Slide 1

The more familiar a passage is, the easier it is to stop letting it teach us.

Slide 2

“The Twenty-third Psalm is the greatest poem ever penned in any language. It reigns supreme in circles of highest culture and in the humble homes of the lowly. It sounds all the chords of the human experience.” – Dr. Robert. C. McQuilkin

Slide 3

“The world could afford to spare many magnificent library better than it could dispense with this little psalm of six verses.” – William Evans

Slide 4

“The Twenty-third Psalm commends itself to the heart of the believer by its own internal excellence. Natural in its structure, simple and perspicuous in its language, and elegant and attractive in its imagery, it breathes forth sentiments of confidence towards God, of gratitude and of joy. There is depth of meaning in every sentence – a rich variety of experience in every verse – and a fullness of joy from its commencement to its conclusion, which comprehends all that is needed in life and in death, in time and throughout eternity. – John Stevenson

Slide 5

Psalm 23

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 name’s sake.

Yea, 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 runs 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.

Slide 6

Most English translations include over 100 words in Psalm 23.

In Hebrew, the Psalm is only 55 words.

Slide 7

The exact center of the Psalm: You are with me.

Slide 8

“The Twenty-third Psalm is the best-known chapter in the Bible – and the least understood. It is the best-loved chapter in the Bible – and the least believed.” – Dr. Robert. C. McQuilkin

Slide 9

Psalm 23:1

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Slide 10

YHWH  –  ro‘i  –  lo  –  ’eḥsar

“The LORD – my shepherd – not – I shall lack.”

Slide 11

YHWH = God’s covenant name (Hebrew consonants)

Yahweh = Likely pronunciation of YHWH

LORD = English Bible rendering of YHWH

Adonai = Lord/Master (didn’t say YHWH out of reverence)

Jehovah = Latin translation of Yahweh

Slide 12

Exodus 3:14

“I AM WHO I AM.”

Slide 13

God is eternal and self-existent. He has no beginning. He has no end. He is. 

Slide 14

Before my crisis, He is.

After my crisis, He is.

Before my diagnosis, He is.

After my diagnosis, He is.

Before my grief, He is.

In my grief, He is.

Beyond my grief, He is.

Slide 15

YHWH is my shepherd.

Slide 16

David is saying his shepherd is:

Not money.

Not success.

Not approval.

Not control.

Not comfort.

Slide 17

Who is shepherding me?

Slide 18

Something is guiding my decisions.

Something is calming my fears.

Something is shaping my desires.

Something is telling me what matters.

Slide 19

In 2019, MIT Technology did an article about the hipster effect: 

“the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same.”

Slide 20

Who is shepherding me?

Slide 21

Sheep wander.

Sheep panic.

Sheep get stuck.

Sheep are vulnerable.

Sheep need guidance.

Sheep need protection.

Slide 22

So when David says, “The LORD is my shepherd,” he is not making himself look strong.

He is admitting he is dependent.

Slide 23

Our culture says:

“You are enough.”

Psalm 23 says:

You are not enough, but your Shepherd is.

Slide 24

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Slide 25

The Hebrew word for “want” means:

I will not lack.

I will not be deficient.

I will not come up short.

Slide 26

Psalm 23:1 is not saying, “Because the LORD is my Shepherd, I will have everything I want.”

Slide 27

“I shall not want” does not mean “life will always be easy.”

There is still a valley.

There are still enemies.

There is still evil.

There is still the shadow of death.

Slide 28

“The LORD is my shepherd; therefore, when I walk through painful things, I will not be abandoned.”

Slide 29

Ezekiel 34:11-12

11 “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.

Slide 30

John 10:11

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Slide 31

Who is shepherding me?

1. Where do I run when I’m afraid?
2. Whose voice carries the most weight?
3. What do I keep trusting, even after it fails me?

If you’ve ever moved to a new area, you know, when you first get there, it can be a little bit confusing. And so it’s great that we now have a phone that you can map everything. And I remember when we moved to Colorado, the, the, for the first handful of months, I mean, in Highlands Ranch, all of our roads are slightly crooked, so none of them are straight. So because of that, especially early on, anywhere, anywhere, I’m putting it in the phone and it’s guiding me where I’m supposed to go. And then all of a sudden there’s some day that you wake up and you realize, I, I don’t need the phone anymore. I, I didn’t, I didn’t grab it. I didn’t say, oh, I’m not sure where I’m going. Because what happens is your mind becomes familiar. You become familiar with the area, familiar with the roads, familiar with the landmarks where you’re supposed to go.

And so all of a sudden you fall into just a comfort zone and things that are familiar, there’s something about that that we like. Maybe you have a familiar chair that you sit in when you’re at home. Maybe you have a familiar rhythm or a routine that you wake up at the same time and you have that same morning coffee or that same morning tea. Maybe even for some of us that you, you pretty much have the same pattern that you live life in. And familiar can be a good thing, but familiar has some dangers to it too. One of the things about familiarity is sometimes we can miss the beauty of something because it’s become familiar think in Colorado of the mountains, that when people from outside Colorado come here to Colorado, they’re just blown away. They can’t stop talking about the mountains.

But for those of us that live here, although they are still pretty spectacular, it’s probably not a daily thing that you’re turning to somebody and saying, man, those mountains are pretty cool, aren’t they? Same is true for a sunset or sunrise, something that is breathtaking. But if you’ve seen it enough times, it becomes familiar. Familiarity can also make us blind to certain things that there’s a thing called being nose blind, that it’s a psychological thing that happens that when you’re around a smell enough that your brain stops smelling that thing. And so, for example, your car or your home, it has a specific smell, but you, I probably can’t smell the normal smell of our car or our home and because we’ve become nose blind to it, but when somebody else comes to our car or our home, they can smell it. If you ever go outta town for, for a handful of weeks and then come back to your house and you’re like, Hey, that smells a little bit different than normal.

That’s actually how it smells all the time. Your brain just doesn’t normally smell it. And, and here’s the thing about familiarity. It can be a good thing, but it can be this dangerous thing. And as we kick off a sermon series, unlikely, the most famous psalm in all the Psalms and possibly the most famous passage in all the Bible, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a familiar thing, it’s a comforting thing, but it’s a dangerous thing. And the danger is this, that the more familiar a passage is, the easier it is to stop letting it teach us that. I don’t remember reading Psalm 23 for the very first time in my life like it was so early in my life that I just always remember knowing it. As a matter of fact, I don’t even remember memorizing Psalm 23 in my life. I’ve just always had it memorized.

‘Cause I grew up in the church. And, and so when you think of Psalm 23, this powerful, amazing, wonderful, beautiful passage, but also so excuse me, so familiar. What what does it look like if we take a step back and look at it with fresh eyes? There’s a few quotes from, from some people that I was reading in the last few weeks talking about the significance, the importance of this passage that stood out to me. Doc Dr. Robert McQuilkin, he wrote this, the 23rd Psalm is the greatest poem ever pinned in any language. It reigns supreme in circles of highest culture. And in the humble homes of the lowly, it sounds all the chords of the human experience. William Evans wrote, the world could afford to spare many magnificent library better than it could dispense with this little psalm of six verses, or John Stevenson wrote The 23rd Psalm commends itself to the heart of the believer by its own internal excellence, natural in its structure, simple. And Perspicuous, pause for a moment, because I didn’t know what the word perspicuous means. I had to look that up. The word perspicuous means easy to understand, which I found very ironic. <Laugh>

Natural in its structure, simple and perspicuous in its language and elegant and attractive in its imagery, it breathes forth sentiments of confidence towards God, of gratitude and of joy. There is depth of meaning in every sentence, a rich variety of experience in every verse and a fullness of joy from its commencement to its conclusion, which comprehends all that is needed in life and in death and time and throughout eternity. Now, most of us probably don’t have that view of Psalm 23 because it’s familiar and we’ve heard it a thousand times, even in pop culture. Even if you don’t go to church, you’ve never been to church before. There are phrases from Psalm 23 that that you hear in rap songs and cultural just moments, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that that is from Psalm 23. And so here’s my challenge.

We’re not just looking at Psalm 23 today. We’re gonna look at Psalm 23 for the next four weeks, and I want us to look at it with fresh eyes, really with this prayer, with open hands, say, God revealed to me the truth of this passage, passage and help it come alive in my heart and in my life. I’m gonna read Psalm 23 and encourage you as I’m reading, to try and listen to the words maybe for the first time, if you want to read along, you’re welcome to read along. If you wanna close your eyes and just listen, you can do that. As a side note, if you’re trying to figure out which version of Psalm 23, this is, this is Kurt’s head’s version, which means it’s a little bit of King James from when I was a kid, a little bit of 1984, a little bit, a little bit of everything.

But this in my mind is Psalm 23. It says this, 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. Yay. 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 runs 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. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, I pray that a familiar passage would be real this morning. There’s such profound truth here, and yet we’ve heard it so many times that it feels ordinary. God, as we look at just the first verse today, I pray that it will come alive. It would convict us, that it would change us, that it would transform us. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. let’s start with a little bit of overview of Psalm 23. So if you look at any English translation of Psalm 23, it’s gonna have somewhere between a hundred and 117 words in it, whether that’s king James version or NIV or ESV they all end up somewhere over a hundred words. The challenge is in Hebrew, it it’s about half that it’s only 55 words in Hebrew. So now the English translations are correct in terms of translating the meaning or the purpose behind it.

But it it’s actually much simpler in Hebrew. The, the, the heart behind it in Hebrew is a very short, concise poem that’s easy to understand. And I want you to pause for a moment in your mind and think to yourself, what is the main point of Psalm 23? So if, if you look at it from a literary device, how we tend to think, we tend to think of literature as the most important phrases at the beginning or the end. Oftentimes it’s both. So we have a thesis statement somewhere in the beginning of something, and then we have a conclusion at the very end of something. But if you look at ancient literature, that was rarely the case in ancient literature. It tends to be this castic structure, which is this fancy term to mean that, that it builds towards the middle. So there’s this, this building towards the middle, and then there’s this falling down after the middle. But the middle point, whatever’s at the very, very center, that is the thing

That’s the most important thing that it’s trying to get you to understand. Now, for most of us, if you’ve asked me what’s the main point of Psalm 23, I probably would’ve mentioned the word shepherd somewhere in there. So, well, it’s really about God being my shepherd, because that’s the first phrase. And so that’s what my mind tends to go to. But that’s not, when you look at the literary device around it, what the poem itself is trying to highlight. If you look at the poem itself, there’s 26 words in Hebrew on the front side. There’s 26 words in Hebrew on the backside. And in the very center, there’s three Hebrew words. And those three, three Hebrew words are, you are with me. That if you’re trying to say, what’s the point, what’s the main idea of Psalm 23? It’s those three simple words. Now I know you’re like, well, those are four words, court.

It’s, it’s three words in Hebrew, four words in English. But in Hebrew, it’s this idea that God is with me. If you take nothing else away from the sermon series on Psalm 23, what’s the point of it? We have this, this false idea sometimes that, well, the New Testament, God’s a personal God, but the Old Testament, he’s not very personal. That’s not true. Then Psalm 23, the most famous passage in the Old Testament, that the point of it is God wants us to know that God is with us. That you, God is with me. That our God as a personal guy, he’s always been a personal God. He wants a personal relationship with you and with me. There’s this other quote from one of the same guys, Robert McQuilkin, and he writes this, he says, the 23rd Psalm is the best known chapter in the Bible, and the least understood it is the best loved chapter in the Bible and the least believed.

We, we say it a lot, but what, what does it look like if I actually believe it, believe it, not just insane while I believe it, but actually living it out in my life. Today we’re gonna just unpack the first verse. It’s very simple. If you wanna work through Psalm 23 over the next four weeks, I’d challenge you try and memorize Psalm 23. The good news is week one, very easy. It starts with this, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Now, now again in English, we have all these words to, to try and explain it, but in Hebrew, very simple Hebrew, there’s only four words there. And when we see Lord, it’s not actually Lord in Hebrew, it’s actually God’s personal name. It’s Yahweh. So those four words are Yahweh, then Roy, then lo, then asar, four words.

And those four words get translated as the Lord. And then my shepherd, that second word, the not. And then the last one is, I shall lack. So when we, we try and translate the meaning and the purpose to English, that’s what we end up getting. But it starts with this idea that not just the Lord is my shepherd, but that Yahweh is my shepherd. And now what we’re gonna do a little side street just on words and etymology and, and something that I think gets very confusing inside the church, and that is God’s name of Yahweh. So, so here is a bunch of different words that all ultimately mean the same thing. So Yahweh is God’s personal name that we first get in Exodus chapter three. And it, it’s a name that, that at some point that that Hebrew manuscripts, they removed all the vows.

So, so it’s just the y, the H, the w and the h. Now we pronounce it as Yahweh. Now that’s, that’s us guessing that. Well, these are the vowels that they removed. The reason they removed the vowels is that it was seen as this sacred name, this holy name. And so it was seen as so sacred, so holy that nobody should utter it. Nobody should say it out loud. So in order to keep it sacred and holy, you, you had people say the scholars, they say, okay, let’s just take out the vowels so that people don’t say that. Now we say Yahweh because our best guess is that that’s probably what the vows were that were in between there. So Yahweh, when you see why HWH is God’s personal name, Yahweh means the exact same thing. Now, in English, we always translate it as capital LORD, which is slightly confusing because if you look in an English Bible through the Old Testament, sometimes you’re gonna have the word Lord, but it’s not gonna be all caps.

But anytime you see the word Lord in its all caps, it means that that is Yahweh, that is the personal name of God. To make it slightly more confusing the name ad and I means the same thing. So ad and I was was you, you have these scholars and they said, well, we don’t want to say the name Yahweh. We see it as too sacred and holy. So instead we’re gonna use a different word and add an I simply means Lord. See, see the, the connection of Lord or capital. And then there’s the word Jehovah, which also means Yahweh. That’s the same word. Now. Now here’s where, where it’s slightly confusing. So, so why do we have another word for it? So when they, they made the Latin translation the Sep two agent they use the word Jehovah for Yahweh. Now we say Jehovah and we pronounce the J, but in Latin, the J does not get pronounced in Latin, the V does not get pronounced.

So if you say the name Jehovah in Latin, guess what? It sounds like Yahweh. So, so all those are the same thing that gets very confusing. But anytime you see all those things, what it’s trying to communicate to us is the personal name of God. Where does that come from? It comes from Exodus chapter three, verse 14, that, that Moses is speaking in the burn to the burning bush. That God, the presence of God starts communicating to Moses through a burning bush when he is telling Moses, you need to go get my people out of Egypt. And Moses is like, wait, hey, hold on a second. What if they ask who sent me? Like, like, I’m just talking to a bush. I don’t know. Who are you? What are you? What’s going on? So then God gives them his personal name In, in scripture, if you look at all Genesis, it never gives the name of God, the personal name of God.

And then right here in Genesis, or excuse me, Exodus three 14, there’s this powerful moment where God says, I am who I am. Sometimes we shorten that to just I am. But the full translation is I am who I am. That’s where we get Yahweh from. I am who I am in Hebrew is Yahweh. So he says, I am who I am. What does that mean? You know, like that’s, that’s kind of an odd name. Like it probably would’ve been more easy for us to understand if, if the, the, the bush said, my name’s Chris, like that in my mind. Like, okay, now, now I know your name. I can go, Hey, Chris sent me instead. It’s this, this thing that seems way bigger than that. I am who I am because it’s not a personal name in the way that you and I think of a personal name.

It’s a personal name that is helping reveal to us the character and the nature of who God is. And really simply put, here’s what I’d say that means. It means that God is eternal, that he’s self existent, that he has no beginning, that he has no end, that he is, we use all these terms because we can’t comprehend or understand an infinite God. We are finite. It’s like trying to explain to an ant math like it, it’s just, it’s, it’s so beyond us though that we cannot even begin to comprehend it. That God is omnipresent, he’s everywhere, he’s omniscient. He knows all things. He has no beginning, he has no end. He’s eternal, he’s self-sufficient, which means that, that he doesn’t need us or anything, that God is self-sufficient in his own right. And so there, there’s concepts here that we, we absolutely cannot comprehend.

But, but here’s, here’s the promise of this idea of I am who I am. That, that him saying that he is, that that means that before my crisis in life, when when I hit a roadblock and something terrible happens, that he is, and that after my crisis, that guess what he is, and, and that for some of us before my diagnosis that he is, but also after my diagnosis, he is, or if you’re walking through a season of grief, that the promises that before my grief, he is, and that in my grief he is, and that beyond and after my grief, he is that he is so much bigger and greater than I could ever comprehend or understand. And, and so when Psalm 23 starts with this idea that Yahweh is my shepherd, it’s much deeper than just saying the Lord is my shepherd. It’s in the God, the eternal God creator of the universe, bigger than I could ever comprehend or understand that, that God is my shepherd.

And now, now understand a few different things that the first David is saying that the Yahweh that God created in the universe is personal to him ’cause a personal relationship with God. But he’s also saying that he’s dependent. David was a shepherd and he knew that the sheep were dependent on the shepherds. So he’s saying, I’m dependent upon Yahweh, which to be dependent on Yahweh means that he is saying his shepherd is not the things that we culturally really function as our shepherds. He’s saying that money is not his shepherd. He’s saying his shepherd is not success. That it’s not approval, it’s not control. That it’s not comfort. That, that if you really peel back the layers of our life and you say, okay, really what is the thing that shepherds me and guides me when not when you really peel back the layers of my decisions and why I do what I do?

Probably it’s most of those things. But David is saying, those are not the things that are guiding and shepherding my life. Instead, Yahweh is my shepherd. Well, which leads to a really important question that if you wanna unpack Psalm 23, if it wants to become personal in your life, if it wants to change our lives, then here’s what we have to wrestle with right off the top. And that is, who is shepherding me? Because all of us, every single one of us are being shepherd in one direction or another. What does that mean? That means that something is guiding my decisions. There’s something outside of me that is helping shaping my decisions. There, there is something in my life or outside my life that is calming my fears. There’s something in my heart or in my mind that is shaping my desires. And there is something that is telling me what matters, that our culture around us is shaping and forming and guiding and shepherding us whether we realize it or not.

And if you want any proof of that there’s, there’s a fascinating story from 2019. So, so MIT has this magazine, their magazine is called MIT Technology. And they, they put out this article and basically the thesis of the article was about this term that they identified called the Hipster Effect. Now, if you think of 2019, that that’s when, well really 10 years ago is when hipsters were kind of a big thing. And you can probably in your mind think of what a hipster is. And and there’s something about a hipster that that’s intentionally counter-cultural. And and here’s what they wrote in their article, that the hipster effect is this, the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same. So it’s this idea that really we all look the same and we, we like to think we’re different and we have our own style, but for the most part, we all kind of gravitate towards the same general norms.

But then there’s this certain group of people that they’re like, no, I’m counter-cultural. I’m not gonna look the same as everybody else. But here’s what happens when people determine that, that in trying to be counter-cultural, they ultimately all end up looking the same as well. And so they used this just generic stock image that they put up of a hipster. So this was kind of their title. And then in the article he wrote this, it was Gideon Litchfield, he’s the editor. He said, what the study found essentially was that when a group of people decide to be different, to do something non-conforming, there comes a point when they all end up adopting the same behavior or the same style. Now, here’s where this article takes a fascinating twist. So they post this picture and there’s a hipster out there that sees his picture and he gets irate. He’s like, they wrote this article bashing Hipsters, and they used my image in their article. And so he writes this long letter, and in the letter he writes this, his name was Neil. Neil says, your lack of basic journalistic ethics and both the manner in which you reported this uncredited nonsense and the slanderous unnecessary use of my picture without my permission, demands a response. And I am of course pursuing legal action. Neil was fired up, baby.

So, so the MIT magazine, they’re like, wait, we just used the stock image. Like we, we, we don’t know what happened. So, so they contact Getty who’s like this big resource of stock photos and they say, Hey, Neil’s upset that we used his image, but but it’s your image. And so what does Getty do? Getty said, well, every stock photo that we have, they have a signed signature of that person giving permission to use it. And so they go, they pull the image and, and they look at the name of the person that signed the image. And guess what? It was not Neil <laugh> that that image that Neil thought was him was not, in fact, Neil, that Neil prove to them the very point that they were trying to make, that they showed a generic picture of a hipster and kneel a hipster was like, you used my photo. I can’t believe it. Here’s ultimately where, where they responded to it. In other words, the guy who threatened to sue us for missing his image, for misusing his image wasn’t the one in the photo he had misidentified himself, all of which proves the story that we ran. Hipsters look so much alike that they can’t even tell themselves apart from each other.

Now, now, my my point is not bashing hipster. So if you’re in here in your hipster, that’s not my point here. Here’s my point is we are all conforming whether we realize it or not, even when we’re non-conforming, we’re actually conforming my, my kids right this age that they’re 13, 11 and seven. So occasionally they will look at pictures of my wife and I, we’ve been married 20 years we’re in our forties, which means that there’s pictures of us from junior high that look ridiculous. And they, they will sometimes look at those photos and they’ll laugh at us like, I can’t believe you. You were wearing that and I can’t believe that your hair looked like that. And here’s what they don’t understand that 25 years from now, their kids are gonna look at pictures of them right now and they’re gonna laugh at them, and they’re gonna say, well, well, like right now.

And they’re like, they can’t comprehend that. ’cause They’re like, I look like everybody else. And guess what? We all look the same in 20, 30 years from now. People are gonna look back and they’re gonna say, you guys looked ridiculous. Just the same way that that we look at the American Revolution, we’re like, why did everybody wear white fluffy hair? And it like, seems ridiculous. But at the time, it was just normal. It’s what people did. It’s why the eighties, everybody looked. Like that’s just, that’s what culture dictates and therefore we all conform to it. And so if that is the reality that all of us operate in, it begs this question to be asked that much further and that much harder, and really look at my heart. And the question is, who is actually shepherding me? Because if I’m unaware who’s shepherding me, then it means that culture is in fact shepherding me.

Who is shepherding me. There’s this, this other fascinating part of the illustration that we get from him and from David, that if Yahweh is his shepherd, that means that he is identifying himself as a sheep. And he was a shepherd who spent a lot of time with sheep, which means that he knew sheep really well, and he knew that sheep are very, very dumb animals. And so here’s the implication of him saying that the Lord is my shepherd, therefore I’m the sheep. He’s saying, well, he knows that sheep tend to wonder, and sheep tend to panic and sheep gets stuck and sheep are vulnerable and sheep need guidance and sheep need protection. And he’s saying, I am that I wonder and I panic and I get stuck and I’m vulnerable and I need guidance and I need protection. And so here’s what he’s ultimately saying.

When David says, the Lord is my shepherd, and he makes it personal, he’s not making himself look strong. Instead he’s making himself dependent. He’s saying, I am a sheep that is dependent on my shepherd, and Yahweh is my shepherd. And that’s actually pretty counter-cultural what we talked about this week at the dinner table. Here’s what our cultural says, our cultural norm is, you are enough. I am enough. You be you. But that’s not what Psalm 23 says. Psalm 23 in our face is saying that you and I are not enough, but our shepherd is the just, just like sheep or dumb bible’s trying to tell us, Hey, we’re, we’re pretty dumb too. And I know sometimes we push back, we’re like, we’re not dumb. I mean, look at enough statistics and you’ll realize in general, we’re pretty dumb. I read a a stat this week, it’s fascinating to me that 33%, almost 33, it’s 32 point something percent of people believe that if there was an emergency on their passenger aircraft, that they could safely land the plane 33%.

That means when you’re flying, a third of the people around you in the back of their mind are like, Hey, if this thing starts to go down and the pilot’s unconscious and the co-pilot’s unconscious, I dunno why they’d pick me, but I feel this was the survey. It was fairly confident. It wasn’t just a, maybe it was like I’m fairly confident, nevermind that pilots go to years of training and hours and hours of schooling and like, no, I don’t need that. I could just walk in, put the headset on. I I’ve played video games. I mean, come on, <laugh>, 33% of people that you fly with in the back of their mind are like, I could do it not that hard. Like here’s what that tells you, people are dumb. Like we are dumb, but, but we don’t think that we’re dumb. Even some of you right now are like, I think I could do it. Like I’m <laugh>. You’re part of the 30 or 30%. And in the back of your mind you’re like, I mean, how hard can it be? It’s just, just a lot of buttons and I can drive a car.

David is saying that the Lord is my shepherd and I am a sheep. That that means I don’t know what’s best for me. I don’t know what lays ahead. He says, I’m willingly, intentionally submitting myself to Yahweh being my shepherd at this point. We’re just through two words in Hebrew. By the way. The next two words are where we get that phrase I shall not want from. And it’s, it’s a tricky phrase in Hebrew because what we tend to translate as in English is I shall not want, which, which makes us feel like what it’s trying to tell us is if the Lord is my shepherd, anything that I want in this life, God gives me. That’s, that’s what we tend to think. But that’s not what I shall want, means that that word in Hebrew that we translate as want, or sometimes English translations say, I shall not lack that.

That word can be translated as I shall not lack, or I will not be deficient, or I will not come up short. But you have to look at that in the context of the rest of the psalm. Like if you just look at the first verse, you’re like, Hey, I’m not gonna have any issues. I’m not gonna have any problems. I’m, I’m gonna be totally fine. And so, so here’s how our mind sometimes interprets it. We, we, we think it means that because the Lord is my shepherd, I will have everything I ever want in this life. And that’s not what it means. Instead, what what he gives the rest of the psalm shows that that can’t be the case. Because here’s what the rest of the psalm shows us, that in the rest of the psalm, there’s still a valley and there’s still enemies and they’re still evil, and there’s still the shadow of death.

So I shall not want, does not mean that life is going to always be easy. If life was always easy, then David wouldn’t have had to write about all those other things. Instead, here’s what this phrase is trying to tell us. It means that the Lord is my shepherd. Therefore, when I walk through painful things, I will not be abandoned. That if I get that first part right, the, the Yahweh, the personal God is my shepherd, that he’s guiding and forming and transforming my thoughts, my words, my actions, that I’m becoming more and more like him, then that means that whatever I face in this life, I will not be alone. And this imagery of a shepherd and sheep is used over and over and over again in scripture, in Ecclesias, or excuse me, in Ezekiel chapter 34 you have this whole chapter where God is talking about Israel being sheep, and he’s talking specifically to shepherds.

And then he says this profound thing in Ezekiel 34 sermon verse 11, it says, for thus says the Lord God, behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out as a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered. So will I seek out my sheep and I’ll rescue them from all places where they’ve been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. So, so that chapter is this, this picture of Israel being sheep and they’re scattered and they’re disobedient and they don’t know what’s going on and they’re dying. And God says, I will be their shepherd and I will gather them up and save them. And that echoes what then Jesus says in John chapter 10, verse 11, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, that that if we wanna understand the gospel, there’s this picture of a shepherd laying down his life for his sheep, that that gives us a picture of the gospel.

And when we think the Lord is my shepherd or Yahweh is my shepherd, it’s the same thing as saying Jesus is my shepherd multiple times, and we see Jesus declare that he is I am. He is Yahweh, he is God. I am the father of one. That’s what Jesus says. So when he says that he’s the shepherd, and we put it in the context of Psalm 23, it means that as Christians, as followers of Jesus, when I say the Lord is my shepherd, what I’m saying is that Jesus is my shepherd. That Jesus tells us that as the shepherd, he lays down his life for the sheep, that the gospel tells us that we weren’t enough, that we couldn’t get there by ourself, that Jesus comes, he dies on the cross for your sins and my sins, and that when we would make him the Lord of our life, the shepherd of our life, what does that mean?

That means that that I’m going to live life in a way that’s not just being conformed by all the pressures of the world around me, but instead is falling in line with his character, his nature, his identity, pursuing him wholeheartedly. If you are wondering, well, how do I really know what shepherded me in life? I came up with these three diagnostic questions. Question number one is this, where do I run when I am afraid? Like when I have a bad thing happen in life and all of a sudden I’m afraid is the first thing I turn to? Is it prayer? Is it scripture? Is it spiritual mentors? Is it the church? Is that my natural reaction is, okay, I’m afraid. I’m not sure what to do because when a sheep is afraid, what do they do? They run to the shepherd. So when I’m afraid, where do I turn?

Second question is, whose voice carries the most weight in my life? For a sheep to survive, they have to know the voice of the shepherd. They have to obey the voice of the shepherd. But in our culture, there are so many loud voices, and is Jesus the voice that I’m paying attention, or is there another voice that carries so much more weight? Maybe it’s your boss. Maybe you care so much about what that one person thinks of you, so much of who you are and what you’re doing and how you’re acting is based off that voice. Maybe, maybe it’s social media, may, maybe the voice you listen to more than anything else is the voices that you see and hear on social media and also the responses that you get. And so you listen greatly based off the number of likes, based off the number of followers, based off of the opinions of other people.

Sometimes there are voices that carry weight and it’s okay to carry some weight, but they just can’t carry ultimate weight, even if it’s a parent or a spouse or a family member, them carrying weight in my life, that’s a good thing, but they can’t be the shepherd of my life because even the best spouse or the best parent or the best family member, they’re still not God. And if I make them the ultimate, that is idolatry. Then the last question is, what do I keep trusting even after it fails me? For so many of us, it’s money. Like we think if I just get this thing, then I’m gonna be happy, then I’m gonna be great. You see it with kids really early on, it’s like, well, once I get this thing for my birthday or for Christmas, or I save up enough money, I’m gonna buy this thing and then life’s gonna be great, and it works for like three days maybe a week, and then the thing is no longer so great. And that doesn’t change when we become adults, just the dollar figure gets bigger. So instead of something when I was a kid that cost $50 or a hundred dollars, now as an adult, it costs a hundred thousand dollars or it costs a million dollars, and if I could just get that, then woo, it’ll be great. And then I get that thing and it disappoints me.

Maybe it’s some type of an addiction that every time life gets hard, that’s where you turn and it keeps failing you over and over and over and over again. Psalm 23 is a simple psalm, and yet it is so challenging

And difficult to live out truthfully, faithfully, where I’m saying that even with all the other voices in this world, I’m going to choose to identify the voice of my shepherd Jesus and make him the transforming voice in my life. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, thank you so much for the power of Psalm 23. God, I pray that as we walk through it in this sermon series, Lord, that it become alive, something that is so familiar that we can easily skip past God that would have truth in our life right now. So the name Lord Jesus, we pray, amen.