Description
iPsalms
Presence
By Lisa Young
Transcripts
Welcome, Flavour Sisterhood! Yay! We are here for our final installment of iPsalms. I have bitter-sweet thoughts about that because on the one hand, I love seeing things come to conclusion, but then on the other hand, I’m like, shoot! It’s over. But it’s not really over because every week we have something spectacular at FLavour. But for iPsalms we’re going to conclude tonight with probably one of the most popular psalms. I guess I’ve always said that, one is better than the other, but this will truly be probably be the most popular psalm. And I’m talking about Psalm 23.
So, before we get into that, I want to say hello to all our different campuses and environments that are joining us, and we’re so excited about tonight. And I know you have a lot of fun stuff going on right there in your room. And so we connect with you and are just thrilled to death to be sharing time in God’s Word together. So, let’s get started with Psalm 23. And I’m just going to start by reading it and you can follow along in your Bible, if you have it with you. Please, please, please open it. If not, there’s a scripture card for you. Psalm 23:
The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
3 He restores my soul;
He guides me in paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
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.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Psalm 23. Many of us memorized that as a child if you grew up in Sunday school. I know I that was one of the things that we did when I was little. I could not give it to you verbatim right now, but I can definitely remember certain parts and could give it to you but reading it and understanding it is just a beautiful thing. What I studied in preparing for this, you know, we talked throughout all the iPsalms series about the different writers of the books that we’ve gone over. We’ve talked about David wrote a majority of them. And he indeed penned this one. I guess he didn’t pen it necessarily. Or I don’t know if he carved it, wrote it. Maybe on papyrus paper or something like that. But anyway, he penned it. He’s the author. And it’s questionable, it’s not questionable who wrote it, we know David wrote it, but what is in question is when. Did he write it at the beginning of his life? In the middle of his life? Or at the end of his life? Some scholars say the beginning because there’s such a strong reference to the shepherd and the sheep. We know that David tended his family’s sheep, his father’s sheep. On that hillside, he was a faithful shepherd for many months, years, while his brothers were off at battle. But then the other thought was that it was written later in life. That perhaps it was written at the end of his life. I tend to lean that way. I can’t give you any exact fact because we just don’t know. I mean why would I know if a lot of scholars don’t know? That’s the fact there. But I tend to believe that it’s toward the end of his life because I look at it, I’m thinking, “Wow.” In this passage, there’s so much to glean. I mean, I was talking to Ed about this and he goes, “Oh Lisa, I’ve got sermon after sermon, I’ve got series about Psalm 23.” I’m like, “Great. You have series about Psalm 23. I have 30 minutes to talk about Psalm 23.” And as I was looking at it and studying, there is so much to glean from it. But what stood out for me, is the words of David, probably at the end of his life where he is recounting and going back and looking over his life and saying, “I have realized the presence of God in my life and I have realized the provision of God in my life.” Remember, we’re talking about p-p-p-p-p iPsalms. And so, we’ve looked at how we praise accurately, we’ve looked at how we have purpose in Christ. We’ve seen this past time about the power of the Holy Spirit. God just didn’t give us a purpose. He said, “I’m going to equip you with power.” Well, today we’re going to look at the presence of God and the provision that He gives us.
My grandparents on my mother’s side, my maternal grandparents, lived to be very old. In fact, my grandmother lived to be 98 and she passed away in July and then the following November, my grandfather passed away two months shy of his 103rd birthday. Yes. I am so hoping I have those genes! My, okay, I’m going to give her age, 86-year-old mother is in Columbia at Flavour right now. So she’s there and you can look at her and say, “Okay. There’s some good genes there.” So, I’m banking on it! Banking on it! But my grandmother, later in life, both of them extremely active. But my grandmother in her later years, probably from about 91 or 92 on suffered with dementia. So she would get confused. I mean she… I remember you know, we came in one time from Houston. We lived in Houston at the time. And we came in, she asked if I was married. You know, I had all my children with me. And she’s like, you know, “Are you married?” “Ah, yeah, that’s my husband right there, Ed. Remember Ed?” And she would just get confused. And so, you know, struggling with that was hard. She’d come in and out. But she was always active. Like she’d still garden, she’d still come to our house for dinner with my grandfather. My grandfather drove until he was 99. Whooo. But, anyway, so when it came to the end of her life, she had been in the hospital, but they released her to go home. And so my mother was with her, and I’m talking about in the last hours of her life. She’s there in the house that they had lived in for so many years. And she told my mother with a clarity that you could not believe. She said, “Oh, but the music is so beautiful.” And it wasn’t that perplexed, confused look like, “Are you married?” You know, and trying to figure out what’s going on in life it was that assured expression where, “Oh, the music is so beautiful.” And “Oh, my house… my house is so lovely.” And she wasn’t talking about her dwelling place that she was laying in right then. She was seeing a glimpse of heaven. There was no question. Because when it came to her home, and her world that she had lived in for these many years, she had gotten very confused. But she had a clarity about what was to come. And in those final hours the last day or two, she would repeat that. And it gave my mom and my aunt such peace to see how my grandmother had been so confused and yet now there was such a clarity about where she was going.
Well, my grandfather was 102 and 3/4ths before he passed away. So, five months after my grandmother passed away. He was sharp as a tack. His body was failing him, but his mind? I remember I was sitting with him in one of our trips to visit and he had his church bulletin. Because they went to church every week until the very end. And then, he would watch different services on television. But I was looking over his church bulletin because the church would send it to the shut-ins. Those who could not attend. And I was going over stuff. He could recount everything, this, that and the other. We had a debate about, well, not a debate, but a firm discussion about marriage. He had watched Ed’s dad’s on television preaching about sex and adultery and I’m talking about, “Pop. This is really awkward.” Really. But he could engage you in a conversation. My mother said the day before he died, he corrected my aunt because she mentioned a man’s name and she called him Jim and his name was John. And my mother goes, “Low and behold. He was right.” I mean he knew he was very lucid and coherent and could, he was just on top of stuff to the very end. But one of the things I loved about getting to spend time with my grandfather was that I could ask him stuff. He was born in 1900. I asked him when the movie, Titanic, came out. I was like, “Pop, tell me about the Titanic.” He goes, “I don’t know anything about the Titanic.” I was like, “POP! You were alive when the Titanic sank!” He goes, “Yeah, but how was I supposed to know about it?” See they didn’t have, you know, radio show was it and if they had electricity. And I’m like “Wow!” I mean so he would go back over his life and about tell stories about being a police officer. Stories about, you know, his life on the farm. Stories about his family. All of these things he could tell me. He could tell me because he had experienced them himself. Do you know what we call that? A testimony. When you tell something that you’ve experienced and know to be true, it’s a testimony.
Psalm 23 is a testimony from David. Now, it’s not about specific events. Meaning, it’s not about when David was maybe fighting a bear on the hillside while he was shepherding the sheep. It’s not necessarily the story of when David tackled Goliath with a slingshot. It’s not necessarily the story of when Samuel appointed him and anointed him as king. It’s not necessarily the events of when he was fleeing for his life because psycho Saul was after him and he had to hide in the cave. It’s not necessarily the stories of his sin with Bathsheba or, you know, his family dysfunction because of that sin. All those different things were historical facts and he could tell about them. But what he tells about is not the event but the presence and the provision of God in the midst of all those events.
That’s something that you and I as Christ followers can also do. We can identify with David and we can talk about specific events and give details. But more than anything, we should be aware and be ready to testify and to give testimony about the presence of God in our lives and about the provision of God in our lives.
Those are the two things that we’re going to focus on today. So, as we look at Psalm 23, we’re going to go just a little bit, verse by verse and some of the things. Here’s just a quick definition of what a testimony is. A testimony is a statement of what you know to be true and what you have experienced. A testimony is a statement of what you know to be true and what you have experienced.
It’s interesting that David, in Psalm 23, chose if indeed it was at the end of his life, to go back to the beginning of his life and use a parallel of a shepherd. It’s interesting because not only did David do this but so often in the New Testament Jesus used the illustration of a shepherd and sheep. And Jesus was known as the Good Shepherd. It’s really kind of a hollow and shallow term for our Savior. But He was known as the Good Shepherd, which means that we are sheep. That’s the parallel there. Now, if you’ve studied anything about sheep, they are so cute when they’re babies. And then they grow and they get stinky. They’re stinky as babies too but they’re really stinky as adults. And they are not the smartest of the animals at all. They’re not. They tend to wander and they don’t know why. They just wander. They get distracted. You know, they might be grazing here and all of a sudden they might be thinking, “Oh, there might be something nice over there.” I mean it could be the drop-off of a cliff and they would not know it. And I use the word, they, because guess what? That’s us. We were compared to sheep. Just like Jesus was compared to the shepherd. We were compared to sheep. And David knew all about sheep because he tended his father’s sheep. But David could’ve given an illustration about again, fighting the giant, he could’ve given an illustration about the palace, he could’ve given an illustration about his military experience, but no. He gave an illustration about a shepherd and His sheep. And I think that is so Spirit-driven, supernaturally-led because of the parallel with the New Testament. And we have seen again that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. So, we see glimpses of Jesus. We see the presence of God through Jesus in the Old Testament even in the Psalms when David did not even know but he was led by the Spirit of God by his relationship with God to use an illustration that was so prevalent in the New Testament. Years and years and years before. So, we’re like sheep. We’re stinky with our sin. We’re wayward. We lose our focus very easily. Wow. Testify… from an ADD family. Yes! We’re really like sheep. And that’s why we need a shepherd. And so, David could give that great illustration like none other because he had spent time tending some very stinky, smelly, wayward sheep. And he knew how important the shepherd was. And so he makes this comparison. So, as we look at it verse by verse, David makes a declaration. The first part of a testimony is declaring the presence of God in your life. Declaring the presence of God in your life. We see this in verses 1-3 where David says,
The Lord is my shepherd,
Not a shepherd, not the shepherd, which He is the shepherd but David pulls it in tight where he says, He is my Shepherd. So basically, David, if he’s at the end of his life, but it doesn’t matter whether he was at the beginning or the end, David is saying, “Guess what? I’m a sheep. I’m like a sheep because I need a shepherd and the Lord is my Shepherd.”
David knew his frailties. And that’s why I tend to lean toward the end of his life when he wrote this because somehow, when we get older, we’re more secure and say, “Boy, I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” And we can look back and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes indeed, I’m a stinky sheep.” But when we’re younger, we feel more autonomous. We think, “Oh my, gosh, I’ve got it all together,” and “I’m not a sheep! No! I’m a brilliant, you know, poodle!” Poodles are some of the smartest dogs out there. Okay? I was going to say Australian Shepherd. That’s a really smart dog, but it might clash with my illustration of shepherd and sheep. But anyway. Okay, so David was saying, “I need a shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, which makes me a sheep. I make mistakes in my life and I need a shepherd.” So, his declaration of the presence of the Lord in his life.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
In other words, the shepherd provides everything you need. He provides for everything. It says in Matthew 6:25-26:
25 “Therefore I tell you,” This is Jesus speaking. 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink. Or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food? And the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
The shepherd provides for the sheep. He’s there with them, giving them their food. The second verse says,
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the quiet waters.
I can totally rest in Him. The shepherd would find a place where the sheep could rest and it was a green pasture. But usually in a green pasture, there was always the presence of an enemy. There was always the threat of a lion. And we know from David’s writings that he often would have to tackle a lion or a bear in order to protect the sheep. But the presence of God in our lives gives us the comfort of knowing that we can rest in Him. Total peace. John 14:27, it says,
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
Jesus gives a peace. He’s the Shepherd that gives a peace. That no matter how stinky, messed-up, wayward, ignorant we are, He gives us peace. I’m paralleling the Old Testament Psalm 23 with so many different passages in the New Testament. You can see the parallel. And I can rest totally in Him. And then it says in the latter part of verse 2,
He leads me beside the quiet waters
In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as Living Water. Do you remember the encounter that He had with the woman at the well? Talk about a sheep. She was a Samaritan despised unto the Gentiles. That was like a really dirty sheep. And she comes to the well in the middle of the day to get water because in the middle of the day, the cistern would be warm and people would not be normally there gathering to draw water. And the reason she did that is because she didn’t want to be seen because she had a reputation. And Jesus meets her there, not by chance. It was divine. And He says, “You’ve come to draw water, but I want to tell you about the Living Water.” And this is what He says in John 4:13-14,
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jesus gives us Living Water. And then, in verse 3 he says,
“He restores my soul.”
And I have read this over, and over, and over again. That word, restores, means he brings back to life my soul. I, as a sinner, away from Christ am dead in my soul. And Jesus brings life. He restores my soul. I just look at that and go, “Oh my, gosh! How incredible!” Is that we’re seeing in Psalm 23 the plan and purpose and presence of God and the provision of God and my life today through salvation Living Water. David is testifying to this. He’s giving testimony that this is what my Lord was to me, a sheep. Just like you and I. And it says in John 14:6 in regards to Him bringing life to our souls, Jesus answers,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
There are so many people who want to be politically correct and omit that from Scripture. It can be for many of the most divisive, separatist verse in all of Scripture because Jesus makes a declaration there. Nobody can restore your soul but Jesus. And I know it to be true, and many of you know it to be true, but it is not a popular statement. And many, even in the Christian world shy away from it. But it is the verse that separates Christianity. There are not multiple ways to come to God. Jesus said, “I am THE way, THE truth, THE life. NO ONE comes to the Father, except through Me.” Do you see any clauses there? Do you see any small, fine print there? No. No, no, no. Jesus is the only one who can restore our soul. He’s the only one. And then we go onto,
He guides me in the path of righteousness,
For His name’s sake.
This is a picture of when we are a part of the shepherds flock. We are guided in righteousness. What is righteousness? Right living before God. We serve a perfect and holy God, we’ve talked about this. God is God, I’m not. I have made mistakes. I’m just a sheep going wayward, stinky, smelly in my sin. And God has given us the opportunity to experience righteousness from the Shepherd, Jesus. And so, when God looks at us, He doesn’t see the wayward, stinky sheep, He sees righteousness which is only through Jesus. It says this in 2 Corinthians 5:21,
“God made him who had no sin, Jesus, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Okay, people! This is in Psalm 23! This is in the Old Testament! There is a thread of Jesus and salvation from the beginning to the end throughout all generations forever more. It’s an amazing thing to look at and go, oh, this is not just coincidence. This is not just happenstance. This is a picture of God through Christ that David was experiencing, probably at the end of his life as he looked back. Now, the cool thing about this is in the first part you see that David as if he’s talking to somebody. It’s like he’s sitting down, you know, on one of these tables or rows and he’s saying, “Listen, I just want to tell you, the Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.” And he goes through this about, you know, the waters. “I won’t thirst. He leads me beside the quiet waters he restores my soul.” He’s telling someone or some people. Maybe his attendants, I don’t know. Maybe his children, I don’t know. But he’s telling them this testimony. But then it shifts and goes into the next section, verses 4 through 5, where David starts speaking to God. He goes from here to there. Let’s look at it. Verse 4,
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me;
It was for God that “You’re with me,” so you see the shift in his vocabulary.
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.
Now this is an interesting thing because for a shepherd, you look at a rod and staff and people would think it was for correction. And it was. But go all the way back into the Old Testament to the book of Exodus where Moses is leading the children of Israel and he had a rod and a staff and God said, “Moses, that rod and staff, they are going to be what provides you and these people with everything they need.” So, yes. It’s a provision, but it’s also for correction. And I, as a parent, any of you who are parents know, that in our home, there needs to be love abounding. We’ve been talking about this in Family Octogon. For there to be love abounding, oh we provide, but we correct. So, that picture of the rod and the staff. You know what? This rod and this staff keeps you safe. When that sheep is out on a ledge about to go whoaaaaa… boom! The rod and staff can pull it back. But also the rod and staff could poke at an enemy. An animal that’s coming as a threat to the sheep. So, the rod and the staff is something that the shepherd would use to protect and correct. An amazing thing.
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.
How about this.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
Whoa. After that other verse, this might be the next verse that people want to omit from the Bible because who wants to talk about enemies. We want to say, “Following Jesus leads me in such a way that I have no enemies.” And then, “I don’t have any troubles or difficulties.” No, He says, “I’m going to provide for you in the midst of your crap.” I’m just saying it like it is. “You’re going to have some poop to deal with and I’m going to be there with you and I’m going to provide for you and it’s not going to be fun. But I will sustain you through it all.” Now, that is definitely something that can come out of the mouth of an individual, a testifier, who has walked through some serious stuff. And David had walked through some serious stuff.
I can look back over my life and I can say, “Let me tell you something. Here is where I was in some serious junk and funk and it was awful. And I was here and I had enemies all around.” And I am thinking to myself, “How do I have enemies?” You know what? It could be people who don’t like you, people who ridicule you for your faith, it could be a, you know, a demonic attack. Whatever the source may be, you will experience difficulty. Whether it’s an illness, you’re going to experience difficulty. We’re here, we’re frail and we’re fallen. But the presence of God with us means He’s going to provide for us in the midst of all that. And I don’t have time to go through and say, okay, here are all the specifics of my life. But I’m telling you I can fill a piece of notebook paper, or maybe a whole stack that you were to get at Office Depot. I can probably fill a whole stack with ways that I’ve walked in the presence of my enemies but I have been provided for, and God set a table in the midst of it. Sometimes He doesn’t just zooop deliver you out. He says, “Just sit down and eat for a while. You’re going to be here.” But nobody wants to hear that. But so often, that’s where the greatest training and dependence comes in. That’s where we go, “Gosh! If it weren’t for God, I couldn’t do this! But because of His presence in my life, I see how He’s providing for me, I could do this.”
The rod and staff are instruments of protection and correction. We’re all going to face difficulties. God prepares a place for us at a table for us in the presence of our enemies. And this last part,
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
The anointing of oil was done when the priest would set apart an individual to take the kingship. Samuel had anointed David’s head with oil. It was also done for healing. You’ve heard before of a healing service and anointing the head with oil. You and I have been set apart as children of the King and God’s anointed our heads with oil. We’ve also been healed, as God has anointed our heads with oil. He has transformed us from the stinky, sinning, wayward, just stupid sheep into His flock with purpose and direction.
As we’ve seen throughout the study of iPsalms, Psalm 100, how to appropriately praise God. And then we went to Psalm 1. Understanding that God has a purpose for our lives. A divine purpose. It’s not about a career, it’s about a purpose to live out His plan. And then we went to Psalm 33 and saw that we cannot do that on our own. It’s through His divine power. Through the power of the Holy Spirit. God didn’t leave us on a lurch and didn’t say, “Here you are. Just do the best you can!” He said, “I have given you power” and it’s at our disposal. But what I love today, Psalm 23, is that now, you and I are given a task to tell about it. To testify.
How many times have I eaten at a new restaurant and it was just so fabulous? And I’m like, “Oh my, gosh! Have you tried blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And you need to order dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And oh, the service was oh…” And I testify about some really weak stuff. I testify about the restaurant. I testify about the hair salon. I testify about this, that, and the other. We need, those of us who have a testimony, that means those of us who have experienced it, and we know it to be true, we have an obligation to share. To testify. And so, be very, very aware of what you are energetically testifying about. Is it shallow like the best restaurant? There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, I don’t want anybody to go, “Oh my, gosh. I don’t want anybody to refer a good restaurant anymore.” No, I’m just saying, “Great! Do it!” And let it be practice for when you when you say, “Let me tell you about God’s presence in my life. He’s my Shepherd and I’m His stinky sheep.” And you’re not going to use those terms. But you’re going to share with people what you know to be true about the presence of God in your life and about how He has provided for you. That’s what people are starving for. That’s what the world wants to know. They want to know “My life has a chance because I’ve seen it happen in someone else’s life and if it can happen for that girl, it can happen for me.” But too many of us have the little kindergarten mentality that I used to do with my children in kindergarten. I’d go, “Zip the lip. Not time to talk.” But God is saying, “I’m going to give you the opportunity. Unzip and testify.”
David, at the end of his life, shared what God was doing and how He had brought him through. You and I can start right now telling our story. The testimony that God’s given us what we know to be true and what we have seen and experienced.
Let’s pray together. Father, thank You for this time of reminder of what our word should be about. To share who You are and what You’re doing in our lives. And Father, help me to be more in tune with the power of my words and what I have to say. You’ve given me such a history and a track record. And Father, I left it out, but the last part of that passage is that,
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I know that that is coming for me, God. Because I know it to be true because I’ve seen how faithful and true You have been all through my life. And as I approach the end of my life, I know You’re not going to change gears. You’re not going to hold out on me. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will dwell In Your house forever. And I pray for every single woman hearing my voice that if they have not settled that, their like testimony, “I don’t know, I don’t even know God’s presence in my life. He’s not present in my life. If He’s not present, how can He provide?” Tonight’s the night. Tonight’s the night. Just say, “Jesus, I’m a wayward sheep in need of a Shepherd. I receive Your forgiveness. I want to walk in the protection of your rod and staff. I give my life to You. And I can’t wait to see the testimony, the experience, the truth that You’re going to give me that I will share with others. Others of us, Father, we just need that stirring. Use that rod and staff to poke us a little. To share that testimony because You have been faithful. Thank You, Father, for Your faithfulness. Thank You, for the study of the book of Psalms. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.