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.