The Lord Protects

We continue this week with our sermon series, “The Lord is My Shepherd.” We have been looking at various ways that we can view our relationship with God by looking at Psalm 23. We are using the book “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23” by Phillip Keller to help us do this.

This week we see that “The Lord Protects.” We are reading Psalm 23 from a different translation each week. This week we will use the New Revised Standard Version.

1The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. 4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

Please pray with me…

· These next two weeks a switch is made within the Psalm.

· The previous threeweeks had statements on what the Lord does for his sheep.

· He makes us.

· He leads us.

· He restores us.

· We now have a transition to how we feel because of what the Lord has done and is doing for us.

For example, our scripture focus for this week is verse four of Psalm 23 which states “4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.”

Another wayof saying this verse is “I am not afraid because I know that you are with me, and I know that you will protect me.” We find trust in these statements. King David, who is believed to be the author of the Psalm, has spent enough time with the Lord that he trusts him even under the most unideal circumstances.

· We can understand this trust when we look at how this shepherd boy became famous and eventually became king.

· David was a shepherd that went to bring food to his brothers,

· He endedup fighting the largest, meanest soldier of their enemy called Goliath.

· He killshim and becomes well known,

· The currentking, Saul, gets jealous and tries to kill him.

· David himself becomes king.

· What ajourney. When David would look back at what happened in his life, he could see how the Lord had been with him throughout the journey.

· He couldeasily believe that if God wasn’t with him the results most likely would have been very different.

· Our journeys are often similar to David’s.

· We havemost likely had an up and down journey through our own lives.

· Everythinghasn’t always gone as we would like.

· We facedadversity and hopefully have gotten to the other side and realized how the adversity we faced strengthened our faith.

It is when we look at these moments of adversity as God moments. Moments in which God is going through these events with us. It reminds us that God wants to be with us on the journey and allows for us to be able to trust him more each and every day.

Some of you may be facing adversity right now. This story and stories like the story of David can help us remember that God is with us during our times of struggle and turmoil. God will never leave us. God will never forget about us.

Keller offers that the Psalm becomes more intimate because the psalmist is focusing on the time of year when the sheep and the shepherd spend all of their time together. (Read second paragraph of 74 and bottom of 75). The sheep have nothing but the shepherd to keep them safe. The shepherd is their only lifeline to the world. It is the shepherd that they rely on to protect them.

· David isreminding us that no matter what we are going through that God is there with us.

· He ishelping us through our ordeals.

· He protectsus through the emotional support that he gives us.

· God canbecome someone to lean on and trust when things are at their lowest.

· When mysister died during my childhood, I felt abandoned by God and my family.

· I feltlike there was only one place that I felt secure and loved. That was at the church.

· It is forthis reason that church is so important to me. It literally felt more like home to me than anywhere else.

· It wasthe people at my church that offered me the emotional support I needed.

· It took years for me to realize that God never left me, that God did not abandon me.

· In fact,he left a group of people to take care of me until I was ready to return to him.

· I turnedaway from God. I quit turning to God because God did not fix the situation that I was in.

· God isnot always going to fix the messes in your life, but he will also not leave you as you are going through them if you let him join you on the journey.

· Not only does going through those dark valleys in our lives grow our faith but they also can allow us to help God support others in their time of need.

· When we go through something horrific or if we face the consequences of something, we did we are able to help people in ways that those that hadn’t gone through them are not able too.

· For example, when my focus turns to the death of my sibling while I was young it changes how I view situations where a child is in the hospital, and they have siblings that are trying to pick up the pieces.

· They are trying to understand why and what to do when their brother or sister is getting all of the attention.

· I know how they feel.

· I can talk to them in a unique way.

· I can pray for them as someone who can understand what they are going through.

· This would not have been possible if I hadn’t walked through that valley in my own life.

I know of people who have lost babies and children, who have had miscarriages, who have lost spouses. These horrible events, these valleys that they have gone through, now allow them to help others through those same journeys.

I know of people who have abused drugs, were alcoholics, went to jail for criminal acts who now can tell those around them that hope is not gone. They can letthose that feel helpless know that there is hope and that hope is in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

No one wants to go through these valleys. But it is these valleys that can make our faith stronger and can allow us to be a witness to those who are facing the valley right now.

· Emotional support is not the only type of support offered to us by God.

· He also offers us other ways to face those adversaries that try to harm us.

· David mentions the two items that a shepherd would hold when he says, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

· Keller brings up that it is the staff that the shepherd will use to help direct the sheep when they begin heading somewhere that may be dangerous or was not the direction that the shepherd needed for them to go.

· It is the rod that the shepherd uses when he faces danger from predators such as lions and snakes.

· Both instruments serve a purpose. They allow the shepherd to protect the sheep.

· Our first reading today speaks of the protection offered to us by God.

· It reminds us that God has set up ways for us to be protected not against any human resistance that we may face but against the “the spiritual forces of evil.”

· We will at times face resistance from those that disagree with us, but this resistance is not what concerns the Lord.

· This resistance doesn’t concern the Lord because he knows that at some point every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord.

· It is the spiritual enemy that he finds the need to protect us from.

· The Lord knows that it is this enemy that is more likely to cause us to move away from him.

· It will often be this enemy that will cause misunderstandings and anger among those around us.

· God desires for our relationship with him to be strong and for that to occur we need to be able to battle against “the spiritual forces of evil.”

· God gives us the tools for us to do this.

· In Ephesians he calls them the armor of God.

· It is believedby some that Paul is looking at one of the Roman soldiers that are guarding him as he is offering us this scripture.

· He is using someone who is dressed to defeat him to let us know how to defeat the devil.

· We have “the belt of truth.”

· There is a reason why Jesus says that that he is “the way, the truth, and the light.”

· When we become followers of Jesus, we have the truth on our side.

· The realizationof who God is and what he did for us is no longer hidden.

· Jesus spoke to the masses while he was on the earth in parables.

· Stories that they found confusing because on the surface they made no sense.

· When we give our life over. When weallow for ourselves to let God be in charge. We receive more and more glimpses of the truth each and every day.

· We also have the breastplate of righteousness.

· Giving our life over to God with the understanding and willingness to say aloud that Jesus died on the cross so that my sins could be forgiven allows us the opportunity to be right with God.

· That is whatrighteousness is, being right with God.

· Then, with the help of the Holy Spirit through sanctifying grace, we get the opportunity to know God better each and every day.

· We become holier which allows us to get closer to God.

· A God that wants us to have a right relationship with him.

· We ahave the shield of faith.

· The more that we trust God, the more that he is able to protect us.

· When we put our whole trust in him than “the flaming arrows of the evil one” will be extinguished.

· Faith helps us overcome obstacles.

· Faith can help us defeat evil.

· Our faith in God helps define our relationship with God.

· There is also the helmet of salvation.

· When we give our life to Christ and ask for our sins to be forgiven, we have already added some protection.

· We have joined the family of God.

· We have been adopted into his Holy family.

· He is our father and our shepherd; he will therefore try to protect us from the evil that is outside of our relationship with him.

· We also can protect ourselves with the sword of the Spirit which it goes on to say is the word of God.

· When we know the word of God, we are able to be better protected by God.

· We can look directly at Jesus and how he acted when Satan was attempting to sway him into moving away from following God after he had been fasting for forty days.

· Each time Satan offered him something that would move him further away from God he used scripture to respond until he tells Satan to go away, and Satan does.

Luke in our first reading adds a little aside comment at the end. He says thatyes Satan left but he left only until an opportune time. He left but he was waiting. Waiting for a moment of weakness. We should also expect that Satan does not give up.

Yes, we may win a battle with him and feel good about ourselves but while we are doing that Satan is waiting for us to get comfortable in our faith. Satan is hoping that we will stop being formed and developed.

We will stop praying and listening to God. We will stop reading the scriptures so we can get to know God better. It is Satan’s goal to do all that he can to lead us a way from God. But wecan have God help us no matter how far away we may become.

Let us choose to let the good shepherd lead us. Let us attempt to keep our eyes on Jesus and allow him to be our guide in our words and actions. Staying connected to God is the best way to have God be able to protect us.