Shepherd Looks at 23rd Psalm part 3

“He makes me lie down in Green Pastures.”

SONG:

Lord I need You.

Lesson:

Read Psalm 23 “A psalm of David. 1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

“He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

This is where we will focus our attention tonight.

Over the last year especially, I’ve been doing a lot of work in my house.

I’ve done my best Chip and Joanna Ganes impression by removing walls and rebuilding.

Changing the layout of a few rooms to make it more suitable for our needs as a family.

One of those rooms is the first room you walk into from our driveway.

It used to be our laundry room, but now it’s our mudroom.

Now I could go on here about what I’ve done in that room in the last month, but let me just say this.

I’ve been busting it and I’ve already had some late nights working in that room, but it’s almost finished…

Sunday afternoon, I worked on some wiring and it really got to me emotionally.

It was hard.

I was wiring 2 - 3 way switches with 12/3 wire.

Normally you have your hot (black), neutral (white) and a ground wire (copper).

That’s called 12/2 wire and it’s typically yellow though sometimes people will use a lesser gauge to cut costs and wire in 14/2 wire.

This wire has an additional 3rd wire that is red as you can see.

Here’s all you need to know beyond that.

I struggled, sweat, and read a lot of diagrams to wire in these two switches correctly.

The first two attempts I failed.

It was getting late.

But on the 3rd I succeeded.

Friends, Sunday night I would not have rested with that problem looming over my head.

I would have bothered me and kept me tossing and turning in bed knowing I was close to the finish line, but I just couldn’t get there.

But by God’s grace, I got there.

____________

This week many of you have had much worse problems than me.

Are these things keeping you up?

Are these things robbing you of rest?

Are we asking the Lord for rest from these troubles and problems we face?

Are we buying into the lie that God doesn’t care about our problems because they are too small?

Charles Spurgeon said:

“It is folly to think the Lord provides grace for every trouble but the one you are in today.” – Charles Spurgeon

Tonight we are going to dig more into the Shepherd / Sheep relationship.

We are going to look at 4 things sheep need to have rest. To lie down.

But know this:

What keeps the Shepherd up at night is in direct correlation to the rest of His sheep.

In other words, if the sheep don’t rest, neither does the Shepherd.

Here are the 4 things required for sheep to rest:

They won’t lie down unless they are free of fear.

They won’t lie down unless they are free of conflict with other sheep.

They won’t lie down if they are being bothered by pests (flies, parasites, etc.)

They won’t lie down if they are hungry.

To sum this up, for sheep to have rest, they must be free of fear, conflict, bugs, and hunger.

That’s a lot like us isn’t it?

It’s honest hard for me to sleep too if any of these things are bothering me!

But the difference is, for the sheep, they can’t do anything about these issues.

What makes this metaphor so powerful is that it is the Shepherd and ONLY the Shepherd who can meet the needs of the sheep.

It is only the Shepherd who can provide a place that is either restful, or restless for His sheep.

Let’s dig into each of these 4 requirements for rest though and look at them a little deeper.

Free of Fear.

Sheep have no self-defense mechanisms.

They can’t fight back, they can head butt, but they typically only do that to one another as we will talk about more in a moment.

so if they are afraid, you know what sheep do?

They RUN!

Isn’t like that us?

We flee from things that make us afraid.

Where are you running to?

Who are you running to?

If there is a wolf or some other kind of worse predator in the field, where is the place that sheep find safety?

They are fenced in after all. Where do they go?

They can run, but they will certainly be slower than any predator after them.

The only place they can go is the Shepherd.

ILLUSTRATION:

Keller tells a story of a friend who comes to visit his fields.

The friend had a small dog that spooked some of his sheep when the sheep saw and heard the dog.

The result was that all his sheep ran as far as they could away from the little dog to the other side of the field.

Sheep who are afraid have been known to lose baby lambs.

But you know what the one thing was that always calmed His sheep down?

Himself…

Him. The Shepherd, would always bring calm and stillness to the sheep.

The presence of the good shepherd calms fears, returns peace, and brings rest to the flock.

There is no substitute for the good shepherd.

2 Timothy 1:7 “7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

In the presence of Jesus, He gives us power, love, and self-discipline for life.

There is nothing you can search for out there in the fields of life that will replace him.

You can try it all. You can do it all. You can run wherever you want.

But just like in Luke 15, the prodigal son, when he comes home, man he finds comfort in his Dad. He finally can rest.

It’s the same for us guys.

The Good Shepherd is right there. He’s always right there.

Don’t run away,

Find rest with Him.

2. Sheep don’t rest if they have conflict with one another.

Ezekiel 34:20–22 “20 “ ‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, 22 I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another.”

internal conflict with sheep can be bad.

This passage in Ezekiel Keller points to as an accurate word picture of the conflict among sheep.

Bullying and rivalry produces tension and competition.

I think of this like when I was a kid.

My brothers and I might be in the heat of a fight.

Josh, one of my two older brothers, was always most competitive and sometimes he’d just turn that switch on and drive you crazy.

But we’d be fighting about something and then dad would just quietly walk in the room…

All of a sudden we would just stop and wait for him to lay into us.

So we immediately turn into that meme…

Dad asks us what we are doing. and we just look at him and at one another...

“Huh… me?… psh… nothing.... Just hanging around...”

But sometimes Dad would wisely deal with the conflict and sometimes we hid our conflict well.

Conflict is never hidden from the good Shepherd.

With sheep, the presence of the Shepherd changed the sheep’s behavior.

For us, I think the real conflict is more sinister.

We’ve got to be competitive in school so we can be successful academically.

On the field athletically…

But why?

Is it just so we can have more opportunities later in life?

Is it so with these better opportunities we can have nicer cars and homes?

Is more stuff what life is about?

Is aquiring more stuff going to lead to more conflict in your life or more rest?

Guys… I’m honestly thankful my house isn’t bigger than it is.

At this point I think I’ve renovated every single room in my house over the last 8 years… I can’t imagine living in a bigger home with more for me to fix.

The truth is, the more you own in life, the more you possess, the more stress you have and the more work you have to keep up with it.

One of my favorite quotes is from Jim Elliot a missionary who died taking the gospel to the lost.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Or a similar quote from my all time favorite movie “it’s a wonderful life.”

“All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.”

What if all the things your working for right now are just things that will produce future conflict in your lives?

Have you ever stopped and really evaluated what your doing?

The more stuff you have in this life, the more conflict you will have.

That’s not what it’s about guys.

It’s about being with the Shepherd!

Paul said it best perhaps in Philippians 4:11–13 “11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. 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. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Are you content with the Good Shepherd?

Keller says on page 38, “It is the humble heart walking quietly and contently in the close and intimate companionship of Christ that is at rest, that can relax, simply glad to lie down and let the world go by.”

“When my eyes are on my master they are not on those around me. This is the place of peace.”

“I would much rather have the affection of the Good Shepherd than occupy a place of prominence in society...”

Are you content?

I can look at every person in this room and say that the reason all of us struggle to find rest and peace in our lives is from this right here.

We have forgotten the simplicity of life.

We have forgotten the purpose is to walk through life, NOT RUN, but walk, with the Shepherd.

3. The sheep won’t lie down if they are bothered by pests.

Quickly here, we will talk about this more when we discuss the phrase “You annoint my head with oil” but for tonight, just know many pests bother sheep.

The good Shepherd calls each sheep to himself, he examines them for bugs, pests, and disease, and then he tends to what bothers them accordingly.

The Good Shepherd is hands on, He is active not just with the sheep in general, but with every sheep individually.

Finally tonight:

4. The sheep won’t lie down if they are hungry.

This is where we come to the final part of the phrase tonight, that he makes me lie down in Green Pastures.

According to Keller, most sheep countries are dry areas. There is not much grass.

Thus, green pastures do not happen by chance.

They are the result of time, labor, and skill.

It requires moving rocks, stumps, roots, brush, and getting down deep too the good soil.

This is hard, dirty work.

Here is the lesson here.

Hungry sheep are always on their feet, looking, searching for something to eat to satisfy their hunger.

As they are hungry and searching, they only lose more and more weight if they are not re placing those calories with green, healthy grass.

In contrast, healthy sheep eat, and lie down, resting in the labor that the Shepherd has provided.

In the OT, one of the pictures we see about the promised land is that it was flowing with Milk and Honey and we sometimes wonder what that meant.

Was there literally milk flowing where rivers were?

No.

What that describes is really a land that is bountiful and abundant with growth.

If there is green grass, livestock will grow healthy and they will reproduce.

babies require milk to grow.

Thus, a healthy flow of milk from livestock is a result of babies which in a grander sense is a reflection of a healthy land and environment.

Bees as well will propagate on healthy flowers and landscapes. A sign of honey bees is always a sign of health.

For the Israelites, moving from Egypt to the land flowing with Milk and Honey was a movement from the dry, arid ground that was Egypt, to a place where the grass grew long and the land is healthy for growth.

For us, this is a picture of us moving from sin to a life of victory.

Think about this, your entire life is about the unrelenting energy poured out by God to care for His sheep.

It is His desire to see my best interests served even when i don’t know what my best interests are but he does.

All of this today should blow our minds and make us step back and just say WOW!

The Good Shepherd is always working… always caring… always providing us all we need so that we can rest.

Are we resting with the good Shepherd, or are we feeling the hunger pains that should lead us to Him, and instead chasing something lesser.

Last week we discussed “I shall not want.”

And can I just remind us again of the conclusion of last week.

IF we want something more than God has given us, then we are actually desiring LESS than what He’s already given.

ALL we need is in Jesus.

His grace is SUFFICENT FOR ME!

2 Corinthians 12:9 “9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

“When my eyes are on my Master, they are not on those around me. This is the place of peace.” pg. 38

Let’s rest in that truth tonight.