The Good Shepherd Series

INTRODUCTION

• What picture comes to mind when you think of rest?

• Maybe it's a beach, a hammock by a cabin in the woods, or lying in a meadow next to a bubbling brook.

• No matter the scene, we have pictures and images that help us imagine what rest looks like.

• People are desperate to find peace and rest.

• Guru's, meditation apps, and meditative mantras are sought out to help us find rest and peace in the craziness of life.

• Google "relaxation," and you will find a myriad of images, YouTube links, and apps that help people find rest.

• This striving should show us the need for rest in our lives—just as God told us.

• Through this series, we have been examining the issue of redeeming rest.

• God did not design us to run 24/7 for our mental, physical and spiritual health; we need to learn to take time to focus on God and to rest!

• In our Wednesday Evening Bible Study, we finished a study on anxiety and how it affects us.

• Anxiety will rob us of peace and rest.

• I believe that anxiety is a tool that the enemy uses to keep us from experiencing the joy, peace, and rest God desires.

• Today, we will examine part of a Psalm that even those who have not read a Bible are most likely familiar with, the 23rd Psalm.

• We will examine the first four verses of this Psalm.

• In these four verses, we will see three keys that will help us to unlock the rest and peace that God desires for you!

› Big Idea of the Message: Just like a good shepherd who leads his sheep to rest, God will give us rest and provide for us.

• Let's begin with verse 1.

Psalm 23:1 (CSB)

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I have what I need.

SERMON

We can experience God's rest and peace if we are:

I. Content with God.

• One of the ways we can experience peace and rest is to be content with God.

Psalms, Volume 1 (B. Yahweh's Gracious Care (23:1–6))

It is not without significance that Psalm 22 and 23 are placed in juxtaposition.

In the former, there is the agony and distress of one who feels abandoned by the Lord; in the latter, the joy and confidence of one who lives daily in God's fellowship.

• In Psalm 22, David laments the woes of the Shepherd, yet in Psalm 23, David joyfully rehearses the joys of the flock.

• If we do not know the sufferings of the Shepherd, we cannot fully appreciate the Shepherd's care for the flock!

• For those in Christ, the 22nd and 23rd Psalm find their meaning in Jesus!

• David wrote the 23rd Psalm as one who experienced God's love and care.

• Here is something we need to understand.

• Finding peace and rest will not happen for us through philosophical or theological speculations,

• David is not writing this Psalm for those purposes.

• David makes a simple affirmation of the truth he realized and experienced in his life.

• You will not experience peace by JUST reading your Bible; you experience peace by KNOWING Jesus Christ, or in David's case at the time, God the Father!

• From this Psalm from David concerning God, we sense that David was content with God; he was at peace with God.

• David begins the Psalm with; The Lord is MY Shepherd!

• God was not just some thought in the mind, words on a page, some mysterious, unknowable, unreachable force; God was DAVID'S SHEPHERD!

• One thing about a good shepherd is the fact that a good shepherd cannot shepherd from afar!

• The Shepherd needs to be close to the sheep.

› David speaks with artless simplicity, without equivocation, and no inhibitions, making a statement that some might consider presumptuous.

› And yet, David's words are altogether devoid of any spirit of boasting.

› Instead, they are the spontaneous outcry of one who himself is overjoyed by the truth he utters.

• THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD!

• Sheep are kind of dumb and defenseless.

• One smart thing they do is hang out in herds, making them look larger than they are.

• That fact is one smart thing. The larger the herd you are in, the less likely the chance YOU will be someone's dinner!

• David does not draw his peace from an idol formed by the hands of man, nor is the almighty dollar, nor is his position his source of peace.

• God, the creator of heavens and earth, HE is David's Shepherd!

• Can you think of a more outstanding shepherd than that?