Slide 1
The journey is important… 
but the destination matters too.

Slide 2
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 3
Provision: “I shall not want.”
Restoration: “He restores my soul.”
Direction: “He leads me.”
Honor: “you prepare a table.”
Pursuit: “Goodness and mercy shall follow me.”
Home: “I shall dwell in the house of the LORD.”

Slide 4
Psalm 23:5
You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.

Slide 5
The imagery changes from a shepherd/sheep to a table.

Slide 6
Cultural understanding: In the ancient world, to welcome someone to your table was not just about feeding them; it also represented honor and protection.

Slide 7
The table is not the absence of enemies/problems. The table is the presence of God in the middle of them.

Slide 8
Hebrew anoint: carries the idea of making fat, refreshing, enriching, or lavishing. 

Slide 9
The table and anointing represent belonging. 

Slide 10
My cup overflows = I have been filled to satisfaction. 

Slide 11
Psalm 23:6
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
    forever.

Slide 12
“Goodness” – tov – Good that comes from God’s own character.
“Mercy” – chesed – covenant loyalty. 

Slide 13
Hebrew follow:  means pursue, chase, hunt down. 

Slide 14
I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Slide 15
Dwell: can also be “return”
Forever: can also be “all my days”

Slide 16
“I will keep coming home to God, and one day I will be home with God forever.”

Slide 17
Jeremiah 12:5
“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you,
    how will you compete with horses?”

For a long time. I would go in the summers and I would speak at youth camps. I would speak at kids camps. And about 20 years ago I was speaking at the camp, and what you’d do is you’d hang out with students during the day, and then at night you’d speak. And then after you speak, everybody on their staff would gather together, they’d do a debrief, and then oftentimes the staff would just hang out at night for a while. And so I remember I was sitting around at tables, there’s probably 20 people around these tables. And then this conversation starts amongst the ladies at the table where they were talking about the most romantic date that they had ever had. And as these things often do, what what starts to happen is somebody gives a story and then somebody else, one ups that story. And they’re like, well, lemme tell you about mine.

And it just happens to be a little bit more romantic than yours. And all of a sudden, one of the ladies there, she starts sharing about this date. And it was a first date. She said, this guy had been asking her to dinner for a long time, and she had said no. And finally she says yes. And he shows up and he brings her flowers, he picks her up from her house in the car, and he drives her to an airport where he owns a plane. And he took her up in his plane, which in the back of my mind, I’m like, that sounds dangerous. I mean, first date, you don’t even know this guy. He’s taking you on a plane. I mean, they, that’s just to me, it sounds a little creepy, but I’m just listening in the background. And then she talks about this romantic date where they fly all over the city and they’re looking at sights and sounds.

And then she said they landed and they had dinner, and they’d get back in the plane and they start going back. And I, I, I just couldn’t help myself. I said, well, hey, where’d you go to dinner? And she goes, well, I mean, that’s, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he put me in a plane and he showed me the city and we saw these beautiful things. They said, yeah, but, but he asked you to dinner and then he flew you to someplace had to been amazing wherever he flew you. So, so where was this place that he flew you to dinner? And she said, I mean, I don’t know that I completely remember.

I said, well, well, surely you remember. I mean, he took you on a plane to this place. You just, I I mean, it couldn’t be that bad. Where, where was the place? And then finally, reluctantly, she says, well, it was Applebee’s, <laugh>. And I, I was just, I was a little confounded. I was like, Applebee’s, like, like the chain Applebee’s. Like surely you flew over a dozen Applebee’s in order to go, was this the original Applebee’s? Was the owner of Applebee’s there making you a private dinner for just you two? And and she’s like, no, it was just a regular Applebee’s. Okay. He flew me on a plane to a regular Applebee’s. And then we went home and I just, I, I tried to just be really kind and I, but in the back of my mind, I’m like, that is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.

That’s the most expensive trip to Applebee’s in the history of trips to Applebee’s. And in our culture, we have this, this phrase that we like to say, we like to say, Hey, don’t worry about the destination. Life is all about the journey. And can I just tell you that the journey is important? I, I don’t wanna discount that the journey does matter, but the destination it matters to. And we’ve been in this study on Psalm 23. And Psalm 23 is largely about this journey of how do I journey in this life with the Lord as my shepherd. But at the end of Psalm 23, David wants us to understand that there is a destination, there is a place that we are going if we are following after God, if you’ve got a Bible term with me to Psalm 23, as we have done every week, I’m gonna read the entire Psalm and then we will unpack the last two verses of Psalm 23.

As I read this over you, I just, I pray that you would listen and receive and try and hear it with fresh ears. In a fresh mind, it says the Lord, Yahweh 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 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. Now, in this psalm, as we read through it, it’s these promises that David, who wrote the psalm as a shepherd, someone who had been experienced as a shepherd, he gives us this picture as God as our shepherd.

And he said, with God as our shepherd, we as the sheep when we’re following after him, here’s what God provides. And he starts with this idea of provision. That phrase, I shall not want that God, our shepherd, the sheep, they don’t have to worry about what comes next. They just let the shepherd provide for them. And in the same way, our heavenly Father is giving us provision. He also gives us restoration in a world that that leans heavily into self-care and self-help. And, and I’m not trying to belittle those things. Those things have value, but ultimately, the only thing in this life that can restore our soul is a relationship with God. Nothing else can provide for us that which our heavenly Father wants freely to provide for us. Then as our shepherd, he gives us direction. The sheep are following the shepherd, that there’s this picture that, that the sheep are, are being herded by following after the direction that the shepherd wants them to go.

And in the same way, God wants to be the shepherd for our life. He wants to guide us and direct us, and we have to follow after his direction. Then in this verse, in verse five and six, it talks about honor that says that God prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Then it moves on to this idea of pursuit, that goodness and mercy are chasing after us. They’re gonna follow us all the days of our life. And then it ends with this idea, this concept of home, that I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That this journey is leading me to a destination. And that destination is the eternal reality. That I will be with my heavenly Father in heaven for all eternity. And if I can live in this life with that eternal perspective, it changes who I am and how I live.

Now let’s start with unpacking verse five. This is what it says. You talking about, God, prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Now, typically when we take, think of Psalm 23, we think of the imagery of a shepherd and sheep. And that is real, that that’s true. But in verse five, that imagery completely shifts. It moves from being a shepherd and sheep to a table. It, it’s a totally different word, picture. And so now David is saying that God prepares a table before him in the presence of his enemies. The idea of sitting at somebody’s table for us culturally looks very different. The understanding is very different than it would’ve been in the Near East in ancient history than in ancient history. The table was a really big deal. To sit at somebody’s table means that they were inviting you into their home.

It was a position of honor and protection. For us today, we, we probably don’t have very many people over at our dinner table, maybe once a week if you’re real social, maybe twice a week. But it’s not a regular occurrence. In ancient history, it was irregular occurrence. It happened continually, almost every night, and it meant something very distinct and different. So, so here’s the cultural understanding of what David is trying to get us to understand when he talks about this table, the Lord’s table that he’s invited us to, that in the ancient world to welcome someone to your table was not just to feed them, but it also represented honoring them and protection. If you came and sat in my home at my table, I am responsible for your protection. Anything bad that happens to you while you are at my table, that’s on me.

That’s my fault. That’s my responsibility. So it’s this picture of protection. It’s also this picture of honor. That’s why Jesus gets into trouble with everybody around him in the first century, because when Jesus was sitting at tables with sinners, they, the culture around him saw them, him as honoring those sinners. Or when he went to the table of sinners, like, like when Zacchaeus invites Jesus to his home and Jesus eats dinner at Zacchaeus table, everybody else would’ve seen that as dishonorable because Zacchaeus was not an honorable person. Jesus was honoring him with his presence. But Jesus did something very different than what people thought at the first century. Jesus was saying, I’m not sitting at your table because you deserve, deserve honor. I’m sitting at your table because of who I am, my character and my nature. And that brings you honor, because of my presence.

Now, what’s interesting is David says that he’s sitting at the table in the presence of his enemies. Now, David had people literally trying to kill him, that that’s what was happening at the time that people were chasing him down. Most of us in this room probably have never experienced that. And I would even go a step further that if you are in this room and you actively have people trying to kill you, we’d love to talk to you at Trailhead after service. Probably we’ll call the cops for you. That’s above our pay grade. But so while we can’t quite understand exactly what that means, we can’t understand what it means to have problems, have issues, have struggles, have challenges. So the table that that David presents with us, it is not the absence of enemies or problems. The table is the presence of God In the middle of them, he, he’s saying, I’m surrounded by issues.

I’m surrounded by problems, and yet I am sitting at the table with God that I, that I have honor and protection at his table, even though these problems are real. Then there’s this Hebrew word anoint. David says, he anoints my head with oil, that that’s that word anoint is not talking about royalty. That the Hebrew word anoint carries the idea of making fat or refreshing or enriching or lavishing. So I’m sitting at God’s table in the presence of God, I’m honored, I’m protected. And then he is saying that I am refreshed, enriched, lavished by God. That’s a picture that God is trying to share with us of what he wants, what he desires. Yes, he’s our shepherd. Where is sheep? But then it moves into this picture of a table and sitting at God’s table that we are being honored by him. We, we are being protected by him.

And then he is lavishing us that ultimately the table and anointing together, they represent belonging. That there’s some core part of all of us as humans that we desire to belong. And oftentimes we feel awkward because we don’t feel like we belong. Think back to junior high dance, that feeling when if you ever went to a junior high dance and you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what to say, you don’t know how to act, and so you just, everybody stands there kind of awkwardly and everybody feels awkward. And there are different times in life where that same awkwardness rears its head. You go into a place where, where you don’t know anybody and you feel slightly awkward. You go to a new house, somebody invites you over to their house and you’ve never been there before. There’s a part of that that naturally feels awkward.

And we don’t like that feeling. Why? Because God has designed us in such a way that we want to feel like we belong. I am supposed to be here. And the picture that David wants us to get is that the only place that we can truly feel belonging. That acceptance is at God’s table. And then he, he takes it a step further and he says that his cup overflows. He says, I’ve been filled to satisfaction that we live in a world that everything around us is trying to sell us satisfaction. Every TV commercial you and I will ever watch is trying to convince us that we are not satisfied or we shouldn’t be satisfied unless we buy that something or that’s something that, that’s what a commercial does. It, it’s telling you, Hey, your life is not as good as it could be. But if you buy this, then you will be satisfied.

And why do commercials never end? Because the promise of satis being satisfied will never end. We’re never ultimately satisfied. Things will fill us for a moment, but they don’t permanently satisfy. But what, what the table of God offers is belonging and complete and total satisfaction. My cup overflows. I don’t need any more. What I have right here with God is enough, enough. It’s a hard word in our culture because we don’t feel like we ever have enough. We always feel like we need a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And God is saying at my table, you have enough. Not because you have stuff, not because you have money, but because we have Him. And as the good shepherd sitting at his table, he is enough. Then let’s look at verse six. Verse six says this, the last verse of Psalm 23, it says, surely, surely could also get translated as only so surely or only goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

There is this eternal perspective of heaven that should change how I live on earth now. And my problems and my issues right now in comparison to that should feel smaller this summer, my family has getting gotten into the game monopoly. We’re kind of finally all of the ages where everybody can play. And we’ve played a handful of times of monopoly. And if you really want to know what your family thinks about each other, play the game of monopoly. If you wanna know if there’s any emotional issues or problems, some, some challenges that are rooted deep down that have never been fully healed, monopoly reveals those things to the surface. Most games of monopoly end up with tears. Somebody is crying. If you’ve got a physical game, it just gets thrown in the air by somebody at some point because there’s something about monopoly that that just, it, it creates this tension in the room because you can’t win the game without having to trade with somebody.

And you don’t get to trade in private. You trade in public in front of everybody in the game. And so what happens is when the, the older kids starts to try and trade with the younger kid and they try and take advantage of the younger kid, Hey, look, I’ll give you all of these for tho that one right there. And and the younger kid, it sounds good. So, so as the adult you’ll occasionally jump in and say, Hey, that’s a bad trade for you. Let me explain why <laugh>. And so now the younger kid’s, upside the older kid and the older kid’s upset at dad, ’cause dad has has stood up for the younger kid. And so now there’s just all kinds of emotions and then there’s fighting and there’s no such thing as a short game of Monopoly. This isn’t a 30 minute thing. This is four hours of your life that is going to end with someone mad at you crying and upset.

And yet we still play. We still play. And and here’s the crazy thing about Monopoly, that in the moment it’s hard for you to explain to your kids, like probably everybody in this room at some point have played Monopoly. And for most of you, but probably you can think back that it’s, it’s, it’s been a hot minute since you’ve played Monopoly, but there’s probably not one monopoly game that you think back to and you remember for the rest of your life. Like I’ve never at Thanksgiving or Christmas got together with my family and been like, Hey, you remember back in 87 when we played that game in Monopoly? I had Boardwalk and Park Place. You remember that? And you landed, I had the hotel. Oh, good times like that. That’s never come up in conversation because although in the moment it feels like a really big deal now once it’s over it, it just doesn’t matter.

And now part of it’s perspective, like my kids, they hold onto that monopoly money. Like it’s real money. I spend that monopoly money. Like I don’t care. It’s not real. This is gonna end that house that you are buying on your little fake property. We are sitting inside my real literal house. Like there, there’s a difference here in how you view this game versus how I am viewing this game. And I really, my, my kids think I care about winning. I really don’t care. Like I genuinely don’t care if I win the game of Monopoly because I have life experience and perspective to put it in the right balance. Now, here’s what Psalm 23 is trying to get us to understand. It ends with this idea of the hope of heaven. Why? Because if I have the hope of heaven, if I have that kingdom eternal perspective, it should change the issues and the problems that I face on this earth.

Now, that’s not to belittle the issues and the problems, it doesn’t belittle the value, it doesn’t belittle the pain, but it puts that pain in perspective. No matter what you and I are facing today in this place, the, in this scheme of eternity, a thousand years from now, 10,000 years from now, a hundred thousand years from now, this problem that feels so big in this moment in the scheme of eternity is not that big of a deal. And that’s what God wants us to understand. That yes, it feels hard, but man, if I can have a kingdom eternal perspective, that that feeling of hard can be seen very different. And then there’s this promise that comes with the verse, this promise that goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Now, let’s pause for a second and unpack biblically what the idea of God’s goodness chasing after me actually is.

Because here’s what we like to do. We like to say, okay, yes Lord, God’s goodness is chasing after me. That means God’s gonna make me rich and God’s gonna make me healthy, and God’s gonna give me all the desires that I could possibly want. No, that’s not what this is saying, that that is the false teaching of the prosperity gospel. It’s very prevalent in American culture. The false teaching is if I love God, God’s gonna bless me with whatever I want. That is not what Psalm 23 says. How do we know that? First is context. He, he’s just talked about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And then he says, I’m eating a meal with God in the presence of my enemies, enemies for David who were trying to kill him. So he’s not ignoring pain and suffering and challenges. He’s saying despite the pain and the suffering and the challenges, he’s saying, goodness is chasing after me.

Now, that Hebrew word for goodness is the word to, it’s this idea that it’s good that comes from God’s own character, God’s nature in the creation story when God creates all things. And then he takes a step back and he looks at it and it says that God declares that it was good. That word good in Hebrew is that same word, tov. So it’s intentionally designed, it’s God’s intended order to things. That’s what this idea of good tve in Hebrew means. So it’s in goodness, God’s intended created order and design for my life is chasing after me. And then additionally, it’s coupled with the word mercy. And Hebrews, the word has said, it’s this idea of covenant loyalty. It doesn’t rely on me, it relies on who God is. It’s the character and the nature of God that God always fulfills his promises. The Old Testament is this idea that God makes a covenant with, with man.

And then man fails over and over and over and over again. Israel fails God over and over and over. But God, because of His said, because of his covenant loyalty not only continues to hold up his side of the covenant, that he’s pointing ahead to the New Testament. What happens in the New Testament? The the gospel is about God’s his set, his covenant loyalty, saying that we failed our part. We couldn’t do it on our own. So God does it for us. That God sends his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus rises from the dead. Why? Because God is fulfilling the covenant and taking on the part of the covenant that we were responsible for, but we could never pay that God pays what we were supposed to pay. That’s God’s heaven has said His, his covenant, mercy, that’s who he is.

And so we have the goodness of God, the mercy of God coupled together. And then it says that it follows me. That word follow in Hebrew can mean pursue or to chase or to hunt down. So even in the valleys, even in the challenges, even surrounded by difficulties, even when life is hard, it is saying that God’s created design in order His goodness and his covenant, mercy and love. Those things are chasing after me. That, that it is this idea that God wants me at his table. He wants this relationship with me. That’s why it goes on to say, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David’s saying, God’s created design for my life is chasing after me. His love, his mercy for my life is chasing after me. It’s not just following me. It is pursuing me and saying, this declaration that I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And now there’s something interesting that happens in Hebrew because that word dwell and that word forever can be translated a handful of different ways. So dwell can mean to return and forever can also be translated. As for all my days. So probably for David in that moment, here’s what he’s actually saying. He’s saying, I will return to the house of the Lord for my days that, that he’s been running for his life. He’s been scared, he’s been in the valley, he’s been in the presence of enemies. People are trying to kill him. And he’s saying, Hey, I, I’m in challenges right now, but I will return to the presence of God, the house of the Lord, and I will dwell there for the rest of my days. But also in the Hebrew, it could be talking about the future. It could be talking about not this life, but it could be talking about eternity.

So this beautiful way, this phrase works. So as it works like this, you could also translate it as I will keep coming home to God. I’ll keep coming back to God’s presence, and one day I will be home with God forever. So, so Psalm 23 applies both times. Psalm 23 applies as us saying, Hey, I have an eternal perspective. Because no matter what happens in this life, no matter how hard this life is, I will ultimately end up with God. And in comparison, whatever I’m I’m facing right now in comparison to that is just not that big of a deal. But also, it’s not just a promise for someday, it’s not just a promise for when I’m gone and when I’m dead. It’s a promise for right now, for today that I can continually be returning to the presence of God, returning to the house of God.

And for all my gaze, I will dwell in the presence of God. And so Psalm 23 is this beautiful, powerful picture of God being our shepherd provision and protection and him sitting at the table so that we can belong. That his goodness and his mercy, it’s chasing after us. But ultimately it points to this idea that I can dwell in the presence of God both for eternity and also for right now in this moment of my life. It’s really interesting. If you go over to Europe, some of the earliest paintings we have of Jesus depict him in the same way they depict him as a shepherd. This is a picture from a catacomb in Rome. This is roughly 150 to to 300 years after Jesus that we, we’ve got dozens of these same types of pictures. And it’s a picture not as Jesus as God, although Jesus was God, not as Jesus as a king, although he was a king.

But instead it depicts Jesus as a shepherd. And so it’s, it’s obviously a 2000 year old painting. It’s a little hard to see, but this is a picture of Jesus as a shepherd with a sheep hanging over his shoulders. It connects back to the parable that Jesus tells about the lost sheep. Then Luke chapter 15, in Matthew chapter 18, Jesus tells this parable about a shepherd. And the shepherd has these a hundred sheep, but one sheep roams off runs away. And he says, the shepherd leaves the 99 for the sake of the one. And then so much of what we see in Psalm 23, we see played out in this parable that the shepherd is chasing after this idea of surely goodness and mercy will chase after me. The the shepherd is chasing after the lost sheep, then the shepherd picks up the lost sheep, the hurt sheep, the broken sheep, the distant sheep.

The shepherd picks up the sheep, puts the sheep over his shoulders and carries him back to the flock. Why? Because the flock is where the sheep is protected. The flock is where the sheep belongs. The flock is where the sheep is supposed to be. Now. Now think about why that would’ve been such a compelling image around a hundred fifty, two hundred eighteen, that if you’re a Christian, that this is how they’re seeing Jesus at that moment in their lives. They’re seeing him as a shepherd. Well in 150 AD and 200 ad, it was not easy to be a Christian. And if you were a Christian, you were ostracized. You could possibly face torture. You could be martyred for your faith that that if you falling after Jesus had with it the risk of death when you had pain and you had suffering, you had challenges. That early church, when they thought of Jesus, they thought of him as the good shepherd.

The shepherd that picks up the sheep and carries the sheep back to the flock. And maybe you’re in here today and maybe you’re like the sheep that that is off by itself. May, maybe you grew up in church, but you really haven’t believed in God and, and been falling after God for a really long time. Maybe you didn’t grow up in a church and you, you’ve just felt like you’ve never belonged. You felt like you are a way in the distance. Psalm 23, the parable of the good shepherd, Jesus. The picture is God saying, Hey, I am chasing down the lost sheep to bring you back to the fold. And maybe that is the story that God wants you to hear today. Maybe that’s the point of Psalm 23 for you, that God wants to be your shepherd. I came across as verse this week, Jeremiah 12 verse five.

It’s God talking to Jeremiah. And it says this, if you have raced with men on foot and they have weed you, how will you compete with horses? It comes in a time where Jeremiah, he’s gone to his hometown and there’s a lot of complaining and there’s, there’s a lot of division and and they don’t really listen to Jeremiah. They ignore Jeremiah. They’re being mean to Jeremiah and Jeremiah’s going to God. And he’s saying, why? Why are you allowing these things to happen? Why are evil men prospering? Why, why are they not just listening to what I am trying to tell them? And God responds in this way of saying, oh, oh oh, Jeremiah, if this is too much for you, you’re never gonna be prepared for what I want for you, then you’re getting tired racing with men, and I want you to race with horses.

And that, that that imagery is so powerful because I think we live in a world where we get tired very easily. Every time you turn on the news, you get tired. Every time you scroll through your social media, you get tired. ’cause There’s, there’s always bad things happening. And we, we like to catastrophize everything and oh, this is the worst. Oh, this is so bad. Oh, this is so challenging. And in the same way we get so tired with, with the small things that, that God is trying to use these values in our life to prepare us for much bigger things. My oldest son right now is 13, but I remember a very vividly conversation we had when he was in kindergarten that I get the privilege of, of driving our kids to school every day. No, it’s very easy because I work at a church that has a school that was, that was true of my last church too.

And so really their whole life, I’ve always been the one while I was driving to work, I was always driving them to school. And it’s, it’s been a really cool thing to have a lot of cool conversations with them. And I remember when my oldest had just started school, he was in kindergarten, so he’s six years old. And leading up to the start of school, leading up to kindergarten is the most magical time because it sounds amazing. Like I, I could go to big kid’s school and you get new shoes and you get a haircut and you get new, new clothes and you get new pins and markers, like everything about, that’s just amazing. And so for the first two weeks, kindergarten is outta this world, like unbelievable, just so cool. And so we’re about two weeks in and two weeks in is about where the newness starts to roll off. It’s not quite as exciting as it once was. And I remember I’m driving, he’s back there in his car seat and, and he, it’d been a rough morning. He had been tired. It was hard to get him up, hard to get him ready. And so he’s sitting back there, he’s just kind of glazing out the window in a daze and he says, Hey dad, how much longer do I have to go to school

<Laugh>?

And he said, I, I’m kind of tired of it already. And I said, oh, oh, buddy said, well, well, you’re in kindergarten. And and that’s not even the real school yet. Like that’s, that’s the preschool that’s, that’s preparing you for once you get to numbers, that’s when you’re like, it’s real grades. And and you have to have 12 of those before you’re done with high school. But there’s a good chance after that you, you go to college and that’s another four years, five for some people with good intentions, <laugh>.

And then you, you might go get a master’s, that’s another two years. You, you, you could become a doctor or, or a lawyer. I mean that, that could be another four years if you wanna get a PhD that’s more than that. I said somewhere between 13 years and oh, 40 years, that’s how much education you have left in this life. And so you got a ways to go. And I remember his voice. He just goes, oh, and then he just kinda says, okay, but, but here’s the thing. What he doesn’t understand is for a 6-year-old kindergarten is hard. And why is it hard? Because it’s trying to prepare him for the next stage. And that’s your prepare him for the next stage and the next stage and the next. And the worst thing I can do as a parent is say, you know what? You’re right.

It is hard. Let’s just stay home and watch Paw Patrol. Like forget this school stuff. No, out of love for him, it is saying you can do hard things and it’s gonna be hard and it’s gonna be challenging and you’re gonna persevere and you’re gonna do it for the next 13 to 40 years. And on the other side of that, that that total experience is gonna prepare and equip you to do amazing and awesome things. And that’s what Jeremiah 12 five God is saying to Jeremiah, God is saying, oh, Jeremiah, hey, you’re in a hard season, but I’m gonna use this season in your life to accomplish amazing and awesome things. You’re not gonna be able to race with the horses unless you can figure out racing with men. And God, right now to you and to me, wants to say the same thing he wants to say whatever season that you are going through.

Although it can feel hard and it can feel challenging and it can feel difficult that God’s saying, I have so much greater for you. If you can figure out the small things, if you can figure out how to persevere through this season, hey, right now you’re getting tired racing with men and he’s saying, if you can have an eternal perspective, what I want you to do is I want you to race with horses. And man, if we could grab hold of that today, not, not just a, a cool verse or a cool picture. It it’s a spiritual truth that God wants in your life and my life. That man, I, I can’t get worn down by small things, but, but what if with an eternal perspective, I can put those things in the right order. It doesn’t trivialize those things. It doesn’t say those things don’t matter.

It means that those things in the perspective of eternity, I put them in their right place and I sit at God’s table and I say, this is where I belong. And I’m gonna dwell in the house of God. And I’m not just gonna dwell in the house of God right now and every day, but I’m going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That mindset changes everything. That mindset lets me run a race with horses. Now, don’t, don’t get me wrong, you’re not gonna run with literal horses. Like no, no one turns into the flash as a result of this Bible verse. But what it does mean is it means God wants more from you out of you and he wants it for your future. And he’s chasing after that, will we be willing to submit and say, Hey, I’m gonna let you be my shepherd ’cause that’s where I want to end up.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father God, we thank you for the power of Psalm 23. We thank you for the imagery of Psalm 23. God, I pray right now that this verse would not just be a familiar verse that, that we hear and we, we think, oh, I get it. I understand it. But instead it will be something that speaks life and truth to us every single time that we read it. God, I pray for anyone in this room that is far from you, that they are like the sheep that has gone astray. And I pray that today can be the day that that let you be the good shepherd that brings them back. God, I pray for anyone in this room that doesn’t feel like they belong. Lord, the, the, the picture that you have for us of sitting at your table belonging. God, I pray for anyone in here right now that is tired, they’re tired, running the races of men. Lord, I pray that you would stir in their spirit what could happen with faith and trust in you to run the races with horses that you would have us run. Pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.