Facing The Future | Psalm 23 | Pastor John Miller

i'm going to read psalm 23 i want you to follow with me in your bible beginning in verse 1. david is the psalmist says the lord is my shepherd i shall not want he maketh me to lie down in green pastures he leadeth me beside still waters he restores my soul he leads me in the past of righteousness for his name's sake and yea though i walk to the valley of shadow of death i will fear no evil for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me thou preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies thou anointest my head with oil my cup runeth over surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and david said i will dwell in the house of the lord for ever so we're facing a new year certainly the last two years or a couple of years have been very challenging and difficult for so many of us and one of the things that creates anxiety and fear is not knowing what the new year holds but i love the concept we don't know what the new year holds but we know who holds the new year amen as god's people and being his sheep and he's our shepherd we don't need to fear the coming new year that's what psalm 23 is all about when david said the lord is my shepherd in the living bible that says i have everything i need i love that now that's a paraphrase but it's a great and accurate paraphrase when the lord is my shepherd i have everything i need and david goes on to delineate in the psalm the things that the lord as our shepherd provide but look with me for a moment at verse 1 it's actually the theme of the psalm the lord is my shepherd i shall not want now the lord my shepherd is written by david the 23rd psalm but we don't know when david wrote it now not knowing when david wrote it again it's speculation and i'm not called to be a speculator i'm called to be an expositor but allow me the liberty for just a moment to speculate when david wrote the psalm some say he might have written it as a young boy out in the field playing his harp watching his sheep that's a good setting when he's just playing his heart the lord is my shepherd he's saying from his heart he makes me to lie down in green patch so everything david was to his sheep he knew the lord was to him david i'm sure was a great shepherd and because of his faithfulness as a shepherd god raised him up to shepherd his people the nation of israel and allowed him to be king but we don't know if he wrote it young and some say middle age when he's being chased by saul and he's hiding in the cave and everything's dark and dreary he doesn't know what the future holds he began to think and pray the lord is my shepherd and i will dwell in the house of the lord maybe he's shivering cold in a cave when he's running from saul but the third option is my favorite is that david wrote it as an old man his hair is gray his beard is gray the crown is sitting kind of cockeyed on his head but he's now looking back over his life and he starts to see how the lord shepherded him and guided him and provided for him and led him i don't know what it is about getting old i think i'm kind of getting at that stage where i'm starting to look kind of emotionally and sentimentally over my life and i realize that i have more behind me than i have ahead of me i don't know how long i'll have but here's another year the lord willing he'll give me strength to keep preaching through the year but um [Music] sometimes i get just kind of like you know just a little emotional thinking about the lord's goodness the lord's provision the lord's guidance in my life so i picture david as an old man writing the psalm in retrospect that he uses a metaphor of the lord my shepherd we are a sheep and in retrospect he's looking back over his long life and all the ups all the downs all the highs and all the lows but yet seeing the faithfulness of god i love the concept of god faithful and so true that god is faithful amen have you found god to be faithful to you faithful in your marriage faithful to your family faithful to your children we were with our grand many of our grandchildren all but one of our grandchildren yesterday and just the faithfulness of god to provide and to guide and to take care of us is such a wonderful thought so my theory is that david wrote it in his latter years and he's looking back over how the lord had led him as he was his shepherd and david was a sheep now if the lord is our shepherd the implication is what we are his sheep now i don't know if you realize it but that's not that flattering a lot of guys watching football yesterday ride all the football games on christmas day and you ever seen a an nfl football team called the sheep got the tigers we got the bears you know i got the lions you know and all these great names and the hawks and all these great names and now ladies and gentlemen here's your team the sheep they come out on the field i don't think so sheep are weak they're defenseless they don't have fanx they don't have claws they're unable to defend themselves they need a shepherd sheep without a shepherd are in big trouble so if we're sheep we need a shepherd and no one better to be our shepherd than the lord jesus christ and i believe that this shepherd in psalm 23 is jesus christ jesus said in john 10 i am the what good shepherd literally in the greek that's i am the shepherd the good one there's the bad shepherds i'm the good one and that he gives his life for his sheep so what a blessing it is if you've been born again you're a child of god you fall into this category you can say the lord is my shepherd and i love that personal statement my he may not be my parents shepherd he may not be my friend shepherd but he's my shepherd david had that intimate personal relationship with the lord as this shepherd so this psalm penned over 3 000 years ago is as fresh as if it were penned this morning and what david does in this psalm at least what i want to point out is he tells us these six things that the lord our shepherd provides for us as we move forward in this coming year if you're taking notes you can write them down because the lord is my shepherd i shall not want for rest and refreshment number one notice it in verse two he maketh me to lie down in green pastures he leads me beside still waters now lest i forget i want you to note the emphasis through the psalm he then in verse 2 he leadeth me then in verse 3 he restores my soul then in verse 3 he leadeth me and his name's sake then jump down to the end of verse 4 we have thou art with me thy rod and thy staff verse 5 thou preparest to table thou anointest my head with oil so the whole psalm focuses on the shepherd the focus of the psalm is not on the sheep it's on the shepherd and his provision and his goodness but the first thing that david says he does is he makes me to lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside waters of stillness now in the middle east little there's little grass and water so the sheep must constantly be on the hunt it's kind of like sheep in southern california very dry very arid so they're always looking for pasture land they're always on the move and they can't stay in one place for very long so the sheep can't really rest unless they have food and they are free from fear the bible says the wicked are like the raging sea they're always being troubled but when we come to jesus christ as our shepherd he gives us rest for our souls i love the promise that jesus made when he said come unto me all ye who are weary and what heavy laden and i will give you rest so you come to jesus for rest of the soul and you find rest and he leads us and guides our life so the sheep have to keep looking for grass and for food but jesus is our shepherd he makes us lie down in green pastures that's picture of rest and he leads me beside the still waters that's a picture of refreshment so if you haven't trusted jesus as your shepherd then you still need that rest of soul that only he can get but as we go into the new year we can rest in the lord we can wait on the lord we can trust in the lord he will give us rest the second blessing that he gives to us as his sheep is restoration look at just the first few words of verse 3 he restores my soul so he gives me rest and he restores my soul and then it says that he leads me in the past of righteousness for his name's sake but the second blessing is restoration you know if you've never read the book by philip keller it's called a shepherd looks at psalm 23. it's an amazing study of psalm 23 by a man who was himself a shepherd in new zealand now i've had the privilege of preaching in new zealand several times only been to the north island but i preached all over the north island and new zealand is interesting because it has more sheep than it has people everywhere you go there's just sheep sheep sheep sheep sheep everywhere their sheep and so philip keller was a shepherd in new zealand but he was also a pastor so he unfolds this psalm in an amazing way and he talked about what he called cast sheep he says that sheep can eat so much that when they get full they lay down and they lay over on their side and then full pull over on their back that their equilibrium kind of shifts and with their full stomach that they can get on their back with their feet in the air and they're cast and they can't write themselves they can't stand up that all they can do is cry out for the shepherd and he hears the bleeding of the sheep and the shepherd actually has to rescue them and put them back on their feet to get them going again or they would die as a cast sheep david said why art thou cast down o my soul why are thou disquieted within me you ever been a cast sheep i have you just kind of get down and you can't get up right and you just like that's my impersonation of a sheep it's pretty bad isn't it but i love this imagery of the bleeding of the sheep and the shepherd hears and comes jesus talked about the good shepherd having 100 sheep loses one what does he do he leaves the 99 and goes look for the one lost sheep now if i were the shepherd i'd say good riddance dumb sheep should have stayed with us he gets lost that's his problem he made his bed let him lie in it but not our good shepherd he loves the sheep so he leaves the 90 and 9 and he goes out and he finds that one lost cast sheep and he picks it up he puts it over his shoulders and he comes back rejoicing that that which is lost has been found amen and so when we fall when we stumble whether we fall into sin or we're just going through a deep dark valley we're going to see at verse 4 or we're discouraged or the clouds come in the good shepherd comes and he restores our soul david though he was a man after god's own heart knew what it was to sin and to fall we're all familiar with david's great sin of adultery with bathsheba how he took another man's wife and she became pregnant and david tried to cover his sin the bible says if you try to cover your sin you're not going to prosper but whosoever confesses and forsake it shall find mercy so for quite a long period of time maybe a year or so david thought he covered his sin because he had he had uriah her husband who was a soldier who was at battle at that time put out in the forefront of the battle and had the troops pulled back and had him killed so david committed adultery and murdered her husband to cover his sin think about that the man the bible calls a man after god's own heart so even god's people can fall into sin they won't habitually practice sin but we can stumble and fall so david lived with this guilt and shame in psalm 32 he talked about as moisture of his soul was turned into the drought of summer and then he uses this figure of speech day and night your hand was heavy upon me so he was a child of god living under the conviction that i have sinned against god and against these individuals against my own family so after a long period of time of god's patience he sent a prophet to david his name is nathan and nathan told david the little story about the wealthy man who had all these sheep and all these sheep and when a visitor came to his house instead of killing one of his own sheep and feeding his visitor he went to his neighbor's house who had only one little you lamb it was like a it was like a pet and he violently took that little you lamb and killed it and fed his visiting friend now when david heard that story he didn't realize it was about him and it was god was trying to reach his heart with this message he got angry and he said the man who has done this will surely die whoa and again with a little sanctified imagination i think nathan pointed his big long bony prophetic finger right at david's face i'm convinced all prophets had long real bony fingers he said david you are the man can you imagine that he just said the man who has done this shall surely die and then the prophet says david you're that man and then his sin overwhelmed him and he realized that god had exposed to sin and he broke and he said lord i'm sorry god forgive my sin and nathan said god has forgiven your sin but the sword will not depart from your house you know god will forgive you but the consequences go on it's a law of god what a man sows that shall he also reap you can't pray god forgive me and cover my sin the consequences are going to still be there so he was forgiven but the consequences were still there and the sword came into david's heart and he never in life he never really rose again to the place that he was before his great sin with bathsheba so but god lifted him up and then he wrote psalm 51. if you get a chance to read psalm 51 where he talks about have mercy upon me o god according to the multitask tender mercies blot out my iniquity for it's so great i think psalm 51 is tear stained in every believer's bible i've prayed that prayer so many times god please forgive me cleanse me and when you read about what david asked god to do in that psalm restore the joy of my salvation uphold me with a free spirit he's actually praying for what sin robbed in his life sin robs us of the joy of the lord the presence of the lord the peace of the lord so he's praying that god would restore all those things back into his life so it's a picture of he restores my soul so no matter what happens this year if you fall into sin god is there to restore you to forgive you first john 1 9 says if we confess our sin he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness so we have rest we have restoration then thirdly write it down it's in the end of verse three we have righteous paths he leadeth me in the past of righteousness for his name's sake now at the end of verse 2 he leads me besides still waters at the end of verse 3 he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name sake now sheep are not only kind of dumb and kind of dependent and kind of defenseless but they lack sense of direction a dog can wander off and find its way back certainly cows can wander out the pasture right you ever seen cows out in the hills and go man where did they spend the night out here where did they go to them you know they're so far from any civilization they know where to go back to the barn they know how to get back to the shelter but not sheep when sheep wander off the path they get lost they need a shepherd so we need past so this coming year we need the lord to lead us and guide us amen we need righteous past to walk in because we need the shepherd to direct us and to guide us so how do we know or find his righteous past i believe that we start with the bible the bible yes that's the book for me i love it i stand alone on the word of god the bible i think we need to take some of the songs from the children's ministry and bring them into the sanctuary you know what you should pray for this year a greater deeper hunger for god's word pray that god gives you a hunger for his word and then you go deeper in his word and you learn more about him in his word god lays out his notice their passive righteousness god always leads us in righteous ways he doesn't lead us to sin he leads us into righteousness and why does he do it look at the text for his name sake amen everything god does is for his glory so pray that god gives you a hunger for his word i continue to have a hunger to preach and to teach and to study god's word and we're going to continue doing that throughout this year praying asking the holy spirit to lead you and to guide you and to all truth and surrendering your life and obedience to his word and all that he does he does for his glory so our desire this coming year is lord give me the right path make them righteous pass i mean to walk in obedience to your word in my marriage in my private life and my thoughts and my words and my heart and my parenting and my occupation and my ministry may it all be your righteous past keep me on your path of righteousness so we have rest restoration righteous past and then notice fourthly if you're taking notes verse four we have comfort in the deep dark valleys of life yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil why because you're with me and your rod and your staff they comfort me so sheep many times are timid as well and philip keller talks about times when he's trying to get the sheep up to the higher pasture lands in the summer months he would have to go through the valleys to get to the mountaintops you have to go through the valleys and then the canyons the shadows would be cast in the canyons and sheep were kind of timid and shy and they see the dark canyons and they don't want to go up and sheep unlike cattle cannot be driven they must be led so many times a shepherd would take a little you lamb pick it up in his arms and he would go ahead of the flock and he would lead the flock and then the sheep would follow the shepherd so the lord is leading us in his righteous past but being a sheep doesn't mean we don't go through deep dark valleys some people have the idea if you're a christian nothing ever goes wrong no difficulties everything's downhill not too steep but just a little downhill it's got the right steepness it's smooth there's no bumps it's well lit the wind is always just very gentle and a little bit on your back there's always roses where the thorns have been removed but the fragrance is so sweet and everybody's lining the road cheering you as you go by and you float down through life why are you laughing [Music] [Laughter] there are no christian fallout shelters god doesn't save you and then pump you in a little bubble and doesn't let anything happen to you we live in a fallen world we have unregenerated bodies our bodies aren't redeemed unredeemed bodies that is we're saved we're born again but our bodies haven't been redeemed yet we will get a new body so we get sick we get weak we get frail we have financial reverses we can lose our job we can get diagnosed with cancer thing things i never come to a new year like this but when i look over the congregation and realize some of you are going to go through some deep dark valleys this year some of you won't be here next year maybe the lord takes you home you say this is supposed to encourage me god bless you some of you're going to die see you in heaven but it's true i wish it weren't wish we would just say oh we're all going to live to the right and we might we might get raptured this afternoon i don't know but i've been around long enough to realize that some of us and i'm included in that some of us we could go through deep dark valleys this year but i'm confident of one thing the lord is our shepherd and he will not leave us or forsake us amen he will be with us [Applause] so there's two things in this dark valley that we have when we pass through and by the way this is not just talking about death in the king james bible and other translations a valley a shadow of death but literally in the hebrew it's that actually deep dark valley or valley of darkness it's assumed that it's talking about death and it very well could be i think it's including death but it's also just talking about deep dark valleys of difficulty in life or trials so whatever we face whether it be death or whether it be just life's difficulties two things that we're going to have this coming year his presence for thou art with me and his protection thyroid and thy staff they comfort me the rod and the staff are there to protect and to guide the sheep but i love that thou art with me remember jesus said i will never leave you or what forsake you that's a promise that you can take to the bank so no matter what deep dark valley you pass through this coming year you'll have his presence and you'll have his protection amen the lord will be with you now notice number five the lord is my shepherd i have his provision verse five thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies thou the focus is on the shepherd now anointing my head with oil my cup runs over now i've always thought it's interesting and some feel and i don't know that this is the case that david switches the metaphor from the shepherd and the sheep to the host and the guest and it seems to be that but the picture is of maybe we are now the guest and the lord is the host and that he prepares a table before our enemies he anoints our head with oil and our cup runneth over so he invites us over and anoints our head with oil and provides for us at his table so we have jehovah is my raha my shepherd now we have jehovah is my gyra he's my provider this is one of the compound names of god we have jehovah nesse the lord is our banner jehovah shalom the lord is my peace jehovah to sid canoe the lord is my righteousness when god used that name i am it's that concept i am whatever it is you need whatever you need god becomes what you need he meets your need so i'm your shepherd i'm your provider i'm your banner i'm your host so now jehovah is our host and we come into the house where he provides for us but i love the doctrine of god's provision for his people the bible tells us in philippians chapter 4 verse 19 my god shall supply all your what not your greeds but your needs according to his riches in glory in christ jesus now flip over with me i i don't want to just relate it to you i want to read up the lengthy passage but hold your place in psalm 23. flip over to matthew chapter 6 real quick matthew chapter 6 verse 26 let's read these familiar words in light of the coming new year jesus is speaking in matthew 6 verse 26 he said beholder look at the fowls of the air for they sow not neither do they reap either gather into barn judge your fa heavenly father feeds them are you not much better than they verse 27 which of you by taking thought or worry or care can add one cubit onto his stature and why take he thought for the remnant or considered the lilies of the field they don't grow no toil neither do they spin yet i say unto you that they even solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these wherefore if god so clothed the grass and the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven shall he not much more clothe you o ye of little faith therefore take no thought don't worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we put on for after all these things do the gentiles it's referring to the non-believers the heathens they seek for your father in heaven knows that you need these things then in verse 33 but seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you take therefore no anxious thought or worry for tomorrow for tomorrow she'll take thought for the things of itself sufficient until the day is the evil thereof why worry about tomorrow it's not here yet right you get burdened by the cares of tomorrow and then you get to tomorrow and it never happens you know we worry about things that many times never even happen you should you should at least wait and see if it happens or not we burdened with the worries and cares of tomorrow sufficient for the day is this is the is the evil thereof now go back to psalm 23 with me so we have his pro-vision in verse 5. he anoints our head with oil our cup runs over the lord is our provider and our host now the psalm concludes in verse 6 with the last blessing in what i believe is a summary of the psalm i believe in verse 6 he abandons all metaphors not sheep and shepherd it's not host and guest he just says surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and then he says i will dwell in the house of the lord forever now i've actually preached six weeks on psalm 23 you can find it on our website and every one of these verses is just full of marvelous truth but i've highlighted three words in verse six surely shall and i will surely shall and i will those three phrases speak of the certainty when the lord is our shepherd we know that goodness and mercy will follow us all our life through not easy but we'll be blessed he'll follow us all our life through and then when we get to the end of our life all this and heaven too so david i believe again is looking backwards and he said you know all mom all my life long god has been good to me he's watched over me remember those times where i thought where's god he was carrying me he was protecting me he was watching over me it those darkest periods in my life when he was sowed there and watched over me goodness and mercy father i always thought it'd be cool to get two two dogs and name one goodness and one mercy and teach him to follow you everywhere you go [Music] and you turn around and look at come on my goodness and mercy are following me everywhere i go i don't know what your life has been like i don't know what heartache or pain or difficulty you've had to face but i do know that once the lord is your shepherd you have everything you need he has everything you need he gives you rest he restores your soul he leads you in righteous past he protects you with his presence he watches over you in the deep dark valleys he provides for you and then he takes you to heaven when you die what a beautiful psalm so it goes back to verse 1 when the lord is your shepherd when you can say the lord is my shepherd then you can say i have everything that i need someone put it in these words and a devotion i found each step in the life of faith is toward richer blessing are you a child of god there's nothing before you in the unopened future but goodness every new experience whether of joy or sorrow will be a new storehouse of goodness for you even in the heart of disaster you will still find goodness unfolded even your disappointments will disclose truer richer blessing than if your own hopes have been realized here is a lens through which every true christian may see his own path clear to the end from goodness to richer goodness from glory to glory and the last step through the opening door of heaven into the presence of the king what a wonderful thing it is to know the lord is your shepherd and that you have everything you need amen

Channel: Revival Christian Fellowship

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Id: 3STLiN-EJxE

Length: 32min 37sec (1957 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 26 2021