Psalm 23 - He Restores My Soul
Tom Shrader explores the shepherd-sheep relationship in Psalm 23, focusing on God's promise to restore the soul. He examines how believers become spiritually vulnerable like cast sheep - through comfort, sin's accumulation, or spiritual carelessness - and how discouragement becomes Satan's primary tool. Through practical application, he shows how God's restoration comes through love for others, acceptance of circumstances, and renewed fellowship with believers.
“God's promise here is I'll restore you, but I am NOT gonna isolate you from the difficulty of the world around you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Psalm 23
Recorded: October 22, 2015
Duration: 39 min
Themes: restoration, shepherding, discouragement, vulnerability, fellowship, comfort, wandering, intimacy, struggling with discouragement, feeling spiritually dry, new believer, experiencing spiritual drift, dealing with complacency, seeking restoration, pastor, feeling spiritually vulnerable
Scripture: Psalm 23, Psalm 23:3, Job 30:16, Psalm 42:11
Theological Themes: pastoral care, spiritual restoration, sanctification, becoming holy, divine providence, spiritual warfare, communion, personal relationship
Full Transcript
Open your Bible to Psalm 23 and let me spend a little time on the introduction. It wasn't planned this way but I'm in the process of teaching Psalm 23 and so is Sandy. I was telling her the other day, I'm sure this has happened before. I've been teaching for 30 years and I don't remember ever seeing a lesson or a series so clearly in one particular genre of teaching.
Let me explain that. I'm teaching at Redemption on November 8th and we're studying the Gospel of Mark. That'll be very much a narrative, so it's story oriented. Not my favorite, I don't think it's my best. I think my best is a book like Ephesians and going chapter by chapter, verse by verse. This I've fallen into and I've called this more a devotional teaching, if that makes sense.
I was telling Sandy, I think she's in her third week and we're in our fifth. I was telling Sandy, I feel like it's so repetitive. I feel like we're saying the same thing every week. So what I thought is something I mentioned early on. I'm more like a locksmith where I trigger something in your mind and then you just take it and run with it. It's very devotional and you have to go back to that initial imagery of shepherd and sheep.
The Lord Is My Shepherd - An Intimate Relationship
So the Lord is my shepherd. I was watching a C-SPAN interview on Sunday with David Gregory, NBC News. His background is a Jewish background and he was talking about his faith journey. It was really interesting to me to watch him struggle to articulate what he's feeling. He said, "I just got done, I've really been studying the 23rd Psalm." And he was talking about this God.
Then the questioner, who I think was Sally Quinn, was saying to him, "Well, is that God?" David Gregory had angst all over trying to say, "Yeah, he's not a distant God, but he's not a personal God." I thought, wait a minute, you just studied the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is what? My shepherd. Not the shepherd or a shepherd or something removed. There's an intimacy here.
In my mind, this 23rd Psalm really drives at those of us who know Christ in a personal way and tells us this is how we get through, live through life. So imagery is shepherd and sheep. We talk about it every week, not in a demeaning way, but in a way that we can now comprehend. Sheep by their very nature are dumb and defenseless and dirty and stubborn. They're constantly lost, wandering around. That's the picture of you and me.
That's not degrading, that's just the observation of what's true. We're prone to wander on our own, we're confused. But the shepherd and the beauty about the shepherd and the sheep is exactly what I was talking about. There's an intimate relationship there. The shepherd knew each sheep, and though the sheep had these characteristics, they manifest them in different ways, and the shepherd knew exactly what the sheep needed.
The Shepherd's Complete Provision
Look with me. "The Lord is my shepherd" - there's relationship. "I shall not want" - there's supply. He knows and will fill the things that I don't have, and He can handle the things that I do have. He can come along and say, "Okay, there's a need there, I'll take care of it," but you may have something.
My daughters sent me a picture, Haley, yesterday. The boys, Braden and Yale, were out in front of school, and their responsibility was to do school collections for Breast Cancer Awareness Week. We didn't have anything like that. I mean, we collected for people we never knew in Africa, and I'm not sure the money ever got there, but they're doing this. The boys had this smile, and Haley had a note on the bottom. This was yesterday. It was four years ago today that mom went into hospice. God's bigger than what you do have.
"The Lord's my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures," literally stretch out. There's rest there. It was last week. "He leads me beside still waters." There's refreshment. Here's today: "He restoreth my soul." It's healing. It's a promise. It's a promise that God makes.
Understanding the Shepherd's Patience
You're a sheep. He's the shepherd, but I don't know anything about sheep. I'm talking to a guy the other day whose dad raised sheep, and he was saying as a kid, adolescence, his responsibility was to take care of these sheep. He said everything you've said is true, and you'd get them all where you wanted them, and then they would just take off. He said, this was a key moment for me, he said, that was so aggravating, and all of a sudden I had a new insight.
It was this: I keep looking at this from the position of the sheep. Think about the shepherd. Think about how much God loves you, how patient God is with you. This kid, now a man, the more he talked, the more you could see him get frustrated with those sheep that he dealt with 30 years ago. Think of God with you.
I have my chance. I'm at Grand Canyon on November 16th, and that's always hard to try to figure out what to talk about with those kids. They'll be a couple thousand of them, and I think I'm gonna talk about the fact that God loves us, but in an unconditional way. That He loves you in spite of you, and that He deals with all of this stuff in your life.
The Promise: He Restores My Soul
Even in this sheep-shepherd relationship, we still wander, but He promised - now we're gonna hang here the rest of the time - "He restoreth my soul." That's a promise. So here's the first thing about promises. They're only as good as the one who makes them.
I can be totally serious and say I promise you - my all-time classic illustration is my friend Larry Wright. I mean, you guys, some of you know Larry, many of you don't, and it's a shame. It's so sad. If we could take the family tree of the Christian community, that tree, those branches, a lot of them go
Back to Larry. Larry was the most sincere, honest man of integrity I ever met. One week, he's got this young man in the study whose life God used Larry to change. This guy fell in love, and it was a hard life, and everything had changed, and now he was in love, and there was going to be a wedding. So he comes to Larry and said, "Will you perform the wedding?" Larry hates weddings. And he said, "Yeah, I'd be honored. It would be an honor."
So it was a Thursday morning study like this. The guy's in there, and he's going out the door, and Larry goes, "Hey, hey, Sunday afternoon, don't you forget it." The guy said, "Yeah, I know." Larry said, "I'll be there. You're going to be there? Don't be chickening out." The guy said, "I'll be there." So he left, and Larry told me this story. He said, "He's a great guy. This is going to be incredible."
Sunday after Sunday morning, Larry's kids and grandkids come over, and he starts playing, and then the Cowboys come on, and then about six in the evening, he's going, "Man, there was something I was supposed to do today. What was it?" And he goes and gets his book, and there it is: the wedding. Now, interestingly enough, they didn't call to say, "Did you have a heart attack, or what happened?" But I love this story, because he's absolutely sincere, but it doesn't matter how sincere I am if I make a promise if I don't have the capacity to keep it. God says He will restore you.
The Promise Implies Difficulty
So that's point number one. Point number two: if the Shepherd promises to restore you, it implies that there'll be distress and difficult times and hardship. Job chapter 30, and I'm going to read you from The Message. This is Job describing himself. Job chapter 30 verse 16: "And now my life drains out as suffering seizes and grips me hard. Night gnaws at my bones. The pain never lets up. My stomach is in constant churning, never settles down. Each day confronts me with more suffering. I walk under a black cloud. The sun is gone."
Go get them, tiger. But maybe that's too dramatic for you, but aren't there times you feel kind of the equivalent of that? And if you haven't yet, trust me, you will. It's a broken relationship, it's a heartache of physical suffering, it's economic, it's being a Michigan fan. Couldn't let it go too long. But it's life. God's promise here is "I'll restore you," but I am NOT going to isolate you from the difficulty of the world around you.
When Sheep Get Cast
Psalm 42 verse 11: "Why so downcast, oh my soul?" That phrase "casting" is what's used to describe a sheep that gets over on his back or her back. And what I'm told is it's a pathetic sight. There's that sheep and they don't even make a sound. They just kind of thrash away and they will die if the shepherd doesn't come along quickly and move them.
One of the authors writes this: "Nothing seems to arouse the shepherd's constant care and diligence and attention to the flock as the fact that even the largest, fattest, strongest, sometimes healthiest sheep can be cast and be a casualty." Actually, listen to this now, the application. Actually, it's often the fat sheep that are more easily cast. So let's apply that. It's often the people that seem to be doing the best—we got it figured out, I think—that if along comes this hardship, whatever it is, you fill in the blank, we get how that could be difficult. Why so downcast?
Three Areas of Vulnerability
Again, the author says there's kind of three areas where a sheep is especially vulnerable. See if it applies to us. Number one: when they're looking for a soft, comfortable spot to kind of lay in. A lot of times they like a little area with like a small little gully and they'll get in it. They get in there to be comfortable and maybe start that way, but quickly it becomes dangerous.
Well, you can see that spot when we get into an easy, cozy, comfortable position. No hardship, no need for endurance, no demand for discipline. Why? Well, I'm in that sweet spot. I like that. That's my thing. I'm an absolute creature—I like security and I like quiet. I was laying in bed last night and I said to myself, "Listen to how quiet it is. There's not a dog barking, there's not music blaring." But I'm vulnerable in that spot. The little phrase I wrote: "I have it made." When you get to that easy, comfortable spot, you're vulnerable.
Here's the second time when the sheep simply have too much wool. It gathers mud, manure, burrs, debris. Wool in the scripture depicts the old self-life, sin. Again, the author writes, "Here is where I find myself clinging to the accumulation of things or possessions or worldly ideas and they begin to weigh me down. All of a sudden I've got that battle going on. One foot in the Christian world, one in the world, torn in two directions." Clearly I'm vulnerable.
Here's the third thing for a sheep. This is too close to home for me. The sheep becomes cast simply when they're too fat, too healthy, and all of a sudden they become careless. Well, that's you and me.
The Testing of Prosperity
We talk about tempting and suffering in hard times. We've done this exercise before. If I say to you, "You're going to be challenged today," you think of a challenge, you'll immediately think of adverse conditions. But there's the testing of prosperity.
Years ago I was talking to a young man whose parents were missionaries and I said, "How's it going for your folks?" And he said, "Not good." I said, "Oh wow. Persecution?" "No." "Government clamping down?" "No." I said, "What's happening?" He said, "Well, the economy in this country has gotten better. The government has actually eased off a little and as a result of the success, the church is shrinking. I don't need Jesus now."
"The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me to still waters. He restores my soul." Phil Keller writes, "In the Christian life there's a great danger in always looking for an easy, cozy corner. The comfortable position."
Sheep can find themselves in a place of despair. No hardship. No difficulty. It's the picture of a helpless sheep, isolated from the others. The shepherd sees them. The sheep begins to panic. The circumstances begin to surround him and at that moment, and we're going to try to get practical at this point, at that moment the sheep becomes obsessed with himself. Maybe you're one of those today and they're hard to spot because you've learned how to play the game. You know how to act. You barely got here today, it was so difficult.
The Devil's Favorite Tool
Kent Hughes tells a marvelous story, a little parable with an application. Let me read it to you.
The story is told that the devil decided to have a garage sale. Taking out all his favorite tools of deception and death, he priced and placed each one on the driveway. They were each marked according to their value. There was hatred and envy and jealousy, all marked for sale. There was deceit and lust and lying and pride, all with the appropriate price tags. But set over by itself, totally removed from the other instruments, was an unassuming, plain looking tool. It was quite worn, in fact it was the most worn of all the tools and yet it carried the highest price.
A customer sauntered up and began to browse through the tools and he picked this one up. He looked it over and carefully asked the devil, "Say what's the name of this tool?" With a shrewd sneer the devil boldly replied, "Ah my favorite tool, I know it well. It's called the tool of discouragement."
"Is that high price negotiable?" the customer asked.
"No, absolutely not. Listen to the application. That tool is more powerful than any of the other ones I have. When I use that tool of discouragement into a person's heart, I can pry open the person's heart and then use all my other tools. It's that key tool, my most strategic tool, and therefore comes at a very high price."
Understanding Discouragement
There is much truth, now Hughes is commenting in this little parable, when Satan discourages us or gets us down or defeats us, we can become easy prey for his hellish host who then, the devil uses, his cheap instruments of destruction.
What is discouragement? Discouragement is the state of being deprived of confidence and hope, in being dejected, disheartened, deflated. It's being despondent, despairing, dismayed, and then he adds parenthetically, "I can't find any more D words and that's discouraging to me."
Why so downcast? So back to Psalm 42, "Why so downcast? Why so discouraged?" I made a list because he gives you the solution there. "Why so downcast, oh my soul? Put your hope in God." When all of a sudden I lose that idea of hope, of a future, what are the things I put my hope in? So I made a list and you could add to this. Eight things that I might put my hope in.
Misplaced Hope in Stuff
Number one was stuff. I was talking to a guy the other day, that's not even true, I'm listening to him. He's talking about Lamar Odom and the experience that he just had and here's what he said as a Christian guy. Here's what he said: "He had it all." The funny little trap we have even as believers. What he meant was he had 35 million dollars and he had Chloe, which I'm not sure that's having it all. I don't know but he had all the world had to offer. But even as Christians sometimes we go, "If I had all that I'd be happy. How could you not be happy?"
I don't have the stats but I'll get it pretty close. The average house today is roughly 800 square feet larger than the average house 20 years ago, yet the booming business outside of apartments, the booming development business, is in storage. We got more stuff, we don't have anywhere to put it. We got all of this stuff. If I have that stuff I thought... I thought that conversation was so interesting. "He had everything." No, he didn't have it. He didn't have Jesus. Jesus is everything. I'm nothing without Him. But I can trust stuff.
Misplaced Hope in Education
The second thing is education. Sandy loves to point out my hypocrisy here. I was not a big education guy for me. I will say my life is filled with regrets and one of them is the way I screwed up my education. I mean when I went to St. Ambrose College, my first day there was with the academic advisor or something. I never had anybody advise me on anything. She goes through all this stuff and "What do you want to do?" I said, "Well I like politics." "Oh, poli sci makes sense." That's how much thought went into it. She said, "Do you have any questions?" My question was, "What grade point average do you need to graduate?" She said, "2.0." It was the first time in my life I had a goal. That was it, that's all I ever had and I minimized.
Yet I'm in awe and Sandy points it out. It's like when somebody says "I went to Harvard or Princeton" or an Ivy League school, and if you have to go to the West Coast, Stanford. I go "Wow." You could be dumb as a brick, I don't know. I guess if you get through there, but every time I research something and I look at the guys and gals that have written on it, it's always one of these schools. I'm talking to a guy who's got three master's degrees and two PhDs and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "Well I'm going to get another PhD." There's this side of me that goes "Why?" Well, I'm putting my faith and trust in my education.
Misplaced Hope in Appearance
Here's the third thing: my appearance. I have several medical conditions but one that you've observed that maybe you haven't noticed are my eyelids. If you some of you met my dad, it's genetics. My dad's eyelids are like this and I know this sounds, unless you're there, unless you're there you don't get it, it can give you a headache. But if I look, you're never going to be able to look at me again the same way. I've screwed you up. If I lift my eyelids up you can see the light pour in. So it's strictly medical. So I go and see a plastic surgeon and I said, "Here's my problem."
Before I came in to see him, I was on the phone and had to talk to him. He said, "Before you come in, go to your ophthalmologist and get this test." It's a field test, and it's really interesting—you push the button and it gives you results, and you can see that your vision is impaired.
So I went in and asked, "Can you fix it?" He said, "Sure, in a couple of ways." The obvious way was just to cut this, and it would be like nothing. But he said there's another way that would actually help me more: "If we go up in here, make a couple of incisions, and pull that forehead up, it'll relieve the pressure on those eyebrows." He did that, and I thought, "Wow, look at that—all those wrinkles are gone!" I said, "You know what? If you're in there, you ought to look up. We could make a purse out of this thing—we have enough time." My mind raced; I was ready for a tummy tuck and everything.
The Trap of Popularity
That's the fourth thing: popularity. That's Psychology 101—you want to be liked. I was at a high school football game about a month ago and didn't know anybody. That's not totally true—I guess I knew a couple of parents—but I was sitting where the students were.
I noticed there was one little girl, and she was nondescript—wasn't fat, wasn't thin, wasn't pretty, wasn't ugly, had nice hair that could have been nicer. She was sitting there, and I watched her for three quarters. It was as though she was invisible to the girls around her. All the other girls were dancing and doing some cheers or whatever was going on, and this poor little girl was there all by herself. I thought, "How awful is that?" I mean, I'm projecting—I'm writing a script. It may not be true at all, but it sure looked true.
You don't want to be that kid. If you're a girl, you want to be the one leading that cheer. If you're out there, you want to be the quarterback. You don't want to be the guy that drops the ball at the end of the game. You want to be popular, and I'll put my hope in that.
Position and Title
Or position—your title, senior executive vice president, founder. I always look—I like Shark Tank. I'm into Shark Tank. I love to watch it. I love the show, I love the human dynamics of it, but I love these guys when they come out: "I'm Tom, founder and CEO." "What are your total sales?" "Ninety-eight dollars." Well, you're the founder and CEO of a garage sale! I don't even know what it is, but founder and CEO. Here you go—put my hope in that.
Pleasure—you can fill in the gap there. Eat, drink, be merry. Put my hope there.
The Danger of Self-Reliance
There's another one: in myself. I'm doing a lot of reading, kind of the coaching thing, and a lot of books relating to that. There's this fine line for me between being positive—I'm not by nature a very positive person—and pride. We got Panther pride! What is that? "We wanted it more than they did." Really? No, you're better. Your average line is 325 and their defensive line is 180. You're going to win a lot of games, even if you take the day off.
There's all that self-help stuff: "If you can conceive it, you can believe it, you can achieve it." Without God? I don't think so. There's a lot of that self-reliance. I'll tell you, especially if you're successful, this is a trap. Because no matter how many times you warn yourself, the rest of the world is going to say, "You're the salesperson of the year," or "Our speaker today is a successful business lady who's done all these things and overcome so much." And you think, "Well, you know, God's blessed me, but let's be honest—why wouldn't He bless me? Look at me." Put your hope in yourself.
The last thing I wrote is just a person—put your hope in another person. Well, if I put my hope in any person, place, or thing other than Jesus, I'll be lost. So for years, with the guys, it was money, sex, power, or gold, girls, glory.
When Life Brings Us Low
"Why so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God." In Him, all those things we talked about are no measurement of spiritual health. They don't preclude it, but I think they make it a lot more difficult many times. The easier it is—I mean, I won't answer out loud, but in your own personal experience, do you find yourself drawn closer to God when the deal closes or when it blows? Do you find yourself closer to God when you're throwing the winning touchdown—this is obviously theoretical for this group—or when you blow your knee? Do you find yourself praying harder when your relationships are all smooth or when they've absolutely fallen apart?
That solitude, that get away—we talked about it—get away with God. Again, one author writes, "The greatest single safeguard which a shepherd has in handling his flock is to keep them on the move." God doesn't leave us until He's broken our hearts, our bones.
The Wandering Sheep
Chuck Swindoll, in writing about this 23rd Psalm, writes this: "Occasionally one particular young sheep will get into the habit of wandering. Again and again the shepherd will have to go and find the wandering lamb. When such occurs too often, the shepherd will lift the lamb from the thistles and the cactus, hold it close, and abruptly break its leg. He will make a splint for the shattered leg and then carry the once wayward lamb on his shoulders. Hopefully during this period of restoration, the sheep learns not to wander off or to depend completely upon anything but the shepherd."
Isn't that great? I don't want that. You can see that—as I read that and as He grabs him and breaks his leg—you can see some of you cringe at that. But that's what He does. "Prone to wander"—the great old hymn. That's who I am, but the Shepherd knows what I need.
Let me see if I can tie it up with this. If I can tie together the idea of discouragement, the idea of the sheep who's wandering, Phil Keller...
gives us seven things that we can kind of focus on. In that time of discouragement, in that time of hardship, number one, be willing to love Christ and love others more.
Here's what happens to me. This really happens when I'm not feeling well. This is my ninth straight day of feeling good. I had nine straight days of almost no pain. I mean, it's incredible. I love it, but when I don't, I'll get into the bedroom and I close all the windows and I have my little radio, which is now my phone, and I'll put on some tape or a news and I literally pull the covers up to my shoulder and the sheets over my head and I don't want to see anything. What happens in that moment is rather than get better, I just cycle down. I get more discouraged. The pain doesn't seem to go away. It seems to intensify.
The best thing you can do in those hardship moments, the best thing you can do is start to think and love others. The best thing for me to do is to go to Sandy. Like, Sandy's really busy right now. She just got a lot of stuff going on. The best thing I can do, and I did it as she was going to the gym yesterday and I was laying on the couch, I said, is there anything you need me to do while you're gone? And she said, well, maybe move to the chair would be good. There's an upgrade for you. But she said, no, but I know it may, all of a sudden I'm going, what can I do for her?
Seven Ways to Experience Restoration
Here's the second thing, willing to be set apart, to be unique, to not just go with the flow, to take a stand. Here's the third thing, to forego all of your rights. Now, that's an all, all of your rights.
But we live in this world. I was telling Sandy the other day, there were three incidents, Sunday and Monday, three incidents where airplanes were stopped in the air, and they weren't stopped in the air, but rerouted in the air, back to the original destination. Because one guy took off all his clothes, and was accosting a flight attendant. One lady was choking the guy behind her, and two other guys were in a fight. We went back to Iowa City a couple weeks ago, and it's amazing, these people on these planes, you see all this work, I want my own right, I want to get out of here now. Well, you're in row 32, I'm in row 29, in my understanding, 29s before 32, get your fat can back there, and let me out.
You know what I did? I looked up, here's this poor lady, I don't know what her hurry was, but you don't have to make everything a rights issue. So the world's passing you by, it's okay. You deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him.
Choosing Humility and Acceptance
These start to get similar. Number four, I'm willing to be at the bottom of the heap. To use sheep terminology, instead of the top ram, I'm willing to be a, I'd never heard this term before, tail ender. I'm willing to be the leader that eats last.
Number five, instead of finding fault with life and always asking why, I accept my circumstance. That's not a defeatist attitude. These are the cards you got. This is the hand you're dealt. This is who you are. This is your capacity. You're this smart, now you can get smarter, you can get more information. You're this tall.
But really, we talk about this in that coaching stuff. The only two things an athlete can really control is attitude and effort. The only two things you can really control is your attitude and your effort. You can't be overwhelmed by these circumstances. And they keep coming. And get that, the promise is not to change the circumstance, the promise is to restore you, oftentimes in the midst of it.
Number five, I'm willing to learn to cooperate with God's wishes, comply to His will, and it makes sense. Number seven, I'm willing to choose to follow His way, to do what He asks.
The Path Back to the Flock
So like that sheep that wanders, time to go. Like that sheep that wanders, you get isolated, you need to be re-engaged, re-emerge into the flock, into the church, into the small group. And when I do, my loneliness diminishes because I have fellowship, and my despair decreases because I have a vision, and my confusion begins to lift because I have a direction.
Now, where do I find all that? You know that, it's in the Word of God. If I want to know, and we said this last week, if you want to start a relationship, a conversation with God, you don't have to wait on Him, He already spoke, here it is. All I have to do is study it, begin.
God's Perfect Character
I found this quote, I like it, we end with it. God is never wrong, He's never rendered a wrong decision, experienced the wrong attitude, taken the wrong path, said the wrong thing, or acted the wrong way. He's never too late, or too early, or too loud, or too soft, or too fast, or too slow, He's always been and always will be right. The Lord is my shepherd, He will restore my soul, that's His promise.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for that awesome and amazing truth, and we confess it doesn't always feel that way, sometimes circumstances look like a tsunami coming at us. Sometimes things are coming, and coming, and coming at me, and I don't know what to do, now I do. Why so downcast old my soul? Put my hope in you. I don't need to understand all the whys, you don't owe me an explanation, and you've given me direction in your Word. Father, for those that are hurting, you bring a person or people around them to encourage and help. God, let us take that huge, deep breath, knowing that you promise rest, and refreshment, and restoration. God, thank you for loving us, that's why we love you, and pray to you in Jesus' name, amen.