Word of Salvation – Vol. 40 No.30 – August 1995

 

The Lord Is My Shepherd

 

Sermon by Rev. H. O. Berends on Psalm 23:1

Scripture Readings: Psalm 23; John 10:1-18

 

Brothers and sisters, boys and girls, young people,

Sheep are very common in our country, aren’t they?  And they are very important for the economy of our nation – as they were in Palestine, both in the time of the Old Testament, and later, in the days of Jesus.

In Palestine, too, sheep were both common and important.  And shepherds were, too – and so we often read of sheep and shepherds in the Bible.

Some of the Bible writers themselves were shepherds.  Moses was a shepherd at one stage in his life, and so was the prophet Amos.  And then, of course, there was that great shepherd king – King David — who, from his experience, wrote a psalm which has become what may well be the best known and most beautiful psalm in all of the Bible: Psalm 23.

I would like us to have a look at this psalm this morning.  And there is so much here that we are going to concentrate on just one bit: the first, and mainly the first part of that verse: “The Lord is my Shepherd…!  The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not be in want.”

Why does David in this psalm – and, of course, the Bible in other places too – speak of the Lord as our Shepherd?  Why are we compared to his sheep?  Well, we can think of a number of reasons.  One is that he is our Creator – it is he who made us.

Now you may say, of course, “but a shepherd doesn’t make his sheep”.  Sheep make sheep.”  And you would be right, and, by the way, that’s very important.  Also in other areas, such as evangelism for instance.

It has often been pointed out that only sheep beget sheep; that it’s not just the minister’s job to evangelise, but also that of everybody else in the congregation.  But we won’t pursue that thought because we aren’t talking about that this morning.

But it is true, of course, that shepherds don’t make sheep.  And yet this is one of the ideas the Bible associates with God as our shepherd.  You see that also in Psalm 100, for instance, another well-known psalm, and this is what it says: “Know that the Lord is God.  It is he who made US and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”

God made us and so we are his – He is our owner.

Just like the shepherd owns his sheep, so we belong to our heavenly Shepherd, to God.

Yes, we belong to God – He made us.  Do we realise that, congregation?  It is God who made everything, He created all there is – the universe, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars – the grass, the trees, the rivers, the oceans.  All that is, is His; and so are we.  We, too, are made by Him, we are His creatures.  We belong to Him and we ought to know that!

Perhaps you, boys and girls, perhaps some of you are longing for the day when you will be grown up, when you will not have to do any more what Mum and Dad tell you.  Perhaps you are dreaming about that day – how wonderful it will be to be free, to be my own boss, to do what I want.  Just imagine, “I’ll be able to stay up as long as I like to watch television.  I won’t have to do any homework; I won’t have to finish my dinner.  I’ll be able to eat at McDonald’s all the time!”

Of course, it’s not that easy.  With freedom come other responsibilities.  But even if you were free from all earthly pressures… you will still belong to your Father in heaven.  God made us and we are His, and He is our Shepherd.  And we are His sheep, and so we must obey Him.  We must follow His rules.  That’s one of the reasons the shepherd has a rod and a staff – as David goes on to say some verses later.  He made us, and so we are His.

God made us – that’s one of the reasons He is called our Shepherd.  But then, of course, there is also a second reason.  And that is because He looks after us, He provides for us.  It’s this which is stressed most in the rest of this psalm by David.  We see that already in the very next phrase: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”  The Living Bible says: “I have everything I need.”  Another translation has: “I shall lack nothing.”

Just as a good shepherd takes care of his sheep, so the Lord himself takes good care of His people.  It is He who gives us food, and clothing, and shelter, and all those other good and necessary things that we so often take for granted.

The Lord Jesus, of course, has much to say about that, too, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount.  God looks after the birds of the air and the grass in the field, will He not much more look after His people?

And he does: He cares for us, just as the shepherd takes care of the sheep, just as he leads them to still waters and green pastures…  So the Lord does, too.  Now we may not always appreciate that…  Sheep are a dumb lot, on the whole, aren’t they?  Sheep can be really stupid, and easily panic.  And so can we!  We want all sorts of things that are not good for us.  Again, you boys and girls, I’m sure there are times you want the wrong thing from your parents.  “Can I go and ride my bike out on the road?”  “No!”  “Can I stay up till twelve tonight?”  “No way”  “Can I have another biscuit?”

Sometimes your parents say no because they believe that what you ask is not good for you.  Sometimes God, too, says no for the same reason.  He gives us what we need, not what we think we need, just like a good shepherd.

Now, it’s true that sometimes, too, He may allow things which are not good for us.  We may get sick, we may have an accident, we may lose our job, we may experience some other disaster.  And then we are not saying that in all such cases we must simply say: “Oh, the Lord is doing these things, so let’s not worry about them.”  It’s not quite as simple as that.

In one of the famous French satirist Voltaire’s stories, Candide: how he ridicules that kind of view – and rightly so.  Candide is a totally unrealistic optimist.  All sorts of terrible thing happen to him: he is whipped, he is hanged – fortunately he escapes before he chokes – he is captured and tortured by pirates…!  And so are some of his companions.  But he always tries to comfort them with his stock standard answer: “This is the best of all possible worlds, and so this must be best for me, and for you, and for everybody else.”  That’s not the view of the Christian.

We know that this world has been ravaged by sin.  We know that for Christians, too, bad things can and do happen.  Christians, too, can be injured in road accidents, or raped, or cheated out of their pensions.  Or have their houses ransacked by thieves, or end up with heart disease, or Parkinson’s, or cancer.  These things do not pass us by.  But even then, we do not lose hope, we do not panic.  For we know that, even when these things happen to us, we are still in the care of our heavenly Shepherd.

The Lord is my Shepherd, and in all that I do, yes, also in all that I suffer, I am in His powerful hand.  The Lord is my Shepherd, and he is a Shepherd who cares for His sheep.  Do you know that, brothers and sisters, boys and girls, young people?  Sometimes we get so worried when things don’t go right.

Charles Allen, a Christian minister and psychiatrist, writes in one of his books how, often, when people come to him for counselling because they are depressed, anxious and worried, he gives them this prescription: he tells them to read this 23rd psalm, five times a day, at regular intervals, for a week, and meditate upon it.  Now many of his patients won’t follow his advice – they think it’s stupid.  But those who do have found him to be right.  Elders and ministers, too, often read this psalm with those who are going through difficult times, with those who have just been bereaved or who are facing a serious operation.

How wonderful it is to know that we have a Shepherd who is there, even when we walk through that deep dark valley: of anxiety, or grief.  Let it permeate our minds; let us think upon it often.  Learn this psalm off by heart, if you haven’t done so yet.  The Lord is my Shepherd.  Wherever I am, whatever I am going through, that fact never alters.  And he will take care of his sheep.

God made us, and He looks after us… but then there is also a third reason.  A third reason why.  God is our shepherd – and that’s because He has bought us, brothers and sisters, young people.  Our Shepherd paid for us: we were bought with a price — the price of the blood of Jesus.  David, of course, didn’t know that yet when he wrote this psalm, but we know it.

That’s what we also read in that reading in John, where Jesus is speaking about Himself and He says, “I am the good Shepherd.”  Jesus is our Shepherd, just like God, because, of course, Jesus and God are one: God the Son and God the Father.  And this is what Jesus said: “I am the good Shepherd.  The good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep”.

Yes, the good Shepherd laid down His life for His sheep.  Jesus gave up His life for His sheep.  Again, do we know that, brothers and sisters, boys and girls, young people?  If you do, then you also know why He had to do that.  Because, although we were His, we had wandered away – like stupid sheep, God’s creatures had gone astray – they had wandered off to other pastures: the pastures of sin, the paddocks of self-will.  They had sold themselves to the devil.  And so He had to buy them back.

There is a well-known story… of a little boy whose father had given him a boat, a beautiful toy sailing boat.  And one day this boy took his boat and let it sail on the river, but he wasn’t very careful.  And before he knew it the boat had sailed off, the current had taken it away, and it was gone – and the boy had to go home empty handed, and very, very sad.  Then one day, some months later, he saw his boat in the window of a toy shop in town.  So he went in and said to the owner: “That is my boat!”  But the owner wouldn’t return it.  He said: “Someone came in with that boat and he sold it to me, so now it’s mine and if you want it back you’ll have to buy it.”  And so the boy went home and he told his father, and his father had to go and buy it back.

That’s a little bit of how it is with us and God, with us and Jesus.  We are His, He made us, but we have wandered away, we have drifted off like that boat – we have sinned, we have fallen into the power of the devil.  And so, Jesus came to earth and He had to buy back his own.  We were redeemed with a price, says the Bible.  Or, in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Yes, the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all – the punishment for our sins were paid for by the Good Shepherd, by Jesus.  And so, we were bought with a price, and now we are His, and He has put His mark upon us.

Philip Keller, in his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, writes how he bought his first flock of sheep, and when he had done so, one of the first things he did was to put his mark upon them.  And in his days that was done with a sharp knife in the ear of each sheep.  And Keller draws a comparison with an Old Testament practice.  A hole was bored in the ear of a Hebrew slave who wanted to remain the property of his master.

Another parallel, of course, would be the Old Testament rite of circumcision.  God’s mark in human flesh – the mark of the covenant.  In our day it’s the mark of baptism.  We, too, have the mark of our good and faithful Shepherd.

Young and old alike – yes, you too, boys and girls – when you were baptised as little children, God was saying: “You belong to me, for I am your Shepherd, and I have bought you.  And you are mine.”

Yes, we are His, we are the sheep, and He is our Shepherd.  And you know, that’s a very wonderful thing, congregation.  Because He is a good Shepherd, who cares for His sheep, in fact there is none better.  So many sheep are still roaming around, always looking for greener pastures.  Some are genuinely lost, others are simply on the run, they believe it is great to be free; they want to be their own master.  How stupid they are: sheep weren’t meant to roam free.  When a sheep runs away, in the end it will perish.  But those who belong to the Lord are fed and kept, they will lack nothing.  “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

Yes, “the Lord is my shepherd.”  Can you say that, brothers and sisters, boys and girls, young people?  I hope you can.  I hope you, too, have come to the One who alone is the Good Shepherd, who made you, who cares for you, and who laid down His life for you, to purchase your pardon, who gives you all you need.  And not in this life only, but always: for those who truly belong to the heavenly Shepherd will also dwell in His house forevermore.

Amen.