Pasture-Raised Peace

All right. How many of you would like to hear one of the most beautiful and best-loved passages of Scripture? Anybody? Anybody? Good. All right. Well, let’s go ahead and we’ll read it together. We all know it. Psalm 23. Ranger, could I get my slide? Here we go. There we go. All right. Let’s read it together. 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. 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 mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.

Thank you. That’s a psalm. If you haven’t memorized it, it would be my great encouragement to you to memorize it. It is such a comfort in so many different cases when your life is just frazzled, you’re at your wits’ end, and you just need some encouragement. It’s hard to go wrong with just letting Psalm 23 roll around in your head and in your heart. It is a psalm about God, but it’s a psalm for us. It’s for God, too. It is a worshipful thing, but it’s meant to be an encouragement to us.

I don’t know how many of you know of the comedian Mitch Hedberg. He was a very unique comedian, but he had this one joke that I always found hilarious where he said, “I was watching a late-night infomercial once that said, ‘Forget everything you know about slipcovers.’ So I did, and it was a load off my mind. But then they tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn’t know what they were.” Anyway, I think that’s hilarious. A lot of us, if we were told to forget everything you know about shepherding, we could say, “Okay, I did.” Most of us—the extent of our knowledge of shepherding comes from the once-a-year trip to the Mayfair where we watch the FFA kids show their sheep and display them and things like that. Which is to say, we don’t know a whole lot about shepherding.

Shepherding is what we think of when we think of Psalm 23 because it starts right off, “The Lord is my shepherd,” right? But there are actually two pictures that David paints here. David, who was a shepherd-king, in this psalm describes God as a shepherd and as a kingly host who is hosting us in his lavish palace at this banqueting table. And both of these images are meant to help us and to remind us how good our lives are because of the ever-present care of our heavenly Father. They are there to be a comfort to us and to remind us that even though maybe our lives are difficult, maybe there are great challenges that you are facing, maybe you do find yourself surrounded by circumstances, by people, by whatever that may fill you with fear, fill you with discouragement, with uncertainty—there is this ever-present reality of God in our lives leading us to good places and pouring out good things for us that we don’t deserve and things that we could not acquire for ourselves in our own skills and abilities using our own resources. We are utterly dependent on him.

And lest we be deceived into thinking that David is painting a picture of this sort of perfect life without any difficulties, without any challenges, we only need to read the rest of the psalms that he wrote, which are so very often about the difficulties and the challenges of life. And yet he is confident, knowing that this is the kind of God who is caring for him, protecting him, and delivering him into these wonderful circumstances.

So in this psalm—and this is really going to be, it’s not really a sermon. I hate to break it to you. You’ve come on Sunday morning and you want a sermon. This is more like me talking through some observations from this psalm. I hope that’s okay. But I want you to think about three words. Three words I think are—I want you to come away with from this psalm that encapsulate both of these images that David uses: God as the good shepherd and God as the king who hosts us at this lavish banquet. And those three words are this: provision, protection, and peace. Right? They have to be alliterated, though, because I am a pastor. So this is what I’m supposed to do. Provision, protection, peace. Remember these words. They are all throughout this psalm. As both the shepherd and the host, our needs are met by God in ways that we could not secure for ourselves.

So the sheep metaphor—sheep and shepherd—obviously that conjures up images of dependence, because even if we don’t know a whole lot about shepherding, I think most of us are aware that sheep tend to be fairly needy. They need to be in a herd. They need to be led. They are defenseless. That’s why there have to be sheepdogs and there have to be shepherds and there have to be pastures that are fenced in and secured, and they have to be put away at night—all of that sort of thing—because that’s the kind of animal that they are.

The image of this gracious host may not at first glance seem to suggest the same kind of dependence. But if it were not for the king, as we look at this psalm, we would be in real trouble because where is the banquet held? Well, it’s held in the presence of our enemies. We are surrounded, in other words. So what this is giving us is this picture that you and I, we need God for nourishment that sustains us.

The shepherd, obviously, with the sheep—the very first thing that we’re drawn to is “I shall not want.” Because of this shepherd, my wants are handled. They are cared for. And so he takes the sheep to green pastures and cool waters where they are able to be nourished. And that might not seem like a big deal, but in a climate that was like ours—where we have all sorts of provisions all around us—but in a climate that was arid and that things would dry up, for the sheep to be able to have access to these lush green pastures and these streams of cool, flowing waters, they wouldn’t just be able to go out and find that on their own. They had to have a shepherd who could take them there and provide security and protection for them in this place of abundant provision. And so even in this shepherd imagery, we have this idea of provisions—provisions that are granted, provisions that are provided (that’s where the word comes from, right?)—by this shepherd. And so the sheep are able to be nourished. They’re able to be sustained, even to the point where they are able to lie down while they’re eating—these defenseless animals. They don’t have any concerns. There’s not any threat that is going to present itself to them that they have to even worry about because the shepherd is there. And so because of that, “He restores my soul.” This is life-rejuvenating. This shepherd has provided this abundant resource for these sheep, and so they are enlivened by it—speaking of “soul” not in the spiritual sense but in the sense of their life, their being. This is the sustaining, and almost to the point where if it was not there they would perish. They are restored and renewed because of this.

Similarly, the host has not just prepared some leftovers out of the fridge or, “Hey, I’ve got a half-open sleeve of Ritz crackers that might be a little stale and a couple of string cheeses that my kids haven’t eaten yet from their lunch. So here you go. Dig in.” It is a table that is bountifully filled—not military rations. It’s an opulent feast. This is, in other words, more than just life-sustaining. This is a luxury that this host has provided. The cups are overflowing. Their heads are anointed with oil. This is sort of refreshing to them—that it isn’t just the food, but it’s even the environment and the other luxuries that are provided for David in this place that is beyond his ability to acquire for himself.

What’s important to notice or to understand is that David is not just talking about a God who provides us with physical food—that God provides us with meals. Yes, that is something that God does provide for us. Even when we think about what the Lord teaches about prayer and that we’re supposed to pray, one of the things we pray for is “Give us this day our daily bread,” or as Jesus taught about the provisions that he feeds the birds of the air and “you are worth more than many sparrows” and so he will feed you. He knows what you need. Yes, God can and does provide for our physical needs, but this is about more than just physical nourishment. This is about spiritual nourishment as well. In fact, when we look through Scripture, the Word of God is regularly described in the language of food. I’ll give you two examples. Jeremiah 15:16: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” And then Matthew chapter 4—you might know this one. It’s the words of Jesus quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3: “But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” So this is just a sampling, but again and again we have the Word of God, the instruction of God, the teaching of God, the commands of God described as this metaphor of food—that is something that we consume and we are nourished by it. And this is what both the shepherd and this kingly host provide for David. He is dependent on it, and he is provided it by God in such measure that it is almost to the point of being excessive.

And if you think about that—if you think about the Word of God—have any of you mastered this? Have any of you come to the bottom of this and you’ve sort of like you’re at the end of the peanut butter jar—you’ve used your spatula to scrape all around the edges, and now all that’s left for you is to give it to the dog to lick what he wants out of the peanut butter jar? No, we would almost find that to be hilarious to think that we could plumb the depths of the Word of God to the point where we have wrung everything out of it that we can and now we need more. No, we always need more, but we haven’t even come close to exhausting the resources of the Word of God. It is like a cup that’s so full it is overflowing and running down the edges of the table. It is like an enormous field that’s more than we could possibly, if we were sheep, eat—not in a day or a week but in our entire lifetime.

But the shepherd and the host do more than provide nutrition. They are also protectors in their own way. The host, for example—we’ve already mentioned that this picnic, this banquet, this feast, whatever it is, however you want to imagine it—is in the presence of my enemies. This may seem like a strange image to you. I don’t imagine you’ve ever envisioned getting a picnic made and taking it right into the middle of people who are your greatest threats and who want to do evil to you. This sounds like less than the ideal afternoon, right? “Let’s maybe not do that. Let’s go somewhere else if there are all these enemies.” But what the picture here is is that this is an enemy so defeated and so subdued that they are no threat at all. The guests of this host are so safe that they can assume a posture of complete vulnerability as they eat this meal because the security that this host provides—even though the enemies are all around—there is no chance that they are going to break through whatever defenses he has set up or whatever armaments he has provided to ensure that they do not encroach on this feast. And so David and whoever else is at this feast can be completely at ease and enjoy the bounty that is placed before him. So there is a protection, a security that he enjoys because of this host.

But the same is true of the shepherd as well. He is also imaged as this great protector. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” These two implements that the shepherd would carry with him: the rod, essentially a club, a weapon that he would use to beat off any would-be thieves or attackers that would come after the sheep—so the sheep are guarded, they are protected. The staff was used not only to direct the sheep, but the crook at the end would be—if the sheep was stuck somewhere—they could be brought down because of this staff, used to keep the sheep from straying or to rescue them, pull them from danger.

What did we read in John 10? “I am the good shepherd.” And what does the good shepherd do? He lays down his life for the sheep. This is how committed he is to protecting the sheep. And in that image, Jesus is talking about his literal life being laid down for the salvation of the sheep—that that is what he came to do, to give up himself so that his sheep could be saved.

The shepherd also, you notice, “leads in paths of righteousness.” Paths of righteousness. That word “righteous” really comes from “right”—the idea of correct. These are paths that take the sheep where they need to go. There’s no chance that they will be lost. There’s no chance that they’re going to end up where they don’t want to be or where they shouldn’t be because of these paths that the shepherd is leading them along. This word “righteousness” comes from the Hebrew word tsedeq, which means an ethical or moral standard or a standard that is set out by God’s Word and is grounded in his character. So it’s more than just “these are correct” in the sense that this is the right path, but these are the moral and ethically correct paths. There is righteousness on which we are traveling.

Here’s a verse that reminds us of that: Psalm 11:7, “For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds.” These paths of righteousness are God’s paths of moral standards. We often think about—when we get into the arena of morality and conduct and these moral codes that are in Scripture—we think of them not as liberating but we think of them as constraining and constricting. We think of them as restrictive, as burdensome, as leading us away from where we want to go with our lives—that these rules, they’re the fun-wreckers. They don’t let us do what we want to do, and instead we’re just sort of stuck on this little narrow path. We also construe these rules as kind of arbitrary, maybe a touch random. But what David is making clear in this psalm is that these paths are exactly the right paths we need to be on to keep us from evil. This is where we need to be but so often don’t want to be.

So often, even those who would call themselves Christians, those who would want to—or claim they want to—glorify God with their lives, claim that they have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ—if they were honest, there would be times where, like, “I don’t really like these paths. I really wish I could be over there doing that. These don’t feel like they are—maybe they’re keeping me safe from evil, but I don’t really know if that stuff is really all that evil over there anyway.” Maybe we want God to provide for us. Maybe we want him to bless us. Maybe we want him to keep us safe, allow us to be comfortable, live untroubled lives, but we really don’t want to be on these paths of righteousness. We want to be able to pick and choose when and how we follow him.

I think this is so tragic about so many of these Christian deconstruction stories that we hear about. The problem isn’t that they shouldn’t take an uncritical approach to the things that they’ve been taught and what they believe. The problem is that so often they end up trying to create their own sort of customized Christianity because there are certain things they just don’t like and they want to be able to do the things they want to be able to do. And so they have to break down what they’ve been taught. They have to contest things that are taught in Scripture and dismiss them as, you know, culturally constructed or whatever the case may be. So often the case is they really just don’t want to abide by the standards that God has given in order to keep us safe.

When our kids were little, we had this series of books that were old stories that had been republished, and one of them—I forget the name of it; Ranger and Piper and Sailor would remember it—but it had to do with these two kids that would travel from their house to their school on this path that was bordered by these briar bushes that were so dense and so tall they couldn’t see past them. And the kids would always wonder, like, “What’s on the other side of these bushes?” And the parents would warn them, “Don’t go in the briars” and that sort of thing. And it got to the point where the brother and the sister were just so curious and they wanted so badly to know what was on the other side of these briars that they pushed through it, and they were getting cut and poked and jabbed by all these thorns and thistles that were in this briar. And they got right to the edge and they realized that on the edge of these briars was this huge cliff, and those briars had been put there to keep them from wandering too close to the cliff and falling off. And it’s obvious—it’s supposed to be this picture about this sort of path of righteousness: that there’s a reason for it because maybe the other side is tempting and maybe we wonder what it’s like to live on that other side or wish we could be on that other side, but what’s on the other side is actually quite dangerous and detrimental to us.

John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus said, if you find yourself not wanting to follow the shepherd on these paths of righteousness “for his name’s sake,” as it says here in the psalm, you really need to actually consider: Do I know the shepherd? Am I one of his sheep? Or is there a reason why I feel this pull to not follow him but to go elsewhere? This is—when we consider our lives—this is why we want to be constantly evaluating our hearts. Maybe we still do need to cry out to the shepherd. Maybe we still need to recognize that the shepherd has laid his life down for us and trust in that work for our salvation.

I love this little accent point at the end of “He leads me in paths of righteousness”: that it’s “for his name’s sake.” What God does for our good is first and finally for his glory, for the glory of his name.

We throw around the term “safe space” a lot. You hear that a lot, don’t you? “This is a safe space. I just want you to know that this place here is safe. You are safe.” Whatever that means. Think about that word “safe.” Safe in God’s presence. Safe walking on the path he has appointed for us. That’s the safe place. That’s where you want to be. The enemy is still there. Remember, even at the banquet, the enemy is still surrounding. If we go outside the hedges of his protection, if we get off the path, there’s still going to be danger there. There’s still going to be evil. But inside the shelter of his refuge, on the path that he has appointed for us—for his sheep—there is safety. That’s really the real safe space. Safe space isn’t just a place where nobody’s going to say anything mean to you, nobody’s going to question the choices that you’ve made in life. Safe space is the place where God has appointed for us to be and calls us to be.

Life for the sheep is not perfect. But both the sheep and the guest live in this encompassing peace, which is the third of our three words that we’re thinking about here: provision, protection, and peace.

The sheep—they even walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That sounds pretty traumatic. That sounds like maybe a place where they wouldn’t choose for themselves to be. We’re so close that death’s shadow is blocking out the light. But even there the sheep has peace. The sheep has no fear. Why? Because the good shepherd is there. The good shepherd is always with them.

The guest—notice that with the guest, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” That sounds very peaceful to know that God’s mercy is always following you. We need God’s mercy. I mean, we don’t even realize how much we need God’s mercy—to not receive the judgment that we deserve, that we’ve earned for ourselves, to not receive the consequences of our actions, but to have it be deflected onto Christ and to be able to receive mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace, that his goodness is there. The guest is pursued by goodness and mercy his whole life and looks forward with gladness and anticipation to dwelling with God forever.

I want you to turn to John. Turn to John 14. You kind of see Psalm 23 sprinkled throughout all of John’s writings, truthfully. John 14—I’m going to read just the first three verses. Remember, “your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” As the guest is pursued by goodness and mercy all the days of his life, he or she is still looking forward to this ultimate future in which there is this dwelling in the presence of God forever. And this is what Jesus promised his disciples: He’s going to prepare a place for them, that where he is they will be also—that this is an eternal promise. It reminds us that this goodness and mercy—all of this—is undeserved favor from God. We didn’t earn it. We deserve so much worse than this. But it’s a goodness and mercy that is going to be, we would say, evergreen—evergreen for all eternity. It’s inexhaustible. It’s always fresh. It’s like the difference between the farm-to-fork stuff and those emergency-ration barrels that you buy at Costco. They might give you a little nutrition, but it isn’t something you really want to dig into, in spite of those infomercials trying to sell you.

We can have peace in the valley of the shadow of death, in the heart of the greatest difficulties, because God is always with us and he’s offering us up heaping portions of grace and mercy.

You might not think you would find this sort of encouragement in the book of Lamentations, but listen to what Jeremiah says in Lamentations chapter 3. It doesn’t start off—it starts off sounding like the valley of the shadow of death: “He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes. My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is.” That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Like, “I can’t even remember what happiness is.” “So I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’ Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.” Okay, this doesn’t sound like Psalm 23 at all. This sounds like the opposite, right? This sounds pretty terrible. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Have you ever quoted that verse about “his mercies are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”? Did you ever know it was preceded by such sorrow and misery—that this is spoken by a guy who’s saying, “I have forgotten what happiness is. My teeth are grinding on gravel”—like, life is the worst? What could possibly go wrong? And if you know the circumstances that Jeremiah lived under and what God called him to do and how the people responded to it and what the people of Israel were going through during his prophecies, it was terrible. And yet he can call this to his mind and it can be a source of encouragement, a source of hope—that the Lord’s love is steadfast, that it’s unmovable, it never ceases, and his mercies never come to an end. Well, that sounds exactly like Psalm 23: that his goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life—and not just my life: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

When you’re feeling like Jeremiah in Lamentations and you’re like, “I can’t even remember what happiness is. My life is so distraught and beset with anxiety and misery and trauma and difficulty, and everywhere I go it’s problems and it’s obstacles too big for me to get over and it’s pain that’s too hard for me to bear and I just don’t know what to do”—well, you need a little dose of Psalm 23. You need a reminder of the goodness of God: that his mercies are new every single morning. He’s not just recycling the stale, old, broken-down, busted-up mercies—if he even had such a thing. He’s pouring out brand-new ones every single day. When you get up in the morning, before you even have a chance to brew your cup of coffee, there’s some fresh mercies of God right there for you on the counter or wherever he keeps them. And it’s every single day because great is his faithfulness.

This is one of the refrains of the Psalms. We find it over and over again: “The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.” It’s never going to end. Never going to be exhausted. Never going to be used up. Never going to be wrung out, broken down, rusted. No, none of it. It’s fresh and it’s potent and it’s ready for you to lift you up, to encourage you, to carry you along.

By the way, the circumstances of Jeremiah didn’t get any better, okay? It did not get any better. And yet he had hope; he was lifted up by this reality. You just need to see how quickly Jeremiah is able to go from despair to hope just by being reminded of these truths. There’s no such thing for God as to overpromise and underdeliver. God always lives up to the hype.

And even when that isn’t enough, there’s this anticipation of what is to come—the eternal future that awaits every believer: that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. You ever been on one of those vacations that just sort of flew right by, and when it was the day for you to go home you’re just like, “I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here forever. I don’t want to go home”? That’s what it’s going to be like. You don’t have to go home, and you want to be there forever because you’re in this never-ending, infinitely good place of peace and righteousness and joy where God is right there with you. There’s no separation. There’s no distance there.

John—another—remember I said Psalm 23; we find it all throughout John’s writing—in Revelation: Revelation 21: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”

Sometimes we say that somebody is so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. You ever heard that saying? I think a lot more often people are so broken down and discouraged and depressed because they’re not thinking about heaven enough. They’re not looking forward to it. They’re not waiting on the edge of their seat with eager anticipation to all this glory that awaits us. I think so often we haven’t thought about the joys of heaven and the eternity with Christ enough. We need to be longing to dwell with the Lord. When we read that accent at the end of Psalm 23—that we’re going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever—that should just, I mean, cause the hair on the back of our necks to stand up and just fill us with so much excitement: “I can’t wait for that. That’s going to be so amazing.”

For so many Christians both in Scripture and throughout church history, that has been the hope that carries them through very difficult and dark times—knowing, as Paul says, that this present weight, this momentary weight of affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison. I can’t even compare it to anything. Maybe this is why we struggle to anticipate with joy heaven—because it’s so mysterious, the eternity of being in the presence of God and the idea of a new heaven and a new earth and “what’s it going to be like?”—and it maybe just seems very nebulous and just kind of hard to hold on to because there’s so much we don’t know about it. And yet we can have confidence that whatever it is, whatever it’s going to be like, it’s so far beyond the best thing we could possibly imagine that there really is going to be no comparison. The question as to whether or not we’re going to be bored or whatever—those are ridiculous. There’s going to be more than you could possibly absorb and do even in your glorified state. That needs to be a source of great hope and comfort and delight for us.

I think another encouragement that I would give to you as we think about Psalm 23: God has provided for you so much. Are you consuming what he has given you? Or are you like a sheep in the middle of this field lying down not eating the grass? Or you’re at the banquet table with all this opulence laid out before you and you’re saying, “Well, I’d rather have chicken nuggets. I’m not going to eat anything because you don’t have chicken nuggets.” Are you consuming what God has given?

And here’s another one—I don’t mean to end on a conviction, but—God is protecting you. Are you trusting in him, or are you just still fretting, trying to protect yourself with your own worries? You don’t need to. You can lie down. Lie down with the sheep in the grass. Sit at the banquet table and eat while the enemies are all around you.

So if Psalm 23—if the words “provision, protection, and peace” are maybe the summaries—what’s the anchor words or the application words? Trust, follow, and rejoice.

Let’s pray. Dear Lord, we thank you so much for this psalm. And I know that we probably really only just scratched the surface of the truths that we can pull out from it. We thank you for how you have used it in the life of your church throughout the centuries, and truly it is a gift from you to us through the pen of David. We thank you how these two visual reminders of the shepherd and the king help us to see you as one who provides and protects and brings peace. May you help us to trust you and to follow you and to rejoice in what you have given us, knowing that it’s so much more than we deserve—it’s even more than we could possibly exhaust. If your goodness and mercy follow us every single day, help us to truly find great delight in all of this. We ask this in your name. Amen.