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He deserves all the credit, all
the glory, all the praise. It's for His glory, right? Well,
I'm thankful tonight that I have a shepherd. I was thinking, what
am I going to preach on Wednesday night? I was thinking about,
you know, usually you go to a psalm or a place and everything give
thanks, or you talk about having a grateful heart. And then the
Lord began to impress upon my heart, what better topic than
to be grateful tonight that we have someone to care for us.
Someone who loves us. Somebody who leads us, but doesn't
just lead us, but journeys with us. I want you to look if you
would at Psalm 23 and I'm going to go very quickly and get us
out to have some pie. I'm going to keep us all night.
You say a lot in about 15 minutes. I don't get used to it. Psalm
23 verse number 1. I'm not sure what your outline
looks like tonight. If it doesn't match mine, we'll
be okay. I think it will. I just may not hit all the points,
okay, because I've only got 15 minutes. Notice the Lord. We could just stop there, couldn't
we? The Lord is my shepherd. Could I just say tonight that
I don't have any shepherd. If you're saved tonight, you
don't have any shepherd. The Lord is your shepherd. The
Lord. The God of the universe. The
Creator of heaven and earth. The great I Am. The God who's
always enough. The God who can. The Lord is
my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still
waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth
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 Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup, Runneth over, surely, goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever." What a statement! This pearl of Psalms, sweetest
song ever sung, David takes upon his inspired lips to tell us
tonight of our great Shepherd. We learn that He was a personal
Shepherd. A personal Shepherd. The Lord
is my Shepherd. That word, my, speaks of a relationship. And not only is it a relationship,
and I've got good news for you tonight. If you don't know Him,
if He's not your shepherd, if you have any doubt whatsoever
of where you're going to spend eternity, the Lord, the Good
Shepherd, gave His life for you. He died as a substitute, took
your sin, my sin, upon Himself, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish. but have everlasting life. Say,
preacher, I don't have to give anything up to be saved. Absolutely
not. You have to receive Christ in order to be saved. A lot of
times people say, you've got to do this, you've got to do
that. Listen, it's already been done. Here's what I learned.
When I got saved, it turned me away from those things. Turning
to Him turns me away from that. You can't live it till first
of all you trust Him. You know Him as Savior. He enables
you to live it. Then He's my resource. I shall
not want. There's not a need in our lives
that He doesn't already know and hasn't already covered. We
may not have experienced it yet. We may still be praying for it,
but He already has it. He's already sufficient. Then
we learn that he was a providing shepherd. Verse 2, that he maketh
me... Sheep don't lie down on their
own. He maketh them. He leadeth them. Sheep, by their
very nature, are fidgety animals. They don't lie down. They're easily agitated and things
easily upset them. Sort of sounds like us, doesn't
it? And so the shepherd makes them. He creates an atmosphere
in which they can lay down. They're made to lay down. And
aren't you glad that God can bring comfort and peace to our
noisy soul that He can lead us by the waters of rest. I don't
know about you, but I need the Lord's rest. Don't you? He satisfies
us and He restores us. He restoreth my soul. And prone
to wonder, the hymn writer said, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave
the God I love. I'm glad that when we wonder,
He doesn't leave us out there, that He leaves the ninety and
nine and goes after the sheep that was lost. Isn't that a blessing?
And then we learn that He directs us in right paths. But as the
shepherd continues to lead their sure paths, their safe paths,
their satisfying paths, when you come to verse number 4, they're
sorrowful paths. Because we're going to find that
there's times in life when we follow the shepherd and it's
going to lead to times of grief and sorrow and heartache and
pain, and I must remember that even then he's still leading
me. Because he is a present shepherd. Number 3. When you come to verse
number 4, you're at the middle verse of the psalm. You're at
the halfway point. The word yea is a connector.
It's a bridge that links verses 3 and 4 together. The same One
who leads us in right paths, paths of righteousness, is the
same One that leads us when we enter the valley times of life.
We enter those times and we need to remember that we've come to
this place because of the shepherds leading, because He's allowed
us to come to this dark, difficult time in our lives. Can I help
us to understand, just because something is dark and difficult
does not mean that God is not still good, because He is. It's
hard for us at times to see that. Sometimes the darkness, the difficulty,
the depth, it hides us from who our Shepherd really is. That He's good and He's faithful
and He's merciful and He's loving and He's kind. Sometimes we can
lose sight of that. We can. Times that Satan slanders
us and tells us that our God's not good and that somehow He's
made a mistake and somehow that if He really loved us, we wouldn't
be where we are. But can I help you understand
that no matter how deep your valley, no matter how dark it
may seem in your life, may I remind you that it has not changed who
your Shepherd is. He's still all of those things.
They're just clouded from view. I want to share with you three
key words that were shared with me in this particular psalm.
They sort of just jumped out. Its first one is the word, though.
It's a word of possibility. It's a reminder that all of us
are going to enter the valley times of life. It's not a matter
of if but when. You know, many of the people
that were up here tonight, almost all of them, that came through
here and they had a cardboard testimony, it was because of
a deep valley in their lives. It was because they had entered
a time in their life that they necessarily didn't want to enter.
They didn't sign up for it. but God allowed it to come into
their lives and through His leading they entered a time of grief
or difficulty or hardship. The Bible says, my brethren,
count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations or trials.
Corrie ten Boom who spent a portion of her life in a Nazi concentration
camp for hiding Jews from the Nazis says, there are no accidents
in the life of the child of God, only plans. We have an all-wise
and loving Shepherd that's in control of our lives. He's the
Good Shepherd. Don't forget that. He's the Good
Shepherd. And He's not going to allow anything
into our lives that are not for our good. And that doesn't mean
that it is good, that we see it as good, but yet we understand
that because God can take all the bitter, the sweet, the ups,
the downs, and He melds them together, He works them together
for our good. We don't understand all of that.
That's why He's God. TONIGHT. But I remind us, they're not
without purpose. Andrew Murray, going through a time of deep
personal trial one morning, was eating breakfast and the hostess
of the house told him, knocked on his door and said, Mr. Murray,
there's a woman downstairs that is going through a great trial
of affliction. She wants to know if you have any advice for her.
And by that time, Andrew Murray, that great writer of the 19th
century, handed her a piece of paper that he'd been writing
on and said, give her this advice. I'm writing down for myself.
It may be that she'll find it helpful. He said, in time of
trouble, say, first, He brought me here. It is by His will I
am in this straight place and that I will rest. Next, He will
keep me here in His time and will give me grace in this trial
to behave as His child. Then say, He will make the trial
a blessing, teaching me lessons. He intends me to learn, working
in me the grace He means to bestow. And then say, at last, in His
good time, He can bring me out again. How and when, He knows.
Therefore I say, I am here, number one, by God's appointment, number
two, in His keeping, number three, under His training, and number
four, for His time." Aren't you glad that God works in our lives
and that He's faithful? And somebody said that whenever
He places in the furnace of affliction that His hand is on the thermostat
and His eye is always on the clock. He doesn't allow us in
the furnace of affliction one second longer than necessary
to accomplish His divine purposes. in our lives. Notice the next
word I want you to look at and underline in your text. Yea,
though. That's possibility. I walk through
that certainty. There we place the emphasis about
being in the valley. The shepherd places the emphasis
on going through the valley. Do you realize a valley by its
very nature is not a dead end? It's a passageway. It has an
opening on both ends. If you enter the valley, you're
going to come out on the other side. I love what one writer said.
He said, California may have a death valley, but Psalm 23
doesn't. This is not the valley of death. It's the valley of
the shadow of death. Death is not in that valley, but merely
its shadow. And may I say that when you and
I go through the furnaces of affliction in our lives, may
I remind us that if there is a shadow, then there must be
light in that valley. And I'm so glad, dear friend,
that we talk about dark valleys and deep valleys, but can I tell
you there's always a light in that valley. And it's the light
of my Savior that will see me through. You never travel through
these valleys alone. We go through it. We don't stay
in them. We don't camp in them. We don't
abide in them. We don't dwell in them. They
don't last forever. We come through on the other
side. Matter of fact, the good news is that the very One who
has led us in the valley will lead us through the valley. Isn't
that a blessing? Here's the passageway to a brighter path ahead. Look
at verse number 5. Thou preparest a table before
me. That's not the end of it. You say, Bridger, you don't understand.
This involved the loss of life. I do understand that. That the
Lord here is talking about the struggles and the trials of life.
And then there's coming a day that barring the rapture that
we're going to enter the valley of the shadow of death. But it's
just a reminder. That's still just a passageway to a brighter
day ahead for the children of God. Can I just remind us that
right now our lives aren't hopeless, they're hope-filled. Number one
is though possibility. Letter B is through certainty.
Can I give you the last one and we're done? He said, Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, no distress, misery, injury, calamity. Why? For thou art with me. See, in
the valley of the shadow of death, the sheep faced constant danger
from falling off a precipice to wild animals to thieves to
robbers. They needed courage. Not to fight
the lion or to beat off the robbers. Sheep are helpless. They don't
have anything to fight with. They needed courage to trust the shepherd.
And you know what I found? That when I enter the valleys
and the trials of life, that's the courage I need. I need the
courage to trust my shepherd. Fear will paralyze you. Faith
will mobilize you. David said, during the valley
times of life, I will not fear. Why? Because thou, deity, art
with me. Did you notice the change in
pronouns from he and me to I and thou? He leads me. He maketh
me. He restores my soul. Now it's
that I will fear no more. Thou art with me. Did you see
that? It's now I and me at this point.
It's even more intimate. It's even more personal. In the
most difficult moments of a sheep's life, it's when it's closest
to the Shepherd. The Shepherd is before us in
verses 2 and 3. He's leading us, but when you
come to the valley, verse number 4, He's with us. I will never
leave thee nor forsake thee. Our good Shepherd is never closer
to us than when we hurt. The Lord Jesus said, let not
your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in Me. You trust God, trust Me. He didn't say, understand Me.
He didn't say, figure Me out. He didn't say, feel Me. He said,
trust Me. How we need to learn to practice
the presence of God. Well, we have His promises, don't
we? Let's look at one last thing and I'm done. Thy rod and thy
staff, they comfort Me. I'm thankful for the rod and
I'm thankful for the staff. The rod was a little club. It
was a club about two and a half foot long. It had a knob on the
end of it, usually made out of oak. But it wasn't for the sheep.
You say, Pritchard, what was it for? It's for the enemies.
That's what it was for. It was to deal with the lions
and the bears and the robbers. That's what that club was for.
Boy, he said, thy rod comforts me, and the shadows might lurk
a lion or a bear, might lurk an enemy, but my shepherd will
defend me. Isn't that a blessing? Aren't
you glad for how many times the Bible says that God will fight
for us? Isn't that encouragement? And the staff. That's what we
think of most of all when you think about the shepherd's tools.
The rod normally hung from a leather belt on his side. The staff was
in his hand. We call it the shepherd's crook,
about six to seven foot long. It was a long slender sapling
that had a crook on the end of it that had been dried and it
had become the walking stick. But oh, it was so much more than
that. While the club was for the enemies and it defended the
sheep, the crook was for the sheep and it comforted them.
Oh, they could fall off a precipice and the shepherd could take the
crook and lift the sheep back up onto the safety of the path. There would be times that the
sheep would begin to stray and he would take it and he would
the sheep with the staff and corrected it and bring it back
into the fold lest it stray to a place of danger. There would
be times that He would take that as the sheep passed into the
fold at night and He would count the sheep making sure that all
the sheep were there. There were times when they would
be going through the deep passageways that is the valley of the shadow
of death And there would be darkness. There would be clouds. There
would be fog. There's times the sheep couldn't see the way. And there's when the shepherd
would take the crook and he would tap the path. And when they couldn't
see, they could hear him. And they knew the shepherd was
there. My sheep hear my voice. And I know them. And they follow
me. There's times in life I haven't
always been able to see the shepherd. But I can hear his voice. Thy rod, Thy staff, they comfort
me." Dear child of God tonight, there's so many things that we
could be thankful for. We could sit down and count our
many blessings and name them one by one. But there's no greater
blessing than to know that you have a shepherd. to be able to say with confidence
and assurance, the Lord is my Shepherd. If we didn't have anything
else to thank God for tonight, we could thank Him that number
one, we're His sheep, and number two, that He's our Shepherd.
That blesses me. God's good, isn't He? What a
wonderful God.
The Lord Is My Shepherd -Part 2
Series Treasures From The Psalms
The Lord Is My Shepherd | Psalm 23 | Pastor Kevin Broyhill
| Sermon ID | 11232212541583 |
| Duration | 16:42 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | Psalm 23 |
| Language | English |
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