The Lord is My Shepherd

October 6, 2019

Summary

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

for His name’s sake.

Yea, 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.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life;

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I have a challenge for you this month. I am encouraging everybody – adults, children – everybody – to memorize 23 – to learn it well enough so that you can say it by yourself.

The most important goal in any sermon is that you hear the Good News about Jesus. God loved you so much that he gave His Son Jesus for you. Jesus came into our world. He died for our sins. He rose to life again. And so we have the promise of forgiveness and eternal life and new life into our world today.

Believe the Good News of Jesus!

I think that for the most part my preaching and teaching is the same as any other pastor’s preaching and teaching. But I do also have a peculiarity. I am much more committed than most pastors to the goal of memorizing passages from the Bible.

I like memorizing the Bible. It’s something I learned from both my mother and my father. Memorizing has been a tremendous blessing for me in my life of faith. And I want to encourage you also to memorize.

My challenge to you for the month of October is to memorize the 23rdPsalm – The Lord Is My Shepherd.

Maybe some of you know it already. If so, then I challenge you to learn it more completely. Or maybe try learning it in another language.

If you memorize God’s Word now, that Word can be a blessing to you in the future.

In the first church where I was a pastor there was a man in his early 80’s who had been quite healthy, but then had a heart attack. I went to visit him in the hospital and he told me how he had woken up in the night there in the hospital and was so afraid, but then he remembered the words of Psalm 23. And he kept repeating them over and over in his head.

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

Let’s say the psalm together again.

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

for His name’s sake.

Yea, 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.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life;

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I hope that every one of us would have those words in our heart and in our mind – that those words would be ready for us in our time of need.

Memorizing God’s Word is a blessing for the future – but it’s also a blessing at the time that we are memorizing.

I have heard people say that they can’t memorize – that it takes forever. If that’s true for you – if you have trouble memorizing – thank God for that, because all the time you spend memorizing is an opportunity that you have to heard God speaking to you. I have done a lot of Bible memorizing in Norwegian – and that has taken a very long time. When I memorize in Norwegian it feels like I am hearing these passages for the first time.

Herren er min hyrde. Jeg mangler ikke noe. Han lar meg ligger i grønne enger. Han leder meg til vann der jeg finner hvile. Han gir meg nytt liv.

The longer it takes you to memorize, the more time you have to hear God speaking to you.

And when you memorize Psalm 23 this week, also spend time meditating on them. Think about Jesus. Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

I also encourage you to emphasize the pronouns in Psalm 23 – “I”, “me”, “my”, “you”, “your”. At the beginning of the Psalm, the words are a testimony. I am telling you who my shepherd – “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” Or maybe I’m saying those words to myself, telling myself, reminding myself who my shepherd is.

Later in the Psalm, the words turn into a prayer – “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

When you are studying the Psalm this week, think about the words – meditate on the message. And especially emphasize the pronouns. Think about your relationship to the shepherd. The Lord is your shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd;

shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

for His name’s sake.

Yea, though walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

will fear no evil;

for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life;

And will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen.

Bible References

  • 2 Timothy 1:1 - 14
  • Psalm 23:1 - 6
  • Luke 17:5 - 10

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