If I took a day this week as your pastor and took a microphone and attached it to a little audio recording device and I walked out onto the streets and took a video and carried that on my shoulder or in my hand and I videoed and recorded the audio of random people on the streets and asked them this question, what would they tell me? If I took all of their responses and put them up on a video screen and we watched them all, what would we hear? If I asked this question to each person on camera, what is one image, picture, or scenery that would best illustrate life in this world? If you could paint a picture, take a picture, use an object, or describe some particular scenery, what picture would describe your life in this world? A boxing match? A black hole? floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, a tornado, a hamster wheel, an endless maze, a fight for survival, a merry-go-round, a carnival, a circus. What would you say if you had to pick and choose one picture that really did paint in full color, in living detail, that one picture, what would it be that describes your life? if you were honest, and really expressed your feelings, what would you say? The fact is that a born-again Christian, for us, the picture we find in scripture is the picture we've been talking about. Let me describe it once again. You could probably do it for me. A lush green pasture side, a bright blue sky, white clouds with no rain in them, a little rippling brook coming down through the pasture, a little patch of forest off to the side, the sun shining through the clouds, sheep relaxing on that hillside, and a shepherd off to the side watching over the whole thing. Is that a picture of your life? Have you been at rest? Have you been at peace this last week under the shepherd's care? Or has it been more like the hamster wheel or the maze or the boxing match or the pinball machine or whatever it is that you feel like? I want to share with us this thought today from this passage that you can experience true rest because the Lord is your shepherd. You can experience true rest. You don't have to go take yoga classes. You don't have to take a vacation to Europe or Canada or Alaska or wherever you feel you need to go. You don't need a sabbatical, though those are helpful at times. You don't need sleeping medicine, though maybe you need that sometimes. What you really need is to recognize, if you're saved, that the Lord Jesus Christ is your shepherd. If you're not saved, you need the Lord Jesus Christ to become your shepherd. And if the Lord is your shepherd, you can experience true rest. The life of a Christian relying on the Lord should be a life of rest in the middle of all the work and challenges that are before you. The Bible says in Psalm 23 verse 2, the phrase we're keying off of today is this, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Number one, my journey with the Lord begins with rest. My journey with the Lord begins with rest. In New York City, we find this kind of hard to understand. We would find it easier to believe that our journey with the Lord begins with a lot of busyness. and ends with rest. But if we will be successful in our Christian journey with God, we must first learn to rest in His guidance and His provision. Life in our journey with the Lord is not like our normal idea of vacation. A normal idea of vacation is a lot of busy, hard work planning and saving and packing and mapping out what we're going to do, unless you take a cruise, then it's all easy, right, Mrs. Burns? But you do all this work, and for me as a parent of a young family, vacations are usually not very vacation-y. We have to pack all the work in beforehand so we can take the trip. We have to pack up all the different kids' clothing and make sure we have enough of this item and that. And then if they mess that one up, do we have enough diapers? Do we have all the other things, the supplies that have to go along with that? Do we have enough room in the van for that? Do we have all the snacks planned? Do we have enough money for that? Should we go out to eat and how much? And where are we going to stop? Do we need one or two motel rooms? And is it the right kind of motel? And we have to plan all these kind of things out. And by the time we get to our destination, I'm just worn out. And then at the end of the vacation, when we come home, that's a trip too, and we come back and I'm still worn out. And I don't feel like I really rested. Anyone here understand what I'm talking about? Good, thank you. I'm not complaining, I'm just talking, explaining. But in the Lord's economy, any journey, begins with rest. Don't start this week without choosing to rest. It's great to have the Lord's Day on the first day of the week, is it not? What day? The Lord's Day. We could talk about why we call it the Lord's Day, why we worship on the Lord's Day another time. That would be a good lesson for us to walk through scripturally. That's a very fascinating study. But this is the day that the Lord has made. We rejoice in it. We'd be glad in it. And it is his day. And if we recognize that, what do we try to do? Rest. That's why I like Faith Baptist. Because you get to have all your services in the morning and early afternoon, then you can go home and rest. In many other churches, you have your morning events, and then you go home, and you try to squeeze a nap in, and then you go back, and you have it all, and then you get home, if you fellowship, late at night, and the day of Monday begins before you realize it, and you didn't necessarily get that benefit of rest. I like what we do, although sometimes as pastor, my rest starts much later in the day than yours might, but that's important. We need to begin our week and our whole perspective of our journey with the Lord with rest. giving everything over to him. Letter A, this includes salvation rest. We must not work for salvation, but must learn to rest by faith alone in his work for us on the cross. Matthew 11, 28 through 30 says this. Jesus says, very welcoming, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If you can imagine in your mind the picture of a rice plantation, a rice paddy over in Cambodia or something of this nature, and if you can imagine two oxen out in that rice pasture with their knees filled up with water and the rice plants beginning to grow and the mud under their feet as they're pushing ahead, what do they have that ties those two animals together as they pull that plow behind them? What do they have? They have that yoke, right? If you're an oxen and you're getting ready to go out and work in the field on a particular day, you're probably interested, if this is how an oxen thinks, you're interested in what the other ox is going to be like on the other side of that yoke. And why are you interested in that? It's the same way and the same reason why Brother Eric understands in the moving business If he has to move a heavy piece of furniture or a piano or something like this, he's very interested who's going to be on the other side of that piece of furniture, especially if there's a few flights of stairs to go down to get to the moving vehicle. Why is that? Because the person or the animal on the other side carrying that load is going to determine how much pressure you're going to feel. A person who is not born again, who is not saved, is walking through life and they're looking to the other side of that yoke and there's no one there. It's them. Well, maybe there's someone there. Maybe there is a priest or or maybe there is a prophet who died many, many, many, many years ago who wrote a book or something like this. And they're looking over there, but they're not really helping them because every night they go to bed and they're feeling the pressure of that curse of the wall that we talked about in the morning service. And it weighs on them. And Jesus says come to me step under my yoke because when you plow the row with me of life not only do you end up at the right destination and it's the only way to end up there every other yoke goes crooked. You also feel like you're not doing very much because he carries it all. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon me. Learn about me. I will give you rest. It's not that you're not working. It's not that you're not doing anything. It's not that you're not moving forward. But as you do it, you realize he's doing it all, and you don't have the pressure, the stress that comes along with that. We are talking here about salvation rest in Matthew 11. If you have never taken the load of your sin and religiousness and your eternity and your guilt and you've never taken all of that and handed all of that over to Jesus Christ and taken his yoke upon you by believing in what he's done on the cross, today is a wonderful day to do that. Your journey with the Lord begins with rest, salvation rest. Let him take the guilt and the sins from you. But number two for those of us that are saved today who have received that invitation are walking in yoke with him this includes arrest letter B in a spiritual growth and service. We must work hard for Christ but in a way that rests entirely and completely in his word and his strength. In the work that you do for the Lord do you rest entirely in him or do you pull a different direction. If you walk and step with him, he carries the load. But if you pull in a different direction, try to carry that load yourself, you don't make progress. Hebrews chapter 4 verses 9 through 11 says this, there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he hath also ceased from his own works as God did from his. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. What is this rest? It is the rest of faith, calm, confident, complete faith in him. Perhaps today you've come to church and you've taken up some of the load of your daily schedule. Perhaps you've taken up some of the pressures of the decisions you have to make and begun to hold on to that yourself. Perhaps there are bills that you're trying to figure out how to pay. Perhaps there's a job that you need. Perhaps there's a wayward child that needs to be reached. Or perhaps there's some other person in your life that is causing a trial and a challenge to you, and you've taken that load up yourself. Let me challenge you today, get that load off your shoulders and give it back to the Lord and enjoy rest. Casting all of our care upon him because he cares for us. God has big shoulders. You know the picture in your mind of Atlas in Greek mythology? How many of you know that picture? The man who gets down on his knees, and I don't know the whole story, but he takes the world and he lifts it up. And according to Greek mythology, this is the one who keeps the world in midair, so to speak. Holds it up. I want you to know that our Lord doesn't just have the world. Remember a couple weeks ago we talked about the size of the universe? how many hundreds of thousands of Earths that you'd have to drop in like cereal balls in a cereal bowl into the sun just to equal the size of the sun, and how the sun is just a speck in the universe, and there are billions of larger stars, mammothly larger stars that fill our universe, and it would take several lifetimes just to fly to the next one. We talked about that, and I want you to know our God is not Atlas, who bears down and holds the earth up on his shoulders. Our God is the one who has all of that on the tip of his finger. He has big shoulders. You cannot overload him. There is not a concern or care in your life, whether it's a penny or a million dollars. It doesn't matter what your concern is. You say, I don't know what my future looks like, what it holds. You can give that to him and put it on his shoulders. He'll carry that. You say, I feel like I need to be there for my children more, and they've grown up, and I can't really be. Give that to God. He can carry that on his shoulders. Your heartaches, your pains, your doubts, your fears, give it all over to him. He will care for you. He can handle that. You just lay down in the green pastures and breathe some fresh air and enjoy the fact that the Lord is your shepherd. When you're not saved and you lay down there are way too many things to think about. But when you're saved you can lay down and not think about some things sometimes and just trust the Lord. Does anyone know what that sound is? Number two, the Lord makes true rest possible. Our journey with the Lord begins with rest. And the Lord and only the Lord makes true rest possible. How does he make this possible? Well, the translation here that we see, maketh me to lie down, in the way that we use the word make, might send the wrong idea, though it doesn't have to. If I say that I make my children sit during church, which some of us are working on right now, Or if I say that I remember there was a time in my life as a junior hire that I had a dog. The dog's name was Coco. We had adopted this dog. It was a Cocker Spaniel. Adopted it from a neighbor who wanted to get rid of it. And she felt that the dog needed more space to roam. And we had plenty of acres of woods and yard space and a meadow in front of our house. There's plenty of space around our house. For those of you who have grown up in the city here, you don't know what this is like. But we had acres of woods that we could play in. We could disappear for a whole day and never see the same tree. We did underground forts and upper ground forts and tree houses. And it was a lot of fun. We had this dog, we adopted, it was already a full-grown Cocker Spaniel, and the thing had a few attitude problems. And there was one time I was trying to teach that dog where he was supposed to go to the bathroom. So I took him down to the meadow. You don't teach an old dog this lesson. The old dog's not going to learn anything. What's that phrase? You can't teach an old dog new tricks, right? I guess this was true. Well, I took him to the edge of, out of the yard to the meadow where the grasses grow freely, where that was where we wanted him to go, not on our grass. So I took him there. And I carried him over by his collar, put his head up to there, and I pushed his head down and said, that is where I want you to go. And you know what he did? He turned around in an instant, and he bit me in the leg. And I had a cut about 3 quarters of an inch deep, probably, in my leg. And I didn't tell my mom about it till the next day. I went up to the house, and I cleaned it up and put a Band-Aid on it and wrapped it together real tight. And it turned out fine. I don't have much of a scar to this day. I don't recommend that procedure, but that's what I did. I also kicked the dog. That was my instant reaction. I kicked it like a football and the thing went flying about 10 yards. I like dogs, but I have to say that was kind of fun. But when I say that the Lord makes me to lie down in green pastures, we are not talking about the Lord forcing you to do something. The Lord doesn't jerk you over to the green pasture and stick your nose at it and say, lay down or else. It's your choice. The Lord doesn't force us to lay down in green pastures. That's not what the psalmist is saying here. What the psalmist is saying here is that the Lord makes it possible for me to lie down He makes it possible. He does all of the work necessary to make true rest possible. True rest can only happen when work has been applied. We begin with rest because the Lord does all the work beforehand. That's what I can say to a person who is not saved. We are saved by grace God's free gift based upon all of his previous work saved by grace through faith which is depending on his free gift of all the work that he's done it's depending on him not by works of righteousness which we have done. We aren't saved by works were saved by grace alone through faith. How does he make to rest possible for us. Well, a person who wrote a book that's very helpful on this psalm, if you ever are able to get it, I recommend it. It's called The Shepherd's Look at Psalm 23 by Philip Keller. Philip Keller was a scientist at one point in his life. He was a shepherd, a real shepherd at one point in his life. And he also was a pastor. He's got a great perspective on this psalm. Some of what I say comes from him. And he makes the observation that there are four things that a good shepherd needs to do to make rest possible for his sheep. He needs to remove, first of all, fear. Letter A, he needs to remove fear. He says there's a flock that is restless, discontented, always agitated and disturbed, never does well. The same is true of people. It is not generally known that sheep are so timid and easily panicked that even a stray jackrabbit suddenly bounding from behind a bush can stampede a whole flock. When one startled sheep runs, it frightens a dozen others, and they will all bolt in blind fear in any direction, not knowing what they're doing, not waiting to see what frightened them in the first place. This is the way that sheep behave when they're spooked or scared suddenly. And so a shepherd needs to remove that sense of fear He needs to provide that sense of safety, whether that's building a wall, or growing a hedge, or being there at the edges of the forest to assure them that if a lion, or a bear, or a cougar, or something like this comes, he will take care of that. And when they come, addressing like David did in the Old Testament, when he killed the lion and he killed the bear, and when sheep see that happen, less and less things scare them. because they know my God will stand for me. I love the promise of the Old Testament that the angel of the Lord encamps round about them that fear him and delivers them. I can't say I do it every time, but almost every time I take a long road trip, I like to specifically pray and say, Lord, would you bring your angelic host and even your own presence and put a hedge of protection all around my car? Protect me from bad driving and also protect me from bad drivers. Protect me from bad weather. And you just protect me best as I know, Lord. I fear you. I want to obey you. If there's nothing in my heart that I, if there's something I need to talk to you about, please let me know. Would you protect me? And he does. I do want you to know that if I ever get into a car accident, the Lord is still good. But I'm thankful for his protection. Claim promises like that. Let that fear go away. Second Timothy one says says one seven says for God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Another verse in 1st John also says this that perfect love casts out fear. There's no place for fear in the Christian life. What are you afraid of really. What causes one of us to be afraid may cause another no harm at all. Are you afraid of heights? I didn't used to be afraid of high places, but somewhere as I became a teenager, that changed. And I realized that the towers, the fire towers, the national parks and state parks and other high places that I used to be able to run up and down with ease, now all of a sudden I was thinking about and very scared about. And I find the higher I get on something, if I can see down through the steps, my knees want to buckle, and I start to perspire, and I just get nervous. I don't know why, but there is some kind of a fear of heights in me, and it's developed over time, and I have to give that to the Lord sometimes. When I was a kid, I used to be scared of the dark. I'm not anymore. People are scared and afraid of different things, and even us adults do have things that we're afraid of. Are we afraid of a government shutdown, of a Great Depression? Are we afraid of losing our job? Perhaps we're afraid of not getting married ever. Perhaps we're afraid of bad health or disease. Perhaps we're afraid of gaining weight or snakes or spiders. Or maybe we're just afraid of the unknown. Not knowing things makes us afraid. Another thing that I'm afraid of sometimes in a certain way is spiders. I don't like spiders. Snakes, I don't mind snakes. Other things I don't mind, but I don't like spiders. And it's not just any spider. Those little tiny spiders don't bother me at all. It's the spiders that when you look at them, give you the impression that they're looking back at you. It's the spiders that if you stepped on them or pinched them in a napkin, you feel something happening. It's the spiders that are more like an animal than a bug. It's the spiders with substance and size and facial expressions. Those are the spiders that scare me. I could take a snake. A snake makes sense. I don't know what that kind of spider is thinking. It bothers me, and I don't like them. I'm just being honest with you. I'm not going to ask you all to have, this isn't AA. We all have to come and explain what we're all afraid of. But you know what, I don't have to be afraid of any of that. If we were living in a climate where just coming to church would cause us to go to jail, could cause our families to be split, could cause our lives to be put at risk, if coming to church today meant that we could be surrounded by special forces and have a gun held to our head, or even had executions happen right here in the church against our will, Would those kind of things cause you to fear? I think all of us would have to sit up and think about that. There is no fear in love. You love someone enough, nothing else will keep you away from them. You love someone enough, you will not be afraid. In a strong marriage relationship, one partner does not go to bed at the end of the day wondering if the relationship will last. There's a comfort that it will, and you know it will. That's the kind of rest that we can have with our shepherd. You will never wake up and find that he has disowned you, never. He never rejects. He makes true rest possible by taking away our fear. That is the first thing that our shepherd does. Letter B, the second thing that he has to remove as a good shepherd is friction. Philip Keller says this about sheep. Generally, an arrogant, cunning, and domineering old sheep will be boss of any bunch of sheep. She maintains her position by prestige, by budding and driving other ewes or lambs away from the best grazing or favorite bed grounds. succeeding her in precise order, the other sheep do the same thing and establish and maintain their exact position in the flock by using the same kind of head-butting tactics of thrusting themselves around at those below and around them. As a pastor, this is something that I have to help to guard and to protect against as a congregation that we don't have any of this kind of head butting or pushing or bully pulpit type thing going on or this pecking order. There's no pecking order here. Yes, I preach and I have some leadership here even as a pastor, but I'm a sheep in this flock like you are. We must all be accountable to one another and be open and transparent with one another and hold each other's feet to the fire and encourage one another in the Lord. There's not a pecking order in the church talked about this morning has nothing to do with how much you make or what kind of position you have your professional perspective. We are all one in Christ. And you've heard it said before and it's not a verse but I this is true in a certain way that the foot is level at the ground of the cross. And we need to recognize that and embrace that. We need to be aware of divisions and frictions among us and make sure that we do all in our power to allay those things, the suspicions and the doubts and the misgivings against one another. He removes the friction. James 3, 14 through 18 says this, if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, do not boast, and lie not against the truth. Don't act like what is not true. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly and sensual and devilish, for where envying and strife is, there is confusion in every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure. By the way, this is a challenge in our culture today. We can talk about love and unity and harmony in this church all we want. But if we are not pure, we can't have it. We can act like we do, but the Bible says don't glory and boast We have to guard our hearts, men. Remember what it says in Timothy where he says, I would first of all that men pray, lifting up holy hands. I have emphasized here at this church that I want all of us to feel free to pray, but especially the men taking leadership. And men, I don't want you to just pray. I want you to pray with holy hands and a clean heart. Who will ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who knows the secret of the Lord? Who comes into his presence? He that has clean hands and a pure heart. Wash your spiritual hands regularly. You see stuff that you didn't plan to see, give it to the Lord. Talk to him about it. Keep a fresh account. You make willful choices to look at things you shouldn't, address that with the Lord. Keep a clean account. Keep your heart clean and pure. This world is not trying to help you with that. Don't be nonchalant and cavalier about this. Be careful and cautious about this, because prayers of a church make a big difference, and unity becomes so much more possible when we are first pure. And ladies, I would say the same thing to all of you as well. I'm going to mention, I don't know if I have the right title, but Fifty Shades of Grey, or whatever that is, is probably not the best thing to be reading. All these romance novels and so forth are not the healthiest diet for Christian women to have. Because it sets up in you a discontent and a false world that you vicariously live through and it makes you discontent and exposes you to ideas and thoughts you really don't need to entertain. You need to focus on those real relationships that God has put into your life and focus and meditate upon the word of God. It must be first pure. Let me ask you a question. When you stand before Jesus Christ someday, how much sin are you gonna see there? None. You will see entire purity, absolute purity. That's our goal. He that hath this hope in him of seeing him someday, John says in 1 John 2, purifies himself, and so much the more. We don't want to be ashamed before man is coming. Part of growing as a sheep in God's pasture is letting him remove the friction and a lot of that friction often comes from impurity. Let him squeeze that out of you. I am not wanting you to think about anyone else in this church but you. No finger pointing, no characterizing, but just you. Are you pure in your heart? Not just men, but men really do have to pay attention to this. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be approached and treated. See, when you're not pure, it's easy to handle other people, roughly, because you're not at peace, you're not at rest. But when you're pure, you're confident. When you're pure, you have peace. And other people can come to you. And even if they accuse you, you're not thrown by that. You're easy to entreat because you know that your heart is right with the Lord. And that's what we all want to be. Gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy, and good fruits. Wow, full of mercy? If you've taken the steps in your life to stay pure and to be pure, you tend to be merciful to other people because you've been honest about yourself. Men, if you have trouble showing mercy, perhaps it's because there might be some uncleanness of some kind in your life. I'm not saying that has to be the root cause, but it's possible. Because when you've confessed your failures to the Lord honestly, and you've called your sin what it is, and you've talked to people that may need to be talked to wherever that's appropriate, I tell you what, you end up being more merciful with other people. because you've been honest with the Lord and you received his mercy that you didn't deserve. And when another brother falls, you say, I will show mercy because I understand. And God is good. I tell you what I hunger for as a pastor is a church like this that is first pure, it's peaceable, it's gentle, we're easy to be entreated, we don't have that friction. We have a placid harmony among each other that shows mercy to one another, that encourages one another, all because of one thing, we all know one thing, we're all in the same flock and the Lord is our shepherd and we're all following him and we're happy to do it. And I know that we're in this flock, and the flock is full of sheep, and the sheep all have their problems, including me, but our Lord is the shepherd, and we can move forward together. That's the kind of wisdom that the Lord wants to bring to our lives, that kind in James 3, 14 through 18. The writer Philip Keller says this, because of rivalry, tension, and competition for status and self-assertion in a flock, There will be friction and the sheep cannot lie down and rest in contentment. Always they must stand up and defend their rights and contest the challenge of the intruder. It's hard for sheep to lay down when they're always looking around wondering when that other sheep is going to come and kick them in the rear end or butt them with their nose. You're never sure what's going to be said or what's going to happen. You're always looking over your shoulder. You can't rest. Shouldn't be that way at church. Shouldn't be that way in a Christian home. There should be a trusting of one another and a working together with one another in harmony. Oh, that's how much I want that for our church as well. It's a beautiful and a wonderful thing. Let us desire with all of our hearts. The Lord says this in Ezekiel 34, I will feed my flock and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord. I will seek that which was lost and bring again that which was driven away. And I will bind up that which was broken and I will strengthen that which was sick. Can we all have that kind of ministry with one another? draw back those that have been drawn away, mend those that have been broken, reach out to those who have been sick. Don't criticize, don't backbite, don't make that distance, but reach out and make that difference. He says, but I will destroy the fat and the strong. I will feed them with judgment. What he's referring to there is those big, bad sheep. I'm not going to pay much attention to them. They're going to have a hard road. But the sick, the hurting, those I'm going to reach out to and I'm going to mend them. Ezekiel 34, 20 through 22, he says, therefore, thus saith the Lord God unto them, behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle, because you have thrust with the side and with the shoulder. And if you can envision these cows pushing each other around and jostling for position, You've thrust with the side and with the shoulder and pushed all the diseased with your horns till you've scattered them abroad. Therefore will I save my flock and they shall no more be a prey and I will judge between cattle and cattle. And what the Lord is saying is this, when I lead a flock, I want all to work together in harmony. And if there's any jostling and bullying and pushing around, I don't want that. I want to address that, and I want to bring peace. I want to bring unity. I want to bring harmony to the flock. When we think about the sheep on the hillside, we don't think about that picture with a few sheep up and moving around pushing other ones. That's not usually in our picture. A good shepherd makes that possible. Do you struggle with jealousy and rivalry in your own heart ever? Wanting to be noticed or to do something public and noticeable? Do you feel that your opinion must be heard or else? Look to Jesus. Don't push around the other members of the flock. And he will put this unrest to an end. The Bible says this to me as a pastor in 1 Peter chapter 5, feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight or the leadership thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, not for money, but of a ready mind. Neither is being lords, this is where I have to learn from this, neither is being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock. I have to make sure that I don't use this pulpit as a bully pulpit. This is not a place for me to stand up and to correct individual people. This is not a place where I get to stand up and spout my ideas and say, or else. I've seen some video clips online. I saw a picture of one pastor at one particular time that grieved me. I said, Lord, help me to never do that. There was someone sleeping in church, which you shouldn't do, by the way. But I understand if it happens. If you are going to sleep in church, let me give you one word of advice. Don't sleep in an open window sill, because there's a man in the book of Acts who did that, and he fell out. His name was Eutychus, and thankfully Paul knew how to heal people. Maybe I'll preach about that sometime. But he was preaching late into the night, which is another thing. If a preacher preaches long, you shouldn't complain, right? Though a preacher needs to be sensitive. But he preached late into the night, he kept going later and later, and this guy was tired and he sat in a window and he fell out. Now, if you know anything about CPR, if a guy falls two stories down to the cobblestone streets and he goes out cold, what should you do with him? Handle him gently. Don't move a bone of his body. Put him on a stretcher. Tie him up carefully. Don't move anything. Keep him right that way so you can, right? What did Paul do? He went down, and he fell on him, and he embraced him. And everyone looked at him. And he said, trouble not yourselves. His life is still in him. And he got up, and Eutychus got up, and they resumed their services. We'll talk about that another time, maybe in a full message. It's very funny. I will say this, if you fall asleep and you fall down, and by the way, if you're curious, go back to that passage. It describes the process of falling asleep in church. There's a three-step process. I'm serious, actually. He was sleepy, he started to fall asleep, and then he fell down with sleep. Pastors observe that process in church sometimes. I've done it myself. But there's another way of handling this. I could stand up here and I could do this. Now you're all feeling nervous, right? This is what I don't want my mode of operation to be. But I could walk around and I could draw attention to things, I could say things, I could give little rants. I've seen preachers do this. where they walk around, and they walk up to somebody, and they start talking to somebody, and then they get off on a rabbit trail and talk about how they're not doing well spiritually, and if they would just obey them, their life would be right with God. I've seen these kind of things. I've seen the rants from the pulpit. May that never be the case here for me. I have a job to do, but my job is not to push you around. I am not a sheep herder. I'm a shepherd. But one of the things that I'm burdened about is that as a pastor, I don't feel that responsibility alone. I loved it this afternoon when some of us gathered in the room right over here in the corner. And we were gathered together around ladies and men and leaders of households and singles. And we were talking about how to reach out to our widows and widowers. And we had a discussion about that. And more names were coming up. And we added them to the list. We made assignments. We even talked about ways to get our teen girls spending time with some of the older ladies in our church. I said, make sure they get in with Mrs. Pinckney. That's one person they have to spend time with. Our teenage girls have to get there. So you have a job, by the way. You have to be a testimony to these ladies. But I tell you what, I love standing back and watching this conversation. Because it told me that I don't have to worry about all those things when I go to bed at night. We're all sharing it. Our ladies are being called. Our men are being visited. And we're all carrying that burden. And if there's a need, our deacons are going to hear about it. And by the way, our young girls are being encouraged by older ladies. I love that. Because that's a shepherd looking out at a flock and seeing the sheep actually caring for each other. It's harder for a lion to go after a sheep when they're being cared for. There are two things that cause people to leave a church. One, bad doctrine, the wrong truth. Two, a lack of love. I think you can boil it down to those two things. And there's different manifestations of that. You can have a church that is full of truth, but if there isn't love, you have weak ones. They're gonna go somewhere where they feel like they're being loved, whether they are or not. And you can have a church filled with niceties and lots of coffee breaks and lots of gatherings and hunters club meetings and ladies stitching meetings and all these kind of things, but they don't preach the truth. That's a problem as well. And one of my goals for this church and for this flock is that we have both love and truth mixed together wonderfully. And I can't do it by myself. We need to band together for that. but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock, and when the chief shepherd, we have a chief shepherd, when he shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, I'm speaking to myself, you younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. So I'm not just preaching to myself, he says, not just you, pastor, but everybody. Can we all? What if I told you today there is a garment rack back there and what you didn't realize is that some of the ladies of our church this last week made some robes for us. And these robes, if you put them on, make you humble. You ever struggle with humility? Just put these robes on and you'll be humble. Now, if we all walked around in robes, we probably would feel pretty humiliated. What if I said, if you put these on, you'll be humble. That's what this is talking about. Put on the robes of humility. Put on the kind of clothing that makes you look like a servant, not like a rich person, spiritually speaking. Make it obvious that you're here to serve. And guess what, you'll get asked to serve. It's true, but put them on. One of the things that I appreciate about a Sunday afternoon group like this is it becomes obvious to me that you're serious to a certain degree about not just coming out in the morning and going home. You want to go farther with the Lord. I appreciate that. We will eventually get to the place where this afternoon time, what's in my heart is that we'll be meeting in small groups, talking to one another about the word, ministering to one another's needs. That's eventually where I'm going to go. want to prepare the way to some teaching and lay the groundwork. But I want us to band together and reach out to one another and meet one another's needs remove that friction. Humble yourselves into the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time which might be after you die casting all your care upon him there it is for he cares for you. Letter C, he not only removes fear and friction, but Letter C, he removes the flies. This is really beautiful. Sheep, especially in the summer, can be driven to absolute distraction by nasal flies, according to Philip Keller. Bot flies, warble flies, and ticks. When tormented by these pests, it is literally impossible for them to lie down and rest. Have you ever seen horses or cows with their tails switching around, batting all the flies away? That's what he's talking about. Instead they're up and on their feet stamping their legs and shaking their heads and ready to rush off into the bush for relief from the pests. Only the diligent owner who keeps a constant lookout for these insects will prevent them from annoying his flock. A good shepherd will apply various types of insect repellents to his sheep. He will see that they are dipped to clear the fleece of ticks. He will see that they are able to access shelter belts of trees and bush where they can find refuge and release from their tormentors. He will do what he has to do to take the flies away. Those little pesky things that annoy us. Philippians 4, 6-7 says this, Be careful, be worried or anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ. What are the little pesky things of life that bother you? The little things. Maybe it's that way that that one brother or sister at church always, maybe it's a mannerism they have or a bad habit that they have and it irritates you. Give that to the Lord. Something that I have to work on, I'm going to be very honest with you on this point here, it's a little embarrassing, but one of my pet peeves, one of my flies, is when I'm sitting and I'm with people and I'm eating, if I can hear it sloshing around in their mouth, that bothers me. Does that bother anyone else here or am I just weird? Okay. And I have to make sure that I don't let that frustrate me I can sit down at a meal with my family and be good to go spiritually and someone is sloshing their food and their mouth is closed even but it's just very obvious that they're eating and it just I don't know it's like fingers on a chalkboard to me I Have to give that to the Lord. I'm serious I I can leave dinner time with a bad attitude for that one thing. And everyone else is sitting there thinking this is humanity, this is life, this doesn't bother me. Well, you have things that bother you too, and I don't know what they are. But some other people in this church do them. But I want to remind you, that's not sin. Sloshing your food in your mouth is not sin. No one needs to repent of that. No one needs to repent of some of the little things that you're concerned about either. It's just you. As a fly, stop stamping, stop flicking your tail around, and let the Lord calm you. Give it to the Lord. The little things. When you go to work tomorrow, there's those little things that if you could change that process in the office, you would, it would be, give that to the Lord. He is watching over it. He could probably tell you all the flies and count them. He probably could tell you how many hairs on each fly. He knows everything. Everything's under control. Just trust in him. And last, letter D, he removes famine. It is not generally known that many of the great sheep countries of the world are actually dry, semi-arid areas. Most breeds of sheep flourish best in this sort of terrain. They are susceptible to fewer hazards of health or parasites when the climate is dry, according to Philip Keller. But in those same regions, it is neither natural nor common to find green pastures. For example, in Palestine, where David wrote his psalm and kept his father's flocks, especially near Bethlehem, it is a dry, brown, sunburned wasteland. To make this area, which is actually a good place for there not to be pests and not to be predators and these kind of things, you still have to come up with green lush grass. And what a shepherd has to do And we'll talk about this later when we talk about preparing a table in the wilderness. He has to do a lot of work to make that arid place grow and be productive. You don't have to do that work, but he does. How does our shepherd provide us with nourishment that we need in a dry and barren wasteland? He does this through his word. Matthew 4, 4, when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, fasting for 40 days, he says this, he answered and said, it is written, and referring back to wilderness wanderings of Israel in the desert without food, man shall not live by bread alone. but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. We live according to his word, not according to the food. Jeremiah says, in a time of hardship and trial in his life, thy words were found and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart, for I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts. Job himself said in his time of trial, Job 19.12, neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips. I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. He says, I've wanted your words more than I've wanted food. That's how much I'm serious about knowing what you want, Lord. Feed on the word of God. And in the word of God, you will find something much sweeter than food. Psalm 19, seven through 10. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, all of them altogether. More to be desired today than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Maybe in American terminology we could say sweeter than homemade ice cream with Hershey's syrup on it. It's better than that. God's word is sweet, God's word is rich, God's word is lush, and it will feed you in any wasteland that you face. God cannot make you rest. but he has done all of the work necessary to make that possible. He has removed the fear, friction, frustration, and famine, making it possible for you to rest in your spirit at all times. The Lord is your shepherd. He makes it possible for you to lie down in green pastures. Therefore, you can genuinely rest.