode. I think you had to be a non-conformist wearing dark glasses and a trench coat to listen to them. But they first sang My Own Personal Jesus. It hit the big charts over in Great Britain. And the gist of the song, My Own Personal Jesus, is something like this. I have friends who will listen to me. And I have a friend who will care for me, my own personal Jesus. And we do believe it is biblical to have friends. It is biblical to have people close to us who will listen to us and help us and care for us. That is, in fact, one of God’s great provisions in life.
But we must say we must be contrary to Johnny Cash and others. They are not Jesus. But on the other hand, we want to remember that we do have a personal Jesus. The Lord is my shepherd. And while we have friends and loved ones who will care for us, we have to sing the old hymn. One there is above all others. Friends will forsake us. Friends will, in their human weakness, fail us. But one there is above all others, and that is Jesus.
We also sing, what a friend we have in Jesus, all our griefs, all our burdens we can bear to him. We sing in another hymn, friends may fail me and foes assail me, but our Lord is by our side. He promises never to leave us. He promises never to forsake us when all around us, We sing, our soul gives way.
He alone is our hope and stay. Occasionally on a Sunday, we will ask the question, what is my only comfort in life and in death? My only comfort is that I belong to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. The question then comes, how do you come to know this? And we can say our life experience with Christ has proven over and over that God, through Christ, is a faithful shepherd.
But Psalm 23 is another strong biblical, truthful affirmation. It’s a popular Psalm. It’s a well known Psalm. I’ve guessed before that in the dozens and dozens of funerals I’ve done over the years, probably half of them have been based on Psalm 23. Preacher, when I die, when you do my funeral, use Psalm 23. You have to figure out how to Make it fresh for the hundredth time. But Psalm 23 gives us an image. It gives us a picture. It gives us something that, in fact, is all over the scripture.
Basically, this God’s people are his sheep, his flock, and God is our shepherd. And the whole story of the Bible is a scattered bunch of sheep. a lost and wayward bunch of sheep being gathered by the Lord Jesus Christ, the shepherd and overseer of our souls.
You know from the scriptures, from the Lord Jesus teaching in life, that if a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one goes missing, what does he do? He leaves the 99 and goes and seeks the lost sheep. And when that sheep is found, there is rejoicing in heaven. Jesus says in John chapter 10, I am the good shepherd. He says of the good shepherd, he lays down his life for his sheep.
If you go back into the Old Testament, into the early generations of God’s people, Rachel, remember Jacob, after he cheated, Esau had to go to Uncle Laban’s and live and he loved Rachel or Leah, I can’t remember which, and worked seven years for one, seven years for the other. But Rachel was a shepherdess. When Jacob and his family go down to Egypt and Pharaoh says, what are your What is your vocation?
They say, we are shepherds. Our parents were shepherds. Our grandparents were shepherds. And that’s why Israel lived in the land of Goshen because shepherds were outcasts. Shepherds were separated from others. They were not well-respected, well-liked in society. And so Israel increased in people, but in flocks while they were in Egypt. And so David comes along and he is not king material. But he is a shepherd and he is the least of his brothers. Yet God raises him up to shepherd the flock of Israel. You read throughout the book of the scriptures, the Old Testament in particular, that there are lots of rotten shepherds, lots of rotten shepherds until the coming of Jesus.
He is the faithful one. And so again, our only comfort in life, our only comfort in death is that we belong to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ, who’s bought us with his blood. He’s the shepherd, he’s the bishop, he’s the overseer of our souls. And so with great confidence, we want to say, Yahweh, the Lord is my shepherd. And so there is a sense, not in the Johnny Cash sense, but in the Psalm 23 biblical sense, we have a personal Jesus. We have a personal relationship with the savior of our souls, the shepherd and overseer of Israel.
And so we have a personal Jesus and we need one because we live in the world with all that it offers us. Contrary to the gospel and the ways of God, we live among wild beasts who seek to destroy and devour God’s people. We live east of Eden with thorns and thistles and sins and sorrows, and we are a wandering people looking for home. We need a shepherd, and one has been provided for us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the things we like to say around here, very simply, the goal of our church is to get you safely home. We’re not here to entertain you. We’re not here to make you feel better about yourself. We’re not here to provide this, that, and the other. Our job is simply to put you in the arms of Jesus in this life and to land you safely into the arms of Jesus in the next life.
So a couple thoughts today about Psalm 23. We want to think about God as our personal shepherd. And as our personal shepherd, he gives us personal care. He gives us personal guidance. And then last, we wanna think about David’s personal reflections on having God as his shepherd. So first, God is our personal shepherd.
This Psalm begins with the words that we know and love, the Lord or Yahweh is my shepherd. Yahweh. the God of the universe, the one who revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush as the great I am. Jesus, when he came to this life and ministered in the midst of crooked shepherds at Jerusalem, stood in the temple and gave those great seven I am or Yahweh statements. One of them being I am the good shepherd. And this God, this creator, this sustainer, this redeemer, this magnificent and mighty God is our shepherd. How do we know that? Well, we know it from experience.
But the scripture here tells us in Psalm 23, you are with me. Remember what Jesus says to his disciples, I must go away, but I will send another. I will send the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the paraclete, the one who will come alongside you and in all ways and shapes and forms. God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit are with us, never leaving us, never forsaking us. If you are a believer, the Holy Spirit dwells in you. If you are a believer, you are united to Christ and we are united to him both in life and in death.
In fact, when we go to our graves, we love to say the catechism question and answer. What are the benefits to believers at their death? The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness. They immediately pass into glory and their bodies. I think this is the sweetest part.
Being still united to Christ, rest in the grave until the resurrection. When you go to your grave, Jesus is with you. The Lord is my shepherd. But also we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. We will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. The whole point of salvation is to be with God.
What happened when Adam and Eve declared their independence from the Lord and the Garden of Eden, the place of beauty and wonder and happiness and holiness. When they declared their independence from God and they sinned against him by eating the forbidden fruit, they were cast out of the garden. They lost fellowship and communion with God. And so that had to be restored and we who were far off. because of sin have been brought near by the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus.
And so when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, believing that we are sinners and that he alone can save us from the wrath of God that is to come, we come into the relationship of a personal shepherd, a personal Jesus. And we can say with great confidence never to be removed from us. The Lord is my shepherd. We have a personal shepherd by faith. And he gives us personal care. We have a personal shepherd and he gives us personal care. He gives us green pastures. He gives us rest. He gives us refreshment. He gives us still waters. The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want. We don’t use that word much. I shall not want, but it simply means I will not lack anything. Uh, if you go to the state fair and you want to ride the ride and you’ve got to be this tall to a ride and you’re this tall, uh, you are lacking or you are wanting and height. You were vertically challenged. You cannot ride the ride. Uh, it’s, uh, what would we call that? Uh, vertical discrimination, something like that single fall out of the ride and die.
I guess, I guess it’s the real reason. Uh, but we have God’s personal care and we lack nothing. Now we’ve got to do a little explaining here because we live in America with the prosperity gospel. If, if you realize your destiny, this is what they say. If you want to realize your destiny, you know, whatever, uh, God wants you to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. That’s, that’s the TV stuff, right? Happy, healthy, and wealthy. Well, what about when you are not happy? What about when you’re Job and you’re unhealthy?
What about when all your riches in one fell swoop are taken away because Satan was incited against you? Can you say as a health and wealth or the Lord has given the Lord has taken away? Blessed be the name of the Lord. Can you say as a health and wealth or shall we take good from God and not evil? So we have to understand what it means. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. God will give you everything you need for life. And he will give you everything you need for godliness. And from a worldly standard, it may look like you have nothing. But what is God up to? He is shaping you and testing you and conforming you and chiseling away at the stone. He is burning away the dross. And he is putting you through the refiner’s fire. The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want. And so when we consider the word want or lack, don’t think of it as health and wealth. Don’t think of it as American standards. Remember the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man had everything. And I think Luke’s gospel says he ate sumptuously. We’re Americans. Just look down at your belly and you can’t see past it to your toes. We eat sumptuously. We are not lacking. We are not wanting in calories and intake. And the rich man ate sumptuously, but outside his door was Lazarus. And he loved to eat the crumbs. He loved to eat what the dogs were licking off the floor. And in this life, the rich man had everything.
But in the next life, when Lazarus was taken to Abraham’s bosom and he was being comforted with the comforts of heaven and the presence of God, Lazarus, who had everything in this life, was looking up from the torment of hell, said, please go and tell, please go and tell with my brothers.
And what does God say? They got Moses. They’ve got the prophets, they’ve got the word of God, and they will not listen to him. And so in this life, we may be lacking by some standards, but we are never wanting by God’s standards. And he gives us his personal care, green pastures or rest. He gives us still waters. or refreshment. Our souls, our bodies do not want. He provides for us. He protects us. the imagery of wolves or predators. But Satan, of course, is our greatest spiritual predator. He is going about seeking to deceive and devour and destroy the people of God. He restores my soul. We speak of the Holy Spirit coming in the life of the believer. We speak of vivification. We speak of the life giving power of the Holy Spirit.
And you may live in a dark world. You may live in hard circumstances, but the Holy Spirit can restore your soul. Think of the chaos at creation when the earth was formless and void, who hovered over the face of the deep, who brought from chaos and an inhabited world or uninhabited world, who brought order and life. It was the Holy Spirit.
And so we have personal care from the God who made the world and takes care of the world. And he can rescue and redeem us from all the black and broken and dark and chaos that is around us. He can restore our souls. His rod and his staff, his vigilance, his defense, give us comfort.
Somewhere recently I heard that It was a bunch of Scottish golf, Scottish golfers, Scottish shepherds who invented golf, right? I guess they were shepherds slash golfers. They got bored. And I was thinking this week, how in the world could they have gotten bored when it is their job to give personal care to an entire flock? Personal care means picking up sheep that are cast down. Personal care means getting rid of the flies and the parasites. Personal care means traveling this way and that way, looking for pastures, looking for water, looking for safety. But somehow these bored shepherds figured out how to come up with the game of golf. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I had a friend one time who said, no, I don’t play golf. I’m a Christian. I don’t know if there’s some correlation.
But in God, in Yahweh, we have a personal shepherd who gives us personal care, but he also gives us personal guidance. David says, he leads me. He leads me to green pastures. He leads me to still or quiet waters. He leads me wherever it is I need to go. His rod and his staff are in his hand. He is out front. He is leading the way on the path.
A couple weeks ago, we did one of the last clean outs of my dad’s house. And many of you know, he did a lot of personal monologues. He did Martin Luther, St. Patrick, William Bradford, Christopher Columbus. But his big one, the one he was the most known for was St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, Turkey. And his costume included this shepherd’s crook that was a good seven or eight feet tall. We always had a joke that you could see dad coming on his St. Nicholas tour because the shepherd’s crook was usually hanging out one of the back windows of the station wagon that he drove on many of his little St. Nicholas tours.
Well, none of us wanted this thing. I mean, it was a piece of conduit from an electrical supply center. It was spray painted gold and wrapped in ribbon. And none of us really had a place for it. And so sadly, we watched it go in the crutcher at the Orange County landfill. It was kind of the end of the era.
But St. Nicholas, the bishop, overseer, that’s what that word literally means, it’s a New Testament word, carried a shepherd’s crook. He carried a staff. Some years ago, worshiping in Atlanta at Church of the Apostles, where Michael Youssef is still the minister, in the corner of the chancel, there was a shepherd’s crook. Thought that was an interesting symbol to be laying there. But that is the idea, that is the picture of the personal guidance of the shepherd. He walks the path, he leads the way. Green pastures, still waters. paths of righteousness, the rod and the staff. They are leading to a destination.
And we got to remember, we live east of Eden. Since being cast out of the garden, God’s people have been exiled. They have been wandering. In fact, if you join up the Sunday school class in a couple of weeks and hear Sinclair Ferguson slash Robert George teach the class, you will find out about sojourners, aliens, strangers. It’s a big, big theme in the Bible.
We are God’s wandering people, but we’re wandering towards a destination and that is heaven. But we are wandering in the midst of a world that hates us, sin that overwhelms us, We are in exile with often uncertain pathways, but a very certain destination. And our personal shepherd, who gives us personal care, gives us also personal guidance. And it may be through the valley of the shadow of death, but we must remember how God has led his people in the past. We sing that wonderful hymn, O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. We remember the glory cloud in the wilderness, the light by day, or the cloud by day, the fire by night. It gave them protection from the sun, but it gave them a fire, a light in the darkness to guide their way at night.
We have the scriptures. We have the complete Bible of the old and new testaments. We have the church. We have pastors and shepherds and elders. We have the, The light of the Holy Spirit, as we read the word of God and we heard it read, we hear it read, we hear it preached. We have the church, we have Christian friends and we can walk the paths of righteousness to the heavenly city. And so we have a personal shepherd who gives us personal care. He gives us personal guidance. He wants us safely home in heaven. Now we have David’s personal reflections.
He says, I shall not want. Now, I hope that as you sit here today and you reflect on the goodness of God, even in the midst of hardships in life, you can say without a shadow of a doubt, I have never wanted for anything God meant for me to have. Remember what Jesus teaches. He’s a father who, instead of giving a fish, gives a snake. That’s not our heavenly father. We shall not want.
Another personal reflection of David, in addition to I shall not want, he says, I will fear no evil. Our life is through this wilderness, our life is through this world. And you remember Jesus high priestly prayer, he says, I don’t pray that you’ll take them out of the world, but more or less he prays that you’ll get us through it, get my people through and safely home. And so his personal reflections, I shall not want, I will fear no evil.
His third reflection is your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Does God’s, the knowledge of God that you have comfort you? Is God your only comfort in life and in death? Or do you need God plus something? You know, we live in a world that wants ice cream therapy, retail therapy. We live in a world that is full of coping mechanisms. Thousands, millions, billions of dollars spent on these things. But our only comfort, the only thing that can get us through life and death is the Lord Jesus.
And so personal reflection, one, I shall not want. Personal reflection of David, number two, I will fear no evil. Personal reflection of David, number three, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. That’s a hard one to say. What if his rod pokes us or perhaps chastises us or even yanks us out of danger? that we were running headlong into, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.
Well, personal reflection number four, goodness and mercy shall follow. One of the great characteristics of God is what we call his hesed, his steadfast love, his steadfast love that loves us unconditionally, pursues us, it chases us. It’s the father on the front porch waiting for the prodigal son to return home and ready to give the fattened calf, ready to give the ring, ready to give the shoes and the robe and ready to even hear the griping of the younger or the older brother who says, I never left you. are ready to be scorned by the world for running and losing dignity to receive a son who was so wayward. Goodness and mercy follow. And that’s exactly what we need. Do you ever think about how far you’ve run from God and how much you’ve resisted him? And yet he is always there. His grace and love are relentless and persistent and even obnoxious.
They come for us. They follow us, they pursue us. In this Psalm, we’ve not really touched on it yet, but we’re the honored guest. He prepares a table for us. That’s David’s fifth reflection. You’ve prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies. The risen and ascended Christ. The risen and ascended Christ has given to the church, pastors, shepherds, elders, teachers, guides, bishops. And their job is to get you safely home.
You know what Jacob said when he was an old man in Egypt, he had thought he had lost his son, Joseph. Remember, the brothers sold him to the Midianite slave traders. He ends up in Potiphar’s house. He ends up in prison. He ends up interpreting dreams. And then he ends up giving the granaries the supply for the seven years of famine.
And so Jacob, bereft of his son, comes to Egypt to find food in a famine. And when he finally meets his son, Joseph and his little boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, remember he’s given them the blessing before he dies. And remember he crisscrosses his hands. He’s gonna bless the younger over the older. And of course, Joseph is not thrilled with that. But one of the statements that Jacob, the old man who can hardly see and hardly breathe, he’s in his last days.
He says, the God who has been my shepherd, All my life to this day, bless these two boys. Isn’t that our reality? You pull away all the mess and husk of life. Our ultimate reality is that the God who has been good to us, he’s been our shepherd all our life. To this day, he can bless the next generation.
Think of what Jacob must feel when he sits in the heavenly places and what John would later write of seeing a multitude, a multitude of people who have been brought safely home. It’s the prayer of the church. It’s the prayer of our church. It’s the prayer we have for each of you, that you will know the shepherd. and that you will follow his guidance, receive his blessings and protection, but ultimately end up by faith in Jesus and his presence forever. The Psalm ends so well, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. Pray with me.
Lord, give us the grace to receive your wonderful gift of Christ. He is the good shepherd, the shepherd of the sheep, the bishop and overseer of our souls. May we return to him now in faith, following him on the path home to glory. This we ask in the name of Christ. Amen.