Sometimes we get walloped with the messiness of life when we least
expect it. Take what happened in, Taiwan. On January 17, 2004, a 66ton sperm whale died and was beached on the southwestern coast of
that island. Almost 2 weeks later, on January 29, authorities decided to
truck the dead whale to a laboratory where they could do an autopsy.
So they loaded this 56-foot monster on a flatbed truck and were hauling
it through the streets of Tainan, when the whale exploded. Yep, it
exploded. It had been decomposing, of course, and all those internal
gasses reached a breaking point. As the truck was making its way down
a busy street, all of a sudden the whale exploded, showering nearby
cars, shops, and pedestrians with blood and organs and stopping traffic
for hours.
Isn't that just like life sometimes? You're going about your business, and
the whale explodes. We don’t expect it, and we couldn’t have
anticipated it, but the whale explodes. Out of the blue you’re called into
your boss’s office and told you’re being downsized. You no longer have
a job. Out of the blue your spouse says, “I want a divorce. I just don’t
love you anymore.” Maybe you hear the word that nobody wants to
hear come out of your doctor’s mouth: “Cancer.”
For some of us it isn’t so dramatic, but the pressure is there. We have
enough, but just barely. Our business is making it, but just barely. I’m
reasonably sure my spouse is still committed to me. I think there will be
a job for me when I get out of school. But there’s no margin for error.
In 2014, real security seems to be gone. The sources of our security
have failed us. Neither the stock market nor investments in land have
proven to be safe places. Our government can’t seem to fully help us
out of the morass. Jobs that we once thought would be there forever
are now gone. Families and father figures fail us. Teachers, coaches, and
community leaders are caught in adultery or are discovered to have
been sexually abusing children. Real security seems to be a thing of the
past. We are a society afraid of what tomorrow might bring. Where do I
find REAL SECURITY?
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In any given year, 18 percent of Americans will suffer from an anxiety
disorder. That's twice the number of those who suffer from depression.
If you broaden the study to include anyone who experiences an anxiety
disorder at any time in his or her lifetime, the number increases to
nearly thirty percent. Our levels of anxiety have also increased
dramatically over the last fifty years. According to psychologist Robert
Leahy's book Anxiety Free, "The average American child today exhibits
the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient did in the
1950s." Material comfort may be higher than it was back then, but
other issues like uncertain employment, threats of terrorism, uncertain
futures, and high medical costs are a few of the many contributing
factors. As psychologist Robert Leahy puts it, "We live in the Age of
Anxiety …. We've become a nation of nervous wrecks." How do I find
peace?
First, I have to REALIZE that I have a tendency to find trouble.
If God is my shepherd, what does that say about me? It says that I’m a
sheep, and believe me, that’s no compliment! No one wants to be a
sheep: Centaur, minotaur, fauns, no sheep-man.
I’ve raised sheep for years. I showed sheep at the fair for 7 years when I
was a kid in 4-H, and a few years ago Becky and I bought out the
remnants of a flock that was in pretty bad shape after the owner got
cancer and health deteriorated. We did the best we could to nurse them
back to health and pass them on to others. We couldn’t save two of
them, and still have one.
Sheep are prone to wander. Even in familiar territory they can get
turned around, confused, and completely lost. Sheep are utterly
defenseless. They need strong fences & guard animals to keep them
safe from predators. Sheep have a nose for trouble. I’ve had sheep
caught in fences, stuck in brush, fallen in a ditch and unable to even get
up. I’ve had sheep try to jump out of fences and not quite make it,
pulling heavy wooden rails down on top of them and breaking legs. I’ve
had sheep get out of pens, find the feed room, and eat until they died.
Without outside intervention from caring shepherds, domestic sheep
don’t stand a chance. If wolves, coyotes, and cougars don’t kill them,
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they stand a pretty good chance of offing themselves at some point
through sheer stupidity.
And yet that’s exactly what King David calls each one of us, himself
included. Look at what he says. He doesn’t say “the Lord is YOUR
shepherd. He says “the Lord is MY shepherd.” The Psalms are very
personal for David and for the other Psalm writers. He’s not excluding
you and I, but he’s making it very clear that he includes himself in the
story. He isn’t trying to fix everyone else. His eyes are turned inward on
himself. The Bible does that you know. We run there looking for peace
and comfort and God says “OK, but you need to know something. I’m
going to shine a spotlight on YOU. On YOUR heart. On what’s going on
inside of YOU.” Know when I last preached from this text? April of 2012,
just 4 months before Zeke died. Little did I know … And that’s the point
of this Psalm … often we don’t know what’s coming around the next
corner.
Now, sheep are one of the most common metaphors in Scripture for the
human race. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah says about us: Isaiah 53:6
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to
his own way;” If I’m going to find REAL SECURITY, then I must REALIZE
that on my own, I’m doomed. On my own, I am plenty capable of
finding trouble … if trouble doesn’t find me first!
Therefore, I must REST, in Christ’s provision
In John 10:11, Jesus takes the imagery of Psalm 23 and applies it to
himself when he says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays
down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd,
who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the
sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.” Any
good Jewish person, growing up in an educational system where the
primary task was to memorize the Old Testament in its entirety word for
word, would have gone back in her mind to passages like this one, and
would have heard Jesus saying, “I am the one you have been waiting
for. I am the Great Shepherd in the flesh. I am the source of your
security.” The picture here is one of rest. Lying in green pastures and
being led beside still waters are images for the truths proclaimed in vv.
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1 & 3: because Christ is my shepherd I lack nothing, and my soul is
restored.
Sheep won’t drink from fast-running streams. They’re afraid of moving
water. In areas where streams are the only source of water for the flock,
the shepherd puts a few rocks or logs in the stream to slow the water
down so that the sheep will drink. But sheep will drink from any old
puddle of water they happen upon, even if fresh water is available.
They’ll drink from puddles that the rest of the flock has been walking
around in, water filled with excrement and other impurities, water that
can destroy their health.
Have you ever gone to an exotic place for vacation and then accidentally
ingested too much of the local water? What happened? You got sick,
right? Montezuma exacted his revenge! Jesus Christ, our good
shepherd, says to us, “Stop turning to filthy puddles to quench your
thirst. Stop turning to alcohol & drugs to numb the pain. Stop turning to
excessive gambling and pornography to fill your heart. Stop trying to
find rest in financial or job security. Come to me, for in me you’ll find a
source of living water that will never run dry.
Sheep won’t rest unless four things are true: They must be free from
fear, there must be no tension among the flock, they must not be
aggravated by the weather conditions, and they cannot be hungry.
What does this verse say to us in a world where people are losing their
homes, their jobs, their security? Where people in many places don’t
have enough to eat, or a safe place to sleep? It doesn’t say that we will
have all that we want, but that we will lack nothing that we need to be
safe and secure in Christ’s flock.
When we read this passage, we imagine an idyllic scene: a lush green
meadow with mountains in the background, a spring-fed mountain
stream running lazily through the pasture as sheep lay contentedly in
the shade. But remember David, who was at one time the shepherd of
his father’s flocks, knew a different scene. The area where he had
tended sheep as a young man was brown and barren. Shepherds had to
work hard to find enough to sustain their flocks. But a good shepherd
could do it. A good shepherd could bring sustenance out of a dry and
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barren land in the middle of the dry season. He knew where to go. And
our good shepherd says to us, “I am the bread of life.” “Come to me,
when your burden is too heavy, and I will give you rest.” In me, you will
lack nothing that you need to be all that I have created you to be. Is
Christ your shepherd? If not, ask him to be your shepherd. He never
turns a sheep away. And then rest in HIS provision.
And thirdly, we must RELY on Christ’s protection
The shepherd’s protection comes in three ways. First, he guides: he
leads me along the right paths. Sheep are very ADD and are prone to
wander, even from a well-worn path with which they are supposed to
be familiar. Shepherds often have to leave for a minute to go find a
sheep or two that has strayed. Sometimes that path leads through what
David calls “the valley of the shadow of death.” Literally, that means the
deepest, darkest places.
In the Holy Land the landscape is scarred by deep wadis, deep ravines
cut into the soil as waters pour from rocky mountaintops during the
rainy season. One man tells this story of walking though one such area.
“I remember hiking down Wadi Qelt from Jerusalm to Jericho with a
friend. An ancient Roman aqueduct, still flowing with water, clung to
the canyon wall at a height of several hundred feet. We began our
journey following the rugged footpath on the opposite canyon wall,
dipping at points to the bottom of the wadi and back up the other side.
It took only about 2 such trips down into the shadowy depths of the
stifling heat at the wadi bottom (and this was in the early morning) and
scrambling back up the steep limestone wall to regain the path, before
we overcame our natural reluctance of the heights and continued our
journey walking along the outer rim of the aqueduct. Even so my 2-liter
bottle of water was depleted halfway through our journey. When we
stopped at a monastery to replenish our supply of water, the water tap
in the courtyard first emitted only steam, and then a grudging stream of
almost boiling water. I had enough trouble dragging myself up and
down those rocky hills. I cannot imagine the difficulty of herding a
whole flock of sheep through the “valley of the shadow of death.”
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Predators wait in canyons to jump from treetops and rocky ledges down
onto unsuspecting prey walking below. Thus animals in the wild have a
healthy fear of canyons and dark places. But the sheep is not afraid, for
the shepherd is there at the front, calling out to his flock, guiding them
along the right path.
Second, the shepherd Defends: The rod was a 2’ long or so “club” that
shepherds kept attached to their waists so they could defend their
flocks from even the most dangerous of predators. Even to the point of
providing for me when I am surrounded by enemies on every side, my
Good Shepherd is there to protect.
And third, the shepherd corrects: The shepherd also carries a staff, the
crook-ended walking stick we all associate with shepherding. It could be
used to rescue an animal that had stupidly wandered into a ditch or
fallen into a hole and couldn’t get out. It could be used to prod an
animal on faster, or stretched out to slow the flock down. Pursued by
Grace. Not only will we be at times pursued by predators of body and
soul in this life, but we have this promise, that God’s goodness, and
God’s mercy (literally his commitment, his perfectly faithful love) will
follow us. That word literally means pursued. God’s goodness and God’s
stick with us through thick and thin love are pursuing us, and will
through every day of our lives, and we will dwell with Christ, our good
shepherd, in HIS house forever.
Many of you know Bruce Larson. He is a pastor and counselor, and for
years he had an office in New York City. Bruce Larson would often
counsel people who were going through the struggles of faith, struggles
over whether they could really trust God, given the tragedies and the
chaos of their present situation. Larson tells of how, when he was
counseling with someone in that circumstance, he would often ask
them to go for a walk with him. They would go down the elevator of the
building in which he had his office, they would go out of the building
and walk to the RCA building, they would step into the lobby, and there
in the lobby was a huge statue of Atlas, muscles straining, carrying the
world. In mythology, Atlas was the strongest of all human beings and
carried the whole world on his back. Now, Bruce Larson would stand
there with the person he was counseling and he would say, "Now look
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at that. That finely proportioned, muscular male body, straining just to
hold up the world." He would say, "That's one option. You can live just
like that. But there's another option." He'd take them across the street
to St. Patrick's Cathedral, and there, above the high altar, was a simple
painting of Jesus as a child, perhaps eight or nine. Jesus, as a child, has a
hand outstretched, and in the hand he's effortlessly holding the world
itself. Bruce Larson would say, "That's the other option. You can choose
to struggle to carry your life like Atlas, or you can choose to trust the
one who so effortlessly holds all of creation in the palm of his hand.
FINDING REAL SECURITY IN CHRIST
What do we do when the whale explodes? What do we do when the
annoyances of life pile up to the point where it seems they join together
to overwhelm us? Where do we find REAL SECURITY? The stock market
can fail. Financial institutions can collapse. Once-secure jobs can
disappear. Friends and family members can let us down, even hurt us,
sometimes seriously. Our own bodies can break. The pressures of this
life can overwhelm us.
But we CAN find REAL SECURITY in Christ, if we are willing to Realize our
tendency to find trouble (and for trouble to find us), Rest in Christ’s
provision, and rely on Christ’s protection
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