Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd.
I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green
pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.
He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right
paths for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the
darkest valley, 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 overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of
my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
Which bit of the Bible do you think is probably the best known
in like around your friends and your family and your culture?
If there was a bit of the Bible that you thought was the best
known, have a think what it might be any other than this
bit, Any bits of the Bible people think are really well
known in culture? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Golden Rule as it's called in it, Yeah.
Probably quite well known, yes. Yeah, sort of in the beginning
and all that jazz. Yeah.
OK. I think let's probably feel like
John three. Oh, yeah, go on.
The Lord's Prayer might be pretty well known for certain
generations, particularly I think my generation and younger
less so, I suspect. I think John 316 has always held
upon cards at sporting events in it, at least the references
here. People don't know what it says,
but I think this there, the Bible is probably the best known
in our culture, especially in the Western world of all of the
Bible. It was the theme tune to the
Vicar of Dibley. No one remembers watching that.
The priest reads it out in the film Titanic as the ship sinks.
Spoiler alert, although if you don't know the ship sinks, why
are you watching the film? It's not a documentary.
It was read at the funeral of Whitney Houston and it was read
at the memorial service for 911 by George Bush.
Artists like Coolio, Duke Ellington, Pink Floyd, Tupac,
The Offspring have all used it in their music and their songs
at some point. It's a really, really well known
bit of the Bible and it begins with a really beautiful picture
of what it looks like to be a sheep and the flock of an
extraordinary shepherd. And in the first 3 verses,
David, the person who wrote this Psalm, paints a fantastic
picture of what it is like to be a sheep that's being cared for
by the Lord as their shepherd. And in verse one to three,
exactly what we want life to be like, like God personally caring
and providing for his flock where we can just eat and we can
lie down. Sheep apparently never ever lie
down. They're really skittish animals.
They never rest. So it's quite rare for sheep to
lie down. But this shepherd sheep can lie
down. That sounds brilliant, don't it?
First one to three just sound beauty.
But then there's a plot twist in verse 4.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no
evil, for you are with me, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort
me. Verse 4 is a really horrible
plot twist and what seems a beautiful Psalm so far.
And even more shockingly, if you look at the trance, see that
between verse 3 and verse 4, you see that full stop at the very
end of verse 3. That's not there in the
original. So actually, you could read it.
He guides me along the right path for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, sometimes the
dark valleys are exactly where the Lord is leading us.
There's a purpose in it. We don't like that, do we?
So we're going to base ourselves, though, in verse 4
this morning to help us see a bit of a flow of the rest of the
Psalm, hopefully to encourage us, to encourage us all as sheep
following this shepherd. Let me pray.
And then we'll spend some time seeing four different things
from this together. Let's pray.
Lord, this is your word. And so as we look at it, we want
it to speak to us rather than us speaking about it.
And so Father, we pray that you would help me to speak truth.
Please help us to hear what you want to say to us.
Please encourage us, please challenge us, please correct us.
We pray, Lord, would you use the word of God with the Spirit of
God to make the people of God look like the Son of God?
We pray, Amen. OK, so 4 things for us to see
from particularly verse 4. But the whole Psalm really will
get the flow of it if you if you catch the drift.
So first one is the valley is dark.
The valley is dark. Now, I grew up in a small town
in the north of England after we moved from Wales, and it was a
pretty rubbish town. There's not a lot going for
Barton upon Humber. I think there's a church there
that's mentioned in the Doomsday Book and one of the artists from
the Beano lived there at some point.
That's about it. But just past the end of the
street where I lived, because it was in the middle of rural
Lincolnshire, there were miles and miles of empty roads and
empty fields, which meant you could go and ride your bike
there and kick a football about there all day long, perfectly
safe. It was a child's dream.
I remember just going out for a whole days at a time with my
mates to just play for the day. But to get to those incredible
fields, you'd have to go through this tunnel.
This subway tunnel looks appealing, right?
I hated this tunnel. It's stank of we, I don't know
why, the bigger boys, the bigger boys would hang out in there and
smoke and do naughty stuff. And it was always dark.
By the way, I've checked every bit of this graffiti.
There was nothing that's inappropriate to show in a
church. The lights, despite being on in
this picture, never ever seemed to work whenever I wanted to go
through it, which meant that even though it's only about 100
meters long, it felt like it went on for miles.
So I would Sprint through this tunnel, or I'll pedal through it
as quickly as I could to just try and get through it.
And you had to go through it because frustratingly, there's a
motorway above it. So if I wanted to get to those
fields, you can't go over it. You can't go under it.
Oh, no, you have to go through it.
And I hated this dark tunnel particularly because it was so
dark. Like, none of us like dark
places, do we? No one thinks, great, I get to
spend some time in the dark. We don't need to cheat.
Teach children to be afraid of the dark.
It comes naturally. Darkness means we don't quite
know how safe we are in it. Nasty things, dangerous things
can hide in darkness. And that's David's experience
right in the middle of this Psalm.
In this verse. He feels like he's in a dark
valley, and he does not like it, and he doesn't tell us what his
specific dark valley is or was. But that's because he's
deliberately written this Psalm so that we put ourselves into
this Psalm as if we were writing it with him.
And we bring our own dark valleys with us, whatever they
may be today. And we do have dark valleys,
right? Sickness, looming diagnosis, or
just the fear of a looming diagnosis.
Relationship breakdowns or breakups, loneliness, abuse,
worries about family members, financial stresses, work
worries, mental health struggles.
And then behind all of those dark valleys, there's that
constant shadow of death. Death of nature and the world
and the environment around us, or death of friends or family or
ourselves. There's no escape from it.
It's going to happen. We try and live like death isn't
going to happen to us, but it will.
It's coming. And the Bible's clear that
behind all of those darknesses is the underlying cause of sin.
Ever since the very first humans rejected, God chose to rule
their own lives, which is what sin is.
They set everything on a one way journey to an appointment with
death that has cast its shadow over every bit of life ever
since. The valleys are dark.
The Bible never, ever tries to downplay that, which means that
we don't need to either. If you're going through a dark
valley when you go through a dark valley, because it'll come
if it hasn't yet, you and I don't need to pretend that we're
not in a dark valley. In fact, the Bible will tell us
that we should be honest about our dark valleys to each other.
They exist and they're real. If David is stiff up, elliptic,
we'd never have the comfort of this Psalm, right?
If he'd been British, this Psalm would not be as great.
I'll say that if he was English, this Psalm would not be as
great. We're good at whinging as Welsh.
The Bible, and the Psalms especially, are honest about the
dark valleys of life. Nearly half of the Psalms are
lament, crying out in pain and sadness to God.
Nearly half of the Psalms the Bible doesn't try and gloss over
pain or tell us to have a stiff upper lip and pretend
everything's OK so we don't lose face.
And if we try and deny that we have dark valleys when we have
them, then we're trying to live our life in a way that we were
never designed to live. And worse, we're acting like
we're better than Jesus because he never denied dark valleys
when he went through them on the night he was betrayed, for
example, knowing what was about to happen, He didn't hide his
dark valley and his fears from his friends, and in fact, he
showed them in an unflinching honesty how scary his dark
valley was. Which means it is good for us to
do the same as well. And it is bad for us and for
people around us when we hide our pain and hurt and fears and
dark valleys because we're missing out on getting and other
people are getting out, missing out on showing what Jesus wants
from his people. If you read the later bit of
John's gospel, when he's speaking to his disciples just
before his dies, he dies. Jesus says, I'm going to go
away, but you'll keep seeing me. And the disciples,
understandably, are quite baffled.
But if you read that, the way the disciples are going to keep
seeing Jesus, the way that we and I will come to Jesus as we
sang in our second song, is by telling each other.
You get to be Jesus to suffering people when they come to you and
talk about their dark valleys with you.
You get to be ministers for and of Jesus to each other when
people are in their dark valleys.
It is really good for us to be honest about our dark valleys.
And the Bible would say it is bad for us to hide it because
the valley is dark. Be honest about that.
Don't lie about it. And there are loads of really
good reasons along with all this why it's good for us to be
honest. But this Psalm has got a
particular reason it wants us to see, and it's David's focus not
just in this verse, but actually the focus in the whole Psalm,
because we need to be reminded of a truth in Hebrew poetry,
which is what this Psalm is. The middle of the poem is very
often the main point of the whole poem.
Like in English poetry, we start with our theme and maybe end
with the theme, and the stuff in between is that fluff.
But that's not the literal way of describing it.
But in Hebrew poetry, often everything builds up to the
middle, which is the main point, and then everything flows out of
it towards the very end. The middle line is the most
important one, and the exact middle of Psalm 23 tells us our
second encouragement. The shepherd is close.
This is the middle line of the
poem in the original Hebrew For you are with me.
This is what David wants us to focus on more than any valley.
For you are with me. Scary situations are much less
scary when we're not on our own right?
And in this dark valley, David's comfort is that he is not alone.
The shepherd is close, which means David can not be afraid
because he knows he isn't walking alone.
The shepherd is close. In fact, the darkness has
brought the shepherd closer. Have a look down.
In verses 1 to 3, David talks about the shepherd, doesn't he?
In verses one to three, he, he, he four times he talking about
the shepherd. But now in verse 4, what
happens? He starts talking directly to
the shepherd. You are with me, Your rod, your
staff, come for me. He's not just telling himself
no, he's speaking directly to the shepherd.
The darkness has brought the shepherd closer.
Thanks to the darkness, he doesn't just know the good news
of being part of the shepherd's flock, although that is good
news now. He now knows the shepherd
personally. It's like in this valley it's
just him and the shepherd, and his greatest comfort is that his
shepherd is with him personally. Now, just to be really clear,
David is not saying now that the darkness is good.
David is not saying that at all. Saying you are with me doesn't
somehow make the valley filled with light and a happy place to
be. No, it's genuinely A terrifying
and dark valley. The Psalm is not telling us that
dark valleys are good things. Now.
Evil is evil. Cancer, abuse, relationship
breakdowns, war, depression, death, They are bad things.
They are not good things in themselves.
And it's OK to be honest about that.
David is not saying that the darkness is good, but he is
saying that the reason we don't need to fear this very scary and
horrible darkness is because of who's with us.
Because you, the sovereign, powerful, covenant God of the
universe, because you are with me, I don't need to be afraid of
the very real darkness and the very real evil that I'm facing,
whatever it is. The comfort is the presence of
the Shepherd in the darkness, not the removal of darkness.
And sometimes the only good thing that we can see in dark
valleys we're LED through is that the Shepherd is right with
us every single step of the way. And in those dark valleys, He
reminds us of just how close He is.
It is not possible for a sheep to go through a dark valley that
is outside of God's leading and His loving care and presence.
He is always with us in every single dark valley.
So if you feel in the dark right now, please be encouraged that
your Shepherd isn't scratching his head wondering what to do
with you or where you are. No, he's with you.
He's not ahead of you, leading you from a distance, saying,
hurry up, children, come on. He doesn't drop you off at the
scary bit and say, I'll see you later.
Now he's with you. He's next to you every single
step of the way. And that changes everything.
And we're meant to see that it always has changed everything in
the Bible. I am with you is one of the
great repeated promises that you find in the Bible.
As you read it, look out for it. You'll see it all over the place
in different ways or other. Here's just a few examples for
us for this morning in Joshua, one on the edge of the promised
land with their enemies ahead of them.
God says do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.
For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
A few 100 years later, facing exile, being taken to foreign
lands, terrified, God says to his people, do not fear, for I
am with you. When Jeremiah doubts whether
he's able to do what God's asked him to do, God says, do not be
afraid of them, for I am with you.
When Jesus sends out his followers in Matthew 28, he
sends them out with the promise. And surely I'm with you always
to the very end of the age, in Acts 18, when the apostle Paul
faced threats and attack and potential death, God says to
him, do not be afraid, keep on speaking, do not be silent, for
I am with you. God with us is the great hope of
the whole Bible. That's the massive promise the
whole Bible is looking to answer.
How can sinful people make it through life?
Because God is with them. Whatever dark valleys, wherever,
in whatever situation makes your chest tighten right now in your
mind race. God says to you today what he
said to his people throughout all time.
I am with you. That's why Christmas is such a
big deal. Remember the name for Jesus that
we think about Emmanuel Christmas a lot.
Emmanuel, what does that mean? God with us, it's a big deal,
right? That is the story of the Bible
that in Jesus God has come to us so that we can now say you are
with me. Like Psalm 23 verse 4 manages to
summarise the whole Bible that Jesus our shepherd, King and
Saviour is with us in every valley and he will never leave
us or abandoned us. And not just some future better
version of you in the valley in the future you go through right
now. And not just a past cleaner,
nicer version of you that used to exist.
Whatever valley you're in right now, your shepherd is with you.
He's with you now as you sit in that chair.
If you are a Christian here today, that means you can
confidently say if I die tomorrow, I'll go and be with
Jesus. And if I don't, he'll be with
me. But only if you are one of his
sheep. If, as verse one says, the Lord
is your shepherd, and that is far more important than any
valley you're walking through, do you know the Lord is your
shepherd? Do you know that he's with you?
Are you following him? Are you obeying him not just as
your shepherd but also as your king?
Can you call yourself part of this flock?
If not, then the Bible says that the dark valleys you walk
through are actually invitations to see just how dark your valley
is and to see your need to follow a better shepherd.
Because we're all following some shepherd or other, only one of
them is a comfort to be with us in the valley.
So your dark valley, if you're not yet today a Christian, is an
invitation to come and join a better flock, to ask for the
forgiveness only God can give, and then follow the sheep of the
shepherd with the rest of the sheep.
If you can say you've done that, then whatever valley you are
ever in, you can fear no danger because our shepherd is with us.
And that is even better news than it might feel, because as
well as being close, David also wants us to see that our
shepherd is strong. The shepherd is strong.
If you walk out of here and you meet somebody and they're
wearing scrubs and a stethoscope, who are they and
what do they do? Yeah.
So I don't do rhetorical questions yet.
Who are? They're a doctor or a nurse,
right. OK.
And they, they're in the medical profession because who they are
and what they do is shown by how they're dressed, right.
And the the tools they're carrying with them.
And the same is true of our shepherd.
Our shepherd carries a rod and a staff, two different things
which show us that he is perfectly equipped for even the
darkest of valleys. Now, I don't know about you, but
my view of shepherds has been far too tarnished by primary
school nativities and kids with tea towels on their head.
And so I often it's easy to picture a shepherd as like a
little child or gentle and oh, that's nice.
But somebody met some Middle Eastern shepherds, described
them like this, as like warriors marching to the battlefield with
guns and daggers and pistols and battle axes or iron headed clubs
and prepared to use their weapons at any moment.
That paints a very different picture of a shepherd, doesn't
it? Like the shepherd who's with us
is great. But you know what?
He's not a weakling, he's a warrior.
Our shepherd's not a weakling. He is a warrior, as all
shepherds had to be, and that is shown by the tools he carries,
the rod and the staff. The rod would be the shepherd's
weapon to protect his sheep from wild animals or thieves.
It'd be about 2 1/2 feet long with a big ball on the end of
it, and there'd have bits of iron or metal like buried into
it to smack things with. It was a perfect weapon.
So good, in fact, that David himself, when he talks about his
own experience of being a shepherd, said he's able to
fight off lions and bears with them.
It's quite a good weapon, but they were also used a bit like a
car park barrier when they were bringing their sheep in at night
to count the sheep in because the shepherd would know exactly
how many sheep they had and so they count them in at night to
make sure they're all there so if anyone missing they could go
off and find them. The weapon to fight was also a
symbol of protection and care for the sheep, and our shepherd
is equipped and strong enough to both defeat our enemies and
protect us sheep, which means there will be things that try
and attack us. That's why he needs the weapon.
But we don't need to be afraid because the weapon's shaping
ourselves in our the weapon is safe in our shepherd's hands.
Maybe some of you feel quite bad today.
Well please let verse 4 remind you that the rod really is in
Jesus hands, not yours. So you don't need to confuse his
tenderness for weakness or his care for you for carelessness
about things that threaten you. That is not what our shepherd is
like. So you can join this psalmist
today in saying to the shepherd, I will fear no evil, for your
rod is in your hand to protect me.
But he's also got a staff and the staff was used to direct and
round up the sheep and to give him a bit of a slap and a tap
and pull them along when they went the wrong way.
It's a bit like a lead for a dog.
It's our dog Remy, just an excuse to show pictures.
And he's really great when we go for walks.
He doesn't really need a lead unless there's some dirty water
we don't want him to go in, then he needs a lead because he'll
try and go in it. We only really put the lead on
him to keep him on the right path and away from the bad
places. And that's how a shepherd would
use a staff like a lead for a dog for correcting them and
stopping them from going the wrong way.
The rod will be for defending and a staff will be for
correcting and leading. And the truth is, as sheep of
this shepherd, we need both. We need our shepherd to protect
us from our enemies with his rod, but we also need him to
protect us from ourselves with his staff.
Because you're my biggest enemy is our own stupid, sinful
hearts, our love of ourselves and our own comfort, our self
pity, our belief in the lies, that the grass is greener
somewhere else. That this dark valley is clearly
a mistake and we all need our shepherd staff to continually
pull us back to him. Maybe this morning you've
wandered off. Yeah, you know, you're a sheep
of the shepherd. But you've realised you've
wandered away. Maybe the valley was too dark,
so actually you're grazing in fields that you really know you
shouldn't be in. Maybe you've prioritised easier,
less dark paths. And actually you can feel a
distance between you and the shepherd, and between US and the
other sheep. Because actually we've been
slowly but surely putting ourselves beyond the reach or
beyond the sound of our shepherd's staff.
And the sound is important because in dark valleys,
shepherds would walk along ahead because they're often quite
narrow, and they'd bang their Staffs against the wall as they
went so that the sheep knew he was still there by the sound of
his staff. Maybe we've stopped listening to
our shepherd's staff in his word, or maybe we're ducking and
diving to try and keep ourselves out of reach of the hook and the
sound of the shepherd's staff. Well, today this verse is an
invitation as well, to stop that, to reset, to restart, to
come home, to look up and see how far off from the shepherd
you've wandered, but also to see the shepherd who's waiting to
walk right close next to you again.
Maybe it's time for somebody here to speak to someone else
and to start listening to His voice and belonging to the flock
again. Or maybe this is just a reminder
to keep on going, but what we're doing is the right thing.
It's hard, the Valley's dark, and I'm tired, but this is the
right thing. Keep listening to God's Word,
keep obeying, keep following even when it looks scary.
With the shepherd walking with us every step.
Because in the dark valley, our shepherd is close, but he's also
strong, which is even better news.
The only time I wouldn't dash through this subway was when I
was with my dad. My dad at the time was bigger
than me. Not now, but he was ripped.
He was an athlete, he was strong, and he loved me.
He'd look after me. So when we walk through this
together, I wouldn't need to run.
Even if the bigger boys were there, they'd be more afraid of
him than I was of them. So I could freewheel on my bike
or just stroll next to him. Because my dad was with me.
He was close and he was strong and he cared about me.
Still does. There wasn't many past tense
there. We just don't live there anymore
anyway. But that's why David can walk
through this dark valley. You spot that in verse 4.
Even though I walk through the darkest final, I'd be sprinting
on my own. He can walk because his big
strong shepherd is with him and near him.
So he doesn't need to be afraid. And we can trust this shepherd
in our dark valleys also because he's been there.
You see, Jesus, our Good Shepherd, he walked straight
into the darkest valley on the cross.
He went through a darkness that you and I will never have to
face. If we're his sheep, He's
forsaken by his Father. He drank a cup of judgement that
should have been ours. And he walked through death
itself, so that for everybody who follows him, death has lost
its sting. The Valley's been conquered from
the inside, and we're following Him, and He knows the way out,
which means that when we walk through our dark valleys, we're
following a shepherd who's already been through the worst
of it, and he's burst out the other side, victoriously alive.
That's why we can fear no evil, not just because he's with us,
but because he's already beaten it.
And if you're not yet following the shepherd, he is calling you
to follow him today. Which reminds us of the final
comfort we're going to see very briefly.
I promise that the valley isn't the end.
It's not the end. The valley isn't a destination.
Even death itself is not the destination, as Jesus proved by
rising from the dead. Now there is only glory to come,
which if we had time, we could see in the final few verses.
But we don't, so we won't. But for now, please be
encouraged that when you're going through dark valleys, do
not forget and not the end. There is only brilliance and
glory and wonder ahead, which doesn't mean you just grit your
teeth and endure it until it comes.
Now David says in verse 6 that all the days of his life, even
in the valley, God's goodness and love will follow him, will
pursue him like sheepdogs around him.
Which is his way of saying that even in the darkest valley, God
himself is still pursuing you and with you even when you can't
see it. But it's all heading somewhere
better than we could ever imagine.
We sang about the cup overflowing and all that jazz
again. I'd love to go into.
I won't. But that means we're lending and
unending peace and joy and happiness and glory.
And if you hear about heaven in the New Testament, the way Jesus
describes it, it's mainly a party, but a really good party,
see. And when the Bible finishes, it
describes the future of everybody who follows this
shepherd. And the Book of Revelation
describes it like this in Revelation 21, verse 3, showing
us what is at the end of our valley, even if that lasts all
the way till we die. It says this.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's
dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with
them. They'll be his people and God
himself will be with them and be their God.
No more distance, no more darkness clouding our vision.
No, God will once and for all be with us in a way that we can
never forget or never imagine. And the fact the chapter goes on
to say that there won't be any sun or moon anymore because God
himself will be the light, which means dark valleys are gone
because God is there and he is the light.
All suffering and all pain and everything that you feel
threatens you today, gone. But God with us is not gone.
It'll just carry on for eternity in a way we can't even imagine
where we'll live with our Shepherd once and for all and
forever. So this week, remember, the
Valley's dark and it is OK and good and it is healthy to admit
that. But remember, the Shepherd is
close and he's strong, and the valley won't last forever
because it's not the destination God is.
And that's going to be far greater than we can even
possibly imagine. Let's pray.
The apostle Paul, when he's writing to the church in Rome in
chapter 8, verse 18 says, I consider that our presence,
present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that
will be revealed in US. Lord, that feels really hard to
imagine for some of us here today.
Our valleys feel really dark, really horrible, and we can't
imagine anything eclipsing it. And yet, Father, Your Word
promises us that even in those dark valleys, you are with us.
Please help us to remember that. Please help us to be honest
about our dark valley so we can be reminded of just how close
and strong you are to us, and we can be reminded that the valley
is not the end. Please help us to be people
who've got our eyes fixed on the glory at the end, but who also
remember You're with us and you are strong, and you'll never
leave us or forsake us. So please help us to help each
other, to not fear any danger, but to trust in the God who's
leading us all the way home. Amen.