“To Baaa or Not to Baaa?”
INTRODUCTION
The Lord is my shepherd - I shall not want
he makes me to lie down in green pastures
he leads me beside still waters
he restoreth my soul...
What comforting words these are. Comforting that is if we truly hear what God is saying. Joyce Hollyday tells the story of how as a child she memorized the 23rd Psalm. She states, “There was always one point of confusion for me as a child. In my recitations, I ran the lines of the first verse of the psalm together: "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want." I always wondered why I shouldn’t want this shepherd, especially since he was supposed to be taking such good care of me. In other words what she read was, The Lord is my shepherd, NOT! Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd, My Sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me." You know, I really want Jesus to be my shepherd because I am told that when I am lost he will look for me, that when I am in danger that his rod and his staff will comfort me. I want Jesus to be my shepherd because he promises his sheep eternal life , because he promises that they shall never perish. "No - one will snatch them out of my hand, "For what my Father has given me is greater than all else and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand." As the 23rd Psalm puts it, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
I reckon that all of you here today want the same thing. You want a God to watch over you to protect you, to bless you, to seek you out when you go astray. A God to comfort you when you hurt, to heal you when you are ill, to walk with you when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. A God to bring you into paradise when you die. I want, you want, I think we all want this. Jesus is the good shepherd. Almost every one of us here today believes that. Almost everyone of us here today believes that he is the shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. I know I believe that and I believe that most of you believe it too. But the question remains my friends. Do we truly hear what God is saying? Let us take a moment to look again at Psalm 23 as if for the first time. The Lord is my shepherd...Shepherd. He is the shepherd, so that would make us the sheep. My dad raises sheep in Vermont. Sheep are dumb. They make a mess every where they go, polluting their drinking water and trampling their grazing fields. They go where they shouldn’t go. They get into things they should stay away from. And when they get in to trouble, oh, and
they will get into trouble, They begin to blat their heads off, crying out for someone to come and rescue them. “blaaaa, blaaaa....” It is we who are the sheep, Ya, that sounds about right. As Isaiah the prophet put it, “All we like sheep have gone astray and He has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” Our iniquity has been laid upon Jesus who is the good shepherd, that’s some shepherd.
The psalm then goes on to say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I shall not want? I don’t know about you, but I want all the time. We live in a society that relies on us wanting. We want a new this. We want to get that. We want, want, want. When I first became a Christian as a young man I had a bumper sticker that read, “I’d rather have Jesus then silver or gold.” Easy to say when you’re young, single, healthy, and not thinking about retirement. Could any of us today say, “Oh, take it all away! I’ve got Jesus,
What more could I possibly need?” Is Psalm 23 getting a little harder to say now? God can hear us all now, “Baaa, Baaaa. Get me out of this. This is getting too hard. Baaa, Baaaa.” But the psalm goes on, “ The Lord is my shepherd - I shall not want, he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restoreth my soul...” Now that’s more like it! To lie down in green pastures. To be lead by still waters. To have our souls restored. Ya, that’s what we want! But not today God. There’s so much work to be done. There’s soccer practice and music lessons to take the kids to. There are church fund raisers to man. If it isn’t this, then it’s that. So much to do and so little time to do it in. Ya Lord, I want to have my soul restored, but could we by chance do this another time? It really isn’t a convenient time right now.
Jesus is the good shepherd. Ya, OK. We are the sheep of his pasture. OK, we get that. And Jesus says He is speaking to us, but are we listening? Sometimes you and I have a difficult time hearing. don’t we? We become too easily distracted in the rush of the modern world. Maybe it’s not that we are deaf to the words of Jesus, as much as we hear what we want to hear and so in all of our comings and goings we tune out Jesus and instead tune in all the sounds and words of the world around us. And so in all of our endeavors we tend to forget that we are not alone and that the good shepherd is here to help us. One day a small boy was trying to lift a heavy stone, but couldn’t budge it. His father, passing by, stopped to watch his effort. Finally he said to his son: "Are you using all of the strength available to you?" "Yes, I am," the boy cried, exasperated. "No," the father said calmly, "You are not. You have not asked me to help you." Are we going to do this thing we call life all by ourselves? Or are we going to rely upon the strength that can only come from our heavenly father. Each and every one of us must make a decision about this life we live. As Hamlet might have put it, the question is “to baaa, or not to baaa?” If Christ is going to be our shepherd, then we must chose to be a sheep of His flock. We must be willing to listen for His voice. To follow Him where He chooses to lead us. To do what He commands us to do. To call on Him in our time of need. Anyone can know psalm 23, but how many truly follow the shepherd?
In the late 1800’s public entertainment consisted of traveling groups of actors who went from town to town. One such actor packed the largest hall in a small Midwestern town. The audience was wildly enthusiastic as the orator recited passages from great plays, poems, and literature. At the end of the performance the actor agreed to take a few requests. Immediately, a hand shot up. The hand belonged to an older man with a weather-beaten face and clothes that were clean, but definitely patched and had seen better days. "Would you, could you, do the 23rd Psalm, please?" The actor thought for a minute, then said, "I’ll do it on one condition. After I have finished, you will come up and recite it also." Puzzled, the old man agreed. The orator began, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...." As he went, he infused the words with all the tricks of his art. When all the beloved words of the great Psalm were delivered, the audience gave the actor yet another enthusiastic ovation. Then the man who had requested the Psalm came up. His face was not handsome, and his voice was thick and uncultured. Yet as he began to speak, his face took on such a glow of joy, and the love almost leaped from his mouth with the words. When he concluded, "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever," the only sound in all the hall was the rustle of handkerchiefs as they brushed away tears. The silence went on until the actor stepped forward and said, "Now you know why I wanted him to follow me. It is as I thought. You see, I knew the Psalm, but he, he knows the shepherd." Do you know the shepherd? You can you know. He’s only a short prayer away. Jan Karon, author of the Mitford series, always finds a place in each of her six books to include the prayer she prayed the night she gave her life to the good shepherd.
Thank you, God, for loving me,
and for sending Your son to die for my sins.
I sincerely repent of my sins,
and receive Christ as my personal savior.
Now, as Your child, I turn my entire life over to you.”
Give your life to the good shepherd today, and come to experience the peace that only the
Christ can give.