My Kingdom, give
us this day our daily
bread.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil.
Jesus, Jesus, Lord, we pray.
...have joined us since you may not be
aware of the fact that we're studying in
Psalm 23 in these morning hours.
And we're turning again to that Psalm this
morning, Psalm 23.
So far we have considered verses 1, 2,
and 3.
This morning we hope to look at verses
4 and 5.
And the Lord willing, the last verse on
Friday morning.
The first thing we did last Lord's Day
when we began our study of this Psalm
was to look at the shepherd himself.
The Lord is my shepherd.
And for that we went to the 10th
chapter of John, where the Lord himself claims
to be exactly that.
And we saw the various proof that he
gives, that he is a good shepherd.
And then we also noted how, as we
move along in the Psalm, that this results
in perfect satisfaction.
Where he says, I shall not want.
And then we're introduced to a very lovely
scene in verses 2 and 3.
Where we have the green pastures and the
still waters, or the waters of quietness.
And we pointed out that it's not so
much a question of eating and drinking there,
as it is to enjoy the atmosphere of
that wonderful provision that the Lord has made
for us.
This we believe fits right in with what
we have in the New Testament, where the
Lord invites us to come and rest.
Come unto me all ye that labor, and
the heavy laden and I will give you
rest.
So we stressed the quiet time in connection
with that second verse.
And then we pointed out too how he
restores our soul.
And for the illustration or at least the
application of that, we went to the closing
verses of James official.
To see the number of different ways in
which the Lord restores our soul.
It's interesting to observe that we're living in
a day when great emphasis is being placed
upon the soul of man.
This is indicated by the number of words
that begin with the syllable psych.
Like psychology, psychosomatic, psychiatry, and so on.
Psych is simply the Greek word for soul.
And we find that the number of words
beginning with that syllable have greatly multiplied in
the years just closing.
So that men are beginning to realize that
there's something that needs attention besides the body.
And how wonderful that the scriptures give us
this very thing.
Then in the close of verse three, we
have the Lord leading us in the paths
of righteousness for his name's sake.
And we pointed out that the reason why
the word is in the plural here, the
paths of righteousness, is perhaps to cover every
activity in which we might engage as human
beings.
Our home life, our school life, our business
life, our social life, whatever it might be,
come under the heading of the paths of
righteousness.
Unless you should think that this is a
sort of an austere experience, let me just
remind you that in the book of Proverbs,
we read that the path of the just
is of the shining light that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day.
Yes, the path of the just one.
The word is in the singular number in
the original language, but that's the one whom
we follow.
And the perfect day, by the way, is
not sunset.
The perfect day is high noon.
When we lived in San Diego, California some
years ago, there was a lady living just
east there, Carrie Jacobs Bond, who wrote that
lovely lyric, when you come to the end
of a perfect day.
When I got to considering that, I said
to myself, the perfect day has no end.
It's always high noon.
And it's the brightness of the full noonday
sun that shines upon one in the perfect
day.
And this is the kind of experience we
have as we follow the Lord Jesus in
the paths of righteousness.
And you notice it says here, and this
is an interesting qualification, for His namesake.
And I like the way this is put
in the Spanish language.
I think that every one of us who
have had the privilege of learning more than
one language ought to take advantage of the
variations that we get in these various languages.
I think I pointed out one yesterday in
John 3, 16 in the French, that it
not only says His only begotten Son, but
Son Fils Unique.
That's His unique Son.
God has given to us His unique Son.
Here again is a very interesting observation in
connection with this verse in the Spanish language.
Instead of reading for His namesake, the Spaniard
says, Por el amor de su nombre, it's
for the love of His name.
For the love of His name.
And I enjoy these variations as I read
the scriptures in the various languages.
And any of you who have had the
privilege of being born in a bilingual home,
as I did, should take advantage of this
because it takes all of these languages to
give us the real fullness of meaning that
we find in these terms.
And then just to consider this, for the
love of His name.
Beloved, that ought to settle every question as
to where I can go and what I
can do.
Can I do this for His namesake?
Years ago, my dear father brought that to
my attention.
There are no specific commandments to tell you
about certain things that you can't do.
For instance, in those boyhood days when, like
every boy, I suppose, there was the temptation
to smoke that first cigarette.
And there was the first dance to go
to and all that sort of thing.
And of course, I didn't know every scripture
which says I shall not smoke cigarettes.
It wasn't there.
And there wasn't anyone that said that I
shouldn't go to a social dance.
But my father pointed out that the way
to answer those questions was to ask this
one.
Would it honor His name?
Would it glorify Him if I do this?
And so this is the way we settle
a lot of these questions.
If you want a direct text of scripture
for everything, well, of course, then you can
almost make a book to suit yourself.
But not so when you don't need it.
When you walk in the path of righteousness
for His namesake.
Oh, beloved, let's remember this.
When we are tempted to engage in certain
things in our everyday life, will this really
glorify the Lord?
Will this bring honor to His name?
I remember when I first went to the
mission field as a young man of 20.
My father took me to the steamship in
New York.
He was setting sail for Central America.
And Dad looked at me and he said,
Son, I'm sorry I haven't got the sum
of money that I could give you to
relieve you of all financial anxiety, at least
for the next year you're going into this
new field.
But he said, Son, by God's grace, I've
given you a good name.
Live up to it.
And my father had given me a good
name.
He had a reputation for honesty and integrity
in the community in which we lived.
And I've been able to use this with
my own children and said, Now look, your
grandfather has left you a great heritage.
Live up to it.
And how much greater is the heritage, beloved,
for those of us who know the Lord
Jesus Christ as a Savior, to let the
honor and glory of His name determine where
we go, what we do, what we say,
yes, and even what we think.
All of these things could come in to
these paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Now so much by way of introduction.
I remember an old Presbyterian pastor we had,
one of the lad of twelve.
He always labeled the origins of his sermon.
This is a part of his introduction.
And then, of course, he preached his sermon,
and now a few words by way of
application.
And finally, by way of conclusion, we were
always ready to conclude with him.
But he's very nicely divided.
But now let's take a look at verse
four in our psalm.
You notice that there's quite a change of
atmosphere here.
Yea, though I walk to the valley of
the shadow of death.
You know, very often this is limited in
people's thinking to some serious experience that they
have, or the closing hours of their lives,
as though this is the only time it
applies.
And they get a rather shock when you
point out to them that they've been in
this valley ever since they were born.
You came into the valley of the shadow
of death when you were born.
And this leads me to make this remark,
that these places which are mentioned in the
psalm are not stations along the road that
you leave behind, like the green pastures and
the still waters.
Yes, I enjoyed them, but let's move on
to the next station, the paths of righteousness.
Let's move on to the next station, and
you come into the valley of the shadow.
In some mysterious way, all of these things,
shall I say, run concurrently.
It's possible that even though we are in
the valley of the shadow of death, to
enjoy the green pastures and the waters of
quietness, yes, because it's His presence that makes
it just that, you see.
But let us look at this expression, the
valley of the shadow of death.
One commentator has pointed out to us that
the word in the original, translated the shadow
of death, is one of the gloomiest, darkest
that you can possibly imagine.
And you ask yourself, how in the world
did it ever get this way?
I remember this as a question I used
to ask myself when men and women were
dying in the neighborhood where I was born
and brought up.
Death was such a mysterious thing to me.
I remember going with my mother to view
the corpse of a policeman who had endeared
himself to all of us boys and girls
in the neighborhood where we lived.
Everybody knew Mr. Waters.
It's true he wore a club at his
side, but he never used it on any
of us.
He was the kind of a man that
could keep order without a club.
And then one day Mr. Waters died.
And Mother, of course, had to go and
comfort Mrs. Waters.
And I went with her.
And I was mystified.
I came home, I said to my mother,
I said, How did all of this start?
And she had a ready answer from the
word of God.
Because the answer is found in the fifth
chapter of Romans.
By one man.
Oh, how much damage one man can do.
By one man.
Sin entered into the world and death by
sin.
And so death hath passed upon or passed
through to all men.
You see where the blame lies.
By one man.
And so the shadow comes in.
There it is in the shadowing, you and
me right now.
We're in it.
The valley of the shadow of death.
What a contrast to the green pastures and
the waters of quietness.
But here it is.
And one has only to pick up his
daily newspaper to look over the obituary column.
If you needed no further proof, that would
be it, wouldn't it?
And so far as I know, every community
of any size that I've ever lived in
has had its cemetery.
There it is.
You're reminded of it.
And then, of course, when it enters the
circle of your own family, as it has
my own on more than one occasion, you're
made very much aware of this, that you're
living in the valley of the shadow of
death.
Thank God for what follows here.
You know, sometimes we think these Old Testament
saints lived in a sort of an obscure
dispensation.
But not so was the psalmist when he
said, Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I'll fear no
evil.
Why, the one who was just my leader
leading beside the still waters, and leading me
in the path of righteousness, now, as it
were, just steps back a step or two.
And instead of becoming my leader, he becomes
my companion.
Thou art with me.
Oh, this is wonderful, isn't it?
To think that the one who just now
was in the forefront is now at my
side.
The one who was in the vanguard now
becomes my bodyguard.
This is tremendous, isn't it?
And this is what enables us Christians to
face that which people look upon as the
king of terror.
As something entirely different.
You say, yes, but why should it make
so much difference to have him with you?
Ah, because he'd been through the thing.
He went right through the thing.
And he faced it in all its grim
reality.
As we were pointing out last evening, when
he faced it there in the Garden of
Gethsemane, he said, If it be possible, let
this cup pass.
Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.
And I like sometimes to just point out
to people that what the Lord Jesus faced
there was not simply what we call natural,
ordinary death.
He died a cruel death.
The cross of Christ.
A cruel death.
The prince of darkness was there in all
of his power.
And when you see the word darkness in
the scriptures, it implies not only the absence
of light, but positive opposition to the light.
When the scripture says light is coming to
the world, and men loved darkness rather than
light, because their deeds were evil.
Darkness, I repeat, friends, is something more than
the absence of light.
That, after all, is a negative definition, isn't
it?
The absence of light.
It's positive opposition to it.
And that's why one of the names we
give to Satan is the prince of darkness.
And your Lord and mine went into it
in its terrible depths.
When on the cross of Christ, not only
was there physical darkness, when for three long
hours he hung upon that cross, and the
sun refused to shine.
But, oh, friends, that was only symbolic of
the terrible darkness into which the Lord Jesus
went for you and for me.
How well did the poet put it.
None of the ransomed ever knew how deep
were the waters of the cross, how dark
was the night that the Lord went through
ere he found his sheep.
The horror of it.
We get some idea of this perhaps in
the 18th Psalm.
Would you mind turning back a page or
two in your Bible to Psalm 18?
And look at this.
While I grant you that primarily this was
the psalmist's own experience, as the title of
this psalm tells us, but I'm sure that
he's speaking here prophetically for the Lord Jesus.
And he says here in verse 4, Psalm
18, verse 4, The sorrows of death encompassed
me, and the floods of ungodly men made
me afraid.
The sorrows of hell or Sheol encompassed me
about, the snares of death prevented me.
You read this psalm and you get some
idea of what the Lord Jesus really endured
upon the cross of Calvary.
All the forces of darkness, satanic, Satan with
all of his hosts was there.
And that is why he can be such
a wonderfully comforting companion in that which otherwise
frightens people.
You know, as one who has faced death
more than once in his lifetime, and I
have, and doubtless some of the rest of
you have also, and when I say faced
death, I'm not simply talking about a sick
bed, because on the mission field, together with
another missionary who is now in glory, we
faced a hostile mob.
We made the great mistake of going to
their town in what they called Holy Week.
And mind you, it is an awful sin
to preach the gospel on Holy Week, in
this particular town.
But we had the audacity to do it.
And as a result we were pelted with
everything imaginable.
Sticks, stones, human waste, what have you.
Yes, they just pelted us.
I managed to dodge a few of the
stones as they came our way.
Caught one of them just before it hit
my companion.
And after about twenty minutes of that, they
suddenly stopped as if someone had ordered them
to quit.
And we moved on to our apartment where
we were having our lodgings.
And they took revenge on us there by
pelting the roof, the tile roof with stones,
until the next morning we could look up
and the whole roof was full of holes.
Well, some thirty years later, I was back
in that same community and preaching the gospel,
and I noticed a man in the audience
whose eyes fairly bore through me.
I like eye contact.
But I didn't appreciate it that day.
There was a bouquet before me on the
table.
I kept dodging it to get away from
his eye, but I couldn't.
And after the meeting he was the first
man to come up.
And he said to me, Were you in
Colinas de Santa Barbara, that was the name
of the town, thirty years ago, the year
1915?
I said yes.
He said, Do you remember being stoned there?
I said, I could never forget it.
He said, Well, I was one of those
that stoned you.
And the way he said it, I thought
he'd come to finish the job.
I looked at him for a moment wondering.
He said, Some time later you came into
another town, Santa Cruz de Yacoa, and he
said you preached there that night.
He said, I well remember the text on
which you preached.
And I went thirty years, you know, you
have to forget what you did thirty years
before, but this man hadn't.
I said, Well, what did I preach on?
He said, You preached on the third and
fourth chapters of Romans.
I thought for a moment, yes, I did.
He said, Brother, as you continued to preach,
God was speaking to me.
And as a result of that sermon, I
came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as
my personal Savior.
I've been waiting thirty years to tell you.
Well, you know, I know it's only for
ladies to embrace each other, but we men
did.
As a matter of fact, this is quite
common in Central America.
We have what we call an abrazo.
And we find the same is true in
Spain today with our dear brethren in Spain.
And don't get me started on Spain, because
things are really happening in Spain these days.
The Lord is really blessing the work.
New assemblies are being established.
I can remember when it was impossible to
preach there with the doors open in Spain.
But today, thank God, these doors are open.
And we're able to preach, yes.
We thank God that we can now embrace
each other in the face as we did
that day of brethren in Christ.
But coming back to my subject, I said
to this brother, I said, Brother, I said,
when you were stoning us, I said, what
did we look like?
I said, tell me, what sort of impression
did you get?
Well, he said, it just seemed like you
didn't care.
He said, you stood there as if, well,
this is part of it.
And we didn't seem to make an impression
on you.
Well, he didn't know just how our hearts
were fluttering at the time.
But the Lord evidently gave us the grace
to show these people a calm in the
face of imminent danger.
And he said it impressed us.
He said, after you and your companion drove
away that day, we were impressed with the
calm and poise that you had.
To me, dear friends, this is a perfect
illustration of what we have in this psalm,
I will fear no evil.
Oh, beloved, if that time comes, if the
Lord tarries a while yet, and you and
I, perhaps some of us who are older,
we have to go through what some of
the theologians call the article of death, I
hope we can go through it just that
way.
My dear father was an example to me
in this.
The Wednesday night before he died, in Winslow,
Arizona, he said to my sister, who now
lives in the Claremont home in California, he
said, Ben, I don't understand it.
Why doesn't the Lord call me?
Well, she said, Dad, you can't barge in
there any more time you'd like.
You've just got to wait your time.
And the next Lord's Day morning, it came.
It was five o'clock, and in he
went.
As you know, Dad never showed one moment
of fear.
Not one moment.
To him, it was going to be a
joyous entering in to the presence of the
Lord.
And in addition to the wonderful experience of
seeing the Lord Jesus for the first time,
there will be the joy of reunion with
those of our loved ones that have gone
on before.
Oh, beloved, thank God for this passage of
Scripture.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil for thou.
You notice instead of talking about the shepherd,
he's now talking to him.
Thou art with me.
And thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me.
Now, this word translated rod here, is translated
scepter in Psalm 45.
The scepter of thy kingdom is a right
scepter.
It's the symbol of authority.
Royal authority, it is.
Thy rod.
Thy royal authority.
And notice, friends, that when he died, that
was actually emphasized even by his enemies.
I was reading through the 15th chapter of
Luke one day, with this in mind, and
I was surprised to find out that in
that 15th chapter of Mark, I should say,
not Luke, 15th chapter of Mark, you have
at least six references to the royalty of
the Lord Jesus.
The king of the Jews?
They wanted it changed.
They said, right, not the king of the
Jews, but they just said, I'm the king
of the Jews.
Pilate says, what I've written, I've written.
Thank God for that.
There he is.
And as the king, the scripture tells us
in the second chapter of the epistles of
the Hebrews, that inasmuch as the children were
partakers of flesh and blood, he himself likewise
took part of the same.
And notice the reason why.
That through death, he might destroy or annul
him that had the power of death, that
is the devil.
This is an arresting statement, isn't it?
That the devil is said to have the
power of death.
Now, we have at least three different words
for power in the original language of the
New Testament.
One of them simply means authority.
That's not the word used in Hebrews.
Another one is found in Romans 1.16
where the gospel of Christ is the power
of God.
And there is the Greek word upon which
we found our English word dynamite.
That's not the word used in Hebrews 2.
The word used in Hebrews 2 is the
word kratos, which we use in combinations in
such words as democrat, plutocrat, aristocrat.
It speaks of might, which could be exercised
apart from authority altogether.
And this is the sense in which the
devil is said to have the power or
might of death, like a villain or like
a bandit who holds you up at the
point of a pistol, puts it in your
side, he says, this is a stick-up.
Yes, he's got the might of death.
He's got the power of death, but he
hasn't got the authority.
And when the Lord Jesus Christ died, he
annulled him that had the power of death,
that is the devil.
For what purpose?
That he might deliver us who through fear
of death were all our lifetime subject to
bondage.
This is it.
You know, this is what makes the deathbed
of a Christian so different, doesn't it?
People say, how come?
Here's a man facing the inevitable, as they
say, and yet he does so with a
look of joy and peace on his face.
Why, he's going home.
And who's afraid to go home?
I'm not.
As long as we're absent from the Lord,
we're at home in the body, we're absent
from him.
But when we're absent from the body, we're
at home with the Lord.
Who's afraid to go home?
And all of this seems to be locked
up in this verse, you see.
I'll fear no evil, for thou art with
me, thy rod or thy scepter, and thy
staff, the staff speaking of that which supports.
Yes, we need his support.
And we never need it more, perhaps, than
when people are looking on just to see
how a Christian dies.
And I've had that experience more than once.
I can testify, dear friends, that I have
an answer for every atheist that I've ever
met.
You can't duplicate the deathbed of a Christian
who knows the Lord is with him.
And then this leads on, as we have
in the next verse here, to a prepared
table.
This is interesting, isn't it?
That immediately in connection with this reference to
death, we should have a table mentioned.
How suggestive, isn't it, of the way in
which the Lord Jesus connected these two things
together.
Because in what we call the Lord's table,
what the Scripture calls the Lord's table, we
have the remembrance of his death.
And here we find these two things brought
together in this connection, the valley of the
shadow of death and the table of communion.
You see, earlier in the psalm, we had
provision made for our hunger and our thirst.
But this is different.
And I point this out to any who
may have never noticed it, that the Lord
has something else in view for you besides
satisfying the pangs of hunger.
I have frequently said, and I'll repeat it
this morning, that I believe the primary purpose
of eating is not merely to sustain the
body or to satisfy the pangs of hunger.
The primary purpose of eating is fellowship.
That's why Eve, after she took the forbidden
fruit, she didn't sit down and eat it
alone.
She gave to her husband with her.
It was a natural thing to do.
Because this was the way things started.
This was to be a time of fellowship.
This is why, dear friends, we enjoy sitting
down and eating with each other.
And this is brought up to its highest
point when we come to what the Scripture
calls the Lord's table.
And He Himself has prepared it.
How wonderful, isn't it?
Thou prepares the table before me, and notice
that this is not heaven.
It's in the presence of my enemies.
Yes, they are all around us.
And we're never more aware of it, perhaps,
than when we're preparing for this.
To be able to concentrate the mind on
this particular thing.
As a lad, I was deeply impressed.
In the Presbyterian church, which we attended at
the time, I was a boy about ten.
And then this Friday night before the communion
Sunday, which was observed about once a quarter
in that church, on the Friday night before,
they had what was known as a preparatory
service.
I learned afterward that in the old country,
those who attended that service were given a
coin, which they presented on the following Lord's
Day, which entitled them to participate in the
Lord's Supper, because they had been at the
preparatory service the Friday night before.
Getting ready for this communion with the Lord
Himself.
Yes, in the presence of our enemies, because
there's so many things come in to hinder
your communion and mine, don't they?
There's the cares of the week that we've
just about finished, and then there's the cares
of the week ahead of us.
In a business world such as we live
in now, oh, how many distractions there are.
Yes, we have all sorts of things continuing
against us when we try to get ready
for the remembrance of our Lord.
But thank God, He's able to silence them
all and give to us that lovely communion,
fellowship with Himself.
And communion simply means having something in common
with somebody else.
And you know the mystery of it is
this, that the Apostle could say as he
does in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, God
is faithful who hath called us into the
fellowship, into the communion of Jesus Christ, His
Son.
God asking us to participate with Him in
that which He enjoys.
That's what communion is.
It's enjoying what God enjoys.
This is tremendous, to think that you and
I should have the privilege of enjoying what
God enjoys.
That's what real fellowship is.
This is what this prepared table is all
about.
It prepares the table before me in the
presence of my enemies.
And then in connection with this, we have
this lovely thought of having our heads anointed
with oil.
A fresh anointing of the Spirit of God.
You know, some of us are quite satisfied
with the fact that we've been baptized with
the Holy Spirit when we were baptized into
the body of Christ, as we read in
1 Corinthians chapter 12.
But you know, St. Paul also speaks of
the supply of the Spirit in Philippians chapter
1.
And I believe there is such a thing
as a renewal in this way.
And how this does renew us when we
come together in this way to remember Him,
together with our fellow saints at His table,
to have the head anointed with oil.
Somebody says, yes, the head needs it.
Because that's where a lot of our troubles
begin.
But I think, dear friends, it's not only
that.
Because from the head it can flow down
to even down to our feet.
As we learn from another one of the
Psalms, it flows down.
The precious ointment.
It goes down even to the skirt of
the garment.
Beloved, let us covet that this might be
our experience any and every time that we
come together to remember Him.
And then, just this last thought here.
And this, of course, is so subjective.
My cup run is over.
Your cup, after all, might not be a
very big one.
But, thank God, it has been one's experience
again and again to find that a meeting
such as this really results in this wonderful
experience that our cup runneth over.
And what do you do with an overflowing
cup?
Well, you share it with somebody else.
This, I believe, should be one of the
things that comes out of our morning meetings
as we remember our blessed Lord and His
death.
The cup should be overflowing.
Sometimes young people come to us and say,
Would you mind giving me a few little
ideas as to how to go about witnessing
for the Lord?
Just get your heart so full of Him
that you can't contain Him.
It will come out.
Yes, indeed.
I remember the night after I was baptized,
I was on my way back to the
job, to work.
My father was superintendent of the shop and
I was working upstairs in the office.
I was wondering just how I was going
to handle this situation because I felt I
should be saying something about it.
But the enemy had me persuaded that I
was such a weak, vacillating individual that I
better not say anything about it.
Just keep it to yourself.
But you know, the first man I met
was a man under whom I worked, a
Virginian by the name of Thomas Evans.
And the first thing he said to me,
he said, Well, kid, I'll get on with
a small one.
I said, Mr. Evans, I was baptized last
night.
I almost choked on my own words.
I wasn't going to say a thing about
it.
But my cup was running over.
It was running over.
So I had an opportunity to witness to
my boss.
And that night when the big boss came
out, who was an atheist, by the way,
chomping a big cigar with his hat back
on the back of his head, I said,
Well, Evans, anything new today?
He said, Yes, Mr. Evans, the kid here
rode the goat last night.
He was referring to what they do in
some of the lodges.
But again, it was my privilege standing there
face to face with the big boss, the
president of the concern.
He said, You're rather young to be riding
the goat.
I said, Mr. Wood, I was baptized last
night in the name of the Father and
the Son.
You can imagine how this 15-year-old
boy went out of that office that night,
thrilled with the thought that he had made
my cup run over.
Friends, this is the way it ought to
be.
You shouldn't have to pump this out.
It should just flow over, you know, just
of itself.
This is one of the wonderful things of
living in such close fellowship with the Lord
that you can say, Thou art with me.
In closing, let us turn to hymn number
202.
Hymn number 202.
What a fellowship.
What a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting
arms.
What a blessedness.
What a peace is mine, leaning on the
everlasting arms.
Number two.
Let us rise to sing.
Will Jesus
come?