Good morning. Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 23. Psalm 23. It's probably a psalm that you don't even need to look down at your Bible. You probably know it by heart, most of you. But you may not know, I didn't know this until recently, that the second psalm is, I'm sorry, the 23rd psalm is a second psalm in a group of three. Psalm 22 describes Jesus the suffering servant, dying for the sins of his sheep. Psalm 23 describes Jesus as the good shepherd of the sheep, tending them. Psalm 24 describes Jesus as the reigning king, receiving his sheep into glory. If you haven't yet trusted in Jesus as your savior, Unless he is your shepherd, the beautiful poetry of Psalm 23, which you probably know by heart, will be nothing more to you than a beautiful painting to admire. The shepherd described in the Psalm is not a work of fiction. He is the living God. He is the savior of our souls. He is the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep. Let's begin reading Psalm 23, verse one. 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. As you read this, you can even emphasize the word he. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. 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. Let's pray. Father, these beautiful words. are words that are impossible to understand unless we are your sheep. I pray, Lord, for any soul here today that is not your sheep yet, that does not know you, that you would speak to them, Lord, and that you would draw them to yourself, that they would hear your voice and come to you. We pray that you would guide my lips as I preach your word this morning, that they would be your words and not mine. In Jesus' name, amen. I won't have time to explore every word and phrase in the psalm. And I apologize if there's any part of the psalm that is precious to you that I don't hit on today. There is just so much here. But I encourage you to meditate on this at home. And I'm gonna jump around a little as we go through this. You might notice there's parts where I'm not going sequentially, verse by verse. That's just the way that the Lord was ministering to my heart as I went through this. And you've probably heard some really good sermons on how shepherds in the Middle East tend their sheep. And I'm not going to get into all that today. The Lord has ministered to my heart, and I think I know that there's a lot of people in this congregation who are really suffering right now, who have lost loved ones, who are sick. And I think the Lord intends to minister to your hearts. Many people think David wrote this psalm as a young man, but I don't think he did. I think it bears the marks of someone who has walked with God for a very long time. He has been down many dark valleys. He has also had his soul refreshed many times. He's been led into green pastures by his shepherd. Through all these things, David's heart didn't grow hard toward God. It grew softer. It grew more fond of the Lord. And you'll notice that. You'll notice that amongst dear saints who have been walking with God for many, many years, his hope is not diminished. For all that he's gone through, it is only increased with the passage of time. He begins the psalm saying, the Lord. And if you know anything about Hebrew at all, you'll know that that word Lord is Yahweh. It is the name of the Lord God Almighty who is and who reigns forever. It's not the name of Baal. It's not the name of any of the pagan gods around whom David was surrounded. It was Yahweh. The Lord is my shepherd. You can emphasize each word in this statement and it means something very different and very powerful. Spurgeon regarded the word my as the most important word in this entire psalm. because it reflects the personal and intimate relationship that David had with his Lord. And he is your Lord, too. Every one of you who has been called by him, even if you don't know him very well, you belong to him. You are his and he is yours. The Lord is my shepherd. David was a shepherd. He knew what being a shepherd was. He knew what tending sheep was. He's saying, the Lord is my shepherd. David had been king of Israel for a very long time, I think, by the time he wrote this, shepherding the people of Israel. He began as a shepherd of sheep, and then he became the shepherd of Israel. But the Lord was David's shepherd, and he is your shepherd. The Lord is not a cattle driver. He doesn't drive the sheep with a cattle prod. He's also not distant, unfeeling, unknowing. He's not an impersonal king on a distant planet. He's powerful. He's personal. He's knowable. He's recognizable. He's caring. He's loving. He's all wise. He's all powerful. He's always present. He's always faithful. Notice that David's speaking directly to him. He knows that God hears him. He is our shepherd king. Therefore, because he is my shepherd, I shall have need of nothing. If you're young here, you might think, what do you mean I do not want him? It's an old English phrase. It means I have need of nothing. If God is my shepherd, if Yahweh is my shepherd, I have need of nothing. And just think also, David is looking back. David is looking back, and he's telling us that God had provided for him. And because God had provided, he knew God will continue to provide. This wasn't theoretical to David. It's not just a beautiful phrase that we say at a funeral. It's real, God is real. He is the God who is, the God who is our shepherd. He's telling us what he knows is true. Even in the midst of times when David was being disciplined, He knew God was his shepherd. And we'll get into that. As I said, I've never met a godly saint. Actually, I didn't say this yet. I've never met a godly saint who complained about the trials that there are going through and that there have been through. I even ran into one this morning with a smile on her face. A couple weeks ago, we were at a wedding, and I ran into a man that I knew 30 years ago. I used to work for him in a restaurant. His name is Lance. Lance is filled with joy. Let me tell you a little bit about Lance. You wouldn't think he was anything special if you met him, but Lance came within seconds of dying. He was in a hospital for months. He had a wife and kids. He had a restaurant to take care of. And suddenly he was completely incapacitated, had cancer. And he went through chemo treatments and it brought him within Inches of dying, really. He had to go through a bone marrow transplant. If you know anything about that, they don't know if it's gonna work or not when they're doing it. It could go either way. And the chemo had brought him, it had destroyed everything in his body, all of his ability to fight infections. And he saw this bone marrow transplant, it was happening. And he knew, if this doesn't work, I'm gone. And he told me that during those hours and weeks that he laid there in the hospital bed, the Lord ministered to his soul greater than any other time in his life. And you could see the joy in his eyes. He told me, I wouldn't trade a second of it because the Lord had made himself known to him. He's just a guy working in a restaurant out in Iowa. Why does God care about any of us? It's not just the great people of this world that God knows and cares about, it's every single one of us. He told me, and of course I'm speaking to him, so of course he survived. I don't know if you know this, I didn't know this, but it's extremely rare for a family member to be someone that can help you with your bone marrow transplant. It's almost impossible. But it just so happened that two of his sons qualified, which is miraculous. And during the time that he was laying there in this bed, he never missed a single mortgage payment because all of his friends gathered around him and raised enough money to pay all of his bills for the year. God took care of him. So he looks back and he can tell you, the Lord is my shepherd. He knows the Lord is his shepherd and he's not scared of what's to come either because he's already been through it. He's not scared of what's to come. When young, when we are young, we worry that we'll have enough to live on. We worry that we're going to make enough money. I'm not going to get the right job or whatever. Meredith and I often joke that when we have a lot of money in the bank, something bad's about to happen. It's uncanny. But then after I say that, I'm pierced in my heart because I know that God is preparing me for what's to come, preparing our family. He provides every single time. I'm not a rich man. monetarily. But in Christ, every single one of us is rich in Christ. And we are inheritors of eternal life. We are inheritors of something that cannot be taken away from us. That's eternal. And let me say this, God is not worried about whether or not we survive, whether or not we get our bills paid. God's not worried about it. God created this world. He created us. He is not concerned. He has a plan for each one of us. Yahweh is our shepherd. He will provide what we need both physically and spiritually. It's always helpful to read what old faithful believers went through. It gives us a little perspective when we are struggling. In the early 1800s, excuse me, I'm gonna have to read parts of this because I didn't memorize it. In the early 1800s, there was a missionary family. You've probably heard of them. The first Americans to travel overseas, this is taken from the International Missions Board website. After studying through seminary and becoming ordained for the gospel ministry, Adoniram Judson and his wife Nancy traveled to Burma, which is Southeast Asia. Adoniram was extremely well-educated even before his seminary training. He graduated at age 19 as valedictorian from his class at Brown University. In Burma, they worked hard to learn the language and culture. Adoniram was the first to translate the Bible into Burmese, edited several dictionaries and scripture interpretation tools for Burmese Christians, and authored and translated numerous tracts on a variety of theological and devotional topics. But their home, their new home was a very difficult place to live. Lots of diseases, wars. The Judsons were frequently acquainted with sickness, serious illness, much suffering and death. They lost three children in Burma. Imagine losing three children. After falling gravely ill, Nancy spent two years in America, convalescing away from her husband. Two years. Shortly after Nancy returned to Burma, war broke out between Burma and England. In 1824, the Burmese emperor imprisoned nearly all Western men as presumed spies for the British government, including Adoniram. He was brutally bound and dragged from his home in front of his family. He left his weary wife at home nursing their infant child. He spent 19 months in prison in appalling conditions. that few were able to survive. There was one point at which he was with a group of British soldiers. Only one of them survived, along with Adoniram. If you can imagine the World War II soldiers, what they endured under the Japanese, that's kind of what it was like. In 1824, I'm sorry, but that was the beginning of his sorrows. Although he was released toward the end of the war, that same year, Nancy died of smallpox. Adoniram, emotionally shattered and physically unwell himself, struggled to provide adequate care for his two-year-old daughter, Maria. Six months later, she died. Adoniram later wrote the immense sorrow of losing both his wife and his daughter in such a short span, noting Maria's death as the final blow after years of relentless hardship. Stricken with grief, he walked carelessly into a tiger-infested jungle and stayed there for 40 days, eating little besides rice rations. During that time, he dug his own grave. and spent much time staring into it, contemplating death. The locals who saw him entering the jungle were surprised when he walked out of it. They expected him to be eaten. During that dark time, the Lord who hadn't left him, ministered to him. and restored his soul. After emerging from the darkness, the Lord blessed Adoniram with a decade of evangelistic fruitfulness, especially among the tribal Karen people who lived in that jungle. Of those dark times, he said later, if I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." The apostle Paul saw things in heaven that no one had seen before. And so he says, to keep me from being conceited. Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in my side. A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited. How well this expresses the same thing that David wrote in Psalm 23. Verse four, 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. Like Judson, David also lived in the valley of the shadow of death. He was hunted like a dog for years. Forced to live in caves. I don't know if you've been to Israel, but if you've been in the desert of Israel by the Dead Sea, it is hot and it is dry and water is very scarce. David was driven into this wilderness. He had to provide for his men. You remember at one point his men sacrificed or they risked their lives just to give him a drink of water. And once they even ate the showbread in the tabernacle. And what happened to the priests that gave him the showbread? Saul killed all of them. The valley of the shadow of death followed David everywhere he went. Taking the throne of Israel meant that his best friend had to die in battle because he was in line for the throne. hated by his own countrymen, slandered and ridiculed by them for most of his life. So when we read later in the Psalm that he feasted in the presence of his enemies, that's what he's talking about. And perhaps worst of all, He experienced the sorrow and the consequences of his own sin that he brought upon himself and his family. He says in Psalm 51, let the bones that you have broken rejoice, speaking to the Lord. After his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, he suffered the loss of his firstborn son, newborn son. And his own sons committed fornication in front of all Israel. His own son, one of his most beloved, Absalom, tried to usurp the throne from him. And then you had David's prideful census. Toward the end of his life, when you think he would have learned by now that God was the giver of all good things, David was a man like us. He got prideful again. He took a census of the people, and 70,000 men of Israel died as a result of it. David's entire life was filled with suffering from his youth to the day he died. But looking back on his life in Psalm 23, he does not say that the Lord forsook him. He doesn't look back thinking, God was kind of a mean, he was kind of a despot, wasn't he? No, he calls him his shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. He confesses with joyful anticipation of what is to come, the feast that he will have in glory because the Lord is his shepherd. He says, back at the beginning, for you are with me. There's not a hint of bitterness. This is a humbled sinner saved by grace. This is where the Lord is taking us. In the 12 years before Adoniram Judson went through his deep suffering, he had only seen 18 converts to the faith for all that work, all the sacrifice. He had arrived in Burma when there were no known native Burmese Christians or established churches. By the time of his death, when he was, I believe he was 51, I don't remember what the exact age was. The time of his death, there were over 8,000 believers. I think 8,000 Baptists, probably means there was a lot more than that in the country, many of whom were from that very same tiger-infested jungle where he had gone. By 2006, the country of Myanmar, Burma, had the third largest number of Baptists worldwide. This type of fruitfulness cannot be experienced by prideful men. God has to take us through these dark valleys in order that he might bless us, in order that he might bless others through us. The glory of these things cannot be received before first being humbled. So we can think trials. Trials are a vehicle through which God reveals his glory to us. Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to bear. We might not see 8,000 people come to the Lord through us. That's a unique experience. But there's other ways in which God blesses us, in which God blesses others through us. And our hearts become prideful and conceited unless He humbles us first. This is not true of Satan's followers. I don't know if you've noticed this. Satan's followers often get everything they want, and sometimes we wonder, why aren't they suffering? He gives them what they want in order to enslave them to sin, that they might worship him instead of God. The devil's slaves believe that they are free. They freely follow their own desires, blindly following the masses into hell where they will be tormented forever. Do not be jealous of them when you're suffering. Satan isn't satisfied with his followers. He also sends wolves in among God's sheep to harass them. He likes to make us weary and to groan and to wish we were not belonging to our shepherd. He likes to make us distrustful of our shepherd. He likes to make us unfruitful. But remember that Christ has a purpose for all these things. It is leading us to glory. Yahweh makes his sheep lie down in green pastures. Jeremiah 56 says, My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray. They have turned them away on the mountains. They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their resting place. We are prone to wander like sheep. We may resist the nudges from his staff as he gets us to go in the right way. We might forget our resting place. But what does the shepherd do? He makes me lie down in green pastures. If you're like me, I'm a bit of a workaholic. Maybe some of you are like that. There come times when God will force you to rest. You will come to the end of yourself. And when he does, He will do this to you. You might get sick, you might get burned out and tired. The Lord means to bring you to rest. We are finite creatures. Even the Lord took time away to pray. In Luke 5, 16, it says that He often left the crowds and went off into the wilderness to pray. Don't be afraid to do this. Don't feel guilty about taking a day. It seems like, didn't the Lord give us a day every week that we should rest? How many of us actually take advantage of that? I am guilty of not doing that. I confess that to you. It's a sin in my life. The Lord is weeding it out of me. Last year, a good friend of mine expressed concern to me that I might be doing too much, expressed concern that I wasn't going to be able to keep this up, and I didn't listen to him, and I got burned out. I would encourage all of you to take time to rest. Take time for your souls. Don't feel guilty. Go to the Lord. Seek Him. Don't just spend it watching TV and on social media. Go before the Lord. Seek rest in Him. But isn't the primary meaning here that He leads us to rest in Him and His righteousness? He says, come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Weary from what? Weary from seeking righteousness through works. All of us are prone to doing this. He makes us lie down. I'm telling you that when the Lord got a hold of my heart, I was seeking to find rest through my works. That's what I was doing. And the Lord got through to me. He made me lie down in green pastures. He restores our souls. How my own soul was made weary in my youth, seeking peace through service to God, through music or relationships. I knew deep down I needed him, but I sought it everywhere else but him. He made me lie down. I used to have suicidal thoughts, constant bouts of fear and depression, wandering the hills of this life like a wandering sheep. Maybe you guys are like this. One day, the skies opened, and He revealed Himself to me. And I pray that He does that for each of you, if He hasn't already. Salvation is entirely the work of God, that He may receive the glory. He makes me lie down in green pastures. The Christian life is not over when we rest in Him. There is much more. He leaves me beside still waters. My favorite sound, I don't know if my kids ever hear this, but sometimes when I'm stressed in my office, I'll play, go on YouTube and play rushing water or maybe just like gentle waves lapping up against the shore. Gentle enough for a sheep to drink. The water he's referring to here is the gentle waters of life that flow from the spirit that he's given you. Don't think that you can be satisfied drinking from the streams of this world. The streams of this world are polluted. It's polluted by the sewage of this world. It will not sustain you. The Lord has given you a spirit, the Holy Spirit. He indwells you and he has given us his word by which we can be satisfied. The blessed fountain is not meant to be appreciated for its beauty, but to be drunk from. Many people are intrigued by the traditions of Christianity. They like the philosophical wisdom of our faith. They like the story of the resurrection. We make movies about it. They like the story of the exodus, Joseph and his brothers. They look at Christianity like someone would gaze up at the Sistine Chapel to admire it. Like a man dying of thirst in the wilderness who finds a beautiful fountain overflowing with water, they stand there and admire it instead of drinking from it. Don't do that. The real Christ, the one who knows you by name, has numbered the hairs of your head. He tells you to come and drink. Drink and eat Christ. In John 6, he says, my flesh is true food. My food is true drink. But whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. Feed on Christ. Did you come here today to hear a fine sermon? Maybe sing some nice songs or to enjoy a good coffee? That's not enough. Drink from Christ. John 7, 37, Jesus cried out. It was urgent to the Lord. This is not a secondary message. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Do you believe this, brothers and sisters? If you believe it, then drink it. Drink from Christ. He lives. He is your life. If you are thirsty, you will know it. He is calling you. By this water, He freely gives and He restores our soul. He refreshes our hearts so that we might be restored We might be restored to peace of mind. Restored that we might be useful for his kingdom. Restored that we might serve others. When Adoniram Judson stared down at the grave he dug for himself, the Lord had not left him. Through the darkness, though the darkness made it hard to see that, in his biography, his son wrote, he read the scriptures, but could find no comfort until at last, in the deep, silent hours, the Lord began to revive his soul. He found solace in the promises of God. He said later, it is not the pain, the wounds, or the hardship, the loss of friends, the privations of a ministry life that weighs most heavily, No, it is the loss of the presence and the favor of our Lord Jesus Christ. May this be restored and we can cheerfully bear the sufferings of a thousand deaths. This is someone who has walked with the shepherd and knows he can be trusted. We must walk in his presence. We must feed on him and drink from him. He leads me in paths of righteousness. for his name's sake. Our viandresser painfully prunes us, but then he feeds us and he waters us that we might bear fruit. No one is able to bear fruit for him unless they first understand that God is the giver of that fruit. You remember in Luke five, when Jesus called the disciples, He comes up to them and Peter has been fishing all day long with his net, hasn't caught a thing. And he tells them to go cast this net out again, go out again. Lord, I've been fishing all day, but since you told me, I will go do it. So he goes out there, casts his net out, and it is filled to overflowing. What do you think he's teaching Peter and the disciples in that moment? He's God. Number one, Peter is struck with fear and he tells them, get away from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. You know what? Peter was ready to minister for the Lord at that moment. We are not ready to minister to the Lord if we are filled with conceit. We must know that he is the Lord. We must know that we are sinners. And they needed to know that when they go preach the gospel and thousands come to Him, it is not their preaching that brought them. It is the Lord. He gave the increase. We often think of the disciples as these, we think of them Saint so-and-so, Saint so-and-so. They're just men. God called sinners to preach the gospel and he's called us as a body to proclaim the gospel together and to minister to one another, to share the gospel with this world. He tells them you will be fishers of men. Spurgeon says, when God's children prosper one way, they are generally tried in another, for few of us can bear unmingled prosperity. In verse four, David begins speaking directly to the Lord. He says, you are with me. He is not a distant shepherd when you're suffering. He's not distant. I've heard that sometimes modern shepherding can be done with drones. Have you heard this? He imagined shepherding sheep with a drone. Apparently that's a thing now. God doesn't shepherd his sheep remotely. He's not sitting there on his laptop in heaven. He is with us. Not only does he send under shepherds to shepherd his sheep, who are also walking with him, who he's also shepherding, he's shepherding us, all of us, personally. John 10, Jesus says this of himself. The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name. He's not using the internet to do this. He speaks to us directly by his word and by his spirit. The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out his own, all his own. He goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. I am the good shepherd, he says in verse 14 of John 10. 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 my life down for the sheep. This is what it means in 1 John when he says, you know me. He speaks to the young men, you know me. How do we know him? Because he put his spirit within us. We know him. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but sometimes you'll hear someone who's not a, who you think, I don't know if this guy is a good teacher or not. Then you find out 10 years later what he's been doing and you find out he really wasn't a good teacher. That's the Holy Spirit warning you. This man is not to be trusted. Follow the spirit. Then he says, I apologize, I did not write down the verse number here, but there's only six verses. You can follow along. It's okay. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The tools of shepherding are a rod and a staff. What is the shepherd's rod for? It's shorter than a staff. It's like a billy club. prodding the sheep to go in the right direction. We are sheep. We like to wander. We don't know where we're going. We don't know what danger lies ahead. The shepherd knows, and he uses it to prod his sheep in the right direction. He disciplines us. The most painful spanking I ever got was from my father. But his goal was to teach me wisdom. His motivation was love. That is the same with our Heavenly Father. His wrath is for a moment. Soon after our fellowship was restored, my dad didn't continue spanking me my entire life. It was for a purpose, and our fellowship was restored. I was the one walking in sin. If he hadn't done that, my heart would have been completely hardened toward him. I apologize, I didn't write this reference down. My son, I think it's in Hebrews. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. God, Yahweh, knows you, and when you're being disciplined, it's because you are loved and you are His Son. Therefore, His rod and His staff are a comfort to the sheep. At the same time, that rod and staff in the same hand is a terror to the wolves. God is a protector of His sheep. The blows of the rod upon the wolves are not meant to discipline, but to wound and to repel them. The wolves are not God's to preserve. They must be repelled from the sheep. David reflects on the final verses of the psalm in verse five. He thinks about all the blessings that have followed him. Thinking back of all the things he's gone through, he says, you prepare a table before me and the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Despite all of his troubles, God had kept all of his promises. All the stuff that David went through, he was sitting on the throne of Israel. He had been anointed with oil. And brothers and sisters, We have been made kings and priests unto God through Christ. He has anointed our heads with oil, too. We don't deserve that. We are His children. We are in Christ, and He does that in the presence of our enemies. There are many stories of people who have come to Christ being converted to him by watching Christians suffering for their faith with joy in their hearts, even singing psalms while they were being burned at the stake. Think of that. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. He's not saying that he's gonna spare us from trouble in this life. He's saying that while we're having trouble, He's going to, we're going to be feasting before the people that mean to bring harm to us. How many people have you heard that went through concentration camps, being beaten and tortured, that were able to have grace toward their torturers because of the grace that God put in their hearts, ministering to them in their suffering? When I was a kid, I didn't realize that Shirley wasn't a name of a person. Shirley Goodness sounds like a Puritan woman, doesn't it? Shirley Goodness and Mercy, her sister. No, that's not what it means. There is no end to the goodness of God. This is what it means. Truly, most certainly, goodness and mercy shall follow me. It follows me. I don't have to make it follow me. You don't have to manipulate God or twist his arm to be good to you. He's already good to you. His goodness follows you whether you like it or not. It may not be the way that we like it. It may not be exactly how we would have seen it to be, but His goodness follows us all the days of our life and there's no end to it. Psalm 79, 13 says, so we thy people and the sheep of thy pasture will give thanks to thee forever. We will show forth thy praise to all generations. This short, difficult, confusing, painful life is painful because God prepares a table before us that we might drink of his goodness. Suffering prepares us for that table. It prepares us for the table that is to come, that is forever, that we might eat and drink more fully, more deeply, and more joyfully. 1 Peter 4, Peter says, beloved, do not be surprised by the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. but rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. When this life is done, we will no longer need the rod of discipline. We'll no longer need to walk through the valley of the shadow of death to conform us to his image. For we shall be like him. We shall see him face to face. Ed Nyrum Judson said toward the end of his life, when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your mercy to us that follow us all the days of our life. We look forward to the day when we shall be like you, fully, Not only shall we have your imputed righteousness, we shall have your righteousness. We shall be like you. We will not need anymore the rod of discipline. We will not anymore suffer the attacks of wolves. We will not anymore wander the hills of this world not knowing where we're going. We will be with you. We look forward to that day, Lord. We anticipate it with much excitement and joy, for you have done it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.