The Lord is my Shepherd

Main Ideas: The Lord cares for us more than ourselves, and he gives us all we need.

Opportunities to serve in nursery, 2 more. Once a month.

2-3 More for Junior Church

A guy walked into his house and realized thiefs had stolen all his lamps… he was delighted.

I remember when I was in VBS one summer and they wanted us to memorize scripture, which is a noble thing for us to do, it would benefit every single one of us if we took time to memorize more scripture, but in order to persuade us to memorize more scripture they employed the candy method. You know, you memorize one of the scriptures they gave you and and if you could at least get pretty decently close to getting the scripture right they would give you a piece of candy. They didn’t want us to be able to listen to the person in front of us so we had to take time outside of the sunday school room while each person was saying their verses, so I would stand in the hallway and repeat them from the sheet in my head over and over again. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life…” And I’d say it over and over again until it was my turn to go in and I’d repeat it and get the piece of candy and then I would completely let go of the memory and forget what I needed to learn. Hopefully, I’m not the only one that went that method for scripture memorization as a child.

When I first decided to give my life back to Jesus, I decided that I wanted to make scripture memorization a bigger priority in my life and I would make notecards to use to memorize scripture, because notecards are my jam when it comes to remembering things, and Psalm 23 was one of the first things I wanted to memorize because, we all know that on the day that we try to enter into Heaven, the first thing that Jesus will want to know is how many scriptures we have memorized, and how many creeds we have memorized. He will want to know if we know John 3:16, the apostles creed, and of course Psalm 23. I am of course just joking, I think, but I wanted to have this scripture committed to my memory.

My hopes are as we walk through this scripture it will give you some insight maybe you have never been able to apply to your life before, so does anyone want to try and repeat this with me from memory?

Psalm 23 ESV

A Psalm of David. 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.

Isn’t it just incredibly beautiful?

I think the first verse is one that if we can wrap our mind around it will completely shape our faith and change the entire ball game for our lives.

Psalm 23:1 NIV

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

THE- the one and only, no other Lord, there is just one…

LORD-supreme, over all, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, sovereign, covenant keeper…

IS- right now, this very minute, every single minute to come, present tense…

MY- my very own, personal to me, yet personal to you, belonging to you…

SHEPHERD- leader and lover of the flock, caretaker, needs-meeter, guard

When we read this verse it gives us an answer to the question, how do you know the Lord. Some of us may know him as Commander, that is he is good, in control, the ruler over everything; telling us what we can and cannot do, but he is this legalistic god. He is keeping track of our rights and wrongs weighing them out against one another, and our job is to make sure our good deeds out weight the bad so that we can be right with Him. Perhaps what you see him as is King, very similar to the idea of commander, but just a little further away and less accessible, he is this guy sitting on the outskirts announcing his verdicts and he wants to make sure you listen and if you don’t there is a price to pay for your actions. You can’t get too close to him though because he is much too important for us to get that close to on our own.

But David doesn’t call him any of these things, In this moment, we have a King, telling us to view his Lord as Shepherd.

And I know when I memorized this verse before it didn’t seem all that deep, the Lord is my Shepherd, but maybe its because I didn’t really understand the context. Let me ask, how many of you own sheep, or goats? This is probably why so many of us don’t really understand this verse because its not a common thing for people in our society to see shepherds or have herd animals, so it doesn’t allow us to understand how we are supposed to view God. But the people in Jesus time, and in the days of David really would have understood the implications of the Lord as shepherd.

I heard an amazing story of a man who had been to Israel telling the story about the Bedouins and the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, and let me just explain it to you a little bit. He said when a lamb is born the shepherd holds it every single day, he will examine it and really look it over to make sure it has nothing wrong with it that needs to be taken care of. If it does have something wrong with it, he will care for those needs and make sure it is well taken care of, but he will continue to pick it up and hold it day after day. It reminds me of a child with a new puppy, they will pick it up and talk to it and love on it and hold it and carry it every where they go, no matter how big that dog will get one day, they carry it in that small stage. The idea with the shepherd and the sheep is during this time the sheep will learn the voice of the shepherd, and know who to respond to, when its name is called.

Isn’t that amazing? It doesn’t stop there, with just knowing the voice, but the shepherd knows the sheep by its name because he has become familiar with it. The man said he had seen the Bedouin doing it with 700 sheep the shepherd can point and say, “Look there’s Tim, and there’s James, over there is Mary!” That is just an amazing thing, even with all those sheep because of that intimacy the shepherd can call them all by name.

If you read John 10 it is all about the relationship of Jesus as the good Shepherd and it tells us he leads and its our job to follow him. I know this sounds so self evident, but if you want to get to the places the shepherd wants you to be you have to follow him to those places. So what does that mean for us, it means if we want to know him as our shepherd, if that is the way we are supposed to know him so we can get to the places he wants us to be, for the plans he has for us, we need to have this intimacy with the shepherd. This is hard, and I know its hard because for so many of us we are just going through the motions of life, we aren’t really living or thriving we are in this season of life where we are sort of just existing and life is happening around us. I’m not saying you’re being lazy or inactive, I’m saying you are still raising your kids, taking them to all the games, working 40+ hours a week, coming to church as much as you possibly feel like you can, and you’re just rolling through the motions of life.

In all honesty you’re probably not happy with life, and you really don’t even realize it, maybe you’re so stuck in the rut that you can’t even tell that you aren’t enjoying yourself anymore, it just is what it is right? I’m sure if you are finding yourself there you are thinking “pastor, just leave it alone, you don’t understand at all, you’ve never been there, you’re a pastor, you’re like Moses, your face glows because you are so close to God all the time.” Please, it isn’t always like that for me either.

Let me be completely honest and transparent, there have been times in my ministry where I was just going through the motions, I was doing the job that needed to be done, but I wasn’t able to thrive in the life God has called me to, I was preaching a good message, and I was showing up, but I was so beaten up that I had really lost hope in ever being able to be the man that God had called me to be.

So listen, I get being in a rut, I get not doing more than going through the motions, but this all comes from a lack of seeing God as our shepherd. Maybe we’re going through the motions because everything has been going so badly lately. You’ve lost people you loved; you’ve lost jobs; people you care about are incredibly sick and you can’t really see through the fog and you’re just doing what you have to do to be able to get through the day. You really can’t see past the current situation, you are really not able to see the forest because of the trees, and you’re at this place where you are doing just whatever has to be done. I get it, I really do, because I’ve been there too. Life man, life sucks sometimes, no matter how many times you keep getting up life just keeps knocking you down.

Some of you you can’t see God as shepherd because you are MAD at God right now. You see him as a giant dictator, he’s up in heaven and he’s ruining your life. He’s the ultimate soup nazi you think, you think you gotta come in in just a certain way, place your order step to the left and pay, and if you get out of line he looks at you and says “No soup for you.” You honestly think that every bad thing that happens in your life is a direct result of your failure to please God. If I would have just memorized that 23 Psalm for church this week then I probably could have gotten the job that I wanted, that is actually probably true. No, I’m kidding. Or you may think if I hadn’t missed church last weekend I wouldn’t have a flat tire this weekend.

Some of you though, you have even larger issues, you blame God for EVERYTHING. IF God is in control, WHY would he let all of this happen to me, why doesn’t he just save me from all this mess, he is so mean. You’re mad because you can’t figure out why God has let you down, because you made a deal with him and told him if he would just give you the happiness you once had, you would read your bible every day and you’ve kept your part. You’ve read the Bible every single morning, in fact you’re so stressed out because you haven’t gotten enough sleep all week because you’ve been waking up early and going to bed late, and why God, why haven’t you come through, and listen, the real issue is that you have made a deal with God that he never made with you. I say that twice because I know I have messed up the way some of you view God and you’re relationship with him. Its true, and I know its true, because I’ve been there before, I have made deals with God that he never made with me.

So it all comes back to the original question, How do we view God? What is our relationship with God, because remember I said that it all comes down to intimacy. The thing is, when we stop seeing God as our Shepherd and we take our eyes off of him as shepherd we start to see him differently and it changes that relationship into religion; and religion, kills relationship.

Don’t believe me? Let me give you an amazing example of this, when Moses was given the ten commandments he goes up on top of the mountain to meet with God and he gets the ten commandments and he comes back down. Do you remember what the Israelites did while he was gone? They made a false idol right? And what was it they made, they made a golden calf, not a cool lion or tiger or some huge giant human that would be scary and fear provoking. No, they created a calve, because when we take our eyes off the main thing, we always worship stupid things, and that could be a totally different sermon. But Moses comes back and sees what they have done and he throws the tablets down and busts them up and he calls the levites to him and they go through the camp and they just start killing people and do you remember how many people they killed? 3000.

Then if you fast forward to the book of Acts and in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirt falls and do you remember how many give their lives and turn to Jesus? 3000

So this religious act by Aaron and the Levites, where they had to have some type of figure to worship for religious reasons, the religion killed 3000 people, but grace and relationship it saved 3000 people. That’s the difference between religion and relationship; relationship with the shepherd, intimacy with the shepherd saves, but religion kills.

Is the Lord your shepherd? OR are you just going through the motions? I don’t need or want to know WHY you are just going through the motions, trust me, I get it. I see it every day in peoples lives, I understand, more than you can imagine, but are you just going through the motions or do you truly see God as your shepherd?

Because listen, the second part of the first verse is a promise, from God, look at what it says.

Psalm 23:1 NIV

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

Listen, when we see the Lord as our shepherd, we spend very little time walking around talking about the things that we DON’T have. When we have a relationship with God, we don’t worry about what we don’t have because when we have a relationship with the shepherd we realize we lack NOTHING. This isn’t because we have everything we ever wanted and this isn’t pointing us to a prosperity gospel that says the shepherd gives me everything I could ever want. No, when we know he is our shepherd we realize we lack nothing, because we realize if we needed it he would provide it for us; and we are already realizing that Jesus is better than anything this world has to offer.He is our shepherd and he cares more for us than we care for ourselves.

So, if he is our shepherd, we lack nothing. Stop telling God what you don’t have, and thank him for the things he has given you, use the things he has given you like the little boy with the fish we talked about a few weeks ago.

Listen, as the leader of a church it is easy to fall into this trap all the time, I hear pastors say things like, “If I only had a bigger building, if I only had a gym, if I only had better lights, I could reach more people.” But if we stop telling God what we don’t have, and we can realize that we have the power of God up in this place, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is here with us, and we can do amazing things when we place it all in the hands of the shepherd.

And listen, I know I’m not the only one who thinks this way. It happens with you as well, if you own a business we say things like, “if I just had ten more employees like, Frank, then we would be so much better off, we’d get ten times the work done, we’d be able to pay everyone more, the place would be cleaner,” and you may forget that God has blessed you with the opportunity to own your own business so that you could glorify him in ways that no one else will. Remember that deal you made that he never made with you, “if you will just give me this business Lord I will run it for your glory and let the world see you like no one else that does what I do will” He is showing you he has given you the employees that need to know more about him and is waiting for you to share the Gospel with them and let them CHANGE into those people that you are hoping they would be.

It doesn’t stop there though, in our home lives we think, “man, if I just had some kids like that couple on that reality show on television my house would always be clean, I wouldn’t have to stress so bad because they would help more. They’d love the Lord and be consumed with loving him so wouldn’t have to worry about them as much. They’d wake me up for church and make my breakfast, and life would just be so much better. And we forget God has blessed you with kids that are waiting for you to lead them to the Lord. Waiting on you to teach them how to clean the house and teach them how to be Hebrew Slaves. Okay so maybe not that far, but he has blessed you with the kids that you asked for and is waiting for you to seek him as shepherd, to help you guide them to where they need to be.

You may think, Listen God, if only my wife were half the wife that Tims was, my life would be so much better. She wakes him up every morning with breakfast, keeps the house clean, raises all those kids and he doesn’t even have to lift a finger. Did you ever think Husband, that God has given you the wife that first off, you asked for, that you pledged your life to, that you promised to love and trust and give up your life fo, remember, you asked for her, prayed for her, did whatever you could to try to make her fall even more in love with you and you went out of your way. Like you used to brush your teeth before you picked her up, and listen, you held in GAS for HOURS. He’s already given you everything you asked for and everything you need, now lead your family men, lead. He’s given you what you need, stand up and follow him.

You may be in a place where you say, Oh God, I can’t do this, there is just way too much going on in my life right now, I can’t handle it. Why would you do this to me, you know that there is no way I can get through this. God, please save me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you, I didn’t mean to turn my back on you, but enough is enough; I need your hand,I CAN’T DO THIS

Listen, the shepherd is waiting to guide you, he is waiting on you to return to him and allow him to lead you. If we can focus on what we do have rather than complain about what we don’t have and we focus on a relationship with Jesus as our shepherd. We can see we lack nothing we could actually step forward in our walk with Christ as he guides us.

Where are you right now in your relationship with Jesus? The Lord is my shepherd… and because he is my shepherd… I lack nothing.