Comfort from the Shepherd: Thou Art With Me
April 24, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
Psalm 23
We’re continuing to our series on the 23rd Psalm, and today we’re looking at the last verses of that Psalm, the last three verses. And we’re going to be reading responsively today, so if you’ll take out your bulletin our reading is from the Common English Bible. It’s a little different version than what you might be used to.
Psalm 23
TheLordis my shepherd.
I lack nothing.
He lets me rest in grassy meadows;
he leads me to restful waters;
he keeps mealive.
He guides me in proper paths
for the sake of his good name.
Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no danger because you are with me.
Your rod and your staff
they protect me.
You set a table for me
right in front of my enemies.
You bathe my head in oil;
my cup is so full it spills over!
Yes, goodness and faithful love
will pursue me all the days of my life,
and I will livein theLord’s house
as long as I live.
If you could know the future would you want to? About your life? If you could know exactly what’s ahead for your life – how much longer you had to live, what was going to happen between now and then – would you want to know if you could push that button? It’s a very interesting question to think about what our lives have ahead for us.
I always remember we used to have that psychic who was right around the corner up here on Westheimer. There was a palm reading thing in the deal. I never went in there, and I was always annoyed when it went away, that I never had the nerve to go in there. St. John’s School bought that, and they kicked her out immediately. They gave her no notice, but they said that it didn’t matter because she should have known it was coming. It’s not fair that she shouldn’t have to give them 30 days’ notice. If you’re a psychic you shouldn’t request such things, I don’t think.
There’s a great story about King Louis XVI that I heard when we were in Paris at Versailles. They said that there was an astrologer who had come to his court, and the astrologer predicted that 8 days from then this woman would die. And indeed 8 days later she did die. That got King Louis all worked up. Then this astrologer predicted that France would lose in some battles, and so King Louis was upset and decided to have this astrologer executed. He called the astrologer to come see him and when he got there the astrologer said, “I just had a dream about us, King. I dreamed that you would die three days after I did, whenever that will be, three days after I die.”
That will get hold of you. Actually smart astrologer.
So this Psalm has been about all of our lives. It’s a Psalm about all of the ups and downs of life. The first parts of it describe green pastures and still waters, the idea that “I have everything that I could ever want,” all good stuff. Then it says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” or “in the presence of my enemies,” not such good stuff.
Yesterday afternoon we had a wedding here. Beautiful young couple, they could have been Barbie and Ken or in some wedding magazine or something. It was a gorgeous big beautiful wedding. He was in a white jacket, and she was just gorgeous. So happy, they were just smiling and so full of joy, just beautiful people inside and out.
So I’m doing the wedding, and I pronounce them husband and wife, and she’s just beaming. I couldn’t help but think what a beautiful moment. But who knows what’s ahead for them? Right now it’s really happy, and maybe that’s Debbie Downer or something, but that’s what the wedding ceremony is built on. It’s built on “for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” It’s to say, “Look, everything’s not going to be wonderful all the time for you, and the question is will you stick through that together? Will you stay together in the midst of good times and bad times? Will you recognize that that’s what life has?”
So that’s what this Scripture is about. Even if I “walk through the valley of the shadow of death …” We don’t know exactly what was meant by the “valley of the shadow of death.” Some believe it was a specific valley like the Valley of Elah. Maybe you remember the story. We believe David is the author of many of the psalms, and you know the story of David and Goliath. This is from I Samuel. “Saul and the Israelites gathered and encamped in the Valley of Elah and formed ranks against the Philistines. The Philistines stood on the mountain on one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with the valley in between them.”
So David came out from the Israelites. None of the other soldiers would come out. They said, “I’m not going to go face that giant, that Philistine.” But David said, “I’m not afraid even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.”
Some think it’s that valley. Some think it’s the Valley of Jezreel which is right next to Megiddo which is the place where two major roads cross in Israel and more warriors have died on that field than on any place in history, they believe. Right there in the valley of Jezreel. It is fertilized and green from the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers over the centuries, because it’s such a strategic place. Maybe that’s the “valley of the shadow of death.” Some believe that.
But whatever it is here’s what the Scripture says, that in your life there will be some valleys. And how are you going to get through them? Well, the promise of this Scripture is that God will be with you through all of it. “Thou art with me.”
I want you to notice something, and it’s really obvious. Once you see it you might think, “Wow, I’ve been saying this Psalm all my life and never noticed it.” It’s that the three verses are when things seem to be going well, they’re in the third person – “He leads me” or “he makes me lie down in green pastures.” It’s third person. It’s about God. But then once you talk about the valley of the shadow of death it’s about the second person. Now you say, “Thou art with me,” “thy rod and thy staff comfort me,” “thou anointest my head with oil.”
There comes a time in life when knowing about God is not enough, when talking about God is not enough, and you actually have to talk to God. You actually have to know God instead of knowing about God. You can come to church all your life, and you can learn all you need to, and all of that is important. But there comes a point where there’s that relationship that you form with the living God that gets you through the night. And those are the times that somehow you’re drawn into that deeper relationship. The Shepherd’s promise to us is that “I’m going to be right there with you in the darkest times.”
John 10 talks about Jesus saying, “I am the good shepherd.” Then he uses another image as well. He says, “I am the gate for the sheep” or “the gate for the sheepfold.” It’s an interesting image. A sheepfold was a pen that was made out of rocks. They’d build these pens out of rocks. If you ever go to Israel you’ll see that everything is made of rock. In fact we always think of Jesus as a carpenter with wood, but the image that’s really there is that his father was a stonemason, that everything was made of stone. So if you go there you realize that, and pretty soon you get there and think, “Wow, there are a lot of rocks in Israel.”
So they made these pens out of stone. But you can’t make a gate out of stone. You can’t make a swinging gate out of stone, so what would happen was that they would gather the sheep at night into the sheepfold. Then the shepherd – or shepherds since there were might be two or three of them – would sleep across the gate. The sheep couldn’t get out unless they went through them, and the predators couldn’t get in unless they went through them.
That’s the promise here. It’s as if to say, “Even when you’re behind the walls, I’m not going to leave you. I’ll protect you all the time.”
When he says, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies” again it’s about relationship. Remember I’ve talked to you before about how in Israel at the time of Christ or even before that you didn’t eat with people you didn’t love. So when it says, “I prepare a table before you,” he’s saying, “I’m going to be in relationship with you. I’m going to love you. We’re going to be tight. We’re going to be like family together.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to go to Normandy. We had the chance last year to go there. Before I went a member of the church had been and came and brought me a neat little devotional guide that had been distributed to soldiers during the Second World War. And it has devotionals from various pastors, one for every day that they could read, a very small book that they could carry with them. And in that devotional guide there is a devotional by a man who had fought in the First World War He’d been a chaplain. And after the war he became a pastor of a church and he wrote this devotional. He talks about how he’d served communion, the Lord’s Supper, to the soldiers in the trenches. And he spoke of the power of being in that place with the bullets flying over their heads, serving the Lord’s Supper. And the text for that devotional? It was “Thou shall prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
There are some people who will tell you that what the Scripture says is that, “You know what? If you live a good life, if you stay faithful to Jesus, God will protect you from all evil.” That’s not been the experience of my life, and I don’t think it’s the witness of Scripture.
It says, “Thy rod and thy staff will…” It doesn’t say, it will protect me. It says, “Thy rod and thy staff they will comfort me.” The word in Hebrew is the word nacham and it means to console or to strengthen. It’s what God does in us, not what God does to our circumstances.
The rod was a club that they could throw at predators. I always thought you just sort of used it to beat, but even today there are competitions where shepherds practice and compete at throwing the rod. They’d throw this club, and it would be used to ward off predators. You usually didn’t kill the predators, but it would also be used to, frankly, discipline recalcitrant sheep.
The staff was the shepherd’s crook that would be used to guide the sheep and gather them in, move them in the right direction. The rod and the staff are not so much used on the enemies. The rod and the staff are used on us to strengthen us in the midst of facing the challenges that we face. That’s the picture that we get here. It’s of this God who supports us and holds us up in the midst of difficult times.
There are really two ways to look at life, two ways to go through life. You can choose to go through life afraid, worried, anxious, always wondering what terrible thing will happen next. Or you can choose to go through life full of trust and confidence in that God is with you. And here’s what’s interesting. It generally has not so much to do with your circumstance but with a decision you make, something internally that changes you, to be comforted, to be strengthened, to be upheld by God. God’s not going to keep the bad things from happening to you. In fact it’s pretty clear that they won’t. Certainly that wasn’t what happened with Jesus if he’s the model for life. But what God will do is strengthen you, and comfort you and be with you.
I always get tickled when I’m working here late at night, and there’s a woman also working. When it’s dark and she’s going to walk to her car I’ll say, “Would you like me to walk you to your car?” She says, “Yes, that would be nice.” Then while I’m walking her to her car I’m thinking, “What am I doing out here?” If someone attacks us what am I going to do? I’m a lover, not a fighter. I’m going to pray over you, Mr. Attacker …
But here’s the truth. It is comforting to know that you’re not walking out there alone. Even if I couldn’t do anything, it’s still a comfort to know I’m not alone. If you’ve ever been lost there’s a really big difference between being lost alone and being lost with someone, a really big difference. It’s that sense where you think, “I’m not alone in this, there’s someone who strengthens me, who comforts me, who upholds me. Who gets me through.” So that’s the promise.
Maybe you remember the video that went viral after the Paris attacks. Boy, it really moved me. I watched it a number of times, and it really stuck with me. It showed a man and a little boy who had gone to the memorial where the attacks had been, and there were flowers everywhere. The little boy said something to his dad like, “Are there bad men out there that will get us?” And the dad said, “Oh, they’re not going to hurt us, son.” And the boy said, “Well, do the bad men have guns?” And the dad said, “Well, yes, the bad men have guns. But we have these flowers.” And the little boy said, “Will these flowers protect us?” The dad paused, because he didn’t know what to say. Then he said, “Yes, son, these flowers will protect us.”
I wrestled with that. Flowers aren’t going to protect us! Yet what he was saying was this: we are not going to let those people define who we are. We’re going to claim the flowers and we’re not going to live in fear. We’re going to choose to be people of courage, and we’re going to know that we don’t go through this alone. And we refuse to be the people who fear the evil all the time. We’ve got the flowers. We’re claiming that.
See, we’ve got a choice. What this is saying is, “Life is going to have good and bad, better or worse, richer or poorer, difficulties that come our way, disease, challenges, unemployment, enemies. And in the midst of all of that how are you going to live?” And what this Scripture says is, “I’m going to live trusting in God. And I’m not saying that no bad things will happen to me, but still, I’m going to live trusting God.” He closes this way: “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
If I were to ask you today, “Tell me about your life. Give me one sentence to summarize your life” here’s what I bet you would say. I’ve had this conversation here, and here’s what most people say. It would be, “I’ve had a good life. There have been hard times. I’ve had some hard times. I’ve really have. But it’s been a good life. I’ve had all sorts of wonderful things. I’ve had great friends. I’ve had all sorts of wonderful opportunities.”
When you look back is that what you see? When you look forward what do you see? I expect you should see the same thing.
Here’s the truism I guess. Whatever it is you’re looking for you will see. And if you’re looking for evil and terrible things and bad stuff coming your way, you’re going to find it. And if you’re looking for goodness and mercy to follow you every day of your life, you’re going to find that, too. Because that’s what it means to decide “I’m going to walk with God and I know that my cup runneth over, and he anoints my head with oil and that I want nothing, because that’s the God that walks with me. Goodness and mercy shall pursue me every day of my life.”
So, friends, I hope you will see the 23rd Psalm as an affirmation of trust in God. That good times or bad times, happy or sad, better or worse, that God’s with you. And “goodness and mercy shall follow you” every single day of your life.
Let’s pray together. Lord God, we thank you for your presence in our lives. Thank you for leading us through these amazing green pastures, and beside still waters and in paths of righteousness. We thank you that you’re with us. Even when we walk through the darkest valleys, you’re still with us. When enemies surround us, you’re still with us. And we can count on you. We pray in Christ’s name, Amen.