Savior, Like a Shepherd
(Psalm 23)
This week, I came across a list of 75 occupations that are either obsolete or really rare in the 21st century. Things like “chandler”—someone who makes candles. Or “Fletcher”—a maker of arrows. And I thought I’d start off this morning by givng you guys a little bit of a pop quiz. Let’s see how well you do with these:
A collier is:
A. A dog breeder
B. A coal miner
C. A tailor specializing in men’s formal wear
A Wainwright is:
A. A wagon maker
B. A werewolf hunter
C. A concrete mixer
A Farrier is:
A. Someone who operates a passenger ferry
B. Someone who man’s a toll booth
C. Someone who trims hooves and shoes horses
Now, all this might be intresting trivia to you, but you are having a hard time seeing what any of this has to do with Psalm 23. So here it is: let’s imagine that our local farrier is a committed follower of Jesus, and he serves as a part time worship leader at his church. And one Sunday he gets up in front of his church with his guitar and says, “I wrote a new song for our worship service today.” And he starts singing:
The Lord is my Farrier. I shall not be unshoed. He maketh me to trot without thrush or abcess…
See, unless you knew what a farrier was, you would have no appreciation for his song. You’d probably nod politely, but in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “Could we just go back to ‘Shout to the Lord?’” You wouldn’t have an appreciation for the song because you really don’t understand what it’s like to be a farrier.
This morning, we are going to study Psalm 23 together. We know Psalm 23—its one of the most beloved chapters in the entire bible, and, other than the Lord’s prayer, the most memorized. And when David wrote Psalm 23, he was writing to a group of people who understood what a shepherd was. But today, a lot of that is lost on us.
But how many of us really understand it? The answer is, unless you’re a shepherd, a lot of the images and metaphors about sheep kind of get lost on you. And that’s where a man named Phillip Keller comes in.
Phillip Keller was born in Kenya in 1920 and grew up in East Africa, surrounded by nomadic shpherds whose way of life hasn’t changed much from that of the shepherds David would have been acquainted with four thousand years ago. As a young man, he made his living as a shepherd, both as an owner of one flock and later as a rancher managing several flocks. So when he wrote the classic devotional book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, it was with a whole lot of credibility. By the way, I have several copies of his book available. I found them online this week for $2.50. If you’re a first time guest this week, please take a copy as our gift to your family.
In each chapter, Keller takes a line from Psalm 23 and relates it back to what he knows about the nature of sheep. [Sales pitch—books for $3]. And truthfully, the more we learn about sheep, the more we don’t want to admit that we are a lot like them. For example:
• Sheep are dumb. They have no sense of direction, and if they are in an unfamiliar territory, they will become completely disoriented. And they absolutely refuse to ask for directions. Also, they don’t discriminate between what is healthy and unhealthy to eat. They will even graze on toxic plants and make themselves sick.
• Sheep are not the cleanest animals. Their wool produces a lot of sticky oils, and without a shepherd to keep them sheared, those oils will mat up the wool, attract pests and parasites, and eventually kill the sheep. themselves.
• Sheep have no natural defenses against predators. They don’t have sharp teeth or claws, they can’t run fast, they have poor eyesight, and unless you’re in the middle of a snowstorm, they tend to not be able to camouflage themselves very well. There’s a reason there isn’t a single high school or college football team whose mascot is the sheep. No one wants to be a sheep.
He writes early on in the book on The State of the Sheep:
“It is no accident that God has chosen to call us sheep. The behavior of sheep and human beings is similar in many ways… our mass mind, our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallels of profound importance. Yet despite these adverse characteristics, Christ chooses us, buys us, calls us by name, makes us His own, and delights in caring for us.”
Phillip Keller
The Sufficiency of the Shepherd
Verse 1 says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Everything that follows in Pslm 23 is based on the assumption that you have made Jesus Christ your Lord. You’ve surrendered your will to his. You’ve entrusted your life to His care. Keller writes that the day he purchased his first thirty sheep, the first thing he did was mark them as his own. A shepherd takes a sharp knife and makes a distinctive notch, called an “earmark” into each sheep’s ear. In this way, even when different flocks are grazing together, the shepherd can know which sheep belong to him. Keller writes,
It was not the most pleasant procedure to catch each ewe in turn and lay her ear on a wooden block, then notch it deeply with the razor sharp edge of the knife. There was pain for both of us. But from our mutual suffering an indelible lifelong mark of ownership was made that could never be erased. And from then on, every sheep that came into my posession would bear my mark.
So, if the Lord is your shepherd, what can you expect from Him? The first thing is that you shall not want.
• What if “I shall not want” is a command? There are a lot of “You shall nots” in the Bible. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. And we read those and immediately know that those things are prohibited in Scripture. But we come to “I shall not want,” and we don’t read it the same way. And grammatically, we really can’t. in the Hebrew, it’s not an imperative. But still. If I really believe that the Lord is my shepherd, then I believe Philippians 4:19: And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
Do I believe the Shepherd is Sufficient?
1. to provide rest v. 2 says “He makes me lie down.” Look at the front of your bulletin. Keller spends a lot of time talking about how sheep will not rest unless they feel free from fear, tension with the other sheep, aggravation from pests and parasites, and hunger. We are the same way. And our good shepherd is sufficient to take care of all of this for us.
2. to provide refreshment (“green pastures, still waters.” Left on their own, sheep will continue to eat the grass in a given pasture down to the root, or as we said before, feed on things that won’t satisfy them or are poisonous to them.
3. to provide salvation (“He restores my soul”. When a sheep falls down, especially if it hasn’t been sheared for awhile, it can’t get up on its own again. The old shepherd term for a sheep that has fallen and can’t get up again is a “cast” sheep. Keller says,
A cast sheep is a very pathetic sight. Lying on its back, feet in the air, it flays away frantically struggling to stand up, without success. If the owner does not arrive on the scene within a short time, the cast sheep will die.
According to Keller, nothing gets more of the shepherds attention than searching for sheep that are cast down. He describes going out early and looking at the sky. If he saw buzzards circling overhead, he would immediately drop everything and count his flock to make sure none were missing. If they were not all accounted for, he would go out searching for the one sheep that might have fallen.
4. to provide guidance (“He leads me in paths of righteousness,” even “through the shadow.” Let me point out that the phrase “the shadow of death” doesn’t actually appear in the Hebrew. It just says “through the shadow.” And the picture is of the Shepherd that has been grazing his flocks in the lowlands during one season of the year, but as the seasons change and the grass in the valleys dries up, he leads them to higher ground to greener pastures. And to do that, sometimes he has to lead the flock through dark valleys and steep canyon walls. We need to remember that even when it feels like we are in the valley of the shadow, God is ultimately leading us toward something better. Which leads us to the next two points
5. to provide courage (“I will not fear”)
6. to provide companionship (“For you are with me”)
7. to provide comfort and loving discipline (“Your rod and your staff”)
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
We can sum all this up by remembering Philippians 4:19: And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus
Now, when we get to verse 5, I want you notice a really important shift. David goes from talking about the Shepherd (He makes me lie down; he leads me,” and so on) to talking to the Shepherd: You prepare a table before me; you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.
You might be saying, “Hang on. Sheep don’t sit at tables. And sheep don’t drink from cups. So maybe we aren’t talking about sheep anymore. And that’s where I want to take us this morning. Let’s look at verse 5 as the point where David shifts from talking about sheep to talking about people. Here’s the The Shift from Sheep to Saints (v. 5).
Not a shift away from dependence, (we are still sheep; we are still under the care of God as our shepherd,) but a shift toward responsibility. We’ve talked so much about how helpless we are as sheep—and all of that is true in terms of salvation—we can’t do anything to earn our own salvation. But when it comes to growing and maturing in Christ, we can’t just throw our hands up and say, “Well, I’m defenseless and dumb and dirty and helpless and lost and confused, so I don’t really think anything is required from me.” I’m just baaaad.
Is you understand verse 5 as a shift from sheep to saints, you see a couple of things that are required of us as sheep.
Look at the first line: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” What does that mean in terms of our responsibility in the world? Let’s look at the Hebrew. The literal Hebrew reading is: You arrange before me [a] table [and] before ones attacking me
Before me, a table. [set up table on stage]
Before the ones attacking me, a table.
How can a table be both before you and before your enemies? The only way for that to work is if you’re sitting at the table together.
You prepare a table so that my enemies and I can sit down together. Part of our responsibility when we move from sheep to saint is to work toward reconciliation in our world. Our Shepherd has made a way for enemies to make peace with one another. I’d like to tell you about the most dramatic example of this I’ve ever witnessed.
In 2007, I went to Rwanda on a mission trip. You probably know that in 1994, Rwanda was the site of a horrific genocide, in which, over just a span of about three months, almost a million members of one ethnic group were killed by members of another ethnic group. Neighbors literally were hunting down and killing people from their own village whom they had known for years.
So when we got there thirteen years later, we realized that every single adult we talked to had firsthand stories about the genocide.
How do you recover from that? In a country of about 6 million, nearly a million were wiped out. And you were left with over a million accused perpetrators. The government, which, by the way, was organized with a commitment to Christian principles—President Paul Kagame had been influenced by Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and had Rick Warren come to Rwanda to train his cabinet on how to be a purpose driven country—the government was smart enough to realize that it would take over two hundred years to move a million perpetrators through the traditional court system. And in the meantime, the country would be torn apart, the economy would be drained, and Rwanda would be primed for another genocide eventually.
So Wednesdays became gacaca day. Gacaca is a Rwandan word which means “justice among the grass.” On gacaca day, every single village gathered in the green space in the middle of the village—12,000 gacaca courts. So on Wednesday, we had to rearrange our schedule of when we would evangelize in the villages. And perpetrators would sit down with their victims. The goals were to establish the truth, enforce accountability, and reconcile community. Often, the punishment for a perpetrator involved him helping to rebuild a victim’s house, ore bring in his harvest.
One of the first things I noticed as were were driving along were work crews of men dressed in pink prison jumpsuits. They were up on the hillsides harvesting crops and working the land. Often, they were working side by side with Tutsis from their own village.
But when enemies sat down at a table together, healing and reconciliation could take place.
You may think that’s impossible. How can sworn enemies be expected to sit down at a table together to work things out? But in the Kingdom of God, not only is it possible, its inevitable. One of the great prophecies of the Old Testament is Isaiah 11:6:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
Let’s look at the second half of verse 5: “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Still 2nd person—the Psalmist talking directly to God. And still something that doesn’t really apply to sheep. Sheep don’t get anointed. They get dipped. So,
• Who gets anointed with oil, and what do they do?
o Priests get anointed, and they reconcile people to God (Ex. 40:15; 2 Cor. 5:18-20)
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling[a] the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20
o Kings get anointed and they provide leadership to the people (1 Sam. 16:12-13)
o Believers are priests and kings (1 Peter 2:9)
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Finally, let’s look at the last verse: Verse 6 says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. You notice we shift back to talking about God in the third person, so its probably accurate to go back to the shepherd. But there’s one thing that’s a little surprising to me in this verse. We’ve been talking all morning about how sheep follow their shepherd. How God leads and guides.
So what’s up with goodness and mercy following me all the days of my life? Shouldn’t they be leading?
The Assurance of Sheep Dogs (v 6)
• Shouldn’t goodness and mercy be leading instead of following?
• What do sheep dogs do?
A good sheepdog should be a valuable assistant to the shepherd or sheep farmer. It will learn where the sheep (or other stock) are likely to be in each field, and it will gather them together calmly, and not leave any behind. A really good sheepdog will even recognize if one or more animals is in difficulty, and attempt to draw the handler's attention to it.
Friends, that is what goodness and mercy do. Imagine God’s goodness and mercy like two sheep dogs— (okay—three sheep dogs—one of them is named Shirley--calmly and lovingly pointing us back toward te good shepherd. And leading us to the house of the Lord forever.
