Sermon
Series: He Calls His
Sheep By Name
Rest in Green Pastures Beside Quiet Waters
John 10:7-10; Psalm 23:2
Dr. Larry D. Thorson
This is the third of an eight week
series on sheep and their shepherds.
We’re building this series around the most famous sheep passage of all,
the 23rd Psalm. To understand
this 23rd Psalm you have to imagine, at least for the first part that
it was written by a sheep. It wasn’t but
David the author was a shepherd and he spent so many long days in the fields
with his sheep that he started to think like a sheep. He saw some parallels between us and
sheep.
What this sheep has told us thus far
in our series is that he has a good shepherd, the Lord who provides everything
he needs to survive and thrive as opposed to some shepherds who don’t look out
for their sheep very well. Now he says
about his shepherd that “He makes me to lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters.”
I haven’t
had any experience with sheep but what I have read about them a shepherd can get
a sheep to lie down but four conditions have to be met.
So we
have fear, tension within the flock, aggravation from irritating things, and
hunger. These four things are also important to a shepherd because he herds
sheep in order to make money and if anyone of those four areas is off it costs
him money. A lot of a shepherd’s money is made on two things: the quality of
the wool and the weight of the sheep, if he’s herding them for their meat.
If a
sheep is in fear, if there is tension, if there is aggravation, or if there is
hunger, they don’t do very well. If there’s stress they can’t put on weight
because stress, causes them to lose weight just like it does for humans. That
is, unless you’re one of those people who eat to cover their stress; but only
humans do that. Animals don’t. Stress just causes them to lose weight. As
they lose weight because of poor nutrition or because of a stress-filled
situation, their wool becomes a poorer and poorer quality. So it’s to the
shepherd's advantage that he makes sure his flock is contented—that there is no
fear, no aggravation, no tension, and no hunger.
That’s
not an easy task. A sheep is so timid
that a rabbit bounding from a patch somewhere will stampede a whole flock. One
sheep takes off; and then they all take off.
They have a stampeding instinct. They don’t bother to look and say,
"Hey, what was it that scared you?" They just go, and they might just
run off the edge of a cliff. It’s serious business. The shepherd always has to
be on top of the matter with sheep, especially when he is in an area with
cliffs or busy highways so that something doesn’t frighten them.
Phillip
Keller in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23
tells the story of a woman who came out to visit him with a Pekingese puppy
which I think was about eight inches long.[1]
This puppy fell out of the car and came up yipping. He ran across the driveway,
across the yard, and toward the field; and Keller's 200 sheep took off
stampeding across the pasture from a little eight inch Pekingese. You see it
doesn’t take much to scare a sheep. Then there’s tension. Humans, socially, have what we call a pecking
order. That term came from chickens. Chickens have a pecking order. With cattle
there is a horning order. With sheep there is a butting order. Sheep butt one
another in order to establish themselves socially within the flock. Usually
what occurs is there will be one "chief butt;" who establishes himself
as the one who is in charge. He is, very frequently, asserting his position by
butting other sheep to make sure they understand who he is. It’s something
instinctive within sheep to do this. It’s not an evil thing. They just
establish the perimeters of their social order in order to make sure everybody
in the flock knows his position.
I say
everybody because it begins with the one sheep, and it goes right on down.
Every sheep in the flock has its place. Most of them are more or less equal;
but each one knows its area, its place. There is this constant drive within
them to make sure others know where their place is. It’s not uncommon for them
to arch their back and neck and go butting heads. They are saying in effect,
"Get out of my way, buddy. I want that pasture that you are on right
now." If that sheep doesn’t move out of the way, then the one who is
challenging butts him. That’s where the
tension rises and a sheep can’t relax, it can’t lay down.
Then there are the annoying bugs. Keller says that a diligent shepherd now days
will apply various types of insect repellents to his sheep. He’ll see that they’re dipped to clear their
fleeces of ticks. And he’ll see that
there are shelters of trees and bush available where they can find refuge and
release from their tormentors.[2]
Finally
there’s the anxiety about food and water.
Green pastures represent for sheep, food. Still waters represent for sheep safe,
available replenishment as opposed to a rushing river that could drown them. If sheep are hungry or thirsty they will
wander endlessly until that need is met.
When
David writes “He makes me to lay down in green pastures” he’s saying as a sheep
that his four basic needs have been met by his shepherd. Sheep don’t have the capacity to calm
themselves. Only a shepherd makes it
possible for them to relax. Keller says
that when he was a new shepherd he got up one morning and found nine of his
choicest ewes, all soon to lamb, lying dead in the field where a cougar had
gotten them.[3] From that point on he slept with a rifle and
flashlight by his bed. At the least
sound of the flock being disturbed he would leap from bed and call his faithful
collie, dash out into the night, rifle in hand, ready to protect his sheep. Over
the course of time he came to realize that nothing so quieted and reassured the
sheep as to see him in the field. One
summer sheep rustling was a common occurrence in the area where Keller lived
and he and his faithful collie slept under the stars to protect their
sheep. That was a good shepherd. His sheep could relax. They could lie down. By laying down they could rest and get
stronger, more productive.
Interestingly,
Abraham Maslow with his hierarchy
of human needs discovered that humans have very similar basic needs to
sheep. The top four needs of humans
according to Maslow that have to be met before a person can grow are
1) Hunger and thirst
2) Safety/security
3) Belonging and Love (not being in a
butting battle)
4) Esteem: the need to achieve, be
competent, gain approval and recognition
You
see the Bible is right when it says that we’re like sheep. We have the same basic needs and when they’re
not met we have stress and stress wears us out. Everybody has stress. In the mornings I jog across the street from the
Everyone
struggles with stress and it wears us out.
My work week starts on Tuesday, Mondays are my Sundays. This past Tuesday, my work week started early
with a call from Toni Shaw. Her husband
Stan Shaw who teaches a Bible class at
Great. So now all Stan had to worry about was how not
to worry. If he started worrying he
would then really have something to worry about. But stress won’t go away just because you say
“I’m not going to worry”.
I
don’t care how much I know that when I die I’m going to heaven, when my plane
starts shaking in a storm I’m scared. When
I go out to my car after church today and a guy points a gun at me I’m going to
be worrying. We look at the stupid sheep
and we say “why are you worrying about an eight inch Pekingese puppy”? But fear doesn’t have to be rational. That’s why you don’t need to make fun of
anyone’s fears. Fear is a feeling and
it’s real in our mind. I hear people say
“Oh I shouldn’t be afraid of something, it’s stupid.” But that fear is real in your mind.
I can’t make you lay that fear down. All I can do as a pastor is to help bring you
back within sight and sound of the Good Shepherd. But even a good shepherd doesn’t go around and
physically push the sheep to get them to lay down. The decision to lay down is always the
sheep’s call when they have confidence in their shepherd.
So a better translation of what David
wrote would be “He makes it possible for
me to lay down in green pastures beside still waters.” What a shepherd does is make sure that the
sheep are in an area where they can feed and where they are protected from
inside and outside the flock.
We
have a need for protection, physically and spiritually. That’s why with all of our children’s classes
we now have two adults or an adult and a youth from different families teaching
the classes. That’s why we have cards in
the women’s restrooms with information for women who come here from an abuse
situation at home to get confidential help and guidance.
We also have a need for protection from
friction within the church. When Martha
and I were starting a new church in Chino Hills we did an extensive door to
door survey of the city and discovered in 1997 only 11% of the population did
not attend some regular form of worship which was amazing to us. Of that 11% over three quarters of those
surveyed were not part of a worshipping community because of friction within a
church they had once been a part of.
I hate to say this and please understand
me correctly, in every social group and church is no different in this regard,
like sheep there will be a chief butt. Sometimes you may get caught in the
crossfire between two people or even groups of people trying to become or
maintain their position as the chief butt.
Don’t pay attention to them.
Jesus the Good Shepherd will take care of them and it’s usually not
pretty.
Like sheep we also need protection from
pests. These are people who fill your
brain with negative, worrisome thoughts.
“You’re not going to that church anymore are you?” “Hey, why don’t you come over, maybe we’ll
have a few drinks” when they know you’re battling addiction problems. Pests.
I haven’t thought of a pestiside for those people yet but hey, I’m just
the border collie, leave that up to the shepherd.
Finally
we like sheep need food and water. In
spiritual terms food represents the Word of God and water represents the Holy
Spirit. We can’t survive and thrive
spiritually without reading, studying and partaking of God’s Word. We need to drink of God’s Spirit and allow
him to nourish us in the faith.
What I want this place to represent to you is
a green pasture beside still waters. When
you come if you have a bad attitude you can confess it in our time of silent
confession. The same is true of things
you’re doing that you know you shouldn’t be doing. But this is a place to drop it off.
The
music here may not be all that you would want it to be. The preaching may not be as engaging for your
attention as you would like. The
sanctuary may not be as full as you wish it was. Still I want it to be a place where you can
relax despite whatever else is going on in your life and in your mind. When this is a happy, nourishing place we
will grow and thrive. What I have
appreciated so much about this church and especially this month with so many
changes is that you’ve kept on smiling and encouraging us.
My
shepherd makes it possible for me to lay down in green pastures beside still
waters. The Good Shepherd Jesus wants to
give to you rest and has provided what you need when you come to church to be
able to do that. If you’ve never given your heart to the Savior Jesus then you
won’t know rest until you turn around and accept Jesus as your Savior in
prayer. You can do that today by
acknowledging your sins and asking Jesus to come into your life and save
you.
In our
reflective time pray around this thought: Lord, my shepherd, I give to you
those things that bother me so that now I can rest in you.
It’s
getting harder and harder for us sheep to lay down in the field. We live in a stressful world and it’s not
going to change. Evan Eisenberg, in his
book The Ecology of Eden,
distinguishes between “mountain cultures” and “tower cultures”. For most of the 19th century in
the
Harold
Kushner in The Lord is My Shepherd believes that the reason the sky is supposed
to be blue and the grass green is that God in his wisdom anticipated a time
when people would be overstimulated by bright lights and loud colors, and he
provided us with an escape from all that stimulation, a world fashioned in
colors that relax the eye and the soul.
When we are exhausted by the strains of living in an artificial world,
when we crave the peace and serenity that the psalmist knew and cherished,
undisturbed by the noise of automobiles and the blare of television laugh
tracks, we know where to find it. God
has given us green pastures to lie down in, green trees for us to gaze at, a
blue sky to llift our souls.”p.44 The
most common treatments — over-the-counter allergy medicines that cause
drowsiness, alcohol or an old antidepressant — come with little evidence that they
help and can themselves cause problems, warned the panel’s draft conclusions.
The best treatment options to date are
behavioral/cognitive therapy — training people to reduce anxiety and take other
sleep-promoting steps — and a handful of newer prescription sleep agents, the
panel found. But even those newer drugs haven’t been studied for more than
brief use, panelists said.
About a third of adults complain of problems sleeping,
while about 10 percent have symptoms of daytime impairment that seem to be true
insomnia.
But what causes it remains a mystery.