Psalm 23 - The Lord Is My Shepherd

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today, we are in one of the dearest portions of all scripture to many people, and we are in Psalm 23 today. And the inscription for this Psalm reads this, A Psalm of David.

I'm reading today out of the King James Version of the Bible. And this particular edition is Cambridge's New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.

And it is, in my opinion, the absolute best formatted King James that's out there, followed closely secondly by Humble Lamb is the publisher. And they have a King James, I think theirs is called The Lion, that they do a tremendous job on.

But reading out of that today, it's kind of in our cultural zeitgeist. It's a very familiar psalm. The phrasing of it, how it's read, how it's said is all very familiar to people.

And so I'm going to read out of that today, obviously, with a few notes taken here and there about perhaps some older phrasings or about phrases that don't quite mean the same type of thing anymore that they once did.

It says this, the Lord, Yahweh, it's the God that appeared to Moses, the I am that I am, I am, Yahweh, Jehovah is my shepherd. I shall not want or I shall not be in want. I'm not in need of anything.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still or the quiet waters. He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This is such an incredibly rich Psalm.

I'm going to attempt to, as best as I can, just kind of walk through piece by piece as we look at the words of this Psalm and ask some questions and see how it applies to our life and what God is doing, what He's saying to us, and hopefully it'll be

an encouragement to you. Starting off in verse number one, the Lord is my shepherd, Yahweh. The I am the one who is in need of nothing, the one who does not need your participation in order to be God.

He does not need your offerings in order to have food or in order to be enriched. He is all sufficient. That God is my shepherd.

He is the one who is with me, the one who is guiding me in every area of my life, the one who is leading me to food.

He is the one that is taking care of perhaps if I start going a wrong direction, if I'm headed towards danger, if danger they see is coming, they're the ones that are attacking it. And God is that for us. He is actively caring for you.

He is not a random person who happens to be near sheep. He is the sheep herder. He is the shepherd.

And God is consistently by your side. He is not absent. He is there.

Sometimes we wander off. Sometimes we get in trouble. Sometimes he does lead us into places where there is difficulty, but it is because he has something better on the other side.

He is with us. He is our shepherd. I shall not want or I shall not be in want.

With God, we can abandon covetousness. We can abandon a desire for what we do not have, and we can rest in what God has actually given us.

That we are not without what we need, but instead we can confidently say with the Apostle Paul in Philippians Chapter 4, My God, I know that my God will supply all of your needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. Where's my shepherd?

I shall not be in want. Our shepherd knows what he needs and he provides for us. He makes me to lie down in green pastures in the Hebrew here, pastures of tender grass that God gives us the rest that we need.

I think we've already looked at a couple of Psalms that highlight the fact that God is the one that gives us the sleep that we truly need.

He is the one that when we are stressed, when we need peace, that he gives that peace as we surrender our needs to him and say, God, I don't know what I'm doing in this scenario. I don't know how this is going to get fixed.

I don't know how I'm going to pay that bill. God is the one that allows us to be able to lie down to rest.

And he does not make us rest in kind of a fearful sense of, okay, I guess I'll perhaps sweat it out and maybe after hours and hours and hours of crying, then eventually God might allow me to pass out. No, no, no.

God leads us to a place where we can lie down in green pastures, in tender grass.

God's desire for you is not that you would be harmed, not that you would only have rest after complete exhaustion, but His desire for you, His eventual goal obviously counteracted by the effects of the fall, but His desire for us is that we would be

able to lie down in green pastures. It says, He leads me beside the still or the quiet waters, where we aren't swept away by the current, but instead we are able to get the sustenance that we need when we need it. And He leads us there.

He leads us to where we need to be in order to gain the sustenance that we need. Notice He leads us there, that we don't naturally head to the still or the quiet waters, but that He leads us there. Verse number three, He restores my soul.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of His name.

There He restores my soul, that our souls that are broken, that are destroyed by sin, that are destroyed by relationships gone awry, that are beaten down with the work of this sinful day and age, He restores us.

And this is His testimony that He gives, that He is working on it. And if it's not complete yet, it's because He's not done working yet. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

That God wants to lead you in a path where you are doing what is right, both by man and by God, that the people that name the name of God, that they've adopted on themselves, they are Christians, they are believers in God, that those people would

walk in the paths of righteousness. How would we know what the path of righteousness looks like? No person could, no mere human could follow that path correctly all on their own. He leads us there.

He has shown us what that looks like. Not only in His Word has He highlighted for us what it looks like, but He came in the person of Jesus.

We can ask ourselves that question from the book from the late 1800s, and then I believe it had a resurgence from that author's grandson in the 70s or 80s. What would Jesus do?

As we follow what Christ would do, then it causes us to see the paths of righteousness that we follow, that He is leading us there.

Verse number four, yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, even when I'm walking through life's darkest valleys, I will fear no evil for you are with me. What a comfort that we don't have to fear calamity.

We don't have to fear temptation. We don't have to fear what man can do because God is with us. And if God is with us, then truly what can be against us?

The worst that mankind could possibly do would be to destroy our bodies, to kill our physical selves. But all that succeeds in doing is reuniting us with God forever and prepares us for that resurrection day where we will all rise as Christ rose.

So because God is with us, we don't have to fear evil. We don't have to fear temptation when it comes that we would say, oh man, I just can't help but sin. I can't help but do this thing.

No, my friend, God is with us.

And if that was true for David, how much more true is it for us with the Holy Spirit of God living inside of us that he wants to build that fruit of the Spirit in and through our lives where we have things like self-control of temperance, that we

have faithfulness to God, that we have an obedience and a love and a joy and peace. He wants to build all of that in us. He is with us. And so we do not need to fear evil.

We don't have to fear what will happen in the election results this year because God is with us. Whatever he has planned for America, it's okay because he is with us.

And so we know if it's sunshine, if it's rain, if it's red, if it's blue, whatever it is, we can know that God is with us. Verse number five, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. A table is a feast.

It's a banquet. He says, God, even when I am surrounded by evil, by those that are against me, you're there. You're making food.

It doesn't bother God when there are enemies. It doesn't bother God when the kingdoms of this world are seeking to do their worst. It doesn't bother God when temptations come because He is more powerful than all of them.

So as a result, we can enjoy life even in the middle of having enemies, even in the middle of temptation. It doesn't mean that our lives have to be miserable.

Instead, we can enjoy the feast that God has given us, both spiritually, that He has given us spiritual food. We can enjoy the job that God has placed us in. We can enjoy the family that God has given us.

We can enjoy the table of all of the Lord's benefits, even in the presence of our enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over. Here an anointing with oil.

This is what was done to David to make him a king. He says, God, you have esteemed me. You have cared about me.

You have honored me. You have, if you will, you've ordained me. This was the same kind of thing that happened for getting the priests into their priestly services.

Like at the beginning, you have a kid that grows up. It's time for him to become a priest. You anoint his head with oil.

And God has made us, as Christian believers, priests and kings to our God. As we would read about in 1 Peter 2 and Revelation 4 and 5, that God has a kingdom for you.

If you are a Christian, then God has a plan for you to be right now a priest and right now a spiritual king or queen in his heavenly kingdom.

That you proclaim the news of the kingdom, that you as a participant in your local church, you have a part to play in how the kingdom operates and the decisions that the kingdom makes.

This is the kinds of things that Jesus was talking about when he talked about the keys of heaven that are given to the church and specifically to believers that whatever they bind on earth is bound in heaven.

Whatever they loose on earth is loosed in heaven. The actions that we take today as believers are meaningful. It actually results in eternal things happening.

When we witness, when we baptize, when we disciple, when we encourage one another, even in hard times, when there's maybe things of discipline, when the church works, the king is working and God has anointed your head with oil.

The anointed one, we've talked about this already, the Mashiach in Hebrew, the Messiah, the Christ is obviously Jesus.

And because you are now in Christ, if you have trusted him as Savior, you are an anointed one that God has just as he has anointed Christ. You are anointed as one of his people. Time would fail to fully unpack all of that, but you are important.

You are a priest. You are a king before God or queen before God. It says, my cup runs over.

My cup is overflowing with what you have given me, God. Verse number six, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. We need God's goodness.

We need his provision. We need that daily bread. We need money to pay the bills.

We need friendships. We need a church family. We need God's goodness to manifest in our life.

We need God's mercy because we are constantly sinning and doing wrong. So we need his mercy because if he did not give his mercy, all that would be left would be his justice and we would be under condemnation.

But because God's goodness and his mercy follow us, pursue us all the days of our life, we can have hope that through dark valleys, through quiet waters, God is with us. And I can look and I can go, God, thank you for your goodness.

I see it in this area. I see your mercy in this area that I messed up here. And God, you didn't condemn me.

You didn't get rid of me. Your goodness and your mercy, they are pursuing. They're running after me.

And then the last line, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord of Yahweh forever. Here in the King James, there's a note that states in Hebrew, to length of days, I will dwell in the house of the Lord to length of days.

It's basically as long as I live, God, I know that I'm going to be in your house. I'm in your presence. What an incredible thought.

Today, we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We dwell, right now, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. His house, the place where God lives, is in you.

Sometimes we reference the corporate gathering of believers as the Lord's house. So someone might say, it's great to be in the Lord's house today. And they're talking about the corporate assembly, the church, which in one sense, God is there.

But God is also in every individual believer through the person of the Holy Spirit. And one of the incredible thought it is, that God lives with you. And not just that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, but God now lives in us.

And Scripture promises he's not leaving until God redeems his purchased possession, which is us. And what a comforting thought that in every situation we go through, it's not God, where are you? God is living inside of you.

He is going through what you're going through.

First Corinthians and I believe even Second Corinthians talk about that fact, that what you go through, your events in life, even your sins, God is with you through all of it, which is why Paul tells the Corinthians, hey, like you need to be moral in

your actions because in whatever you're doing, you're bringing along the Holy Spirit along with you while you're doing it. So do what is honoring to God. Don't make the Holy Spirit present for your sin. For us today, the Holy Spirit is with you.

He's with you in your suffering. He's with you in your hurting. I love Romans 8 and I'm going to turn over there real quick.

It's right about verse number 26 or so. Turn on the page. Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities or our weaknesses.

For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.

And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. That the Holy Spirit is with you, that he is speaking with groanings that can't be uttered.

He's speaking that heavenly language to God saying, this is what so-and-so needs. This is what Kathy needs. This is what Dina needs.

This is what Zach needs. This is what Teresa needs. This is what John and Shelly need.

I think I've got everyone that normally mentions listening to the podcast. He says, I know what you need, and I am praying to God for it because you don't really know what you need to be praying for, but I do, and so I'm going to ask God for it.

What an incredible thought. As you go through your life, God himself lives inside of you.

He's going through everything that you're going through, and he's praying to God the Father for the things that you don't even know that you need to be praying for. God is on your side. He's your shepherd.

He loves you. He has done so many amazing things for you, and he will continue to follow you with goodness and with mercy for all of your days, and you will live with him forever, both now and in eternity. What an incredible, amazing God we serve.

Hope that Psalm 23 would be an encouragement to you today. Thanks for taking time and listening through it with me, and hope that tomorrow you'll tune in as we are in Psalm 24, another one of the Messianic Psalms.

My good friend Owen read this passage for us on Easter Sunday, and really, really love the thoughts that we can read about Jesus and His promised coming and His victory, and really looking forward to it. Thanks for tuning in. Have a wonderful day.

Bye.