Shepherding of Jesus Christ Over the Pastors
Turn in your Bibles please to probably one of the most familiar places in all of Scripture to most of us, if not all of us: Psalm 23.
A Psalm of David, Verse 1:
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. 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. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.”
Let’s again look to the Lord:
Father, we again are thankful that we can come here with hope and expectation because we worship a true and living God. We worship a Christ who conquered the grave and who ascended into Heaven, and even now intercedes on our behalf. We thank you that we have a great, High Priest. One who understands our weaknesses and our infirmities. So Lord we cry to you afresh, with faith. Come by your spirit. Give strength to our weak bodies and even our weak souls. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.
If I asked you to open up your wallet and to look at those dollar bills, you might have a five, maybe a twenty dollar bill, even some of you might have a fifty or a hundred. If you looked at them very carefully, I’m sure you would see that some of them are crisp and bright in color, they’ve been newly printed. But there are others in your wallet, I’m sure, where the edges are bent and maybe you even have one or two that are taped together with scotch tape; they are soiled with fingerprints and they have even lost their color.
Well, as Christians and certainly as pastors we can say something is similar to when we pick up our Bibles, look at our Bibles, read our Bibles. There are portions of our Bibles that look very fresh, sort of like a new dollar bill, hardly been touched. There are sections that we don’t read all that much. When’s the last time that you gave a serious study of the book of Leviticus? I’m sure there are those genealogies that most of us sort of run over quickly and don’t look at for a very long period of time, but there are places in our bibles that are dogeared. They look like an old, tattered dollar bill.
Where are some of the familiar places that we as pastors, or the people of God, go? Certainly the Old Testament Psalms. We go to the Psalms in critical times. How many times have you gone to Psalms 51, when you’ve been brought under a conviction of sin? There are those great, penitential Psalms that are soiled with our fingerprints, the fingerprints of a true penitent. Sometimes we struggle with injustice, persecution of the godly.
Psalm 43, “Vindicate me O God, plead my cause, rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.”
Maybe you have found Psalm 73 a place where you go quite frequently. That’s where God seems to be blessing the wicked more than the godly. And we can struggle, can’t we?, with discontent and even envy. Asaph said, “My feet almost slipped.” So, again, a place where we might go quite frequently.
Then there are those Psalms of lament. They are wet with tears. Psalm 6, for example, “I’m weary with my groaning. All night I waste away because of my grief.” If you want some help when it comes to your prayer life, there are those Psalms that are prayer Psalms. They are marked by fervency and desperate praying.
Then there are those happy Psalms, singing Psalms, not a hint of sadness. They begin and they end on a note of praise and thanksgiving. Psalm 135; Psalm 136. But we all have our favorite Psalms, our dogeared Psalms.
I would guess that the Psalm that is most dogeared, for most of us, is Psalm 23. How many times as a pastor have you used that Psalm when you’ve sat beside a sick bed of a loved one? Maybe at a funeral service? You could say Psalm 23 is a pastoral favorite. Spurgeon called it “a pearl of Psalms.” Alexander Maclaren said it has dried many tears for thousands and thousands of years, for millions and millions of Christians.
Now, I want to us to look at this Psalm, as pastors, because we need it ourselves and we can go to this Psalm in a way that other people can’t. We can use two different lenses. We can use the lens of the shepherd and we can also use—we should use—the lens of a sheep. We are pastors, but we are sheep.
Certainly we can come to Psalm 23 and learn from the Pastor of pastors. You know that Jesus is the fulfillment of this Psalm. He is the great Shepherd, “I am the good shepherd.” He’s captured in Psalm 23, but again don’t forget that we are sheep. We all need the Pastor. I want to look at the Pastor of pastors, Jesus Christ, by taking three camera shots, using Psalm 23.
Number one: the intimacy with the Shepherd; number two: the identity of the Shepherd; and number three: the sufficiency of the Shepherd. So let’s look at Psalm 23 through these three camera shots.
Number one: the intimacy with the Shepherd. The Bible, I’m sure you know, is sort of like a picture book. It’s full of pictures. It’s not a literal photo album. It doesn’t actually have photographs, but it does have figures of speech, similes. It does have graphic visuals, and no doubt the greatest of the visuals in our Bibles are pictures of God Himself. God reaches down into our world, into our physical world, and He describes Himself under familiar images. For example: bread, rock, fire, water. God describes Himself under graphics of people or of relationships. God even puts Himself under the figure of a mother. He puts Himself under the figure of a friend and certainly a father. God also puts Himself under vocational or occupational graphics. A judge, a farmer and a shepherd. That’s what we have here. We have a picture of God under this image, this graphic, visual of a Shepherd. “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
Now, we don’t think about shepherds, at least not in terms of everyday life. When’s the last time you met a real, live shepherd? You probably don’t have any shepherds sitting on your pews. You have engineers, doctors, nurses, maybe a farmer, but not a shepherd. But in biblical times, shepherds were a dime, a dozen. I went to Australia last year and I was told kind of to excite me. “When you get to Australia, you’re going to see kangaroos galore, you’re gonna see more kangaroos than people.” Well, first couple of weeks, I think I only saw one kangaroo, but I also went to New Zealand a few years ago and I was told something very similar, that there is more sheep than people in New Zealand. It didn’t take me all that long to figure out that was true. I saw sheep everywhere.
In terms of Old Testament Palestine and New Testament Palestine, that’s what you would’ve seen. You would’ve seen sheep and shepherds everywhere. When you open up the New Testament, think of Luke, chapter 2, you’re staring in the face of shepherds and sheep. They were everywhere present. Now think again of the men in our Bible, even the patriarchs, who were shepherds. Moses was a shepherd, Jacob was a shepherd, and the person who wrote Psalm 23 was a shepherd. David did some shepherding activity. Again who better to tell us about a Shepherd than a shepherd? If you wanted to learn how to play quarterback, who better to tell you than a Tom Brady or a Peyton Manning? You wouldn’t want to learn how to play quarterback from a seven year old guy on the, you know, little league football team. David is a shepherd and he’s going to teach us about the true Shepherd.
But David’s not just a shepherd. David’s a sheep. That’s really what’s happening here. This is a talking sheep. He’s talking about the Shepherd. He knows from his own life, his own life experience, what it means to be a sheep. David’s gone astray. Sheep go astray. I really believe that you could make an argument that David writes Psalm 23 at the backend of his life. He’s gone through a lot of trials; he’s faced a lot of dangers. The man has battle scars. The man has wounds. Apart from Job, who’s suffered more in the bible, in the Old Testament, than David?
Just read the Psalm. You can go way back to his early life. You remember he is running from King Saul for a number of years. He’s a fugitive from the law when he becomes King. He stands on battlefields. David has slain his ten thousands. He was a man of war. You cannot get on a battlefield without being exposed to a lot of human suffering. On a personal, domestic level, David was a man who knew a lot of pain. He was betrayed by his son Absalom. Betrayal is one of the most painful of life experiences. Most pastors get betrayed, sooner or later. It’s almost inevitable. If you’re going to share in the sufferings of Christ, you have to go through that experience.
I’ve been preaching through the life of Samson, and it never struck me that Samson really does, in terms of all the judges, typify Christ better than any of the other judges. I mean, he’s a kind of a rotten kind of a judge. He’s got a lot of significant moral weakness and failure, but he does typify Christ, even in the way his birth announcement is given. Think, he’s even handed over to the Philistines by the tribe of Judah. That was betrayal. He was betrayed by two of those Philistine women. Now, he was pretty foolish to get involved with them in the first place, but Samson knew at a deep level what it meant to be betrayed. Again, we as pastors will know that as well.
But going back to David—David also experienced intense hostility. You, again, read to the Psalms and he mentions his enemies over and over again. And what pastor has not come under attack by members of your congregation? Sometimes congregations can hold secret meetings and write vicious letters and emails. Here in Psalm 23, David even mentions his enemies, verse 5, “…in the presence of my enemies.” Now some think that that’s a change of figure or image. It’s possible, but his enemies are still there. David knew from his own experience. When men go through significant trials, we all know that there are dangers there, aren’t there? Dangers of becoming embittered and angry. Even our relationship with God can suffer, when we go through trials. We begin to question God’s goodness. We begin to question God’s sovereignty but David. It’s obvious from Psalm 23, again if it’s written at the backend of his life, he never lost confidence with God.
This is a Psalm where he begins on this note of faith, this bold declaration, “The Lord is my shepherd.” My shepherd! He starts off with a personal pronoun, notice, my. He’s not looking at the Shepherd from a distance; he’s not looking at the shepherd with suspicion or with a frown on his face; his heart hasn’t become cold or chilled with bitterness. No, personal pronouns run through the whole Psalm. It’s intensely personal. “He leads me. He restores my soul.” Even David, notice, when he finds himself in that deep valley, the valley of the shadow of death, notice what he says, things become even more intimate, more personal, you can say. He’s no longer talking about the Shepherd, he’s talking to the Shepherd. He’s talking to the Shepherd! “You”! He’s looking in the face of the Shepherd. “You are with me.” “You are with me.”
One of the wonderful things about trials is—I think it was Dr. Carlson—I’ve quoted this quite a few times over the number of years, “Trials will either make you better or bitter.” Better or bitter. I’ve said to people, I put it this way, to folk who are in the midst of suffering, “These sufferings will do one of two things for you, my friend, they will either drive you away from Christ and his people or drive you into the arms of Christ and his people.”
Something else you’ll note here in Psalm 23 that makes this Psalm throb with intimacy and affection: most English translations don’t give us a word for a literal rendering of that first verse, notice what it says here, “The Lord is my shepherd.” You know what the literal translation would be? “Yahweh is my shepherd.” No definite article. “Yahweh is my shepherd.” ‘The Lord’ is a title, not a name. Sort of like the president, Mr. President. That’s a title. That’s not his personal name.
Dale Ralph Davis, in his commentary on the Psalms says, “Sometimes you even hear husbands talking about their wives in a bit of a cold, detached way. ‘The wife went shopping, instead of, ‘My wife, Susie or Mary, went shopping.’” David doesn’t say the Lord, but Yahweh. He’s using that covenant name for God. Yahweh—it’s His distinctive name. He’s my Shepherd. Again, we need to remind ourselves of that, don’t we? As pastors, we have a Shepherd. The greatest of all shepherds. Not someone who we suggest imitate, we have to imitate Him, but someone we need to depend upon, but someone we can know intimately and personally. He’s not a standoffish Shepherd. He’s not simply someone you know about, but you can know Him better than you can know anybody else.
That brings us to our second consideration. We’ve looked at the intimacy with the Shepherd, but secondly note this from the Psalm 23: the identity of the Shepherd.
“Yahweh is my shepherd.” Well, who’s Yahweh? Well, probably the best place to start when trying to understand who’s Yahweh is Exodus, Chapter 3. God even gives an explanation back there in Exodus 3 as to what ‘Yahweh’ means. You remember what happens there in Exodus 3? Moses has that encounter with God, through that theophany of the burning bush. Moses at the time is a human shepherd. Remember he’s been shepherding for about 40 years of the backend of a Midian desert, but there is this spectacular revelation, sort of like an explosion, in a desert, that’s what happens there and God appears to Moses by way of a burning bush. He lets Moses know that, “I am the great I am.” He lets Moses know how big He is. Remember Moses is going to be given a pretty significant God-assignment. He’s going to have to stand before the most powerful, human person in the world, the Egyptian Pharaoh, and say, “Let my people go.” Who’s up for that kind of a job assignment? It sounds almost like a suicide mission. How can he go? Well, he goes if he believes in who God is. He’s Yahweh. He’s Yahweh.
“I am the God your father, the God of Abraham, the God of the Isaac, the God of Jacob. I’m a covenant-making God. I’m a God who keeps his promises. You can trust me Moses. Literally, I am who I am. I am the being one. I am the self-existent one. I am the one, true, living God.”
If you want to know who Yahweh is, you just have to continue to read your Bible, from Exodus 3 forward. You follow that word Yahweh and you’ll come away saying again and again, “Great is the Lord, great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised.” Nothing small about Him.
Think of Isaiah, the prophet, and how he gives a wonderful description of Yahweh in Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 12 and following. Remember what he says there? “Behold Him,” and it’s almost like the prophet, Isaiah, throws down the gauntlet and says, “I challenge anything, I challenge anybody, I’ll put my God up against anybody, the greatest powers, the greatest forces, the greatest of the living creatures and there’s no comparison.”
Talk about the nations of the world. What are they like to this God Yahweh? Well, nothing. Little drops in the bucket. Dust on a scale. He talks about the inhabitants of the earth. He says they are like grasshoppers. Flying into Newark yesterday, we flew over a football field. I could see the little grasshoppers running the football field. They looked like little ants. All the inhabitants of the earth are like grasshoppers. Even the great ones, the princes, and the kings, the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Pharaohs and all those Roman emperors, and Neros, He makes them nothing. He raises them up and brings them down. “Look at the stars in the heavens,” says Isaiah. You can feel pretty small can’t you when you stand under a canopy of stars. There are what 100 to 400 billion stars at our Milky Way alone, and God knows them all by name; that’s our great Yahweh.
Again, if you track that word Yahweh, through the songs of David, there at least 73 songs written by David and he loves to talk about Yahweh and tell us how great He is. Psalm 8, he tells us that Yahweh made everything and then He—it’s almost like he’s flabbergasted, yet Yahweh is mindful of man. In that Psalm 139, remember how David celebrates those two Omni attributes of God.? His omnipresence. No matter where I go, He’s there. I can ascend and descend; doesn’t matter how high I go, how low I go, Yahweh is there, that’s how great He is. He knows everything. He knows everything about me. When I sit down; when I stand up. What I’m about to say, even before I say it. What I had for breakfast, for lunch and supper. He knows how many, if any, sugars I put in my coffee, and how many creams. He knows how many calories you guys had today—shame on you. He knows everything. He knows everything; you can’t hide from him. That’s when we get ourselves into trouble. That’s when the sheep, including us, get ourselves into trouble, but we think we can play games with God. We can play a Jonah, right? And run. You can’t run from God anymore you can run from air.
David thought he could play games. He thought he could play hide and seek games with God until Nathan showed up on his doorstep and said, “Thou art the man!” Even here in Psalm 23, David acknowledges His omnipresence, 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.”
The worst of the worst of places, you’re there. This valley of the shadow of death, that say, a figure, on the graphic for intense suffering. It’s found in the book of Job several times. Our sheep will eventually go through deep, dark valleys, but as pastors, I’ll make a distinction here. Pastors, often experience a higher degree of suffering. I don’t think you can really be an effective pastor if you don’t suffer at a deep level. You’re to come along as sheep, and you’re to weep with those who weep, and you’re to minister to them, and you’re to know them. And it’s often only by our own suffering do we learn what it means to suffer. You can’t learn it at a pastor’s conference. You can’t learn it by hearing a sermon or a theological lecture. No, we have to go into the valleys ourselves. If you’re a pastor, you probably know this as well: a lot of our suffering is lonely suffering. You can tell the Shepherd about it, but it’s probably not wise to tell everybody in your congregation about it. Silent suffering, that’s part of being like the Lamb; He opened not His mouth. The suffering can have a negative effect upon all of us, we all know that, I’m sure. Sufferings can devastate you. Sufferings can shatter you. I have a book in my duffle bag there, in my briefcase I brought along, I purchased a few months ago. It’s titled, Shattered Shepherd: Finding Hope in the Midst of Ministry Disaster. Your whole, life work could go down the tubes with one, major crisis in a church. Pastors can get hurt pretty badly in the course of ministry.
Pastors can get depressed. Our good friend, Spurgeon, suffered with chronic depression, and a lot of it had to do with the pressures and challenges of the ministry. At the backend of what was called the Downgrade Controversy, you know what he said? “This is killing me! This is killing me!” I think he died within a couple of years, Pastors can commit suicide. I’ve even heard of pastors who have gone that route, sometimes in the midst of fighting deep depression. There are dark valleys, but look here, that’s why this Psalm is such a comfort to pastors and to sheep, because the Shepherd is there with you. “You are with me.” Yahweh is everywhere present; and this isn’t just the kind of God who comes when you cry out in a kind of emergency 911 call. No, this Shepherd is with us, not only in the critical moments of our lives, but He’s always on-call, twenty-four-seven. He’s always guarding, always watching, always caring. He’s always involved in our everyday lives. The tenses of Psalm 23 are all present tenses, not past, not future, but present tense verbs.
The intimacy with the Shepherd: He’s my Shepherd. The identity of the Shepherd: Yahweh, the great, “I am,” and then thirdly: the sufficiency of the Shepherd.
The Christian life is a life of faith, and what are the essential elements of faith? Well, the reformed doctrine and the reformed confessions tell us quite clearly the three constituent elements of faith. What are they? Well, certainly knowledge, you cannot believe on someone you don’t know. You have to have knowledge. Conviction and there’s trust. We are called to live a life of faith! We are called to live a life whereby we trust in God, but here’s the question: can you trust Him? In Psalm 23, it says, you can trust Him. You can trust Yahweh. You can trust your Shepherd. That’s one of the reasons why David puts God under the figure of a shepherd. To help us trust Him. And he wants us to know why you can trust Him. We all have problems with trust. I think that’s why we see more people, at least that’s why I think we are seeing more people come through our doors, in Canton, Michigan, and they’re quite comfortable to sit on pews, in the morning, they don’t want to come back in the evening, because they don’t want to commit themselves. I think some of that is a problem of trust, not all of it, but some of it’s trust. They’ve lost trust. Some of them are broken and some of them are bruised. Some of them have gone through broken marriages. We live in a divorce culture. We live in a culture now that tells us there’s no moral absolutes. A postmodern culture. If there’s no absolutes, who can you trust? Who can you trust? Who can you believe? You can trust in the Shepherd.
There are three great shepherding activities or constants that David wants us to know here concerning the Good Shepherd and why He’s always a Shepherd and why as sheep we always need Him. You never, ever, ever outgrow your need of a shepherd. We never graduate from the pasture. We never come to a level of maturity or independence where we can sort of say, “Well, I’m on my own now.” You can do that. Your children can do that, can’t they? When they get married they’re on their own, they’re independent, but you’re sheep. You’re always dependent.
That book by Timothy Witmer, it was recommended at one of the Pastors’ Conferences years ago at Trinity, but this is the point he makes. Listen to what he says, he says, “The shepherding metaphor is not only comprehensive with respect with the nature of the care received, but also with respect to the extent.” This is one of the most important distinctions between the metaphor of a father and that of a shepherd. Children grow up and become less dependent upon the earthly father though the relationship continues. Sheep on the other hand are always completely dependent upon their shepherd. They never outgrow their need for the shepherd to care for them. You always need a shepherd.
Again, if we lose that identity marker, that we are sheep, we’re in trouble. We’re in trouble. Why are so many pastors stumbling, and falling, and leaving the ministry today? I think a large degree is that they forgot who they are. They’ve forgotten they’re sheep. They’ve forgotten they’re sheep. You will not always be a pastor, right? You’re going to have to retire sometime, but you’ll always be a sheep. You never get to retire. You’re always going to be a sheep. You never outgrow your sheepness. No matter how long you’ve pastored, no matter how many people you’ve pastored, how long you’ve been in the ministry, you’re still a sheep! One of the reasons why God, in His wisdom, has given us a parallelity of elders—which is the norm in the Bible, it’s the standard. Why does He give us parallelity? Because He knows we all need shepherding.
Even on the human level. I don’t know where I would be today if I were not privileged and blessed with a parallelity of elders, right from the get go. I’ve been there almost thirty years. I’ve always, always, always had another elder. Even if you don’t have another elder, hopefully you cultivate relationships with pastors who know you and you can share your own life struggles with them. We all need shepherds. Even on a human level. We all need shepherds. Here’s the great Shepherd, however, He’s the perfect one. And why again can we trust Him? And what does He do that should assure us that He’s trustworthy?
Well, there are three things, as I said: number one, he feeds the sheep, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” Although the image there might be more the emphasis not so much upon what He gives you by way of food but He takes you into green pastures and you lie down, it’s rest. Sheep have in their DNA fear. They’re very fearful creatures, but He takes care of sheep in such a way that they can actually lie down. Sheep have a trouble lying down. You take care of them. That’s sort of the picture there, but go on in that Psalm, he does mention the table. Again, the image there might change, but he talks, it might be the image of a host but whatever the case might be, there still the feeding element, the presence of food. He’s taking care of that, and we come back to what we do as pastors. That’s certainly where we can imitate the perfect Pastor, Jesus. That’s our primary responsibility as we’ve heard even throughout the day and, I’m sure, yesterday.
We are to preach the Word, “Labour in the word and doctrine.” If you’re not preaching the word then you’re not being a shepherd. You’re not being a shepherd. If you’re called to be the preacher, you are to preach the word. That’s the most important element of pastoral ministry. You can’t be a good shepherd if you don’t preach and teach the word. But it’s not just preaching the Word; you’re a sheep. You need to feed upon the Word for your own soul. You need to be fed by the Shepherd. You need to have personal time with God. Whatever you want to call them, devotional times, whatever, but you need to have time with God.
Psalm 1, “The blessed man meditates on the word day and night.” That’s crucial to maintaining a faithful, pastoral ministry. I often listen to other men’s sermons to feed my own soul, but we need spiritual nourishment or our own souls will dry up and shrivel. Why do men drift away from the gospel? Why do men lose their first love? Well at some point they’ve stopped following the Shepherd into the green pastures. They’ve stopped feeding their soul upon the manna of the word.
One of the greatest dangers I think it is for me, my friends, I’ll be honest here, is to approach my Bible academically or vocationally. I’m having my devotions, every morning, I try to have my devotions and then I find myself, I’m constructing sermon outlines. I almost have to punch myself and say, “Stop it! Read because your soul needs food. It’s not a time to prepare a sermon; it’s a time to feed your soul!” Again, we’ve forgotten that we are sheep. We need a Good Shepherd. He’s a Shepherd, a Good Shepherd we can trust because He feeds our souls, He leads us into green pastures.
He’s a Good shepherd because, well, that’s the second thing, He feeds us, but He also leads us. He leads His people. He guides them. Notice that’s the emphasis in verse two and three, twice, repeat, that tells us it’s pretty important: “He leads me beside the still waters. He leads me in paths of righteousness.” Notice He leads them. Shepherds don’t drag them. Sheep follow the master. They hear the voice of the Shepherd. He doesn’t have to drag them. He doesn’t have to drive them. He doesn’t have to force them.
There’s a story told about a group of tourists in Israel, and they were informed by their Israeli guide that shepherds always lead a flock and that you’ll always see a shepherd in front of a flock. You’ll never see a shepherd driving sheep from behind. Apparently, a short time later, they came across this so-called shepherd who was walking behind the flock of sheep and the tourist approached the tourist guide, they pointed, “What’s this guy doing? You just told us,” and the tourist guide was a little perplexed and he said, “Well, let me get out and talk to the guy,” and he gets out, talks to the guy, comes back and says, “That’s not a shepherd, that’s a butcher, he’s gotta slaughter the sheep.”
Shepherds lead, sheep follow, and notice where He leads us. He leads us along paths of righteousness. This Shepherd is concerned about holiness, and you can understand why, right? He’s the Good Shepherd. There’s an ethical connotation to that word ‘good.’ He’s a Good Shepherd, or He’s the Holy One. He’s the thrice Holy One. He sent His son Jesus to make us holy, and holiness is our responsibility. All the sheep are called to be holy. There’s no one who is a sheep, who sits on a pew, who can exempt himself from the commands to be holy in all manner of life. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and sheep are to display holiness, we are to exemplify it. That’s why there’s such an emphasis on character. I think Pastor Piñero reminded us. Not on gift. One qualification, with regard to gift: apt to teach. It’s all upon character. A lot of self-discipline and self-control issues there when you look at qualifications. Not given to wine, that’s a man who’s self-disciplined. Can you preach? As every pastor needs to be a preacher, again, if he’s not a lay elder, that should be his primary calling: preach the word; but are you holy? Are you holy? Remember what Murray M’Cheyne said, that Scottish Presbyterian, “The greatest need of my people is my holiness.” The Shepherd wants us to be holy. That’s why He guides us along the straight and narrow paths of holiness. And to be a holy man, you need to have a solid grip of the Shepherd’s belt.
I’ve been going to the Pastor’s Conference up in Montville, New Jersey, for about thirty years and you know, if you might have been there, that they take photographs of the pastors who were there and they send those photographs to you so you can have them. Quite a lineup, over thirty years, of all these photographs. From time to time, I’ve gone back to them, I’ve looked at them, and then sometimes there is a real joy because I know there’s men there who have passed away but they finished the race well. Dr. Robert Martin, our dear brother, who ministered to us, what, a couple of years here at the conference. I had the privilege of being at his funeral. I think we could all say, that brother finished well. He was a faithful man right up until the end. You could look at those photographs and say there’s another one who’s made it to Heaven, safe and sound, but there are men in those photographs who aren’t there. Today, I don’t know where they are spiritually. Some of them had to step down in disgrace because of adulterous relationships. When I look at those photographs and realize there’s men who were once in the ministry who are no longer in the ministry because of scandalous sin, I remind myself that I’m vulnerable. I don’t look at them and say, “Oh, how could you?” I say, “Boy, buck for the face of God!” I’m a sheep too. I’m a sheep too. I need to be walking in holiness. I need to constantly look to my Shepherd. He’s a faithful Shepherd. There’s nothing wrong with His faithfulness, the problem is the sheep. But we need His constant care. We need His comprehensive care.
We need Him to feed us; we need Him to guide us, and the third thing we can say from Psalm 23 in terms of His care, His all sufficiency: He protects us.
Remember when David stood before King Saul and argued as to why he was able to step on a battlefield and take on Goliath? He made reference to his past shepherding activities. He said, “I took on lions, and wolves, and bears. I protected the sheep.” That’s what a shepherd does. A shepherd protects the sheep, and here in Psalm 23, we see that as well. You could argue that from verse 5, again. That could be a change of metaphors, but if you don’t want to use verse 5, you can certainly use verse 4. He has a rod and a staff. They were to guide but also to protect, especially when the sheep go through the valley. These valleys, were deep and dark. What would often happen is that animals, ferocious animals, beasts, would hide themselves in the crevices and the crags of those rocky cliffs or those ravines, and so when sheep would go through, those animals would pounce on them. It was a sheep’s worst nightmare. So you get a sense from this picture here that the sheep is all alone. Suffering times can be very vulnerable times, can’t they? Again, as I mentioned earlier, pastors can suffer in some of the deepest ways: Crushing grief, a lot of disappointment, things we hope for were not realized. We see our own sheep, who we pastor, going astray. That brings tremendous grief. We experience suffering from within our own families. Pressures can be upon our own wives and even our own children. Lots of expectations.
I read recently that a question survey was put out and asked the average congregation, “What should a pastor be doing with his time?” and here were the list of activities, quite extensive: sermon prep, outreach, evangelism, counseling, administrative tasks, visiting the sick, community involvement, denominational engagement, church meeting, worship service. The average amount of time that the church members expected the pastor to give were 114 hours a week; that’s the expectation. A ministry can have it’s toll, can’t it? Upon your own physical well-being, your own spiritual well-being, your family.
Sometimes the expectations other people have drive pastors to the neglect of their own families, and that’s why we need to put on a safeguard, don’t we? We are first called to be husbands and fathers, but we need protection. We need protection. The devil is out to get us, every one of us, and the longer you’ve been in the ministry, I think it’s true, the more you have to lose. The more people know you, the more people trust you; the more devastation if you fall.
So the devil, he goes after all pastors, but I do think he begins to mark out those who have been in the ministry a little longer, and the longer they are, the more intense he becomes in his more aggressive he becomes, he attacks them. He clips their reputation. So we need the Good Shepherd, don’t we? He takes care of his sheep. You can trust Him. He leads the sheep. He protects the sheep.
I’m sure you men have come to this pastor’s conference to be reminded that you are pastors. If you come back tomorrow and I get an opportunity to preach again, I would preach what your responsibilities are as a pastor. I’d take that 1 Peter passage. This is what your job description is. So you are a shepherd, but you’re also a sheep. Don’t forget you’re a sheep. You have a high calling, a wonderful calling. Is there any greater calling than a shepherd, a pastor? I hope we can all leave in terms of what we’ve heard from the other men. What it means to be a shepherd, a better shepherd, a more faithful shepherd. I hope we can leave trusting in the Shepherd and wanting to imitate the Good Shepherd more and more, but also to rely upon the Good Shepherd because we are sheep.
I will be fifty-nine at the end of this month. You know, Pastor Martin tells you how old he is, I can tell you how old I am. The two things that have been impressed upon me more and more as I’ve got older, been in the ministry longer, are the—I’m going to be honest—are my own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. My own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. That hymn that we sing— “My prone is to wonder my Lord, I feel it, I feel it.” Things can get scary at times, especially, again, when you look around and you see more and more men dropping like flies and you find another fallen soldier, another wounded soldier. And, again, I have often prayed, “Lord, help me, keep me, protect me.” But that’s one thing that’s come to my mind, more of my own frailty, my own weakness, but I also think more of Jesus Christ. In my greater sense, my dependency upon Him. His great faithfulness; and I’m more thankful for His shepherding care.
The backend of this Psalm is a wonderful note, verse 6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
There’s a day coming when we will be with Him, when we will see Him in His full glory and majesty and beauty. We’ll be able to tell Him face-to-face, “Thank you Jesus! Not just for dying for us, for shedding your blood for us. I thank you not only for your blood and your righteousness, your perfect righteousness, but thank you for taking care of me, for feeding me, for guiding me, and protecting me. I wouldn’t be here in glory, if you were not a Good Shepherd.”
Psalm 23, my pastor friends, is a Psalm tailored-made for you, because you are a shepherd; but it’s also tailor-made for you, and for me, because you are a sheep. May God help us to be faithful shepherds and faithful sheep.
Let’s pray.
Father, in heaven, again, we thank you for your word, for it’s clarity, for its relevancy, for its sufficiency, for its authority. Press it upon our hearts and minds. Lord, help us all to be more diligent, more faithful in our callings. And we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.
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