OPEN: I once read the story about a 1st-grader stood in front of his classroom. The class had been taking turns in front of the room answering the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
This little boy stood up and said, "I’m going to be a lion tamer and have lots of fierce lions and tigers. I’ll walk into the cage and they will growl and roar."
Then he paused for a moment and added, "But of course, I’ll have my mommy with me."
APPLY: That little boy had been to the circus and he’d watched a lion tamer enter a cage full of ferocious lions and tigers. He’d been impressed with how brave and in control that man had appeared. What he was telling his class was that - one day - he wanted to be like that man. He wanted to be fearless. He wanted to be brave. He wanted to be in control.
But THEN it suddenly occurred to him: Hey – that’s all well and good but a guy could get hurt in a place like that… unless someone bigger and stronger were there with him. Someone like his mother.
Hold that thought in the back of your mind for a minute.
I. Outside of church, where would you most likely to hear the 23rd Psalm quoted?
That’s right, at funerals. I’ve heard a lot of preachers complain about that. Because, you see, the 23rd psalm is NOT a psalm about death… it’s a psalm about life.
Think about it. David is sitting on the side of a hill - watching his father’s flock.
Are these sheep dead? … are they even sick? No… there’s not a thing wrong with this flock. They are ALIVE. They are cared for.
David’s sitting there thinking about how GOOD life is for those sheep. They’re peaceful. They’re contented. Life is good and the sheep are at ease…
Other kinds animals may face dangers of predators like lions and bears but not his sheep. His sheep are safe and protected. No one is going to touch his sheep while he’s around. And the sheep have it good because they have a shepherd.
As David ponders on this, he realizes that HIS life is good too - because he also has a shepherd. God has given him everything he wants in life. God has given him:
o rest
o and refreshment
o and food
o and guidance
God has removed the fear from his life and given him courage when he’s faced with danger as shepherd out in field.
You see, this IS NOT a psalm about death. It’s a song rejoicing in life… life as only God can give it.
II. NOT ONLY is this a song of life… it’s a song about a LIFE filled with confidence
Remember that little first grader? He wanted to be so brave and fearless and in control and he realized that that kind of confidence if someone bigger than he was was in the lion cage with him.
David recognized something like that too. He recognized HE could be brave - he could have confidence - if God was there with him.
He visualized God preparing a table before him in the presence of his enemies... (Ps 23:5)
Can you imagine that? Imagine all of David’s enemies gathered together in one room and David just walks right on in and sits down to eat. David is the guest of honor at a great banquet, and all his enemies can do is watch and seethe, because
- they can’t touch him
- they can’t hurt him
- they can’t lift a hand against him…
When David walked with God, those who opposed him became powerless. When David prayed to God, and when he sought God’s direction in his life, God led him through the most difficult situations… even leading him thru the valley of the shadow of death.
That’s why, when the flock was attacked bears and the lions, David felt no fear. David simply took God with him and (as David told Saul) "…When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it…. The LORD… delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear..." 1 Samuel 17:34-35, 37
And that’s kind of confidence allowed him to face Goliath when no one else would, saying:
“Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.” (1 Samuel 17:36)
David’s confidence did not lie in his own abilities, but rather in the power & faithfulness of His God.
ILLUS: I have personally experienced this kind of protection in some very REAL ways.
In the first church I served, a man had left his wife for another woman… but he wanted to keep coming back home for the comforts of his family. Now the husband was a trucker – a BIG man with a reputation for being tough.
The wife asked for my advice, but they’d never covered anything like this in Bible College, so I sought out the advice of some counselors in Ft. Wayne. They asked what we would do if a man were sinning like this within the church (her husband was not a Christian) and I said “well, we’d excommunicate him. We wouldn’t eat with him or associate with him.” They advised that she should shun him. If he wanted the other woman… he could do that… but the wife and daughters would have nothing to do with him.
It told the wife about this and she said she could do it - but she wanted me there when she told him about her decision. We prayed about it and then set the date for the confrontation.
The day arrived and they were standing in the kitchen talking as I stood back leaning against the wall at the doorway to the hall, listening with my hands in my pockets.
When she told him her decision he literally blew up. Realizing I had been the source of her decision, he turned on me with fury in his eyes. His fists were clenched and his veins were bulging from his face. Did I mention, I had my hands in my pockets? All he had to do was land one good punch and I was finished. Even with my hands OUT of my pockets I couldn’t have defended myself very well… so I did what all religious people would do in a situation like that: I said a silent prayer.
Even in that dangerous setting, a calm settled over me. I began to very quietly talk to the man and, in time, he calmed down backed off and left the house.
God had literally taken me through the valley of the shadow of death. And tho’ I felt some fear, I was strangely at ease talking him out of his anger.
You see, when we TAKE God with us – when we pray to Him and seek His guidance, our enemies become powerless. They can threaten us. They can make our lives difficult and complicated, BUT they can never really damage us. Why? Because God has promised to prepare a table for us in the presence of our enemies... and to lead us EVEN Thru the valley of the shadow of death.
So this is a song about life
And a song about a life filled with confidence
And it’s also:
III. A song ABOUT A LIFE filled with value and meaningfulness
ILLUS: I was with some friends last Saturday at a “card party.” We played euchre and would switch partners throughout the evening so that we could get acquainted with each other. At one point I sat down across from a woman who had lost a few games and was down on herself. She held her hand up beside her forehead and formed an “L” shape with the thumb and forefinger and laughingly said “Loser!”
As I researched this psalm I read numerous sermons and commentators to see if I could discover any insights to share this morning it seemed that this was how many of them saw the sheep in this psalm. Losers! They would describe sheep as being:
· ignorant
· stubborn,
· easily frightened
· helpless
· timid
· and feeble
Now… while all that might be true, it occurred to me that this was not the focus of David’s psalm. Close your eyes and listen this psalm again and see if you here God describing them as being losers:
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul:
He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, 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 runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Did you hear anything in that psalm about sheep being ignorant? Or stubborn? Feeble? Weak? No! There are no put-downs; no insults… no words of discouragement. Just words of acceptance and protection. The reason people love this psalm is because it’s so filled with assurances of God’s love and affection for us. This is the psalm of someone who senses God’s really cares for him… that God really loves him and wants to protect him.
David had value because God valued him.
Likewise… we have value because God gives us value…
“… we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10
You and I have a shepherd who wants to give our lives meaning and value. And when you get right down to it… that’s all we need in life.
ILLUS: Robert Ketchum tells about a Sunday school teacher who asked her group of children if any of them could quote the entire twenty-third psalm. A little 4 year-old girl raised her hand. But the teacher, a little skeptical, asked if she could really quote the entire psalm.
The little girl nodded her head and then said: "The Lord is my shepherd, that’s all I want."
So the 23rd Psalm is a song about life
And a song about a life filled with confidence
It’s about a life filled with meaning and value
And one more thing…:
IV. It’s a song about a life of belonging
“The LORD is MY shepherd.”
I belong to Him… and He belongs to me
I once read the story about Ben Hooper, twice been elected governor of Tennessee. He often told this story from his childhood.
“My mother wasn’t married [when I was born]. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn’t a very nice name. I used to go off by myself both at recess and during lunch time because of the taunts of my playmates, which cut me deeply. What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering who my real father was.
“When I was about 12, a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door,… I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.
“‘Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?’
“I felt the old weight come upon me. It was like a big, black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down, I thought.
“But as the preacher looked down at me, studying my face, he began a big smile of recognition. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God!’
“With that, he slapped me across the back and said, ‘Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’ “That,” Ben Hooper said, “was the most important single sentence anyone ever said to me.”
With Christ’s help, Ben Hooper had overcome his sense of rejection and inadequacy and claimed his inheritance as a child of God.
CLOSE: The Lord is MY Shepherd.
You know. There is a distinctive difference between the sheep of the field, and us. Those sheep do not get to CHOOSE their shepherd. The shepherd chooses them. In the days of the Bible, when a shepherd bought a sheep, he’d take a firm hold on the sheep, pull out a long, sharp knife and cut a distinctive earmark into one of the ears of the sheep. In that way, even from a distance, it would be easy to determine to whom the sheep belonged.
The difference for us, is that – unlike the sheep – we get to choose whether or not we will take the mark of Jesus into our lives. His mark is distinctive – but what does that “mark” look like? The Bible is very clear on what the mark looks like. The mark starts with
· Faith. We must believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God.
· We must Repent. Acknowledge that we have sinned and fallen short of being accepted by Him living our lives in our own way. And the turn around and turn our lives over to Him.
· We must Confess that Jesus is our Lord. We must give Him everything we have. Our possessions, our loved ones and our very lives. We must determine to make Him the Lord of our lives.
· And lastly, we must accept the distinctive mark of what He did to purchase us. He bought us by His death, His burial and His resurrection from the dead. Thus, His mark upon us is taken by us when we die to our sins, are buried in the waters of Christian baptism, and rise to walk in newness of life.
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES (A Man After God’s Own Heart)
Measuring Up - 1 Samuel 16:1-16:13
Be Prepared/ Scout Sunday - 1 Samuel 17:1-17:53
A Friend After Your Own Heart - 1 Samuel 18:1-18:5
A Heart To Honor Authority - 1 Samuel 24:1-24:22
An Obedient Heart - 2 Samuel 6:1-6:15
A Heart To Worship - 2 Samuel 6:12-6:23
The Heart Of A Shepherd - Psalms 23:1-23:6
The Over-exposed Heart - 2 Samuel 11:1-11:5
The Undeserving Heart - Psalms 51:1-51:1
The Weakened Heart - 2 Samuel 3:17-3:39
The Heart Of A Father - 2 Samuel 13:1-13:39
A Heart to Build - 2 Samuel 7:1-7:17
The Dead Dog Syndrome - 2 Samuel 16:5-16:14
