Book of Psalms - Psa. 23, vv. 1-2

We're gonna be in Psalm 23 today. This is a Psalm, as I was just saying, that I can teach through the entire six verses of this

Psalm and get a lot out of it in 15 minutes flat. However, I am not going to try and rush through this one.

I know that I can do it in 15 minutes flat because I've taught this a hundred times for Tradeway.

And there's a lot of entrepreneurial risk type stuff in it. The entrepreneurial journey is depicted in Psalms 23 verses one through six, but that's not gonna be our focus today.

We'll have some of that in here. My hope is that we will slow way down and get a lot out of this

Psalm. We have been looking at some of these past Psalms which showed a progression of Jesus's work, right?

And he came to earth, he fought a good fight here on earth and vanquished his foes.

And then he had the final sacrifice on the cross. And it was just like the pinnacle of the battle.

And we observed his thoughts on the cross and it was pretty powerful.

That was Psalm 22. Psalm 23 has got a very different tone because Psalm 22, you see our

Lord literally being tortured psychologically on the cross. Here we see

David speaking of peace and tranquility and how life is just amazing, but that's because of the finished work of Christ.

And so what we're gonna look at today is we're gonna go through Psalm 23 and we're gonna look at how the finished work of Christ in conjunction with the responsibility of man, how they work together to provide an abundant life.

I don't know that we'll get through all six verses because we're gonna really slow down and try to get a lot out of it, but maybe we will.

We'll see. So let's get started.

We're getting a little bit of a late start. So maybe that'll make it where we'll have to split this one into two different weeks.

We'll see. But it starts out with, the Lord is my shepherd.

Now this is a Psalm of David. It says that in verse 23, one, Psalm of David. So we know that David is the one who wrote this

Psalm. David did not write all the Psalms. The Psalms span over a thousand years. The very first Psalm being written by Moses.

This one is written by David though. So the Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want. As we walk through this Psalm, what I want you to do is to make these words your words.

I want you to think of this Psalm as if you are the one saying it, all right? And I'm gonna do the same up here.

So the Lord is my shepherd. If the Lord is my shepherd, what's that make me?

A sheep. And sheep are funny creatures. There's a lot of interesting things about sheep that when you learn about these things, you go, oh, that's why

God used sheep as an analogy so often for us. One of the first things you can learn about sheep is that they are relational creatures.

They have to have a flock. I think of Ben and Ashton's chickens because they do much better in a flock.

For a while, they had the one chicken at their house and that one chicken was always sitting up at the window because she wanted to be near other beings.

The starlight, is that right? Moonlight, moonlight. Moonlight was always at the window and you still have moonlight, right?

Yeah, so she's an old chicken now, but she was always sitting at the window while they would eat at the table and stuff.

She needed to be around others. And so when they got other chickens, she doesn't stand at the window so much anymore because she's got her other chickens that she can run around with, but she's a very relational creature.

Sheep are the same way. That's why we call them flocks, right? You got a flock of chickens, you got a flock of sheep.

And it's interesting that God uses these relational creatures as an analogy for us.

The popular stereotype of a sheep is that they're docile, passive, and unintelligent, and even timid.

But according to Wellbeing International, research on their behavior shows that they have quite a high level of cognition.

Their personality reveals that they are complex, individualistic, and social.

That sounds a little bit like people, right? They are very complex. They each have their own individual personalities.

And yet we do better in the company of others, typically. We need the company of others.

That's why God said it's not good that man should live alone. Some studies have even revealed that sheep experience emotions like anger, boredom, and happiness.

They get sad when they lose a friend, and apparently they exhibit evidence of anxiety over other sheep.

And think about that. I've never tried to raise sheep. I wish I'd had an opportunity to talk with Brother Bill a little bit more about the sheep that he was raising.

I did talk with him a little bit about it because Miss Pam had given me a book called

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. And so I was reading through Psalm 23 from a shepherd's point of view, and I learned a lot about sheep in that book.

But at that time, I was sharing some of what I learned with Brother Bill, and he was always like, yep, yep, they're a lot like that.

I do remember him saying that sheep were very dumb. And also at the same time, very intriguing.

He mentioned that the biblical account or the biblical analogy was pretty much spot on for us.

Sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and they run from the voice of others.

There's a relationship that happens between a sheep and its shepherd, which is an interesting thought if you think about it, because if we're like sheep, and the scripture says all we like sheep have gone astray, he has turned everyone to his own way.

The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It means even though we're sheep and we tend to follow the shepherd, we are made,

I should say, to follow the shepherd, we tend not to follow the shepherd. We're designed to do it, and yet we don't do it.

We tend to run away. And are led astray. And so because of that, you have to ask yourself, well, what leads you astray?

If the sheep do not spend enough time with the shepherd, because they are relational beings, they will be drawn to other voices.

Think about that for a second. If they're drawn to other voices, they will follow the other voice, which means the other voice becomes the shepherd.

There are not all good shepherds out there. There's only one that is the truly good shepherd, and that is our

Lord. John chapter 10, verses 26 through 29 say, but ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. It's interesting because we have here the concept of relation, right, relationship.

My sheep hear my voice, which means there's proximity, right, a nearness, where they are within earshot of the shepherd.

The shepherd knows them, so there's the relationship. And then they follow me, which there's the responsibility.

The sheep is supposed to follow. Verse 28 says, and I give, and this is in John chapter 10, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my

Father's hand. All right, so we have sheep are relational. We're supposed to be relational.

We were made for that. So isolation isn't good. Being a separatist from other humans, not good.

We tend to, some of us, we will get where we're like, you know, this world,

I'm done with this world. You know, I'm done with it. I'm not gonna be around people anymore.

I'm just gonna be a hermit. We can get that way. And the worse the world gets, the more we wanna be that way.

But what's interesting is that we're not built for that. Now, does that mean we should just go have a relationship with the world?

Not necessarily. Well, maybe necessarily, but the relationship should not look the same as the relationship that we have with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

But we are made to have a relationship with the world. It just looks a little different. All right, the second thing about sheep is that they are prone to follow.

Now, this is really interesting to me because it shows just how dumb a sheep can be, but also just how strong the tendency it has or the instinct it has to follow is.

One farmer said that if you have a bunch of sheep in a barn, you can stretch a rope across the door of the barn before you let them out.

So you just stretch a rope across the door, kind of low. When the sheep come out of the barn, the first sheep will jump over the rope.

If you then cut the rope, the remaining sheep will continue to jump over the rope that's not there because the first sheep did it.

So the second sheep sees the first sheep jump, so the second sheep jumps. And they will continue to jump over the invisible rope because that's what the rest of the flock is doing.

That's pretty stupid if you ask me. But oh my goodness, can we see why

God compares us to sheep? Because we are very much like that. Oh, well, everybody else is doing it. Oh my goodness.

And in fact, it's to the extreme. They will do it to their own harm.

This was reported in 2005 by Fox News on July 8th. Here's the report.

First, one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned

Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1 ,500 other sheep followed the first, each leaping off the same cliff, according to Turkish media reports.

In the end, 1 ,500 sheep leapt off a cliff because the one in front of them did it.

450 animals dead at the bottom of the cliff.

But 1 ,500 jumped. The others survived because the pile of sheep got so high that it cushioned the fall.

How wild is that? And they just kept going. And the shepherds couldn't stop them.

They were in the zone. They were just, they were so focused on what every other sheep was doing.

They didn't listen to the shepherd and they all leapt to their death. Well, towards their death, right?

Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned. Wow. And then, of course, what

I just quoted a minute ago in Isaiah, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the

Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's the second thing about sheep.

Now think about that. That's a great depiction of how people are. We will get so wrapped up in what the rest of the world is doing that we will stop listening to our master.

Number three, sheep are not load -bearing animals. So let's talk about what a sheep is not for a second.

They are not meant to carry a heavy load. And yet the

Lord relates us to sheep. What does that tell us about ourselves?

We were not meant to carry a heavy load. Can we carry more than we think we can? Absolutely.

We sure can. And by the way, while sheep were not meant to carry a heavy load, there are some farmers who will make them carry a load.

There are some farmers who will train them to pull a sled. There are sheep that are, in some ways, misused.

Psalm 55, 22 tells us, "'Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.

"'He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.'" We're supposed to not carry that load.

We're supposed to give it up to the Lord. Let Him carry it. A fourth thing about sheep, they're very valuable.

They've always been considered valuable. Isn't that interesting? Shepherds used to risk their lives in order to save the flock.

David wrestled a bear and fought a lion in order to keep his flock safe.

I mean, that's a pretty big risk, if you think about it. So to Jesus, of whom

John said, "'Behold, the Lamb of God, "'who takes away the sins of the world.'" And Isaiah said, he was a lamb led to the slaughter.

We saw this in the last chapter, by the way, when we looked at the thoughts of our

Lord as He hung on the tree. He is the shepherd, but He risked His life by becoming the

Lamb. He did this to save His flock. Now, we're like those sheep that are jumping to our death.

And we needed one of the sheep to stop and tell us, wait, don't jump.

But there were no sheep to do that. So the Lord became a sheep.

Think about that. Like He entered into our world and He became one of us to say, stop it.

You are jumping to your death. A fifth thing about sheep.

They are very productive. Every day in every season, a sheep will produce its wool.

It just keeps on producing and nothing stops it. In fact, just so the sheep will not just become this ridiculous ball of fur that's just stuck on its own wool, it is often sheared by the shepherd.

They are very fruitful day in and day out. What are we called to do? Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it and have dominion over it.

A sixth thing about sheep is that they are defenseless. They're pretty much at the bottom of the food chain.

They're very, very close to the bottom at least. You might say the grass is at the very bottom because that's what they eat, but they are just above grass and that's about it.

The only thing that a sheep can do to defend itself is run away. And when they get caught, they kick, but their legs are not very strong.

Remember, they're not designed to carry a load. They're not a load bearing animal.

So sheep are pretty much born to be eaten. I mean, unless of course they are protected by the shepherd.

And that's exactly what will happen with them. They will either be eaten or they'll be protected by the shepherd.

We too are powerless against the world, the flesh and the devil. Without the shepherd, we would be destroyed.

A seventh thing about sheep. Sheep will settle for less.

Apparently, a sheep will stop to drink dirty water even when there is clean water nearby.

Because there's water right here. I'll settle for this. It's water. Even if there's like a puddle, just like a little, a river just feet away.

Here's the puddle. I'm gonna drink out of the puddle instead of the river. Another thing that shows how dumb a sheep is, right?

A sheep can have a full trough of food and will run away from its trough of food when it sees someone carrying a pail that it thinks has the same food in it.

Oh, that must have food. I'm gonna go after that. Even though they can't tell for sure, they'll leave their abundance of food to go after a lack of food.

They will leave their abundance to chase after lack. Wow, that's a profound thought.

Because we are sheep. We tend to settle for less than what

God has provided for us. He came that we might have life more abundant. He provides conditional promises and gives us the capacity to pursue those promises.

Yet we avoid the pursuit because we've listened to the other voices that cause us to think the pursuit of abundance is evil or wrong.

The pursuit of abundance is only wrong if your pursuit comes from a heart of greedy gain.

But how can we expect the people around us to believe that we serve an abundant, loving father while we walk around looking famished and impoverished?

That's an interesting thought. I had never had that thought before until I heard Myron say it to a group of probably unbelievers.

It was an interesting thing he said at one of his events that Noah and I attended.

I think he feels a responsibility to show people how good the father is by activating the promises the father has given him.

Like, I'm gonna go do everything that God told me to do and they're gonna see that it works because he is a loving father.

What a simple and yet profound way to look at life. Because we have a responsibility to show how good

God is in our lives. He is good to us. We know he's good.

But often we'll walk around as if life's so hard and it can be.

But there's a reason why God tells us not to let our countenance drop. There's a reason why he tells us to be joyful.

Again, I say rejoice, right? Because while life is hard,

God's a lot tougher than life. And he takes our load and we get through life.

I think when we look back on our lives, we tend to go, oh wow, like God really took care of me there and it could have been so much worse.

We tend to do that sometimes. And then we might have a few fleeting moments of thankfulness.

But a lot of times Christians will not be thankful in the moment. And what does that say about the father we say we serve?

Like we gotta show people we trust him. Does that mean your life should just be easy? No, but it does mean your life is a lot easier than it had to be.

Like your life, as hard as it can get, and I've known some great Christians who've gone through some pretty crazy, terrible things, they would tell you that it could have been a lot worse.

I think the key to this first phrase in Psalm 23 is found in the name used for the shepherd, the

Lord. What do we see here? The Lord is my shepherd.

God's sovereignty. He is the shepherd. He shepherds, he guides, he cares for, he leads, he feeds.

And yet you also see man's responsibility because he should yield to the shepherd as Lord.

Both are pictured right there in that first phrase. The Lord, that shows that we have a responsibility to yield, is my shepherd.

That shows us that he is gonna do all the taking care of. So the responsibility of man, sovereignty of God, perfectly joined together in the very first phrase.

What is the result of a relationship where man yields to the shepherding of our

Lord? I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want. Now, many people mistakenly interpret this word want as a type of covetousness, right?

Like I'm not going to be covetous because I've got the Lord shepherding me. That's not what this means at all.

It actually just means I, it means I shall not lack. The word want here means lack.

When man is yielding to his shepherding Lord, he will lack nothing in his life.

Nothing good anyway. Might lack a whole lot of bad. That'd be great, wouldn't it? This is because the

Lord is the good shepherd. But remember, a sheep settles for less, which is why we get a look into how the shepherd provides so much good.

That's what we're going to look at next, okay? So verse one, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

How does all that work? Verse two gives us the answer. He maketh me to lie down.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Now remember, what am

I? I'm a sheep. What do sheep do in pastures, green pastures?

They eat and apparently they sleep. So isn't it interesting that a sheep finds rest in its food?

Think about that. That's what the pasture is. It's its food. That's where it eats, but that's also where it finds rest.

In the green pastures. It only finds that rest because the Lord makes it go there.

Otherwise it would settle for a less than green pasture. One of the things I learned in the book that I was reading that Ms.

Pam gave me was, sheep are considered the animals with the golden hooves.

Remember I said a sheep is valuable? If a sheep is properly cared for, and if it's following its shepherd, it will make everything around it better.

If the soil becomes enriched, the grass becomes greener, but in order for that to happen, a sheep has to always be on the move.

A shepherd has to guide the sheep around the pastures and not leave it in one place for too long because if a sheep is left to its own devices for too long, it will absolutely destroy the land completely.

It will look destitute, and the sheep will stay in that destitution until it is led away from the destitution by its shepherd.

Wow, are we ever sheep or what? What we're gonna see in this

Psalm is exactly that concept that the sheep, or David here, is in a great place.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.

That sounds like a great place, right? But next is, he restoreth my soul and leadeth me down the paths of righteousness.

Like he's gonna take us away from that place, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll come back to that in a minute. But you see, the sheep is gonna always be on the move.

I think it's interesting that a sheep finds rest in its food. Colossians 3, 15 through 16, if you wanna turn there with me real quick,

I wanna look at another passage that would seem unrelated at first. When do we rest?

At night, when else? Sometimes we rest during the day, nap time. When we're tired?

What about when something is attacking our property, or when someone is attacking our family?

We're certainly not resting then, right? If somebody's attacking our community, or if there is work to be done, and we go to battle in the workforce, we're not resting.

We tend to rest in times of peace, right? When the work is done, when the battle is won.

Peace and rest are often seen as two of the same thing, right, two, one and the same.

I don't know how I meant to say that, but in Colossians, read this, and let the peace of God, this is verse 15,

Colossians 3, verse 15, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you're called in one body and be ye thankful.

My question is, how can peace rule? We think of peace as just being something that's there.

How does it rule? All right, now hold onto that thought right there,

Pop, because that's gonna be important. You can choose peace over agitation or hate or anxiety, right, that's gonna be important in a minute.

But how does it rule though? How does it? Okay, so like, in other words, if you're trusting

God, says Matt, then there's a type of lordship going on there where it's ruling over you, is that what you're getting at?

Okay, so Matt's saying if you're really truly trusting God, it will lead to peace, is what you're saying.

All right, so then my question would be, how do you trust God? How do you truly trust

Him? What's that, Ashton? Through the Holy Spirit, that gives you the ability to trust, and the

Word. Spirit and the Word work together, and that gives you the ability to trust in Him. Watch this, the word for peace in this

Colossians verse, actually is speaking of a peace from God, or the

Messiah's peace. It means the way that leads to peace, often referred to as salvation, right?

But a way that leads to peace. Now, that sounds a little different than just the concept of peace by itself.

Wouldn't you agree? So if you say, oh, and by the way, the word rule here means to be an umpire, okay?

So you could read this as, and let the way that leads to peace of God be an umpire in your hearts.

All right, so that's a different way you could say this verse. Let the way that leads to the peace of God be an umpire.

Look at the very next verse in that Colossians thing. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

If the way that leads to peace is a reference to salvation, that indicates the spirit within you.

And the very next verse joined up with it is let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

And by the way, Jesus was the word, right?

And the word became flesh. And you have his spirit within you. And what was it

Paul said that the Gentiles did? Like they have the word written on their hearts. So like, when the word of God dwells in you richly in all wisdom and teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the

Lord, notice that the scripture in Colossians joins the idea of the spirit and the word and it brings rest or it brings peace.

In our Psalm 23 chapter, we have the spirit or the shepherd leading us and making us lie down, have rest in green pastures, which is where our food is.

But man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

So our rest is with the spirit in the word. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

We will have peace if we will make our bed to be in the green pastures of scripture. He leadeth me beside the still waters.

Now this is where what Pop said is gonna come into play. So leadeth means to carefully guide, right?

So this Lord who is our shepherd, he carefully guides us beside the still waters.

The word for beside means like on the grounds of.

Now let me ask you, the still waters, what does that sound like to you?

Sounds like peace, still waters, it's peaceful. Cool, and if the

Lord is taking me to the grounds of the still waters, does that mean

I'm in the still water? No, I'm just,

I'm near it, I'm beside it. What's interesting is when you are in the word and you are walking through life and you are asking the spirit to guide you, guess where he'll guide you?

He'll guide you down the way that leads to peace. But then you still have a responsibility.

Do you partake of the still waters? Or do you then choose not to listen to the spirit and to start going your own way like a sheep?

That says, oh, look, a puddle. Let's go to the puddle instead.

Instead, we could have the crystal clear water that God provides for us, or we can go to the dirty, muddy water because I like dirty, muddy water too, why not?

You have a thought? What? We'll bring our own trouble to the still waters, huh?

Take what could be a peaceful situation and just bring our own muddy bodies to it, or something.

That's a good thought there. But I think it's interesting that when you read through this and you read what the words mean, there's a clear picture of the sovereignty of God that leads us to a potentially abundant, peaceful life.

He's constantly leading us there. The shepherd goes out and he'll leave the 99 to grab the one and bring us back.

And by the way, the word for leadeth here is an imperfect word, which means it's continually happening, it never ends.

So he's constantly going and grabbing us and bringing us back to the still waters and going out and grabbing us and bringing us back to the still waters.

And we keep running over to the puddle and saying, look at the muddy puddle. I'm gonna go drink in the muddy puddle.

No, come back over here. And he brings us back, and yet then we still have a responsibility.

You got the sovereignty of God going out and grabbing us, and then you have the responsibility of man to partake of the still waters, to eat of the green pastures.

One of the most profound things I have heard this year was something that Matt said he and his dad were talking about.

I love this. I don't know if you remember this, Matt, but they were talking about how when you are sick, sometimes you have to force feed a sick person, right?

You gotta force feed them so that they have something that they can fight the sickness with. And what's interesting is as a

Christian, if you get out of the word long enough, it's hard to get back into it because your spirit gets sick enough where I don't feel like eating.

I don't feel like munching on the word of God right now. And so you have to force feed it for a while.

And if you'll force feed it the word, it will give your soul something to fight the sickness off with until eventually you're able to heal from the sickness.

And then you get your appetite back, right? And all of a sudden it's like, hey, you know what? I kind of like this food.

And if you eat on food long enough, your tummy's gonna expand. You're gonna want more of that food, aren't you?

Now that might be bad from a physical sense, but from a spiritual sense, expand that spiritual tummy as much as you can.

Eat as much as you possibly can. Get fat on the word of God where you'll want more and you need more.

I have watched that happen with Ben and Ash big time over the last five years, especially, but like, man, it's really cool to watch, you know?

And you get where you need it. I can remember a time in college,

I was telling Tyler about this yesterday when he and I were driving in the car, going to a soccer game, went to watch

Finn play soccer yesterday. I was telling Tyler about what Matt and his dad were talking about and I told him,

I've actually experienced that dynamic. And in college, freshman year,

I felt spiritually sick and I went to the bell tower on college campus every single day and I force fed myself scripture for a while.

And it got to the point where that's all I wanted to do.

I'd just sit out at the bell tower and read my Bible. And then I got where I felt like I was better.

And then I thought, well, I'm all right now. So let's go try and live life a little bit.

And I can remember distinctly, I had a PlayStation 2 that Pop had won for me at a

Radio Shack thing and I had it in the dorm and I hadn't played it in a while and I love video games.

I love playing video games. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna play some video games and I started to play those video games and it wasn't a bad game or anything, but it just wasn't as fun as sitting at the bell tower, reading the

Bible all of a sudden, it was weird. And I was like, well, I mean, I'm having fun,

I guess, but man, I wonder what the next verse says. So I put it down, I went back out to the bell tower,

I got where I had an appetite for the word. If the word of God is like that, if it's like a green pasture and we're like a sheep,

God has made us to lie down in the green pastures. He gives us rest in his word.

But sometimes when we get full on food, we stop eating and we'll get busy with life.

And have you ever gotten busy with life and forgotten to eat, like missed a meal? We can do that in our spiritual life.

You can get so busy that you forget to go and feed on the word of God. And at first, it doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I didn't even get a headache, I guess I wasn't hungry. Right, go to bed, I'm all right. Next day, got a lot done yesterday,

I should do a lot again today. Get a lot done, miss another meal. Do that physically for a while and we'll start losing weight.

And eventually, if you just keep doing it, you might start getting a little anemic. Can happen spiritually as well, miss some spiritual meals.

You get where, it didn't affect me that much yesterday. I got a whole lot done, let's do a whole lot again today.

And eventually, you'll miss enough meals where you'll start getting sick and not even realize it. You ever notice how sickness almost creeps up on you?

Like that happens, sickness can creep up on you. Where, I felt fine yesterday and today,

I feel like just staying in bed. But if you really thought about yesterday, you might have had like a little tickle in your throat or something.

That can happen spiritually, just like it can happen physically, it can creep up on you. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

He leadeth me beside the still waters. God will take you to the place of peace. He will take you to the place of rest.

He will take you down the straight and narrow and he will constantly go out and grab you.

When you come back, if you don't partake of the green pastures, if you don't enjoy the still waters, then you're not gonna have the peace.

We're almost out of time. So I guess we'll stop with the first two verses. I didn't expect to go that slow.

Sorry, I've got the other notes, but that's okay. We'll get a lot more out of this as we go slowly through Psalm 23.

There's a whole lot of great risk return type stuff and the entrepreneurial journey.

We might throw a little bit of that in there, but there's too much other great stuff that we can get out of it.

So, if you are in a place right now in your spiritual walk where you feel like things are pretty good,

I'll leave you with this thought. It's once things are pretty good spiritually that it's almost time to move.

And I don't mean like physically get up and change cities or anything like that. I mean, the Lord is going to move you somewhere else in your spiritual walk.

And that's what we see in this Psalm is that he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul. We'll talk next week about what that means. But then he leads you down the paths of righteousness.

Means he's going to take you away from that really great place of contentment because you can't just be the sheep that's always in the same spot or you will make destitute the area that you're in.

He's got to move you. He's got to take you to another place. And then you can be the animal with the golden hooves and make everything great around you.

So be looking, walk circumspectly, right? That redeeming the time for the days are evil.

In other words, look for opportunity to do something for the

Lord. Look for where he's leading you next. If you keep your eyes on him, he's always on the move.

He's always walking. The shepherd leads. He doesn't just sit. He's going to take you to the next pasture.

And guess what? This one that's been so great and green and wonderful and you've had still waters, it's not going to stay great where you are.

It feels like it will because God led you to it. It has to be great. I should stay here because he led me here.

But just like manna that came from heaven, the Israelites were supposed to only take enough for that day because it didn't stay great.

He had to provide the next day. And that's what the Lord's going to do with us as his sheep.

He's going to lead us to yet another green pasture and other still waters. But if we stay here too long, we're going to muddy the water.

We're going to eat all the grass and there's going to be nothing left for us here in our current spiritual state.

As awesome as it is right now, as much fun as you're having, feeling the peace and the rest that you've had where you are in your spiritual walk right now, it's nothing compared to what you're going to experience next, but you're going to have to leave the comfort zone to see what he has for you next.

So that'll be our first two verses of Psalms 23.

We'll get to the next two or maybe the next four and finish the chapter next week.

Any other thoughts as we wrap it up? Learned a lot about sheep today.

All right. Noah, would you mind praying for us and dismissing us? Thank you, sir.