A God Who Sustains— Behold God in your Suffering, for he will meet your every need

Introduction

Last night, we camped out on the amazing truth that we are never alone when Jesus is our shepherd. He is always with us…and we see that when we take time to look back in our life and map out all the ways God has demonstrated his faithfulness to us, we will see that he was always with us. We also considered how important it is to look ahead in our lives…to consider eternity…to dwell on Heaven by dwelling on the One who promises that we will be with him physically forever in Paradise…and it is when we look back and look ahead, we can look right here and right now in our current circumstances—no matter how good or how tragic they may be—and in faith say, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

The God of the Bible is the God who comforts his people with his presence. This is significant…because a God who is with us is a God who comforts us and sustains us.

This morning’s main idea is this: Behold God in your suffering, for he will meet your every need.

Please open up your Bibles to Psalm 23, and follow along with me as I read:

Scripture Text

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 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.

5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Outline

The Lord will sustain you, by providing just what you need

David says in verse 1:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

We briefly talked about this last night…when you think about it, it’s quite a bold thing for David to say, “I shall not want” because as I consider my own life, I want all the time. Don’t we all? We live in a world where want is all around us. Even within our church community, we are constantly lifting up prayers, asking God to provide specific things in our life because we…want.

And this is especially true when we’re in a season of trial…a season of loss…a season of deep sorrow and suffering, we want so much.

We want better health.

We want relief.

We want our relationships to be mended.

We want the testing of our faith to end.

We want peace and quiet.

We want a cure for cancer…a cure for that which is deemed a chronic illness

Is David saying that he doesn’t want these types of things? Is that how we are suppose to understand what David is saying here? I don’t think so. If we were to take it that way, I don’t think it would be realistic and honest… because as human beings it is obvious that we want so many things in our life.

Therefore, I shall not want is not a statement of not having desires, but rather it is a statement of having all our needs fulfilled by God. In other words, David is saying if I have God as my shepherd, then I have everything. He is mine; so I have all I need.

Some Bible translations rightly capture this idea by saying:

The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need. (NLT)

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. (NIV & NET)

One person rendered verse 1 as: “The Lord is my shepherd, what more do I need?”

When we understand verse 1 in that sense, then, as Richard Briggs puts it:

Verse 1 points to letting Yahweh decide what it is I need, in the very process of ensuring that whatever it is, I will not lack it…Psalm 23 is partly in the business of training my sense of need to be better attuned to what God provides.

So when:

Tragedy strikes…

When circumstances don’t improve but actually worsen

When you just can’t catch a break in life

If the Lord is your Shepherd, he promises that your every need— as He sees fit— will be met. You will never go about your life here on this earth and never be given what you truly need…

As someone once said: God provides in our lives that ultimately leads to His own purposes…to his own cause. When God is providing for our needs, it’s not just for the sole purpose of earthly ease but what is eternally best for all of us. And the proof for that is verse 3: He restores my soul.

He will sustain you, by providing you just what you need for this journey leading to Him.

Are you depleted, weary, disheartened? He will provide nourishment and rest for your soul

Are you depleted this morning? Your shepherd will provide nourishment for your soul. Verse 2 says:

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

Verse 2 paints the picture of the Shepherd providing food and drink and an opportunity to rest for his sheep…as one commentator noted, the fact that he makes the sheep lie down means that there is more then enough food and water in that place. There is no need for the sheep to get up and wander off to other places for more food or water.

One interesting fact I learned about sheep is that very rarely do they ever lie down. Sheep are normally almost always seen up on their feet. They’re actually very busy, active, and wandering animals. And so the fact that the sheep in this passage are lying down in the green pastures…it tells us there is a level of deep rest that comes from knowing that the shepherd is near and that you may safely lie down.

Have you ever wondered why we are so drawn to the mountains or the woods or the ocean beach for vacation? Why is it that we can sit by a lake for hours or walk alongside the river and feel absolutely relaxed? One person considers such a question, and this is his thoughtful answer:

God’s world, decorated in blues and greens, calms us, gently bathing our eyes with quiet, low-intensity colors. We spend so much of our lives in a man-made environment, with its artificial lighting and artificial cooling and heating, bright neon signs and color television programs, that when we get a day off … we instinctively feel the need to find our way to God’s world with its more restful palette.

He goes on to say that the invention of electricity has led humankind to rule the night as we rule the day, the ability to dispel darkness leading to our sense of mastery over the world, but “in the process it alienated many of us from the natural world. We spend more of our waking hours under bright lights than we do in God’s world of blue skies and green grass.”

Maybe this is why Psalm 23 is one of the most popular passages in all of the Bible…because the language of green pastures and still waters captivates us. It expresses something that we all deeply resonate with…and that is the longing of our hearts to have a deep and long-lasting rest in an every weary world.

God has always intended for his people to dwell in a place full of peace and restfulness:

This is what God himself does. What did he do after he created everything in six days? He rested on the seventh.

And God created mankind and invited them to partake in resting with Him. It’s what he had intended for Adam and Eve in the Garden. And when they were forced to leave the Garden of Eden, God set out to return his people back to a place of rest. This is the story of the Bible.

And within that grand narrative of God seeking to save his people and bring them to a place of eternal rest, we find small moments spattered all throughout the Scriptures that foreshadows to this ultimate mission that God is on. Take for instance the Exodus again…The promised land was described to the Israelites…a place flowing of milk and honey. But as we see from the entirety of the Bible, that promised land of rest was simply a type…a foreshadowing of something much greater to come.

Jesus in the Gospels says,

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Mt. 11:28-30

Like sheep, we can be weary for a number of different reasons:

We can simply be weary just from the heat of the day. Just as we cannot control the weather, there may be circumstances in your life that are simply just outside your control.

Sometimes, we can be weary from wandering away or getting ahead of our shepherd’s leading. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we can live life making decisions thinking we know what is best rather than waiting on our Shepherd or looking to Him to lead us to what we need to do or where we need to be…resulting in expending needless physical, emotional, and spiritual energy. Pulling up our bootstraps and looking within ourselves to solve every problem only lasts so long before we burn out and crash.

If you’re feeling depleted and weary know this: Jesus sees you with love in His eyes. He gently invites you to rest in Him. He’s kind, humble, and full of peace—and He wants to share that peace with you, both now and forever. As James Hamilton puts it, with Jesus as your shepherd, he promises to lead you to a place “…where all of God’s promises are realized, all needs are met, and all fears are gone.”

In Revelation 22, God’s Kingdom is described as a place with a river of life flowing from His throne. On both sides of the river are trees full of food for everyone to enjoy. It’s a picture of perfect peace and joy.

English Standard Version Chapter 22

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

This reminds me of Psalm 23, where the Shepherd leads His sheep to rest in green pastures and beside calm waters. Psalm 23 is like a preview of the Kingdom to come: a place of eternal rest…where our hearts will be refreshed, our bodies will be fully restored, and our souls will be made whole.

You see, with Jesus as your shepherd, he is seeking to lead you in this life to green pastures and still waters.

Now you may be thinking to yourself: “Ok, that’s beautiful and all…yes, Jesus is my Shepherd…but how do I actually experience green pastures and still waters in my life? What does that look like?

This kind of rest and nourishment simply comes from a familiarity with the presence of Jesus in your life. We discover green pastures and still waters in the everyday of life when we are constantly coming to him…and walking with him…and being led by him.

With Jesus as your Shepherd:

His words will nourish your soul with hope and confidence (23:2)

His presence in your life will quiet your anxiety and fears (23:2)

Are you lost and uncertain? He will lead you in right paths

But, “What if I am lost and uncertain? What if I don’t know what to do with the circumstances in my life?”

Continue to press on in the faith. Continue to familiarize yourself with Jesus and what he says about himself in the Bible. Continue to live your life as He calls you to: Loving him, loving others, loving his church, resisting sin and temptation. And here’s the beauty…continue following your Shepherd’s voice, and he promises to lead you in paths of righteousness…it says in verse 3:

He leads me in paths of righteousness…

In other words, you follow Jesus, and there’s a certainty…there’s a promise that you are being led on the right path. Trust that Jesus is leading with every decision you make and that every outcome is a part of the path that he is leading you on. This promise of always leading us along the right path is rooted in God’s righteous, jealous zeal for his own glory. If you didn’t catch it, notice what comes after “He leads me in paths of righteousness…”

Why does he lead us along the right path?…it’s for his name’s sake.

The Lord, for his own glory, ensure’s that his sheep will endure to the end. The Shepherd says to follow him because of who he is. And the Lord will stay true to his revealed character to preserve his reputation of who He says that He is. Therefore, friends, don’t give up on God.

If I am being honest with you all, there is a part of me to this day where I feel lost and uncertain. One of my favorite songs is what we’ve been singing, Christ our Wisdom. The very first verse says this:

Christ our wisdom, we are humbled

When you hide your ways from us

You have purposes unnumbered

Each one good and glorious

When we follow Jesus on this side of eternity, there will be times when he chooses to show us his way for our life. Then there will be other times when he chooses to hide his plans from us and we don’t know where he is leading us…but tells us to keep following him. And sometimes where he leads us leaves us in confusion, feeling lost and uncertain.

God, why this hurt and disappointment?

God, why this pain and discomfort?

God, why did you give me this good gift to only then take it away?

God, why does it seem that the most faithless and least faithful seem to be the ones that you award most with a life of comfort and ease? But for me…you choose otherwise?

We have to take God at his Word and trust that all of his purposes in our life are good and glorious, for his name’s sake. Indeed, the trials that we face are never good, but God promises to take that which is dark in our lives and use it for good and for his glory (Romans 8:28). If you are feeling lost, Jesus promises that he will come to you…and you can take him at his word because he showed on the cross that he will come you.

Are you scared? He will protect you

But what if I am scared? What if I am scared that the outcome might be what I fear most? What if I am scared that I might mess this all up? See verse 4:

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.

What I have learned about Shepherding is that Shepherds often carried a rod in one hand and a staff in the other. The rod was like a club that shepherds would use to fight off lions, wolves, or thieves. The staff could also serve as a weapon, but it was primarily used to guide and prod sheep in the right direction.

Like a good Shepherd, Jesus promises that if enemies approach, he will ward them off with his rod.

Jesus promises that when you stumble and fall, he will lift you up with his staff. If you wander away, he will come and prod you in the right direction. With Jesus as your Shepherd, even you can’t mess up God’s plan for your life. Isaiah 41:10 says:

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand.

——

Have you every heard the story about Joni Eareckson Tada? Joni was named after her dad, John. And Joni was a normal, fully healthy girl growing up. She was clever…she was athletic…she loved riding horses, playing lacrosse, and going swimming.

When Joni was 15 years old, she went to a summer Christian camp. And it was at that camp where it finally hit her learning about Jesus’s great love and forgiveness and how much she needed him. It was at that camp, she prayed to God: “Instead of doing things my way, I want to follow Christ’s way.”

Well when Joni was 17, one day went out to the bay with her sister to swim and goof off. Out in the water there was a floating dock for people to jump off into the water. Joni dove off the dock into the water…but what she didn’t realize was that the water was too shallow for diving. She hit her head on the bottom and tragically broke her neck.

-Her hands would never work properly again.

-Her legs would never work at all.

-Joni was paralyzed… She was a quadriplegic.

In a moment, everything about her life suddenly changed. She had to learn again how to move her shoulders and arms. She had to learn how to sit up in a wheelchair. She had to learn how to scoop up her food with a special spoon that was attached to her hand with a leather strap. The hardest part of it all was that she had learn how to rely on others to help her change and undress…to bathe herself.

Joni experienced deep and dark depression. She struggled with anger at God. She struggled with suicidal thoughts and even at one point screamed at her friend and begged her to slit her wrists.

Over time, Joni returned to reading her Bible. She read Romans 8:28 where it says “in all things God works for the good of those who love him”…and she realized that God loved her and that he could use even her accident for good.

It’s hard to share all the amazing things that God in Joni’s life since the accident:

But Joni became famous worldwide because of her ability to paint beautiful pictures while holding a paintbrush in her mouth. She would be invited as a guest on TV shows like Good Morning America and other platforms…and while they would want Joni to talk about her artwork and her ability to paint without using her hands…Joni would instead talk about she was so hopeful in life despite her tragic accident.

Joni started a ministry called “Joni and Friends” which sends wheelchairs to people all over the world who can’t afford one.

She has been invited to speak at conferences where Joni would share her story and tell others that God is big and strong and wise enough to trust no matter what may come in life.

Joni is alive today and has been in a wheelchair for over 50 years.

With Jesus as your shepherd, he may have you walk through a dark valley as Joni did, but know that you don’t walk through a valley that is absent of God’s grace. Even if death awaits you in the valley, death does not have the final say. Death does not have the power to separate you from your Shepherd.

Darnold Gray Barnhouse, a 20th centruy preacher, once had to explain the shadow of death to his children…on their way to their mother’s funeral….

As they were in the car on their way to the funeral, a large truck whipped past them, causing the kids to jump and retracted in fear across the car seat.

Their father asked them, Why are you afraid?…the kids said, “The truck!”

To which the father replied, “The truck did not touch you…only it’s shadow…and it’s that way with your mother. Death has not touched her…she is with Jesus…only the shadow of death has touched her.

Our God is a God who sustains his sheep. He will meet your every need. So Behold your God, even in your suffering. Let’s pray.