A forest ranger is making rounds in a remote part of the wooded reserve when he comes across an unkempt man, sitting at a make-shift campfire, and, to the ranger’s astonishment, eating a fish and a bald eagle.
The man is consequently put in jail for the crime. He was soon brought to trial for his crime.
The Judge asked the man, “Do you know that eating a bald eagle is a federal offense?”
“Yes, I do, Judge,” replied the man, “but if you will let me argue my case, I’ll explain what happened.”
“You may proceed.”
“I got lost in the woods and hadn’t had anything real to eat for two weeks,” the man explained. “I was so hungry, I was eating plants to stay alive. Next thing I see is a Bald Eagle swooping down at the lake grabbing a fish. I thought ‘if I startled the eagle, I could maybe steal the fish.’ Low and behold, the eagle lighted upon a nearby tree stump to eat the fish. I threw a stone toward the eagle hoping he would drop the fish and fly away. Unfortunately, in my weakened condition, my aim was off, and the rock hit the eagle squarely on his poor little head, and it killed him. I thought long and hard about what had happened, but figured that since I had killed it, I might as well eat it, since it would be more disgraceful to let it rot on the ground.”
The Judge says he will take a recess to analyze the defendant’s testimony. Fifteen minutes goes by, and the Judge returns.
“Due to the extreme circumstances you were under and because you didn’t intend to kill the eagle, the court will dismiss the charges.” The Judge then leans over the bench and whispers: “If you don’t mind my asking, what does a bald eagle taste like?”
“Well, Your Honor, it is hard to explain. I guess the best comparison I can make is, it’s a bit more tender than a California Condor, but lacks the tang of a Spotted Owl.”
Today we’ve come to the fifth verse of the 23rd Psalm, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Let’s stand and read the Psalm together. “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 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. 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.”
I’ve got a confession to make this verse has always bothered me a little bit. Especially as I’ve read through the first four verses and seen just how well the analogy of the sheep works in our lives. It’s all going so well and then we hit this thing about preparing a table before me and while it’s a beautiful thought, it doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the passage. And the whole anointing my head with oil thing, that doesn’t seem to fit either, I mean I know that Samuel anointed David’s head as king, but what does that have to do with sheep. So here’s this beautiful passage, one of the most loved in all the Bible, but it seems to go off track. Or does it? Because as I did the research on this passage I realized that the passage was fine, it was my understanding that was off.
See the issue was with my understanding of the word table and our new understanding of how David is describing the life of the sheep. You’ll remember that we last week we discussed the fact that the first three verses all describe things that a sheep could discuss across the fence with a sheep of a different flock as they graze in their shepherds pastures. But last week marked a change, the sheep began to move. Because of their thin skin sheep have to be moved away from the extreme cold of winter and the severe heat of summer. They move from the low pastures up to the pastures in the high land. In both cases these are fields that the shepherd has scouted in advance and yes prepared.
When the shepherd brings the sheep up to the highlands they have to have someplace to graze. We talked about it last week, sheep don’t to well on mountainsides, that’s not what they’re made for and it’s why they travel through the valleys. But they’re going someplace. If they’re going to the mountains then they have to find a flat place to graze, a high pasture land that’s going to be their goal. See as the sheep are moving through the valley to their destination, a mesa or plateau where they will stay until winter approaches. Mesa is the Spanish word for “table.” David wrote it exactly right. In the Psalm the imagery he is using is of the sheep moving through the valleys and to the high pastures, the table top.
This will be a mesa that the shepherd has scouted and prepared ahead of time. The shepherd will have had to have scouted places where the grazing is good. This is not as simple as it sounds because it’s not just a matter of finding places where there is lush grass for the sheep to eat. See on these trips the shepherd will bring with him tools to clear a suitable area to make it better for the sheep. He will bring with him bags of minerals and such to treat the ground so that the grass grows better and healthier, and he will set up places for him to shelter as well. Once that is done, he will make return trips to check on these pastures to see how the grass is growing because often the on same ground that has been prepared for the sheep’s benefit will be plants that can cause the sheep’s destruction.
Phillip Keller talks about having blue and white cammas on his sheep ranch in Africa. The blue cammas are beautiful and bloom in abundance along the beaches. The white cammas are a bit of a different story. Oh they’re still beautiful, just not as abundant, and they don’t tend to bloom on the beaches, but hidden in the grass land, the land where the sheep graze. The problem with them is that they are deadly poison to the sheep. In fact just a few of their leaves can kill a grown otherwise healthy sheep. So Keller used to have to constantly watch over his fields for these flowers to bloom and if he saw them he had to pull them out to destroy them before they killed his any of his sheep.
This process of walking through and checking for an destroying any hazardous plants would be part of the process that David so simply calls preparing a table before me. When just a few leaves can kill the shepherd must prepare the way before the sheep arrive. It’s the same thing with God. There are times that He is going to put things in our lives to grow us, things that He wants to use to make us more into His image and more into the people that we were always meant to be. The process is not easy but it is always vital and our shepherd has gone before us to prepare the way so that we can make it through safely, even when our enemy has other plans for us.
The best example of this concept that I can think of is in the life of Peter. As we walked through most of the book of Acts last year we could see the change in the apostles life. He went from a man in the gospels who had foot in mouth disease, he just always seemed to almost do the right thing, and then would mess it up by going just a little too far. The man who got out of the boat to walk on water with Jesus and then took His eyes off of Him. The man who answered that Jesus was the Christ the son of the Living God, and then told Him not to complete God’s plan. He was just always a little off, just a little too hasty and a little to focused on the things of this world in the gospels, and yet in the book of Acts, he is the calm faithful leader who does still make some mistakes but overall is faithful to lead the church from a small group of disciples into a church that not only changes it’s world, but the world for all time.
What caused that change? I think any student of scripture would say that it was Peter’s greatest failure, when during Jesus trial Peter denied him three times. Jesus knew it was coming, he warned Peter about it, but it happened anyways. But God did what He always does if we let Him, He used it to bring about a change in Peter that made Peter stronger than he had ever been before.
But listen to what Luke, the historian who wrote about Peter’s changed life in the Book of Acts, look at how he describe the discussion between Jesus and Peter. Luke 22:31-32, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Do you see it? God had a plan to strengthen Peter to transform him into the apostle that he could be, but Satan wanted to use the exact same process to destroy Peter. It’s a fine line, the greatness and disaster narrowly separated what was the difference? The Shepherd had prepared the way, notice those words, “But I have prayed for you.” Before Peter was even in harm’s way, before the process started that would change him forever, Jesus had already prayed. What’s interesting about this story is how John recorded the end that when Peter saw Jesus, Jesus charged Peter to “Feed my Sheep.” What an interesting parallel for us. The sheep has grown into the position where he is trusted as a shepherd, by the shepherd who prepared the way. That is what Christ does for us, He prepares the things for us that are necessary for us to grow healthy and strong, even in the midst of our enemy who seeks to destroy us.
That is what David is saying with those words, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” God will give us what we need even in the presence of the one who would destroy us. It’s the same for the sheep. See the shepherd prepares the table for the sheep to come and graze on, but the danger isn’t just in the weeds that grown in the same area and same grass land. The predators in the area know it and prepare accordingly so on the outskirts of the comforting pasture the sheep’s enemies will lie in wait. Just waiting for a sheep to wander too far from the rest of the flock, too far from the shepherd and then they are destroyed. This can be the temptations of the world, it can be people who come into our lives and they led us down paths that we know better then to go down. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to council with someone who’s done something that has cause havoc with their lives, relationships, damaged, opportunities lost, dreams destroyed, all because they did something stupid, something they knew they shouldn’t do, and I ask them why they did what they did and part of the answer is, I started hanging out with the wrong people. Listen it doesn’t matter how nice you may think someone is, it doesn’t matter what they say to you or how much they tell you they like you, if they cause you to do things that you know will hurt you, they are not your friend they are an enemy and having them in your life will destroy you.
As followers of Christ we have enemies all around us because we are trying to live life definitely not just from other people but differently from our nature. Our nature tells us that we are the center of everything, that we are the solution, but as followers of Christ we’ve finally admitted the truth, we aren’t the center of everything, He is, we aren’t the solution He is, and we need to be on a path that follows Him. That different then the path that everyone else is on, but it is also the path through the danger that our shepherd has prepared for us in the presence of our enemies.
But before we leave this part of the verse we have to answer one other question, do you believe that we have a literal enemy? Jesus did, remember He told Peter that Satan had asked for permission to sift Him. If Jesus believed in Satan then why don’t so many people around us, and why don’t we realize that the true evil of him isn’t the will to simply destroy life like in some Hollywood horror movie, the real evil is that he wants to limit this life, to cause us to be less then we can be to accept worldliness instead of Godliness and to make our impact on the world on of our power instead of what God can do through us.
I was tempted to say that we don’t believe in Satan because we can’t hear him or see him. But he is all over our culture, listen to the words of the songs that people play, the dialogue of our movies and hear the hiss of his taint. Watch the imagery that is placed before our eyes to insight us to lust and to accept that which the Bible has called sin and see his vision for the world a vision where we follow anything but the path of our shepherd. We have and enemy in the world, we live in his territory and we better start living and thinking like it, or we will slowly be pulled into the traps that he sets for all mankind.
As I think of all the things in the world that would slowly pull us down and rob us of the life that God desires for us, I think of that next clause, “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. See the role of oil in our lives is filled by the Holy Spirit. Oil in the Bible is one of the symbols for the Spirit. In this world where we are surrounded by danger, in this world where we are surrounded by so many things that would rob us of our joy, in this world where it is so hard to get by, we need the oil, the Spirit of God to help us through.
We’re going to talk more about this in a minute but oil is supposed to heal us so that we can rest. Let me ask this question do we allow the presence of the Spirit to heal us and to give us rest? We know that we should but do we actually do it. When the memories of past failures and mistakes come to we rest in the knowledge that if we let Him, God will use those very things to make us better today for having gone through them? When we’re in the midst of difficulties do we rest in the security of knowing that our shepherd will lead us through? When we’re thinking about the past hurts do we allow Him to teach us to forgive others and let the past go because He has forgiven us. The Spirit of God is the one who works in our lives to make these things happen if we will accept His help. The question for us is do we, or do we try to do everything ourselves. The difference for us is the same as it was for Peter, two paths lie ahead of us, growth or disaster, the difference is the presence of our shepherd.
But see there is a truth about the protection of the shepherd for the sheep. To be fully protected sheep must stay close to the shepherd and his oil. We’ve said it before the predators wait on the outskirts of the grazing area, they are waiting for a sheep to wander away from the shepherd, to get so far away that they can kill the sheep before the shepherd can do anything about it. To be fully protected the sheep must stay near the shepherd. If we want to be protected by our shepherd we must stay on his path and we must stay close to His oil, to the Spirit.
See oil is an important tool of the shepherd. Today there are different types of oils that shepherds use but in David’s day this would have referred to olive oil and things that were mixed in it. It was expensive but necessary stuff. Notice how well the shepherd cares for the sheep, he doesn’t just anoint them with oil, but does it until their cup overflows. The cup would be under the head of the sheep to catch the oil that ran down so it could be reused. David said that his shepherd, our shepherd, uses so much oil that it not only runs off the head and into the cup, but until the cup overflows. Our shepherd gives us liberally and overflowing amount of what we need.
See sheep need oil for three things. First, the shepherd uses oil to repel summer flies and heal the wounds that they leave behind. Summer time is fly seasons. Anyone who has lived in a moist wooded area knows this is true. Flies come and they buzz around the heads of the sheep annoying them. Some kinds of flies will actually fly into the noses of the sheep and lay their eggs there. When the larva hatch they will crawl in those passages in the sheep’s head and burrow into the skin looking for food and warmth. Obviously this is very uncomfortable for the sheep and they will rub their heads into trees and rocks looking for relief, sometimes they will actually bang their heads into rocks to trying to stop the attack, in severe cases sheep will actually bang their own head into a rock so hard that they kill themselves. When the shepherd sees this start to happen he will get out a mixture of oil and other ingredients and rub it in the sheep’s nose and face and the oil kills the larva, helps heal the infection left behind and repel and other flies. It’s exactly the cure that we need for all of the irritations of this world that can distract us from doing what we need to do.
Oil repels the flies, oil is also used to fight “scab” an infection caused by a tiny little parasite and passed when sheep rub heads. It’s just a tiny little thing but it becomes a huge problem see sheep are social creatures, and what infects one can soon infect the whole herd. This infection is often passed from head to head because when sheep are together to show affection they will often rub their heads together. When this happens the parasite can jump from one sheep to the next.
The same thing can happen to God’s people. Someone gets an idea, it can be about scripture, or someone else and we talk about it, we whisper is, and soon this infection has spread through a whole group of people. See we need to know God’s word and focus on teaching that and sharing His love with the people around us. But too many times we worry about too many things that aren’t the main thing or we judge and then gossip about someone else. When that happens the view of our shepherd towards us, is that we have the scab, we are infected sheep and He needs to cleanse us. So He anoints our head with oil. The Spirit comes to takes us from our sin and put us back to following our shepherd.
The oil protects us from flies, it cleanses us of our infections, and the shepherd will use oil to “lubricate” the friction between rival sheep. See the end of summer, as the time is coming to move down the mountain and away from the cold of winter is also mating season. It is the time when the rams will begin to vie for the ewe’s that they want. If the shepherd is not careful the very sheep that he has cared for, for the entire summer, will kill and maim one another in the name of position and rivalry. They will line up bow their necks and ram each other with their horns and repeat until one either gives up, or is unable to continue because of wounds or death. When the shepherd sees this is happening he will get out a thicker mixture of oil and smear it on the top of the rams heads so that when they make contact they slide off of each other rather than having a major collision, the result is that after a few tries the rams get tired of looking foolish and awkward and they move on to something else to resolve their differences.
The same thing can happen in the church, we get worried about how we are perceived. We get worried about our position. We get worried about all these things that are about us. But the shepherd is worried about the survival of the flock, and it’s His flock in the first place. He is the one who prepared the table, He is the one guiding. May we not need Him to send His Spirit to remind us of His position and our position. May it be that when we see a wounded sheep, that rather then trying to make sure that everyone knows what’s wrong with it, or to put it in their place, we bring it to the shepherd and allow Him to bring healing and restore it to it’s rightful place in the heard, just like He did with us.
That is what God does. He takes us where we are and begins to work in our lives so that we can be healthy and become the people that we were always meant to be. If you’ve never accepted His help will you do it today?
