Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's read Psalm 23 together.
[00:00:03] And the subtitle here says, a Psalm of David. Simple enough. Verse number one. We're all familiar with this. You can quote it. No doubt many of you can quote this.
[00:00:14] The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
[00:00:19] He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
[00:00:33] 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.
[00:00:46] Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with 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.
[00:01:04] Would you pray with me, Our Lord, as we look at Psalm 23 tonight, Lord, it's my desire that your people might be strengthened and helped as we see you as our shepherd.
[00:01:16] Lord, would you please teach us and help us to. And to understand and would you reveal to us who you are to us, Lord? It seems that, Lord, the more we grow, the more we come to understand all the different facets of our relationship to you and who you are to us. Lord, we thank you for these various names and titles that you've given to yourself in the scripture that describe different and various ways that you interact with us and relate to us.
[00:01:48] And Lord, help this psalm. Even though it's very familiar to us, I pray that it would be all the more precious to us as we uncover what it's saying and what it shows us about you being our shepherd. So, Lord, bless our study. Tonight we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:02:09] What's interesting is this psalm begins with the subject of the psalm. Obviously, the subject of the whole Bible is the Lord, but it begins with the Lord is my shepherd. So this whole psalm is a pastoral psalm because it covers a lot of things related to the life of a sheep and shepherd. But really this psalm is really not about the sheep, although obviously the writer considers himself to be a sheep. If you call the Lord your shepherd, that means that you are the sheep. And so.
[00:02:43] So the rider is the sheep and the shepherd. The Lord is the shepherd. And that is the subject of this psalm. What's interesting is in verse number one, the Bible says the Lord. Now you'll notice you have the second word. There is capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, which is the name of God, right? It's the name of the Lord. And that's how it's addressed here. So this is David, this is a thousand years before the time of Christ. And he's describing his relationship to God as a shepherd. And then the Lord Jesus comes along 1,000 years later, and you get to John chapter 10, and the Lord Jesus assumes this role, right? That. In other words, the role that Jehovah had a thousand years before. And that. Listen, that's an important thing. That's an important thing. Anytime the Lord Jesus takes a name or title that is given to Jehovah in the Old Testament, he's making a statement. And so when he comes in John, chapter 10, and he says, what I am the good shepherd. He's making a statement of his deity. You see it in Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 20. In 1st Peter, chapter 2, verse 25, 1st Peter, 5, 4, all. In each one of those New Testament verses, the term shepherd is applied to the Lord Jesus. And that is directly connected to Psalm number 23, where the Lord is the Lord, Jehovah is identified as the shepherd. And so what we see here is by looking at those two things, when you compare the scripture with scripture like that, you can start to see these little, you can call them nuggets, these little truths that are nestled in there that the poor Jehovah's witnesses will never see because their minds are blinded to it. But it's there the Lord Jesus constantly asserts names and titles and positions and roles that are reserved only for Jehovah. And this is one of those cases. As I said this. This psalm is not. Is not about sheep. Although I will. I will say a few things about sheep as we look through the psalm, but it's really about the shepherd.
[00:04:58] So this is the shepherd's psalm, over and over, over and over. This psalm does not describe what the sheep do, but what the shepherd does. Look at what it says.
[00:05:10] He maketh me. Verse 2, he leadeth me. Verse 3. He restoreth my soul. Verse 3, he leadeth me.
[00:05:19] Verse 4. Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Verse 5. Thou preparest a table. Thou anointest mine head.
[00:05:32] All of these things are not descriptions of what the sheep does or thinks or feels, but a description of the shepherd.
[00:05:41] So that's what I want to concentrate on tonight. There's one other thing before we look at a few, just a few kind of bullet points on this is notice all the times that you see these personal pronouns, I, me, my, as the sheep Speaks as he, as you might say, bleats about his shepherd. You like that, didn't you?
[00:06:05] As the sheep speaks, he says, my shepherd I, he maketh me, he leadeth me, he restoreth my me. You go through verse four. I, I, me, me. You just go through that. You can see it over and over and over and over. Here's a funny thing about this. At no point in this psalm do you see anything about the flock.
[00:06:29] You don't see anything about the flock. You only see an individual sheep describing his shepherd. Now, if you know anything about sheep, sheep are domesticated sheep, which is what we're talking about here. Domesticated sheep are creatures that live in groups.
[00:06:48] It is very rare. Sometimes they call it a hermit sheep that's separated from a flock that doesn't want to be with the flock. But it is very, very unusual. Sheep are creatures that like to be in groups. Right? But you don't see that here.
[00:07:05] So an animal that by nature likes a group.
[00:07:10] In this psalm, the group is not even mentioned. He's not even mentioned in passing, not even implied.
[00:07:18] And I think it shows us something about the purpose of this psalm with the concentration on the shepherd. And here's what that purpose is.
[00:07:27] The psalmist is viewing and describing his relationship to the Lord as a one on one. One relationship.
[00:07:37] As a one on one relationship. Which is a little bit surprising considering that sheep are animals that live in flocks. They're not one on one animals with the shepherd. You never see a shepherd. You never see a shepherd with one sheep, unless, of course, he's dealing with something. But normally the shepherd is with the whole flock. But our Lord listen now, our Lord, our Lord does not have a relationship only with us as a group, although that's true. Did you know the Lord has a relationship with Choice Hills Baptist Church as a whole? Everything that happens here affects others. And the Lord not only looks at us as individuals, but he also looks at us corporately.
[00:08:24] In other words, when you might ask a question, what is the spiritual condition or the spiritual temperature, you might say of choice Hills Baptist Church. That is the sum total of the individuals and what the individuals are doing. But you can gauge that. The Lord can gauge that as a whole looking at the group.
[00:08:44] But what you have here is a description of the psalmist's, his relationship to the Lord individually, without the group.
[00:08:54] And we talked about this some when we were talking about prayer in Matthew chapter six. But our relationship to God is primarily individual, right? First and foremost, our relationship is individual. See, there are a lot of People who, their interaction with God is always done in the group, not privately.
[00:09:15] But Psalm 23 doesn't allow for, for that kind of corporate relating to God in like a church. No, this is an individual relationship to the shepherd. So what's interesting is we know that the shepherd has a lot of sheep to deal with, you know, dozens, hundreds he has to deal with. And we know from, from John, the book of John, that he calls them by name and he knows the names of individual sheep and that sheep, and that reveals something about the shepherd and that one on one relationship with the sheep. But even though that we're all in the flock, we're all in the church, yet our relationship to God is individual.
[00:10:00] We relate to him individually.
[00:10:03] He has time, he has attention, and he relates and interacts with us individually.
[00:10:12] We're not lost in the crowd. Isn't that great to think that Christ, the church of God, right, the church of God, composed of all believers everywhere.
[00:10:24] Even though that is a group and that is a flock, you might say, yet the Lord individually knows them. And that's what the psalmist is describing from the perspective of this sheep. He sees his shepherd as you uniquely and personally devoted to him, as an individual, as an individual sheep. And this is the real core and the essence of our walk with God. It is supposed to be what, as I said before, private religion, you walking with God as an individual.
[00:11:04] Now let's look at a few things about the Lord here. Notice in verse number two or verse number one, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. That doesn't mean desire. Want means you lack something. And then he says in verse 2, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Now, the two most important things that sheep need is what are what, huh?
[00:11:31] Grass and water. And here you have both of those things. And in verse one, he says, I shall not want. In other words, here's the point and here's the bullet point if you're writing it down. The Lord is my provider. The Lord is my provider. The pasture and the still water represents basically the sum total of the needs of the sheep.
[00:11:52] And in the same way, all of our needs are in the care of the shepherd.
[00:11:58] No matter how many needs we have and no matter what kinds of needs we have, because we're a lot more complicated than sheep. We are indeed. We don't need. Well, first of all, our diet, thankfully is more than just grass and water. But we have physical needs and we have bills to pay. That's what we Talked about on Sunday, right? We have bills to pay. We have needs that need to be provided for. But beyond that, especially what's in this psalm. Notice in verse three, he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness. Notice those are spiritual matters. And so beyond the physical things that we need, we have spiritual needs that are actually far more important and far more pressing. That's what Matthew 6:33 says, right? Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. In other words, seek the spiritual things. So you can see the spiritual need, but you can also see the physical need. And the Lord is the one. Just as the sheep need needs, basically grass and water, so the Lord is our provider and takes care of all of our needs.
[00:13:06] He is a faithful provider who will never fail to supply our needs.
[00:13:13] The thing about sheep is sheep cannot provide for themselves. You know what sheep will do? There's a little book, if you're interested in studying this out. It's called why the Shepherd. It's not a very long book, less than 100 pages, I believe. And it's basically a Bible study study of Psalm 23. And it's written by a man from New Zealand. A little bit of trivia. There are more sheep in New Zealand than there are human beings. And he's a man from New Zealand and he is. He's like. He had like the world record for the. For the most number of sheep sheared in nine hours or something. It's like 559 sheep that he sheared. He developed a shearing method. I mean, this is a man who is devoted, who had devoted his life to sheep. He wrote this book and here's what he said. He said that. He said that sheep will stay in one spot, eat all the grass and drink all the water, and then hunger and thirst to death in that spot.
[00:14:16] They'll eat everything there is and drink everything there is, and then they'll die right there.
[00:14:23] In other words, you know what that is? That's a creature that needs a shepherd. That's why verse two is so significant. We just pass over and say, oh, how nice, sheep laying down in grass. No, the shepherd has already thought ahead.
[00:14:37] He knows how long the grass is going to last. He knows if the water is safe to drink because sheep will drink anything. They'll drink poison, they'll eat poison. They have no idea. They're just.
[00:14:48] It's not that they're dumb. They're just, they're just, they're ignorant.
[00:14:59] That in other words, sheep are such are animals that need the shepherd. And you know what our Lord in verse 2, in verse 1, I shall not want. That means the Lord, for our needs is already ahead of those. He knows what they are.
[00:15:17] He knows when we will need them. He knows all about them. He knows the kind, the way to fulfill those needs in a way that's helpful and beneficial to us. He knows the kind of grass, he knows the kind of water sheep. You see, still water. Sheep don't like fast moving water, but they also can't have stagnant water.
[00:15:37] They have to have a certain. But the shepherd knows all of that. The point is not what the sheep need. The point is they need the shepherd.
[00:15:44] Is that not a repetition of Matthew chapter 6? God knows what our needs are before we ask him, why bother with it? God knows. And this is exactly what we see here. The Lord is my provider. The sheep are holy, dependent upon the shepherd, and the sheep are helpless without him. Remember, this psalm is not about the sheep, it's about the shepherd.
[00:16:15] You know, you think primarily of your spiritual needs.
[00:16:19] You know, one of these days we're all going to stand before the Lord to give an account for our life. And I dare say that probably what, what looms large in our mind from day to day is going to just melt away into nothingness, right? Vanity.
[00:16:38] All the things that occupy us. And you know, a lot of those things we can't avoid, they're necessary for life, right?
[00:16:46] But when you compare the spiritual and the physical, I think when we stand before the Lord, I think all the things that are physical, that seem huge and so important are going to just vaporize. And what's going to be left are all the things that we had such a hard time concentrating on, the spiritual. And those things will be large. And we will wish we had given ourselves to the Lord in that way, to the things which are above. Colossians we saw on Sunday, just as another kind of, another supplement to what we studied on Sunday. And this Philippians 4:19 says this. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. This is specifically referring to physical monetary needs. But it says all your need, that includes the spiritual. Like we see in this psalm.
[00:17:47] The Lord knows and cares for my needs so that I do not need to. The second thing I want you to see is in verse number three, he restoreth my soul. The Lord is my restorer.
[00:18:04] Now, when you think about the word restore, you know, implied and kind of, kind of buried in that word is this, this idea that if something needs to be restored. You think of an old vintage car that's been stored in a garage somewhere. The car is decayed, the car is broken, the car is degraded, the car is worn, it's damaged, or whatever the case may be. The only things that need to be restored are things that are not in a good condition to begin with.
[00:18:37] And that's what you see in verse number three, is that these sheep, or as you. Now, as you go through the psalm, it starts with very vivid, literal language about sheep. And as you go through it, it gets more human. I don't know if you noticed that there's fewer references to sheep things. And then by the end of the psalm, you forget that it's talking about sheep. But when something needs to be restored, that means it's damaged. And this is referring to our soul. He restoreth my soul. That means my soul was damaged, it was broken, it was degraded.
[00:19:16] You know, in our life, in this world, seeing that it is a fallen world, not too much, not too unlike a sheep that's in the wilderness with all the dangers, with all the problems of weather and the ground and the dangers of poison and all of the things that happen when you're away from the sheep, when you're away from the sheepfold, out in the wilderness. And that's where we are in our life, in this world. We get injured, we get worn. Our soul. Now, we're not talking about physical things. We're talking about spiritual things. He says he restored my soul. We get broken. Things happen in our life that are disappointing. Things happen that are discouraging. Things happen that bring us to our wit's end, and we do not know where to turn.
[00:20:06] People hurt us.
[00:20:08] Sometimes we hurt others.
[00:20:10] We are faced with things that we had hoped would come to pass and don't come to pass. Listen. And that doesn't even count temptation and sin and the effect of that upon our lives, not only in ourselves, but also the sin of others that harms us.
[00:20:29] We get broke, but the Lord is our restorer.
[00:20:37] We got to remember that we are likely to be injured, we are likely to be worn, we're likely to get hurt in this world. Because living in the reality of life in a fallen world is that it's not always pleasant. And bad things happen spiritually now.
[00:20:59] But when those bad things do happen, we must learn to run to the Shepherd. For in him, restoration, in him is healing. We have to take it to him.
[00:21:13] You know, the secular psychologists, they kind of scoff and mock at the Lord being the solution.
[00:21:23] You know, oftentimes we look for the Lord, we look for a solution in the Lord. We look for restoration. And we want to go to God. We want to come down to a, you know, a mourner's bench and we want to pray and think. We get up and everything's fine.
[00:21:36] We realize that that's just not how it happens. If you have a fall at work and you break a limb or you hurt your back, do you feel, you go to the doctor, you go to the er. James, when they go, when they leave the er, do you say, okay, in the morning you'll be good? No. There's a healing process takes time. But the expectation is I do this one little thing, I say this one little prayer and everything will be fine. And they say, well, if I'm not fine, we think, well, that wasn't much help. And so we run to another source of restoration. But we find is if the source is not the Lord and his truth, we find that that ends up the same way.
[00:22:21] When we go to the Lord, we have to understand that he will restore us, but he will do it in his own time, in his own way. And sometimes that healing takes time. It does take time, but he is the one who does it.
[00:22:37] The third thing I want you to see is this. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. The Lord is my leader. The Lord is my leader. Did you know that sheep do not in fact cannot lead themselves, in other words, just like with the food.
[00:22:56] So in this way the sheep need, they are wholly dependent upon The Shepherd. Jeremiah 10:23 says this, O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. I encourage you to memorize that verse maybe for Sunday School. Jeremiah 10, verse 23, because that is a good verse to remember.
[00:23:25] You know, we get heady and high minded and think we can function without the Lord's help, not knowing he's helping us all the time. But we need to remember that it is not in us to direct our steps. But here's. Notice what it says. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness. Every path that the Lord leads us in will be a righteous path. You hear me? Every path he leads us in, everything he leads us to do will be a righteous path. I did not say every religious decision I make will be a right decision. I said everything he leads us in will be a righteous path. That's what this verse says.
[00:24:07] If we claim to be led by the Lord and that path is itself unrighteous. Or, or it involves unrighteousness. Or the end of that path has an unrighteous end. We can be sure that whatever is leading us, it is not the Lord, because the only way the Lord leads us is in paths of righteousness. Think about the Lord Jesus as the great shepherd of the sheep, because just as the Lord Jehovah is the shepherd, in this verse, Jesus is the. Is the great shepherd in Hebrews, chapter 13.
[00:24:43] How does Jesus lead us?
[00:24:46] You know, there's two ways Jesus leads us. You know that in the context of being a shepherd, there's two ways.
[00:24:52] Number one, he can lead us and we'll get to in a minute. He can lead us with his staff, right? He can kind of, you know, jab us a little bit and correct us. And that's the way the staff is used, the rod is used.
[00:25:04] He can lead us directly, he can lead us personally, and he does. The Lord Jesus leads us as a shepherd. He leads us directly and he leads us personally. But in the context of sheep, there's another way that he leads us, and that is by his example.
[00:25:21] You think of a flock of sheep. Sheep are not driven. Sheep are led, right?
[00:25:27] Because they have a one on one, they feel, and indeed they do have a one on one relationship. Despite all of the sheep in the flock, they have a one on one relationship with the shepherd. That's what you see here. And as a result, they're connected to him. So where he goes, they imitate and follow him. Wherever he goes, they go. And so it is with the Lord. Jesus, our Lord provided an example to us as the shepherd. And this is one of the ways he provides leadership to us. Did the Lord Jesus ever do an unrighteous thing?
[00:26:03] No. You see, that matches with verse number three.
[00:26:10] When he was angry and he was, did he sin? No.
[00:26:15] When he was reviled and insulted, did he reply in kind? No. When he was the subject of gossip, did he gossip in response? No.
[00:26:26] When he was hated, did he hate? No.
[00:26:29] So if. Listen, sometimes, well, I just feel like I need to give them a piece of my mind. Some holy, some righteous indignation. You know what that is? That's another word for carnality. And wickedness is what that is.
[00:26:40] Righteous indignation is something God has, not something people have.
[00:26:45] But how many times, brother Ari, have you heard people. I'm sure all the years you've been in church, you've heard people use that, that term, right, to justify venting their anger at somebody. The Lord didn't do that.
[00:27:00] He leads us only in what paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
[00:27:07] Then you see, then the next thing I want you to see is in verse four. 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. You know, one thing, being a missionary in Cambodia, I remember I came for some reason. They have rods like we would get in our house. We used them as weapons because we couldn't have any other real kind of weapon.
[00:27:37] We would get curtains. You know, my wife would have curtains made and for the windows, because blinds didn't exist and you had to have curtain rods and the hardware to hang the curtains, right? The old fashioned with the hooks and a big long wooden rod, right?
[00:27:53] Those rods were made out of Asian hardwood.
[00:27:58] And just put it this way, if a ninja had one of those, he could do some serious damage to a dude, like cave a skull in kind of thing. Like, those rods were serious, serious dents kind of hardwood.
[00:28:12] And that's, that's when I see that we don't have that kind of stuff around here. But, but when you, when you have a rod and there's a coyote, right, that comes around, I'm telling you, you could beat a coyote to a pulp with one of those things. I promise you, especially if you sharpened one end.
[00:28:30] They are, they are deadly. They are deadly.
[00:28:34] This is what the shepherd carried.
[00:28:37] Here's what I want you to see in this.
[00:28:40] The Lord is my comforter. You say, how is that related to comfort?
[00:28:44] The rod and the staff, as I said a minute ago, were used to nudge the sheep. It was guidance, it was correction, it was control. We'd stick the rod out and say, don't go there. Make little sounds with their mouth. You know how they do with animals. And they would just nudge the sheep just as a reminder. I'm here, you don't need to go that way. I'm paying attention. And the sheep go back.
[00:29:08] But the rod was also used occasionally it would be used for correction as well, which we'll get to that in a minute. But the rod and the staff were also used as protection against predators. So whenever a predator did come out, the shepherd had a weapon that he could use that had a dual purpose.
[00:29:29] So therefore, the sight of the rod and of the staff of the shepherd was reassuring to the sheep. And it was a reminder. I'm not talking about sheep anymore. I guess you picked up, right? It was a reminder that the shepherd would stand between an enemy and the defenseless sheep.
[00:29:46] Once again, sheep have no defense to speak of.
[00:29:50] The only defense a sheep has is the group and, and that speaks of the church, right? The body of Christ. But outside of that, no defense except the shepherd.
[00:30:03] The sheep need the shepherd. The psalm is about the shepherd.
[00:30:11] Just a note to the parents, though you think of the word rod because rod is in the Scripture, often associated with correction and discipline.
[00:30:22] But notice in this verse it says, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me, which is positive.
[00:30:28] So something that is normally associated with correction is a comfort, is a comfort.
[00:30:38] So the knowledge that the shepherd will discipline has a benefit, has a benefit of, of providing comfort to the sheep. And that is the same way it is with children.
[00:30:50] Children, of course, do not like the exercise, the use of the rod, right? They don't like it.
[00:30:57] But in the Bible, the use of the rod with children is actually associated not with anger, but with love. You know that. Listen to these verses. Proverbs 13:24. He that spareth his rod, hateth his son, but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes love with the rod. Hebrews 12:6. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth again, love. Revelation 13:3, verse 19. As many as I love, Jesus says, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous, therefore, and repent. So the rod and the staff are connected with love, which is like comfort.
[00:31:42] So here's the thing I want you to understand is when you have a child and you use the rod not in anger, but in love, it's not that the kid likes that, but that provides comfort to the kid. The boundaries provide comfort, even if it comes in a way that's not so pleasant. The boundaries and the correction is actually beneficial to the kid feeling safe and secure and loved. The question is whether you know when people are coming up and they're trying to decide on how they're going to raise their children. The question is, are you going to believe God and do it his way, or are you going to disbelieve God and do it your own way?
[00:32:31] Because what the scripture says is absolutely true. I've proven it. My kids might not.
[00:32:36] I'm sure they would say they did not appreciate the event of the use of the rod, but in the end it reassured them that mom and dad were paying attention and mom and dad would not permit them to go in a wrong direction.
[00:32:53] Alright, as we finish, just a couple more, look at verse number five.
[00:33:00] Thou preparest a table before Me in the presence of mine enemies.
[00:33:05] The Lord is my safety.
[00:33:08] The Lord is my safety. If you can imagine in your mind, it's night out in the field where the sheep are laying down and the enemies are in the tree line.
[00:33:21] Their red eyes glow in the dark in the distance and the tree line.
[00:33:27] The sheep smell them, right? They smell the wolves and the bears. They smell them because they can smell. They have good sense of smell. The sheep know they're there, but the sheep are not alarmed. Notice. Look at this. Now, this is a case where it doesn't really sound like we're talking about sheep anymore, but it's still the same context here. There's a table prepared. They're grazing. They're. They're taking their ease. They're enjoying themselves. The Lord has provided for them. They are calm. They're calm enough to eat because they know the shepherd is near, and that is enough to calm them.
[00:34:05] Even though the enemies are right around, they know they're there. The enemy. The enemies know they're there. The predators know they're there. But in the midst of predators, they're calm. And that shows us how. Our Lord, in the midst of a world of enemies of our soul, in the midst of a world that is not friendly to us. Yet Jesus said, in this world you shall have tribulation, right?
[00:34:33] But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. So even though there's tribulation and there are enemies about, we live in a world that's fallen and there's a lot of. Of temptation and there's a lot of things that can destroy us, spiritually speaking.
[00:34:50] Yet in this world, God gives us calmness and peace and rest. And that calmness and peace is not due to a lack of enemies. Notice the enemies are in the tree line, but in the midst of the enemies, then we see in the last verse, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
[00:35:11] The Lord is present. Goodness.
[00:35:18] Goodness and mercy. Describe the basis. Notice it's talking about all the days of his life. That's why he's alive during his life.
[00:35:26] This is the basis and the principle by which God interacts with us. God does not interact with us in anger. God does not interact with us in harshness.
[00:35:42] God's relationship with us, that's what this verse says, is defined by goodness and grace and mercy. It is not defined by anger and punishment and threat. That is not how the Lord chooses to interact with us. He interacts on the basis of grace and of goodness. Even in the unpleasant times we Know that those come from a heart of goodness and grace and mercy toward us. And this is the blessing of eternal life.
[00:36:09] Verse six.
[00:36:10] Life Now. Right. That's what verse six is talking about. The first part of it, Life Now.
[00:36:16] So right now we have eternal life. And a lot of people misunderstand that. They think, when I die, I'll get eternal life. Eternal life. That is false. Eternal life in Scripture is a present possession.
[00:36:29] At no point in the future will the goodness and mercy of God fail toward you, toward his sheep.
[00:36:39] And here's why.
[00:36:42] Because God's goodness and mercy is not based on my performance or my obedience.
[00:36:50] Sometimes I won't perform.
[00:36:53] Sometimes you will not be obedient.
[00:36:55] Yet his goodness and mercy shall still follow you. You know why? It's not because you are a good boy or good girl. It's because of his promise.
[00:37:09] It's because of his promise we don't have eternal life because we manage to endure to the end. That's a false theological fallacy. We have eternal life because of God's promise, which is what you see here.
[00:37:25] I will, and you will most certainly fail. But his goodness and mercy toward us will continue to follow us.
[00:37:33] Occasionally he will employ the rod to correct us when I'm in need of some comfort and a good reminder of his nearness to me. But at no point in time will he abandon his sheep because he is my shepherd. See that? See why that personal aspect is so important? And then the last one is this. The Lord is my future.
[00:38:05] You might say it like this. All this. And heaven, too. He says, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. You know, there aren't many places in the Old Testament that talk about heaven, that talk about dying and going to heaven. But here is one. Here is one. What's interesting about this is that Psalm 22 deals with the cross.
[00:38:28] Psalm 23 deals with the shepherd, and Psalm 24 deals with the kingdom.
[00:38:35] So it actually is a progression. And right now, one of these days, we're going to leave this world and we're going to go dwell with the Lord in His house, right? The Lord is my future.
[00:38:47] Nothing in the world I will dwell. Not I hope to. Maybe will, if I'm obedient, if I obey, if I'm. If I'm a good little boy or good little girl. No, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Let's pray.
