The Lord is My Shepherd
Currently, Middletown Bible Church is without a Senior Pastor. The Lord's Day following the resignation of Pastor Jon Zwingel, I gave this message but for some reason most of the video and audio got cut off, so I wanted to post it here in it's entirety so it can be referenced as we move forward as a church...
The Lord is MY Shepherd
Well, it’s been quite a week, right? In some ways, even a quite a trying year. A lot has happened and, in many ways, it has stretched the bonds of friendship and brotherhood within the Body here at Middletown Bible Church to near the breaking point. At times, you may, as I have, felt discouraged, angry, sad, and even hopeless as we have wrestled together with things we never imagined we’d be faced with here at Middletown Bible Church. I thank God that he has saved us from having to have a vote this morning and I look forward to our time in the word and then some time to hear from you afterward.
Before I get into the text, however, I want to address the elephant in the room, which is “how is it that we continue on as a church without a Senior Pastor; without a head shepherd of the flock?”. The answer to that question is quite simple… we DO have a head shepherd of the flock and his name is Jesus. It is him who will carry us through this season and I trust you will see this morning that he has a plan for us all and if we seek to be faithful to him, he will be sure to build us up into the church He wants us to be.
This morning, we will look at the 23rd Psalm, a Psalm of David, and we’ll see that our Good Shepherd, Jesus grants us eternal, abundant life; even in the midst of disappointment and discouragement. In other words, if we can together remain close to Jesus and keep him the center of everything here at MBC, He will cause us to thrive rather than just survive. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use some thriving right about now.
So, If you can turn with me to Psalm 23, we will read our passage together. Some of you may even have it memorized, I’m sure.
Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 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.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
David was no stranger to trials (Much of it he brought on himself too). While he was a deeply flawed man, it was said of him that he was a man after God’s own heart. In the Old Testament, God used circumstances and various men as illustrations or “types” of what was to come in the fullness of time through the person of Jesus Christ.
David, for example, is said to be a ‘Type’ of Christ in so far as some elements of his life as a king would be used by God to illustrate the nature of the coming Messiah. For example, The Messiah, was to be the true king in the line of David in contrast to the king put forth by the people, who was Saul. Saul was selected for his looks, basically, and God said if that’s the king you want, I’ll give him to you and he turned out to be a bad king. David, however, was anointed as king before Saul was ever given the throne, so even though he was technically king after Saul, he was actually chosen by God before Saul which made him the greater king, the “chosen-by-God king”. In the same way, Jesus fills out this picture of David when he ascends to the throne of heaven to be the chosen God-man-king after having done his work on the cross. God had a plan of salvation from before time began and he purposed to raise up Jesus who would bring salvation to his people. David was a picture, but Jesus was the fulfillment.
But David can also be thought of as a ‘type’ for the church, in that he was chosen by God according to His good purpose and will, for no reason other than that he had set his love on him and purposed to use him. It is in this context that we encounter David this morning. David was himself a Shepherd before he became king, an experience the Spirit used to prompt him to write the 23rd Psalm as a picture of how he and God’s people are a lot like sheep who are being led by a great, good Shepherd. David, under the influence of the Spirit, and like other prophets in the Old Testament, often wrote things that he saw as applying to himself, but that the Spirit would show later in New Testament revelation that it actually applied to Jesus.
A good example of that is to look back in Psalm 22 verse 1. If you go back a page or so, you can see David, crying out in his distress and fear, saying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. He goes on to lament how he feels God is far from him and he is restless and feels abandoned. You may recognize that Jesus, 1000 years later, would cry out the same thing when he was abandoned on the cross to die, having been separated from fellowship with the father for the first time in all eternity and taking upon himself the sins of the world. In Psalm 22, we see how David’s turmoil was actually a prophetic look forward to the pain and turmoil that would be suffered by Jesus on the cross as the Holy Spirit gave him a divine peek into the plight of the Savior as he would bleed and die for our sake. Later in Psalms 22 he talks about being poured out like water and having bones out of joint. David writes “they have pierced my hands and feet” in verse 16 and “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots”.
We would recognize all these things as being a foreshadow of the account of the suffering of Christ, but David, personally, was also crying out as a man who suffered greatly and had many enemies. His own son tried to kill him, for example; this after Saul had tried to hunt him down in his youth and so many things in between. David had led such a bloody life, he was not allowed to build the temple because of all the blood he had spilled. Many of the Psalms consist of David simply crying out to God for relief, safety and shelter. We might say that his words in many cases betray a certain hopelessness, except that in almost every instance, David will turn in his distress to praise to God as he seems to suddenly remember that no matter what was happening to him and around him, God was in complete control and would ultimately care for him because he loved God and sought to remain with Him.
This is a lesson that we can take away this morning, that just as David portrays anguish and despair in Psalm 22, he turns to abundant Hope in Psalm 23 as he thinks back to his time as a shepherd and sees in himself the same profound need from his heavenly father that his sheep used to have from him. For us, with all that we have been through most recently, we can look to Psalm 23 to see how abundant hope is found in Jesus Christ, who Peter called the “Shepherd and Overseer of your souls”.
David remembered how deeply the sheep rely on the shepherd for everything they needed to survive. For example, sheep are kind of dense and without a shepherd moving them to different pastures, sheep would eat all the grass where they are and simply starve to death rather than go to try to find another pasture themselves. Sheep are without direction on their own and are prone to wandering into dangerous areas, subjecting them to injury. They would be vulnerable to predators looking for easy prey with no defenses themselves. They would attract and suffer from disease and die in great numbers if the shepherd didn’t treat their wounds. In short, they would be without hope in the world and with a greatly diminished life without their shepherd.
In the same way, we are completely reliant on Jesus, our “good shepherd” according to John 10:11. But Jesus is not content to just provide for our needs, he gives us over and above what we can ask or even imagine when, just like David, we turn from our circumstances to see how God always cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep we begin to see life differently. There is a new beauty to all we go through as helpless little sheep when we remember that our Good shepherd provides abundantly for all our needs.
In fact David shows us four basic ways the Lord provides abundantly for our needs in our passage this morning:
First, The Lord is our provision
Second, The Lord is our guide
Third, The Lord is our protection
And Fourth, The Lord is our Eternal Hope
The Lord is our provision
David writes starting in verse 1 of our passage:
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul.
God’s perfect provision comes to us in abundant pastures, still waters and restoration for the soul.
In John 10:9, Jesus said “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” Elsewhere, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, the life and no one comes to the father but through me”. God provides abundant provision in that he allows us to pasture in the son’s field. There we find unlimited resources to live and thrive as we remain connected to the source of all power, our savior Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel, in chapter 34 foretells how Jesus will provide abundant pasture for his flock when he proclaims “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out” in verse 11. Then picking up in verse 13, he says expands further:
“And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 34:13–15, ESV)
The idea of the sheep laying in green pastures and being led by still waters is the idea of rest for the weary. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Of course, this is a rest that is only provided through knowing the good shepherd. We enter into his rest when we enter the pasture through Jesus. The provision of the pasture is the abundant life he provides through the salvation he offers to anyone who comes to the Father through him. This is a rest that cannot be given from the world, because it is not of this world. Jesus provides his sheep a kingdom rest, a rest that is freely given and perpetually available to his sheep. Hebrews says “let us strive to enter that rest” where we can “rest from our works as God did from his”.
The good grazing land and rich pasture that Ezekiel speaks about and the green pastures and still waters from David, then, is salvation through Jesus Christ where he restores our soul through reconciliation with the Father. Jesus said in John 10:10 about the sheep who would come to him, he said “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”. So if you are feeling like you are only surviving and not thriving this morning, fix your eyes on the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for you so you might have life and have it abundantly. Gaze on him this morning and see that he makes you lie down in green pastures and leads you by still waters. Oh what a wonderful, beautiful shepherd he is.
The Lord is our guide
3b He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Jesus has justified us before the Father. The work accomplished by the shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep is none other than the that of a Holy God determining for himself to redeem a sinful man to himself by the blood of the cross.
Romans 3:25 says:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:23–26, ESV)
Jesus leads us in paths of righteousness in that we are unable to obtain it apart from the blood of his cross. Just like the sheep are fully dependent on the shepherd to guide them from pasture to pasture, we are fully dependent on Jesus to lead us into righteousness as we follow him in faith, submitted to his Lordship and bearing his name, where we are then covered by his righteousness. Like Romans says, we are all sinners, having fallen short of the glory of God, if we aren’t led into righteousness by the shepherd we follow, we would never have a chance to attain it. We would wander like a sheep without a shepherd like you did before you knew Jesus.
If now you bear the name “Christian”, you can be assured that your righteousness, not being your own, is secure in the holiness of Jesus, not as a work you have done yourself, but a work secured on your behalf by your shepherd who went before you into the grave to raise again and call you. Jesus spoke of having a sheep from another fold and unless you are a Jewish believer here today, you are a Christian because your good shepherd called you to himself. You heard his voice and turned from your sin to follow him on a new path… The path of righteousness. Like the sheep trust their shepherd to guide them, we trust our good shepherd to guide us to the Father where he pronounces you “righteous” as He is righteous.
This truth should cause us to thrive as we remember that our righteousness is not in anything we have done and is, instead, secured by our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ through the work he did on the cross to be the propitiation for us.
The Lord is our protection
4 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.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
In David's day, the valley of the shadow of death was an actual valley with high walls where robbers would stalk travelers to relieve them of their possessions. Jesus protects us with an abundance in that as we walk through this world, he guards and keeps his true sheep as a good shepherd, not allowing even one to be lost. In John chapter 6 verse 39 Jesus gives his sheep assurance by saying:
“And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”” (John 6:39–40, ESV)
So for those who have “followed in the paths of righteousness” by placing their trust in Jesus, he says, he will lose not one, but raise it up on the last day. We will see a bit more about that in the next section, but we can see here that for those who’s faith is in the good shepherd, he keeps them secured by the power of God the father who has “given” Jesus a flock and has determined that they will not be lost.
In Jesus’ priestly prayer in John chapter 17, Jesus is praying to the father on behalf of his sheep and again reiterates the security his flock has in the work he was about to do when he prayed in verse 12:
“While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12, ESV)
His protections are sure even in the midst of the world around us and the enemy who is prowling around like a lion looking for some sheep to devour. Satan is a defeated enemy, however, meaning there is safety for those who belong to the good shepherd. The sheep who are kept secure under the shepherds protection are able to sit without fear of what can be done to them. Jesus said in John 17:15:
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” (John 17:15–16, ESV)
While we live in the world awaiting our future glory, we sit at the table of the Son in the presence of our enemies. We are in the world, but not OF the world. We are not what we were but still not what we will be. Jesus’s sheep have been born again and stamped with the Holy Spirit, the downpayment of a future glory, the anointing on all those who attend the marriage supper of the lamb from Rev 19:9.
Once we have been born again, we have been made secure in Christ so that even though we still live in the world (like being seated at a table in the midst of our enemies), our future is secure because Jesus holds the future in the power of his eternal plan of salvation.
When we remember that our protection is found and held in our good shepherd and not in the stupidity of the sheep, we are secure and we can thrive in his abundant protections, secured from anything which might try to steal us away or hurt us. Fixing our eyes on the good shepherd reminds us who we truly are and we trust in him to bring us to full completion in the day of redemption where we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, which brings us to the last division…
The Lord is our eternal hope
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Finally, Jesus provides us with an abundant eternal hope.
We have a hope not only for this life, where we have found goodness in mercy through Jesus Christ, but also for the life to come in glory where we will dwell with him forever.
Peter reminds us how secure our eternal hope is in 1 Peter 1:3-5 when he launches into a doxology praising the assurance we have in the good shepherd to bring about his eternal purpose and keep us until that day. Here is what Peter says:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
Our inheritance is being guarded by “God’s power”, not by any power of man. We thrive in abundant hope when we remember that God is keeping our future inheritance for us. We thrive when we don’t allow ourselves to be swayed by difficulties and controversies that we see before us, but we fix our eyes on what is to be “revealed in the last time”, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading which is being kept… held, secured, where? In heaven… for whom? For YOU!
Beloved, this is what we call a promise, and God’s promises can not be taken back! He is literally unable to take a promise back. Did you know that? Because of God’s unchangeable nature, once he has said that he will do something, he is incapable of changing his mind. Therefore, we maintain an abundant hope in the promises that our good shepherd, who has promised that he will “lose not one but raise us up on the last day “. If he promises it, he will do it and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Revelation 20 calls it “the new Jerusalem”, where John writes:
“And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:22–27, ESV)
So now we come back to today, where we find ourselves in a new season as a church, once again without a Senior Pastor. What can we learn from David’s 23rd Psalm that will encourage us this morning?
Church, in this age, Pastors, Elders, Overseers and Deacons will come and go, rise up and fall. Ministries will spin up and spin down. Programs are started and they fade away. Membership ebbs and flows. Persecutions come and will keep coming, but there is one thing that will never change or diminish and that is the character of the Good Shepherd of the sheep who remains head over all of it and is in control right now, even though it seems so chaotic and scary. Jesus is keeping watch over Middletown Bible Church; He cares for you and I with a love and tenderness which no earthly shepherd can emulate or match because he has loved you from the very beginning and has gathered you together as his flock.
With our eyes fixed on Him, then, we ought to not fret and we ought to not fear. We ought to not be taken by discouragement or despair. We should not ask “how are we to be fed?”, “who will care for us now?”. Instead, we set our gaze on Christ, the preeminent in all things. We say with David from our passage this morning, “The Lord is MY Shepherd, and I shall not want”. We will continue to gather together faithfully and expectantly, trusting our good Shepherd to lead us, provide for us and protect us as he has promised to do for his faithful sheep.
We may find ourselves today without a “Pastor”, so now we look to the one who is “Perfect”. He is not a type or a model. Not a picture or an illustration. He is the fulfilment of all that has gone before and the icon of all who have come after.
Beloved, let’s fix our eyes on Jesus Christ this morning with a new hope and a new confidence that God is not done with Middletown Bible Church. He never gave up on David and he won’t give up on us as long as we remain faithful to follow the Good Shepherd and preach Christ from this pulpit. He has promised that he will come again and finally lead us into a new, forever pasture where we may lay down and which will never go barren and we look forward to that day when we “shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever”.
Before I get into the text, however, I want to address the elephant in the room, which is “how is it that we continue on as a church without a Senior Pastor; without a head shepherd of the flock?”. The answer to that question is quite simple… we DO have a head shepherd of the flock and his name is Jesus. It is him who will carry us through this season and I trust you will see this morning that he has a plan for us all and if we seek to be faithful to him, he will be sure to build us up into the church He wants us to be.
This morning, we will look at the 23rd Psalm, a Psalm of David, and we’ll see that our Good Shepherd, Jesus grants us eternal, abundant life; even in the midst of disappointment and discouragement. In other words, if we can together remain close to Jesus and keep him the center of everything here at MBC, He will cause us to thrive rather than just survive. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use some thriving right about now.
So, If you can turn with me to Psalm 23, we will read our passage together. Some of you may even have it memorized, I’m sure.
Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 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.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
David was no stranger to trials (Much of it he brought on himself too). While he was a deeply flawed man, it was said of him that he was a man after God’s own heart. In the Old Testament, God used circumstances and various men as illustrations or “types” of what was to come in the fullness of time through the person of Jesus Christ.
David, for example, is said to be a ‘Type’ of Christ in so far as some elements of his life as a king would be used by God to illustrate the nature of the coming Messiah. For example, The Messiah, was to be the true king in the line of David in contrast to the king put forth by the people, who was Saul. Saul was selected for his looks, basically, and God said if that’s the king you want, I’ll give him to you and he turned out to be a bad king. David, however, was anointed as king before Saul was ever given the throne, so even though he was technically king after Saul, he was actually chosen by God before Saul which made him the greater king, the “chosen-by-God king”. In the same way, Jesus fills out this picture of David when he ascends to the throne of heaven to be the chosen God-man-king after having done his work on the cross. God had a plan of salvation from before time began and he purposed to raise up Jesus who would bring salvation to his people. David was a picture, but Jesus was the fulfillment.
But David can also be thought of as a ‘type’ for the church, in that he was chosen by God according to His good purpose and will, for no reason other than that he had set his love on him and purposed to use him. It is in this context that we encounter David this morning. David was himself a Shepherd before he became king, an experience the Spirit used to prompt him to write the 23rd Psalm as a picture of how he and God’s people are a lot like sheep who are being led by a great, good Shepherd. David, under the influence of the Spirit, and like other prophets in the Old Testament, often wrote things that he saw as applying to himself, but that the Spirit would show later in New Testament revelation that it actually applied to Jesus.
A good example of that is to look back in Psalm 22 verse 1. If you go back a page or so, you can see David, crying out in his distress and fear, saying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. He goes on to lament how he feels God is far from him and he is restless and feels abandoned. You may recognize that Jesus, 1000 years later, would cry out the same thing when he was abandoned on the cross to die, having been separated from fellowship with the father for the first time in all eternity and taking upon himself the sins of the world. In Psalm 22, we see how David’s turmoil was actually a prophetic look forward to the pain and turmoil that would be suffered by Jesus on the cross as the Holy Spirit gave him a divine peek into the plight of the Savior as he would bleed and die for our sake. Later in Psalms 22 he talks about being poured out like water and having bones out of joint. David writes “they have pierced my hands and feet” in verse 16 and “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots”.
We would recognize all these things as being a foreshadow of the account of the suffering of Christ, but David, personally, was also crying out as a man who suffered greatly and had many enemies. His own son tried to kill him, for example; this after Saul had tried to hunt him down in his youth and so many things in between. David had led such a bloody life, he was not allowed to build the temple because of all the blood he had spilled. Many of the Psalms consist of David simply crying out to God for relief, safety and shelter. We might say that his words in many cases betray a certain hopelessness, except that in almost every instance, David will turn in his distress to praise to God as he seems to suddenly remember that no matter what was happening to him and around him, God was in complete control and would ultimately care for him because he loved God and sought to remain with Him.
This is a lesson that we can take away this morning, that just as David portrays anguish and despair in Psalm 22, he turns to abundant Hope in Psalm 23 as he thinks back to his time as a shepherd and sees in himself the same profound need from his heavenly father that his sheep used to have from him. For us, with all that we have been through most recently, we can look to Psalm 23 to see how abundant hope is found in Jesus Christ, who Peter called the “Shepherd and Overseer of your souls”.
David remembered how deeply the sheep rely on the shepherd for everything they needed to survive. For example, sheep are kind of dense and without a shepherd moving them to different pastures, sheep would eat all the grass where they are and simply starve to death rather than go to try to find another pasture themselves. Sheep are without direction on their own and are prone to wandering into dangerous areas, subjecting them to injury. They would be vulnerable to predators looking for easy prey with no defenses themselves. They would attract and suffer from disease and die in great numbers if the shepherd didn’t treat their wounds. In short, they would be without hope in the world and with a greatly diminished life without their shepherd.
In the same way, we are completely reliant on Jesus, our “good shepherd” according to John 10:11. But Jesus is not content to just provide for our needs, he gives us over and above what we can ask or even imagine when, just like David, we turn from our circumstances to see how God always cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep we begin to see life differently. There is a new beauty to all we go through as helpless little sheep when we remember that our Good shepherd provides abundantly for all our needs.
In fact David shows us four basic ways the Lord provides abundantly for our needs in our passage this morning:
First, The Lord is our provision
Second, The Lord is our guide
Third, The Lord is our protection
And Fourth, The Lord is our Eternal Hope
The Lord is our provision
David writes starting in verse 1 of our passage:
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul.
God’s perfect provision comes to us in abundant pastures, still waters and restoration for the soul.
In John 10:9, Jesus said “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” Elsewhere, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, the life and no one comes to the father but through me”. God provides abundant provision in that he allows us to pasture in the son’s field. There we find unlimited resources to live and thrive as we remain connected to the source of all power, our savior Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel, in chapter 34 foretells how Jesus will provide abundant pasture for his flock when he proclaims “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out” in verse 11. Then picking up in verse 13, he says expands further:
“And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 34:13–15, ESV)
The idea of the sheep laying in green pastures and being led by still waters is the idea of rest for the weary. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Of course, this is a rest that is only provided through knowing the good shepherd. We enter into his rest when we enter the pasture through Jesus. The provision of the pasture is the abundant life he provides through the salvation he offers to anyone who comes to the Father through him. This is a rest that cannot be given from the world, because it is not of this world. Jesus provides his sheep a kingdom rest, a rest that is freely given and perpetually available to his sheep. Hebrews says “let us strive to enter that rest” where we can “rest from our works as God did from his”.
The good grazing land and rich pasture that Ezekiel speaks about and the green pastures and still waters from David, then, is salvation through Jesus Christ where he restores our soul through reconciliation with the Father. Jesus said in John 10:10 about the sheep who would come to him, he said “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”. So if you are feeling like you are only surviving and not thriving this morning, fix your eyes on the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for you so you might have life and have it abundantly. Gaze on him this morning and see that he makes you lie down in green pastures and leads you by still waters. Oh what a wonderful, beautiful shepherd he is.
The Lord is our guide
3b He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Jesus has justified us before the Father. The work accomplished by the shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep is none other than the that of a Holy God determining for himself to redeem a sinful man to himself by the blood of the cross.
Romans 3:25 says:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:23–26, ESV)
Jesus leads us in paths of righteousness in that we are unable to obtain it apart from the blood of his cross. Just like the sheep are fully dependent on the shepherd to guide them from pasture to pasture, we are fully dependent on Jesus to lead us into righteousness as we follow him in faith, submitted to his Lordship and bearing his name, where we are then covered by his righteousness. Like Romans says, we are all sinners, having fallen short of the glory of God, if we aren’t led into righteousness by the shepherd we follow, we would never have a chance to attain it. We would wander like a sheep without a shepherd like you did before you knew Jesus.
If now you bear the name “Christian”, you can be assured that your righteousness, not being your own, is secure in the holiness of Jesus, not as a work you have done yourself, but a work secured on your behalf by your shepherd who went before you into the grave to raise again and call you. Jesus spoke of having a sheep from another fold and unless you are a Jewish believer here today, you are a Christian because your good shepherd called you to himself. You heard his voice and turned from your sin to follow him on a new path… The path of righteousness. Like the sheep trust their shepherd to guide them, we trust our good shepherd to guide us to the Father where he pronounces you “righteous” as He is righteous.
This truth should cause us to thrive as we remember that our righteousness is not in anything we have done and is, instead, secured by our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ through the work he did on the cross to be the propitiation for us.
The Lord is our protection
4 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.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
In David's day, the valley of the shadow of death was an actual valley with high walls where robbers would stalk travelers to relieve them of their possessions. Jesus protects us with an abundance in that as we walk through this world, he guards and keeps his true sheep as a good shepherd, not allowing even one to be lost. In John chapter 6 verse 39 Jesus gives his sheep assurance by saying:
“And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”” (John 6:39–40, ESV)
So for those who have “followed in the paths of righteousness” by placing their trust in Jesus, he says, he will lose not one, but raise it up on the last day. We will see a bit more about that in the next section, but we can see here that for those who’s faith is in the good shepherd, he keeps them secured by the power of God the father who has “given” Jesus a flock and has determined that they will not be lost.
In Jesus’ priestly prayer in John chapter 17, Jesus is praying to the father on behalf of his sheep and again reiterates the security his flock has in the work he was about to do when he prayed in verse 12:
“While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12, ESV)
His protections are sure even in the midst of the world around us and the enemy who is prowling around like a lion looking for some sheep to devour. Satan is a defeated enemy, however, meaning there is safety for those who belong to the good shepherd. The sheep who are kept secure under the shepherds protection are able to sit without fear of what can be done to them. Jesus said in John 17:15:
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” (John 17:15–16, ESV)
While we live in the world awaiting our future glory, we sit at the table of the Son in the presence of our enemies. We are in the world, but not OF the world. We are not what we were but still not what we will be. Jesus’s sheep have been born again and stamped with the Holy Spirit, the downpayment of a future glory, the anointing on all those who attend the marriage supper of the lamb from Rev 19:9.
Once we have been born again, we have been made secure in Christ so that even though we still live in the world (like being seated at a table in the midst of our enemies), our future is secure because Jesus holds the future in the power of his eternal plan of salvation.
When we remember that our protection is found and held in our good shepherd and not in the stupidity of the sheep, we are secure and we can thrive in his abundant protections, secured from anything which might try to steal us away or hurt us. Fixing our eyes on the good shepherd reminds us who we truly are and we trust in him to bring us to full completion in the day of redemption where we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, which brings us to the last division…
The Lord is our eternal hope
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Finally, Jesus provides us with an abundant eternal hope.
We have a hope not only for this life, where we have found goodness in mercy through Jesus Christ, but also for the life to come in glory where we will dwell with him forever.
Peter reminds us how secure our eternal hope is in 1 Peter 1:3-5 when he launches into a doxology praising the assurance we have in the good shepherd to bring about his eternal purpose and keep us until that day. Here is what Peter says:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
Our inheritance is being guarded by “God’s power”, not by any power of man. We thrive in abundant hope when we remember that God is keeping our future inheritance for us. We thrive when we don’t allow ourselves to be swayed by difficulties and controversies that we see before us, but we fix our eyes on what is to be “revealed in the last time”, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading which is being kept… held, secured, where? In heaven… for whom? For YOU!
Beloved, this is what we call a promise, and God’s promises can not be taken back! He is literally unable to take a promise back. Did you know that? Because of God’s unchangeable nature, once he has said that he will do something, he is incapable of changing his mind. Therefore, we maintain an abundant hope in the promises that our good shepherd, who has promised that he will “lose not one but raise us up on the last day “. If he promises it, he will do it and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Revelation 20 calls it “the new Jerusalem”, where John writes:
“And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:22–27, ESV)
So now we come back to today, where we find ourselves in a new season as a church, once again without a Senior Pastor. What can we learn from David’s 23rd Psalm that will encourage us this morning?
Church, in this age, Pastors, Elders, Overseers and Deacons will come and go, rise up and fall. Ministries will spin up and spin down. Programs are started and they fade away. Membership ebbs and flows. Persecutions come and will keep coming, but there is one thing that will never change or diminish and that is the character of the Good Shepherd of the sheep who remains head over all of it and is in control right now, even though it seems so chaotic and scary. Jesus is keeping watch over Middletown Bible Church; He cares for you and I with a love and tenderness which no earthly shepherd can emulate or match because he has loved you from the very beginning and has gathered you together as his flock.
With our eyes fixed on Him, then, we ought to not fret and we ought to not fear. We ought to not be taken by discouragement or despair. We should not ask “how are we to be fed?”, “who will care for us now?”. Instead, we set our gaze on Christ, the preeminent in all things. We say with David from our passage this morning, “The Lord is MY Shepherd, and I shall not want”. We will continue to gather together faithfully and expectantly, trusting our good Shepherd to lead us, provide for us and protect us as he has promised to do for his faithful sheep.
We may find ourselves today without a “Pastor”, so now we look to the one who is “Perfect”. He is not a type or a model. Not a picture or an illustration. He is the fulfilment of all that has gone before and the icon of all who have come after.
Beloved, let’s fix our eyes on Jesus Christ this morning with a new hope and a new confidence that God is not done with Middletown Bible Church. He never gave up on David and he won’t give up on us as long as we remain faithful to follow the Good Shepherd and preach Christ from this pulpit. He has promised that he will come again and finally lead us into a new, forever pasture where we may lay down and which will never go barren and we look forward to that day when we “shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever”.
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