Well, I feel honored to be here. I'm in great company. It is so
good to be here with you to see you again after all this time.
And I bring you greetings from the church, Kitchens Creek, and
also Marian Stoniker said to tell all of you hello. And I
know she would enjoy being here with you tonight. You know, I was sitting there,
playing here, here. I met his grandparents and his
mother. I don't remember when it was. I know Henry and I were
preaching in North Louisiana. And they came down to the meeting.
And the just small world come to find out that Clay's grandfather
and my mother, your dad's dad, went to school
together in Thornton, Arkansas. That's where they lived, both
families. I told my mother, who I had met,
she said, oh, my sister had such a crush on him, so we came real
close to being husband and in-law, Clay, you know? Never know how
close some of those things, but I remember I called my mother,
and I forgot your grandpa's name now, but what's his first name? Yeah, T.P. Curtis. T.P. Curtis. I called my mother and
I said, do you know T.P. Curtis? You know, it's just one
of those things you don't forget, but it's a small world. Marvin,
known you so long. First time I met Marvin, we went
to his mother's house and she fixed us the greatest cup of
coffee I had ever drank. You make it in a sock, there's
just something about it that's good. And I had drank it in Mexico,
but I didn't know that anybody in the States knew how to make
coffee in a sock like that, but good coffee. And I was loaded
down with it. You can get a boy out of Louisiana.
It's hard to get a Louisiana boy, though. And I brought him.
Did you count him? Oh, he grew. He said, now, my
mother said she is sending 20 sacks of coffee. There better
be. Twenty sacks of coffee in there when I look in there. I'm
glad it grew. I'm glad there was more. Must
have been those big bags of coffee. Psalm 23. Psalm 23. Don Fortner and Shelby and the
congregation there send their love. Donny Bell and Mary. Nick
Crossville and the congregation send their love to you. We had such a It's been a great
week. We left Sunday afternoon after church and drove up to
Meridian, Mississippi. And then on Tuesday, we drove
up to north of Nashville. And our Monday, rather than on
Tuesday, went to Danville. And on Wednesday, we went back
south a little bit down to Crossville. And then yesterday, came up to
Ashland. And it's just been great, been a great trip. And now to
be here with y'all, what a blessing. These words of this psalm, the title of my message tonight
are found in these first words. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. It's also the comfort of my heart
to know that the Lord is my shepherd. It's my statement of faith. Jehovah is my Shepherd. It's the theme of my preaching.
The theme of everything that I have to say to you. It's the
strength of my life. It's my eternal hope that the
Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. The first thing the psalmist
David tells us here is who God is. He's Jehovah. Now Jehovah is God in Christ. He can only be merciful and gracious
to us in Christ. It's only mentioned four times
in the Scriptures, the name Jehovah. But when you read Lord in the
King James Version, it's Jehovah. It's Jehovah where the translators
determined to do it. And it's usually spelled in caps,
large and small capital letters. In the Spanish Bible, it's always
translated Jehovah. But that's who he is. Now who
is this? You know, in Exodus chapter 6,
the Lord spoke to Moses and He said to him, I am the Lord, Jehovah. He said, I appeared unto Abraham
and unto Isaac and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty. But by my name Jehovah was I
not known to thee. Though our Lord said, Abraham
saw my day and rejoiced in it. But then in Exodus 34, he passed
by and he declared himself, and this is what he said, the Lord,
Jehovah, the Lord, Jehovah, God, Elohim, the Strong One, Merciful,
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and
truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." That's
Jehovah. This great Jehovah. who is merciful,
who is gracious, will by no means clear the guilty, for if he pardoned
the guilty without the satisfaction of that sin debt being made,
we would have no hope. No hope whatsoever. If he were
just to arbitrarily pass by sin, we would have no hope. because
he could arbitrarily pass by us. He's not going to do it. This work of grace, it's not some frustrated desire
with God, something that he wishes to accomplish if we'd let him. But it's who he is. And it's
how he deals with his people. He's Jehovah. And you know, his
name is found in every verse in this psalm, all six verses. Verse 1, we find Jehovah Rahi,
my shepherd. Verse 1, Jehovah Jireh, he will
provide. Verse 2, Jehovah Shalom, my peace. Verse 3, Jehovah Rapa, He heals. Verse 3, we also find Jehovah
said, Kanu, my righteousness. Verse 4 again, we find Jehovah,
shalom, my peace. Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. My peace,
thou art with me. In verse 5, Jehovah Nissi, my
banner. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. And around me he puts all of
his forces. And you have to picture an army
that's standing battle ready there. They put their banner
there. That's who we are. Mine enemies, they can't touch
me. In the presence of mine enemies. My banner. In verse 6, Jehovah-Shamma,
the Ever-Present One. That's who He is. This is my
shepherd. This is my shepherd. Now who am I here? Sheep. Sheep. You know, people think,
oh, that's so nice to be called sheep. But it's no accident that the
Lord God of Heaven calls His people sheep. You know, there
are about 570 references to sheep in the Scriptures. And when you
read about sheep, you study sheep. I've never dealt with sheep,
but I did a lot of reading about sheep in order to get some understanding
of us being called sheep. And when you look at sheep, they
have some very peculiar characteristics, some unusual traits that are
not found in other animals. But it's probably the dumbest
animal that ever lived, the dumbest animal that ever walked on the
face of this earth, a sheep. Do you know that they say that
a sheep will put out its head and start eating? and walk over
a cliff, fall to his death without ever raising his head. That's
how dumb it is. It's a dumb animal. You ever
seen a trained sheep? You ever seen a sheep in a circus? It's an animal that's afraid
of the simplest things. They will not drink from noisy,
rushing water. It has no defense. Can't see well. Can't hear well. Can't run well. You know here,
it was last fall sometime, I go over to a detention center, it's
filled with federal detainees, illegal not only just wetbacks,
they come from all over the world. They've come to the U.S. Some
were just picked up and found out that they were illegal. Most
part, they've committed a crime, and after they've served their
sentence, some have been in prison 10, 15, 20 years, they've served
their sentence, and now they're taken to these detention centers,
they're federal detainees, and they're held there for usually,
it takes about a week. to process them through the system,
and then they're turned over to ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement,
which is now part of Homeland Security. ICE takes them and
puts them on U.S. Marshall Airplanes, JPATs, and
they export them, deport them all over the world. And I get
to go there and preach every once in a while. I got to go
there and preach because 99.9% of them are Hispanic who speak
no Spanish. So I got invited to go preach
to them. And I've been over a number of
times, but you can go every once a week, every week, and you'll
preach to 500 different men. Well, not 500. I wish it all
come. Usually about 125 every time you go. If you see 125 this
week, next week, it'll be a brand new group. Those have already been deported.
I always have to ask, is there anybody in here that doesn't
speak Spanish? Most of the time, there are none.
But one night, one man, he's back in the back. He said, I
don't speak Spanish. I said, well, come up here at
the front. I said, sit down right there. They meet in the chow
hall. And so they just sit on the benches there along the tables
in the chow hall. And I said, come up front. And
I did a bilingual service. I don't like to do it. It gives
me a headache. My brain has two gears, English
and Spanish, and they don't mesh well. There's a clash in there
between those gears, but I do it. You know, you say part of
it in Spanish, and then you say it in English, and then you say
it in English, and you say part of it, and then you say it in
Spanish, and back and forth. But anyway, I was dealing. I
brought up that about these sheep. He was from West Africa. After
the service, he spoke fairly good English, heavily accented.
He came up and he said, and I can't talk like he did. When I talk,
he's going to sound like a Texan. But he didn't sound like a Texan.
He said, brother, he said, sheep have one defense, one way to
defend themselves. I said, really, what is it? He
said, when they stick together. He said the lion is afraid of
them when they're in that flock together. He said the lion thinks
it's a great big animal, and the lion won't fool with them.
They get one separated, and they go after it. But he said they
will not fool with those sheep, even the mighty lion, when they're
all together. I thought, man, well, that's
us, isn't it? We can't go out on our own. We
can't turn our back on Christ. We can't walk off for whatever
reason. Sheep. That's what we are. Sheep. Sheep will lose itself. It will
walk off. It will. What a shame it is when
it does. It's weak. It dies so easily. They depend on the shepherd.
totally dependent on that shepherd for all their needs. John 10 said, in a stranger's
voice, they will not follow. My sheep know my voice, and they
follow me. And I could go on. I read books
on this. I could go on and on and tell
you stories that I read about how they kept them, but just
let it suffice to say how dependent they are on this shepherd. That's us, sheep. And we depend
on Jehovah as our shepherd. Now, what's he done for us? Everything. He said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Now in our English today we have
changed the meaning of that word want. The word means I will lack
nothing. We have want meaning desire today. It means I will lack nothing. He supplies everything that I
need. I shall not want. Oh, if we could
ever distinguish between what we don't need and what we don't
have. If we could learn to distinguish
between those things. If we could learn to distinguish
between absence and lack. You know, I came over here today
And I didn't have an umbrella. But I didn't need one, did I?
It wasn't raining. But if I came over here and it's
pouring down rain and I didn't have an umbrella, then that's
what absence is. That's what lack is. That's what need is. The first
case with the sun shining, it's just absence. I don't have it.
But if it's pouring down rain and I don't have it, then I have
a lack. I have a want. I have a need. And we lack nothing for His glorifying
us here in eternity. Now the wicked always lacks,
but not the righteous. I shall, and that shall, always
distinguish in the Scriptures between the shalls and the wills. The will declares His power.
The shall declares His promise to us. He's promised. His sheep won't lack. And then look what else He does
for us. Verse 2, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Lie down. He leads us in the
pastures of His Word. You know, I talk to so many and
they say, I just don't understand the Bible. I read it. And I read it. And I don't understand
it. But you know, it's not the words
of the Bible that give us trouble. Ninety percent of the words in
the Bible are one and two syllable words. That's so simple. That's baby
talk. That's not our problem. You know,
you just look at the account of creation. And God said, Let
there be light. And there was light. And God
saw the light that it was good. Everyone, I'm a one-syllable
word. It's the scriptural truth of
that expression that we don't understand. And that part we'll
never understand until the Holy Spirit of God reveals it to us.
You know, there was a radio station there in Alexandria, Pineville,
Louisiana area. It's gone now. But when I went
there, they came on the air at 6 o'clock in the morning. And I used to set my alarm to
wake me up just so I could turn the radio on to hear them come
on. They came on every morning in the beginning. God created
the heavens and the earth. Oh, I love to hear those words
every morning. People don't believe it today. It's so simple. But we're like
that little bird sitting up there on that telephone wire. He sits
on it. He's supported by it. He trusts
all of his weight to it, but he doesn't have an idea in the
world what the message is running through those wires. And that's
the way religious people are. This book, it becomes a sort
of a religious icon to them. They say, I believe every word
written here. I even believe the covers of it. This is my
hope right here. And they have no idea what it
says, no idea whatsoever. Oh, he leads me. He leads me
in the green pastures where His Word is faithfully preached. He'll lead me to a place where
He has a man that faithfully proclaims this Word. He leads
me to join together with the saints of glory. He leads me
beside still waters. He gives me peace in my heart. And He says here, In verse 3,
He restores my soul. He does everything for me. When
my soul strays, He brings me back. When my soul is sorrowful,
He revives it. When my soul is weak, He strengthens
me. He leads. He leads. You know, Moses drives us by
the law. But the Lord Jesus Christ leads
us. by His mercy and His love. When I was still living in Mexico
preaching the Gospel, one time my dad came down to visit me. He was in his early 80's when
he came down and spent two weeks with us. And we rode all over
the country down there. And he spent two weeks saying,
I've never seen anything like that in my whole life. One day
we was riding down the road He said, I've never seen anything
like that in my whole life. And I said, what is it? He said,
look over there. He said, there's sheep and goats
in the same herd over there. That's what he called them. I
looked over there. I said, look again, Dad. They're
not together. That shepherd's in the middle
chunking rocks at those goats trying to keep them in line.
And those sheep are right behind him, following him. They're not
together. They're not together. And I tell
you what, there's some that that's only where they stay in line.
They've got to have somebody chunking rocks at them all the
time, keeping them in line. But you know what she'd do? They'd
follow the shepherd. They'd follow the shepherd. Oh, he leads us in the paths
of righteousness. These paths that are always adorned
with the trees of holiness, always watered with the fountains of
comfort. How refreshing that is! And these ways, they always terminate
in everlasting rest. Why does He do it? For His namesake. Because He's Jehovah. He changes,
not the only reason we hadn't been consumed. Now, I'm amazed
whenever he says Jacob. Generally, when he calls us sons
of Jacob, that's not a very complimentary thing either. And that's what
he says, what Malachi says, I am Jehovah. I change not. For this reason, you sons of
Jacob, you hadn't been consumed. It's because he doesn't change. He doesn't change. He's promised. And when He had promised, He
swore an oath to it. And when He could find none greater,
He swore by Himself. He will fulfill. And He does
it because of His mercy and His grace to us. Verse 4, He said,
Yea, though I walk, Yea, though I walk. Not running. Running is a lack of trust in
Him. I walk. Running is a confiding in my
own strength. I walk. And yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for thou art with me. and thy staff, they comfort me."
You know, this valley in which the psalmist is speaking here,
it's a valley that's in Palestine, and it lies between Jerusalem
and the Dead Sea. It's just south of Jericho. What I read about it, they said
it's only about 12 feet wide at its widest point. And they'd
take the sheep through this valley to get to the green pastures.
This valley plunges from like 2,700 feet above sea level to
something like 400 feet below sea level. It's a scary place. It was dark. The shadows made
this a dark place. And that's the reason he said,
Theedo, I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. Now, we're alive this evening.
And to those that are alive, death is a scary thing. But did you know that that's
the reason he called it here a shadow? Because shadows can
hurt us. Whether it's the shadow of a
sword or the shadow of an animal, it can't hurt us. It's just a
shadow. Now, he doesn't say there will be no evil. He just says
that there's a shadow. It's a shadow. It can't hurt
you. When I first went to Ball, Louisiana,
from my back door to the office door at the church is 140 steps. Well, one time when we were working
on getting our insurance changed over, the lady said, you use
your vehicle to drive back and forth to work? I said, no, I
don't. She said, how do you get to work? I said, I walk. She
said, good for you. I said, ma'am, it's only 140
steps. It's no big deal, not like walking
a couple of miles, you know, it's only 140 steps. But I can
remember One of the first nights, everybody had left after service,
and I'd closed up the building. And I started walking back across
the churchyard over to the yard of the house. And man, this dog,
that thing was about 10 feet tall. And he had a voice on him
like an elephant. And he started barking at me. I couldn't see him. All I knew,
there was a hedgerow there. And I thought, man, that thing
is fixing to eat me alive. But he didn't. I went on home. The next day, I surveyed out
where that dog was. There was a fence there behind
that hedge, those hedges. He couldn't get to me. He could
only go so far. That was it. He's on a chain. He wasn't on a chain, but he
was on a chain. He could only go so far. He couldn't get to
me. What was it? It was just noise. It was a shadow.
The shadow of death. And that's the way the Lord God
of heaven has Satan. He can't get to us. You know,
you read over in Job, Satan went before the Lord. He said, I can't
touch Job. You've got a hedge around him.
He does, doesn't he? He does. He can't hurt us. You know, it's not death, really. What we call death is a deliverance
from death. This is death. We're dead men
walking. This is death. This life we live
is death. What is this thing called death?
It's a door to life. But can you imagine that in that
day, we're going to look death in the face and call it friend,
embrace it as a friend, You know why? The sting's gone. O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God which giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The sting's gone.
Oh, I love to tell this story. You've probably heard it, but
I forgot. I'm going to tell it again. One of the benefits of
age, you know. We're permitted these liberties. One time, you know, we in Mexico,
where we live on the Pacific Coast, right down on the Guatemalan
border. We had four months of rain and eight months of dry
season. Four months of rain, we'd get
about 120 inches of rain, and then we'd go eight months, not
a drop, not even dew. It would get so dry. March and
April and May were the hottest months of the year for us. The
sun was on its journey north again, right over the top of
us. That was our hottest summer. We had another hot summer in
October when it would head south again, but this was the And it
was so dry. But then, the first of June,
the rains would start. And the scorpions would come
out. Now, I don't know if y'all have
scorpions up here. We do. Louisiana, Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona. I know they're all over that
country. That scorpion, they say, that along with the cockroach
are two of the oldest surviving Species is known. They're right
in there with the dinosaurs. But it's got that tail that curves
up. Got that stinger right on the tip of that tail. And if
you mess with it, it throws that tail forward and it hits you.
And you feel like you've just been stabbed with a hot ice pick.
One night I was gone. Rains had started and these things
seemed like they'd just come out of the walls. I don't know
where they lived. But Claudia, she rolled over
and got hit twice in bed, right in the middle of her backbone.
Tongue swelled up. It gets a little scary sometimes.
But what I want to tell you, I was in a man's office. He was
a good friend of mine. We were drinking coffee one evening.
He was sitting at his desk, and I was just kind of leaning up
against the desk across from him. We were just shooting the
breeze, drinking coffee, and there's a scorpion crawling across
the floor. And he had an aluminum ruler
laying on his desk. He picked up that ruler and he
came around and he put it on top of that scorpion. And then
he rolled it over. And with the edge of that ruler,
he just clipped off that stinger. And I'm sitting there, leaning
up against that desk, watching. And then he runs that ruler underneath
that scorpion like that, picks it up and throws it at me. And
it hit me right here in the chest. And I don't know if I hit my
chest with my hands trying to get it off of me or my heart
tried to come out. I didn't want to embrace that
scorpion, knowing that it didn't have a stinger. And you know,
that's the way we are, being alive without death. We're alive.
We don't want to embrace. It's hard to understand right
now, isn't it? But we know. that the sting is gone. The sting
of this death is sin. And the strength of that sin
is God's holy love. But thanks be to God which giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. One day we'll be able to look
infinite justice in the face with a cheerful heart Death is
going to see a friend. It's not going to our execution. There is a shadow. But you know
why there's a shadow? Because there's light. You take
light away, there's no shadow. There's light. There's light. Those that are in darkness, they
see no shadow. Oh, but the Lord Jesus Christ
said, I am the way, the truth, the life, the bread, the light,
the water of life, on and on. He said, I will fear no evil
for thou art with me. The Lord Jesus Christ died without
God. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? But we die in Him. We die with
Him. And omnipotent love must fail
before one sheep would ever perish. Oh, but what a scary place that
valley had to be for those sheep. But they followed the shepherd.
You know, I marked this over here. You don't have to turn
over. But in Isaiah 43, the prophet
said, But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed
thee. I have called thee by name. Thou art mine. When thou passest
through the waters, I'll be with thee. Through the rivers, they
shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the
fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle
upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the
Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Sheba for thee, since thou was precious in my
sight." Oh, He looked on us, polluted in our blood, when none
wanted us. We were cast out into the open
field to die. He looked on us in love and He
said, live. He said, live. And He took us. And He washed us, and He decked
us out, precious in His sight. Thou hast been honorable, and
I have loved thee. Therefore will I give men for
thee, people for thy life. Fear not, for I am with thee.
I will bring thy seed from the east, gather thee from the west,
say to the north, give up to the south, keep not back. Bring
my sons from afar, my daughters from the end of the earth, Even
every one that's called by my name, for I've created him for
my glory. I formed him. Yea, I have made
him. And yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because
he is with me, my Savior, my Christ, my love. That's where David found his
hope. You know, I read about the Apostle
Paul. Never once did he call himself
a prisoner of those Romans, did he? He was a prisoner of Jesus
Christ. I think about Peter over in Acts
chapter 12. I always wonder, I know Peter
slept well. The scriptures tell us that he
was asleep that night, chained. Between those guards and the
other guards were keeping the doors of the prison. Said Peter
was sleeping. I always thought, I wonder if
Herod slept that good that night. I don't believe he did, but Peter
did. He said, Thou art with me. Verse five says, Thou preparest
a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Lord, you set
it up and you put the banner of your army there for all to
see. What I do, I just sit down in comfort as though nothing
were going on. I trust you. I trust you. Like I said, Job was hedged about
from his enemies. And you know what the sad part
is? My enemies see my comfort. They see my rest. They envy it. They envy my rest. They envy
my peace. They get frustrated by it. They
can't penetrate it. They can't stop it. We have a propitiation put there. Oh, that's Christ. Propitiation is like the roof
on this building. Poor example, but if it had helped
us to understand it, let it rain. We're dry. It all fell on Christ,
our propitiation. We have Him put there by God
for us and nothing can touch us. Evil men can't hurt believers. Just remember, evil men, they're
still just men. God's still God. He anointed my head with oil.
You know, this is how they showed their love and respect for a
guest that came into their house. They anointed them with oil to
refresh them. And He said, My cup runneth over.
They took that guest. And they set him down. And they
served him an overflowing cup of wine. It was just a symbol
to show while you're my guest, you'll lack nothing. There's
an overflowing abundance of everything. And not just abundance, see,
there's redundancy. It ran over. It runneth. It continually. runs over. Surely, oh my, if the Lord is
my shepherd, if He's your shepherd. You go through this, all five
verses, and you have to come to this conclusion. Verse 6,
Surely, goodness and mercy. I read one writer, I forget who
it was, He said, Lord has some sheep dogs. And he said, I can
tell you their name. One named Goodness, one named
Mercy. And they keep me. They keep me. Your provision
and your pardon, they follow me. Through all the mercies of
God bestowed upon him, David came to be persuaded of the continuance
of this favor of God toward him. Surely, goodness and mercy It
shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever. I don't want to dwell in a house
of my own building, but in His house, in Christ, His pleasure,
in Christ, His will, in Christ, His work, in Christ. and be there forever. Dwell. Dwell. Not just passing by, staying
in a hotel overnight, not come back again until next year. I
told the men when I left Sunday, I said, well, y'all be sure and
water all those Easter lilies that show up Sunday. I wish they
would. But you do get some every once
in a while. They show up about once a year.
I don't want to just pass through. I want to dwell there. Dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. May the Lord bless you. Thank
you.