The Names of God – Part 6 - Living Truth

The Names of God
Part 6
Jehovah-raah: The LORD My Shepherd
Psalm 23
Pastor Charles Price
In a moment I am going to read to you what I think is probably the most well
known passage of Scripture in the whole of the Bible. I won’t tell you what it is
just for the moment.
But we have been looking over a number of weeks at some of the names of God
in the Old Testament Scriptures. Names by which God revealed Himself, and in
particular, the names associated with His name, Jehovah, which means I AM –
that is, in the present tense, at any time, in any situation, totally sufficient.
And then we have been looking at some of the compound names, some of which
don’t come across in our modern Bibles. Some do come across in the Hebrew in
the King James Version of the Bible.
We looked at Jehovah Jireh, the LORD Our Provider, Jehovah-rapha - The LORD
Our Healer. Jehovah-nissi – the LORD Our Banner – that is our Victor in battle;
Jehovah-shalom – The LORD Our Peace.
And all these names revealed not in a classroom setting (well, here’s another
name for God, and giving it), but they are all revealed in the context of people’s
experience of God. And nearly always they were revealed in a crisis or at the end
of a crisis.
And that’s why these names are so important to us. They don’t just teach us a
nametag for God; they teach us about the working of God and what you and I may
experience of God in our day-to-day living.
And today I want to talk about Jehovah-raah. Now that doesn’t come across in
any English version of the Bible, but Jehovah-raah is The LORD My Shepherd.
And you will recognize straightaway of course that that comes to us from Psalm
23.
Jehovah-raah – easy to remember because it rhymes with “baa”, which is sheep
language. So the shepherd is raah and the sheep say baa, just to help you
remember and learn a little bit of Hebrew.
What I would like to do is to read together Psalm 23. I think we should read it in
unison. We are going to read the New International Version. All the versions are
slightly different, but let’s read it together.
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“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
“He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet
waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for
his name’s sake.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You
anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
“Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I
will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
Well I don’t know how much you know about sheep, but, if you have lived in an
urban setting most of your life or all of your life, you probably don’t know very
much.
I grew up in rural setting and I have lived in a rural setting and I have grown up
on a farm and so I actually know quite a bit about sheep.
And if you ask a person, “What do you know about sheep?” probably the first
thing they would say is, “Well, sheep are stupid.”
That’s the unfortunate reputation that they have, probably due to their strong
flocking instinct where, instead of acting independently, they follow the first
sheep out in whatever direction it might be going.
And you remember, in the Old Testament Scripture it says, “All we like sheep
have gone astray.” You know, we follow after those who lead us down difficult
paths.
But actually it’s quite a smart move because it’s designed to protect them from
predators. And when they are fearful in any way they come together and they
move together as a flock of sheep, which helps them prepare themselves, rather
than acting independently.
But there is increasing evidence that actually sheep might be a lot more intelligent
than we thought they were. That has been some research going on – I can’t, for
the life of me, think why people are researching the intelligence of sheep, but
apparently they are.
And I found a website that told me some things. It says that a study has found
that sheep can remember the faces of more than 50 other sheep for up to two
years.
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So if they meet a sheep they haven’t seen for 18 months on the road, they just say,
“Baa” and they reply, “Baa” and move on. But they recognize each other
apparently.
They also recognize a familiar human face. And the journal “Nature”, it is called,
suggests that they may be nearly as good as people at distinguishing faces in the
crowd.
I couldn’t help but thinking, well, well done, this research, whoever spent money
and time on this. If they had read John Chapter 10, when Jesus talked about sheep
2,000 years ago, they would have found something similar to that. Because
talking about being the Good Shepherd, Jesus said that the Good Shepherd
“…calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought
out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him
because they know his voice.
“But they will never follow a stranger; in fact they will run away from a
stranger because they do not recognize his voice.”
So all this up to date research just tells us what Jesus said 2,000 years ago
anyway.
But they also say that sheep can form individual relationships with one another –
friendship in fact – that can last for a few weeks (like the friendships some of us
have, I am sure).
It is even possible that they might think about a face even when it is not there.
And the research has also found that female sheep had a definite opinion about
what made a ram’s face attractive. So there you are.
But actually BBC reported just a while ago that in the north of England on the
Yorkshire Moors where there are a lot of sheep, there was a beautiful garden,
which had a cattle grid to protect animals getting into it – a cattle grid was on the
road. (A cattle grid is a series of bars – any animal trying to walk across it will
fall down between the bars.)
And they noticed some sheep standing around at the entrance, as sheep often do.
Our house was in a field and we had to go down a drive to it and we had a cattle
grid and we had sheep in the field and they often would stand around and look at
it.
But what happened, according to the BBC, is that one day one of these sheep lay
down and rolled over the cattle grid, got up on his feet on the other side. The next
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one followed and when somebody came out, there was all this flock of sheep in
their garden.
Now that’s pretty smart, don’t you think?
So sheep are a little more intelligent than we often give them credit for.
Now this psalm is a psalm spoken by a sheep, from a sheep’s perspective. We
sometimes call it the Shepherd’s Psalm; it’s really the Sheep Psalm.
He is saying,
“The LORD is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
And then it’s I, Me, personal pronoun all the way down through the psalm,
speaking on behalf of the sheep.
And I want to build what I talk to you about this morning around three things that
the sheep says about itself. And these are three things that you and I will be able
to say about ourselves when we are living in a wholesome relationship with the
Lord as my Shepherd.
The first thing he says is
“I shall not be in want.”
That’s a great thing to say.
Second thing: Verse 4:
“I shall fear no evil.”
And the third thing, in Verse 6:
“I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
Now this makes three easy divisions for us this morning. So now I am going to
talk about these one by one and see how the other verses in the psalm amplify and
explain these statements.
First of all:
“I shall not be in want.”
What he is saying is, “There is adequate provision for me when the Lord is my
shepherd.”
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I looked up a number of different translations to see ways in which they express
this. The King James, which many of you will be familiar with by memory, says,
“I shall not want.”
The Amplified Bible says,
“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not lack.”
The contemporary English Bible says,
“You LORD are my shepherd, I will never be in need.”
Another translation says,
“The LORD ruleth me and I shall want nothing.”
Another one says,
“Jehovah is my shepherd, I do not lack.”
The Message says,
“God, my shepherd, I don’t need a thing.”
And one that I love, which my assistant Maggie Millwood gave me – it’s actually
from a hymn but it is a great statement based on this verse:
I love that.
“The LORD my shepherd guards me well.”
“The LORD my shepherd guards me well.”
What does it mean to not want, to not be in want?
You know contentment is not simply the result of an environment that is
comfortable and sufficient. Contentment is an attitude and disposition of mind.
It is possible to have everything that seems right around us and yet to be
discontented and it’s possible to have everything around us falling apart and to be
content.
And I will give you two examples of that from the Scripture. One example is Eve
in the Garden of Eden, where literally everything in the Garden was lovely. The
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environment was beautiful. The food was okay. The husband was fine. The
purpose for their lives was clear to them. And they had everything they needed in
the Garden of Eden.
But it is never enough if your heart is not satisfied. And when the devil dangled
in front of her this fruit she was forbidden to eat and she saw that it was good for
food and would make her wise, would give her something she thought she hadn’t
got because this is what the devil told her, she took of it and ate and fell into a
mess.
On the other hand, when Paul, the apostle, wrote to the Philippians, writing from
prison, he said to them in Philippians 4:12,
“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation,
whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
He said, “I have learned the secret that it has nothing to do with my
circumstances. It is a secret of a disposition of heart that leaves me content.”
You see to not want is a choice. And I will tell you why we need to make that
choice: because all the time we are bombarded with ideas that what we have is
not enough.
All of advertising is designed to make you dissatisfied and then to want what it is
that they are offering you.
And so this position of “I shall not want” somehow – and we’ll try to see how –
works out of really knowing that the Lord is my shepherd – Jehovah-raah.
David goes on to explain ways in which he does not want. There are four ways – I
am going to give them to you.
First of all, materially - Verse 2:
“He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
Now I have lived around sheep for many years of my life. And as I mentioned,
the house we lived in, in England before we came here, we were there for 20
years in that house in the middle of a field. We had sheep in the field.
The only way to make a sheep lie down is to satisfy its stomach. And when a
sheep is not hungry it lies down. That’s the only situation.
David knew this. David was a shepherd. He may have written this as a young
man when still a shepherd. And he had seen his sheep lie down. “Okay, the
shepherd would say, “I can relax now; they are satisfied.”
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“The LORD is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
Why?
“He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
And they are green pastures. When I farmed in Zimbabwe for several years when
I was younger, it didn’t rain for 8 months of the year. It started to rain in October,
preferably, sometimes November; run through till February or January. And
maybe two or three days a week it would rain. You hoped it would – and rain
heavily.
But for 8 months of the year it was just blue sky every day and all the vegetation
would dry up and become this golden browny color.
And we had a lot of sheep and we had shepherds who looked after these sheep all
day. But we would irrigate an area of fresh grass – a big paddock of fresh grass.
And irrigate it for a few days – it would become rich and lush. And by this time
the sheep have grazed down the area they have been in for a little while. And we
would move them from one to the other.
And I remember one day seeing the shepherds moving these sheep along the path
that went to the newly irrigated lush green pasture. And as the sheep came to a
certain point, they could see the beautiful green grass in the distance and they
would begin to run.
And before long the sheep were running, creating a big dust, getting into that
paddock, grazing and lying down when they were satisfied.
But the point is “he makes me lie down in green pastures - he provides what I
need.”
Now Jesus encouraged us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
He did not encourage us to pray, “Give us today enough bread to last the month or
the year”, but to live in day-by-day trust and dependence.
And you know, David wrote this as a young man, but he wrote Psalm 37 as an old
man.
And in Psalm 37:25 he said this:
“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous
forsaken or their children begging bread.”
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And the reason why he wrote that statement then was because if you look at
Psalm 37, he is discussing in that psalm, why is it that the wicked seem to
prosper? Why is it that the people who act evil seem to get away with it? Why is
it that the good people often seem to get into trouble?
And that is a very real dilemma. It is addressed several times in Scripture. He
addresses it in Psalm 37, but at the end he says this: “I was young; now I am old
and I will tell you this: I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his children
begging bread.”
When it comes to what we need, the Lord is a good shepherd.
And then secondly, he talks about his provision emotionally.
“He leads me beside quiet waters.”
Or some translations say,
“He leads me beside still waters.”
Waters have a calming and soothing effect. That’s why a lot of people have
cottages next to lakes because that’s where you go to unwind and find the
soothing effect of the water.
Nobody says, “I have got a cottage in the middle of the city.” You want to get
away and you want to get by the water.
And still waters are deep waters. Shallow water is fast moving. So these are deep
waters. And he says, “He leads me beside these deep waters where I can – he’s
using picture language here of taking time to renew and to find peace in the
stillness and the depths of being alone and being alone with God.
Later in the Psalms it says in Psalm 46:10,
“Be still and know that I am God.”
You know one of the biggest – I think – one of the biggest dangers in our culture
today is the noise pollution, if I can call it that that we constantly expose ourselves
to.
We are never without noise, never without music. You see people jogging, you
know, and they have got their iPod or MP3 and they are listening.
We get in the car and the radio goes on straightaway or the iPod goes in or
whatever it is. We get home; we switch on the television or we put on the music.
And we are hardly ever – for many of us – just quiet, just time to think and
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meditate. In fact some of us don’t know what to do with silence – we’re scared of
it.
“He leads me beside still waters.”
Thirdly, spiritually – he says in Verse 3,
“He restores my soul.”
Our needs are not just physical, but spiritual. And he talks about restoring the
soul, renewing the soul.
Later again in Psalms and I tried to find some other statements in Psalms that
undergird some of these statements here in Psalm 23. But Psalm 62:1,
“My soul finds rest in God alone.”
There is a rest; there is an intimacy that comes from being with God alone. And
He restores my soul. We need the refreshment and the restoration of soul that
comes from spending time alone with God.
And fourthly here, under this “I shall not want”, he talks about morally,
“He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
If we are in step with the shepherd, we are led along paths of righteousness – that
is, we love what is right and we do what is right and we live in a way that is right.
And if you are discerning the will of God but going down a road that involves
unrighteousness, I can tell you this: you are out of the will of God, because He
leads me in paths that are morally righteous. He is talking here about our
behaviour and the way we live.
And do you know why He does that? It’s for His name’s sake. Now that changes
the focus, doesn’t it? Because often we say, “Well, is this going to advantage
me?” Because there are some times when unrighteousness is to my advantage –
cheating a little bit – not quite being honest with the truth. That’s to my
advantage.
No, it’s not about “for our name’s sake”; it’s for “His name’s sake.” For keeping
in such a wholesome relationship with the shepherd that as we live that way we
can say Jehovah-raah – the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I will not lack,
and I have enough.
Can you say with a good conscience this morning “I shall not want?” Or is there
under the surface driving you some aspiration which is not satisfied in letting the
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Lord be your shepherd, which means He will guide you and lead you and put you
in the right place, because that’s what shepherds do for their sheep?
The second thing that he says is,
“I shall fear no evil.”
If to say “I shall not be in want” is to talk about adequate provision, to say “I shall
fear no evil” is to talk about adequate protection that is given me by the shepherd.
And here are three areas in which we may not fear. We need not fear death,
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for you are with me.”
He talks about death and fear in the same sentence there and often those two
things do belong in the same sentence for a lot of people. A lot of us fear death or
we fear dying, or we fear both.
But actually, though these two words are in the same sentence – death and fear –
he is separating them by saying,
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
There is death – I am going to go through death – that is the only certain thing
about life is that it will end physically in death. But, “though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
So he takes hold of evil and he gets hold of death and he says, “These two are no
longer married together where death leads to fear.”
There is death but there is no fear – he separates them.
And do you know why he does that? Because he describes death as “the valley of
the shadow of death”. Death, though real, is reduced to a shadow.
And remember this: if you see the shadow of a stick on the wall, it will never hit
you. The shadow of a dog will never bite you. The shadow of a truck coming
down the sidewalk will never run you down. And the shadow of death will never
kill you. It is reduced to a shadow. You go through it but you come out the other
side alive.
And as somebody said to me about 45 minutes ago, death becomes a shadow
when you put a light on it. Shadows are only there when there is light. And you
see we have a totally different understanding of death now. This physical life will
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come to an end but to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord,
Paul wrote in the New Testament.
John Stott once wrote this:
“One of the most searching tests to apply to any religion concerns its
attitude to death. And measured by this test, much of so-called
Christianity is found wanting in its black clothes, its mournful chants, its
requiem masses. Of course dying can be very unpleasant and
bereavement can bring bitter sorrow, but death itself has been
overthrown.”
And he quotes Revelation 14:13:
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”
“The proper epitaph,” writes Stott “to write for a Christian believer is not
a dismal and uncertain RIP (which means Rest In Peace), but a joyful and
certain affirmation CAD (Christ Abolished Death).”
And Hilary and I were able to attend the funeral of John Stott in London a few
months ago. We were in England at the time. We arrived that morning,
coincidentally, and we attended his funeral. And it was a celebration of a life that
trusted God and was unafraid of death.
I know there are natural fears about death. There are natural fears about the
things we don’t know about death and the process of dying. But it is only a
shadow – it’s only a shadow.
And those who know the Lord as their shepherd, who are in such relationship
with Him that they have received that gift of eternal life, we pass through the
shadow; we come out the other side alive forever.
So he says, “I shall not fear. I shall not fear death.”
Secondly he says, also in Verse 4, “I shall not fear discipline” because he writes,
“Your rod and staff, they comfort me.”
Now the rod and the staff are the basic tools of the shepherd. They were two
things with which he provided protection on the one hand and correction on the
other hand.
So when marauding animals came along, the shepherd would whack them with
his rod to drive them away. And when a wandering sheep fell over the cliff, he
would pull it back to safety with his staff, which had a hook on the head of it,
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which you could reach down around the ankle of the sheep and pull it back.
That’s how you catch a sheep, normally, if you are going to do something with it.
When the sheep needed a poke, they would get it from the staff or the rod. And
he says that this poking and prodding and whacking that goes on with the
shepherd’s rod and staff is a comfort to me.
It’s comforting to know we have a shepherd who will protect us and a shepherd
who will correct us, who will poke us when we need poking and prod us when we
need prodding and even whack us when we need whacking (which we do from
time to time).
You know, in a family it’s very comforting to have parents who will protect you
and correct you. It’s not always pleasant at the time. The writer to the Hebrews
writes that in Hebrews 12:5,
“Have you forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as
sons: ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose
heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.’”
I love the fact that this is a word of encouragement that the Lord disciplines you.
Why? Because He loves you and because you need protecting, you need
correcting.
And the discipline of God is encouraging.
“Your rod, your staff, they comfort me.”
I made a comment a week or two ago that God doesn’t judge us in this life, that
there is going to be a day which He has set, by which He will judge the world.
But He does discipline us; He does correct us. And that’s because He is a loving
father and because He is a good shepherd.
And the third thing here on not being afraid is that you will not fear dissension or
conflict.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You
anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
We talked about no fear in death and no fear in discipline. Now there is no fear in
defiance or dissension or conflict, battle. There are two things in this verse –
there is a feast (You prepare a table before me) and there is a fight – where is the
table? In the presence of my enemies.
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Now if you want to get off balance, just see it as all fight or just see it as all feast.
It is both. We enjoy the feast – that is the provision that He makes available to us.
And He makes it so fully available to us that he says, “my cup overflows”.
“My cup overflows – there is plenty.” The provision I need to rest in His
provision – there is a feast.
But there is also a fight; there is a battle. And we are in conflict – we are in
conflict with principalities and powers that are outside of the physical world but
operate within our physical world. We fight against the world, the flesh and the
devil, is what the Scripture tells us.
The principle of the world, which is God-less and it’s all about myself, because he
explains it in that passage in 1 John. It’s about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, the pride of life. We fight against the world, against the flesh, the old nature
that loves to do its own thing, loves the dirt, and against the devil and his cohorts
who fight against us.
You know, part way through Jesus’ ministry He sent His disciples out on their
own. He had not done that before. And He told them four times in Matthew 10
when He sent them out, “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.
Do no be afraid.”
They probably thought, “Well, what’s there to be afraid of you know? “This is
exciting.”
“He said, ‘I am going to send you out to preach the kingdom of God is near, heal
the sick, raise the dead.’ He is going to empower them to do these things. Wow,
that’s fantastic! Why are You talking about “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,
don’t be afraid?”
Well then He says to them this:
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” [Matt. 10:16]
They probably said, “I beg Your pardon?”
I mean what happens when sheep and wolves meet? Well the wolves have a
picnic don’t they? Do the wolves roll over on their backs and the sheep tickle
their tummies? No, when wolves and sheep meet, the wolves have fun and eat the
sheep.
I can imagine Jesus saying, you know, “Peter, James, John, I am sending you
out.”
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“Hallelujah. We’re ready; we’ve ready. Hey You told us this was going to
happen.”
“Let me finish the sentence. I send you out like sheep amongst wolves.”
“Wolves?”
“Yeah, see those wolves over there?”
“Yes.”
“See their sharp teeth?”
“Yes.”
“I am sending you out to meet the wolves.”
“Help!”
“And don’t get this wrong. You’re the sheep; you’re not the wolf. You are the
vulnerable one.”
But He said, “Don’t be afraid.” And we’re not looking at that whole passage, but
what He said after this was, [Matt. 10:28-31]
“Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
(They can kill the body.)
“Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to
the ground apart from the will of your Father.
“And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
“So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
He doesn’t say, “Now, you are not going to have any trouble.” No, He says,
“You know sparrows fall out of the nest and die? Well your Father knows about
every sparrow and you are worth more than that, so you may actually, when you
face the wolves, die.
And James, of these disciples, was the first to die in Acts Chapter 12. That’s not
very far into the book of Acts.
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They tell us, in as much as we know with extra biblical information, that only one
of those disciples died in his bed as an old man. The others were martyred –
Thomas in India, Peter crucified upside down, others we don’t have detail about.
But He says, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid, because you see, your need to not
fear death and your need to not fear discipline and your need to not fear
dissension and battle and conflict is because “the Lord is my shepherd” and don’t
be afraid – just let Me lead you as a shepherd leads his flock.
But in the midst of it, enjoy the feast, the calm peace.
A man came to me at the end of the first service this morning. He said, “You
know, this week I was diagnosed as having five tumours in three different parts of
my body.” He said, “I have had quite a lot of pain and when I went this week and
was given the diagnosis, instead of panic, I felt a peace.”
He is a middle-aged man – not an old person. He said, “Not only a peace but
when I went home, I almost felt” – he said, “it sounds crazy to say I felt happy
because I don’t think I felt happy, but I felt something inside that was so warm
and real.”
And he said, “Thank you for explaining this morning what I felt, because the Lord
is my shepherd, I shall not fear.”
I wonder where you are in your life and what is going on. These are real issues of
course and we don’t glibly treat them and glibly respond to them. And yes, we
struggle sometimes, coming to that point of having no fear. And we struggle with
surrendering these things. I know that.
But there is adequate protection. “And I shall fear no evil” he says.
And the last thing, the third thing, he says,
“I will dwell in the house of the LORD.”
If there is adequate provision and adequate protection, there are adequate
prospects too that I am looking ahead now to the future. And he looks to the
future in two ways.
First of all, in the temporal part of our life:
“Surely, goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.”
Some translations:
“goodness and mercy” – the word can be translated both ways.
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And He says, “This is something I know: surely, that whatever the days of my
life involve, be they 20 years or 50 years or 70 years or 90 years, or whatever it is
God gives to me, surely these two things are going to follow me: goodness and
love and mercy.”
Shepherds today work with sheepdogs. Sheepdogs get behind the sheep and drive
them. My father used to breed sheepdogs. He even used to exhibit them in
sheepdog trials at one stage, but he gave up in embarrassment after one or two not
good incidents with his sheepdogs.
But he would train them and I would watch him train them. And he would
communicate with these dogs with a whistle. I couldn’t tell the difference
between one whistle and another, but the dog knew one meant go the right; one
meant go to the left; one meant go straight on; one meant go stop; one meant lie
down, etc.
And he would use two dogs as well and each dog knew the signal that was for
him or her and they would drive the sheep. Put up two poles in the middle of a
field and they would drive the sheep through the poles. The dogs would make
sure that one didn’t go outside the pole – no fence, just two poles – just to make
sure the dogs could do it well. It was great to watch.
There are two sheepdogs that the shepherd sends to round us up and bring us in:
goodness and mercy. These are the two things that are going to follow us.
And these are the two things that we can trust God for, that, whatever He does in
our lives, it is good. It may not seem that at the beginning, as we read in that
verse in Hebrews that discipline doesn’t seem good at the beginning, but it yields
its fruit and you look back afterwards and say, “That was good. I am so glad I
went through that.”
Not only His goodness, but His mercy or His love. And we need His mercy; we
need to be forgiven, we know we are going to fail, and His love that keeps
reaffirming and operating within us.
And then the second thing: we have adequate prospects in the temporal but we
have adequate prospects in the eternal for he finishes:
“I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
We will pass through the shadow of death, but on the other side, there will be
forever a life, as he puts it, “in the house of the LORD.”
To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. There really is
something greater to come. That is not an escape from the present for the
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Scripture equips us to live in the present but to know that there is going to come
something even greater that the mind cannot comprehend, because it is beyond
anything we know in this life.
No wonder David wrote in Psalm 79:13,
“Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will praise you forever;
from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”
He says, being the sheep of His pasture, “from generation to generation, we
recount Your praise; we pass it on to the next generation.”
But also he says, “We will praise you forever because we know this world is not
my home, I’m just a passing through,” as that old spiritual used to say.
You know, you only know how to live when you know how to die. If someone
doesn’t know how to die, they are not going to be free to live because you are all
the time dealing with fear – what will happen if it goes wrong, what will happen if
I face death.
And these two things - how to live and how to die – are addressed in this psalm.
But it is not a psychological process, it is not a technique for living; it is a
response to a relationship where the Lord is my shepherd, where Jehovah-raah, as
the Hebrew puts it.
He is the One to whom I have entrusted my life. He is the One who leads me,
guides me, protects me. And because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in
want.
Or that lovely one I quoted earlier:
“The LORD my shepherd guards me well and I am safe.”
And there may be some of us here this morning and we don’t know Christ. This
is a little bit strange, what you are hearing. It is difficult to fit into your mind and
understanding because the framework for understanding this comes from entering
a relationship with God. And in that relationship it will make sense. Outside of
it, it won’t make sense.
And you can come into that relationship with God this morning. It involves
facing the fact that you are separated from Him, that Christ died, the Good
Shepherd gave His life for the sheep. He died in order that we might be forgiven.
And in confessing of our sin, we come into that relationship with Him whereby
He comes to live in us to be our shepherd, to be our guide.
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But if there are those of us and we are Christians already, and we know we are
Christians but we are not living in the freedom of this and a lot of this is a bit ‘pie
in the sky’ stuff, it’s not really the practical day-to-day living that we are dealing
with, then maybe your Shepherd isn’t really being your Shepherd.
You have not really entrusted yourself to His care and protection. Because when
you come to that point it is so wonderfully liberating, you don’t have to fulfill
anybody else’s expectation anymore, don’t have to prove anything, don’t have to
accumulate all kinds of things; you are just content to be under His direction and
care and leading, both now and ultimately right into eternity.
And we, as Christian people, need to keep that relationship fresh and right
because so easily do other things slide in.
And the symptom of it is this: it is no longer true that I do not want. The
symptom of the Lord not really acting as shepherd because you are not living in
that relationship with Him, is that you actually begin to want other things.
It is no longer true “I shall not fear.” You fear all kinds of things that are out of
your control.
And the invitation of the gospel is a relationship that day-by-day Christ, as our
Lord, the good shepherd, exercises His role as shepherd and we exercise our role
as humble, dependent, obedient sheep.
If we can help any of you either to come to know Christ for the first time or, if
you know that your relationship with Christ has become distorted and you are
wanting and you are fearful, maybe we can help you, talk with you and pray with
you if you come into a fresh surrender of yourself to the Shepherd.
Let’s pray together. Lord, we are grateful this morning that this is not empty
words that we have in the Scripture, but these words are true and these words are
life-giving. I pray for every person here this morning. I pray for those who may
not know You as their Shepherd and their Lord, never come into a relationship
with You, that You would draw them maybe this morning. And give them the joy
of knowing Christ as their Shepherd and Lord.
And those of us who are living the Christian life and the battle in which we are so
often seduced and deceived and pulled away from the simplicity that is in Christ,
from just simply trusting You and loving You and yielding ourselves to You,
bring us back we pray to that point, that we will say with absolute clear
conscience,
“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
Make this true for us we pray, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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