All right, thank you. Let's go
to a very familiar passage of scripture to all of you, Psalm
23. The book of Psalms, and we'll go
to the 23rd Psalm. And I'll begin a message this
evening that I am quite confident that I won't be able to finish
until next Lord's Day evening. on this subject, the Lord is
my shepherd. That's one of the sweet truths
of the word of God to all of the Lord's sheep. And this is
sheep food indeed when we speak about our glorious shepherd. Psalm 23, it is a Psalm of David. And he writes, the Lord is my
shepherd. I shall not want, that is I shall
not lack for any good thing. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. He leadeth me beside the still
waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness, and he does it for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And here's the reason, for thou
art with me Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest
a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest
my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. There's a blessed connection
between Psalm 22, Psalm 23, and Psalm 24. And it's only fitting
that the 23rd Psalm kind of comes in the middle of that great trilogy. The old writers used to make
various comments about this trilogy of Psalms that fit together,
Psalm 22, 23, and 24. Psalm 22, we know, is the Psalm
of the Cross. It's about our suffering Savior. There will be no green pastures
for the sheep, There will be no quiet still waters for the
lambs of the Lord unless there's the substitutionary work of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And you may mark this down. There
was no still waters for him. There were troubling waters of
the wrath of God that he had to navigate. There were no green
pastures for him to lie down in and relax and take it easy. He had a work to do. He was on
a mission of mercy, on a mission of grace. Our shepherd, he came
to redeem, he came to save. You're very well acquainted with
Psalm 22. which begins with one of the
seven sayings of our Savior that are recorded from the cross.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He is the Savior of the sheep. It's his death that did indeed
seal our pardon. It's his death that honored and
satisfied God who demanded death for iniquities. It was the suffering
Savior. That's what Psalm 22's about. It's about his agony. It's about
how he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree,
and he had to endure the wrath of God. In Psalm 22, the Psalm
of the Cross, we read of him speaking about his enemies. They
gaped upon him. They were like fierce, wild dogs
who pursued him all the way to his death. But it wasn't his
enemies who dealt the most harmful blow to the shepherd, it was
the father. For you see, the very soul of
his sufferings was his soul suffering. God dealt with him in the inner
man. Yes, men did all that they could
to him. And they saw to it that he died
the most painful, embarrassing, ignominious death of the cross. But they didn't make him to be
the Savior. God did. He had to suffer all
of the hell, all of the wrath of God that you and I, who are
believers, that we would have had to have suffered forever. He suffered it in our stead. and he paid our debt in full. And so Psalm 22 is the psalm
of the cross. Here is the Savior. Here is the
Savior. The very last part of Psalm 22,
if you'll look at verses 30 and 31 of Psalm 22, a seed shall
serve him. You know who the seed is? That's
the sheep. That's the sheep. It shall be
accounted to the Lord for a generation. That's his sheep. And he says
in verse 31, they shall come. They shall come. The purpose
of God has determined that. And the very power of God will
bring it to pass. the effectual call of grace will
go forth to these sheep that the Savior has laid down His
life for. They shall come and they shall
declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born. They shall be born of the Spirit. They shall be regenerated. And
they shall attest to this, he hath done this. No glory goes to the sheep. The glory goes to the savior
of the sheep and the shepherd of the sheep, which brings us
to Psalm 23. Here is indeed the shepherd. After all he has endured, has
been expressed in Psalm 22, now we know this one who is our Savior
is the guardian of our souls. He's the guardian of his people. He's the shepherd. David knew
the responsibilities of a shepherd. because he himself had been a
shepherd. He watched over the sheep that
belonged to his father. He knew a shepherd's responsibility
was to protect the sheep, to watch over the sheep, to lead
the sheep. The sheep don't lead. The sheep
follow. And David is not, though he is
the king of Israel, no doubt when he wrote this he's the king
of Israel, yet he acknowledges the fact that he is like a poor,
dumb, wandering, timid, foolish sheep. He takes that position. He recognizes that which He is
by nature, and He recognizes the office that the Savior holds
by the determination of God. He's the shepherd of the sheep. He's our Savior, and He's our
shepherd who guards us, who protects us. was faced off by the Philistines. And the Philistines, the mortal
enemies of Israel, had a giant. They had a champion. And his
name was Goliath. And David goes to take some bread
to his brothers who are in Israel's army, and he hears the challenges
of that vicious Man, Goliath, and no Israelite would take the
challenge. David told Saul, he said, I'll
go. You'll go. You're just a young man. You're not a warrior. He said,
let me tell you something. He said, I watched my father's
flock. A bear came after him one time,
and I had a slingshot and a stone. I brought him down. And on another
occasion, a lion, a lion attacked my father's sheep. And I protected
the sheep. And I grabbed him by the beard.
And he didn't live to growl at the sheep any longer. He said,
I'll fight the battle. That's our savior who fights
our battles. He fought the ultimate battle.
He fought and won the war for the souls of his people when
he laid down his life, the shepherd giving his life for the sheep. He is the one who is the savior
and he is the shepherd. And then we get to Psalm 24. He's the sovereign. Because in
Psalm 24, He is the one, He's the Savior who bought us, He
purchased us, He redeemed us, He satisfied every demand of
justice against us. All the legalities of our salvation
were settled once and for all by His one-time act of obedience,
His death upon the cross of Calvary. I wouldn't take anything away
from His perfect life. His perfect life, though, that
was not one act. You read Romans chapter 5. By
one act of obedience, He put away our sins forever. What was
that? That was His death. That's His
death. Thank God for His virgin birth,
but that didn't put sin away. Thank God for His perfect life,
but that didn't put sin away. It was by his death he laid down
his life. This was a voluntary act. He said, no man can take my life
from me. Matt read that a while ago. No
man can take my life from me. I have the power to lay it down.
He laid it down. And then he took it up again.
He said, this commandment have I received from my father. He who is our savior is our shepherd
And for this reason, because he successfully redeemed his
people, he is now the sovereign. He's the king. He's the Lord of glory. That's what Peter said in Acts
chapter two, God hath made this same Jesus whom you crucified,
both Lord and Christ. And that's what Psalm 24 is all
about. It's about Him being the sovereign. God made Him Lord. God has exalted
Him above all. There's no name under heaven
given among men whereby we must be saved. The greatest name in
all the universe is the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's glory in
Him. Let's brag on Him. Let's speak
of the wonders of His saving grace, the wonders of Him being
our shepherd who leads and guides and directs and protects and
provides for us. And let's brag on Him and rejoice
in the fact He's the sovereign of the world. He rules over all
things. That's our shepherd. That's our
brother. That's our friend. the Lord Jesus
Christ. And if you go back to Psalm 22
to kind of look at this a little bit different, Psalm 22 speaks
to us of propitiation. What is propitiation? Satisfaction
of divine justice. He was the just dying for the
unjust to bring us to God. That's what Psalm 22's about. What's Psalm 23 about? If Psalm
22 is about propitiation, I would say that Psalm 23 is about providence,
divine providence. The shepherd leads the sheep
by his sovereign will. I know there are a lot of things
that happen in your life and in my life, we can't begin to
comprehend. We kind of scratch our heads
and say, I don't know how this works together with all of the
things for my good, but the word of God says it does. Well, who
is making all of these things work together for the good of
God's sheep? This one, who is our savior,
who is our shepherd, And who is our sovereign is bringing
all things to pass, which we call providence. No accidents. No good luck or bad luck. All things happen according to
the perfect will of our savior, of our sovereign. of our shepherd. He governs all things. I don't know what you're going
through with. There are people who are watching, many of you,
I'll never meet, not this side of glory. But whatever it is
you're going through, and whatever it is you are going through,
and whatever it is I'm going through, The shepherd is bringing
us through it. So that even the worst news that
we could possibly hear will not really be bad news to us at all. Last year I had to go to the
dentist. And the dentist, I'm having trouble
with one of my front teeth, and I knew it was broke, and I was
in for a bit of an ordeal. He said, I got the worst news
possible. I said, the worst news possible?
He said, yeah, we're going to have to do something about that
tooth. I said, that ain't the worst news possible. And I thought
about something I heard Brother Scott Richardson say many years
ago that registered with me and still registers in my heart.
He said, I haven't heard any bad news ever since I heard the
good news. There is no bad news. No bad
news. When Carolee was in the nursing
home, And the doctor broke the news to her that she was dying. That wasn't bad news to her,
was it? No. I'm going home. I'm going home. My days struggling in this world
are about over. I go to be with my Savior. with my shepherd, with my sovereign, the one who is my propitiation,
the one who guides and directs me by his providence. And then we get to Psalm 24,
and I'm looking for another word that begins with P. try to keep
these together, and I thought, you know, I know what Psalm 24
is all about, his promotion. He was indeed humiliated one
time. He humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross one time,
one time. but having given his life to
save us, to redeem us, to wash our sins away, to make us righteous
in his own righteousness, having accomplished the work of redemption
that God gave him to do, God raised him from the dead and
God promoted him. He said, sit at my right hand.
I'm gonna make all you enemies your footstool. And right now,
seated at the right hand of God, seated on the very throne of
majesty, is our savior, our shepherd,
and our sovereign. He's been promoted. And I'll
tell you something, because he's been promoted, we gonna be promoted
one day. When we leave this world, we'll
enter into glory. And we're gonna go there, if
I may say it this way, on the coattails of our Lord Jesus Christ. You're not going because of anything
you've ever done. You're going because of him.
Because of him. And then to put it another way,
I could just keep on going, He's prophet, priest, and king. Psalm
22, he's the priest. What did a priest do? Well, one
of his main jobs was to offer the offering for sin, to present
the sacrifice to God. He's the priest. There's no way for you and me
to enter into the presence of God except by the high priest,
Christ himself, who offered unto God the sin offering that did,
in fact, remove all the sins of his people. He's our priest who offered to
God the only sacrifice that could ever put our iniquities away.
By one offering, we read in Hebrews 10, he hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. And then in Psalm 23, we see
him as the prophet. He teaches the sheep. He gives us a teachable spirit. And his sheep can be taught. We're not unteachable goats. There in John chapter 10, Matt
read for us, the Lord Jesus said to those religious, self-righteous
folks, said, you believe not because you're not of my sheep. You won't hear my voice. Because
my sheep hear my voice. They'll hear. They'll listen. They'll learn. The sheep may
say, I don't understand. The sheep may say, Lord, please
teach me. But the sheep, you will never
hear one of the sheep say, I don't care what the Bible says, I don't
believe that. That's not the language of a
sheep. We bow to him as the prophet. He's the perfect prophet. And
in Psalm 24, we see him as the king. He is the king of glory. That's reason in Psalm 24. Let
me just read, look at Psalm 24. Look at verse seven. It says,
when our Lord ascended, The Word goes out. Remember,
He is the Lord of hosts. We talked about that this morning.
He's the Lord of the armies, the armies of the angels. That's
both the elect angels and fallen angels. Lift up your heads, O
ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the
King of glory shall come in. He's the King. He doesn't want
to be King. He's not going to be King. He
is the King. Some of these dispensationalists
are all confused. They say, he's gonna be king
one of these days. I beg your pardon. He's king
already. He's royalty already. The scepter
of righteousness and the scepter of universal government is in
his hand. And the question goes out in
verse eight, who is this king of glory? And the answer comes
back, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. He
battled the enemy of our souls and he crushed his head in fulfillment
of Genesis 3.15. He took our sins and he buried
them in the depths of the sea. And the law of God, he upheld
the integrity of God's law and died to satisfy his every demand. Who is he? He's the Lord, mighty
in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates. Even lift them up, ye everlasting
doors, and the King of glory shall come in. And the question
is asked again, who is this King of Glory? Well, he's the Lord
of Hosts. He is the King of Glory. Then
he says, Selah. Now you stop and think about
that. He is the King. And I'll give you one more outline
if you want a little more outline on 22, 23, and 24. In Psalm 22, there's the crucifixion
of the Savior. Psalm 23, there's the consideration
of the shepherd. In Psalm 24, the coronation of
the sovereign. David said, the Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. What
kind of shepherd is he? Well, let me just touch on two
or three things as time allows tonight, and I'll pick up on
this next Lord's Day evening. Number one, he's the divine shepherd. Who is he? David, who is your
shepherd? Well, he's the Lord. He's the
Lord. He's the great I am. He identified
himself to Moses back in the book of Exodus. We've been talking
about this on Wednesday nights. He appeared to Moses in a bush
that burned, but he wasn't consumed. And he says, my name is I Am. Because Moses asked him, listen,
you want me to lead the children of Israel to freedom? You want them to follow me? When
I tell them that I met you at the burning bush and you spoke
to me, who shall I say has sent me to them to tell them I'm gonna
lead you to freedom and liberty? Tell them I am the Lamb. That's who my shepherd is. You don't have some weak, Man
to be your shepherd, the shepherd of your soul. Somebody said preachers
are like under shepherds. Well, I suppose that's a fair
statement. But we're by no means divine. We're just sinful men. We're just sinners telling other
sinners about the mighty Savior. But the one I'm preaching about
tonight and every time I preach, He's divine. He's not a creation
of God. He's not one that was made like
Adam was made. He's the one who made Adam. He's
the everlasting. He's God over all, blessed forever. My shepherd is the Lord. And if he's your Lord and your
shepherd, I'll tell you, you're all right. Everything's okay
with you. He's the divine shepherd. There's a definite article there.
The Lord is my shepherd. And I like the assurance that
David has. He doesn't say, I hope he's my
shepherd. He didn't say, I think he's my
shepherd. He said, he is. He is. If the Lord is my shepherd, let
come what may. It doesn't matter, right? It
doesn't matter. Because my shepherd is my savior
on the one hand and my sovereign on the other hand. He's my priest on the one hand
and he's my king on the other hand. Let him teach me and let
him do with me according to his will. It'll all work out perfectly
for me. Tell me about your shepherd,
and I'll tell you if you got the right one or not. Because that one who is the shepherd
of God's sheep, he is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-governing Lord. when he sent his disciples out
to preach the gospel after his death, burial, and resurrection,
he said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Now go ye therefore and preach
the gospel. You wanna know why I keep preaching
the gospel? Because he's got all power. The
one I represent, the one I, I have been called into the ministry
to proclaim. He has all power over all flesh,
that he should give eternal life to as many as the Father has
given him. So I keep on preaching. I woke
up early this morning, and I was praying. I said, Lord, take the
word of the gospel today, and if it please you, reveal Christ
to people. He's the only hope we've got.
But oh, what a good hope we have in Him. That's why Paul says
in 2 Thessalonians 2, we have a good hope through grace. What is a hope in the Bible?
A blessed confidence and anticipation of future good. We've got a good
hope. My shepherd is divine. He's the
Lord. He's the Lord. He lacks no power to do whatever
he wants to do. He is infinite in his power and
in his knowledge. And I'll tell you something else.
And I'll give you this one, and I'm going to quit on this one.
He is not only divine, he's the promised shepherd. He's the promised
shepherd. And for this, I want you to go
back to the book of Genesis. You know, when we talk about
Christ being our shepherd, this is, I mean, I could just preach
on this from now on. It's like an endless subject
because it is so glorious, but I'll limit my remarks tonight
to just this point and then next Sunday night, but this shepherd, he's the one who's
been promised. When you get to Genesis 49, you
can look this way. You'll recognize this, many of
you will, as being the last words of Jacob. Genesis chapter 49,
the last words of Jacob to his sons. And he begins to speak
about Joseph, Genesis 49, 22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, even
a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. In other words, he's going to
bring forth lots of fruit. He says in verse 23, the archers
have sorely grieved him and shot at him and hated him. But his bow abode in strength
and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the
mighty God of Jacob. Parentheses. From thence is the shepherd. the stone of Israel. That's the
first reference in the Bible to our Lord Jesus being the shepherd
of his sheep. You see Jacob, he looked to Joseph
and Joseph was to his family as a shepherd. We've gone over the history of
Joseph in somewhat of detail on Wednesday nights, several
months ago. But what Joseph was, he was the
provider of his family, right? The protector of his family.
He watched out for the well-being of his family. He made sure his
family was fed. Now, indeed, in order to get
to the position to where he did those things, he had to endure
great trials and troubles to himself. He was sold into slavery. Of course, some of his brothers
wanted to kill him. But he went through all of these
troublesome times in order to eventually be elevated to a position
to where he was in such authority, he could be as a shepherd to
his family. There's our Lord Jesus. Like Joseph, he went through
many a low place in life, and ultimately to his death. But he's elevated. He's exalted. Just like Joseph was exalted
to sit at the right hand of Pharaoh himself. And to Joseph belonged
the responsibility and the opportunity to do good for his family as
the shepherd, the shepherd watching over his flock. There's our Lord
Jesus, the shepherd over his family. And Jacob says from thence, from
the God of Jacob, from thence is the shepherd. and the stone of Israel. Who
else could he be speaking about but our Lord Jesus Christ as
the shepherd and the stone? You see, Joseph was to his family
like a solid rock. They could count on him. when he sent his brothers home
to finally fetch his father to Egypt, they knew they could count
on Joseph. He was like a rock. There's our
Savior. Build all your hopes on him because
he's the shepherd who is our solid rock foundation. Our Savior asked his disciples
one day, who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, well, some say
you're Jeremiah, some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're
one of the other prophets, which was really putting our Savior
down, because that would be to put him on the same level as
all those men. He said, but I want to know who
you say I am. I know what others are saying.
Because remember, he never asked a question for information. I
know what others have said. Who do you say that I am? And
I would ask you, who do you say that he is? Simon Peter said,
thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And our Savior
said, I'll tell you something, Peter. Flesh and blood didn't
teach you that. My Father, my Father taught you,
revealed to your heart my true identity. You see what others
don't see. You realize what others don't
realize. You believe what others don't
believe, that I'm God manifest in the flesh. And Christ said, I'm going to
build my church on this rock, the rock of my identity. And
I'll tell you what, if our church, if our local church isn't built
on this shepherd and this stone, no use going on. But if all of
our confidence is in this shepherd, And if we're building only upon
him who is the solid rock, we'll stand forever. What about you? Is he your shepherd?
And is he your stone? The shepherd's stone. He is indeed the rock of ages.
And that's our last song for tonight. Back to the black folder,
number 15. You say, well, we could sing
that out of the songbook. Yeah, but they leave out a key
verse, and I'm not happy about that. So we'll sing Rock of Ages
out of that black folder, number 15.