The Lord is My Shepherd - Part 1

Introduction to Me

Good morning. It is an honor and a privilege to teach you guys this week. As Willie said my name is Jared Callison. I actually grew up here at camp. That house right up there is where I lived for most of my life. Now my brother Shane lives there. So camp is kind of in my blood. I love camp. I don’t love doing all the work I like coming in and doing stuff like this. This is much more my speed.

That is my wonderful wife Abby sitting over there you will get to know her better as the week goes on and we love working with teens.

I am the Pastor of Discipleship and Youth at Faith Baptist Church in Mason City just a few minutes from here.

I am a proud Father of Suzy who we adopted a little over a year ago and I am also very lucky to have the privilege to care for these two kiddos Bella and Khalifa for as long as God/the State has them in our home

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So adoption holds a special place in my heart and then Willie just starts talking about it with no heads up yesterday and It’s everything I can do to not start balling my eyes out up front.

But a couple things Willie mentioned yesterday that really stuck out to me.

He said we are adopted as Sons into the family of God. And as he said that shows that we are not second class children in this family but rather first class. That means so much to me because although we don’t have any other children if Abby got pregnant tomorrow that would not diminish Suzy’s place in our home for a second. In fact, I actually have a special place in my heart for adopted children. So we are not simply second class children we are first class.

But then Willie also said that because we are sons of God then God is our Abba, he’s our farther, he’s our Dad. I love that because I think we have a misunderstanding of who God is and how he feels towards us. I think we often think of God as this distanced frustrated farther. Maybe because that’s the kind of farther you have or how God has been taught to you. But that’s not the God of the Bible.

So Suzy has been in our home for a couple years at this point. And for the last couple of year my wife and I have been the one taking care of her. I’d been waking her up in the morning, feeding her breakfast, getting here ready for school, dropping her off at school, cleaning her up when she was dirty, kissing her owies, holding her when she was scared, hugging her when she was sad, reading her bedtime stories and laying with her when she couldn’t fall asleep. Caring for her every need. For two years I’ve been doing this for my little girl. But for the first year she lived with us. She called me Jared. Which was fine. I wasn’t her dad yet.

To her I was this wonderfully nice guy named Jared who was taking care of her. But I was not her dad. But about a year into her living with us something changed.

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I can’t begin to express how much that meant to hear her call me daddy. I was so proud. Proud enough that I showed this video to 70 people I don’t know. But I don’t care. Cuz I’m her Dad. I don’t care what you think of me. Because that little girl calls me dad.

For a year I watched her struggle. I watched her hurt. I watched her cry. And the whole time I so badly wanted her to turn to me. To look to me as her her dad. To look to me as the one who would care for and love her. The one who would protect and comfort her. And when she finally did it filled my heart with more Joy than I can express.

I think the same is true about God.

He sits in heaven and watches us make mistake after mistake after mistake. He see’s us hurting. He sees us crying in private when no one else can see. He sees us running from sin to sin to sin hoping to find joy hoping to find satisfaction hoping to find hope. But everything comes up empty.

All the while God lovingly meets our needs. He takes care of us in millions of ways that we could never know. But we just look to him as God. Not Dad. And yet here God is waiting patiently for the day when we look to him for the one who will comfort and protect us. The one who will give us real lasting joy. That’s my passion.

I am here this week because I want you to know and understand who God is. I want you to realize maybe for the first time that God is not a distant farther but a loving one. Who cares for you more than you could possibly know.

And that leads us to the text that we are going to be studying this week Psalm 23.

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I’ll explain this more tomorrow but I think it is incredibly important that we have a proper understanding of who God is and how he relates to us. Because if we screw this up everything changes.

So we are going to spend four days in Psalm 23. If you know the Psalm you know that there is only 6 verses in the entire Psalm. SO we are going to spend 4 days on 6 verses. But this is my goal this week. I want to spend the week saturating ourselves in the truth of this Psalm.

In fact on top of studying the Psalm this week I am also challenging you to memorize the psalm as well and for the first 10 people who can quote the psalm to me I have a book on Psalm 23 that’d I’d like to give you as well.

Why do I want us to spend so much time on this Psalm this week.

(use towel cooling towel)

So often we quickly read through verses and we never take the time to let them change us. We never take the time to just sit in them. We splash ourselves with a little reading of God’s Word and leave unchanged. And because we don’t see any effect on our lives from reading God’s Word we give up the practice completely. And we are as useless to God and others as this dry cooling towel.

So we are going to do something different this week. This week we are going to sit in Psalm 23. We are going to soak in everything the Psalm has for until it’s truth changes who we are.

So here’s my challenge for you this week. Memorize Psalm 23. Read it every morning and every night. It’s only 6 verses. Memorize it and then every day in class we are going to dig deeper into it until it changes who we are and what we believe about God.

You see there will be a time in your life when everything around you seems to be falling apart. When it feels like your falling and there is nothing to hold onto. Who knows maybe someday your wife will come visit you on Friday night of Senior High Camp and tell you something that happened with your kids that makes your head spin. And in a moment your worst nightmare because a reality.

You see this Psalm is deeply personal to me. This Psalm is what is keeping my head above water. And in that moment when your life falls apart what are you going to hold onto? What are you going to grab that keeps you from sinking?

Hear this. A splash of bible reading will not give you what you need to survie in that moment of crisis. You need something greater.

Now you may be thinking I already know Psalm 23 and that may be true.

Psalm 23 may be the most popular piece of poetry that has ever been written. Which is a wonderful thing because that means that many people have been exposed to the truth of this beautiful and rich psalm. But this also brings with it some challenges.

Familiarity is wonderful but it also makes it hard to read or listen to the psalm with fresh eyes and gain fresh insight. But that’s what I ask you to do this week. Come ready to read and learn from this Psalm with fresh eyes ready to hear what the Lord has for you.

I’m reminded of a story that I heard years ago. It goes like this. There was once a performer in front of a crowd and after his act was over he boasted that there was not a single piece of poetry that he could not quote. (Which by the way is quite the claim.) So He challenged the crowd to shout out a piece of poetry and to test whether or not he knew it.

So in the back of the room an old preacher raised his hand and asked the great performer to quote the 23rd Psalm. Sure enough the performer jumped into action and quoted the psalm with incredible eloquence and beauty.

After he was done the crowd was in awe by how marvelously the performer had quoted the Psalm. So the performer decided to fire back at the old man who dared test him and asked if he could also quote the psalm.

SO the old man slowly walks to the front of the crowd and with no flair or eloquence begins to quote the 23rd psalm. By the time the old man had stumbled through the Psalm there was not a dry eye in the crowd.

The performer got back on the stage and summed up what he saw like this. He said, “I knew the Psalm but this man knows the shepherd.”

That’s my goal for you this week. I want us to go past a surface knowledge of the psalm. I want you to do more than just splash some biblical truth on yourself and hope for change. I want you to spend the week sitting in the pool of truth that this Psalm offers and most importantly I want you to know the shepherd. I want you to know the shepherd so well it literally changes who you are.

You may already know the psalm. I want you to know the shepherd.

Let’s pray and ask for God’s help this morning and for the rest of the week.

Psalm 23 (ESV)

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.

We are going to spend the reminder of our time this morning in verse 1.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. We must not move to quickly past this phrase. The Lord is our shepherd. We have a caretaker. We have a provider. We have a leader. His Name is Jesus.

The Lord is my shepherd. I want that phrase to be ringing in your ears all week. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord will take care of me. The Lord will provide for me. The Lord will lead me. The Lord is my shepherd.

Sheep are week, unintelligent, constantly getting into trouble, constantly wondering away, constantly doing what they shouldn’t be doing, hopeless and helpless on their own.

Show sheep video

Part 1 - vs. 1 and introduction

Part 2 - vs. 2-3

Part 3 - vs. 4

Part 4 - vs. 5-6