Is Christ Enough?

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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Christ as Shepherd and the Confession of Need

Sermon. In the life of the church, once it gets big, you find that you lose some connection, and you also find that you'll ask people, you know, like, oh, how long have you been here? And they'll be like, or even just assume they're new because you've never met them, and then they're like, oh, we've been here for two years, and you're like, oh, that's not good, but just enjoy the family that you have here at this time, too.

So we're glad to partner with Grace Fellowship, and it was glad to have you come and preach, and we'll be doing this from time to time, but it's our privilege, actually, to partner with you guys and to see a gospel, a point of the gospel to be planted somewhere in our city.

When we moved, when my wife and I moved here in 2006, that's one of the things that we thought right away is that Edmonton's actually very dark spiritually, and what we have been excited to see over the years is certain people come and plant churches, and so it's the heart of our church, becoming the heart of our church, to give you a little bit of a history of where fellowship is at.

Fellowship in 2030 will be 100 years old as a church, and in its history, I'm sorry to say, we've planted two churches, and that was the last one was planted 40 years ago, but praise the Lord. We have a plan to plant another church as well here in the coming years, and so the Lord is working everywhere that we turn around, and we're praising the Lord for that and praising the Lord for you as well and our friendship together.

Psalm 23 is a psalm that has has been a comfort to many. It's been stitched on a lot of pillows. It has been, if you're familiar with a lot of little, I'm trying to think of the website, Leah, you're on it all the time, but you go there, and there's little trinkets, and Psalm 23 is there.

It's on a cup, it's on a pillow, it's on a little embroidery, it's everywhere, and sometimes we lose the significance of it and even its place in this songbook, and when we think about Psalm 23, how many of you memorized it as a child?

Yeah, so a few of you. I did too. I told my mom this Mother's Day, I told her, I said, all the scripture that I ever quote to anybody, I learned because you made me memorize them, and so I'm glad that she did, and I remember this one as well, but from the outset, the very outset of this psalm, the sweet psalmist of Israel makes a declaration that I hope all of us come to one day, if not today, and in a day of spiritual deprivation, a day when we instinctively know and feel and even experience spiritual darkness and confusion, and it's easy for us to fixate on something and to think that something is being withheld from us.

We can look at another church and compare ourselves with them. We can look at another family and compare ourselves with them. We can look at somebody else's vocation and compare ourselves with them, and then we start thinking something good is being withheld from us.

It's easy for us to do that, but this psalm in particular is instructive for us, and even if we've never thought of it as something instructive, it is in the scripture for that purpose, to lead us to an understanding that we must come to, and I want you to notice that the Lord wasn't a mere generic shepherd to David.

He was David's very personal shepherd, and if you see there, he makes this declaration right from the beginning because he says, the Lord is whose shepherd? My shepherd. And he said, the Lord is my shepherd.

And as a result, David confidently confesses, I have everything I need. And that's really what we want to look at as we go through the psalm today, that truth, because God had covered all of David's needs.

He recognized that he was lacking nothing. And some Christians have trusted God to save them for eternity, but they don't have much confidence that God can provide that for them in history. And David's beautiful, poetic testimony here can help us in instill in us a confidence that God not only gives us what we need in the sense of our physical needs, but He gives us mostly what we need even in the deprivation of them.

And we'll look at that here in a second. But having declared the Lord to be his shepherd, David proceeds in the remainder of the psalm to explain how God meets his needs. And we see this starting in verse 2, as He makes us to lie down in green pastures, and He leads us beside still waters.

If you've walked with God very long, then you've experienced this, if you remember them. These times when you're in the middle of all of the stress, you find that God is there, and He gives you that rest and that peace.

Sometimes there's long periods between that, but you've experienced that. And this, I would say, is the part of the psalm that we love and enjoy. This is where we instinctively want to stay, right by the green pastures, right by the still, cool, clear water.

This is where we want to stay. We don't want to move on to anything else in the psalm because this is good enough. I'm going to say something here, and I want you to withhold judgment until the end. But if we say this, I believe that we're wrong.

And I believe that we need something more than green pastures and still waters. In our day of biblical confusion, many of us are told that this is the only place that God wants us. But then also, in that case, when we say, oh no, because we would say, oh, this is some kind of prosperity gospel when they say this.

But I want to say this, too. They're not wrong. Not the prosperity preachers, they're wrong. But they're not wrong to say that this is where God wants us, still waters, green pastures. But for now, this verse is the stitch in the pillow side of God's leadership and sovereignty in our lives as shepherds, as His sheep.

Restoration, Peace, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death

The second thing we see, though, is that He restores our soul. This is verse 3. He not only leads us to rest, but He brings us back to the joy of our salvation. You ever been in that place in your life where you're like, man, I want that joy back?

Sometimes, how many of you remember the day that God saved you, or at least the period of time? Do you remember this? It's okay, you can raise your hand. So you remember this, and you're like, you remember that joy and that exuberance, and then what happens?

Well, life happens. And all of a sudden, that joy wanes, and we're like, bring that back to us, and we want to live there. How many of you went to Bible camp growing up? Anybody? So you go to Bible camp a few times, and then you get this massive kind of mountaintop experience, and then you're like, I want to be there all the time.

I don't want to move on to something else. Certainly not a valley of death shadows. But God takes us there, and we'll see that in a minute. But how does He do this? How does He return us to back to the joy of our salvation?

Well, I would say that He does this by reminding us of the cross. There's a lot of people who don't understand what this means. It seems that we turn peace to mean something different, because how do you look to the cross and find peace?

Well, we know this by the gospel, but when we turn to this, we kind of think that if God is going to bring us peace, we think it's going to be the absence of strife in our life, and we find that it's not actually the way it is.

And this is, by the way, no surprise, because when the Lord Jesus actually comes, the angels come, and they sing this song to Him, and do you remember what they say? Peace on earth, goodwill to men, peace on earth.

And you remember in chapter 9 of Isaiah's prophecy, do you remember what He says there? That doesn't look like a lot of peace. The government's going to be on His shoulder, and we have all these things that are happening, but if we say peace on earth, do we see that today?

And the answer is no. We would say, are you kidding me? Not even in Jesus' day did He see this idea of peace being the absence of strife. It just doesn't seem that that's our experience. Well, the question is, what do we do with this?

What do we do with this? Well, I think we have to see verse 4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

This, I think, we know this seems to be more of our experience than still waters and green pastures. And sometimes, sometimes we do this to ourselves. You know, remember that He calls God His shepherd, which is a confession that He is His lamb, which is to say that we are sheep.

Now, sometimes when you look at the pillows and their stitching and stuff like that, you think you see the lamb there, and you think, this is us. We're sheep. How many have ever been near sheep? Okay, so it's not very flattering to be called sheep.

I'm just saying, it's not. I mean, I remember a friend of mine telling me a story about he went to Saskatchewan, a friend of his who had a sheep farm, and they're standing at the bottom of this little hill, and there's a tree at the top of the hill.

And he taps my friend on the shoulder, and he says, look up there, you see that sheep? He's up at the top of the hill, and he's standing by this tree. He says, look, he's looking down, and he sees all the sheep down there.

And he says, that sheep up there has no idea how to get down here. And it's true, and there's nothing impeding him. He just has to walk down the hill, but he's looking confused and anxious. And he says, I have to go up there and get that sheep and bring him down.

And so, when we think of the fact that we're likened to sheep, I don't want to say that God thinks we're idiots, all right? That's not what the Scripture's saying. But I do want us to understand that we get ourselves in a lot of trouble sometimes.

One of the words from Spurgeon helps us understand this. He says that a sheep is one of the most unwise creatures. It will go anywhere except in the right direction. It will leave a fat pasture to wander into a barren one.

It will find many ways, but not the right way. It would wander through a forest and find its way through ravines into the wolf's jaws, but never by its weariness turn away from the wolf. He goes on to say, it could wander near his den, but it would not instinctively turn aside from the place of danger.

And listen to what he says. It knows how to go astray, but it does not how to come home. Left to itself, it would not know in what pasture to feed in summer or where to retire in summer. In winter, sorry.

End quote. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like my own personal experience. It knows how to go astray, but it does not know how to come home. Again, an old Christian, you have to understand that the valley of death shadows does not always happen to us, but often it happens because of us.

Because of the residual of the old nature that we still are facing all the time, we find ourselves in a place where we know how to go astray, but we just don't know how to come home. But please understand something.

Our shepherd does not let us wander into harm. And I'll get there in a moment, but first, shepherds know the weakness of our flesh. Our shepherd knows this. Think about what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

He says,.

Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me, but he said, dear saint, listen to what he says. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfect. They're perfected in weakness.

Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weakness so that Christ's power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties for the sake of Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. We would stitch that last part on, when I am weak, then I am strong. Yes. But would we ever take pleasure in weakness and insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties?

Would we ever say that? But let's leave out the part, we would say, of the weakness and hardships and difficulties. And we would say, Lord, I don't want those. But Paul says, I'll glory in these. And then if you want to be more frustrated, look at James chapter 1, because in the first part of James chapter 1, he tells us to count all of these things as joy.

Are you kidding me? Count them all as joy. Okay, that's good. God is working something in me. And we resign ourselves to just say, okay, this is the way it's going to be. And one day it's all going to end, but we forget something here.

The Good Shepherd doesn't leave us or forsake us. That's why the psalm reminds us of, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

The Good Shepherd doesn't leave us. How then did we find ourselves in the valley of death shadows? Have you ever wondered what this rod and this staff being there is a comfort and why it was a comfort?

I would say that with some mystery about God's ways, that we need to understand that we didn't just wander away. We used to talk about this in this way when I was young, we called it backsliding. We would backslide, we would digress in our faith.

But I believe, I believe that the Bible teaches us that God never leaves us nor forsake us, which means that a lot of times we find ourselves in the valley of death shadows because He led us there. The shepherd wasn't just standing on the side, counting the sheep at the end of the day and saying, okay, there's Leah and there's Shane and there's Sam and there's Eden and there's, where's Tim?

Not again. But remember the rod and the staff indicate to us that God is with us, right in the middle of the valley of death shadows. He wasn't running into the valley there to rescue us. He was there because He led us there.

And how do you know that this suffering isn't just to make us miserable? Well, that isn't how God works. He's not the dad watching, waiting for you to mess up and then bang, He's going to correct you.

He isn't that kind of God. Fearing God is not being terrified that you're going to experience punishment. In fact, even the fact of even thinking that way helps us understand that this is not how God is.

Fearing God is not being terrified, but respecting and understanding His power to crush us and the fact that He doesn't, and in fact what He does is He takes all of our rebellion away. It's taken care of.

And you say, but it doesn't seem that this is going to make any sense. How does this work? God, I'm hurting and it doesn't seem like You care. And His rod and His staff, they comfort us. Son, I'm here.

You don't need to yell. I'm here. But it hurts. I know. I've already been here and I brought you here. What comforts me in the dark night of the soul, it's Him. It's not being brought out to the other side of green pastures and still waters.

It's actually knowing that while I'm there, He's there. And that no matter what happens, He's enough for me there. He's enough for me there. He's preparing a table before my enemies. He's anointing my head.

There's a feast that He's going to welcome me in. But not just a feast. He anoints my head with oil. And the language here is not just of something that you do in hospitality, but it actually, where it kind of gives the idea of refreshment, but there's something more that's happening here.

The word often is translated, as translated anoint, it also carries a suggestion of this symbolic act of initiation into a royal status. When He says He's going to be anointing our head before the dinner, this is what He's talking about.

And what does it mean? It means that He is going to bring us home. Remember what Spurgeon said? We have a hard time finding our way there. Guess who knows the way? It's Jesus. Guess who's guiding us there?

It's Jesus. He's bringing us closer. He's invited us to eat at the wedding feast. And when we get there, we realize that it's our wedding. How can this attention be given to me when Jesus is there? But remember the real, do you remember the real Lord's prayer?

He asks that we would be one with Him in the same way that He is with His Father. Make them one with Me as I am with you, He says. And this is what just seems to me to be so amazing. God is so invested in our joy because when we are most satisfied in Him, when Christ truly is enough for us, when you can say, I don't need anything else because I have Jesus, then that's when God is most glorified.

And then He says in verse 5, the end of verse 5, He says, my cup is overflowing. God doesn't just trickle grace on us, He lavishes us with it. Nothing in this world can satiate our thirst except for Jesus.

And this again does not mean that it is, it kind of overruns the brim of the cup, it means that He is actually enough, fully satisfied. You know, when we go to restaurants, sometimes we eat too much, right?

Anybody been there? Nobody's going to admit it. Okay, we eat too much, we go home, we don't want to complain because we got to eat at a restaurant, but we're, you know, we ate too much. And we think that we went there and we were lavished with food.

And we go home, and then what do we want to do? We want to sit down and snack on something else, right? But this is what we are, is because we just can't be satiated. We can go to a place, and it could be even a buffet.

And it's almost like we get there and we're disappointed when we leave, but not with Jesus. We are only fully satisfied in Him and in nothing else, nothing else. He says to us in the last verse, goodness and steadfast love will follow me all the days of my life.

And I want you to understand that goodness and steadfast love are not a what, but a who. And don't miss this, the Good Shepherd promises Himself goodness and steadfast love. All of this flows from His promise of Himself to be with us.

It's a promise that's flowing from His cross, a pardoning mercy, a protecting mercy, a sustaining mercy, a supplying mercy. And also nothing, nothing can follow it, but understand that it follows us. In all places, in all conditions of life, it or rather He is always with us, and He pursues us and leads us until we get all the way home.

This is His promise. And the last part I want us to understand is that we'll be forever with Him. You know, you ever think about what it's going to be like to be in heaven? We think that sometimes we get to heaven, and it'll be like, wow, look at the golden streets.

Look at the pearly gates. Look at the mansions on a hilltop, as the old song says, right? And we just can't wait, because it's going to be crazy. Like we read Isaiah chapter 6, and there's this throne room scene, and there's these seraphims, and there's these wings, and they're flying around, and we're going to be like, wow, this is amazing.

There's a song out there that came out a long time ago, I think they made a movie after it now. Can you, you know, we can only imagine. It's true. We can only imagine, because the Scripture tells us there's no eye has seen nor ear heard of the things that await for us from heaven.

But we can't possibly imagine what we're going to see, but I do know one thing for sure, is the one thing that we want when we get there is going to be the one person who has led us there, and that's Jesus.

He is the one. He is the shepherd that's going to lead us there. The reward of heaven is Him, and we can not even contemplate or comprehend what that joy is going to be like. We can't imagine it, but I do know that the Bible says that we'll see Him face to face, and when we get there, He'll be the one we've always wanted.

But there's the thing, and the psalmist knows this experience, and he's being supplied with what he needs, rest, clear water. Remember, Jesus says, you know, the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.

He's the one who actually is Lord over our rest. Also, He says, come to me, all you who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. But also, John 4, Jesus is the water that we drink of that we'll never thirst anymore.

He is the one who comforts us. He is the one who leads us in and through and someday out of the valley of death's shadows. He's the one who doesn't leave us or forsake us. He's the one who is preparing a table for us and lavishing us with drink, and He is the one who, because of all of His promises towards us, is going to be the one who follows us and guides us all the way home.

And here's the thing, we're not just waiting for it to happen, like we have to just grit our teeth here until we get to heaven. He is here now. He is with us because He promised He wouldn't leave us. He is our supply.

He actually is our enough right now. So if I stand hungry, thirsty, beaten, mocked, persecuted, struggling, I have to question not, where is my supply? I have to question, but even now in all of this, is Christ enough for me?

You can actually read of the saints since 2 ,000 years of history, Fox's Book of Martyrs, read Bonhoeffer's story sometime. It doesn't matter where they are. You know what they realized is that when everything around them was taken away, they still realized that they had everything.

They realized that, I lack nothing. Why? Because Jesus never left them. Because Jesus was their food, was their drink. Jesus was their possession, as you mentioned earlier. The field that was bought so that the was there could be had.

Christ was enough. Christ was enough for them. The question is, whatever you're going through today, is Christ enough for you? You say, but what if my situation never changes? What if there's never any green pastures and clear waters?

What if it's only for all that God has for me is a valley of death shadows? Well, let me encourage you not to fear any evil there, for you know that He is with you. We will find often in our life that we feel like we don't have enough or that God is keeping something from us, but I can promise you it's never true.

You say, but I think I need these things. Do you know that God will give you every good thing that you need? And if you don't have it, it's because He knows you don't need it. That's hard to come to grips with sometimes, but we need to say with the psalmist that it is enough for me to know that God is my shepherd.

Sure, sometimes He makes me to lie down in green pastures and leads me beside waters of rest, and He restores my soul for His namesake, and He leads me by right paths, but we also need to know that even though I walk through the valley of deep, deep darkness, that you don't have to fear evil because Jesus is with me.

The good shepherd, His rod and His staff, they comfort me, and in the valley of death shadows is often where we start to understand what it means to be invited to the wedding supper, to know that He's preparing a table before us, even in the presence of our enemies, that He is anointing our head with oil, and that our cup of goodness overflows, and we should know that only goodness and steadfast love will follow us all the days of our life, and that we're going to return to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The psalmist wrote this song in the middle of several different messianic psalms. One of the most excruciating of those psalms was the one right before this. You say, nobody knows what I'm going through, but our Savior went through the darkest of death of valleys, so that when we go through them, He's with us.

He went through the valley Himself and experienced it already, and that's why when He says, you're already there, you led me here, I can trust you here. So I want to know from you, is it enough to know that God is your shepherd, even if everything doesn't go the way we thought?

Is it enough to know that Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, is with you, and that no matter what happens, nothing can change that? As He says, only goodness and mercy or steadfast love are going to follow me all the days of my life, and then there's a promise we're going to dwell with the Lord forever, forever.

Is Christ enough for you? Can you say with the psalmist, it's enough for me to know that Christ is my shepherd? If you're like, I don't know, I don't really understand how to get there, you can talk to us.

You can talk to Pastor Shane or Sam. If you've never experienced this, I encourage you to, but I can tell you right now in my life, I have a long story I could tell you, but I know that in the darkest times, that's when I learned these truths, that God is preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

He's anointing my head, bringing me into His family, my cup overflows even in the darkest of times. It's enough for me to know, and I hope it is for you too. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for giving us Jesus.

God, we thank You that we have experienced gain and we've experienced loss, and just like Job said, you give and you take away, but blessed be Your name. And Father, over time, we realized that it is better to be without some earthly things.

Lord, that we would have the one thing that matters the most, which is Jesus. Father, I pray that for those that are struggling even tonight with loss, with hardship, in a valley of death shadows, Lord, would they feel the comfort of Your rod and Your staff.

God, would they be filled with an understanding, Lord, that You are lavishing grace on them, even in the middle of the hardest time in their life. And may they come from that, Lord, being able to know with confidence that it's enough for them to know that You're their shepherd.

So, God, I pray this, Lord, so that You would be glorified and that Your people would experience joy in You. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Finally, you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca. We pray that you have been blessed by this recording. God bless you, and we hope to see you soon.