Series: The LORD is my shepherd Sermon Title: My Shepherd secures my future Passage: Psalm 23:6 Preacher: Dan Weyerhaeuser Date: 6.4.17 Years ago, a local channel was showing vintage Chicago Bulls games. I watched the last 12 minutes of a 1989 Bulls vs. Milwaukee game. We were in the old stadium, Michael Jordan still had hair, Doug Collins was our coach, Horace Grant, John Paxon, Bill Cartwright, and of course Scottie. (Short pants, high socks and white shoes ☺, the way God intended Basketball to be played.) It was really fun to watch. I called Jonathan because I thought he should see Jordan play. 7 minutes left we were down by 12 points and Milwaukee was playing great. We would score, they would score, we would score, they would score. We had pulled to within 3 with a minute left but then Jack Sikma hit a 3 and we’re down by 6. But then Jordan hits a 3 (down by 3). Sikma hits 2 free throws, Jordan scores twice, so we’re down by 1. 9 seconds left Milwaukee had an inbounds pass at from half court. Chicago had no time outs. Its over. But on the in-bounds pass, the Bucks make a bad pass and Jordan gets the ball. With 6 seconds on the clock, he drives the length of the court, pulls up at their free throw line, and with 2 seconds left, scores. Bulls win by 1! (Johnny “Red” Kerr was yelling, “Yea! Yea! Yea!”) Here’s the fun part. Through the whole thing, I kept saying to Jonathan… “We’re going to win this!” We were down by 12 with 5 minutes left… “We’re going to win this.” We score, but then they score… “We’re going to win this!” 1 minute left down by 6, “We’re going to win this!” Even before the inbounds pass with 9 seconds left, I said, “Just watch… we’re going to win!” And we did. How did I know? When the re-run of this game was introduced, the commentator described the game by saying, “Jordan wins in last second.” I knew the outcome while the game was still being played and the outcome SEEMED uncertain.
It’s a different thing to watch a game when you already know the outcome. It changes your experience entirely if somehow you know ahead of time that you are going to win! You don’t get nervous or discouraged because even when things seem to turn for the worse, you know where things end up. As Christians, Jesus wants us to live with a confidence like that because WE know Who wins in the end AND Who cares for us every day until the end! Even when we hit roadblocks, He wants this for us… for YOU. I don’t know about you, but that would help my life! We have been studying Psalm 23 for the last 5 weeks. Psalm 23 was written by David, the 2nd King of Israel, who writes to help us worship and follow the LORD He loves so much. David had spent the first 16 years of his life shepherding the family sheep… living among them, feeding them, leading them, protecting them, caring for them. As he got older, David came to worship and follow the LORD (YHWH). As he looked back, he realized there were many ways in which the LORD’s care for him was like his care for his sheep. So he wrote Psalm 23 to help us worship God and trust and follow Him. V. 1 The LORD is my shepherd. He is not a rancher, but my close, caring, involved, invested shepherd. No wonder David would say, “Therefore I don’t need anything.” V. 2 He provides for all my needs… physical and emotional. V. 3 He protects me from dangers inside of me and turns my heart back to Himself (even though it cost Him everything to do this). V. 4-5 He protects me from dangers outside of Me. Today in v. 6… Main point: My Lord has secured my future If you take in and believe Psalm 23:6, it will help you live your life with security (even when there is no evidence to make you think you can). Outline: 1) Looking back, He pursued me with good, 2) Looking forward, He brings me to Himself, 3) Looking upwards, He has done all this by grace. READ David starts v. 6 by 1. Looking back and testifies that the LORD has pursued him with good 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
V. 6 begins with a backwards look, but notice that it is in a future time-frame. G oodness and mercy WILL (future) follow (looking backwards). When David comes to the end of his life and looks backward, he will surely see goodness and mercy having followed him every single day of his life (meaning in every
2 single situation he ever faced). Let that sink in… that is an awesome promise! This is what ANY sheep in the care of the LORD’s shepherding will see. Let’s unpack this though. Actually, follow may not be a strong enough word. The picture David is trying to convey is not that we are followed by goodness and mercy like they are being lifelessly dragged behind us on a string we pull. The word follow might be better translated, pursue (rapad)! Something that follows you you has a life of its own. It is under its own propulsion and guidance and is interested in following YOU. David used this same word to describe Saul’s army pursuing him in (1 Samuel 26:20). If you are in the LORD’s care, David is telling you that in the future when you look backwards, you will realize you have been pursued. WHAT pursues me? 2 things: The first is goodness. If the LORD is your shepherd, then goodness pursues you every day of your life. NOTE: In the Bible, the word “good” is a BIG word! For one thing, goodness is a word that describes God. Psalm 100:4-5 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him. Bless His name! For the LORD is good. His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.
Good describes the way God is. There is a moral excellence about Him (Psalm 34:14). There is a beauty to Him (Gen 24:16). There is a joyfulness about Him (Ps 45:1). HE is good. Therefore when He MADE the creation in Genesis 1, we read 7 times that it was good. It was morally good, it was visually beautiful. Its trees were good for food, meaning they produced fruit that tasted good and was good for us (Gen 2:9). There was a superior quality or value to the creation (Gen 2:12). We get this. We know what it means to be good morally. We know what a “good” view looks like in beauty. We know what a “good” crop is because it produces a lot of food. We know what a “good” painting is because it is well done.
TRUTH: The good in the world comes from Him because HE is good. But after Adam and Eve rebelled against God in Genesis 3 and plummeted the world into the broken place it is in today, there is much that is NOT good. HOWEVER, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to confront what was not good (evil) and turn back the world towards good. Psalm 23, David realized that there were elements of God’s good present every single day of his life. Psalm 34:10 Those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. Psalm 84:11 No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift comes from your Father in heaven…
At the end of our lives we will look back and see that goodness pursued us every day, even though we didn’t realize it at the time. The second thing we will look back and realized has pursued us every day of our lives is Mercy. This word mercy is also translated “loving kindness.” David is talking about the covenant love of God. Hesed is the relentless love of God. The Bible uses an illustration to help us understand this love from God by comparing two birds, the ostrich and the stork. The two birds are utterly different in their care of their young. An ostrich is often distracted and fearful. It is not unusual to find ostrich eggs by themselves because in fear or distraction, the ostrich mother left her un-hatched eggs to fend for themselves. A stork, on the other hand, is fiercely loyal and single minded about parenting. In the wild, you will almost never find stork eggs without a mother stork nearby, and threatening. A stork will face danger and lose her life before she will abandon her young. Interestingly in the Bible, the Hebrew name for “stork” is a derivative of “hesed,” (hesedina).
God’s hesed, is His stubborn, tenacious, sacrificial, loyal, unconditional covenant love, His “love that will not let you go” even though we do things every day that give Him reason to do so! Because the LORD is my shepherd, His covenant love follows me, pursues me all the days of my life, not because I have been good enough to earn it, but because He loves me by grace! TRUTH: There is nothing you can do to make Him love you more. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you less! His mercy pursues you too! KEY: This pursuit is on ALL the days of my life! Every day, all day, every circumstance, God’s goodness is being injected into my life, and God’s mercy is applied because I don’t deserve it. TRUTH: we can see how God’s goodness and mercy follow us on good days.
The day we graduate from school, the day we get a job, or have success on the job. The day of your wedding. Or if you are parents, the day your children were born… are all days it is EASY to bless the goodness and mercy of
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But David said God’s goodness and mercy follow me ALL the days of our lives which includes the other days, when we DON’T get a job, or when we lose our job. They follow me when I DON’T find someone to marry, or I DO but staying married feels really hard! They follow me when I am sick, or worse when people I love are sick! Having God’s goodness and mercy pursue us do NOT mean that I don’t walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It didn’t mean David’s life was easy or luxurious every day. But it DID mean that as he looked back, he realized that even while he lived in this broken world, his life was DRAMATICALLY better because God’s goodness and mercy pursued him every day, INCLUDING days he walked through the valley of deep shadows! They gave new MEANING to his days. One of our Church family is Van who just got married to Becky! (Congrats). Van is a great example of this. When Van was 20, he drove a friend to what he had no idea would be an attempted murder. Because Van drove his friend to the crime, at age 20, he was tried and found equally guilty for the crime his friend committed. June 26, 2011, Van’s lawyer visited him with the news that the state was willing to offer him a 21-year sentence. Van was dumbfounded! All he could say was, “21 years! I’m not even 21 years old yet!” How is THAT for a hard place to be… life changing news! But God’s goodness and mercy were pursuing Van that very day. Earlier that day, Van had gone to a Bible study where the teacher was teaching about the Holy Spirit. Van was amazed by what he learned… on the day he thought his life was over. He went back to his cell that night, distraught with the reality of being in this jail cell for 21 years. “I was just in college… how could I be here?” But he’d also heard about the Holy Spirit. Van hit the concrete for the first time in that cell and started praying, “God, if you are real, I need to know right now!” And then he started saying, “Hit me with the Holy Spirit!” (3x). He told me yesterday, “I didn’t know what I was asking for because at that moment, I suddenly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in that single cell. Truth became clear to me. Suddenly the suffering I was going through was no longer about me. It was about how I could help other people.” Some inmates call prison a morgue for the living. They are just constantly suffering with no hope or purpose. But for Van and guys like him who encountered Christ, jail cells are transformed into the holiest places you’ve ever been. He told me, “I came to feel like it was such an honor to walk with Christ in such a dark place like prison.”
Question: Would you say that goodness and mercy followed Van on the day he thought he’d have to spend 21 years in prison? TRUTH: God’s priorities can be different from ours! We can long for wealth, HE longs for us to worship. We can value comfort, HE values conformity to His Character. We want success, HE wants single-minded devotion to Him. And worship, conformity to Christ’s character and devotion to Him ARE GOOD THINGS. They are life as God created it to be! He wants us to have His very best! WE can forget this. WE say, “The Lord is my shepherd, but, I can’t pay my bills. The Lord is my shepherd but I don’t feel well. The Lord is my shepherd but I’m worried about this problem. Instead, we should say, “I’m having trouble paying my bills right now, but the LORD is my Shepherd. I may not feel well, but the Lord is my Shepherd. On the last day of your life, child of God, you will be able to look back and testify, “Surely goodness and mercy has pursued me all the days of my life.” Something else we will see… 2. Looking forward, He brings me to Himself An African student at Covenant Seminary said to Bryan Chapell – “I have been here (the U.S.) now for several months, and I am impressed – overwhelmed – by what you Americans have. I have seen your fine homes, I have seen your nice cars and the clothes you wear. I am very impressed with all that you have. I have heard many sermons, but I have yet to hear one sermon on heaven. You have so much, you don’t seem to need it. But in my country, my people have very little, so we preach about heaven all the time.
DAVID loved much about this world, but not in a way that kept him from yearning for the next one. He is the one who said, “Better is one day in Your house than a thousand elsewhere.” He is the one who said to God, “Your loving kindness is better than life.” In fact looking forward to life after life here was his final thought about having the LORD as his shepherd! …and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
This is the second thing that shall happen in our lives because He is our Shepherd. Goodness and mercy
4 SHALL follow me all the days of my life AND I SHALL dwell in the house of the Lord forever. At the end of our lives, God brings us to Himself! A whole season of shepherding has been captured in these verses. V. 1-3 Green pastures and cool waters are in the spring. V. 4-5 Then in the summer, shepherds take their sheep up through valleys up to the highlands where the weather is cooler and the plateau’s (tables are) are lush. V. 6 As the summer turns to the cool of fall, the shepherds lead their sheep back down the mountain and finally back home. That’s the sense here. Question: What does it feel like to have spent the summer camping up in the highlands and caring for the sheep out in the wilderness, to bring them back down out of the mountains and see your home? Do you remember what it feels like to lie down in your own bed after having been gone on a long journey, or having been away from home on a traumatic trial? A: That feels something like it will feel when God’s people arrive at the house of the LORD where we will dwell forever. FINALLY we will be home!
On the other side of the grave, we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The house of the Lord, for David, of course on one level meant the Tabernacle. Eventually, it would be the Temple in Jerusalem constructed by David’s Son. The house of the Lord was the dwelling place of God on earth. That’s where we will dwell. It was the MOST beautiful, MOST precious, MOST valuable, MOST sacred place on earth. We will dwell there. Two clarifications: 1) In the Old Covenant, worshippers of God could enter the temple, but they could not get closer to God than the court of the Jews. Only priests could enter the Holy Place (just outside the center room) and only the High Priest could actually enter the Holy of Holies where God was present, and that only briefly on one day a year, and that after the sacrifice of thousands of sheep. Completely off limits. But we will DWELL in the house of the Lord. David does not envision a visit, or meet and greet with God. We will dwell there! That’s different. 2) The Temple was just a tiny, dingy replica of our actual dwelling place of heaven where we will dwell with God forever. Think about it! If this sin-filled, polluted-spoiled world is so beautiful now, can you imagine the beauty that will surround us in eternity in our Father’s house, fully of glory and His holiness? And if God created the universe in 6 days… and Jesus has been preparing a place for us for 2000 years… MORE: WE will be different! Paul tells us that as a seed goes into the ground but produces a crop out of the ground different from what went in, so WE will be made new by God. What is perishable today will be imperishable on that day. What has dishonor today will be raised in glory that day. What is weakness today will be raised in power on that day. What is natural today will be spiritual on that day (1 Cor 15:42-44). The same Spirit Who raised Christ from the dead, Who is living in Christians, will give life to our mortal bodies. We will be in this place… forever! Forever is a long time. How long? Imagine a block of cement 1 mile by 1 mile by 1 mile. Every 10,000 years, a hummingbird lands on top of it, sharpens its beak, and flies away. When the cement is gone, forever is over.
Let this sink in! Being omnipotent, God is able to do what God wants to do. What He WANTS is that we would be with Him, dwelling in His presence forever! The image here is God waiting in the doorway of His eternal home, welcoming you to be with Him forever! JESUS wanted us to look forward to this future. John 14:1-3 Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many (rooms); if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
Jesus shared this message with His disciples who, in a matter of years, would face a lot of hardship for their faith. They would be helped if they thought often in this world about the next one. Several hundred years ago, Thomas Moore was SO helpful when he said… Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal
Dwelling on THIS future, will help you follow and serve Him here! So at the end of our lives, He will have secured every day here, and then every day in eternity. One last observation from this Psalm…As we go to close it, I think we are helped to also see… 3. Looking up: He does this all by grace
5 The care the sheep in this Psalm receive is incredible! We have learned…He is beside you as your Shepherd, He’s provided beneath you in Green Pastures. He remains near you so you will lay down beside still Waters. He is within you restoring your spirit to Himself. He is ahead of you, leading me to righteous Paths, He is against your enemies and protecting you with His Rod and Staff. He is around you, providing a table. He is upon you, anointing you with oil. He is above you, overflowing with blessings. He is behind you with goodness and mercy. And He is before you in awaiting your arrival at his house. (Robert Morgan) From the complexity of our birth, through sustaining you at every moment (if He stopped, everything would fly apart) to His welcome of you into heaven and for all eternity, HE has done this for no reason other than that He is good and He chose to lavish every blessing He has upon us in giving us Christ A sheep does nothing to receive the care of a shepherd… and so it is with us! We have this gift because He chooses to give it. This is the LORD David wants us to worship, know, and follow! Response: Make this your psalm 5x a day read it (Waking, after breakfast, after lunch, after dinner, and at bed) and God will use it. You sow God’s Word in your heart every day, throughout the day and it will bear much fruit! Clint Morgan travels the world for global missions. He shared the story of a young Christian he met in Tajikistan who was assigned to work in a notorious prison near the city of Kudjand, but he got off to a rough start. Arriving at the prison, he was escorted to a dark room occupied by an old murderer sitting cross-legged on the floor. “What do you want, boy?” snarled the hardened man. The young fellow was so unnerved that he dropped his Bible. As he picked it up, it opened to Psalm 23, which he proceeded to try to read. The old man responded by taunting him, “What are you going to do, boy, try to turn us all into sheep?” “No,” stammered the worker, “I just want to tell you how to find green pastures.” He returned home with a stabbing sense of failure but returned the next week. This time he walked into the room to find it packed with prisoners. In the middle of them sat the murderer. He said, “Son, we want you to tell us how to find the green pastures.” As best he could, the worker shared the message of the Good Shepherd. As he finished, the elderly convict said, “Young man, I want to go to those green pastures”— and then he inexplicably fell over dead. The dramatic news resulted in great curiosity, and large numbers of prisoners came to hear the message of the green pastures. Many became Christians; as they were released from prison one by one, they went forth preaching the Gospel. One of these, Serguey Basarov, became an effective evangelist and pastor in the city of Isafara in northern Tajikistan. Because of his faithful witness, Islamists fired sixteen rounds into his room as he was engaged in his devotions, striking him in the hand, leg, and heart. But nothing stopped the progress of the Gospel. According to the Baptist Union of Tajikistan, over 75 percent of their church-planters are former prisoners who found the Good Shepherd and His green pastures while in prison. God used Psalm 23 to unleash this!
Wherever you are and whatever your need, the same Shepherd is seeking to find, love, guard, guide, and bless you. The Twenty-third Psalm isn’t just a beautiful narration; it’s a living reality for those acquainted with its divine author. Make it your Psalm! Make the Good Shepherd YOUR Shepherd. Bob Goeff - Speaker at National Youth Worker Conference in Dallas described a time when he was in Uganda, leaving in jeep. There were 5 kids running after him. He sat in the back and was waving (fingers up and down), saying goodbye. Then 10 kids were following. He kept waving. Then 100. They kept after him as he was waving. Later he found out that in Uganda, that Gesture means, “Follow me.” Jesus is waving “Follow Me” and we are waving back with the same motion “Hi.”
We have a great shepherd Who loves us and will lead us. Jesus died on the cross to open the way for us to know God as our Shepherd! He leads us by grace. BUT, we must follow Him… and not just occasionally! 1) Some may be here on the edge of saying “yes” to the Lord. Some sheep wander off from the Shepherd and lose their lives for their waywardness! If you are here seeking something (we are honored that you would be here), Jesus says, “Follow Me” like a Shepherd! Pay attention to His voice. Trust Him. This is not a small thing. Following Christ actually becomes our identity, or we aren’t doing it! But sheep can be stubborn and refuse to follow Christ. Sometimes sheep wander off from the Shepherd and lose their lives doing it! He says,
6 “Follow me.” Give Him your whole life today! 2) Sometimes we Christians get really sloppy paying attention to following our Shepherd! The biggest threat to the church today are fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ. They want to be close enough to Jesus to get all the benefits, but not so close that it requires anything from them....Fans often confuse their admiration for devotion. They mistake their knowledge of Jesus for intimacy with Jesus. Fans assume their good intentions make up for their apathetic faith…. And fans almost always consider themselves to be followers. (Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan) Do you need to tell Him again today, “I will follow You?” Do it! Every phrase of this Psalm was purchased by the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, so that we could become sheep in His care. May we follow HIM! Tell Him so!
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Small Group Leader Notes June 4, 2017 From Pastor Dan… Hello Small Group Leaders and anyone else using these notes, We come to our final message in Psalm 23. I hope this has been a good study for you. Next week, Pastor Chad Henderson is going to share a single message about using our gifts to minister. The week after that, we will begin our summer series, “Stories of the King.” We will be looking at parables of Jesus in the gospels. That will be good! May your time be blessed of God! He is what your people need. Warmly, Dan Our Scripture Study… Series: Message #: Sermon Title: Passage: Preacher: Date:
The LORD is my Shepherd 5 of 5 My Shepherd Secures My Future Psalm 23:6 Dan Weyerhaeuser 2017-6-4
SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS Getting to know each other: What is one thing about your future you look forward to? Personal Study: As you study (read, reread, consider, ponder, reread) the passage, list observations you make from the text. What is the main point of this passage? How is the theme developed? What “Aha’s” come to you as you read? What questions come to mind? How do you respond to the God seen in these verses? Bring your observations and questions to your Small Group this week!
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Psalm 23:6 1. Practice reciting Psalm 23 (the verses we’ve covered so far). Has this Psalm been on our minds this last week? Did God encourage you? Group discussion. Read 23:6 carefully. Let’s unpack each word and what it means. 2. Goodness (tov) is the opposite of evil (ra) from which God protects us. Read Psalm 100:5. What do we learn about “good” here? Also Genesis 1:31 and Psalm 84:11. What does it mean that goodness “pursues” us? “Good” is the way God is. Good is a moral statement. Good is a statement of beauty. Good speaks to the fruitfulness or practical benefit of something. Good describes something that works as it was intended to work. All of these are expressions of what “good” is. We all know what is mean by saying “This food is good” or
8 “this view is good” or “this crop is good” or “this person’s actions are good.” Good (which is all of these reflections of what God is like) follow me every day. 3. Mercy (hesed) describes God’s, unconditional, absolutely faithful love for us. How does it help us to know His covenant love pursues us. In the message, I shared the Biblical illustration of the “Stork” vs. the “Ostrich.” God’s love is like a “Stork’s mothering” who would never leave her eggs, even if she lost her life protecting them. Group reflection question: How does the thought of God’s love for you like this impact you? 4. “Follows” is not nearly as strong a word. Can someone put into their own words what it means to have “goodness” pursue them? The same word is used in 1 Samuel 26:20. How does this fill out our understanding? I suggested that “pursue” is a better translation of this word. This word describes something much more than “dragging” a lifeless thing about behind me. What “follows” me as this word is used is more like, “Pursues” me. Like Saul’s army was able and motivated to pursue David, so goodness and mercy “pursue” me. Reflect as a group on what this means to have these two things “pursue” you. In the message, I shared Van’s story. You might want to review it (see above). 5. What do we learn about God that His sheep are “pursued” by these things all the days of their lives? How about that we will dwell with Him forever? He is generous. He brings about good in our lives. He is full of grace. He isn’t passive, but active in His bringing good to us. He loves us in wanting us to be with Him. 6. “The house of the Lord” is a description of the Old Testament Tabernacle and then Temple where God dwelt among His people. In the Old Covenant, only one man could be in God’s presence one day a year, and then briefly. How is our future different? We all who are sheep in the care of the Shepherd (Jesus) will all not only enter the Holy of Holies, but heaven itself, and not just to visit briefly but to dwell in forever with Him. God is omnipotent… He can have whatever He wants. And what He wants is us with Him. HE is what makes heaven heaven! 7. Years ago, Thomas Moore wrote, “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.” How does knowing this change how we live today? Group reflection . 8. While our Shepherd does all of the work in this relationship we have with Him, the sheep must do something. What is it? What does this look like in our lives? Can we help each other with this? We must follow the Shepherd. We must trust Him, know His leading, believe His presence, rest in His protection, obey His commands, etc. Can you think of a particular way that you want to be “following Jesus better? You might want to read this quote and talk about it: In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes, “Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don't want (some) of your time and (some) of your money and (some) of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down… Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think are innocent as well as the ones you think are wicked-the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours." C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Or this one: The biggest threat to the church today is fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ. They want to be close enough to Jesus to get all the benefits, but not so close that it
9 requires anything from them....Fans often confuse their admiration for devotion. They mistake their knowledge of Jesus for intimacy with Jesus. Fans assume their good intentions make up for their apathetic faith…. And fans almost always consider themselves to be followers. (Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan)
