Lately, we've been spending some time in the Psalms, and we're going to, this morning, read a very well-known Psalm, which is Psalm 23. Psalm 23. A Psalm of David. 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 namesake. 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. Our Lord Jesus also referred to this image of a shepherd in John chapter 10, so we're going to read that together as well. John 10, the verses 1 through 21. Here we read as follows. Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the father knows me and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, he has a demon and is insane. Why listen to him? Others said, these are not the words of one who was oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? Our text this morning is the first half of the first verse of Psalm 23. I, or the Lord is my shepherd. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, this morning we're going to spend a little bit of time with Psalm 23. One of the appealing things about this psalm is its simplicity. It's only six verses long, but it has a lot of comfort to offer us. It goes back down to the basics. Even if you're at a place right now where you doubt a lot of things in your life, this psalm is filled with a quiet confidence that you can lean on. And it's well known. It's so well known that occasionally you even find unbelievers who are familiar with some of the thoughts in this psalm. Now most people consider this psalm to be a psalm of comfort. It tells us about the good shepherd, Jesus Christ. But it also tells us about ourselves. It says that we are his sheep. Now most of us would not consider ourselves to be sheep. We like to think more highly of ourselves than that. To be labeled as a sheep, if someone calls you a sheep, it's a pejorative term. You think, for example, of Android phone users who refer to iPhone users as iSheep. It's not a compliment. But this psalm says, yes, we are actually sheep. We are the Lord's sheep, and it is a wonderful thing. But being a sheep comes with certain consequences. This morning we're going to consider what those consequences are. We're going to restrict ourselves only to the first half, of the first verse of the psalm that will already give us a lot to think about this morning. And so I may bring the gospel to you summarized as follows. The Lord is my shepherd. And we'll see that that means three things. It means that I am his sheep, that I belong to his flock, and that I hear his voice. So think about what it means to be to have the Lord as your shepherd. It's one of the first things that this psalm is trying to convey to us is how amazing it is that we are his sheep. We have an amazing shepherd. And you see that sense of amazement reflected in this opening verse. The Lord, the Lord is my shepherd. The one person in the universe who is completely autonomous, who does not depend on anything or on anyone else, who still bound himself in a covenant relationship to his people, who declared himself to be their God and the God of their descendants after them. The Lord, the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in them, who gives life to all things and the multitudes of heaven worship him, that God, is our shepherd. Think about that. Even though I and you and every other human being are no more than dust and ashes, a blip on the chart of history, if even that, and yet it says that the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, is our shepherd. It's an amazing thing that the Lord of heaven would regard human beings like us as his sheep, and disappears even more amazing to us now because we live in the age after the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In a reading from John, he says that he is the good shepherd. In other words, Jesus said, I am the one ultimately to whom Psalm 23 is referring. From a New Testament perspective, Psalm 23 is about our Lord Jesus. And so all of the things that we considered earlier are true about him. Colossians 1 verse 15 through 16 says, By Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or principalities or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And in Hebrews 1 it says that the Son, that is Jesus, has been appointed by the Father to be the heir of all things. It says in Hebrews 1 verse 3 that he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his being. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. So through Jesus, all things were created. By the word of Jesus, all things hold together. And that is, you're a shepherd. So the opening words of this psalm are meant to be read with a sense of marvel. The Lord is my shepherd. You can just imagine David sitting there on a starry night looking up at the heavens and thinking to himself, the Lord is my shepherd. Turn that over in your mind, the Lord is my shepherd. From David's perspective, the Lord is the shepherd par excellence because the Lord acted in history. The Lord is not only the creator, but also the redeemer, the one who led his people out of slavery in Egypt. And that's connected to the shepherd imagery in Psalm 78, verse 52. It says, he led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. He led them in safety so that they were not afraid, but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. No other God had ever done this before. No other God has ever done this since. And there are many other places in the Bible where the Lord is called the shepherd of his people. Now what makes this psalm unique is that David is taking this corporate image, if you will, of the Lord as a shepherd of his people, and he applies it to himself personally. He makes it personal. And that's actually a very important point. David is not trying to lose himself in the crowd. You know, he could have said that the Lord is our shepherd, and it would have still been true. But he doesn't say that. He says, the Lord is my shepherd. So he's not just drifting along with God's covenant people. He's not drifting along with the church community, as we would say today, repeating their confession without making it his own. You know, people do that sometimes. It probably happens more often than we realize, that people will be church members, they repeat the church confessions, but they never really make it their own. They never really have a True saving faith. And David doesn't do that. David says, the Lord is my shepherd. The Lord, the creator of heaven and earth, the covenant God, the judge of all mankind is my shepherd. Now, if you are a child of God, you may repeat that same confession. In John 10 verse 14, the Lord Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own. My own know me. I lay down my life for the sheep. He's serious about his relationship with you, his sheep. He died to redeem his sheep. He died to ransom his sheep from their sins. And he was raised from the dead and he is able to shepherd us today. And so even today we can say those same words, the Lord is my shepherd. So do we realize what a blessing it is to be able to say that? to have the Lord as your shepherd? Think about it. There's this misconception in the minds of many people that, well, if the Lord is your shepherd, that means that you're His slave. You have no freedom of your own. So many people prefer not to have the Lord as their shepherd. Many people prefer to have autonomy. That means that they are a law unto themselves. That's what that word means. Autonomy means that you're a law unto yourself, that you get to decide how to live your life and what to do. And then at the end of it, you can look back and say, I did it my way. So many people prefer autonomy. But what they don't realize is that even if you reject the Lord as your shepherd, you are still a sheep. There's no one on the face of this planet who is completely autonomous. We are all in one way or another sheep, and proof of that is all around you. People come up with the craziest things and call them fashion. Look at the latest clothing, the latest haircuts, the latest music that people are listening to. Every time that the next big thing comes along, whoever or whatever it is, everybody Hops on board and they go along with it. So the question is not whether or not people are sheep. Everybody is sheep. The question is, much more important question, who is your shepherd? You see, the alternative to being a sheep is not autonomy. It's not being your own boss. The alternative is death. Psalm 49 verse 14 puts it so well. It says, like sheep they are appointed for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd. So that is the destiny of sheep who do not have the Lord. Now the word Sheol is pretty flexible in the Old Testament. It can mean different things depending on the context. But surely here the context would be more than just that they go into the grave. In the context of the Psalm, it's looking more broadly than that. Like sheep, they are appointed for death in the ultimate sense of the word, in the sense of eternal destruction, hell. Death shall be their shepherd. That's the destiny of sheep who do not have the Lord. And in the meantime, look at how dysfunctional their life is. Look at how dysfunctional the sheep are who do not have the Lord as their shepherd. Now, of course, God's sheep are not immune from dysfunction either. When the Bible calls us sheep, it's not giving us a compliment. Anyone who has ever owned sheep knows that they are high maintenance to say the least. You cannot leave sheep to themselves. You need to regularly move them along from paddock to paddock or from one place to another. If you don't, they will ruin the grass. They will pull it up by the roots until there's nothing left. And then if you were to leave them there, they would starve. Moreover, sheep are helpless. Sometimes you get sheep that are too heavy, whether from diet or from being pregnant or having too much wool. And then when they roll over, they cannot get up. And a sheep that's left alone like that on a hot day will soon bloat and die. No domesticated animal is more helpless than a sheep. Moreover, sheep are flocking animals, so they go along with the flock. And if you've ever seen a sheep get a fright and run, you see all the other sheep run after it. They run together, and none of the sheep ever stops to ask itself, well, why are we actually running? Because they don't think like that. They're flocking animals. And yet, says this psalm, the Lord is my shepherd. I am his sheep. Think about that. When you consider what the Bible was actually saying here, there's not anything here for us to brag about. And maybe you can relate to that. Maybe you feel pretty low about yourself. Maybe you feel like you're more trouble than you're worth. But remember, the Lord loves his sheep. The Lord is willing to shepherd us through our dysfunctions if we will let him. If we will admit them. But the first thing we need to do then is to humble ourselves before Him and to acknowledge to the Lord that we are no more than sheep. To not be wise in our own eyes. The Lord is willing to shepherd us through our dysfunctions if we're willing to admit them to Him. But if we're not willing to admit that we're sheep, if we don't see ourselves as the Lord's sheep, then what are we if we are not sheep? What are we then? The Bible doesn't regard this as a negative thing that we are God's sheep. It says this is a wonderful thing. David is delighted. The Lord is my shepherd, he says. And from a New Testament perspective, we can see how deep this goes because the Lord Jesus does not consider his sheep to be too much work at all, to be more trouble than they're worth. In fact, did you know that The Lord considers his sheep to be a gift. Micah 7 verse 14 refers to God's people as the flock of his inheritance. So God's sheep are his inheritance to himself. From a New Testament perspective that comes up much more strongly, John 10 verse 29, Christ says, the Father has given the sheep to Him. And He died and He rose from the dead and so the sheep are His inheritance in the true sense of what that word means. The sheep are a gift from the Father to the Son, promised to Him from eternity. In Ephesians 1 verse 4, Paul is writing to believers and he says, God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. So the father promised these sheep to the son, and the son redeemed them. He waited for them to be born in time, then he called them, and because they are his sheep, they come to him. One writer on Psalm 23 put it this way. He said, if you can say today the Lord is my shepherd, you are saying it because God said from eternity, my sheep. So what this means is that the shepherd is willing to put in the time for the sheep. He is our shepherd. He's committed to being our shepherd from the foundation of the world. He is not running a hobby farm. He's not keeping a few sheep on the side because he enjoys that sort of thing. This is literally a life and death matter to him. He knows his sheep with all of their weaknesses. He couldn't give more For them and to them that he has, he is their shepherd and he loves them. But the question then becomes, if the Lord is my shepherd, am I living as his sheep? Or am I living in sin? Because those are the only two options. Either you live as his sheep or you live in sin. And remember, sin is autonomy. Sin is literally to be a law unto yourself. instead of following the law of God. But a Christian, on the other hand, lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ and follows Him. John 10 verse 14 says that he goes before them and the sheep follow him. Is that you? Do you personally respect God's complete and total ownership over your life as His sheep? After all, the Lord is your shepherd. You said that, didn't you? So the Lord is your shepherd. That means you are his sheep. It also means you belong to his flock. We'll look at that next. The thing that you need to realize about sheep is that they are flocking animals. You never see a shepherd in the ancient Near East leading only one sheep. And here in Australia, it's never recommended to have to keep one sheep on its own. Sheep are flocking animals. They need each other. And in the ancient Near East, they were led in a flock as well. And we lose sight of that sometimes, this idea of the flock as part of our identity. We tend to live in a very individualistic age. We are not immune to that spirit of individualism. As a result, we focus very much on our personal relationship with the shepherd. Even if you're a believer, it's possible to focus very much on your personal relationship with God and not really give a whole lot of thought to the flock or to that relationship in the context of the flock. Yet if the Lord really is my shepherd, it means I belong to his flock. I am one of many that Christ died for. He died for them as he did for me and he loves his flock. He decreed that his sheep should live and should graze together. In John 10 verse 16, he says there will be one flock, one shepherd, and that implies that it is God's will that there be a flock and that the flock live together. It is actually a serious warning against individualistic Christianity in those words. So we see that from time to time, that there are Christians who want to have the Lord as their shepherd, but they want nothing to do with the other sheep. And our text makes us realize we do not have the right to do that. And the rest of Scripture warns us against going off on our own. Think, for example, of Proverbs 14, verse 12. It says, there is a way that seems right to a man. You could say there is a way that seems right to a sheep. But in the end, it leads to death. Do not leave the flock. You cannot say the Lord is my shepherd and then withdraw yourself from his flock. So if the Lord is my shepherd, it affects how I think about the other sheep. I need to be very careful about how I think and about how I talk about the flock because these are the sheep that Christ died for. Do you really have the right to be angry with them? Do you really have the right to speak about them disrespectfully? Sometimes people say very negative things about the church or its members. What gives us the right to talk in that way about our fellow sheep? What gives us the right to talk like that about the people that Christ died for? The word of God calls us to go even further than that. which says don't just tolerate the sheep, you have to love the sheep. Calls us to love the flock and to love our fellow sheep. In fact, love is the litmus test for whether we belong to the flock to begin with. 1 John 3 verse 14 says, we know that we have passed out of death into life because of what? Because we love the brothers. The brothers and sisters, whoever does not love abides in death. So the question is, do I love the flock? Do I love Christ's sheep? Do I love worshiping with them? Do I love fellowshipping with them? Do I love it for more than just the social benefits? Do I love these people as my brothers and sisters in Christ? That's the question we should ask ourselves And if I don't love them, is it because I don't really believe that the Lord is my shepherd? Now it could be that you want to be part of the flock, but you simply feel that you don't belong. There can be various reasons for that. Maybe you feel that others have it all together and you don't. Or you're stuck in your own head. You feel like no one can relate what you're going through. Maybe sometimes you don't feel anything at all. And you know, that can't be true. But surely, we would not put our feelings or our lack of feelings above what the Lord says to us. Because in this Psalm, the Lord says, you, I, we are part of his flock. If you have faith, you are part of his flock. So what does it mean then to have faith? Well it means that you believe that Christ is your shepherd, that you live accordingly. But what if you feel like you don't belong? Now it's painful, but don't believe it. Do you remember the definition of faith? Hebrews 11 verse one. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Perhaps not only the conviction of things not seen, but also the conviction of things not felt. It could be that your desire to feel is maybe a little bit like a desire to see. And God's people in the past did not see, but they believed. They believed that they belonged to his flock. And the psalm says to us, if the Lord is our shepherd, we may believe the same thing. If the Lord is my shepherd, I am his sheep. I belong to his flock. And then there's one more thing, I hear his voice. What is that voice? Well, first and foremost, the voice of God is that he is heard when he speaks. When does God speak? Well, in the time of David, he spoke through the law or the prophets or both. In Exodus 19 verse 5, right before the giving of the Ten Commandments, the Lord speaks to his people and he says, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. So the Lord speaking here is connected to his saying that he is their God and giving them his law then also to follow. So here the voice of God is something that is to be obeyed. God's speech, the words spoken by God's voice, have been recorded for us to obey. God's voice is not some sort of mystical inner feeling that guides you in making your day-to-day decisions. That's not God's voice. God's speech, his speaking, is recorded for us here. It's not meant to be kept to only a select number of people. It is given to each and every one of us. God's voice is recorded for us and God's voice is to be obeyed. But then remember, the promise always comes before the obligation. It is so important for us to remember this. You do not become His sheep by hearing His voice. You hear His voice because you are His sheep. And because you are His sheep, you follow Him. You keep God's commandments because He first came and said to you, I am the Lord, your shepherd. And then there's purpose to your life. Then you have an eternal perspective. Then you have something to guide and to structure your life. So what's the alternative to that? What's the alternative to God or to his word? Well, the alternative is living for the day-to-day. The alternative is going from one experience to the next. And Christians can be guilty of this as well. We can be very guilty of falling into the trap of living for the next big thing, whatever that is. The next big deal, the next big buy, the next big vacation, the next big home, the next big shopping trip, the next big you name it. These things don't have to be bad in and of themselves and often they are gifts that the Lord gives to us. but they cannot guide our lives and we should never be at a point where we are not able to turn around and walk away from it all. If we are living from one experience to the next, if that is what gives our life structure and meaning, we are actually living out of a secular attitude. Instead our text says, the Lord is my shepherd. I am his sheep, I belong to his flock, I hear his voice. So how do you hear that voice? By exposing yourself to it regularly. You cannot have His word abiding in you if you don't listen to it faithfully. That means immersing yourself in the word, reading it regularly, hearing it, memorizing it, coming to church prepared to be spoken to, letting the word conform you, enter your mind, shape you. And the only way to do that is to work with it. So work with the word. Don't be afraid, for example, to put up your hand and to write an intro for club. Sometimes people shy back from that because they're afraid they won't live up to the challenge. But if you do that, you are missing an opportunity. Be drawn into the word, work with it. Let it challenge you and stretch you. The problem is not everybody wants to be stretched or challenged, but that comes with consequences. We are never neutral when it comes to the word. And everything that we do or don't do comes with a consequence. So why do some people have vibrant spiritual lives and others don't? Why do some people seem to care deeply about spiritual matters while others are indifferent? It's because those who care spend time in the word. If you want the word to grab you, you need to come within its reach. Don't hold back. Don't put in a nominal effort and expect amazing results. That's like buying a weightlifting set and then putting it in your shed. That's not how you put on muscle. You need to use it. You need to work with it. Sometimes you wonder why is there so much lack of discernment in the church today? Why are so many Christians watching things that they should not be watching? Going places they should not be going. Doing things they ought not to do. Why is it so hard for the sheep to listen to the shepherd's voice? Because we are drowning it out with other things. We're far more familiar with those other things. We never seem to lack time for those other things. You know what those other things are. You don't need me to spell them out for you. We know what they are in our own lives and they eat up our time. They're always trying to keep up. It's like running on a treadmill. You're running like crazy, but you stay in the same spot. You can keep on doing that. You can run as hard as you want, but you're never going to get ahead. You'll never come to a place of being finished. You'll never find peace. And Psalm 23 says, turn away from all of that. It says to us, the Lord is our shepherd. It leads us to confess that I am a sheep. I belong to his flock. I hear his voice and he's calling me. He's calling you. He's calling us to hear him and to follow him. He's calling us into another week. So rejoice that you are a sheep. Be glad that you belong to his flock. Eagerly hear his voice for he has called you by name and he will lead you out. Amen.