As we continue to walk through the 23rd Psalm we see that David knew who would provide for him. The answer was God. Last week we looked at the first verse, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” We saw that this verse contains the beautiful promise that God will provide for our needs. We should never take for granted not just what is provided but who is providing. The creator of the universe, the one who holds everything together, cares for us and will provide for us. What a great privilege we have to be able to say that the Lord is our shepherd. But we also saw the warning that we will not want. When we refuse to be content with what He has provided, we are really questioning Him and what He has chosen to provide. It doesn’t mean that we are not to work to better ourselves or have goals, but it also means that in our present state we need to also be able to be content.
This week as we look at verse two we will again see God’s provision. Let’s start by reading this scripter together. Psalms 23, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even thought 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. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Today we are going to focus on the second verse, “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.” And as we saw last week, when we stop to think about he context of these verses, there is more to them then a surface reading will allow. To really understand them, we have to understand the real needs of the sheep and the cost to the shepherd to fulfill the promise that is contained in the scriptures.
The more I study for this passage the less impressed I am with sheep and the more I understand about the relationship that God has with us. You see putting the sheep down to rest was not as simple as saying, “Good nights sheep and turning off the light.” Because even though sheep may not be the brightest or hardiest of animals, they still think about things and what they think about can deny them rest. Because they aren’t that hardy because they can’t take care of themselves there are also little things that can deny them rest as well. In order for sheep to rest they must be free of four things.
The first is that the sheep must be free from fear. There are a lot of things for sheep to be afraid of, after all they can’t really protect themselves. Every predator our there is a cause for fear and alarm. Phillip Keller the shepherd/pasture tells about shepherds who would go do sleep at night and wake in the morning to find that just a few wild dogs had decimated their flocks. He personally woke one morning to find that a mountain lion came during the night and had killed 9 of his best ewes. After that he slept with a rifle ready to check on the sheep at the least little sound in the middle of the night. Sheep have reason to be afraid when they lie down and the only real protection they have is the diligence of the shepherd. A shepherd who will not come to check on the flock to see what is going bump in the night, and to protect them from whatever it is, is a shepherd with tired sheep. But our God has already said that no matter what is out there, He will protect us.
I think of the imagery in the New Testament not just of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in John 10, but Peter’s picture of Satan as the roaring lion seeking whom he may devour becomes much clearer when we think about God as our shepherd. We have an enemy and only God can overcome him.
But we also live in a scary world, and we can think about those things too much. Keller tells about a friend who came to visit him and brought over a tiny Pekinese pup, the minute the puppy got out of the car and hit the grass over 200 sheep jumped up and rushed from one pasture to another. It was a sheep stampede if you will. It seems silly to us, but Keller also tells the story of 2 dogs killing 292 sheep in one night. Sheep have a reason to be afraid of the things that go bump in the night. We have a reason to be afraid of the things that happen in this world. But we have the same answer as the sheep, when we put our faith in the shepherd we can find rest, in fact only when we put our faith in the shepherd can we find rest.
To find rest the sheep must also be free from inter-flock disputes. It is a really nice way of saying that in order for the flock to rest, the sheep can’t be fighting with each other. It was amazing to me when I read this but when the shepherd is gone a flock of sheep will form a pecking order the older, larger sheep will want and therefore take for themselves the nicer areas to graze, and the cooler more shaded area’s to lay and rest. If one of the younger, smaller sheep is in one of those places the older sheep will come and begin to bleat at it, then nudge it to get it to move. If the younger sheep still won’t move the older sheep will begin to but it with it’s head or horns until the younger sheep is forced to move. If this behavior is allowed to continue for a period of time the result is that the older sheep in the heard will be large and healthy, but it will be at the cost of the younger sheep who will become weak and unhealthy. It is the job of the shepherd to care for all of the sheep not just a few.
We can see the same thing in the church and in the body of Christ. Those who have been in the church for a long time want the things that make them comfortable, they want to do the things that make them healthy, but as a church we need to get everyone involved and everyone growing. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not something that’s new to the church, it’s always been true of the people of God because it’s always true of people.
Look at Ezekiel 34:15-22, “I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock fed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet? Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, I will save my flock, and they will not longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another.”
It may sound familiar but it doesn’t have to. Do you know what it takes to get the sheep to calm down? One simple thing, all the shepherd has to do is walk into the field. As long as he is there the sheep look at the shepherd and stop trying to meet their own needs. The same thing for us, when we put our eyes on the shepherd all the rivalry that can exist between us disappears and it’s always been that way. Look at Ezekiel 34:23, “I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd.” The answer for peace in our relationships with each other has always been to keep our focus on our shepherd rather than each other or trying to meet our needs on our own when we do that we will find rest.
The third freedom that sheep need to rest is freedom from parasites and irritants. Sheep in the wild can fall pray to all kinds of little crawling things, flies, mosquitoes and ticks all come to mind. Just like sheep we have things in our lives that can bother us, sometimes they’re the same thing. With the sheep they are ill prepared to handle them. A sheep can’t sit down on its paws like a dog can and scratch behind the ears. When they get fleas and ticks it’s up to the shepherd to come and check them, everyday and the shepherd takes oil to sooth the itching. Life is full of irritants, it can be the people around us, it can be traffic, whatever it is. The only source of relief we will ever truly find from our shepherd and in His word.
For sheep to find rest they must be free from fear, from inter-flock disputes, from parasites and irritants, and finally, they must be free from hunger. We talked about it last week. Sheep constantly need to find places to graze. The only way that they can find food is if their shepherd leads them too it. How blessed are we that our shepherd promises not just to lead us to pastures but to green pastures, to the place where there is good food. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me lie down in green pastures.
And He leads me beside the still waters. The importance of this promise can not be over stated. Here’s a fun fact, water is a necessity for sheep in fact their body is about 70% water. Water makes up the majority of their body and is a necessity for life. Is it any coincidence then that the Bible relates water to life so much? To drink spiritually means to take in, to accept or to believe. This is exactly what God wants us to do. Salvation is by faith, but it’s not just that we believe in God, but that we accept what He has done, and the what He promises to do. When we trust in Him then we find the one place that our needs can truly be met. Look at what Jesus said in John 7:37-38, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”
What is living water, it’s the communities with God that all of our souls long for. There’s an old love song that says, “There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by you.” The thing is that the line can’t be true from one human to another. How many people do we know, that we’ve watch who run from one relationship to the next trying to find satisfaction. Our world is full of promises about what we can get from people and activities that we can do with them. But that hole is our heart can only be filled by God.
It’s interesting about sheep, when they are thirsty that can’t rest either. They will wander around until somehow they can get their thirst quenched. This same thing is true of our spiritual thirst. Until people find God they will restlessly search for something to quench their spiritual thirst. It’s nothing new to the human condition, look at what Augustine wrote, “O God! Thou hast made us for Thyself and our souls are restless, searching, ‘til they find their rest in thee. People all over the world are searching for contentment, happiness and meaning, but they will only find it in God because He made us for a relationship with Him and we and the people around us will never rest until we look to God for what we need. With all of the learning and knowledge that our culture has put together, how amazing is it that 3,000 years ago a shepherd who became a king knew that answer and wrote that the Lord leads us beside the still waters. He knew the answer and so do we and not only that deep down so do many of the people around us who refuse to look to him.
What’s interesting is that for sheep there are three sources of water and each of them correlates to our lives. The first is the dew on the grass. Think about what the grassy fields look like early in the morning, the dew coating the grass, the leaves and everything else. Did you know that during the wetter times of the year that sheep can actually live for long periods of time on the water that they get from rising early in the morning and eating? Of course it takes the diligence of the shepherd to get them up early to eat that grass.
What’s the correlation for us? Simple, we need to start our day spending time with God. We need to spend that time, praying and reading our Bible, letting God speak to us and strengthen us. Just like the sheep those early morning hours that we spend with the shepherd give us the strength to make it through not just a normal day but through the really tough times in our lives.
The second source is the deep wells provided by the Shepherd. In my mind I’ve always pictured a well that is dug, with a cistern next to it so that the shepherd can lower a bucket, pull it up and pour the water out for the sheep to drink and sometimes that was an accurate picture.
But as I was studying this week I discovered that often shepherds had to prepare wells that were far more complex than that. You see in an arid region like Israel a shepherd would not only be concerned with giving the sheep water, but cool water and also relief from the heat that at times could be oppressive. Often the shepherd would find a cave relatively close to water and would spend many hours forming a path down into the cool of the cave. Understand this would be a dangerous process because a cool cave is not only inviting to sheep but to predators as well. The shepherd is going to have to watch out for them while he carves a path down that the sheep can follow. At the bottom of the path he would have to carve a cistern into the hard stone, it would have to be deep enough to hold enough water for the sheep to all drink deeply. When that was done he would then have to carve a channel for water to run from the entrance of the cave down to the cistern that he created. I get tired just thinking about what it.
As hard as that task sounds, that was literally just the prep work. You see usually when the shepherd would bring the sheep to a well like this that he had prepared, the shepherd would then have to draw the water from the stream down into the channel, sometimes this could be done directly, sometimes it had to be done with a bucket, but always it was hard work. You wonder if the sheep appreciate or are even aware of
But then as I think about the sheep’s perspective it’s easy to see why they would miss it. You see we’re tempted to think that the sheep miss it because they aren’t very bright, and while that may be true, that’s not necessarily it. Did I mention that this type of well would be in a cave. The cave would be dark, I didn’t mention the shepherd putting in a lighting system did I? The cave would be dark, the trail that the shepherd carved would have been narrow and twisting, the sheep wouldn’t know where they were going, it would be a scary experience for the sheep. At the beginning of the process they don’t understand why the shepherd is taking them where He is, it’s not until the end when they are drinking the pure water, in the cool of the cave that they may understand why they had to take the dark path that they did.
How many times are we like the sheep? We don’t know where we’re going, the path makes us completely uncomfortable and to be honest more then a little afraid. Do we have faith in the shepherd? The sheep may not like the path the shepherd has them on, but they willingly go. As long as they can see the shepherd they will follow wherever He leads. Do we follow our shepherd with that type of faith? Do we appreciate that no matter where we find ourselves in life, He has already done the prep work to carve out a path to lead us to an end that benefits us. Do we really understand what David did, a shepherd called to be a king, who had to run for his life and hide in caves, do we understand what he meant when he wrote, the Lord is my Shepherd, He leads me beside the still waters.
That can be the dew on the ground, meaning our time with Him and in His Word, the deep wells that the shepherd prepares, being those times of darkness, danger, fear and doubt that we all walk through with the shepherd, those times when we learn to depend on his presence. Finally the sheep can find water from the springs and streams that the Shepherd knows. These are the cool clear waters that shepherd simply has to guide the sheep up to. These are the simple gentle times, church on a Sunday morning, a retreat in the mountains, a worship conference, those times that we are able to just spend time with God and with the people of God and just worship Him.
That time with God, that trust in God that is the spiritual water that we all need. In a world where so many people are confused by so many false things, when we see so many people searching for satisfaction perhaps the most frustrating thing that we can realizes as those who follow Christ, who have drank the clear spiritual water from the cool stream of God’s grace is that some people don’t follow Him because they don’t want to. Some people refuse to follow what God has provided. Shepherds see this all the time, as they lead sheep to water some sheep will stop to drink out of puddle on the trial, shallow water, heated by the sun, full of parasites, that will rob them of their strength and the dirt and filth deposited there as the rest of the flock passed by. They drink it because they assume that this is the best that they can get. They refuse to trust the shepherd to lead them to better water, they would rather take what they can find on their own.
We all know people like this, they have always been there and it’s not only frustrating to us but to God. Listen to His heart as Jeremiah records Him crying out, “My people have committed two sins: they have forsake me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” It’s a question that all of us have to answer every day. “Are you willing to follow the shepherds lead? If you never have do it today, nothing in the world will satisfy you like the Shepherd who wants to walk with you everyday and lead you to the still water.
**Parts of this sermon were drawn from "A Shepherd Look at Psalm 23" by Phillip Keller
