Sermon Series: He Calls
His Own Sheep By Name
He Restores My Soul
John 10:11-13; Psalm 23:3
Dr. Larry D. Thorson
John 10:11-13
Jn
Jn
Jn
Ps 23:3
he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
We’re in the fifth week of an eight week series about sheep and their shepherds called “He Calls His Sheep By Name”. It’s a series centered on the most famous of sheep passages in the Bible, the 23rd Psalm. Today we’re going to look at what the shepherd David meant in verse three by “He restores my soul.”
I’ve always
liked the word “restore”. As a kid I
loved cars, especially classic cars. I
always wanted to restore an old car to showroom fresh. My dream in life was to grow up and own a ten
car garage where I could keep my expected collection of classic cars. Of course that ten car garage would be in the
back of a 1906 Victorian house in a small town of
I like the word restore. It means to bring something back to new condition. The phrase “He restores my soul” means that a soul has worn out but not to the point where it can’t be brought back to new unlike some classic cars.
I learned in studying car restoration that some cars are just not restorable. Those are called “rust buckets” where rust has eaten significant portions of the car away. Those cars become parts cars helping to restore other cars.
The nice thing about being a human is that if you’re still breathing your soul is restorable. You may feel like a rust bucket ready for the heap but your soul is always potentially ready for renewal. Let’s look at what David meant by that.
When David wrote these words he was writing as if he was a sheep describing what his shepherd does for him. You don’t usually think of a sheep talking about his soul. Soul was another way of talking about who you are. Another way to put that would be to say “he restores me”. Sheep know about being restored.
In Psalm 42:11 David wrote “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” Cast down is a shepherd term for what happens to a sheep when it lies down and can’t get back up on its feet because it’s somehow rolled over on its back.
It happens when the sheep lies down and stretches out (usually in some kind of a low spot in the ground in order to get some of the cool from the ground and take the weight off its feet). Then it turns over on its back, and its center of gravity shifts. Then they find themselves with their hooves no longer touching the ground. They panic, and, while they’re struggling, the gas from fermenting food begins to build up in their stomach and it starts to fill up like a balloon blowing up. It puts pressure on the vital organs that are in the trunk of its body and begins to cut short the diaphragm, which makes it difficult for the sheep to breath. It also begins to shut off circulation to the legs and hooves. If it is a hot day, they’ll die within several hours but if it’s cool and even damp, they can last for several days in that kind of a position.
In
Luke 15:4-7 Jesus said "What
man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he
finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And
when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to
them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!' I say to you
that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance."
What Jesus was describing here is a situation where the sheep has become cast. That’s how it became separated from the flock (which has been gently, slowly moving on). And this sheep got left behind because it was on its back, flailing away, bleated for a while, and lost its strength. Then the shepherd began to see that the sheep was not there and he began to go out and search. The reason was because of what I described to you before—once gas begins to build up in the stomach, even though the sheep is turned over, it still could not walk (anymore than you could walk when your foot or your leg goes to sleep).
When the shepherd finds the sheep, the first thing he does is lay it over on its side and begin to let the sheep catch its breath. He begins to knead its stomach and diaphragm area in order to start working the gas into another part of the body. After a little while, he will stand the sheep up on its hooves; and he will straddle the sheep in order to hold it up.
All the while, the circulation is beginning to be restored into its legs, but it still can’t walk. Most of the time the shepherd (unless he has a lot of time, which he usually doesn’t have because he has to go back to the ninety-nine) will pick the sheep up, throw it over his shoulders and walk back to the flock.
“He restores my soul.” I personally think those four words gives us
a clue as to when and why David may have written Psalm 23. David had sinned with the wife of one of his
soldiers. To cover his sin he sent her
husband to the front line of battle where he was killed and David could then
marry his widow. But all of our sins get exposed at some
point.
For David it was a prophet named Nathan who came to
talk to him. Nathan told him a story
about a wealthy man who took a poor man's lamb. In II Samuel 12:3 he said, "The poor man had nothing, save one
little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up and it grew up together
with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his
own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter." The story was well chosen, and I can't help
but think that this description must have hit home with David, reminding him of
his earlier days of shepherding and the affection he had for his own sheep.
Having been convicted by Nathan's words, David
prayed a prayer of repentance and used the same word ("shoob") when
he says in Psalm 51:12 "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.". I think David later, while reflecting on
this, saw himself as the "cast" sheep who has now been restored, set
on his feet and returned to the path of righteousness by a tender, caring
Shepherd.
“He restores my soul”. I like that word restore. It gives me hope. No one is beyond restoring. As damaged beyond repair that you think you
are, the shepherd won’t leave you. I’ve
been with people when they’ve lost their job, when their spouse has just moved
out, when their child was killed, when they laid in the bed knowing they’d
never get out again because of cancer. I
remember a man who came to see me and confessed to having just done a very,
very bad thing, something that he would spend the rest of his life regretting.
“He restores my soul”. I have experienced myself the depth of a dark
night of depression shaking for fear of tomorrow. I know what that feels like. “He restores my
soul”. I never want to go there again but I know that if it happens the
shepherd won’t leave me in my despair.
That’s what I want you to know when you go to bed at night and when you
wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. “He restores my soul”.
Today the Lord’s Table is set as a place to restore
your soul. The first step is to say
“there is hope, I can be restored. Jesus
became a sacrifice for the sins of us, the fallen. The joy of your salvation may be gone but
like David it can come back. You can be
restored but you have to want it. Tell
God that you want to be restored. Tell
God that you trust alone in his son to restore you because of what he did on
the cross. Then trust in time, in time
that the Good Shepherd will back looking for you and restore you to your
feet. That’s what the table of our Lord
is all about.