Songs of Summer: Psalm 23

My name is Josh, and if you are a guest today, online or in person, we welcome you, especially if you are a guest. I would love to get to know you, to meet you today. Please come say hello after the service. As Laura mentioned, and as most of you know, we've been in the Psalms, which has been fun. I got a lot of great feedback.

People have enjoyed being in the Word and studying together and learning together. There's always more. Every time you go back to the Word, there's always more. You keep digging, there's always more. And I love that about it.

The Psalms are actual ancient songs. We find them in the Old Testament of our Bible. Some of them are 3,000 years old. They're emotional and raw. They're guttural and honest.

They're poetic and real. They've been used for thousands of years as a way to cry out in frustration and anxiety. They've been used as a way to worship, as a way to express feelings and emotions that we all have, right? They're rich and messy and beautiful all at the same time. And today is Psalm 23, this Psalm that's famous, the Shepherd's Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, right? I shall not want. Let me ask you, this isn't a rhetorical question. I actually want you to answer back. What is the number one place or experience where this psalm is used the most?

Funerals. Everybody got it. Well done. Funerals and death. Right?

It's most often used because of that line, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. In fact, in the late 1900s, even the great philosopher and theologian Coolio used these words in his song Gangsta's Paradise.

See, you know, you know. But today, no matter how these words have been used in the context of death or funerals or misappropriated by pop culture, I want us to read these words not through the lens of death and difficulty and sorrow, but actually through the lens of life and care and protection. And I also want to approach this Psalm a little differently than we have the last few, where we dug line by line, word by word, through everything. And I want to fly back a little more broadly and look at the Psalm and how it applies to our life. And I want to share a personal story from my family about this Psalm.

But before we dive in, I'll read Psalm 23 again. 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. The guy that wrote this psalm, David King David, was in fact a shepherd himself.

David grew up in a family of shepherds. He spent about half of his life caring for his father's sheep. And I think this imagery of God being a shepherd kind of holds even more weight because David was a shepherd, and David wrote these words. Think of it this way. If I knew that you were an incredible chef, that you went to culinary school, you've been cooking your entire life, you run your own restaurant, a five star restaurant, and then one day you come to me and you introduce someone to me as your chef.

That chef's gonna be really good, right? We can just assume that. And so when we read these words from David, when David is a shepherd and he says, the Lord is my shepherd, he knows what he's talking about. I think he may have written these words down as he was sitting on a hillside watching over his sheep, recognizing that God cares for him the same way that he cares for his sheep. David knew that the shepherd's job is constant.

He not only has to protect the sheep from predators and lead them to good grazing and water, he also has to protect the sheep from. From themselves. I actually read on a farmer's forum online that's a thing. And I looked it up, and that's weird, but I looked up the question, why are sheep so needy? And one farmer said this.

It's not so much that they need help. It's that their sole goal in life is to find a way to die. So shepherds and farmers have to spend all their time trying to thwart them. This is so good. A farmer wrote this.

For creatures so benevolently dim, they are actually quite innovative in finding ways to die. Another farmer said, a sheep's one ambition in life. This is so good. Is to die as quickly and as inconveniently as possible.

Sheep can literally fall over because of the weight of their wool or because they're pregnant and get stuck feet in the air and they just don't get up and they just die. They will literally just lay there and die. They get stuck in fences, they trip over things into the water and drown themselves, and they'll also follow whatever any other sheep in front of them does. There was actually a story in the news in 2005 in the country of Turkey where one sheep decided it was a good idea to jump off a cliff. And 1500 sheep followed that sheep.

I'm not making this up. Here's the best part. Only 450 of them died because the rest of them had something soft to land on.

Sheep need a lot of care and protection. And David knew this. He knew this intimately. He knew this as he looked at his own life and saw himself as a sheep deeply in need of a shepherd. Actually, this picture of God as a shepherd is on repeat throughout the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

Jesus himself says in John 10, I am the good shepherd. I think all of us at some very foundational level long to be led, long to be mentored, cared for, protected, guided by someone who can be trusted, don't we? But we don't have to look very far to find a million really bad examples of shepherds. In fact, we might be the most wary generation that's ever existed because we've seen so many bad examples of leaders. From government leaders to church leaders, to bosses, even to parents, there are a staggering number of terrible, egomaniac, power hungry, selfish train wreck kind of leaders, aren't there?

But this hesitancy to not trust leaders, this is not a new thing. That was a seed that was planted all the way back in Genesis 3 by the enemy himself. When he asked the question, did God really say that he lied to them? He told them that the only reason that God didn't want them to enjoy the fruit is so that God could maintain an unhealthy power structure over them. And we're living in the shadow of that even now.

Since the beginning of time, he's been working the enemy has been working to undermine our trust in leaders and authority. And I think he's doing it for one reason. It's because he knows that if he can grow our distaste and our distrust for earthly leaders, then he knows by our human nature that we will transfer that distrust and distaste for leadership all the way up to the greatest authority, to God himself. I think this is why Satan keeps tempting and encouraging leaders to be self serving and power hungry and harsh and uncaring. So that we will continue to keep our distance not only from earthly leaders and authority authority, but also from God.

So that we'll assume that even internally, when we're not even thinking about it, that God might be like them. In the book of ezekiel, it's written 2,600 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel addresses the problem of bad leadership, garbage leaders. The leaders at the time had done a terrible job of leading God's people. They used their power for self gain. And the people in their care were suffering deeply.

And in chapter 34, God pronounces judgment on these leaders. And we're looking at it today because God uses this metaphor of the shepherd we pick up in verse 4 of chapter 34. Through the Prophet Ezekiel, God says to them, the weak you have not strengthened, the sick, you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts.

My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for. And so, with the people suffering, God has had enough. And his solution is that he will be the shepherd we pick up in verse 11.

For thus says the Lord God. Behold I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep. And I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered. On a day of cloud clouds and thick darkness, I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.

There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed. And I will bind up the injured, and I, I will strengthen the weak and the fat, and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them injustice. God says, enough, enough is enough.

I will be the shepherd. And his plan to accomplish this shepherding will be through his son, Jesus, the good shepherd. Now, I think that this idea of Jesus being a good shepherd, really, if we're dead honest, it starts to break down very quickly in our lives as we observe what is happening to us and around us, doesn't it? Because we look at the world and we experience hardship. And now we start to question whether he's leading us or if he is leading us, if he is good at all.

I'm sure none of you have ever questioned that this is so common, right? We don't feel often like he has led us beside still waters. We don't feel often like he has restored our soul. In fact, some of us feel like he's leading us astray. But here's the tough truth.

God does not promise that as he leads us that everything will be easy. He doesn't say that everything will be butterflies and rainbows, that we'll just kind of hang out behind that still or beside that still brook in the shade, gorging ourselves on sweet grass or choice food. Remember what he says through Ezekiel. He says he will bind up the broken, but that means that we'll experience brokenness. He says he'll seek out the lost, but that means that sometimes we will go astray and he'll have to come find us.

He says he will feed us and water us, but that means that we will experience hunger and thirst. He says that he'll protect us from the wild animals, but that means that sometimes we will be and will feel afraid and hunted. He does not promise to keep us from difficulty. He promises that when we experience difficulty that he will be with us. Jesus, the Good shepherd, tells us in John 16 that his aim is that we find peace.

That not in our experience, but in Him. He says, in this world you will have trouble. But he says, take heart, because I have overcome this world. We're to find our peace in him, the Good Shepherd. So back in June of 2020, Covid is raging.

And we had planned this great trip out west to go visit multiple national parks. And we just said, you know what? We're going. And it was fantastic because there were way less people out there. And so we traveled around, we visited lots of national parks.

We got to hike so many miles together. It was really neat. On day eight of our trip, I had looked up something that I was super excited about. We were going to take an off road, 58 mile trip. Yeah, sounds great, right?

All the guys in the room are like, yeah. All the guidebooks said that this area was so remote that you better prepare for two to three days of food and water, because if anything goes poorly, it's so remote, there's a good chance you might not see another person for two to three days. They, you know. Cause it's like every three days that the park rangers go look for dead bodies.

And I'm thinking, this sounds awesome. Heidi was not thinking, this sounds awesome. But we actually, before we went on the trail, we called our parents and we said, we're going on this trail. If we don't call you tomorrow morning, then go ahead and call this number and tell them to come look for a black suv, because that will be us. But we got enough water and we got enough food, so will be okay.

But there's zero cell service out there. So something happens during this trip that we'll never forget. And it isn't because it was good. It was because it was bad. It was really bad.

This was a bad day, but it looked really good at first. Everything was going great. The first half of the trail, we're driving through places that look like we're on another planet. I mean, it's amazing. We're down in the valley, and it is warm and sunny, and we drive all way up to the top of this hill or mountain or whatever it was.

It's snowing up there. It was like the coolest place. Now, my son Garrett, who was almost 10 at the time, he had spent his money on buying this really nice drone with a good camera on it. He was excited to take it out on this trip because of all the landscape. He wanted to fly it out there and get some really cool video of the landscape.

Well, you can't legally fly a drone inside of a national park. And so on this trail, there was part of the trail that would go outside of the national park for like a quarter of a mile and then go back in. And so we hit one of those areas where the trail went outside of the park. And my son gets excited. He's like, can we fly the drone?

And there's this beautiful giant monolith, giant thing jutting up out of the ground. And we're like, that's cool. Let's go do that. So Garrett and I hop out of the SUV and we just go down over the hill and we launch the drone. And we're flying it out toward this monolith.

And it's quickly after that, this crazy sand and windstorm stirs up. It's like 40 mile an hour winds. We're getting sandblasted. It is loud. And the wind starts pushing the drone away, and the motors on the drone aren't strong enough to keep it where it is, and.

And we start to lose the drone. And so I'm looking at the thing on the phone, trying to see the screen, and we're trying to fly it back, and we're getting frustrated and it's blowing away. Well, about 50 yards behind us is my youngest son, who at the time was seven. And then about 50 yards behind them is Ada, my oldest, who was 10 at the time and Heidi, who are back at the suv. And so the wind is howling, and it's chaotic and it's loud, and.

And the drone is flying away. It's my son's drone. And I'm feeling bad, and I'm like. We start running over the hill, off through the sand to go try to get to this drone where it's going. Well, all Heidi sees is us go over the hill, and then we go off to the left.

And Wyatt, who is right behind us, he sees us go over the hill. So he chases after us, and he gets to the edge of the hill, and he can't see us, and he goes off to the right. So now Heidi's back at the car. She tells Ada, stay in the car. So as she's walking away from the car, she hits the button to lock the car out of habit, because that's what you do, right?

So that'll come back into play here in a minute. So Wyatt runs off this way. Garrett and I run off this way. The wind is blowing. We couldn't even yell and hear each other because it's chaos.

We got sand in our hair, sand in our teeth, sand, sand everywhere. Garrett and I are chasing after this drone the way that we think that it went. She goes to get Wyatt. We're running off the route. We're exhausted.

And as we're running, the thing starts to glitch, and the drone is disconnecting from the controller. And I'm like, no. So we're running, and it starts to disconnect, and then it completely disconnects again. Heidi, Chase, and Wyatt, Ada's in the car. Chaos abounds.

And we are just running towards the way that we think that the drone went. And as we run, it picks back up. It connects, except it's flashing red, and it's saying emergency landing because the battery's about to die. And I'm like, this is not good. This is my son's drone that he spent his own money on.

And in the video, I can see a road, just a gravel road. And I'm like, it's a road. I'm flying it to the road. And as it is touching down, it cuts out. So all this is happening.

Garrett and I just keep running that way. We get to the road, and we start walking down the road. And as we're walking down the road looking for this, I hear a honking horn just barely off in the distance. Well, I don't know this, but what has happened is Ada got out of the locked car and the alarm is going off, but I've convinced myself that Heidi is panicking, going, where are you? And so I am looking at Garrett and we're already tired from running.

We're about 500 yards from the car and I'm thinking to myself, it's going to take forever for both of us to get back to the car for her panicking. And I got to get back there so that she can know that we're okay. And so I look at Garrett and I go, stay here. Yeah, stay here. I'm only 4 or 500 yards from the truck.

It will just take a minute. I'll run back to the car, we'll come back and we'll get you. So out of breath. I make it back to the suv, exhausted, I can hardly talk. The wind is still.

I mean, it's just chaos. And this storm came out of nowhere. So she's got Wyatt, she's got Ada, and I don't have Garrett. And she is right, rightfully concerned. I said, it's okay, he's just down the road.

So we hop in the SUV and we drive down and right where he's supposed to be, he's gone. Like gone gone. Not anywhere. We're honking the horn and at this point I'm completely calm, right? He just went looking for the drone as a 10 year old boy might do.

And so we hop back in the SUV and we're driving down and we go around a bend and around another bend and around a third bend. And this is the part where I'm starting, my heart's starting to sink. I'm like, he did not go walking down the road. Heidi's starting to panic. I'm still calm.

There's a rational explanation for why a 10 year old is not where I left him, right? She's probably not thinking kind things about me at this point. And I said, it's fine, he's fine, I'm sure he's fine. He just, we'll find him, right? And so at this point, she's convinced that he has either fallen into a giant hole or he's been eaten by a mountain lion.

And I'm thinking, no, there's a rational explanation. And so we drive back and forth down this road, honking the horn again. 40 mile an hour winds, chaos. He can't hear anything. He is gone.

So it's about 15, 20 minutes that go by. We can't find him. We go back to where we had sent the drone off to fly and I don't know what to do. And I'm starting to panic. It's about three hours until dark.

And it's gonna be another three hours just to drive out of the park. There is no one around. If he is hurt, it's gonna take forever for us to get to a hospital. Like, what are we going to do? And so I'm thinking, and there's this giant sand hill over here and a giant sand hill over there.

And I said, you run up that hill. I will run up this hill. And we'll be able to see him from there. He's got a bright green sweatshirt on. And so we do.

She runs up that again. Sand blowing in our teeth and our eyes. It's just loud and chaotic. She runs up that hill. She's sobbing.

I run up this hill. I get to the top, and I can see for a long way, and he is not there. And I look and I gesture to her and she gestures to me. Neither one of us can see him. Well, now I'm really starting to get worried.

And so she's sobbing, and I can just see. She's a wreck running down this hill. And so I am running down this sand hill full speed. And as I do, I trip and I tear up my ankle. And immediately I can't walk on it.

It's swelling up right away. And now I'm gritting my teeth to crawl, basically, to my wife, who's losing it. And I just wanna be there to comfort her. And I have no way to solve this problem. And my son is gone.

He's gone.

So we get back in the SUV and we're just about to pull off. I'm like, well, I don't know what else to do other than drive down the road. I mean, what do we do? And just as about. Just as we're about to pull off, I see him about 300 yards away running across the top of this ridge the wrong way.

And he doesn't see us. And I'm laying on the horn, and right before he goes over the hill, he turns and he sees us.

He's running down the hill. She's running. I'm hobbling behind. They're all crying. He's a wreck.

He's afraid and crying. It's not going. And it's. They embrace each other. And I get there, and finally we get them back in the suv.

And honestly, we just had, like. We just had to sit there for a minute. Calm down, you guys. Some of you know what it's like to lose your kid in the grocery store for five minutes.

We had to calm down. It's okay. We're okay. All the things that we were afraid of is. Didn't happen.

We're okay. Except Garrett was not okay.

He was not okay. The whole rest of the trip out of there, he was not okay. Silent. And as if it mattered. We found the drone.

It was down the road. And we took the rest of the trip out. And then the closest hospital is four hours away. So we drove to the hospital just to make sure that my ankle wasn't broken. Thankfully, it wasn't.

And for the rest of that trip, and then after we got home, Garrett was not okay. Every night he would have anxiety and panic. His heart would race, his chest would be tight.

He couldn't talk about it without falling apart. Every night he was. He was obsessive. The door had to be cracked just. Just so much.

And the light had to be on and he. Everything had to be just so. And for weeks, for weeks, we're praying with him and counseling him and helping him as much as we can, and nothing is working. And we're asking God, how do you we help our son? And it's just gut wrenching to think about the fact that the first time he ever experienced those really extreme emotions, he was alone.

After several weeks of praying, I just felt the Holy Spirit say, you need to encourage him to be in scripture when he feels this anxiety. And so the very first scripture that came to mind for me was Psalm 23. And so I shared it with him. I read it to him and he said, dad, I like that. That gives me comfort.

And so every night he would have his Bible in his bed, and he would just read and read and read and read Psalm 23 over and over again. Every time he felt anxiety, he would just read it and read it and read it until he fell asleep. And eventually he memorized it. And so it was inside of him. And he would just recite it over and over and over until he would fall asleep.

Until one morning, he came to us early in the morning and he had a big smile on his face and. And he said, mom, Dad, I realized last night I didn't feel it. I just fell asleep. And it would go on, it would come back. And every time he would go back to the Word, every time he would go back to Psalm 23 and remind himself of what was true.

Now, don't get me wrong. Psalm 23 is not some magical anti anxiety incantation that we just speak over our lives and magically things go away. But over time, over time, it started to Change his heart. Don't miss this. The power of peace that Garrett started to experience did not come from reciting empty words from a page.

It came from his long internalization of the truth that the Lord is his shepherd. And here's the thing that gets me, man, and I love it and I hate it. The truth is that Garrett only came to know the ultimate value of the shepherd because he walked through the dark valley. And whether God caused Garrett to get lost that day or he just happened to to get lost, I believe that God fully intended to leverage his experience to put seeds of real deep faith in his life. God fully intended it as a catalyst for his faith.

And I want you to know today that just because it hurts does not mean that he is not with us. Because sometimes getting lost makes you want to walk with the shepherd. Because sometimes wild beasts make you want to walk with the shepherd. Because sometimes brokenness makes you want to walk with the shepherd. Enemies make you want to walk with the shepherd.

Thirst makes you want to walk with the shepherd. Death, the fear of death, and even death itself makes you want to walk with the shepherd. And don't you know that he knows that. God knows that. And he is in the business of leveraging our sorrow, leveraging our hurt, leveraging our pain to make us want to walk with him.

And in this very upside down, paradoxical way, to bring him glory, makes you want to walk with the shepherd. Now, throughout scripture, we see him do this over and over and over again. And I've said this before, and I will say this again. God is in the business of redeeming all things. All of them.

All things. Even the broken, jacked up, dark, painful, hurtful things. He's in the business of redeeming all of them and not just getting them back to. To an equilibrium, not just getting them back to zero. But he pours out his grace lavishly on us.

That our cup overflows. It pours onto the table, it spills out onto the floor. He is in the business of redeeming all things with rich, glorious grace. The good shepherd is caring for us in our difficulty, in our wandering, in our brokenness, in our anxiety, in our trouble. And he is protecting, healing, caring for us and leading us all the way, whether we can see it or not.

Church, as much as we don't want to admit it, we are all sheep, deeply in need of a shepherd. And if we're truly longing for a good shepherd, there is only one. There's only one. We will not find an earthly leader who can suffice and we are terrible shepherds of ourselves. Too many of us are walking around putting up this front, pretending like we can be sheep and shepherd at the same time.

But the truth is we weren't built for that. We weren't built for that. Our job is to rest. To rest in the reality that we are sheep. We're constantly in need of a shepherd.

And the sooner that we can swallow this idea, the sooner we. We can step into the care, the refreshment, the restoration, the leadership and the peace of Shepherd King Jesus. Shepherd King Jesus, who loves us and gave himself up for us. I mentioned John 10 earlier, where Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, but that's not the end of the verse. He says, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep shepherd. King Jesus willingly and purposely laid down his life for us. He hung on a cross. He took on our sin. He literally died for us so that we might have access to eternity in heaven.

The good shepherd laid down his life for us.