When I Need Reassurance

My name is Mark and I want to welcome all of you. I'm so glad you're part of church whether you're in this room, a next-door venue, joining us on Facebook Live or at our website TLC.org. We are glad that you are part of this morning's church service and we've been in a series called "Living in the Goodness of God," which is based in Psalm 23, also called the Shepherd Psalm. But I was thinking this week, this series titled "Living in the Goodness of God" could just become another Christian cliché or it could be a reality in our lives. Something that gives us strength and stability regardless of our circumstances.

I'll give you an example. Twelve days ago, Southwest flight 1380 took off from LaGuardia in New York bound for Dallas, but 20 minutes into that flight one of its two engines suffers a catastrophic failure. A fan blade is flung into the engine, the shroud around the engine is torn apart, pelting the cabin area with debris. A piece of shrapnel actually hits one of the windows, breaking it, and tragically the passenger seated next to that window suffers fatal injuries. At well over 30,000 feet, the cabin now loses pressure suddenly, oxygen masks drop, the passengers experience violent turbulence as the jet rapidly descends out of its altitude. For the next 22 minutes, 144 passengers and five crew members wonder, is this it? Is this the day I die?

One of those passengers, a guy named Marty Martinez, he's pictured there right on the left. In fact, this picture comes from him broadcasting this ordeal on Facebook Live. Marty says this, "Everybody was going crazy yelling and screaming. We knew that we were in a really bad place. I'm like, we're probably not going to make it." Meanwhile, Captain Tammy Jo Schultz, who happens to be one of the very first female fighter pilots in our country, has the unenviable task of landing this plane. Now I want you to listen to the actual voice recording of Captain Schultz talking with an air traffic controller as she prepares to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia.

"I understand your emergency. Let me know when you want to go in." "We have part of the aircraft that is still going to need to float out of it." "Southwest 1380 speed is your discretion maintain any altitude above 3,000 feet." "Southwest 1380, you'd like to turn and start turning it down." "Southwest 1380, turn start turning southbound. There's a Southwest 737 on a four-mile mile. Be turning southbound, start looking for the airport. It's off to your right and slightly behind you there and altitude is your discretion. Use caution for the downtown areas." "Okay, could you have the medical status there on the runway as well? We've got injured passengers." "Are your passengers okay and is your airplane physically on fire?" "No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing." Oh, is that all? It's not on fire but the part of it's missing. I mean, talk about nerves of steel.

Well, shortly after she lands the plane and hugs all the passengers, she gets a text from one of her friends, someone who goes to her church with her, and that text simply reads, "Praying for you." Captain Schultz's response, who happens to be a devout Christian, is just three words: "God is good." God at most harrowing, yeah, it's amazing. But listen, put this in perspective. Hardest day in the office in her life. Harrowing experience. What's your takeaway? God is good.

Now listen, having this deep conviction that God is good doesn't turn you into a robot and like nothing ever phases you or something like that, but it does give you this deep underlying strength and peace that no matter what, God is good and he is with me. Which brings us to Psalm 23. As most of you know, it was written by a guy named David who would eventually become the king of Israel. But David started out life as a young boy, a young teen. He was a shepherd many days out tending the sheep, and then he's elevated to national hero, eventually becomes king. But he's been the hero, he's been a fugitive, his life has been threatened on many occasions, been hunted, he's been in battle, he's had family drama. David has experienced the entire spectrum of life and looking back on all the ups and downs, he pens this psalm and kind of goes back to his days as a shepherd.

We're going to read not only the first three verses today that we've seen, but we're going to add four and five, and that will be our focus today. Since we're trying to get this psalm into our hearts and into our memory, I'm going to invite you to read along with me from Psalm 23, the first five verses. So let me hear you read this as we go. Here we go: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides 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."

Like I said, we're going to be focusing on verses four and five, and in just these two verses, there are really two extremes. Verse four is down in the valley, right? And not just any valley, but a deep dark valley. Back in the original Hebrew that this was written, the word that's used for darkness is the strongest word available in the Hebrew language to describe a deep darkness, thick gloom, even the abode of the dead, which is why it's translated valley of the shadow of death. But verse five, the scene has changed. David leaves behind the shepherd and the sheep metaphor. He starts talking about a table that's prepared for him and how, despite being in the presence of his enemy, his head is anointed with oil. It's a place of elevation, of honor.

So why these two extremes? Why the depths of the valley and the heights of the banquet? The point is this: it's because God is with us in both the highs and the lows and everywhere in between. I really want to press into this point, and so I want to give you an illustration from Scripture. I love this; it's in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings. If you wonder where 1 Kings is, it's right before 2 Kings. But in chapter 20, there's this awesome story that hardly anybody knows, and it's too bad because this is such a great story. It begins with a guy named Ahab who is the king of Israel, and Ahab has a problem. He's got an enemy army parked right on his doorstep, and this enemy king has assembled 32 other kings, and they're all going to gang up on Israel. So it does not look good for Israel. In fact, this enemy king, he's the king of the Arameans. His name is Ben Haddad, which is like something you'd hear in a Star Wars movie, like the evil Sith Ben Haddad.

He sends a message to Ahab saying, "Your silver and your gold are mine, the best of your wives and your children are mine. Tomorrow I will send my envoys and they will take from you everything you value and bring it to me." You can almost hear the sinister laugh behind that. Ahab responds, "Okay, you say so." It turns out to me not a real great king, and when his elders, his counselors around him hear that this is how he's responding, they're like, "No, wait, wait, wait, time out. That's the wrong answer. Ahab, remember that the Lord is with us. We can stand up to these guys despite being vastly outnumbered." So Ahab goes, "Okay, say so," and they take the fight to the Arameans and these 32 other kings, and they route them. I mean, it's just a total victory.

Then God says to Ahab, "Don't drop your guard because even though you've had this victory that I've given you, they're going to be back next spring, so be prepared." Sure enough, this enemy king, right after the loss, he can't believe this, and so he gathers together a war council and he's like, "Okay, we have to have an evaluation here. We're going to debrief; we're going to find out how in the world did we lose to such a puny army?" I love what his counselors tell him. They say, "Well, your Highness, here's what happened. We have figured this out. You see, the gods of Israel," and they say gods plural because that's their paradigm, "the gods of Israel are the gods of the hills where we tried to fight them, and that's why we lost. However, if we attack them in the valleys, we'll win because their gods will not be able to protect them there." And he's like, "That's brilliant! Why didn't we think of this the first time?"

So he rebuilds his massive army down to the last chariot and horse, and here they come. They're right there again, ready to attack. Surely this time they are going to just plunder the Israel army. In fact, the Bible says that in comparison, the Israelite army looks like two small flocks of goats. That's how massive and mighty they are, like two little flocks of goats, and they are surrounded by thousands upon thousands of these enemy warriors. But God is with Israel, and this is what the Lord says to Ahab. I love this; this is the punchline of this story. This is what the Lord, this is what Yahweh says: "Because the Arameans think the Lord is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the Lord." That great! I love that. That's really this message in a nutshell because he is not just God of the hills; he is God of the valleys. He's not just with you when times are going well; he's with you in the darkness when you feel lost and bewildered and afraid.

Let me ask you something: do you need to be reassured of this today? Is there a part of your life, a category of life where you've kind of compartmentalized things? It's like, well, you know, God's with me at church and when I sing in a worship night, well, he's there. But in this particular situation, I kind of feel like you're all on your own. You wouldn't say it that way, but that's how you're operating, like God is not actually in you, in that with you. But he is; he is with you always, even in the darkest of your valleys. Now I'm quite confident that there are no small number of folks here that are in a dark valley right now. I talked to a person last night; they got a very difficult diagnosis. I have a friend who's here this morning who, prior to going to church, I don't know what you did to get ready for church, he went and had cancer treatment and then came to this service. If you're not in a dark valley, sorry to inform you, but life is kind of a series of valleys. So if you're not in one now, you will be.

But nonetheless, you can say like David says here in verse four: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me." Did you notice how the pronouns have changed? In the first three verses, he talks about God in the third person. He says, "He makes me lie down, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul, he guides me." But now he's not just talking about God; he's talking to God. "You are with me, you prepare a table, you anoint my head." You see, because it's in the valleys that we find out what we really believe. That's where we find out whether we have built our life on the rock or on the sand. You might say it's where it gets personal; it's where we go from just simply believing things about Jesus to experiencing things with Jesus, that he's not just out there, but he's right here with me.

One of the moments of my life that I experienced this in such a profound way was several years ago when we were expecting our second child. Just two and a half, three weeks before we anticipated the birth of that child, he suddenly died in Laura's womb. For reasons that we won't know until heaven, I can tell you that of all the things that we experienced in that chapter of life, all of the emotions, one of them that we never experienced was panic. I mean, were we sad? Absolutely. We felt struck down. The panic? No. And it's not because I'm a pastor or we just kind of whipped up this amazing faith. We weren't even trying to have faith. What we knew unmistakably was that God was with us, that God was caring for us, that God was going to bring us through that difficult valley. In fact, I distinctly remember at some point during that time, I might have even been in the hospital, but I remembered a song that I learned growing up in church that we would sing, a song that just goes, "There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place, and I know that it's the spirit of the Lord. There are sweet expressions on each face, mostly, and I know that it's the spirit of the Lord." I don't know who wrote that song, but they knew what they were talking about because in the valleys, God makes his presence so real to you that there's a sweetness to it. Despite everything else that was going on, there was the sweet sense of God's presence.

Because here's the thing: if you've placed your life in the hands of Jesus, there will be times when you experience the firmness of his grip, and it's a tremendous comfort. When something happens in your life, something that I can testify to. Well, David continues, and he says, "Your rod and staff, they comfort me." Perhaps he's thinking back to his shepherding days when he would lead his sheep up through a valley or a ravine. In Israel, they call those a wadi. In fact, here's a picture of what he kept in Israel today. You know, you can go down in that wadi; you can find shade, you can find foliage, you can find water. But you might not be alone in that wadi; there might just be some predators waiting for their dinner to show up. Especially as the shadows start to descend, you might wonder what's lurking in the darkness, what's behind that next turn I can't see. And that's where the shepherd's rod comes in, just a little club-like stick that they would use to either club a wolf or a lion, some kind of predator, or they would throw it like a throwing stick. Shepherds like David were just deadly with this kind of rod.

I'm looking at your faces; some of you are thinking that there is no way that I would take on a wolf or a lion with some little stick like that. No, thank you. But here's the thing: we've become domesticated. In all of our comfort and ease, we have lost some serious skills, skills that people like David would have had. In fact, I don't know if you saw this, but here on screen, there's a picture of a guy. This guy goes golfing with his friends, and he somehow manages to tick off this goose. One of the things I love about this is how his friends are like, "Yeah, good luck with that; we'll see you later." They just abandoned him. He tries to run away, but it's like boom, not fast enough. It's like that goose is giving him a whooping. I don't know if maybe the goose thought that the golf ball was an egg, like, "Hey, you're going to mess with my young!" It's like, boom, you know, it's like, "No, sir." I look at this photo and I go, you know, it's really too bad that guy didn't have anything to defend himself with, a club or two or ten. Such a shame.

David says, "Your rod and your staff, they comfort me because God, you know how to use them. You know how to use them." Now that doesn't mean that we're not going to experience any pain, any tragedy in our lives. David knows that better than we do, and you know it well enough in your own experience. He's not saying that, but he is saying that there are times God is going to protect us in mysterious ways, often ways that we don't even realize in the moment. I mean, let's face it, some of us are just fortunate to be here this morning, am I right? You can think back at times where you know you were delayed in traffic, and then suddenly you came up on an accident. You would have been there at that time were it not for the delay. Or you were given a diagnosis, and now you don't have a diagnosis. For some of you, it's not even mysterious; you saw the tragedy coming, you had lost control of the outcome, and yet God stopped it in its tracks, and he gave it the rod, so to speak. Other times, it wasn't so much the rod, but he directed you around it. You averted it because he guided you in a different direction.

That's where the shepherd's staff comes in, where he gently guides his sheep. God gently guides us around things that, man, there have been situations that I put myself in that I did not deserve to escape from, but God protected me, God provided a means out of it. If you weren't here last week, René gave a magnificent sermon about how God guides in our lives and how we might seek his guidance. I won't belabor that, but this is what I have learned and become convinced of from my own valleys in life. I know this to be true: it's that God will give me what I need when I need it. God will give you what you need when you need it, whether that's protection or guidance, and often he works that out in mysterious ways.

But I know this much: again, if we stay focused on the Good Shepherd, we stay surrendered to his care. I don't have to know all the answers; he does. I don't have to know how to get out of the valley; Jesus knows how to lead me out of the valley. In John's gospel, he calls himself the Good Shepherd two times, chapter 10, not the absent shepherd or the aloof shepherd, the unavailable shepherd, but the Good Shepherd who is faithful to his sheep. So whatever your circumstances this morning, and especially if you find yourself in a dark valley, stay focused on your Good Shepherd because here's the thing: in these valleys, we're vulnerable. Not every bit of advice you receive in the valley is going to be good advice. Not every impulse that you're going to have in the dark valley is going to be a good impulse, okay? The hard truth about tough times is that we have the ability to make them worse.

So stay focused on your Good Shepherd, surrender to his care, and you will be able to look back. You'll look back years later, and you'll go, "Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't see his hand." But now, in those moments, you'll be able to say like David does in verse five what he says: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows." This is so key because it's human nature to think, would you agree? It's human nature to think that, you know, once I'm rid of all of my problems, once God just clears the deck of all of my problems, then I'll be happy. Then I'll have joy. Then I will be a blessed person. You know, if God just silences my critics and he heals me of my ailments and he pays the bills and he establishes world peace, then I will be a blessed person.

But have you noticed you're always going to have some opposition, some enemies you might have, you might say, in your life? And you may have also noticed that the people that may have greater opposition, greater challenges than you can at the same time be more content. In a week, I'm going to go down to Mexico with the seventh graders here at Twin Lakes Christian Middle School. I've made this trip a couple of times, and so I know what these kids are going to experience. One of the things I promise you they will experience is that they are going to be surprised, stunned by the reception they're going to receive, by the warmth, by the joy, by the laughter, by the hospitality of these orphans. Now, I'm not romanticizing their situation at all—their poverty, their wounds, their challenges—but even so, God can prepare a table. God does prepare a table for them in the face of those things.

So when we're down there, they will subversively remind each one of us, including the grown-ups, that just because you may have more comforts, that is no guarantee that you will have more joy. God can prepare a table in the face of our enemies, our challenges, and this is such an important lesson. This is the lesson that Israel struggled with over and over again. After God delivers them out of Egypt, you'd think it'd be like, "Hey man, we have no problems left!" And yet, as soon as they're into the journey, it's like, "Man, this is horrible! Well, we had this and we only had that." They could only focus on their fears, on their enemies, on what was wrong. In fact, in Psalm 78, which is a recap of Israel's history, their time where they wandered out in the wilderness for 40 years because they couldn't learn this lesson, says this in verse 19: "They spoke against God. They said, 'Can God really spread a table in the wilderness? Can he really do that?'"

Do you believe that? Can he spread a table in your wilderness right now, despite your circumstances, despite your very real griefs? Can he spread a table before you in the face of your wilderness? Well, David answers, yes, he can, and yes, he does. "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows." He's talking about not only God's provision, but he mentions this anointing his head with oil. What does that mean? Well, that's how you honored someone who was a guest at your table in those days. In fact, you can read about this in Luke 7. Jesus gets invited to the home of a Pharisee named Simon, and Simon, he doesn't really know what to think about Jesus. He's somewhat skeptical of him, and because he's ambivalent about who Jesus may be and whether he's a good guy or not, he neglects to honor him. He doesn't anoint his head with oil, and Jesus actually calls him out on this: "You disrespected me because you didn't know what to think of me." Now contrast that with how the Lord regards us. He's got a lot of reasons not to respect us; he knows all our secrets and all our warts and all the things that would prevent us from thinking that we have anything to ask of him. Yet David said he treats me like an honored guest, anoints our heads with oil, and says, "Come, you are welcome at my table. I will provide for you."

This kind of blows David's mind, and so he just, "My cup, it just overflows." So David goes from the darkness of the valley to now he's erupting in praise. How does that happen? I mean, it's not like he's, you know, kind of Pollyanna. He's a realist there with the valleys; they were very dark. And yet he can say, "But hey, even so, my cup overflows." You know how David was able to do that? It's because there are three things David knew he could count on. Three things he just knew he could take to the bank. No matter what, and the good news is this is the same three things that you and I can count on. So to sum this up, I just want to mention these three things and let's try to apply these things to our own lives.

The first thing that I know, and I know you can count on, is that the Lord is with me. The Lord is with me. Now let me ask you something: do you believe that? Do you believe it in that difficult situation? Can you, even in your prayer, say, "Lord, that difficult conversation that I'm going to have, or that relationship that's strained, or that challenge that I'm facing, or in my loneliness, whatever it might be, Lord, thank you that you're with me. Thank you that you'll never leave me nor forsake me." Just acknowledging that, just praying that can bring tremendous reassurance and comfort. You can count on him to be with you.

The second thing you can count on is that the Lord protects me. Now it may not always be in the ways that we would hope or ask, but again, God will mysteriously intervene in our lives in ways someday we'll look back and maybe it won't even be till heaven, and the curtain will be opened up and we'll go, "Oh my goodness! Thank you, God! Thank you for all the ways that you intervened in my life." You know, it really comes down to two options because here's the thing: you can live your life fearing what might get you, okay? Some dread disease, some tragedy, the bottom falls out, the other shoe drops, whatever you want to call it. You can live your life fearing what might get you, or you can live your life trusting that God has already got you. That's the beauty of being one of his children, knowing that God has already got me, that my life is in his hands, come what may. Now that's a process; we don't do that overnight. But over time, we can have that confidence that comes from knowing he is mine and I am his.

Well finally, not only is the Lord with me and the Lord protects me, a third you can count on is the fact that the Lord will provide. The Lord's going to provide in amazing ways, in his time, in ways that will likely surprise you. It reminds me of a story I just came across a couple of days ago. It starts out sad because this little girl that you see on screen, she's a fourth grader in Pennsylvania, and since the first grade, she's been bullied severely by her classmates. She finally decides to tell her story, and so she makes a little video where she just holds up these handwritten signs that tell the narrative of what's been going on, one page after the next. This is what she says: "My name is Cassidy. One day during recess, a group of kids grabbed my purse off a teacher and spit on it. They hit me, kicked me, pulled my hair, pushed me, stepped on me, spit on me. Kids don't even want to go near me. Whenever I sit at a lunch table, the kids get up. They threatened to kill me, and then they tell me to kill myself." Just part of a terrible, sad, disturbing story. This is the valley that this little girl Cassidy has been in.

Well, she makes this video and she puts it on her Facebook page, and this video goes somewhat viral. It reaches one or more of the players for the New York Yankees. Now, I am NOT a big Yankees fan, okay? I'll just confess that. I'm not even a little Yankees fan, but I have to say that's changed because of the way that this team responded. The players got together, and they kind of took her video style and made one of their own and sent this back to Cassidy. I want you to see part of what this video contains: "You like a bird on a tree, I'm just sitting here, I got time. It's clear to see from up here the world seems small. We can sit together, it's so beautiful, you and me. We're meant to be in the great outdoors, forever free." Not great? "You're not alone. You can sit at our table any time." In fact, they tell her that there's going to be a seat reserved for her in their clubhouse. Then later in the video, one of them holds up a sign saying, "There's 25 of us." Then player after player after player holds up a sign that says, "I got your back. I got your back. I got your back." That's what Psalm 23 is telling us, that the God of heaven and earth says, "You're not alone. I got your back. You have a place at my table. I'll provide for you in this life, and when I bring you into my kingdom, you will have a seat at my table for eternity, and wonders and welcome and love beyond your imagination waits you because you are mine and I am with you."

I hope that you are reassured by this today. I hope that you're reminded of this today. I put one of David's prayers for times that we need assurances from Psalm 16. I just grabbed some of the verses there; you might even read the whole thing, but keep that with you and pray it this week as often as you have need. I'm going to pray it for us in just a moment, but I want to say this specifically to those of you who are in a dark valley right now. What are very clear in no way would I ever want to minimize what you're going through. I want to remind you, God did not say, "You know, be sad, not be wounded, not be lonely." He said, "Fear not, fear not." But again, for those of you who are in a valley right now, I'm not an expert in suffering and loss; I don't want to be one. David knows a lot more about the subject than I, but one of the things I think is so key to living in the goodness of God is when we trust that God will give me what I need when I need it. I mentioned that earlier, but I want to mention it again: God will give me what I need when I need it.

I promise you it probably isn't going to come when you want it or even how, but God in his love and in his perfect will will bring into our lives what we need when we need it because after all, he is the God of the hills and the valleys, our good shepherd who is with us every step of the way. Amen? Amen. Would you pray with me? And as I pray these words that were penned by David, it's my hope that you would be able to make these words your own. Heavenly Father, we pray these words: "Keep us safe, O God, for in you we take refuge, and we confess to you today you are our Lord, and apart from you we have no good thing. Lord, you have assigned us our portion and our cup; you have made our lot secure in Jesus Christ, and we thank you for that. The boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places, and surely we have a delightful inheritance. So we will praise you, Lord, the one who counsels us, and even at night, the one who causes our hearts to instruct us. We have set you, Lord, always before us, and because you are at our right hand, we will not be shaken." We pray these words, Lord, in the name of our good shepherd. We thank you for your assurance today. Amen.