“The Lord Is My…”

A sermon based upon Psalm 23, CEB

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

July 21th,  2019

There is a 2,000-year-old story that has been passed down, that may or may not have happened, but has been passed down because it is so true to life. The story took place when much of the world was unknown and largely unmapped. Cartographers had to have some way of portraying those areas of the earth that were as yet unexplored, so they symbolized these regions by dragons, monsters, and large fish. The message was clear. Uncharted territories were frightening, fearsome places. Terrors lay buried there.

But as many maps declared, "There be treasures" as well. The story is this: One commander of a battalion of Roman soldiers was caught up in a battle that took him into the territory that the mapmakers had represented with their monsters and dragons. Not knowing whether to forge ahead into the unknown, or turn back into the known, which would also be a retreat, he dispatched a messenger to Rome with this urgent request: "Please send new orders. We have marched off the map."  (The Six Longest Short Verses in the Bible," Homiletics, 5/7/95).

Ever feel like that; that your life has marched off the map into uncharted waters, going off either the technological map, the political map, the economic map, the environmental map, the ethical map, the relationship map, the medical map, or virtually whatever map you can think of?  How do we possibly hope to navigate the uniqueness of our lives which are always, in some way, ‘off the map’?

The only way any of us can navigate the unknowns is with help, that's how.  The help I’m referring what David meant when he first penned the words of the 23^rd Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd...." This Psalm is probably as well known and well-loved as any portion of scripture.  Generations have memorized it; in Sunday school or at the knee of parents or grandparents, this is usually one of very first Bible passages we learn.  And it is often some of the last words that are spoken over us.  Thus, our first hope in life, and our final hope in death, is that God, the Lord, will shepherd us, lead us through to our final destination.

THE LORD IS MY…

Don’t you find it interesting, that even here in America, and in the south too, where finding a Shepherd or Sheep is almost like finding a needle in a haystack, that this Psalm is a favorite, if not the favorite?   What can these old pastoral images of a Shepherd and his sheep have to say to us in high-tech world, very un-pastoral world? 

Well, for starters, no matter how high-tech, low touch, and virtual our world becomes, the human person still needs to know that we are not ‘alone in the cosmos’.  We need to know that at the beginning of everything, at the end of everything, and also in the middle too, there is always someone that cares.  We need to know that at the basis of everything life is, is a personal, loving, caring mind, with heart and hope, we call God.  As the British scholar NT Wright once said, the major concern of the Apostle Paul when writing the Galatians, was not did they have knowledge of God, but did they know about God’s knowledge of them (“Wouldn’t You Love to Know: Toward A Christian View of Reality, Dec.6, 2016, Biologos.org).

Even as a King, David needed to have this kind of knowledge.  David probably penned these words based on his own experiences as a Shepherd boy, watching over his Father Jessie’s flock.  Later, when David became King of Israel, his mind must have traveled back to simpler, less complicated times.  It was those early realities in his life that must have given his heart constant assurance, that no matter what he was going through, and no matter how troubled or complex life became, and also no matter how many mistakes he made, he could only remain hopeful and confident as long as he remained connected to the most basic realities he observed as a young shepherd boy.

What this Psalm reminds us, in a very rural, pastoral, ancient, and even most primal way, is that we are ‘all’, in some way, helpless before the realities of life and death.  Our only true help, and our only real hope, is a personal, promising, loving God, who not only created life, but sustains and reddens our lives, desiring more than anything else, to ‘shepherd’ our lives all the way home.

I told you earlier, about the famous atheist, Anthony Flew, who spent his whole life as a philosopher, trying to logically prove that there was no logical reason to believe in God, or to believe that there is a loving purpose behind human life.  But late in life, only 7 years before Dr. Flew died, he changed his mind.   He said that after reexamining all the complexity of human DNA, he had to come to another, even more logical conclusion; that the human person, created with almost limitless thinking, feelings, and relational capacity could not be accidental.  He believed the scientific evidence pointed to not only a purpose of our capable minds, but also to the great mind with great purpose; though he did go as far to say ‘who’ or ‘what’ that mind was.

I share this story with you again, because we live in a world that seems to think that Science and Religion are enemies of each other.  But the truth is, as one great Scientist has said, “Science likes to take things apart and tell us what it is, only faith can put things back together and tells us what it means.”  Science and Faith are looking at the very same realities we all face, but they do look at them differently.  Science can reveal what we should be afraid of, but only Faith can tell us how we need not to be afraid.   

Interestingly, David didn’t yet understand all that life was, as a boy, or a man, but he certainly understood, even without a science book, or a PHD, what he needed to know, most of all.  We can too, if we allow David’s heart-felt words to touch our own hearts.  As a thinking, creative, spiritual person created in God’s image, David understood God’s care for him to be reflected in the image of his own care for the Sheep.  This how why he could say in confidence, both in life, and also with the constant threat of death:   “The Lord, is my Shepherd…I shall not want.”

HE GUIDES ME…

Because ‘the Lord was (his) Shepherd’, David said: “I lack nothing.”  David understood, that life finally comes down, not to what you have or don’t have, but who has you: Life finally comes down to ‘who’ you are with and who you can trust.  

In our lives today, we all know and experience so much information, so many choices, and so much opportunity, that people become more and more confused about who they are and what they should do with their lives.   David would suggest to us that it all comes down making life-giving, healing choices; not life-stealing choices.  All these very beautiful pastoral images of ‘green pastures’, ‘quiet waters’ and ‘right paths’ point us toward those nourishing, calming, and healthy life-choices we humans need still must make.  They are kinds the healing choices God would lead us to make.  We might call them the healthy-trio: healthy body-nourishment, healthy-soul nourishment, and finally, healthy mind-nourishment, which comes from seeking, finding, and staying on the right path in life.

But what is the right path?  Isn’t that what’s so confusing to modern people.   We live in a plurality of ideas, religions, and opinions.  How do we know how to decide which path is the right one?  We all heard stories of people hiking in wilderness areas, getting lost and confused, until they were finally located by rescue teams. One of the first skills I learned in Boy Scouts, many years ago, was how to focus on high places, to keep from walking around in circles. I don’t know whether they even teach that basic skill today.  Recently I heard on a news report that there is no place in these United States, where you will find yourself more than 5 miles from a public road or highway.  But while our geographic wilderness may be shrinking, our emotional, relational, and spiritual wilderness seems to be enlarging.  How can modern people who no longer take time to trust, connect to, or make room for the healing, nourishing, and reflective places of life, find their way home, when they get ‘lost in the cosmos’ where they live their lives as if there is no God, to whom they constantly and continually return for the health of their soul, or to find the right direction for living?

But what David never outgrew, and always came back to, even after times of wandering and getting lost,  is only when we allow the LORD to be your Shepherd, can you actually know how he is the  ‘GOOD’ and True Shepherd to guide your life.  When Jesus picked up on David’s Psalm, and named himself as ‘the Good Shepherd’, Jesus said he could be known as ‘good’ because ‘the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep’.  The hired hand, he said in contrast, will ‘run’ when trouble comes, but the ‘true Shepherd, will stay put, and even put his own life at risk to guide and care for his sheep. This is why Jesus could can be trusted to have ‘the words of life.’  For life is what his shepherding and his sacrifice is about:  “I have come” Jesus said, ‘so that they may have life, and have it abundantly (Jn. 10:10). 

HE PROTECTS ME…

Besides, having to choose the right, healing, heathy and helpful ways that give life; real life, what does this life really matter if we are only ‘matter’ that doesn’t matter, since we are just ‘dust’ anyway?

Years ago, I used to sing a strange, somewhat depressing rock song with young people.  I didn’t sing it to depress them, but to shock their mistaken illusions that their lives really only belonged to them; were eternal, and to challenge their careless, and often excessive carefree lifestyle.  That song was written by Kerry Livgren, and recorded by his rock group, Kansas, entitled, ‘Dust in the Wind’.   It begins:

“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind,    All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind.  Oh, ho, ho

Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away.  And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind.  All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind. Dust in the wind.  

Then the song ends with the most shocking thought of all.
Everything is dust in the wind, Everything is dust in the wind
The wind….

What is most interesting, is that only a few years, after writing, and performing this song, over and over again, the spiritually seeking musician, Kerry Livgren, who was experimenting in very strange spiritualities, became finally convinced that Jesus of the Bible is the true Shepherd, and our only hope. Today Kerry teaches a Sunday School class at Topeka Bible Church.  He is currently working on a musical production of the biblical story about the Raising of Lazarus.  Kerry’s creative and spiritual questions only found resolution in the message of God’s care and promise, and in Jesus Christ as his Good Shepherd.

How do you resolve the pressing existential issue which reminds us, whether we want to be reminded at all, that we are ‘dust’?  That popular insurance company slogan, “life comes at you fast” certainly had a very serious portrayal recently, when cameras captured an alarming video of a speeding hockey puck passing a newsman’s head and then crashing the camera lens.  If you saw it, the newsman didn’t even react until the puck had already seemingly long passed him, bouncing off and breaking the lens.  He had come just inches from death, but didn’t know it.  If that puck had hit him, he probably would not have even known what cut his life short. Having such an event on camera, records not just a near miss’, but serves as a wake-up call for any of us. It’s another sobering reminder of just how ‘fast’ and ‘fragile’ life can be? 

Without God, without God’s promise and protection for our souls, Kerry Livgren is right, ‘All we are, is dust in the wind’.  We might be amazing, remarkable, exciting, and memorable creatures, but without God’s care, and without God’s eternal presence to promise us that no matter what happens, ‘God has our backs’, where is the ultimate value or meaning of anything we are, or in anything we do.  Of course, there is the next generation to care about, but if we have no promise and no sense of God’s care and protection for our own souls, how will they also find any ultimate hope?

Isn’t this the confidence we need, both for life, as well as, in death?  Don’t we all face the vulnerabilities of life like helpless Sheep, constantly needed the protection and provision that the only the great shepherd can give?  Don’t we, in light of all that threatens, need this most basic promise, that the Lord’s strength is always there and that no matter what happens, to hear his promise, that we have nothing to fear? 

For me, however, the most powerful picture of God’s promise and protection, isn’t just going through this Valley of Shadow of Death, but it is God’s promise that, we can continue to graze and feast on life’s goodness, even when ‘enemies’ are always present.  Sheep always grazed in lush valleys with many predators lurking around them, especially at night. In the much the same way, also for us, the enemies of life can easily gain the advantage over us were it not for the presence, the promise, and the protection of the shepherd.  If we don’t wander away from the flock of his care, in spite of what is around us, or what is before us, we can find the nourishment we need for life, and receive the overflowing cup of God’s healing and hope.

HE PURSUES ME…

Perhaps, the greatest and most wonderful surprise, even in this old, often repeated, ancient text, is the ending, that expresses how God’s ‘goodness and mercy follow’ him ‘all the days of his life’.  

It must have meant a lot for David to write this, but who knows whether David actually wrote this Psalm as a young shepherd boy, or he was looking back on those days and wrote it much later after he became a King?   Whenever he wrote it, it must given him great comfort to remind himself that God’s forgiving, faithful love was constantly ‘following him, all the days of his life’.  Without faithful, forgiving love, where would any of us be?

Here is the message, people often forget: In true Faith or religion, God is never out to get us, to steal our lives from us; but the true Shepherd is there to guide us, and to give life to us; to save us, redeem us, and to bring us into the fulness of life that he has purposed for us.   He also ‘follows us’ to bring us back to that purpose and his protection, when we have wandered too far away. 

The primary image here, is exactly this: David sees God’s ‘goodness and mercy’ following him, staying with him, even hounding him like a sheep dogs, one named ‘goodness’ and the other named ‘mercy’, circling him, restoring him into the fold of shepherd’s love and care.  The Good Shepherd, here, is exactly who Jesus described in his parable: God, the Lord, is like the Shepherd who leaves the 99 Sheep and goes after the 1 single sheep who has wandered astray.  When we get lost in life, the Shepherd is after us in much the same way.  The Lord of goodness and mercy is not out to get us, but he puts his most talented dogs on us to tract us down and corral us back into the Shepherd’s care. 

Is this kind of “Lord” your Shepherd?  The great poem by Francis Thompson, entitled the Hound of Heaven, pictured God love similar to this, like sheep dogs hounding us back home, saying so very compassionately, He wrote of the God’s love so poetically:

 “Deliberate Speed, Majestic instancy, came on the following feet and a voice above their beat…” …How little worthy of love I am…” Thompson wrote, “who would I find who would love or could save me?  His answer comes at the end:

Yet, I am the one you love, and I draw my love from the one who loves me.”

Thompson’s final line reminds me of that old gospel him, which rings out the bass in the chorus, over and over, ‘even me’.  “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more, but the master of the sea, heard my despairing cry, from the waters lifted me, now safe am I.

“Love lifted me, EVEN ME.  Love lifted me, EVEN ME.  When nothing else could help, Love lifted me.  Love lifted me, EVEN ME.  Love, Lifted me, EVEN ME.

When nothing else could help, LOVE LIFT_TED ME!  

Dr. Steve Brown. Dr. Brown used to teach that  "the trouble with Christians is that we sometimes forget that we are defined by God's love; that is by God’s goodness and mercy, and not by our own.  Like the little boy who asked his father, “Do you love me, even when I’m bad.”  “Of course I do, I want you to be good for your own good, but I love you even when you aren’t as good as I want and expect you to be.”  The boy responded, “You’re the best daddy in the whole world”.

My and your value as a person is not found in terms of just what I do, my value lies in belonging to Christ, the Good Shepherd, trusting His direction and leaning on His Grace. I am valued--because I am loved by God.  Jesus never tells about any ‘good sheep’, only that his Sheep hear and respond to his voice.  Finding life value and find God’s love is just that simple; hearing God voice and responding to God’s love.  Yes, life is as simple as hearing and responding to God’s goodness and God’s love.

And this ‘love’ that can lift us, save us, when nothing else will, is the loving caring Shepherd, that David envisioned, even way back when he was a little boy.  David simple called him ‘the LORD’.  We can call the Shepherd our Lord too, because he wants to shepherd us so that his own ‘goodness and mercy’ can abide with us, and follow us, all the way home.  

Way back in 1937, the famous Golden Gate Bridge was completed. At that time, it was the world's longest suspension bridge. The entire project cost the United States government $77 million. During the process of constructing the first section of the bridge, very few safety devices were used, resulting in twenty-three accidental deaths as workers fell helplessly into the waters far below.

The toll was so significant something had to be done before the second section was built. An ingenious plan was arranged. The largest safety net in the world (it alone cost $100,000!) was made out of stout manila cordage and stretched out beneath the work crews. It proved to be an excellent investment in view of the fact that it saved the lives of at least ten men who fell into it without injury. Interestingly, the work went 25 percent faster, since the workers were relieved from the fear of falling to their deaths.

God's great net of security spans this globe.  No matter where God’s children live, God has stretched out His everlasting arms beneath us.  As a result, every one of us, who allow him to Shepherd us, can live and work freely and fearlessly, knowing that we are protected by His powerful presence and his wonderful promise never to ‘leave or forsake us’, because his goodness, and his mercy follows us, always. 

Will you allow him to be your guiding, protecting Shepherd?  And if you have wandered away, will you allow his ‘goodness’ and ‘mercy’ to catch up to you, and to escort you, and bring you back home?   Amen.