Summer Psalms - Psalm 23

So we're going to be in this new series over January and perhaps a couple of weeks into February. We've called this series Summer Psalms. If you weren't feeling in holiday mode, maybe you went back to work this week. I know a number of people were back in the office on Monday, holiday. Hopefully.

That image you think of, sea and sand and psalms, that's the goal. And so we're gonna be looking at some various psalms over the next month or so. And as I was preparing for this series, I was reflecting on the fact that there's kind of certain times within the year that as a minister, as someone who comes and shares God's word with you, that there are certain times that kind of. You want to put some more thought into it. I mean, we put a lot of thought into all of our sermons, but obviously at Christmas and Easter, you're thinking there might be people there who are coming to hear the gospel for the first time.

But the other time, I reckon that I can very easily get bogged down and spend a lot of time in prayer. And thought over, is this start of the year. I think the start of the year feels a bit more weighty to us. And it's probably not just in the world of church sermons that that's the case. I think that's just in life.

I think for many of us, the start of the year feels like it's more important. It's significant that we don't want to miss this opportunity. It's why we. And perhaps you've done this. We make New Year's resolutions, we reflect on the year that's gone, and we think about the 12 months ahead.

We're kind of standing at the precipice of 20, 25 and. And thinking, what is it that I want to achieve? What are the goals I want to set for myself this year? And maybe you've done that. And if you have done that, well done, it's why at the end we're going to have donuts, but we've also got fruit salad.

The fruit salad is to help you. For those of you who have made a New Year's resolution, it's there for you. But as I was reflecting on this focus, I thought, what is it that we can look at in God's Word? I mean, there's so much in there, so many good things, so many places we could go, so many things that could help us to set our mind on the year ahead. And I came to this kind of decision that we would open the psalms because in the Psalms, we see right in the middle section of your Bible so much variety, so much depth, so much reflection of life and what it means to walk with God.

And so we're going to do that this morning and next week we're actually going to be looking at Psalm 23. It's perhaps the most famous of the Psalms. And then Pastor Allen will share Psalm 1 with us on the 26th. But as we open God's word together this morning, let's pray. Oh God, we come to you at the start of this year.

Lord, there's probably so many things in our hearts and minds, so many goals, so many ideas of what we want to achieve this year, but God, we more than anything, we want to grow deeper in our knowledge and understanding of you. We want our walk with you to be more personal, to be stronger. And so, Lord, we pray that as we open your word today, God, that you would speak, that the great shepherd, you would come and we would walk with you, that we would be guided by you. And so we ask you this in Jesus name. Amen.

Let's read Psalm 23 together. Words will be up on the screen or you can open there in your Bibles it says this. The Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows.

He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honour to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.

You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honour me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. Now, perhaps you, as I read that this morning, maybe you read it along.

Maybe you could have recited that if I had have asked you to get up. I think many of us would have made a good fist of being able to recognize recite. Probably not the new living translation which I was reading from. I know I memorized the new international version, but it's very similar. But I reckon most of us could have made a good fist of that.

I think we find that in terms of passages of scripture, that Psalm 23, perhaps alongside John 3:16, are passages that are the most well known. They're the most well known in our churches. They're the most well known, well known outside of churches. These are passages that have crossed. I think into the mainstream that people perhaps who have never set foot inside a church would still have some idea or recognize at least these passages.

And Psalm 23 is perhaps more famous even than John 3:16 because it is a psalm that is often associated with death. St. Augustine called it the Martyr's Hymn because so many recited it. Christian martyrs recited it as they went to their deaths. Verse four that we read, perhaps the most famous verse in the most famous psalm speaks of the valley, of the shadow of death. And that's become synonymous for a death of our physical bodies as we pass away in this life and move into eternity.

And so you've probably heard that read at funerals. You might have heard it or seen it rather, on tombstones, if you've visited a cemetery. On the few occasions where I've had the sad task of visiting those. The bedside of those who are near death. It's a psalm that I've read and I've prayed over them.

But we run the risk here of hearing this psalm and just associating Psalm 23 with. With dying. Because what I'd say to you this morning is that the words of Psalm 23 are far more concerned with living than they are with dying. Because the central thread of what we read, as we read this psalm, is it's about the psalmist's relationship to the living God in his own life. He speaks of the comfort, of the direction, and of the blessing it is to know the shepherd.

It's really helpful, perhaps in your Bible there you've got it written, a little heading, and it says to you that it's a psalm of David. The psalms are really helpful in that. In most of them, they tell us who the author of the psalm is. And you probably have heard of David. He's the most prolific author of the Psalms.

Some of them are written by other people scattered throughout, but David writes the majority of them. And as he writes this psalm and as you read that name, I wonder what image springs to mind? Because lots of us have heard of David. We've heard of King David, but he had a really multifaceted life. And they often say that a feature of the modern world is that what is it that the average adult changes career, like, I don't know, five times or something.

But David, I think, was well ahead of his time, because in his life he was shepherd, he was warrior, he was king, he was poet, he was musician, he was dancer, and he was songwriter. Now, that's quite a few different careers, quite a few different strings to his bow. But David was a very, very proficient man. And as he sits down to write this psalm, it's widely accepted that this was later in his life, that this isn't a psalm, a song that's written by someone with just a bit of youthful exuberance, with inexperience, with enthusiasm, but rather it's a psalm. It's a song that flows from the heart of a man who's lived a bit, who's experienced some stuff, who's seen a few things.

And if you know anything about David's story, we see that he certainly lived a bit. It's easy to picture him, David in green hills, playing a harp, singing, being very peaceful. But we can't forget that this is the man who was chased by Saul, who was attempting to kill him, who suffered the consequences of his sin against Bathsheba, whose son Absalom attempts to overthrow him and then tries to hunt him down and kill him. This is a man who knows a broken family, who knows the consequences of living through sinful behavior, and who knows what it is to have a life that is under threat. And in the midst of those things, with that perspective on life, David pens this psalm.

And I reckon we should draw comfort from this, because David writes these words in the midst of not a life of luxury, not a life where everything has gone perfectly for him, where he was anointed king and then he lived happily in some, you know, Disney castle where everything went well for him, but rather he faces problems that some of us have faced. Now, I hope your children are not hunting you down to try and kill you. I mean, holidays are tough sometimes for parents, but I hope not that tough. But many of us know what it is to have broken families, to come from homes where things have not gone well. Many of us know what it is to face strife or to be unjustly accused.

Many of us know what it is to feel mistreated by others, perhaps in your workplace or amongst your friends. And in the midst of these things, King David, who lived a very full life, he writes these words. And this morning we're just going to focus on the first three verses of this psalm. So let's remind ourselves of those. The Lord is my shepherd.

I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honour to his name.

David starts with this profound metaphor. And I think in our culture, we read this and we think, isn't that beautiful, the idea of a shepherd. We perhaps picture Jesus with Robes and a staff. But as we saw a few weeks ago, in the ancient Jewish world, shepherds were considered untrustworthy. They were considered unclean.

They were not allowed to participate in the Jewish temple ceremonies or practices. They were kind of. It was said that when shepherds came to town, things would go missing because shepherds were not necessarily the thing that you would choose to compare with. David says, yahweh, God, this Hebrew word that means the covenant making and covenant keeping God, David says that God is my shepherd. But you see, David knew a thing or two about shepherds.

He had been a shepherd. Being the shepherd of the sheep was the job that they reserved for the youngest child. And because he was the youngest of his brothers, he was sent out into the fields, far away from the family, far away from the house. It was the worst job that they gave to the youngest child. I'm a youngest child, and I can, you know, sympathise with David, but it was the fact that David knew what it was to be a shepherd.

He knew what it was to be a shepherd. And so he returns to his formative years as he writes out this song. And he discovered a few things about what it meant to be a shepherd, but he also had discovered what it meant to be a sheep. And that was because he'd spent these years looking after his father's flocks. And in saying that the Lord Yahweh is my shepherd, he's saying that we are the sheep.

Now, again, you could picture a lovely lamb that is clean and is spotless, and that would be a nice image to have. But. But one of the things that David knew about sheep, and a bit of research has told me, is that sheep are really dumb. And so David says, we are sheep. Now, if you thought, oh, I came to church this morning to be encouraged, it's okay, I will encourage you before we get to the end.

But not only are sheep dumb, they also have terrible vision. And perhaps because they're not very smart, they have really bad vision. They're also very easily scared. And they're partly very easily scared because they've actually got no natural defenses. Do you know how Cindy and I were up at SeaWorld and we went to this show where there was some dolphins at it, and I was remarking on the fact that dolphins are so graceful.

But, you know, you get a pod of dolphins and they'll run off a shark, like a shark is scared of a pot of dolphins. No one is scared of a flock of sheep. Sheep are not the land equivalent of a dolphin. They have no natural defenses. Their only response to being threatened is to run.

And so when they run, the other issue that they have is cause. They're not very smart. The rest follow. So if one sheep gets scared and it runs or it wanders off, the other sheep have got a tendency to kind of follow this sheep as it goes. But what they tend to do when they run is they actually take themselves away from protection.

They take themselves away from green pastures. They take themselves away from quiet waters into places that they shouldn't go. And David knew this. He'd spent every day and every night with the sheep. And I think he sees in sheep some of his own tendencies.

And perhaps you can identify some of those tendencies in your own life. See, David could look back on his life, and he could see the way that his lack of vision had led him to wander. He could look back on his life, and he could see that when he was afraid, he ran not towards God often, but away from him. He could see the times where his lack of wisdom had led him into rocky places, had led him into trouble rather than into the arms of the shepherd. And I wonder if you can see that in your own life.

It's kind of depressing, isn't it? A man named Philip Keller, not Tim Keller, a man named Philip Keller, who was a shepherd, he wrote a book called A Shepherd's look at Psalm 23. And he says this. It is no accident that God has chosen to call us sheep. Our mass mind or mob instincts, our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits, are all parallels of profound importance.

Yet despite these adverse characteristics, Christ chooses us, buys us, calls us by name, and makes us his own and delights in caring for us. And I think this is the reason why Psalm 23 is such a moving text, why it's caught the hearts and the minds and the souls of generations. Because it not only reminds us of our place, but it reminds us of God's place. It reminds us of the heart of a loving God for his sheep. And David says, because the Lord is my shepherd, that I lack nothing.

I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. And you see two things there.

Not only does the shepherd provide nourishment physically, but the shepherd provides spiritual nourishment for the sheep. And he says that because the Lord is my shepherd, because the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. I lack nothing. Now, that whole concept is quite countercultural, isn't it? It stands in stark contrast to our consumer driven culture, where we're conditioned to be consumers, to always lack something, to always think that we don't have enough or that we need more, that if we could just get that next thing, if we could just have that, that we would then be satisfied.

But anyone who's lived a little bit knows that that thing doesn't bring satisfaction. And David says, in knowing the shepherd, I lack nothing. He takes me to fields of plenty. This is like the buffet for a sheep, where there are green pastures as far as the eye can see, where there's quite a quiet waters, places that are safe to drink, to be replenished and refreshed, and where I can lie down. Now, that image of a sheep lying down.

I know very little about sheep. I'm a city boy, you know, Living here in Duffy on the western edge of Canberra is country enough for me. But sheep, sheep, they will only eat standing up, so they won't lie down when they're eating. And because their defence is running, they also won't lie down unless they're safe. And so for a sheep, as David says, the shepherd makes me lie down.

It says, you are satisfied and you are safe. You are satisfied and you are safe. You can trust in the shepherd for provision and for protection. And then David says, the shepherd restores my soul. The word that we see used here in the Hebrew translated here, for soul, we see, translated in other parts of the Old Testament, as my innermost being or sometimes my life.

He says, the shepherd comes and restores my life. I was doing some research over the last couple of weeks about sheep and there's this thing that can happen to sheep when they've eaten too much or when their wool is too thick or perhaps they're pregnant or there's a bit of a dip in the ground. There's a lot of things that could go wrong. They run the risk of rolling over. It's called being cast.

A sheep can be cast. And what it means is that there's a sheep, let's picture it in the meadow on its back with its legs flailing in the sky. I don't know if you got 1,000 of those beetles at your house. Over December, we got a bazillion of them in our house. And they would roll on their back and their little legs would flicker around in the air.

I mean, it's kind of comical, but it's actually deadly for a sheep. And it's really dangerous because what happens is they roll over and they actually can't flip themselves back over because they've got those big bodies and those really little legs, they can't flip themselves back over. And so the gases from the grasses that they've eaten start to build up and it actually kills them. It's a really painful, horrible death of a sheep that has rolled over. And the only thing, when a sheep finds itself in that position, when it finds itself cast, the only thing that can save it is the shepherd.

The only thing that can right it up the right way, that can lift it up, that can maybe shear it if it needs sharing, the only thing that can save it is the shepherd. And I was struck there by this incredible prophetic image that David gives us of a sheep that is helpless. Like, it's embarrassing, isn't it? Like, can you imagine if you were a sheep and you're there kicking your legs in the air? Like, it's a really horrible position to be in, Completely vulnerable, like, with no defenses, because it can't even run.

And David gives us this prophetic image of the one who calls himself the good shepherd, Jesus, who comes and who restores us, who turns us up the right way. When death is about to beset us, when we are facing no way of being able to help ourself, when our sin has led us towards this death, Jesus comes and he restores our life. And what an incredible image it is that David gives us there. And so, as we wrap up this morning, I want to leave you with one fairly simple thought. Over in Mark 10, we see what I think is like the opposite of the truth of Psalm 23.

Because over in Mark 10, there's this story where a rich ruler young man comes to Jesus and he says, teacher, what must I do to have eternal life? What must I do to be right with God? And Jesus says, well, you know, follow the law. And the guy goes, yep, done all that. And Jesus says, well, there's one thing you haven't done.

Go and sell everything that you own and give the money away to the poor. And we read that the rich young ruler, he walks away because it says he owned much, he had much property, much wealth. And he goes away dismayed. You see, the rich young ruler had come to the shepherd, but he hadn't made the shepherd his shepherd. He'd sought fulfillment in gathering things rather than finding fulfilment in the shepherd.

And if you're writing one note down this morning, or perhaps you've got your phone there and you want to write one thing down, my encouragement to you at the start of 2025, amongst all of your New Year's resolutions, all the goals that you've set for yourself is make the choice to be content in the shepherd. Make the choice to be content in the shepherd. Because David writes that not only do we find all that we need in the abundance and the generosity of God, but in turn, we as the sheep, must make a choice to be content in Him. A man named Walter Bruggeman, who's a theologian and an expert in the Psalms, he says this. I lack nothing.

It is a decision made against the greed and the lust, the aggressive ambition of a consumer society. Our consumerist society is driven by the notion that we must always want one more thing, that we're entitled to it, that we'll have it no matter what, that we'll never have enough. And this is what happens when we look at the rich young ruler. What do we see? We see someone who saw Jesus as just another thing, another thing that could be accumulated, another thing that would meet his spiritual need, while his possessions and his status and his position in life would meet his earthly need.

And Jesus says to him, I want you by saying to him, go and sell all that you have. Is not Jesus on a crusade against wealth or against people owning things? It's not that at all. It's Jesus saying, you're content in what you own. You're not content in me.

And Jesus says to us, don't fall into that same trap. Don't just want Jesus to meet the spiritual need of your life while all the things that you accumulate outside of your faith meet your physical needs. What David is promising us here, he's not saying, the Lord is my shepherd, so I lack nothing spiritually, but every day physically is a struggle. He doesn't say that. He says, I lack nothing because I'm content.

The shepherd. I'm content in Christ. And so, as we start this year together church, I'd encourage you. Let's reflect on Psalm 23 over these next two weeks. And let's see it as a call to pause and to consider where our trust lies.

Because we live in a world that so readily pushes us to chase more. More success, more staff, more busyness. But David reminds us of something that is incredibly freeing. And I hope you find it freeing as well that with the shepherd, you already have all that you need. And so here's my question for you today.

Will you choose in 2025 to be content in Christ? Will you let him guide you to those green pastures, to lead you beside the quiet waters and to restore your soul over in Ephesians as we close, Paul echoes these truths in a prayer, and as I was reading it this week, I thought that'd be a really lovely prayer for us to pray as a church as we start this year together. And so would you join me as we pray. This is from Ephesians 3, 1621. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources, he will empower you with inner strength through his spirit.

Then Christ will make his home in your hearts. As you trust in him, your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Amen.