Commandment 4 Exodus 20:8-11
"Remember the Sabbath (shab-bawth') day by keeping it holy (qa-dash').
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
  • finding rest in a tempestuous world
    • busy
    • fatigue
    • fear
    • self
  • priorities
    • important (too who?)
    • urgent (too you?)
    • trust (in whom)
  • components of rest (as a sheep and If the Lord is our shepherd
    • The shepherd
      • Power: God is the most self limited person in the cosmos.
    • Lie down in green pastures
    • Beside still waters
    • The shepherd refreshes his sheep
    • His sheep will not want for restoration
    • righteousness for his names sake
    • we will not want for courage - the valley
    • the Rod and staff are comfort
  • results
    • banquet
    • head with oil
    • cup runneth over
    • goodness and mercy or love will follow me
    • dwell in the house of the Lord forever
Martha Martha
From Discover the Word   Notably Haddon Robinson


TEXT: Psalm 23
IDEA: If the Lord is your shepherd, you�ll not want for rest.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate the rest that God can bring into their lives.

I. The first verse of Psalm 23 is the key to the rest of the psalm.

The psalm is saying that if the Lord is your shepherd, then you will not lack for anything you really need.

The word that David uses for "Lord" is the Hebrew word Yahweh.

It is a sacred word to the Hebrews. They would not pronounce it in public meetings.

Yahweh was the one who not only created suns and stars and planets, but also brought the nation Israel into existence.

David is affirming that it is this mighty God who is personally involved in his life. What was true for David is true for Christians.

II. If the Lord is your shepherd, you shall not want for rest.

This is a picture of shepherd life in the Near East. Sheep often need rest, but they do not realize it.

The shepherd makes the sheep lie down in green pastures.

Sheep do not rest unless they are well fed.

Sheep do not rest if they are disturbed by some unexpected threat.

The shepherd not only leads the sheep to green pastures, but often moves among them to force them to lie down.

III. We often need rest, but we will not take it.

Sometimes we need physical rest.

All of us need spiritual rest.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that one of the things God does for His own is to allow them to enter into rest.

He is not talking about the sweet bye-and-bye, but the hard now-and-now.

We can enter into His rest when we realize that we have only one master to serve and only one person to please. That is the essence of faith.

------------------- IDEA: The shepherd refreshes his sheep.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate that the things we fear most are often used by the shepherd to refresh us.

I. Sheep often need refreshment, but they draw back from water.
After a long day in the wilderness, sheep are tired and thirsty. They need refreshment.
They may come to a river that has fresh cool water.
Sheep are afraid to get water on their wool. They realize instinctively that they can become waterlogged and sink beneath the stream. As a result, they draw back from the waters.
The shepherd takes his rod and pries loose some large stones and dams up a quiet place beside the river where the sheep are able to drink.

II. What a shepherd does for his sheep, our God does for us.
At times we look ahead to some situation that we dread. It resembles a rampaging stream. We are afraid.
We often look back on those situations and discover that out of the things we feared most the shepherd has brought spiritual refreshment.

III. Sheep often wander off from the flock and cannot find their way back.
The shepherd goes out to find the sheep and carries it back to the fold.
Occasionally a shepherd will have one sheep that constantly wanders off, and he continually goes out to bring it back. But there are times when a shepherd may break the leg of a sheep and then set the leg in a rough splint.
The sheep is helpless, and the shepherd carries him for several days.
When the sheep is able to walk, it is dependent on the shepherd. It cannot handle the obstacles that other sheep handle with ease.
But when the leg of that sheep is completely healed, it has learned an important lesson. It needs to stay close to the shepherd�s side.
------------------- IDEA: The Lord is your shepherd, and you as His sheep will not want for restoration.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand that God will do anything to bring us back to Himself and to help them understand the nature of the shepherd�s guidance.
The person who wrote the nursery rhyme "Little Bo-Peep" didn�t know much about sheep.

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn't know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they�ll come home,
Dragging their tails behind them.

I. In his experience, David knew God�s work as a shepherd in restoring him.
He committed adultery with Bathsheba and saw to it that Uriah her husband was killed in battle.
He lived in that condition for over a year. A baby was born to David and Bathsheba.
God sent Nathan to confront David about his sin.
In Psalm 51 David confessed his sin to God. But before David ever confessed his sin, God confronted David to bring him back to Himself.

II. The shepherd restores his sheep when it goes astray.

III. He also leads the sheep in the right paths.
There are many "paths" in the terrain of the Near East.
Some of the paths were made by the wind.
Some were created by robbers who wanted to rob the shepherd of his flock.
There were right paths, and the shepherd knew which paths to take.

IV. What the shepherd does for the sheep, God does for us.
We often feel the need for guidance. Life can be confusing.
God�s guidance is not primarily to a place but to a position in life.
His will for you is that in everything you give thanks.
His will for you is your sanctification, being set apart for a holy purpose.
If we are what we should be, then God has no trouble placing us where He wants us to be. He has made His will for us clear in Scripture
------------------- IDEA: If the Lord is our shepherd, we will not want for courage.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand that God sometimes leads us into difficult and dangerous places.

I. There is a comparison and a contrast between verse 3 and verse 4.
In verse 3, David is saying that God guides him, and in verse 4 he says that one of the places in which God guides him is the valley of deep darkness.
Early in the year the shepherd leads his flock in the lowlands. But when the snows melt, he leads them to higher ground.
To get there, he often has to take them through a threatening ravine with dangers on every side.
Yet the sheep does not have to be afraid because the shepherd is with him. How does the sheep know that? Because the shepherd has led him there.
There is also a contrast between verses 3 and 4.
In the first three verses, David talks about the shepherd, but in this verse he talks to the shepherd.
He turns a psalm of praise into a prayer.
Perhaps some threatening situation came to his mind, and with a chill in his heart, he turns to speak directly to God.

II. What a shepherd does for the sheep and God does for David, He also does for us.
We�d like to think that if we follow Jesus Christ, all of our meadows will be green and all our days will be sunshine.
But God�s purposes for us sometimes mean that we must go through the valley of deep darkness to get to higher ground.
------------------- IDEA: We need courage to trust the shepherd.

PURPOSE: To help listeners realize that courage is bound up in trust.

I. What kind of courage does a sheep need?
David says, "When I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I will not be afraid."
A sheep does not need courage to fight its enemies.
The most courageous sheep would be an easy victim to the smallest wolf.
A sheep needs courage to trust the shepherd.

II. What kind of courage does a Christian need?
We need courage to trust the Shepherd.
We fight against an enemy that is not made of flesh and blood.
We cannot fight this enemy on our own. The evil one is too clever, too powerful.
The Christian in the midst of spiritual danger needs to trust the Shepherd. As long as we know that the Shepherd is close by, we can go back to grazing again and that takes courage.

III. David says, "Your rod and your staff they comfort me."
The rod was a small club, usually about 2 feet long, with stones embedded in the wood.
The skillful shepherd could use it like a missle or as a weapon to beat off a predator.
The staff was the long stick with the crook at the top.
The staff used it to keep the sheep in line, or to rescue a sheep that had stumbled into a ravine.
Both the rod and the staff were emblems of the shepherd�s power. Undoubtedly they made enemies afraid.

IV. We can have comfort in dangerous situations when we realize that God�s power is at our disposal.
We often think of God�s power with awe, but not necessarily with comfort.
We may feel that God uses His power indiscriminately, like the gods of the ancient Greeks.

V. God�s power is always at the disposal of His love.
God is the most self-limited Being in the universe.
He cannot use His power apart from His love.
He cannot display His love apart from His holiness.
God has the power to do whatever His love demands.
------------------- IDEA: God�s provision for us in the future is plentiful.

PURPOSE: To help listeners be able to face the future with confidence and hope.

I. The psalm closes with the promise that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.
The word for follow is a military word. It means "they pursue us."
David says SURELY this will happen, because what God has been to him in the past he knows that God will be to him in the future.
So the shepherd goes before him and goodness and grace bring up the rear.
David can look to the future out of the assurance of what God has done for him in the past.
He will seek the house of the Lord, which means that he will seek out God�s presence in the temple.
This has come to mean what the rest of the Bible affirms: the Shepherd will take us safe home to the other side.
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