The Lord is My Shepherd: A Sermon by Dave Wilkinson, Pastor, Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Lord is My Shepherd

by Dave Wilkinson

Psalm 23:1

January 14, 2001

Now I love that drama. I've looked forward to it for months. Just imagine a mother thinking her son needed an announcer to help bolster his self-esteem. While all the time, as we saw in the drama, he had what he needs a shepherd.

Psalm 23

No chapter in the Bible has provided assurance to so many people as the twenty-third Psalm. "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul."

This Psalm almost demands to be read in King James English. It is a masterpiece of literary form. But it is much more than just poetry. Psalm 23 has sung its way into more hearts than any other part of the Bible except the Lord's Prayer. Its message has been grasped by young and old alike.

I've heard it at weddings, where it is read with a sense of celebration, excitement, and anticipation. I've heard it and read it at funerals and memorial services where it is given as a source of comfort in the midst of deep and terrible grief. Young children memorize it easily and understand what it has to say. Yet the oldest of the old quote it and gather from it a perspective on life and a comfort for life's realities. In all seasons of life, Psalm 23 is a tremendous personal confession of faith in the God who cares.

You don't need me to tell you what this Psalm says. Anyone facing trouble who has been touched and comforted by this Psalm is already an expert on what this Psalm means.

So as I preach on this Psalm today and four consecutive weeks, I want to be very very careful. I want to be careful to avoid dissecting this Psalm and handing you the pieces in a way that is technically accurate but all wrong because it is without life.

I can't add to your understanding. What you already understand the Psalm to mean through your own experience with God is what the Psalm means.

All I can do is to let the Psalm and the Psalmist speak -- and pray that you will come to more perfectly trust the Lord who is your Shepherd.

The image of the Lord as a Shepherd comes to us from David, King of Israel. David knew what it means to be a shepherd through his own life with the sheep. And he knew what it means to be shepherded through his life with his God.

But what about today? What does it mean for us to say "the Lord is my shepherd" when we know so little of sheep? In New Zealand, there are twenty sheep for every human being. But not here. We drive modern air- conditioned cars up the coast carefully screened from the smells and noises and eccentricities of some not very spiritual but very physical sheep in the fields.

But at least we see sheep -- if only at a distance. What does it mean for the person in the concrete jungle of twenty first century New York or East L.A. to affirm with us: "The Lord is also my shepherd?"

Now there are two approaches we could take to understanding. We could try to find a similar analogy from our modern age the Lord is my programmer perhaps or the Lord is my mechanic. Or else we can continue to look at our lives in terms of David's sheep symbol. I chose this second approach because there is no analogy from modern life, which expresses the truths that are captured by the picture of the sheep and the Shepherd. Nothing else does the job.

This Psalm is about ownership ownership that goes both ways. For if the Lord is our shepherd, that means that we are His sheep. This is what another Psalm, Psalm 100 declares: "We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand." We are reminded there that "It is God who has made us and not we ourselves."

But why do the scriptures refer to men and women as sheep? Is it because we are soft, cute and cuddly a whole wonderful flock of "Embraceable Ewes?"

I'm afraid not. I'm afraid the real answer won't make us feel all that glorious. For as we observe sheep - - and have them compared to us -- a number of things stand out.

First, sheep are totally dependent on a shepherd. A sheep needs a shepherd. Without a shepherd a sheep lacks protection, provision and guidance. A sheep cannot be trained to be independent of a shepherd and still live a whole life!

Now when we say, "the Lord is my shepherd," we Americans make a declaration of dependence that is unusual for us. This is because we aren't generally into dependance. We are into independence. We don't like other people to control us. We resent it when other people make decisions on our behalf. We prefer to be in the position of strength where others may be dependent upon us but not us upon them.

But when we say "the Lord is my shepherd," at least we are being real -- even if we don't sound much like John Wayne -- who always played a cattle rancher anyway. For we are dependent beings. We do not possess in and of ourselves the wisdom to live life in independence. So called "personal autonomy" -- life lived independent of God and all others -- is a destructive and life-distorting myth.

A second thing we learn about sheep is that sheep are prone to wander. Though a sheep needs a shepherd, it is stubborn enough to still try to "go it alone." A sheep follows his nose or his stomach to whatever source of food and comfort he finds. And in the process, he gets into trouble.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote "All we like sheep have gone astray each after his own way." (53:6) God declares through Jeremiah: "My people have become lost sheep." (50:6) And as the hymn we just sang puts it: "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it; prone to leave the God I love."

That my hymn. That's about me. It's about you, too. There man is, constantly seeking fulfillment wandering here and there, trying this and that -- all the time wandering further from the only real source of authentic life.

The third thing we note is that sheep are vulnerable. Because a sheep needs a shepherd and because sheep are prone to wander, sheep become vulnerable to wolves and false shepherds. And because a sheep so desires happiness, he easily follows any shepherd who will promise that happiness.

We may resent the picture. The image isn't that flattering.

But for all people's intelligence, we are sheep -- vulnerable to anything that promises to meet the profound longings of the heart. You only need to look at the phenomenal success of any fad to establish this fact - - the fad being drugs, marijuana, booze, automobiles, new age religious cults; whatever is current. The advertising industry is built on this insight.

So when the scriptures refer to us as sheep, it's not because we're all that cute and cuddly. It's because, like sheep, we are dependent beings, wandering beings and vulnerable beings -- especially when we've declared independence from the shepherd.

Now if these insights about our sheepness from God's word are accurate, then we are faced with a second question. Who will be my shepherd? There are many shepherds who are beckoning for us to follow. There are many false shepherds who are trying to lure our kids. But there's only one Shepherd who can ultimately fulfill our lives and their lives.

But it's not easy to follow the true shepherd because the gospel of grace He preaches doesn't do anything for the human ego. It's the opposite of self-realization. It is the recognition of our total need. This is why a person has to be disillusioned with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.

You see, as long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or the next scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility, we are not likely to risk the uncertainties of the life of faith.

But when we sooner or later figure out that human leaders and human institutions offer only limited and fragile hope -- even when elections aren't close and chads don't hang, then we are ready to put our hope in the Lord as our Shepherd. It is then that we finally begin to live our lives and find our strength beyond the realm of human limitations.

For the Lord who is our Shepherd is none other than Jesus Christ. The Apostle John writes in Revelation: "The Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their Shepherd and shall guide them into fountains of waters of life." That's the promise.

The Lord is our Shepherd. And with that great fact comes a tremendous affirmation: "I shall not want."

What do we expect from Jesus Christ? You remember the song by Janis Joplin.

"O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz!

My friends all drive Porsches, and I must make amends.

I've worked hard all my life, little help from my friends,

So O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?"

That was her expectation. What is ours? The way we interpret this phrase. "I shall not want" tends to mirror the way we look at the world and how we understand our true needs. For often we take things that are merely desires and think of them as genuine needs. The point is that the Lord won't give me everything I want. Some of the things I want would be destructive for me. But he does give me what I need. Our faith is not that God will always do what we want. Our faith is hat God will always do what is right.

A visiting psychiatrist wandering through the wards of a state asylum was particularly intrigued by a patient who sat huddled in a corner all by himself, scratching for hours on end. The doctor addressed the patient gently and asked: "Why do you stay huddled in a corner all by yourself, scratching?" "Because," said the man in a world weary voice, "I'm the only person in the world who knows where I itch." Makes sense.

Well David affirms in this Psalm that the Lord knows where we itch. He knows our needs as individuals and He knows the needs we share with the rest of humanity. And He is capable of meeting all of these genuine needs -- no exceptions.

God has a big job cut out for Himself in the twenty first century. Carl Menninger writes: "There's a vague emptiness within the heart of modern man ... It may sound surprising when I say on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as on that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the late decades of the twentieth century is emptiness. By that I do not only mean that people do not know what they want. They often do not have any clear idea of what they feel. When they talk about the lack of wholeness and lament their inability to make decisions, difficulties which are present in all decades, it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants. Thus they feel swayed this way and that with painful feelings of powerlessness because they feel vacuous, empty."

Do you know anybody like that? People without a center? Dr. Robert Audrey has written: "I feel a restiveness in man --a dissatisfaction of a universal sort. The average human being, as I judge, is uneasy. He is like a man who is hungry, gets up at night, opens the refrigerator door and doesn't exactly see what he wants because he doesn't know what he wants. He closes the door and goes back to bed. Then the whole process is repeated."

What we want and what we need, is to know that, despite it all, everything is okay. We need to have a center. We need to know that we belong. We need the knowledge that somebody cares for us. And the cross where Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, laid down His life for His sheep demonstrates the reality that someone does indeed care. The arms of the cross are the open loving arms of God. This is why Paul declares in Romans 8 that a God who gave His own Son to die for us can be trusted to give us everything else we really need. If God has already given the big gift, He's not going to get stingy with the small stuff.

Do we believe this about our Shepherd? Do we trust His goodness and power? Or do we go off trying to fill the emptiness on our own?

The Lord is my Shepherd -- but He doesn't know my needs?

The Lord is my Shepherd -- but He doesn't really care?

The Lord is my Shepherd -- but He moves too slowly?

No. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

That should be our greatest practical, day to day affirmation of faith.