Sermon over the 23rd Psalm

This past Sunday, I chose from the Lectionary offerings to preach over the 23rd Psalm.  Now, one should never come lightly to preaching over what is likely the most well-known piece of Biblical Scripture.  Nearly everyone who has attended more than one Christian funeral will have heard the 23rd Psalm recited. In the Midwest (where I admit to having spent my entire life thus far and where I fully intend to spend the remainder) it would be the exception among adults to find one who couldn't join in reciting the 23rd Psalm once they had heard "The Lord is my Shepherd", such is the scale of this piece of scripture in the Christian mind and soul.

I have attached the video of the sermon which you will find below, I have also included below the entire manuscript for the sermon.  This week, I decided to preach from a manuscript which is something I have not done for many months.  I think I may go to using a manuscript every third or so week, or maybe just when I feel like it... you never know about me after all.

You'll find that I hit upon each and every verse below, but let me just touch a little bit on verse 5 here.  I think this may well be the least understood and most 'glossed' over verse in the Psalm.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Here we are inclined to think that the Lord is glorifying us, or even taunting our enemies by setting a banquet in our honor.  But, I don't think we could be any more wrong to think this way. I elaborate upon this more in the sermon but, let me just say that this is another example of table fellowship in scripture, here we are invited to sit at a meal with our enemies.  My firm belief is that the overwhelming nature of God is reconciliation, and this is a meal where we dine with our enemies and our differences are worked out and forgotten.

Let us work to reconcile with those whom we have offended or wronged, as well as those who have offended or wronged us in life.  God prepares a meal for us to sit with our enemies and be blessed by His grace.

Be a blessing to someone today!

In His Love & Grace,
Roy

Sermon given 4/17/2016
Woodlawn Christian Church 
Pastor Roy Karlen

Psalm 23 King James Version (KJV)
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The 23rd Psalm is almost certainly the most widely known of all the Psalms and very likely the most well know piece of Biblical Scripture.  If you start off with “The Lord is my Shepherd....” nearly everyone can chime in and recite the verses as they are found in the King James Version of the Bible.

Today, we're going to reflect on this Psalm but we're going to go through it verse by verse as it is found in the New Revised Standard Version.  If you go to your Pew Bibles you'll find it on page 435, let's all look it and pay attention to the slight differences that we see from the King James Version.  Page 435, please.

Psalm 23 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
A Psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I 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 mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.

Did you notice any differences?  Well, there are a few and we'll talk about some of them as we go through this timeless Psalm verse by verse.

Verse 1:
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The Lord is my shepherd.  Let's stop there for now and take a look around.  Now in Biblical times, most people could relate to shepherds better than the average person could today.  Tradition has assigned the authorship of this Psalm to King David.  David of course, was as a boy a shepherd, for him assigning God the role of shepherd over humanity made sense, and it was something he could readily identify with.  King David understood all too well the role of a shepherd.

I've told the story before of how my Grandfather used to own a Grocery Store on the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota, and how he traded that business for a herd of sheep.  My father as a young boy had been managing the grocery store for my grandfather.  Suddenly, Dad found himself in the role of a shepherd.  To his dying day, my father hated sheep.  As some of us here know, sheep aren't the brightest animals alive and they seem quite adept at getting themselves into trouble of one kind and then another.

For the Psalmist to cast himself in the role of a sheep is saying that he... we... can't be trusted to be on our own.  Left to our own devices, we'll just find endless ways of getting lost, injured or even killed.  We all need a shepherd, someone who is out there watching over us and guiding us in life.  Unfortunately, just like the sheep, we don't always listen to the shepherds voice and we end up in harms way all too often.

Of course, the New Testament is filled with references to sheep and sheep herders, one need look no further than our 2nd scripture reading for today that I read just a few moments ago.

I shall not want; this part of the verse can also be translated as “I lack nothing” or “I have no need”.  With the Lord as my guide, I shall have no further need.  We are reminded of the entire bread of life concept that we celebrate as Disciples each and every week, as well as the woman at the well in the 4th Chapter of the Gospel of John.

John 4: 10:14
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

We also cannot help but be reminded of the words in Matthew's Gospel:

Matthew 6:25-34New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Again with God as our shepherd we truly lack for nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.  These green pastures and still waters are not only idyllic, they are also provisions.  Here we have an obvious and certain tie with the previous verse, I have no want, for I live in His abundance.  This world is our Lord's and He uses it to care for us.

In the very next Psalm we read these lines:

Psalm 24:1-2  New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
1 The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it;
2 for he has founded it on the seas,
and established it on the rivers.

The earth is the Lord's, we are the Lord's.  If we have faith in Him he shall provide and care for us.

He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.  Here, where it says “restores my soul”, well that could be better translated as “He keeps me alive”, this is the literal translation for this verse.  Did you remember to thank God for letting you open your eyes this morning?  If we do the Lord's work he will lead us down the right paths, but sadly... we all tend to follow our own paths, for our own benefit and pleasure rather than pursuing that which God wishes us to do.  If we just turn to Him and follow His bidding, we'll be on the right paths.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.  Now here we see perhaps the biggest difference from the translation in the King James Version, which reads as we all know so very well:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  The King James Version is the one we cling to during so very many funeral services: yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but the New Revised Standard Version is a more literal translation for this verse.  It's not that we walk through a valley where death surrounds us, but that we walk through darkness of all kinds in this earthly journey.

The Lord's metaphoric rod and staff comfort us for these are a shepherd's weapons to use to protect his or her charge.  In Biblical times, sheep had many enemies waiting in the dark to try and attack or devour them.  The shepherd's staff was a formidable weapon, but with its traditional hooked end, it could also be used to reach a sheep that had gotten itself in trouble on a ledge.  Or the staff could pull a wayward sheep back into line and into its place within the herd.

Of course, the rod and staff have a dual meaning here, the represent the rod or staff held by a King ruling over his court.  We are here in God's Kingdom, where he truly is Lord.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  This line “you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”, has always struck me as peculiar, what is the Psalmist trying to say?  Is this a case of mocking one's enemies?  Is God setting a banquet before you to say to your enemies, “I love this guy, the rest of you not so much”?

Personally, I don't think so... and here's why...

We all know how very, very important table fellowship was in Jesus' ministry.  Jesus ate with tax collectors, sinners, and the unclean.  Jesus invited himself to a meal with Zacchaeus, he didn't just eat with the fallen when they invited him in... he summoned them to him to eat a meal together.  A meal where all that has divided is forgotten and wrongs and hard feelings are healed.

Remember just a few weeks ago when we looked over the parable of the Prodigal Son, well remember that the two parables leading up to that parable... parables that literally set the stage for the story of the prodigal son are the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.  These two parables portray a God that pursues us when we are lost, this is a God that doesn't wish for any two members of His Creation to be at odds.

This is the kind of God that sets a banquet and calls two adversaries to sit down to a fellowship meal and reconcile.  This is the kind of God who sets a table like this one (pointing to communion table)... where the fallen are returned to a right relationship.

In the book “If Grace is True” by James Mulholland and Philip Gulley the authors paint a picture of what Heaven is like.  Drawing on the Lord's repeated and preferred use of table fellowship they portray Heaven as a magnificent banquet in an endless fellowship hall.  Here at this fellowship meal to end all fellowship meals, we find ourselves seated between two particular individuals.  On our right, we have the person who in life has injured us the most severely, and on our left we find the person who in life we have harmed the most.  Do you know already who you're seated between... if so maybe you should work on this seating arrangement while we're still in this world.

Here in the 23rd Psalm, we may just be seeing a scene very much like that which Gulley & Mulholland put forth in their vision of Heaven.  Heaven a place where all are reconciled, where the wrongs are not only forgiven but forgotten.  The table is placed between you and your enemies and you are all called to the table of reconciliation.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.  The word translated here as follow is really more like pursue.  Surely God's goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.  Remember those parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, here we have a shepherd, our God who does not forget about us... no matter what... He pursues us and never gives up on us.  A God who leaves the 99 to find that one lost sheep.

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.  Here we have another variance from the King James Version, which of course reads; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  The translation in the New Revised Standard Version is the more literal translation, the Hebrew doesn't speak of eternity per se, but I believe it speaks to spiritual life as well as earthly life.  We as Christians believe that spiritual life is eternal, so, therefore, it is of course, forever.

Surely, we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Praise God!

Let us pray...