Father, we do trust you and we do need you. And we just thank you for adopting us as your own children. We praise you for that. And Holy Spirit, we thank you for being our teacher and counselor. And just teach us this morning. Please speak directly into each of our hearts that we'll leave with something that we know is for us and from you. And Jesus, we thank you for being our Savior, our friend, our shepherd. And we praise you and trust you with that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. There's a verse in John 5 that I just love because this one verse kind of puts the whole Bible into context. Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of the day. And he says, You search the scriptures because you think that they give you eternal life. But the scriptures point to me. And one of the most beautiful examples of that in the Bible, of the scriptures pointing to Jesus, is a song that David wrote. It starts, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And in about 15 lines, it gives the most perfect description of our relationship with Jesus. Jesus, of course, calls himself the good shepherd. And 1 Peter he says that we are all like sheep who have wandered off, but have turned back to our shepherd. And so we, like David, can say that Jesus is my shepherd. He's not the shepherd, he's not a shepherd. He's my shepherd. Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Or as a newer translation would say, I have all that I need. And that's not a standalone statement. That's really the introduction to the whole song. What David's going to write about is the different things that we need. We need rest and we need our emotions and our minds healed. We need strength and we need energy and we need comfort. We need protection. We need God to be with us when we're going through the really, really tough times. We need good things to happen to us and our children. And we need to know that us and the ones that we love are going to live forever with God, with our Father, with the Holy Spirit. Now, all these needs are talked about in the 23rd Psalm. This morning we're going to just see a couple of them. In the second verse, he says, He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. The last few weeks I've learned quite a bit about sheep. I've never really been a sheep aficionado, never done a lot of sheep studies in my life. But you know, just thinking about this section in the Bible. I've learned about sheep. Sheep are not something that I would naturally want to be identified with. Most people don't. I can't think of one professional sports team that is called the sheep. I mean, there's the Rams, but they're not sheep. I can't think of a professional rider, I mean a professional wrestler that's nicknamed himself the sheep. Um there's not a rock band called the sheep. Uh I don't think Charlie Sheen has tweeted he's got sheep DNA. You know, it's just not an animal that we normally want to be associated with. But the more I learn about sheep, the more I have to admit that I am like a sheep. I share a noticeable trait with sheep. And it's not just the color of my hair. It's uh it's something I didn't know. Sheep have trouble resting. You know, one of a shepherd's biggest challenges is to get his or her sheep to rest. So it makes sense that David, a shepherd, would start this song talking about rest. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. You know, from a distance, you look at sheep and they look pretty peaceful. You know, in paintings they definitely look peaceful, but they're pretty wound up. You know, sheep are easily irritated. You know, flies and other insects, you know, some animals, you know, flies get on them, they don't care, but not sheep. Anything like that uh aggravates them. The smallest thing agitates them. Uh they're worried about being attacked. You know, they're a uh a pretty common prey and they don't have any real natural defenses, unless an animal is allergic to wool, but that's not uh that's not that often, you know. And uh, you know, sheep aren't good fighters, uh they don't run that fast. Um and so sheep are constantly edgy, they're just on high alert all the time. And one thing about sheep is they tend to annoy each other. They just, you know, one sheep will be eating the grass, and other sheep will come over and bump them out of the way, and then start eating there, and they're just constantly just kind of hassling each other. So you combine all those things, and sheep really have trouble resting. I mean, they're I haven't thought about them this way, but they're kind of stress monsters. Um, they can't relax, it's hard for them to go to sleep. Um they try counting other animals, but uh that never works. See, they they have this quiet exterior, but inside they're really wound up. Which means that I have to face it. In many ways, I am like a sheep. Because that really is kind of like me. Rest has always been a big issue for me. I'm one of those people that appears so calm and you know, uh quiet on the outside, but a lot of time on the inside, you know, I'm just thinking about things and I'm working on things. My mind is going um a hundred miles an hour. I've been that way really for as long as as I can uh remember. Most of you know this is a pretty new role for me. That uh before this I mostly was in the in the business world when we started a company and the first few years were were really tough. And so it seemed like there was always some crisis and some cash flow problem and some, you know, whatever. And so I'd go to bed at night, and I couldn't wind down. You know, my mind is just is just running. I'm just thinking about all these different things, and and uh, you know, I just could not rest. But the funny thing is that as the business took off and and we got more successful, it wasn't so much the crises, but I'd go to bed and I'd be thinking about all the opportunities and all the exciting things. And if we just did this and if we could just make this this change, and I couldn't rest. You know, I'd pretty much stay wound up all the time. We'd go on vacation and I'd then invent reasons to be stressed out. A perfect example is we'd be driving to the beach and I'd map quest how long it's supposed to take to get there. And in the whole trip, I'm on a mission to beat that time. I don't know if anybody else is like that. But if there's road construction, I gotta go faster because my average speed is uh is way down. Um haven't helped anyone that had to go to the bathroom twice on the uh on the trip. Remember uh Andrew and I once uh made a trip down to uh to Tampa and we get there and and Andrew's uh um great-grandmother says, Andrew, how how was the trip? And and she says, Oh, it was cool. Dad let me pee in a jar. I was just trying to make time, you know. I had a I had a personal best that uh it was important to me. And so God has had to help me a lot. I mean, it it's it's a big thing for me, you know, for him to teach me uh just how to rest, to renew me and change me. And it's certainly been a process uh for me, and I know in a group this size that I can't be the only one that has trouble resting. You might have found ways to try and rest. You know, we sometimes think of it as taking the edge off. You know, it might be drinking. I tried that with uh poor results. Um, it could be drugs, it could be prescription drugs, it can be shopping or TV or um obsessing over a hobby or eating, it can be it can be anything that we use to help us calm down, to help us, you know, try and rest. It's a pretty normal thing. We live in a whole nation of people who can't sleep and who can't rest. It's not so unusual because really we're created. We are created to need rest. We're created in God's image. All of us, you are created in the image of God. God rested. You know, so we need rest. It's always been a big issue for people. God had to use a whole commandment to try and get his people to rest. It was the Sabbath, one day a week. They just had to stop and focus on God. But that law wasn't for God. You know, he didn't need the attention, it was for them because they needed the rest. In Mark 2, he says, Jesus says, the Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. People needed rest. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters. So one thing I've learned about sheep is that they can only rest under the care of a good shepherd. There's a man, Philip Keller, who was a shepherd, and he wrote, In the course of time I came to realize that nothing so quieted and reassured the sheep as to see me in the field. The presence of their master and owner and protector put them at ease as nothing else could do. And this applied whether it was day or whether it was night. Jesus is our shepherd. He wants us to rest. He wants to help us rest. One of the reasons Jesus got so frustrated with religion is that he wants his sheep to rest. You know, we have the new banner out front, and it uh it says Jesus, not religion. That might seem a little confusing because to some of us, Jesus, you know, Christianity is a religion. But Jesus did not come to establish a religion. He came so we can have a relationship, so that we can have a relationship with Him and with the living God. And what people tend to do is we take our traditions and we take our rules and we take what we think is best and we force them on each other. And what Jesus said to some of the religious leaders, he said, you put heavy burdens on people, and you won't lift a finger to help them. See, Jesus' offer to us is quite different than that. This is what he says. Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. What Jesus offers is rest. Rest. I'm a pretty tough case. And Jesus is the only one I know that can make that offer to me. To rest. You know, I'm starting to slowly get a little bit more of the hang of it. I'll share one thing that he is doing with me that uh might spark an idea for you. He's impressed upon me that I've got to spend chunks of time with him. And uh, you know, I'm kind of more of a just I spend life with him, you know, go through the normal day and do normal things and whatever it is. I I'll talk to him about it and and and uh lean on him for it. But for the past few months, he's really impressed on me to consistently, regularly get at least an hour and do nothing but spend that time with him. And what I'll do is I'll spend like the first 30 minutes praying, and like I've said before, you know, my mind will wander and then I'll pray about that, and I'll get back on track, and I'll and I'll spend about 30 minutes just talking about things that are on my mind. Sometimes it's things that you guys are going through or that I'm going through, or whatever it is. And then the last 30 or 40 minutes, I really don't do anything. You know, I've got a worship playlist I like, and I'll play that, and I'll just hang out and rest. I'm not trying to impress him, I'm not trying to earn any points, I'm not trying to be, you know, super Christian. I'm just laying there. I'm just asking him to fill me up. Him to give me rest. I will say that in my entire life, those times are the times that I feel the most completely and totally at rest. I realized this week, thinking about the 23rd Psalm, that Jesus is my shepherd. He is. He's my shepherd. And what he's doing is he is making me lie down in green pastures. It doesn't come natural from naturally for me. I can't do it myself. He is making me lie down in green pastures, he is leading me to still waters. He's given me rest. So we're all created uniquely, and so none of us are the same, and God works in unique ways with all of us. And so your green pasture might be different. Your still water is probably different. I have a friend that goes on a walk every morning with Jesus. Just spends that time talking and walking with Jesus. It gives him rest. I've got another who meets God while he's painting. I've got another, she spends time singing and playing the piano. But if you're like me and you have trouble resting, I'd encourage you to ask God to show you, to lead you to whatever your green pasture is, to whatever your still water is. He gives us everything that we need. And one of the things that we need, the first thing that David chose to talk about is rest. Is rest. He'll lead us to rest. And the song continues. He restores my soul, he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. You know, Jesus came to show us how much God loves us, he's an exact representation of our Father, and to reconnect us with Him, with Jesus and with the Holy Spirit and with God our Father. But then he does something next. And if there's one line in the entire Bible that sums up what that is, it might be this. The Bible doesn't use soul quite the way that we do. When we think of a soul, usually we think of a spirit. You know, that's how we would use the word. But in the Bible, when he's talking about the spirit, our spirit, it simply is the spirit, you know? He says the word spirit. But soul is kind of the essence of us. It's our what we'd say is our personality. Our soul is our mind, you know, and it's how we make decisions, and it's how our emotions work. It's what people think of when they think of us. That is our soul. It's kind of it's kind of us. Our mind, our will, our emotions. And God's created each of us with great care. He's created us in his image. He's created us uniquely. And what happens is we take a beating, you know? Our personality, our mind, our emotions. It usually starts with people hurting us. They don't always mean to, they're often doing the best they can. But they hurt us then. It's us. You know, we make decisions and we reap the consequences. And then before long, we're kind of a mess. Our souls are. You know, we have fear, we have insecurity, and we have jealousy. We might have gotten calloused, we might have gotten hard-hearted, we might not be able to trust anybody, might not be able to trust God. And Jesus does this miracle of miracles. It is his absolute specialty. He restores our souls. He changes us. He heals us. He puts us back together the way he originally intended, and he does it from the inside out. It's something only God can do. To change a person's heart, to put us back together, to restore our souls, and to forgive another person. For us to forgive ourselves. You know, when we say that that God saved our marriage, you know, it's like Susan and I. We really have been have struggled with our marriage. And so if we say God saved our marriage, what we're really saying is that God has restored our souls. Because He's made us healthier. And now that we're healthier, we can have a better relationship. When we talk about God saving us from an addiction, what we're saying is God has restored our soul. He's put us back together, He's healed us so we can depend on Him instead of a substance or something else. It's what our shepherd is doing right now with each one of us. He's restoring our souls. In Ephesians 3, 20 and 21 says that God can do anything, you know. Far more than you could ever imagine or guessed or request in your wildest dreams. And it's such a great verse. And so we we apply this to all sorts of different things. That God can do anything, more than we can think or hope, or imagine. And he goes on, he does it not by pushing us around, but by working within us. His spirit deeply and gently within us. In other words, he restores our souls. He can do anything. He can do more than you can think or imagine. The pain you think will never go away. He restores our souls. Most of it doesn't happen overnight. You know, it's kind of frustrating. Because he doesn't just zap us, it's a process. You know, he shows us how much he loves us. That's the biggest thing of all. He shows us how much he loves us. Then he does other things, you know. He connects us with people. And 2 Corinthians 1 and 3, verses 3 and 4 says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others when they are troubled. We'll be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. So he fills us with his love. He shows us that he's adopted us as his very own children, that he's not against us, that he's for us. And he connects us with people, people that he's helped that can now help us. You know, he gives us his word. And he teaches us and instructs us. You know, Mike in the in the freedom group, he talks about how Jesus didn't spend, you know, three years teaching just to hear himself talk. It was for our benefit, you know, and we can read what he says and we can apply it to our lives. In fact, what Jesus does is he uses everything in our lives the good, the bad, the all of it. He uses it all, he makes it work out for our good, and he restores our souls. It's all inside stuff. You know, we're kind of programmed in our world to look at the outside. You know, we're judging everything from the outside. Jesus works from the inside. He starts on the inside. And he changes us, and he uses all these things. And it's a process, and he leads us. He does it. And pretty soon it's reflected on our outside. You know, you can see it. We're making better decisions. We're thinking better. Our emotions are under control. You know, we're generous and we're loving and we're not as selfish and we're easy to forgive. That's what David calls our shepherd leading us down a path of righteousness. You know, he needs our cooperation, but he's doing the leading. He's doing the heavy lifting. He changes on the inside, it's reflected on the outside. And we start doing things right. Righteousness. You know, we're making right decisions. You know, and we're thinking right, and we're reacting right. And we're loving right. It's absolute proof of God's love and care for you. That He is restoring your soul. He's leading you down a path of righteousness. And it's a process. And where we get messed up sometimes is we look at someone else and we say, oh, you know, I don't know, they're not doing what they should be doing. They're not thinking the way they should be thinking. But what we don't always understand is sometimes Jesus has a different priority than us. He might be working on something else. You know, he's got a path. It's his path. He's got a path he's leading us on. But he does it and he changes us. And over time we get more and more like he created us to be. He leads us on a path of righteousness. And David finishes by saying, for his name's sake. You know, Jesus' reputation is on the line. It's his reputation. He wants everyone to know that he loves them. He wants everyone to know that he is a good shepherd. How can you tell a good shepherd? How would we tell? When his flock is thriving. That's how. When the sheep are growing and when they're healthy and they're thriving and they're at rest. That's how you tell a good shepherd. And that's how Jesus is. It's for his name's sake. He's proud of his flock. He's proud to have us as sheep. He's glad to pour himself and everything into us. He's glad to lead us and help us and lay us down to rest and lead us down a good path. It's what he does. We're his flock. It's for his name's sake. His reputation is on the line. And it shows. It shows. Because he is restoring us. He is changing us. We are a flock he can be proud of. You know, we're starting to thrive. And he's proud. He's proud to call you his sheep. He's proud that you would identify with his name. He's proud to be our shepherd. He loves you. He's going to take care of you. He's going to give you rest. He is restoring our souls. He is leading us down a good path. If the worship team will come up, we're going to finish in a minute. It's so simple to get connected with Jesus. You know, it's just in our own words, in our own way. There's not forms to fill out, nothing to get notarized. You don't have to walk an aisle. It's in our own words, in our own way. We step into his pasture. We say, Jesus, I want you to lead me. I need you as my shepherd. And he does. And it's why we can't get ourselves scrubbed up. You know, sometimes we think I get myself scrubbed up. I'll get myself all better. And then maybe I'll come to God. It doesn't work that way because as we can see, he is the one that restores us. He is the one that changes us. He is the one that leads us down good paths. And so we come to him just like we are. Junk and all, messed up and all. And he does it. He changes us from the inside out. He restores us. We're going to sing a song together here in a minute. It's a great song. It's a new one. It's taken from this section of the Bible, from the 23rd Psalm. And Jesus wants us each to know something. This is what he wants us to know. This is why he inspired David to write this song. He wants you to know that he is your shepherd. He is. You will have everything you need. He will make you rest in green pastures. He will lead you beside still waters. He is restoring your soul. He is leading you down the bright path. His reputation depends on it. And you know what? Even when you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, you will have nothing to fear. He'll be with you. He'll protect you. He'll comfort you. He's going to lavish on you. He's going to do it right in front of people who are against you. You're going to overflow. For sure, definitely, guaranteed. For sure, goodness and mercy and love is going to follow you every single day of your life. And then we will live with him in his house forever. What an amazing thing. Jesus is our shepherd. Let's stand and get ready for the song and prayer. Father, we thank you for being such a great God. Thank you for loving us, for being the love. Jesus, we thank you for being our shepherd. We're so thankful. We want you as our shepherd. Please lead us. Please give us rest. Please change us. Please change us from the inside out. Make us to be more like you. Help us to make good choices. Help us to make good decisions. Lead us down the right path. We love you. We thank you. We trust you. We're proud that you're our shepherd. It's in your name we pray. Amen.