Discover a fresh perspective on one of the most beloved passages in the Bible with our latest talk, "The Lord Is My Shepherd". Join us as we take you on a journey through Psalm 23, revealing its profound insights about God's character and our relationship with Him.
Welcome to Crowd Church, a digital space where faith is explored, hearts are
Speaker:inspired, and everyone is welcome to discover the meaningful life Jesus lives.
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Speaker:Now this month, this August, we are going to be doing things
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Speaker:If you've been to one of our live streams before, you will have seen hosts buzzing
Speaker:with energy and doing real time engagement in the comments, doing something
Speaker:that we call Conversation Street.
Speaker:Oh yes, we like live streaming, we like Conversation Street.
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Speaker:The members of the crowd team, just like many of you, We'll be taking
Speaker:this time to rest, recover, and recharge with our loved ones, just
Speaker:as God rested on the seventh day.
Speaker:We believe in the importance of Sabbath, of taking rest, of taking time off.
Speaker:To renew our spirits and regain our strength.
Speaker:So during this time, what's going to happen?
Speaker:Well, you'll still see a scheduled video going out each week as usual, what we call
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Speaker:live thing, we'll be taking a step back.
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Speaker:Uh, as each live stream goes on, and to make this period a little bit more
Speaker:special, we've invited four, yes that's right, four fantastic guest speakers
Speaker:who will take you on a unique journey exploring their favourite psalm each.
Speaker:Now these psalms have spoken into their lives and they're excited to
Speaker:share their insights and reflections.
Speaker:If this is your first time with us, a huge welcome to you.
Speaker:You can find out more information about Crowd Church on our website at www.
Speaker:crowd.
Speaker:church.
Speaker:So, I hope you're excited.
Speaker:We are looking forward to this time of renewal and hope that the powerful words
Speaker:of the Psalms will bring you peace.
Speaker:Comfort and a little bit of inspiration for your life.
Speaker:Thanks for being with us.
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Speaker:faith journey together in September.
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Speaker:So let's get into the Psalms.
Speaker:Psalm 23.
Speaker:It's a beautiful, poetic, powerful psalm that helps us to understand
Speaker:something profound about who God is, and something profound About who we are.
Speaker:The Lord is my shepherd.
Speaker:The Lord God, He is my shepherd.
Speaker:I love this psalm.
Speaker:It is a psalm I committed to memory many, many years ago.
Speaker:It's a psalm I often recite and pray through the day.
Speaker:Sometimes I pray in the darkest hours of the night.
Speaker:It is a great psalm.
Speaker:To memorise and meditate on.
Speaker:For example, you could, if you wanted, just go through the psalm,
Speaker:each verse emphasising a different word each time, and see how
Speaker:God speaks to you through that.
Speaker:The Lord is my shepherd.
Speaker:The Lord is my shepherd.
Speaker:The Lord is.
Speaker:It's a certainty, it's not a might be.
Speaker:He is my shepherd.
Speaker:The Lord is my shepherd.
Speaker:Just an idea if you're wanting to meditate on the Psalms.
Speaker:Another thing I love to do when reading the Bible and the Psalms is to
Speaker:highlight what I call the God Verbs.
Speaker:Verbs are doing words.
Speaker:What are the God Verbs?
Speaker:What is it that God, the Lord our Shepherd, does in this Psalm, Psalm 23?
Speaker:He leads, He restores, He guides, He is with us, He comforts us, He prepares
Speaker:a table, He anoints us, He pursues us.
Speaker:There's so much in this psalm that God is doing.
Speaker:But what I want to focus on today is how this psalm helps us to understand
Speaker:our relationship with God because there are lots of ways of understanding and
Speaker:articulating God's relationship with us.
Speaker:There's lots of different metaphors that try and use our limited...
Speaker:Human vocabulary to try and express the relationship between
Speaker:Almighty God and little old us.
Speaker:For example, some people think of God as like the big boss
Speaker:and themselves as the workers.
Speaker:And so they're always trying to work out what they need to do for God.
Speaker:A far better, healthier picture is that of God as Father.
Speaker:And we're his children, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, when
Speaker:God wants to articulate his great love and passion for his people, he
Speaker:is described as the groom, and we as people as the bride, the bride and
Speaker:groom, a metaphor of love and union.
Speaker:There are lots of different ways we can think about who God is and
Speaker:how we relate to him, but here in Psalm 23 we discover that God is
Speaker:the shepherd and we are his flock.
Speaker:You and I are the sheep of his pasture.
Speaker:And Jesus used that language all the time to describe himself as the
Speaker:good shepherd and us as his sheep.
Speaker:Just a couple of quick caveats here before we dig into this text more deeply.
Speaker:Firstly...
Speaker:Anyone, absolutely anyone can make God their shepherd.
Speaker:Anyone can become one of his sheep, his flock.
Speaker:You simply need to ask him to cleanse you and forgive you of your sins.
Speaker:God is holy, God is pure and our unholiness separates us from him.
Speaker:So we come to him and we come to Jesus and we ask him to cleanse us and
Speaker:forgive us and that's what he does.
Speaker:And then we get welcomed into his family, into his flock, we take on
Speaker:a new identity, we belong to him.
Speaker:That's the first little caveat, anyone can be part of this flock.
Speaker:Secondly, sometimes you hear people say, oh well, you know,
Speaker:Jesus never claimed to be God.
Speaker:He was just some nice moral teacher, some rabbi, some guru like everyone else.
Speaker:Yes, he did claim to be God.
Speaker:All of the time, if you understand the language and the
Speaker:culture of what he's saying.
Speaker:When he says, uh, for example, he's a good shepherd, the
Speaker:religious leaders were outraged.
Speaker:Because only God was the shepherd.
Speaker:And just like C.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:Lewis famously says of this, he says that Jesus is either God, as he claimed,
Speaker:Or some madman, or lunatic, or liar.
Speaker:They're the options.
Speaker:So anyone can be part of Jesus flock, and Jesus is our good shepherd.
Speaker:He's God.
Speaker:Just one example of how he talks about himself as God.
Speaker:The final little caveat...
Speaker:Before we dig into the text is this, that I've got teenage boys, so I am well aware
Speaker:from their insults that to call someone a sheep is not a good thing, it's an
Speaker:insult, you sheep, you sheeple, it's meant negatively, those who blindly, mindlessly
Speaker:go with the flow and with the crowd and Have no need to think for themselves.
Speaker:But you know, when we're described here in Psalm 23 and in the Bible
Speaker:as sheep and God as our shepherd, that is such a positive thing.
Speaker:It's such a good thing.
Speaker:It means we belong to Him.
Speaker:It means we are precious to Him.
Speaker:It means that He will look after us and protect us and provide for us.
Speaker:All of those promises in Psalm 23 of guidance and restoration and
Speaker:rest are ours because we're His.
Speaker:We are the sheep of his pasture.
Speaker:So you might think, I'm no sheep, I'm a free thinker, I'm the master of my own
Speaker:destiny, I do things my way, well...
Speaker:And good luck with that.
Speaker:How is that working out for you?
Speaker:I used to think of myself as some deep, academic, philosophical, big thinker.
Speaker:But that led me to the conclusion, A, there must be a God.
Speaker:B, such a God is good and loves me.
Speaker:And C, that God knows me better than myself and what's best for me.
Speaker:And as I follow Him and His pattern...
Speaker:That's when life starts to work.
Speaker:I'm so glad to be one of his sheep.
Speaker:So we're thinking about God's relationship with us.
Speaker:That he is the shepherd, and that we are his sheep.
Speaker:And, and that actually means, uh, the Hebrew here, it's the Lord is my shepherd.
Speaker:It's Jehovah Rohe, or Yahweh Rohe.
Speaker:Rohe is a bit more than shepherd.
Speaker:It's a bit more than a hired hand in an employee sense.
Speaker:It's about...
Speaker:A livestock owner.
Speaker:That's what it means when it says he's our shepherd.
Speaker:We belong to him.
Speaker:Sheep are precious.
Speaker:They're valuable to their shepherd.
Speaker:You are valuable to God.
Speaker:Sheep are known by their shepherd.
Speaker:They are marked by their shepherd.
Speaker:It's about ownership.
Speaker:Identity, Value.
Speaker:One way of living life, one theory for smashing life for those who think they
Speaker:aren't sheep, is to think, well, okay, I've got to make my life work, I've got to
Speaker:get everything sorted, this existential, ambitious, driven, striving, where it's
Speaker:all down to me and my effort, I've got to work for this, then I've got to take
Speaker:the best gym membership out for the best body, then I've got to have some amazing
Speaker:holiday to recover from all of it.
Speaker:I feel exhausted just thinking about that way of living.
Speaker:But there is another way to live.
Speaker:Jesus is our Good Shepherd.
Speaker:Just imagine being a sheep for a moment.
Speaker:Imagine you've got your head down, you're munching on grass.
Speaker:You hear the shepherd calling in the distance.
Speaker:You start to follow the voice of the shepherd.
Speaker:As you look up, you realise the shepherd has led you into green pastures.
Speaker:The Hebrew for that translates literally as...
Speaker:An Oasis of Vegetation, and he makes you lie down beside still waters, he begins
Speaker:to restore your soul, you're refreshed, you're nourished, you're sustained, and
Speaker:it's all his doing, all you had to do was follow, all the sheep had to do.
Speaker:Was to lie down.
Speaker:This is the Christian life.
Speaker:This is the life of grace.
Speaker:I often say the effort of grace is surrender.
Speaker:The effort of grace is to yield.
Speaker:It's to lie down.
Speaker:It's to let God be God, to let God do what only God can do to rest in him.
Speaker:There is an effort in an intentionality to that, but that's how we find true peace.
Speaker:Now, that does not mean that bad stuff won't happen in life.
Speaker:It doesn't mean there won't be dark times.
Speaker:God doesn't say we won't walk through dark valleys.
Speaker:He says, even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we
Speaker:will walk through the dark valleys.
Speaker:You may be walking through a dark valley right now.
Speaker:You may feel darkness and death are casting their shadow over you.
Speaker:But there is a promise for us, his sheep.
Speaker:Jesus, our Good Shepherd, will be with us.
Speaker:He is with us in the valley, and he has a rod and a staff.
Speaker:In his hands are a rod and a staff.
Speaker:People debate the meaning of those.
Speaker:I tend to think of one, maybe the rod, I don't know.
Speaker:One he's using to keep me moving forwards.
Speaker:When I get stuck in darkness, when I get stuck in despair, when I pitch my
Speaker:tent in the valley of self pity, I'm so thankful that my shepherd gives me a
Speaker:little nudge, a little prod, to keep me moving through it, and not to live in it.
Speaker:Of course, there's a rod and there's a staff, because he's our shepherd.
Speaker:We are precious sheep to him, that means he's fighting for you, he's
Speaker:protecting you, he's fending off the wolves and those things that might
Speaker:cause you harm, because you're his sheep, because he's your shepherd.
Speaker:Verse 5 then says that our shepherd prepares a table for us.
Speaker:in the presence of our enemies.
Speaker:He prepares a table in the presence of our enemies.
Speaker:Now a number of years ago I did a talk, a series of talks on spiritual
Speaker:warfare and during one of those talks I asked an artist in the church just to
Speaker:paint whilst I preached on this verse.
Speaker:And that's what she did, she produced an incredible piece of artwork of a table.
Speaker:Just imagine a dining room table and around this table there's a family,
Speaker:their They're feasting, they're eating, they're drinking, they're
Speaker:laughing, they're sharing stories.
Speaker:Now all around them, in the background, are dark figures.
Speaker:They're enemies.
Speaker:But the powers of darkness can't get to them.
Speaker:The powers of darkness can't touch them.
Speaker:Because that feasting family is surrounded by God's light.
Speaker:And I love that imagery, it's so defiant, so confident, as we do the
Speaker:feasting, God does the fighting.
Speaker:Again, it's all about the effort of surrender, the effort of yielding, just
Speaker:to hold your ground, the effort of grace.
Speaker:I want to finish with a final thought, verse 6 says, Surely goodness and mercy
Speaker:will follow me all the days of my life.
Speaker:Some translations say surely blessing and mercy will follow, others goodness
Speaker:and faithful love will follow.
Speaker:But the word I want to focus in on is the word follow, the
Speaker:Hebrew word radaph, radaph.
Speaker:God, our good shepherd, follows us with his goodness, his
Speaker:kindness, his faithful love.
Speaker:But radaph is more powerful than that.
Speaker:It's better translated as the word pursuit.
Speaker:God.
Speaker:Pursues me.
Speaker:In fact, it's even stronger than that.
Speaker:The first time the word Radaph is used in the Bible, it's used
Speaker:of Laban chasing down Jacob.
Speaker:It's used of Pharaoh chasing the Israelites as they escape Egypt.
Speaker:It literally means, Radaph means to hunt you down.
Speaker:God, our good shepherd.
Speaker:It's pursuing us, it's chasing you, it's hunting you down with all of
Speaker:his goodness and his mercy and love.
Speaker:The poet Thomas Francis wrote a poem about this called The Hound of Heaven.
Speaker:He tried to hide from God how he fled from God, he says how I fled.
Speaker:Him, down the nights, down the days, I fled him, down the arches
Speaker:of the years, I fled him, down the labyrinth ways of my own mind, and in
Speaker:the midst of tears, I hid from him.
Speaker:He goes on to talk about God's undisturbed pace, deliberate speed,
Speaker:majestic instancy, the hound of heaven.
Speaker:Hunting Him down.
Speaker:God loves you so much.
Speaker:You are so precious to Him.
Speaker:You're so valuable to Him.
Speaker:Uh, so when we stray, when we go our own way, when we get a
Speaker:bit lost in life, He pursues us.
Speaker:He goes after us.
Speaker:Such is His great kindness and mercy towards us.
Speaker:I heard a story recently about a sheep in New Zealand that had
Speaker:been lost, I think, for six years.
Speaker:I think the sheep was called Barak.
Speaker:I can't quite remember the details of the story.
Speaker:Google it.
Speaker:But because this sheep had been lost and hadn't been sheared for six years,
Speaker:the wool had grown so heavy that this poor sheep could hardly move.
Speaker:It was weighing it down.
Speaker:It couldn't see properly for the wool over its eyes.
Speaker:And they, there were these before and after photos when, when they found
Speaker:the sheep, I think they, they removed like 75 pounds, 35 kilos of dirty
Speaker:matted wool off the sheep in the sheep barrack, it could move again, it was
Speaker:free again, it was light again, it could see again, it could breathe again.
Speaker:It was brought back into the fold.
Speaker:Now, for some people listening to this, that is a picture of you.
Speaker:You, you thought that that freedom, doing your own thing in your own way,
Speaker:that thing you were pursuing was going to bring you into the life you wanted.
Speaker:But all it's done is weighed you down.
Speaker:Today, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is calling you by name.
Speaker:He's calling out to you, come to me.
Speaker:He's searching for you, He's pursuing you, He's chasing you, after you with
Speaker:His grace and His mercy and His kindness.
Speaker:and His love.
Speaker:And as you come to Him, ask for His forgiveness, ask for His restoration.
Speaker:He is going to lift all of that heavy matted stuff off you.
Speaker:He's going to pasture you besides the waters.
Speaker:He's going to begin that work of strengthening and
Speaker:restoring your weary soul.
Speaker:The Lord is our shepherd.
Speaker:He's your shepherd.
Speaker:He pursues you in His love.
Speaker:And I pray that for every person Listening to this, watching this, that right now
Speaker:you would know the Good Shepherd with you, standing alongside you, leading you,
Speaker:guiding you, restoring you, comforting you, anointing your head to equip you to
Speaker:serve him in life, fighting your battles for you, and pursuing you with his
Speaker:great loving kindness, mercy, and grace.
Speaker:Amen.
Speaker:We hope you found today's exploration of the Psalms insightful and inspiring.
Speaker:Every psalm has a unique message, a distinct voice that speaks
Speaker:to the heart and to the soul.
Speaker:Now we would love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker:What did you think about today's psalm?
Speaker:Feel free, if you haven't done so already, to share your thoughts, your reflections
Speaker:and experiences in the comments below.
Speaker:I really, really look forward to seeing them.
Speaker:It's always great to learn from each other.
Speaker:on our journey of faith.
Speaker:So do get busy in the comments, do share them.
Speaker:Now, if you wish to reach out to us, you can find out more information about
Speaker:us, uh, and how to reach us, how to connect with us on the website at www.
Speaker:crowd.
Speaker:church.
Speaker:And don't forget, come September, we're returning to our regular live
Speaker:stream services, resuming the Origins series that explores the roots of
Speaker:the church through the Book of Acts.
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Speaker:Now remember, at Crowd Church, everyone, including you, is welcome,
Speaker:and everyone, including you, is valued.
Speaker:No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, there's a place for you here.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us.
Speaker:Thanks for being with us today.
Speaker:Until next time, be blessed.
Speaker:Stay inspired and keep exploring the beauty of faith.
Speaker:See you in the comments and see you back here next week.