Our scripture reading tonight is Psalm 23, Psalm 23, so let us give our careful attention to the reading of God's Word, Psalm 23, this is God's own Word. a psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So far the reading of God's Word. As I'm sure you all remember, some weeks ago I preached from Psalm 103. Some of you remember. And I said on that occasion that Psalm 103 had been through the centuries really the favorite psalm of Dutch Reformed churches. And I said, by contrast, very clearly the favorite psalm in the English-speaking world through the centuries has been Psalm 23. And in that sermon on Psalm 103, I promised to get around to preaching Psalm 23, so here I am fulfilling fulfilling my promise. And I wonder if some of you thought, when you saw that I was preaching on Psalm 23, maybe for just a moment you thought, haven't we heard that often enough? Don't we know Psalm 23? What's new to be learned out of Psalm 23? And I understand that. It's a very familiar psalm, isn't it? It's a psalm that we sing regularly in church. It's a psalm that is sung rather regularly at funerals, sometimes sung also at weddings. I remember when my niece got married, my son Robert was asked to sing at her wedding, and he said he'd sing Psalm 23. And my he said, isn't that a funeral psalm? And my son said, no, it's also a wedding psalm. And you may recall that it was Queen Elizabeth II that helped make the tune of Crimen, which we'll sing after the sermon, popular in the English-speaking world. She had that Psalm 23 sung to Crimen at her wedding and at her funeral. So it was a psalm very close to her heart and a psalm close to all of our hearts. It's familiar to the extent that most of the phrases from that psalm we know, don't we? Probably I could read almost any half verse from this psalm, and most of you would be able to tell me, oh, that's from Psalm 23. It's just a psalm that we recognize and that we know, and so why does it have to be preached again? Well, I think the very familiarity of the psalm means that while we know elements of it, we may not know so clearly how it hangs together. What is the flow of the thought of the psalm? It's one of those parts of Scripture where we may know the elements of it, but do we know the wholeness of it? That's part of what I'm hoping we'll be able to make progress on tonight. Because although the psalm initially seems so very simple, if you spend time studying it, there's actually a fair bit of complexity to this psalm. It's quite interestingly put together. And just the minute you think you have figured it all out, it becomes elusive and escapes. I suppose that's a sign of a really good poem. It never is entirely figured out. It's never completely mastered, and yet this is a psalm that is wonderful to memorize. Psalm 63, we sang about meditations in the night, and I find as I get older, I have more time to meditate in the night because there's less time spent sleeping. And so it's important to have things that we've memorized, that we've committed to our hearts as well as to our minds that we can turn over in our minds at night and during the day and various times of need. And this is wonderfully true of Psalm 23. It is simple, easy to memorize, easy to sing to a good tune, and we have wonderful tunes and wonderful meter settings of Psalm 23, and yet we need to grasp at a profound level what the Lord is saying to us and what He's saying to us about His care for us. This is what Psalm 23 is really all about. it's a wonderful celebration of God's care for us. You can all relax tonight. Psalm 23 does not ask you to do anything except maybe remember, except maybe rest in what the Lord has done for you. This psalm is all about God's work, about God's care, about God's provision. And what it says about us is that as we are taken care of by God, we are a blessed people. There are wonderful statements that come to us in this very short psalm, just six verses, that talk about because of God's care, because of God's action, because of what God has done for us, we do not have to want, we do not have to fear, we are comforted, we are followed by grace and mercy, no, goodness and mercy. I was testing you. It's full of these declarations of how the work of God leads to blessing in our lives. And that's what this psalm wants us to focus on. It's a beautiful poem. It speaks to us in powerful images, poetic images. And the most powerful one perhaps is the one with which the psalm begins. The Lord is my shepherd. And that's a powerful image, isn't it, of the care, of the presence, of the provision of the Lord with His people. That as sheep need a shepherd to be protected and to be guided and to be provided for, so the Lord is for us a shepherd. But what I hope we'll see as we go along that although that image is so powerful and so important, it's only one of the images with which God is portrayed for us. And sometimes we've allowed that idea of shepherd to become so dominant in our approach to the psalm that we don't see anything else. There was a whole book written entitled A Shepherd looks at Psalm 23 and claims that the whole psalm was about shepherding. Well, I don't think that's right. Part of the psalm is about shepherding, but it's about a lot of other things, a lot of other images with which the Lord talks about His care for us. And this psalm talks about God's care for us as we live out our lives. One of the repeating images of this psalm is about how the Lord cares for us, provides for us, is with us as we're walking. Walking is an image of living out our lives, and as we live out our lives in various circumstances, the Lord is with us to bless us. But this psalm also talks about how the Lord is with us to bless us when we're resting. Not all of life is walking, thankfully. There's also resting. He causes us to lie down in green pastures. He causes us to dwell forever in His home. So, there's a comprehensiveness to this little psalm that covers so much of life, which I think is part of why it has been such a very popular psalm. The great Dutch commentator Kroosheide said that it is the most comforting psalm in the Psalter. And when we think of all the comfort we derive from psalms to say this is the most comforting psalm, it is really a remarkable thing. This psalm is sort of the fuzzy blanket of psalms. Or as I might like to say, this is the Sunday afternoon mashed potatoes and gravy of psalms. This is the comfort food of the Scripture that comes to us to assure us of the character of God. And so we want to look at this psalm. And the first thing I would suggest is in the opening verses of this psalm that we are directed to is the Lord's provision for us. The Lord's provision for us. Our God is a God who provides for His people. And the first point made here in verses 1 and 2 is that He provides for us as a shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. The Lord is a shepherd who provides for the physical needs of His people. That's certainly what's being taught here. Many have said that if you want to know what Israel is like geographically, but you don't want to get on a plane and travel all that way, you could just go to, oh, say, Escondido. that Escondido is a lot like Israel. Which means what? Green pastures are not in abundant supply. If you were a shepherd in Escondido, where would you go for green pastures? Well, we do have some green pastures, but they're all man-made, aren't they? They're all artificially watered. Well, maybe not all, but a lot of them are. And if you were a shepherd in Escondido and wanted to take the sheep to quiet waters, that would be challenging too, wouldn't it? Certainly to try to find flowing quiet waters. You might go to Lake Dixon or Lake Hodges, but those are man-made lakes. When we finally have rivers with some water in it, they're not quiet rivers very often. but flooding rivers. And so there's a wonderful poetic picture of the abundance and the thoughtfulness and the appropriateness of God's provision and care for His people. He gives us the green pastures we need to sustain us. He gives us the quiet waters that are accessible with us to bless us. And what a wonderful picture it is of the Lord's provision for us. And then we go on to verse 3, where He's continuing the theme of the Lord's provision, but I think now not as a shepherd. I think the theme of shepherd, He's already moving beyond. Now, some have said, no, this is still the shepherd, because when it says He restores my soul, we could well translate that He restores my life. So, if I'm a sheep and He restores my life, that would make sense. Sheep don't have souls, so it doesn't make so much sense to talk about restoring the souls of sheep. And then it says, He leads me in paths of righteousness. We could translate that. He leads me in right paths. Sheep can be led in right paths. I don't think they can be led in paths of righteousness. I think the psalmist has moved on from the theme of shepherd. We find shepherd so powerful, we may not find it so easy to move on, but I think the poet has moved on to think about God now not as shepherd, but as Savior. He restores my soul. That word restores is a very interesting word it's found in the psalms of the sense where the poet talks about restoring the fortunes of zion and what that really means there is god turns the heart of zion turns the life of zion around and that's what he's saying about us too god restores my soul in the sense that he turns my soul turns my soul away from the paths of wickedness to the paths of righteousness. And so, God is acting here not so much as shepherdess, as Savior. He's the one who comes and gives me a new heart. He's the one who sanctifies me and directs me and encourages me in the path in which I should go. And then you notice there at the end of verse 3, He does this for his name's sake. Why does the Lord act as a shepherd for us? Why does the Lord act as a savior for us? Well, he does that to glorify himself. He does that for his own sake. We hear a similar sort of reflection in the prophet Ezekiel. In chapter 36, at verse 22, Ezekiel says, Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Psalm 23 is talking about how the motivation of God for the salvation of His people is a motivation that He might be glorified and we might be blessed. God cannot find the motivation for salvation in us because we do not deserve it. But God is going to vindicate His own glory before the world by assembling a people, a people who are not wiser or richer or better than the rest of the world, but a people that have been chosen by His sovereign good pleasure, and to whom He will give His Spirit, and to whom He will give a new heart, and in whom he will give a new life. And that's just what Psalm 23 is celebrating there in verse 3. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. What a great provision we have from God. And that provision from God has such blessedness in our lives, and that's what is declared in those marvelous words right in verse 1, I shall not want. I shall not want. That is the most important things that we need in life, for physical life and for spiritual life. The Lord promises He will provide, and He has provided, hasn't He, in our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. Jesus Christ is the faithful Savior. Jesus Christ is the provision of God. And Jesus Christ is the one who assures us we shall not want, but He will give us what we need for this life and for the life of the world to come. So that's the first great point this psalm makes, I think, the Lord's provision. And the second great point is the Lord's protection. The Lord's protection. There we see it, I think, in verse 4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Do you notice the intriguing shift in that verse? In verses 1 through 3, the psalmist has been talking about the Lord as He. Those verses are verses of meditation. The psalmist is rolling around in his mind who the Lord is for him. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my Savior. Now that meditation turns into prayer. For you are with me. It's not that He is with me, that would be true, of course, but it's interesting in the Psalter how frequently meditation turns to prayer and prayer turns to meditation. They are mutually reinforcing. As we meditate in the night, we will be led to pray in the night, and as we pray in the night, we'll be led to meditate on the character of our God. And here in verse 4, the psalmist is is meditating on how God protects him in the great difficulties of life. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, it's not just death that is the difficulty he's meditating on, but all of those struggles of life which are threatening to life itself, to undermine life, whether spiritually or emotionally or physically, All of those threats that can come upon us, the psalmist is able to say in the face of them, I will fear no evil. I will fear no evil. In adult Sunday school, we've been studying the gospel of Mark, and one of the things that has impressed me in the gospel of Mark is how Mark constantly draws a contrast between faith and fear. When the disciples fail to exercise faith, they fall into fear. And even when they face circumstances that ought to create fear, they don't have to fear if they have faith. And that's very much what the psalmist is meditating on here. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death, whatever that difficulty, whatever that threat in life might be, can very legitimately lead to fear. But the psalmist is saying, when I meditate on God as my shepherd and my Savior, when I pray to God as my protector, I will not fear. He will drive out fear. He will fill me with confidence. And how does God do that? Well, here in this little verse, we're told in the first place, He does that by being with us. For you are with me. What a wonderful promise that is. Whatever the difficulty, whatever the struggle, Whatever the problem, God promises to be with us, and that promise, again, is preeminently fulfilled in Jesus, isn't it? What is one of the names of Jesus? It's Emmanuel, God with us. God's being with us drives out fear. God's being with us assures us that however difficult the circumstances, however great the threats, God will protect us because He's with us. One of the greatest agonies of the soul that we find in the Psalter is when the psalmist for a time thinks maybe God is not with him. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But the promise of God's word is that he does not forsake us. He is with us. And in being with us, he drives out fear. You notice it doesn't say he drives out the threat of the valley of the shadow of death. But he drives out the fear that we'll be overwhelmed by the threats of this world. He is with us to protect us. And that brings us then to, can we say, the weapons of His protection? Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Now, when we read that in light of the psalm beginning with the words, the Lord is my shepherd, we have almost always thought of that rod and that staff as the weapons that the shepherd carries with him. And that may well be what the psalmist have in mind, but there is another possibility, and that is that these could be related to the weapons of war that a king and soldiers and conquerors carry. These words are not specific to a shepherd. They can also be translated as a scepter. Your scepter and rod, they comfort me. Even your spear and your rod, they comfort me. These can be implements of war. It can be a vision that God has gone to war for His people, to protect them, to care for them. And I tend to think that's the character of what's going on here, because the very next verse goes on to say, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. I'm fairly sure sheep don't need a table. It's a clearly different image. It's an image of a conqueror, of a king who has triumphed on behalf of his people, and in the presence of his victory, he provides a feast. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. This is still the verse about the Lord's protection. The Lord protects us. And the Lord says, in light of my protection, in light of my presence, I want you to be comforted. I want you to be assured that you're not alone, that you're not abandoned, that you're not forgotten. but that the Lord is not only present with you, but the Lord will act to preserve you as He's present with you, and that that should fill you with faith and with comfort that will drive out fear. And so here is a wonderful reflection in prayer now of who the Lord is for His people. The Lord's provision, the Lord's protection, and then the last two verses I would call the Lord's power at work for us. The Lord's power. You prepare a table before me in the presence of your enemies, of my enemies. The Lord's power is at work to conquer the enemies and to give us a victory party. That's the picture here. The Lord is providing for us again physically in a profound sense. But also, I think we can say spiritually. What kind of feast is this? I think it's not the feast of the shepherd, but it's the feast of the lamb, perhaps. It is our God who, as victor over the enemies that attack His people and attack Him is able, in the midst of that victory, to provide a feast, an abundant feast, an overflowing feast. It's a celebration. He anoints our heads with oil. That doesn't mean He makes us messiahs. It means He refreshes us after the battle. And He provides more even than we need so that our cups overflow. This is a picture of God's power at work to bless, to sustain, to provide for His people. And then, in the great closing verse of this psalm, I think a verse that maybe really is greater than the opening verse, He says, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. He's back to meditating now. And what a meditation. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. That's the traditional translation. But the commentators suggest a better translation would be, goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life. it's not just that they're around. It's not just that they're a little ways behind. They're after you. They're after me. Goodness and mercy are what God sends for us to pursue us, to run us down, to provide for us. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Who's chasing you in life? If you're inclined to be paranoid, aren't we all? They really are chasing me. Who's chasing you in life? This psalm says, fundamentally, what's after you in life is God's goodness and mercy, God's faithfulness. And how long will God pursue you? How long will God be after you? All the days of my life. You can't outrun Him when you belong to Him. He'll protect you in His power. He'll preserve you in His power. That's the promise of this psalm. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. In my walking through life, goodness and mercy pursue me. They pursue me so that I might have a home in which to dwell. And that home is the very house of the Lord. This psalm begins with the covenant name of God. The Lord is my shepherd. And it ends very close to the end with the covenant name of God. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now, some of the scholars point out that the Hebrew doesn't actually say forever. The Hebrew says for length of days. And some of the Jewish scholars say you people have Christianized this psalm. It doesn't say forever. It says for length of days. That means just as long as you live. And the Christian answer to that is, how long are you going to live? How many days does Jesus give you? How many days does Jesus give you as his people? Out of his goodness and mercy, he gives us an everlasting number of days. And I think the psalmist is not so much saying He's only going to have us dwell in the house of the Lord during this earthly life as He's saying as you live in the house of the Lord it's not just forever it's every day leading to forever. That we will dwell in the house of the Lord because of God's care because of His mercy because of His provision for us. That's the promise of this psalm. And the psalm, as we step back and look at it, as we see ourselves kept by His power, this psalm, in a variety of ways, repeats itself, doesn't it? I've divided it kind of neatly into provision and protection and power, but these elements overlap and they repeat. Because God wants us to repeat this psalm. God wants us to let this psalm overlap in our mind, to return and return and strengthen us, because as we meditate on it, as we pray it, it will strengthen us, it will bless us, it will build us up in the faith. One of the great American novelists, a controversial novelist, John Updike. I think if you'd asked John Updike what his religion was, he might have said he was a Calvinist. That would surprise a lot of people, and I'm not commending to you all of John Updike's writings. But as he lay dying of cancer, He returned to writing poetry, which had been an early love of his life. And he meditated on Psalm 23. And it's always interesting to see a poet meditate on a poem. Poets see things in poems that the rest of us often don't see. And there was one word that Updike found so comforting. so helpful, so central to the meaning of this psalm, and it's what we have at the beginning of verse 6. Surely, goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life. You know, it's one thing for God to say, goodness and mercy will pursue you all the days of your life. But it's another thing for God to say, surely, surely, undoubtedly, certainly, absolutely, goodness and mercy will pursue you all the days of your life. And what will the result be? You'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. What a comforting song. What a comforting song. You don't have to do anything except rest in it, believe it, trust it, let its promises fill your heart and life because surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we are so thankful for Your Word. We are thankful for that Word which directs us and instructs us. We are thankful for that Word when it rebukes and challenges us. But tonight, we are so thankful for that Word as it comforts us, as it promises us that in Christ we need to have no fear, for You are with us, that in Christ we can be comforted to know You will protect us. In Christ, we will have no want. In Christ, goodness and mercy will pursue us. And in Christ, we will dwell with You and the Holy Spirit forever in glory. We do thank you for your care for us. We do thank you for the blessings that overwhelm us. And we praise your holy name. Hear us, for we pray through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.