When Uncertainty Terrorizes

We are living in a world that I don’t think any of us ever dreamed we would have. I think we are facing the most challenging times ever. There’s economic, there’s relational – Here’s what I know: we need each other. But you and I can’t impart what we don’t possess. I can’t love people if I’m not filled up. I can’t be a good shepherd unless God is shepherding me.

And what I know is that we need each other to do that. I am reminded that when David was in his lowest time ever, do you remember what happened? It says, “Jonathan went to his friend David and he encouraged him in the Lord.” And so, that’s why we’re together. That’s why this is so important.

The second thing I know is not only do we need each other, we need to experience God. When Jesus shows up, everything changes. Right? You can be in a boat and there’s a storm and Jesus shows up and He speaks and it’s calm. You can be rowing and you can’t make any progress in a situation in life and Jesus shows up and He changes it. There could be thousands of people that need food and Jesus shows up and it’s different.

There can be demons and spiritual opposition – Jesus shows up – everything changes when Jesus shows up. Here’s what we know. We know He’s always with us. Right? He promised that. We know He’s not only with us, but He’s in us. But it’s one thing to know that, it’s a completely different thing to experience it.

In our time together, what I want to ask and answer is: how do we experience God’s presence and His power so that He would fill us up in ways that we have first what we need for us, our families, and our relationships, and then in an overflow of His presence and His power, we could actually serve and love other people.

So, let me pray. Almighty God, You know every man, every woman, every ministry, every challenge. Lord, we need You. God, we know much about You; we love You. But we are desperate and You promised that in our deepest need, in our weakness, You would display Your power.

And so, Lord, I pray now in Jesus’ name that as we walk through this psalm, designed for us to believe and experience that You’ll provide and You’ll protect and that You will be our shepherd, that by the power of Your Holy Spirit, You’ll speak to us like never before. In Jesus’ name, amen.

So, what I’d like you to do is open to Psalm 23 and I want to remind you that the psalms weren’t written primarily as messages for people to study. This was truth to be experienced. This is David’s life, this is in the ups and the downs. This is how he connected to God. And it became something that was sung so that people just didn’t know that God was their shepherd, it was they would experience in their life and they would sing it, memorize it, and ponder it.

Let’s just read it by way of overview. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness” – why? “for His name’s sake. Even 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 overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,” and I love this, “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

It’s very familiar but what I want to do before I give you an overview of this text, is I want to remind you just a little bit about sheep and shepherds. Because if you were a Hebrew at the time this was written, or even in the first century, your mind and your heart at what I just read would be far different than those of us in the twenty-first century.

Sheep primarily are unusual animals. They are slow, they are defenseless, they are one of the stupidest animals, they are easily frightened, they are not clean, and they can’t find food. A sheep will not even growl when a predator is there. A sheep, left to itself, will eat and not even find fresh grass. It will eat to the roots and ruin it.

A sheep, if the water is bubbling and it’s kind of loud, a sheep will not even go to that unless the water is quiet. Sheep were very frightful animals. And over two hundred times in the Bible, God calls us sheep. Don’t be too offended, because the other thing is sheep were super valuable. They were valuable for the wool, they were valuable as meat, they were valuable for a sacrifice.

Imagine this: Jesus, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. He allows Himself to be called a sheep or a lamb. And so, what I want you to know is the parallels are we are very, very valuable to God, but we drift easily. We are very fearful. We are very vulnerable. We have great need.

And what I want you to see about this passage is here is a structure, for years I read this passage, I had it memorized, and I didn’t see the structure.

There are three huge statements that are all in the future tense. They are declarations. And David is in the midst of very difficult times. I mean, think of what he went through. Because this isn’t just a nice little poem. This isn’t like, “Oh, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” This isn’t like something that we read for a funeral that makes people feel a little bit better.

This is the David that faced the giant. This is the David that dodged spears as Saul was coming at him. This is the David who, when he had to flee, his wife was taken away from him and given to another. This is the David that went on a trip as a warrior and when he came back, his family and children, they were kidnapped. This is a David that got so hungry that he actually went into the temple and took the showbread. This is the David that hid in caves, that was persecuted, that wondered where his next meal is coming from.

David understood pressure and stress and fear and uncertainty. He understood crisis. But what he makes is three declarative statements.

Number one he says, “I shall not be in want.”

Number two he says, “I will fear no evil.”

And number three he says, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Everything else is in the present tense. And David makes these three declarations. And brothers and sisters, here’s what I want to tell you. We need to experience those declarations. Never in the world do we need, like never before, to say with all the uncertainty: The Lord isn’t “the” shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd.

Now, let me show you why. The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want because the shepherd provides all my needs. Just write that word if you would, “He provides all my needs.”

And under that, I want you to write a number one and put physical.

And then I want you to write a number two and put psychological/emotional.

And then number three, I want you to put a number three and say spiritual.

In this passage, in this short little passage, David says to you and he says to me, “Yahweh, the God Almighty, the All-Knowing One, He is also the Intimate One and He is going to supply all your physical needs.” Notice what it says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters.”

A shepherd would take a place and he would dam up the water and create it where it would be calm. He would take the sheep and he would have to lead them and he would let them graze for a little while and have just enough and then he would lead them to the next place and the next place and the next place.

And by the way, the sheep didn’t know that we have grass for next week or next year. Not even next month. The shepherd, moment by moment, day by day, and what David learned and what we have to learn: God will meet all of our needs, but they are not hypothetical. The apostle Paul would say if we have food for today and a shelter over our head, we can be content.

There’s a New Testament promise that’s a parallel, right? Philippians 4:19. And for some of us, we are hanging on and it’s so hard, it’s so difficult. “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus.” But it’s not just our physical needs.

Notice he says He will restore soul. That word soul in Greek, we get our word psychology or psyche. In Hebrew it means the whole person. In other words, God understands what it’s like to feel the emotional tension, to feel pulled, to feel like you can’t deliver what you need to for people that are in need. People in your family, maybe people at work.

He knows what it’s like when you’re isolated and you can’t connect with other people and He wants you to know that as you come to Him as the shepherd, as you say, “You’re the One I’m looking to to meet my needs. I’m not looking to the government, I’m not looking to someone else, I don’t expect this person or that person. God, at the end of the day, Lord Jesus, I believe, I declare You’re my shepherd.”

And He says, “I’ll restore your soul. I’ll do things in your heart.” You know, He did that for the disciples, didn’t He? They were scared to death. Professional fishermen. “Lord, don’t You care?” “O, you of little faith.” And then He speaks. Waves calm. Wind dies down. I believe we are in a season and especially people that are around the world, I mean, it’s dire situations, I believe you can expect God to show up in very miraculous ways. God does very miraculous things when we lean in and when we are desperate and we declare, “You’re my shepherd.”

Physical, emotional, and then spiritual.

“He guides me in paths of righteousness.” Literally, in the right path. I mean, isn’t one of our biggest needs right now, God, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

I mean, it’s super difficult. The shepherd says, “I’ll take care of you physically. I’ll take care of you emotionally. And I want you to know, I will guide you in the right path.”

And notice, not just so it works out for you or me, for His name’s sake. You see, God’s reputation is at stake here. He wants us as men and women, church leaders, pastors, people in the pews, regular Christians – He wants all of us to say, “You know what? I declare the Lord is,” not the shepherd, “He is my personal shepherd.”

Jesus said, “I will be with you always.” But the difference between knowing about that and experiencing that is something called faith and dependency and trust.

And it’s just, I think God shows up in the most powerful ways when you say and I say, “We are desperate. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know that I can make it, in fact, I don’t think I can make it.” Help me. Have mercy upon me. I want you to know, God is ready and willing to be your shepherd. The fact of the matter is, we are human and He understands, the fact of the matter is we tend to lean in and look to people or other things to meet our needs.

And sometimes the greatest experiences we ever have with God is when we are at the end, I mean, at the very end of our rope.

But not only He’s our Shepherd and He provides.

Notice this great statement, “I will fear no evil” – why?

“Because the shepherd protects me from all evil.” And we are living in a world that’s scary right now. We see violence and around the globe division and wars and difficulty.

Notice what he says. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” and then why?

“For You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

That little phrase “the valley of the shadow of death,” I think so often we think that that means, oh, it’s just when we’re going to die. But that’s not the picture at all. The picture is at different seasons of time that the shepherd would have to take from the lowlands and go through the rocky crags and go up to the plateaus where the grass was green.

But it was in all those rocky crags with mountains on one side and mountains on the other side, it would be dark and there would be lions and predators. And I remember reading, it’s a great book by the way, an old book by Phillip Keller called A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm.

And he was a shepherd in Australia for over ten years. Thousands of sheep. And he said, “In all my years I don’t think I ever saw a lion or a bear or a predator ever get one of the sheep.” And he said, “What I learned was, it’s during that time when it’s dark, that’s when you take that rod and you tap it, that’s when you let the sheep know, ‘Stay close to me.’” And so, he gives, he says there are two things that comfort him. He says, the rod, it would be, it’s kind of like a long pole but it had a ball on the end. And those shepherds in Israel, they got good with it.

Not only could they use it as a club, they could throw it, amazing marksmen, bam! And he says, “Just like that, God, His power, His power against evil,” the evil of the enemy coming against you, the evil in a fallen world, and even the evil of your own flesh, he says the same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you and dwells in me. And therefore, I will fear no evil, even in the darkest times.

Brothers and sisters, we don’t have to fear evil, but we have to declare our position in Christ. And so he says, “We have got the power,” and then I love it, he says, “His staff,” you know the little crook?

The one gives us the power against the enemy and the other provides some correction and some rescue. When a lamb would stray and get in some thicket, he would take that and pull it out.

God wants us to know we don’t have to be afraid. And the reason is, “I am with you.”

How do you experience the “I am with you”? Well, times like this together, right? The fellowship of the brothers and sisters.

Second is God’s Word. I don’t know how you’re doing. But let me just tell you this, if you’re not making the very first portion in the world that we are living in to get into God’s Word, and I don’t mean read a little devotional. I’m talking about, Oh God, speak to me. And study and memorize and taking these promises and putting them in your heart and saying, Lord, I can’t make it today without You. And getting into Your Word and putting it into practice. Saying it out loud.

One of the things in this season that I do a lot of, and I use Psalm 23, is you know when you’re just waking up and your eyes are just starting to open, right? And you’re almost semi-conscious, but you’re awake. I would encourage you, before you get out of bed, this is what I do almost every single morning, I pause and I ponder, I wonder what this day is going to hold. And I’ll just start, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I will not be in want or need today. Thank You. He will lead me by quiet waters. He’ll make me lie down in green grass.”

And by phrase by phrase I just go over that in my mind in sort of a prayerful attitude and I’m just going to, I’m going to live today, Lord, I have no idea what is going on. There are times where fear comes into my heart, but, You are my Shepherd, You are my Provider, and You are my Protector. And that’s what He wants you to know. And He wants you to experience that. But you need to verbalize that out loud, you need to take in the Word, you need to sing songs unto Him.

And you need to believe that the power that He has provided with His staff and His rod, His Word and His Spirit - that dwells within you.

The third declarative statement, he says, “I will,” future, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord.”

And I love this. The metaphor changes. He has been talking about sheep and shepherds. And now he is going to talk about an amazing banquet. He says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” It’s this picture of victory.

He says this table, this word of a table would be a great feast. And it’s in the presence of his enemies. In the ancient Near East, when a general went out to battle, after he won, he would come back on a white horse. And then he would, remember that phrase in Psalm 68 or Ephesians 4 - a train of captives?

And what they would do is the people who were captives, they would be in the very end and all the plunder, and they would have this huge banquet and there would be all this food. And in humiliation, the enemies would be sitting, some of them because of the cultures, would be stripped to the waist, sometimes they would parade them naked just to humiliate their enemy to say, “Our God is greater than your god.” So many of the battles in the Old Testament were a connection or a battle between the true God versus what was happening in these other gods.

And so, He says, “I’m going to prepare a table,” but notice what He says. He goes, “I’m going to anoint your head with oil.” That would be olive oil with some perfume at a very fine dinner that you were invited to. And then your cup overflows, it’s like, this is lavish. This isn’t like God’s grace in little eyedroppers. This is: Look at all the food. Look at – I will take care of you. I want you to rejoice.

And then finally he says, “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Goodness and mercy,” literally the word is, it’s not just will follow me, the Hebrew word, “it pursues me.” It pursues you.

I want you to know that today there is something that you can declare that is true so you can take, “I want to experience God’s presence” from an idea that you believe to an experience in your heart and you declare, “I shall not be in want; He’s my Provider. I shall not be afraid; He’s my Protector. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord now and forever” – why? “because His promises are true.”

Jesus promised you eternal life, because Jesus called Himself – what? He’s the Good Shepherd. Lord, I pray now, I ask that You would take these very familiar words and in the midst of our greatest need and greatest pain, that You would grant us the grace to lay hold of You as our shepherd, our protector, and our promise keeper. Amen.