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Stephen Crane writes in his book
about a young private in the Union Army who was so fearful
that he fled the field of battle. He was overcome with shame and
grief at his cowardice. And so he determined that if
he only had a war injury, that he would be able to withstand
his own fear. He volunteered with his regiment
to be a standard bearer. And so the next time that his
company went to battle, he was on the front lines carrying the
American flag. So my question to you this morning
is, what is your red badge of courage that keeps you from fleeing
in moments of sheer terror? I want us to look at the answer
to this question this morning from Psalm 23. Please open in
your copies of God's word to Psalm chapter 23. Please give attention now as
I read God's holy word. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me
to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still
waters. He restores my soul. He leads
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 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 runs 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. Amen. May God add his blessing
to the reading of his word. Let's pray together and ask God's
blessing also on the preaching. Father, we come to you today
dependent upon you and your Holy Spirit. We pray for of falling
afresh of your spirit upon us, that you would make application
from your word. May we not be just hearers of
your word, but may we be doers. May we be changed today. Father,
we commit this time to you now. In the name of Jesus, we pray.
Amen. I just want to make a couple
of observations before we get into the text. First of all,
This must be or has to be one of the most favorite beloved
texts of all Holy Scripture. David here writes of two images
or metaphors, the first being the good shepherd. We're very,
very familiar with that. And then in the second part,
that's one through four, in verses five or six, he writes about
the gracious host. And there are several things
that stand out here, and you may have noticed this yourself. One is how personal this psalm
is. Notice the personal pronouns
here. There's 17 personal pronouns. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. But there's
also a confidence here that David writes with. The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And that's the question for us
today. And that's what I want us to
focus on. How is that possible? Think about that valley of deep
darkness that you may be experiencing this morning. What are you fearing? What is troubling you? Is it
the future? We start playing this what if
game, right? What about a cancer diagnosis? Or maybe you're struggling with
the demonic. When we think of fear, we tend
to think of Satan and his demons. I want us to ask the question
this morning, what is fear? What does David mean when he
says, I will fear no evil? Does that mean that we don't
ever get nervous? We're never afraid. Well, if
you're walking along in the woods and you come across a snake,
what happens? Your emotions immediately shoot
to a 10, right? Your heart is in your throat
and then you realize you look down and that snake is really
just a stick. Did I fear? I did. It's a physiological
response, right? The fight or flight. I don't
want to be killed. So there is a real fear emotionally
that we might experience. That's not what David is talking
about or addressing here. The fear here that he speaks
of is that of despair. It's that of disbelief or unbelief,
the sin of unbelief. Franklin Roosevelt wrote, Courage
is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something
else is more important than fear. Think about, again, our author,
David, writing, and he is standing before the giant Goliath. And
yet he tells Saul, I'm not afraid of this Philistine. Let me at
him. How is that possible? David,
a young, small lad, probably 15, that would face the champion
of the Philistine army. And of course, you know, the
story would later decapitate him. It's about perspective. David was not looking at Goliath. He was looking over Goliath's
shoulder and he was seeing Christ. So it's the perspective. When
we're focused on God, our problems, our fears become really, really
small. But when we're focused on our
fears, God becomes very, very small. I want us to look at how
Christ comforts us in three ways this morning from our text. First
is his provision. You are with me. I will not fear. Why? You are with me. Number
one is provision. Number two, his protection. And we see that in verse four,
for you are with me, your rod and staff. Your rod relates to
Christ's protection. And number three, his perfection. And this relates to his staff. So number one, Christ comforts
us by his provision. It begins with his presence. All of the benefits that we have
in Christ come from him and his presence. You, literally, for
you are with me. Who is David speaking of? Verse
one, the Lord is my shepherd. In your text, your copies of
God's word, Lord is in caps. That is the proper name of God. Jehovah, I am. This is the one who brought all
things into existence. The Lord is my shepherd. Jesus said in John chapter 10,
I am the good shepherd. I lay down my life for the sheep. He is with us. Of course, Christ
makes the equivocation, right? Who is good? Only God is good.
Jesus is linking himself here to Jehovah, the one, only, and
true God. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is our God, Emmanuel, God
with us. Corrie ten Boom wrote, if you
look at your circumstances, you'll be distressed. If you look within,
you'll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you
will be at rest. Christ, our rest. And he brings
and gives us rest. I think back to a time in my
own life when I was 10 years old, my parents let me watch
a television program You probably would think it's benign, but
it affected me so traumatically that as a 10-year-old, I had
to take a bath that evening, and I had to have my mom sitting
in the bathroom with me. I was so frightened. And so if
you're 10 years old as a young man, and you want your mom sitting
with you in the bathroom, you know you're fearful. But later
that night, I asked my father if he would sit in the hallway
outside my room. I asked him to keep the light
on in the hall, and my door was open. And as I'm going to sleep,
I have this memory of looking over and seeing my father in
the hallway. His presence brought me such
great comfort. The psalmist continues in verse
two, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So the question we have to ask
ourselves is, is this a blank check? Is this the health and
wealth gospel? Is that what David is writing
here? Not at all. In fact, one of the most misused
verses in all of scripture is, delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart. Well, what does
he mean there? It means that as our desires
are conformed to his desires, we want what he wants. David
here is describing our needs. Jesus will supply all of your
needs in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, Ephesians
1.3. Of course, not only will he meet all of our spiritual
needs and does in Christ, but he promises to meet all of our
physical needs. The problem is in our culture
and even in the church today, we're a needs-based culture. Everything is a need, right?
Health insurance is a need. Whatever, you fill in the blank.
Problem is, even with men, we elevate respect. That is a need. That's not how we're to operate.
Needs are very, very limited, right? Clothing, food, shelter.
But yet, Christ promises to meet all of our needs, our legitimate
needs. Look at verse five. You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. This is that image, that metaphor
of the gracious host, the good shepherd, and yet now we have
the gracious host. My cup overflows. Look back to
verse two, I shall not want. It's like an inclusio, this bracket
that Christ delivers and meets all of our needs. I was thinking
as I was preparing this, we tend to think we're not as wealthy
as King David. I want you to think with me for
a moment. When you go to your house, how many servants do you
have? When I go to the sink and I turn
on the spigot, fresh water comes out. I have a microwave, I can
put a plate of food in there and I click a couple of buttons
and my food is hot. Think about how rich, how blessed
we are, even more so than even King David in all of his wealth.
Think about all the servants that we have. Our cup overflows. We have everything that we need
in Christ. It gets better. Look at verse
six. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life. This is the blessing of being
in God's presence. Think about this. Christ our
shepherd. Shepherds don't herd sheep, they
lead sheep. What a beautiful metaphor that
is. Christ before us and we have here goodness and mercy shall
follow me. We're surrounded by God and his
love. We see Christ as the good shepherd. We see here mercy as the Holy
Spirit and of course goodness Only God is good, God himself
surrounding us behind and before. This is that, notice, eternal
provision. Not just now, but eternally. I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever. We have his presence with us
forever. This is that eternal provision.
The provision that Christ gives us begins with his presence.
But he continues, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. So number one, Christ comforts
us with his provision, beginning with his presence. Number two,
Christ comforts us by his protection. The shepherd's rod represents
power, authority, and protection. Think about a king's scepter.
And this rod, a shepherd would take a young sapling, would pull
it out of the ground, invert it, and cut off all of the roots.
And on the base of that sapling, he would form a small ball. He would work on it for hours. It would fit perfectly in his
hand. And this is what he would use
to protect his sheep and himself. Think about David, the shepherd
boy. Again, when he talked to Saul and told him, I've got this,
what did he say? The Lord delivered the lion and
the bear into my hand. Most likely, he was referring
to the rod of protection that he carried with him to protect
his sheep from these wild predators. Contrast this with a hireling.
Jesus talks about this in John chapter 10, 12 and 13. He who
is a hired hand and not a shepherd who does not own the sheep, he
sees the wolf. What does he do? He flees. He
runs. And the wolf snatches them and
scatters them. Why does he flee? He doesn't
have ownership. He's there to get paid. And if
it's between him and the paycheck and death, He's gone, not so
with Christ, our good shepherd. He is the one who lays down his
life for the sheep. So how does Christ protect us? How do we see his protection
here in our passage? Look with me at verse two. And this is not gonna be clear
in the beginning, but I want you to think about this with
me. He makes me lie down in green pastures. Well, how is this a
protection? Well, sheep are known to just
need one more bite of that luscious alfalfa. Sheep are known to eat
so much that they'll die. And so the shepherd, in protecting
the sheep, will cause them to lie down. What a beautiful picture
metaphor for us. Are we not overextended? Do we not over consume? One of
the battles in our culture today is with social media. Do we not
spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, on social
media, building our own brand, the cult of personality? Christ
gives us protection even from ourselves I want you to think
with me, and I think this is the best application, is the
Lord's Day, the Sabbath, that Christ has given us one day in
seven that we might rest. We need rest. It's a protection.
And so avail yourselves of this wonderful day, the Lord's Day,
in which we come together in worship, in which you rest, not
just from your physical labors, but it's a reminder of our rest
in Christ and His work that He completed for us. We're resting
in Him for our salvation. But it's very, very practical.
Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath. God has made the day of rest
for you and for your protection. Look at verse 2b. He leads me
beside still waters. Again, sheep are so timid. They're so scared that by moving
along fast running waters, they'll get spooked. And again, Jesus
as the Good Shepherd knows us so well. He knows our frame.
He knows that we're but dust. 1 Corinthians 10, 13. He will not let you be tempted
beyond your ability. He is gentle and lowly. Matthew 11, 29. And I love this
picture in Isaiah 42. A bruised reed he will not break
and a faintly burning wick. he will not quench. This picture
of Christ, our Savior, going along, a candle that's almost
burning out, and he passes by so slowly and gently that he
does not cast that light, or that light does not go out. Or
the reed that's barely hanging on by a thread, and he's passing
so gently and lovingly that he doesn't even break the reed.
This is our Savior who knows you intimately. He knows what
concerns you. He will not give you more than
you can bear. I think a good application of
this is for us, dads, as fathers, that we not provoke our children.
We need to know them well. We don't need to be overly sarcastic
with them to the point where they're provoked. We need to
know our wives as well. Know her needs, men. know what
concerns her and defer to her as Christ does to us, the good
shepherd. He protects us with his love.
Psalm 103, 13 and 14, as a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he
knows our frame. He remembers that we are but
dust. So Christ comforts us, one, with
his provision, beginning with his presence. And then number
two, Christ comforts us with his protection that relates to
his rod. And now, number three, Christ
comforts us by his perfection. Your rod and staff, they comfort
me. When we think about a shepherd's
staff, it's so iconic. You could just see a silhouette
and you know immediately what that is. RPTS, their tagline
is Study Under Pastors, and underneath it is a shepherd's crook. The
Latin for shepherd is pastor. And so he is perfecting us with
the use of his staff. And we borrow heavily from this
idea and this imagery of a shepherd. The shepherd's staff was created
and designed specifically for sheep. That's all it's good for.
It was six to eight feet long and the shepherd would use it
when a sheep would start to wander off the path and maybe fall down
off into a crevice and use that crook of his staff to bring them
back. Isn't that you and I? How often
are we prone to stray? We're greedy just for a little
bit more grass. We're clumsy. We fall into water
and yet our shepherd, the good shepherd, perfects us. He brings
us back onto the path and shows us the way. Look at verse three. He perfects us by restoring our
soul. He restores my soul. In the Hebrew,
the word for restore is the word for repentance. This is very,
very significant. He, our shepherd, our savior,
gives to us repentance. That's true restoration, is it
not? The faith and the repentance
that we've received from Christ. The parable of the lost sheep
in Matthew 18 and 12 and 14 is a wonderful reminder of Christ
and his love for us, his sheep. Matthew writes, if it turns out
that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more
than over the 99 which have not gone astray. So it is not the
will of your father in heaven that one of these little ones
should perish. He leaves the 99 and he goes
after you and I who are prone to stray, we're prone to wander. He leads me in paths of righteousness. He restores my soul. He leads
me in the paths of righteousness. We have repentance, and now we
have righteousness. He's guiding us in the way He
wants us to go. Aren't we thankful for His word?
My wife recently was on a trip. We were not together and she
got lost. And so she called me and said,
I'm lost. And I didn't help her. I said,
well, where are you? She said, I don't know why I call you.
She had GPS, but for whatever reason, the GPS kept taking her
on a wrong path. This was in a really not a good
area in Dallas, Texas. And she didn't realize at the
time, but she wasn't breathing properly. And so her hands kind
of started tingling. How true is that for us in life? If we don't know where we're
going, it brings up in us fear and anxiety. And yet Christ here, as the good
shepherd, leads us in the paths of righteousness. He shows us
where we're to go. Another beautiful picture of
the shepherd and his sheep is that of using the staff to guide
his sheep. And shepherd have talked about
how this pastoral scene where the shepherd lays his staff on
the sheep and they liken it to a sheep and the shepherd walking
hand in hand. I love that picture. Even though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil. Why? Because you are with me. Jesus is holding our hand. My father was a Baptist pastor.
He pastored First Baptist Church in Livingston, Texas. I was probably
five years old. We went through the building
to turn out all the lights after an event, and there was this
large gymnasium. And the lights are very, very
bright. And so as he turns off all the
light, he noticed that I didn't say anything. I wasn't scared. And he asked me later, he said,
weren't you scared when you and I were in the gym and I turned
the lights out? And I said, No. And he said, why? I said, because
you were with me. You were holding my hand. And
that's the picture here of the shepherd holding our hand, leading
us in the paths of righteousness. He gives us repentance. He gives
us righteousness. He leads us in right paths. And
why? Why is he doing all of this? For his namesake. It's for his reputation. He does
this for his own glory. He has sworn an oath to his people. He cannot and will not deny himself. This makes Jesus the guarantor
of a better covenant. Hebrews 12, excuse me, Hebrews
7, 21 and 22. The great shepherd comforts us
with his presence. He comforts us with his protection. and he comforts us with his perfection. He's conforming us more and more
to the image of his son. So the question I asked you at
the beginning, what is your red badge of courage? What keeps
you from running away in fear? Well, it's not about us, is it?
It's about Christ who bore our sins in his body. We have not,
according to the writer of Hebrews, in our struggle against sin,
have yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. And yet Christ
did. By his wounds, we are healed. He is the standard that has been
lifted up. And we are to look to Him. You
remember that story of the children of Israel in the wilderness.
They're being bitten by venomous snakes. And it's very odd. What does Moses have them to
do by direction of the Lord? I want you to build a pole. I
want you to put up on a standard the snake. And we're thinking,
what in the world? That snake is a representative
of death, that thing which is killing God's people. Jesus became
sin. He knew no sin, but he became
sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. We are comforted by Christ alone,
by his perfect sacrifice for us. Even though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, literally deep darkness, I will
fear no evil. Why? For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they
comfort me. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we're
so grateful to you for our Lord Jesus Christ, who not only provides
all that we need, but he gives of himself to us. We have more
than we would ever want or need in Christ, who satisfies everything. He has never forsaken us. He will never forsake us. He is with us. We're grateful
for his protection, even from ourselves. And Father, for your
perfection, for your conforming us more and more into the image
and the likeness of your perfect son. And so Father, help us to
gaze our eyes upon Jesus, to put away our fear, to trust in
him alone. for our salvation. We pray all
of this now in your name. Amen.
Christ Our Comfort
| Sermon ID | 9922225797918 |
| Duration | 29:02 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 23 |
| Language | English |
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