This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Well, good morning. I'm just going to move this over here for a second. You can tell that I'm the preacher. What gives it away? I do have one other tie I see in the congregation. But I think, and I do see a jacket, although it's not a sport jacket. But I'm the only one that has the combo of jacket and tie and lavalier microphone. So that's my qualification to be preaching this morning. Glad to be here. Yeah, the last time I was here, I forget when it was, but the AC was down. And it was in the summer, I think, and they moved us over into the gymnasium. But it worked pretty well. Well, glad to be here. I always enjoy preaching. Preaching on one of my favorite Psalms this morning, probably one of the Psalms that has been used in the life of God's people throughout the generations, more than any other Psalm, the 23rd Psalm. If you have your Bible, you can turn there. If you don't have a Bible, it's printed for you in the bulletin. And on the back of the text, there is an outline for you. Now, this might come as a surprise to you. Maybe not. You might find it hard to believe, not boasting. When I was in high school, which was a few years ago, as you can tell by the top of my head, when I was in high school, I could have been a great basketball player. Somebody tell me what are the operative words in that sentence could have been, which means I wasn't a great basketball player. I was good. I would even say I was very good, but I wasn't great. I was the point guard. One of the years, not my senior year, but one of the years, I lived in Pennsylvania. Joe named this from my hometown as the way I now put it. I used to say I'm from his hometown. We also have something else in common. Anybody know the ethnicity except the young lady from Budapest? Anybody know the ethnicity of Futato, take a guess. Hungarian is the first guess. Hungarian is the Budapest gives it away. Guess what ethnicity Joe named it is? That's kind of a softball, right? He's Hungarian also, although it's not really named, but it's nemith, but at any rate. Futato is not really Futato, it's really Futato, so go figure. But at any rate, our high school team won the state championship. So I played, I was a very good basketball player, very good team, very competitive, but I wasn't great. I was the point guard, I understood the game, I was an excellent passer, I was fast, I was a good shot, I was a good playmaker, but I wasn't great. There was one thing that kept me from being a great basketball player. There was one thing that I lacked, and it didn't really have anything to do with the physicality. The physical skill of basketball, it had to do with something that I was missing inside, something inside. Close, she said, courage. Somebody tell me the title of the sermon, you can find it in your bulletin, confidence. It was a lack of confidence that kept me from moving from good to great. It sounds like a title for a book, maybe I had to write a book with that title. From good to great, a lack of confidence. God wants us not to stay at good in our lives, whatever dimension you want to be thinking about this morning, whatever the issues are in your life. God doesn't want us to stay at the level of good, he wants us to move to the level of great, and to do so we have to have something on the inside as well as something on the outside. And what we have to have on the inside is confidence, and I'm confident that God wants us to be confident. If I were to play two cuts of music, if I were to play a piece of country music and a piece of classical music, even if you haven't had any musical training, do you think you could identify which is which? You might not be able to explain why one is the one and one is the other, but you could identify country and you could identify classical. The songs are like that. There are different kinds of songs, like country and rap and classical. There are different kinds of songs, and one category of songs are called songs of, you tell me, what's our title for the sermon? Very good, confidence. There's a whole group of songs that are called songs of confidence. There's a positive, dominant, confident note in these songs, and that's why I'm confident that God wants us to live with confidence because he's given us an entire group of songs that are called songs of confidence. They're there to instill confidence for living within us, and the best example is Psalm 23. So if you have your Bible, or if you have the handout, turn to Psalm 23, and I'm going to be reading from the NIV, a Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you or with me or rot in your staff. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. May God bless the reading and preaching of His Word to each of our hearts. Whatever you need this morning, I trust that God will take something from His Word to encourage you to give you hope, to instill a little bit more confidence within you. Okay, if you turn your text over, you'll see a little outline. We can summarize this Psalm with two ideas. First of all, this Psalm gives you one promise. How many? Not two, not three, one promise to believe in, and how many affirmations to live by. Three, one promise to believe in, and three affirmations to live by. We're going to spend most of our time on the front end of that. Now, here's the promise. Actually, it's going to, they're going to be five dimensions to it, but I want to summarize it for you. Here's the summary of the promise, because God is your shepherd and host. He promises you that you will have everything you need, and then some. That's the promise. Because God is your shepherd and host. He promises that you will have everything you need, and then some. Now, we normally think of this Psalm as the shepherd's Psalm, and it is. But if you're reading in the NIV, you'll see there's a little bit of extra white space, an extra line, right after verse four, and before verse five, and that's a modern editor's way of telling you there's kind of a change of topic. The first four verses are about God as your shepherd, and where he's leading you is to his home, and the last verses are about God as your host, because once he gets you to his home, you're no longer sheep, you're guests at his table, and he's hosting you at a marvelous banquet. So there are actually two images in this Psalm, the Lord is shepherd, and the Lord is host. So we're going to have to use our imaginations this morning and just walk our way through the Psalm. First of all, we're looking at how many promises to believe in, one promise to believe in, and that promise is that because God is your shepherd and host, you will have everything you need, and then some. Now, there are five dimensions of this, everything you need, and then some, let's walk our way through the Psalm and look at what those five dimensions are. First of all, the necessities of life, and here we are talking about the necessities of life. We are not talking about an extra cell phone and a DVD player and a sailboat. We're talking about the necessities of life. Imagine that you're a sheep, what are the necessities that you need as a sheep? You can look at the first couple of verses to see, what's one thing you need as a sheep? You need food to eat, what's another thing that you need? You need water to drink, food and water, what's another thing that you need? Okay, look at the text, what's it say? You need rest, that's right, food, water, rest. Now, we've got to imagine that we're not sheep anywhere, we're sheep living in Israel. And if you know anything about the, any Californians here? The climate in Israel is very much like the climate in California, two seasons, rainy season and dry season. Right now in California and in Israel, we're at the end of the dry season, so this is when you have the most danger for fires. There hasn't been any rain since about May, about five months of drought and so we're sheep and we're sheep in about October. So what haven't we had much of for very long, for five months? We haven't had much water and we haven't had much grass and since we haven't had much water and much grass, we've been walking around all over the place trying to find grass and water. So in addition to not having much to eat, not much to drink, what are we? We're tired. That's the setting of this song. But notice what the Psalmist says. The Lord is my shepherd. I will not lack anything. And what's he mean by that? The necessities of life. Food, water, rest. Now notice the text goes on to say, he restores my soul. But we've got to stay in the image here. Somebody tell me one thing that a sheep does not have. She doesn't have a soul. And so we don't want to go kind of spiritual on the Psalmist at this particular point. There's an ancient rabbi who said reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your bride through the veil. There are times when when we're reading in translation, we don't quite get the picture of what's really going on. I had an interesting experience in this regard. If I were to say to you, I'm going to give you a tortilla to eat after the service. What would you picture in your mind? White, white, flower, tortilla, maybe corn tortilla. How many of you would picture something that looks like a quiche pie with vegetables in it? Well, you know, if we were living in Peru and we went and bought a tortilla, that's exactly what we would buy. So you always have to be careful in moving one from one culture to another that you really understand how words are being used in that culture. And this expression to restore the soul is only used a couple of times in the Hebrew Bible. And when it's used, it means to renew one's physical strength. And it makes perfect sense, right? We haven't had much to eat. We haven't had much to drink. We're very tired. And so God is going to renew our souls. He's going to renew our souls in the sense that he's going to send the rain that's going to cause the grass to grow. So we're going to be able to lie down by those quiet waters. We're going to have plenty to eat, plenty to drink. In other words, the soul must is promising you that because God is your shepherd and host, you will have everything that you need. And where he starts is simply with the necessities of life. I'll bet there are some people in this room who are lacking some confidence right now in a number of ways. How many of us are lacking confidence in our leadership, whether it's political leadership or whether it's economic leadership? How many of us are lacking confidence with regard to what retirement is like because we've been watching what's been happening to our 401K's and our 403B's. How many of us are lacking confidence because we're watching what happens in the stock market day after day. A lack of confidence, are we going to have what we need? And God is telling you this morning, in spite of what's going on in our culture around us, that you can be special people, people living with confidence, not because you're sure where the economy is going to go in the next week. But because God is your shepherd and your host and He promises you that you will have everything that you need. The necessities of life. Second thing, direction for life. Notice it says he guides me in paths of righteousness, guidance direction. Do any of you have any decisions that you need to make in the next week or a couple of weeks? Some of them are small, some of them are big. We all need from time to time direction and guidance. One of the things a shepherd does for the sheep is what? Guides directs and God's promising you that you will have that direction that you need. Now again, we have to stay with the picture, with the metaphor. We think paths of righteousness, we move immediately to ethical and moral categories. But some of you have decisions to make that are not ethical, and they're not a matter of morality, they're not a matter of right or wrong, sin or righteousness. Somebody tell me something that a sheep never does. I'm thinking about in terms of that word righteousness. Sheep never what? They never sin. They never do anything unrighteous. A sheep doesn't need to be guided in moral paths of righteousness. Again, the expression, if you're using a new living translation, it says something like, he will guide me in just the R-I-G-H, just the right path. It may be a moral question. It may be an ethical question, but it may not be. Anywhere where you need guidance. The psalmist says that God as your shepherd will guide you in just the right path. And so as you go about this coming week, making decisions, sometimes you say, I just don't know which way to go. I'm not saying that God's going to make the decision for you. That's your responsibility. He's absolutely sovereign, and you're absolutely responsible to make life's decisions. You're making those decisions. Even when you're not 100% sure, you can still be what's the C word. You can still be confident because God is your shepherd. And he has promised not only the necessities of life, but also direction and guidance in life. So live with confidence, making those decisions that need to be made, the big ones, the small ones, confidence because God is your shepherd. It's one thing to know where you're going. It's another thing to know why you're going there. In our culture, we have many people who are very skilled and know precisely where to go and how to go, but they're not sure why they're going and so life tends to lack meaning. There's a Christian book that has just sold millions and millions and millions of copies. What's the name of the book? Purpose-driven life. Why did that book sell like hotcakes? What does the high sales of that book tell us about our culture? We're hungry for what? We're hungry for purpose. We not only want to know why, how, and what to do, we are hungry to know why we're doing it. And we want to know that we're doing whatever we're doing for something that is big. A big purpose. Now, the psalmist just happened to be Presbyterian. Can somebody tell me how Presbyterian types answer the question, what's our main reason for being here in more formal language, what is our chief end? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I wonder where those old Presbyterians got that idea. I think they got that idea because they were reading texts like Psalm 23. Notice that He's guiding us in just the right path for His namesake, for His glory. You see, you all have a story and you're living out your story day by day. And sometimes you think, my story is just a little story and nobody really cares about it. I'm just a speck of dust in this vast universe. And God says, no, your story is connected to my story. And my story is the story of the God of the universe. And I have created everything for my glory. And your story taps into that. And the more you begin to see how your story is part of this bigger story, the more your life takes on what's the p-word. Purpose. Something way bigger than you are. Something way bigger than I am. Something bigger than our economy. Something bigger than the United States. Something bigger than all of Earth history. It's the glory of God throughout the universe and you have the privilege of being tapped into that and being part of it. Whatever the role is that God has for you to play in that. Because God is your shepherd. He promises that you will have everything you need and then some. That includes the necessities of life. That includes direction in life. That includes purpose in life. And here's the fourth one. Comfort. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. You're a rod and your staff. They come from me. Again, we've got to lift the veil here a little bit. Anybody know German? A little bit of German. One thing that's true of the German language, and I'm not fluent in German, I learned a little bit of it a long time ago, German will take two words and stick them together a lot to make a third word, kind of like ground hog. You can look up every meaning of ground and every meaning of hog and you'll never know what the ground hog critter is, right? German can do that. Hebrew mothers taught their kids never to do that. Now why am I telling you that? Because the traditional translation shadow of death is one word in Hebrew that scholars have presumed means shadow of death, a combination of two words, but Hebrew doesn't do that. The word translated shadow of death simply means very, very dark. Even though I walk through a very, very dark path. Now one of the darkest paths we walk is which path? The path of death. So that's not excluded. All I'm saying is this dark path can be all sorts of other dark paths other than death. My wife and I have three parents. We lost our first parent last summer, and those were very dark days. And I'm sure that in this room some of you know the darkness of the path of death, a spouse, a child, a parent, a friend. But you also know other dark days, don't you? You know the dark days of family relationships that just aren't what you envision them to be. You know the dark days of the loss of a job. In this time in our culture, you know the dark days of an economy that has been turned on its head. You know the dark days of losing hope that if we throw enough money at the problem, it'll fix it quickly because that hasn't been happening hasn't. You know the dark days of an illness that hasn't gone away for months and for years. You know the dark days of hope that has been disappointed time and time again. All of these dark days as well as the dark days of death or what the psalmist has in mind and notice what the psalmist says because God is your shepherd. No matter how dark those days are, He is right there with you to provide you with comfort. Now I am not God, I know that doesn't surprise you, but not only am I not God, honestly I can't figure God out at times. Some of you may know the story of one of our students at RTS. His young son has been struggling with leukemia for a long time and it's up and down and one foot in the grave and two feet back in the land of the living up and down and up and down and a couple of months ago the young father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease of which his father just died a year or two ago. Now go figure I can't, I can't pretend to tell you I understand what God does, what God is doing in that family's life. It makes no sense to me at all. I have no explanation for you, but I marvel at how I see the grace of God in this family, how I see God as their shepherd walking through these dark days with them with His rod. And His staff providing them comfort that goes beyond human explanation, even when you think God is not there, even when you can't feel Him or sense Him and the darkness closes in around you so that you say in the language of Psalm 88 the darkness is my closest friend. Even there, God is there. He's with you, His rod and His staff to comfort you. You've just got to reach out by faith and believe and live with confidence even in the darkness. Not confidence in you, not confidence in our CEOs, not confidence in our government officials, not confidence in world leaders, but confidence in God, your shepherd and your host, because He'll provide you with the necessities and with direction, with purpose and with comfort. Now, remember I said the promises, He'll provide you everything you need and then some, where's the end then some coming from? Let's look at number E, number E, okay, letter E and abundance. Now we move to the shepherd's home and we're at His table. Notice how He says that He spreads a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Yes, there's trouble all around. But God provides us with a lavish spread table. Makes me think of Ant Rose and Uncle John. They weren't mine, they were everybody's in the congregation that I grew up in. Half an hour before any service back there where the, where Scott is sitting in that it was a pew, traditional church it was a pew. Half an hour before any service you find Ant Rose and Uncle John on their knees praying for the service, old Romanian couple. Well, they would have us over for dinner, Hungarians, Romanians were cousins. They would have us over for dinner and I remember once I brought a high school girlfriend with me and I said Jill, go slowly. Because she always served meat and potatoes, vegetables, ginger ale. If your cup went halfway down, guess what she wouldn't do. She wouldn't ask you, do you want more? What would she do? If your potatoes were gone, what would she not do? Ask you if you want more. What would she do? Meat, vegetables, until everything was, I said the Jill, go slowly, let others get stopped because Ant Rose won't stop. She provides, she spreads a lavish table. That's always been a picture to me of what your host is like. He spreads a lavish table. He anoints your head with oil. That sounds strange. How many of you would just love for me to come pour oil all over your head right now? Well, it's not our culture, but in their culture, let's say in our culture if somebody comes to your house for Thanksgiving, they've been driving for five hours and they get there a little bit late and they're tired and their air conditioner was broke. Before you have them sit down the table, you would say, would you like to go freshen up, right? That's what the oil was in their culture. The oil was a refreshment for them having come all this way to the host house on the journey. He provides them with this anointing oil which was much more like an aromatic perfume than it was Missola or Quaker State. So he spreads the table. He provides you the refreshment of this anointing oil and somebody please tell me is this cup half empty or is it half full? Okay, look at the text again. Somebody tell me is this cup half empty or is it half full? It's overflowing. It's neither half empty nor half full. So when we say, how do you see the cup half empty or half full? I see it half empty. I see it half full. God says I see it overflowing. It's neither of those. But you have to have the eyes of F-A-I-T-H. You've got to have the eyes of faith to seize. There's the and then some. He starts with the necessities. He takes you through direction and purpose and comfort and then he says, and then some I've gotten more where that came from. My brother is fairly well off financially. He has a daughter who had incurred some big expenses and she was concerned about that and my brother said to her, I've got closets full. Now literally he doesn't but what was he telling her? He didn't want her to be afraid that somehow he was going to run out of money and so he said, I've got closets full. There's more where that came from. You might look at your bank account and think there are limited resources. Yes? But God owns the cattle on a thousand hills which is a way of saying he owns everything. He, parents, have you ever wanted to give something to your children that you couldn't because you didn't have the resources? I'm sure you have because you have a parental heart. Well guess what God never struggles with. He never says I wish I could give it to them. I just don't have the resources. His cup is neither half empty nor half full. It's overflowing. You see, one promise to believe in you will have everything you need and then some because God is your shepherd and host and if you believe that trust me your work your week will be characterized by what's the word. Okay, we should be done right now. It's five after I said I was going to do the last one real quickly and so I'm going to now do it really, really quickly. How many affirmations to live by three? If you look at the song, there are three key I statements. One at the beginning, one in the middle, one in the end. What's the first I statement in the song? I shall not want. Let's put that positively. I have everything I need. Want by the way does not mean desire. See, sometimes we think good Christians don't want anything because doesn't the Salma say, who have I in heaven but you in being with you? I desire nothing on earth. So we think that good Christians don't want anything and that the way to true spirituality is to divest ourselves of all desire. That might be good Buddhism, but it is not good Christianity. God is the one who has given you desires. How many of you can go a week? Okay, at least men. How many of you can go a week without any sexual desires? How many of you can go a week without any desire for food? Desires are good. That's why Psalm 37 says, the light in the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart. Desires aren't bad. Desires are good when they're executed in a godly way under the godly authority of God. The affirmation is not I don't want anything. It's okay to want things. The affirmation is I don't lack anything. That's pretty different is it because God is my shepherd. I lack nothing. Look in the middle of the song. What's the middle effort? What's the middle eye statement? I will not fear. Let's put that positively. I live with courage. Courage is the opposite of fear because God is my shepherd. I lack nothing because God is my shepherd and host. I live with courage, a key component of confidence. Now, how many of you look out at the coming week and say there are things to be afraid of? There are. And I can't change that. That's on the outside. But as Scott was saying, we've got to get down on the inside. In spite of the fact that there are really things out there to be afraid of, we can say I live with courage. David, you know, the guy who killed Goliath, David, the guy who killed the lion, David said when I am afraid, aren't those comforting words? If David said when I am afraid, who else is allowed to say that? You're allowed to say it. It's okay. It's not unspiritual to say I am afraid. If you feel afraid, it's okay to feel afraid. It's human. God understands, but David didn't stay there. He said when I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God whose word I praise, in God I trust, I will not be afraid. He said, I feel it, but I'm not going to stay stuck there. I'm going to process my way through it and I'm going to live with courage because God is your shepherd and host. Promising you that you have everything you need and then some, you can not only live with what's our first word. Live with the sense that you will lack nothing but also live with courage. And here, what's the third eye statement all the way at the end? And with this we'll conclude. I will dwell. Finally, the affirmation, I will abide in God's presence. Regardless of whether the stock market is up or down this week, I will abide in God's presence. And notice that confident note, surely, surely goodness and mercy will follow me most of the time. No, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Doesn't that instill confidence, believing that you're going to be pursued by God's unfailing love every step of the way, even when those steps are in darkness? What a song. One promise. Do you think it would make a difference if you, before your feet hit the ground every morning, you said in your heart these three affirmations that God gives you in this song? You know it would. Believing this promise, living by these affirmations means we live a life of confidence because God is our shepherd and host and now I'll really conclude. Sorry, I'm a little bit long. I'll really conclude by saying, let's go back to the basketball story. Do you know why I lack confidence? It was my coach's fault. My coach was mean and critical just waiting for me to make a mistake and clobber me. And so since he was mean and critical, you see, it's really not my fault that I wasn't great. It was his fault, right? It wasn't my coach. It was my perception of my coach. I perceived my coach to be mean and critical, to being a guy who just was waiting for me to make a mistake so he could clobber me. And so I played very S-A-F-E-L-Y. We're still going to keep adverbs in our language. I played very safely. I played with great reserve. I didn't play with everything that I had because I didn't have confidence. And you're saying, what's this have to do with Psalm 23? And I would say everything. Because how many of us view God as our cosmic basketball coach? Just waiting for us to make a mistake so that he can clobber us. And if that's how we view God, we are not going to live with confidence and we may be good but we're never going to be great for him.
You see, God is not your cosmic coach. God is your good shepherd. And as we're going to celebrate in a moment, if I can finally quit. As we're going to celebrate in a moment, he has come as your shepherd and he's laid down his life for you so that now there's only a little bit of condemnation left for you when you make mistakes. A smidgen? What's Paul say? There is therefore now. Do you believe that? Do you believe that because Jesus' body was broken and his blood was shed, that there is now absolutely no condemnation for you. There is no cosmic coach waiting to beat you up if you make a mistake. As we have sung, there's only someone with his outstretched arms, five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary's tree, they pour effectual prayers, they strongly plead for me. Before give him, oh, for give, they cry, nor let that ransom center die. It's because of the Lord's supper that you can live with confidence now and forever. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. You know each one of us and you know those areas where we lack, you know those areas where we're afraid, you know those areas where we stray from your presence. And we thank you that there is forgiveness for all of that. And we rejoice in you, our great God and Savior, the great shepherd of our souls and the great host of the banquet. And we rejoice in you this day and we pray that your spirit would take your word and fill us with confidence in you for our living this week. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.