“1 The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. 3 He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. 4 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. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Today we like to talk about life as a journey and that is nothing new. The Greek poet Homer used the metaphor hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. He said that this journey was the whole point of life—“the journey is the thing”, he said. More recently the author Robert Louis Stevenson argued that life is about travelling hopefully because, as he put it, “it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”
Those great thinkers thought that the journey of life the point of life. David would disagree and I hope that by the end of this sermon that you disagree too.
David agrees that life is a journey. He says that for the children of God life is a journey filled with goodness and steadfast love. David values the journey, but he thinks the destination is even more important because the destination is God Himself.
David’s description of life as a journey far more attractive than that of Homer or Stevenson. It is far more attractive than other views that are peddled today. I hope that you view your journey the way that David viewed his. I hope that you travel through every day of life expecting goodness and steadfast love. I hope you travel expecting to wind up in the house of God. God’s children have every reason to travel expectantly through life and even through death. That is the claim of this sermon: God’s children have every reason to travel expectantly through life and even through death.
We will study this in two points. First: all the days of your life. Second: all the days of eternity.
First: all the days of your life. Now “all the days of your life” is a rather ambitious heading for a sermon point. Apparently, what I am about to say applies to all the days of your life. There isn’t much that can be said that applies to the day of your birth, the day of your death, your worst day, your best day, and your most boring day. What we will study now applies to every one of those days for the children of God. “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.”
David could look back and affirm that God’s goodness and mercy followed him on every one of his days and he knew they would for every day that lay in the future. Now that is a startling statement because, as we’ve clearly seen over the past few weeks, none of us know the future. If David didn’t know the future how could he say, “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life”?
David could say that because that’s what God promised. God promised it often. Let’s just look at one such promise through Moses, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments.”
The word translated here as “steadfast love” is hesed, which is perhaps the most important word in the Old Testament. This is God’s committed love. No matter what happens, God will show hesed to His people. He will show steadfast love because He has promised to show it. Sometime soon we are going to study this hesed by way of the biography of Abraham. We will see how God’s goodness and steadfast love followed Abraham all the days of his life. We could go through any number of biographies in the Bible and show how God’s goodness and steadfast love followed these people all the days of their lives.
David wasn’t adding anything new to Scripture when he wrote, “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” He was simply making clear in a memorable way what God had promised.
If you are part of the people of God, you can say with David that, “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” I want you to ask yourself if you are comfortable saying that. So often we aren’t comfortable owning what is ours by grace. We doubt we should own promises. If you are a child of God, goodness and steadfast love follow you every day of your life. Own that.
That includes today. Today is, without a doubt, one of the days of your life. It is, therefore, a day on which you can see God’s goodness and steadfast love at work in your life.
Now we humans are so prone to focus on the negatives. Psychologists call this our negativity bias. We are quick to notice what is wrong. David made it a point to look for what was right. He kept a lookout for goodness and steadfast love, and he found it written all the pages of every day of his life. You can do the same. You can look for the goodness and steadfast love of the Lord on any day of your life because they are present on every day of your life.
They are present on the worst days of life. That was the point that Jeremiah was making when he wrote, “because of the Lord’s steadfast love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
As you think about the worst days of your life, you might wonder were God’s goodness and steadfast love where then. Jeremiah would tell you that they were the only reason that you haven’t yet been consumed; “because of the Lord’s steadfast love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
One of the worst moments of my childhood was the day that my dad brought me out to his truck to see the body of my dog; he had been hit by a car. I still remember what his ribs felt like. That was in many ways the end of childhood. On that day, God’s goodness and steadfast love were still with me. There were certainly other realities that were present, but God’s goodness and steadfast love were present too.
Shortly after I graduated high school my mom’s mother was diagnosed with lymphoma in her brain. This woman was a saint in every sense of the word. She loved to help anyone and everyone. She seemed old to me then, but she was only sixty-nine. I remember visiting her in the hospital. She made some rather confused and confusing statements. I looked one of my aunts and I don’t remember exactly what she gesture my aunt made, but she made it clear that I shouldn’t expect grandma to make sense anymore. Now that was one of the days of my grandmother’s life. Were goodness and steadfast love following her on that day? David would say that they certainly were. They were present on every day of her life.
Just one provision for God’s people is that goodness and steadfast love are present every single day of our lives. Yes, other realities will be present too, but none of them will cancel out God’s goodness or steadfast love. David says they follow us every day of our lives, and, in fact, it is even better than that. The translation “follow” as in “surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,” is a rather weak translation. The verb usually means “pursue” or “chase” or “dog.” “Surely, goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life.” “Surely goodness and love will chase me all the days of my life.” “Surely goodness and love will dog me all the days of my life.”
We usually think about trouble pursuing us, hounding us, and dogging us. We think about mosquitoes dogging us every day of late spring. When we are in financial difficulty we think about creditors hounding us. If you are a child of God, God’s steadfast love pursues you that way. It is unrelenting. One song describes it as, “the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.” That song is about the saving aspect of God’s love, but it is true about His steadfast love as well and, of course, that saving aspect is just one part of hesed. Just as it pursued Abraham even when he ran to Egypt, so it pursues God’s children today. Just as it pursued David when he stood on the roof of his palace looking at Bathsheba, so it pursued David when he had to flee from the palace from his son Abraham. It pursues God’s children every day of their lives.
Maybe you are the sort of person who is always waiting for something bad to happen. We say that such a person is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. David would ask you why you aren’t the sort of person who is waiting for the goodness and steadfast love of the Lord because that is what is actually pursuing you if you belong to God.
You might be wise to spend some time thinking about your best days and your worst days and looking for God’s goodness and steadfast love in the midst of them. Ask yourself, “where was God in that moment?” You believe that, “surely goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life.” What did they look like on that day of your life?
Spotting goodness and steadfast love is like spotting anything else. The more you look the more you see. That is how it works with birdwatching. You didn’t see birds anywhere before but now that you are looking for them you see them everywhere. Now they’ve always been there just like God’s goodness and steadfast love have always been there on every day of your life. You do, however, need to look for them.
You will, of course, see other powers at work in your life as well. You will see Satan working to deceive and destroy. You will see the world at work to tempt and taunt. You will your own flesh at work to confuse and control. You will see other powers at work as well, but you will see certainly God’s goodness and steadfast love at work on each and every day. To paraphrase Calvin, “[David] does not say, “my cup will always [and only] be full… but… [he expresses his] hope that as the goodness of God never fails, He will be favorable towards [David] even to the end.”
That gave David hope for each day. You can have that same hope every day. If you are a child of God, you will not endure a day without God’s goodness and God’s steadfast love. You can count on those showing up each and every day. Yes, other powers will show up too, but those will not cancel out these reasons to travel through life expecting goodness and steadfast love.
Jesus came so that you could travel through life expecting goodness and steadfast love. He said, “I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.” Jesus didn’t come so that you could expect nothing but trouble until heaven. Jesus didn’t come so that you could despise this life because you are waiting for the next one. Jesus came so that you might expect God’s goodness and steadfast love every day of this life until you dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
That is one part of life to the full, and you need to ask yourself if that is the life that you are living. It is very possible that as a child of God you are not enjoying this life that is rightfully yours. You are living in fear of the future. You live each day hoping to avoid trouble and you go to bed each night just thankful that the day wasn’t worse. Jesus didn’t come for you to live that way. He came so that you might expect God’s goodness and steadfast love every day of your life. He also came so that you might dwell in the house of the Lord forever and it is to that, that we now turn in our second point.
Robert Louis Stevenson said that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive. David would disagree. Having goodness and steadfast love pursue you every day is quite a hopeful way to travel, but it isn’t near as good as arriving in the house of the Lord.
David travelled expectantly through life, and he traveled as a man on his way to a destination. That destination was the house of the Lord. “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Now we often think of this house in terms of a home just as we tend to envision Jesus’ words in John 14 as describing a home, “My Father’s house has many rooms.” More likely, as in almost certainly, the house of the Lord here in verse 6 is what it almost always means; it means the temple or, in David’s day, the tabernacle. The house of the Lord was the place of worship.
David’s dream was to build God a temple. He wasn’t allowed to and so he saved up for it. This isn’t the only Psalm in which David wrote about enjoying the house of the Lord. He also wrote, “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.” David could think of nothing better than what God holds out as eternal life, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
When David said, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” he wasn’t so much speaking of a building as he was speaking about being as close to God as possible.
It was David’s desire to be as close to God as possible that made him a man after God’s own heart. He was a man after God’s own heart because he pursued God’s own heart. He was terrified of sin because it separated him from God. That’s why, after he repented of murder and sexual sin, he cried out, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” He wanted God’s presence. He wanted to be as close to God as possible.
Would David recognize you to be a kindred spirit? If you had one wish would it be to be as close to God as possible? That is what David wanted and so he was very happy to know that eternal life consisted of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. That is what Moses wanted. When God told him, “I am pleased with you and I know you by name,” Moses went for broke and said, “Now show me Your glory.” That is what Jesus wanted. On the night in which he was betrayed, he told his disciples, “ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”
Now, Moses knew what would satisfy. He spent years as a prince in Pharaoh’s court and when he had his opportunity to ask for what he wanted most, he asked to be as close to God as possible. David knew what would satisfy. We don’t know if he wrote this after he was king but, if so, he knew all the pleasures available to man and what wanted was to be as close to God as possible. Jesus knew more about satisfaction than you or I can begin to comprehend. He had enjoyed what we think of as heaven. He was God Himself and what he wanted was to be as close to the Father as possible. Please consider if that is what you want. If that is what you want, on the authority of the word of God I can tell you that, that is what you will enjoy forever. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Don’t be satisfied with less than that. A Christian is not a man or woman who denigrates the rest of life and finds no enjoyment in creation or good food or hobbies because only God can satisfy. The Christian is a man or woman who enjoys all of that but knows that being as close to God as possible is even better than all of those.
That brings us to what David did not mean. By saying, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” David was not limiting eternal life to an everlasting religious service. The new creation is described in many ways. It is described, as we saw last week, as a feast. “The Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.” It is described by the Son of God as a celebration. It is described as the new Eden. It is described as a city. There are plenty of ways to think about the new creation.
There is nothing about the new creation that smacks of religiosity so please don’t read, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” that way. An eternity of churchiness is no paradise. If you want push to come to shove on that, please recognize that there is no temple in the new creation. “I did not see a temple in the city,” writes John, “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.”
Now David wouldn’t have been disappointed with that vision. He would have been thrilled to know that he would be that near to God that no temple was necessary.
In many ways, the whole of the new creation is the new Holy of Holies of the temple. John describes its dimension as a massive Holy of Holies. The message is that God’s presence is everywhere.
That was always implicit in the temple from the start. The decorations of Solomon’s temple were meant to point the worshipper back to Eden. This idea was never to localize God’s presence in religion. Rather the point was to show that the religion revealed in Scripture and most clearly in Christ is the way to back to God’s presence. It isn’t about religion. It is about the presence of God. David wasn’t looking forward to an eternity of churchiness. He was looking forward to an eternity with God.
Now I can’t wrap my mind around this eternity. I can’t wrap my mind around the weight of the word “forever,” in the words, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Everything I encounter by way of my senses has a beginning and an end and so I can only understand what has a beginning and end. Since I’ve only experienced that, I don’t know why I should be expected to comprehend a life that never ends. I shouldn’t expect to understand “forever” in this life. I will understand it when I’m in it. Trying to explain eternity to me now would be like trying to explain romance to a seven-year-old boy who thinks girls are gross. He will understand when it is time for him to understand. So if you have trouble wrapping your mind around eternity, stop. Just look forward to it. You can’t wrap your mind it in this life. David couldn’t, but he still looked forward to it. Be like David. He simply wanted the Lord.
This Psalm began with the Lord, “the Lord is my shepherd”, and now it ends with the Lord, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” As we’ve seen in the exact middle we find the words, “You are with me.” This is a poem about the ways in which the Lord is with us now and forever.
Please consider the privilege of that life. Consider the privilege of this Psalm 23 life compared with what the world has to offer. Consider it compared with what your own flesh has to offer. Consider it compared with what Satan has to offer because unless you are shepherded by the Lord you will be shepherded by those three monsters.
A 23-year-old woman who lived in North Carolina wrote a poem about what it was like to be shepherded by them. She wrote it shortly before she committed suicide. Her own biography had to do with being shepherded by heroin. Now different shepherds will make the specifics of this poem different but only the Lord can make it turn out like Psalm 23. This young woman wrote, “King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want. He maketh me to lie down in the gutters. He leadeth me beside the troubled waters. He destroyeth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness. Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear no evil for thou, Heroin, art with me. Thy needle and thy capsule comfort me. Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family. Thou robbest my head of reason. My cup of sorrow runneth over. Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the damned forever.”
You can insert whatever your god is into the shepherd position. “Success is my shepherd.” “Money is my shepherd.” “Being liked is my shepherd.” Nothing other than the Lord can shepherd you into green pastures or beside quiet waters. Nothing other than the Lord can make goodness and steadfast love follow you all the days of your life. Nothing other than the Lord can bring you to the new creation.
It is only those who can say the Lord is my shepherd who can travel expectantly. I wonder if you can say, “the Lord is my shepherd.” I wonder if you have good reasons to travel expectantly through this life. If you do, you know what you are supposed to do. Journey through life looking for God’s goodness and steadfast love. You will find them each and every day until you find yourself in the house of the Lord. If you can’t say the Lord is my shepherd, why not? What is stopping your from coming to Jesus who called himself the Good Shepherd? What is stopping your from enjoying this life that is followed by goodness and steadfast love? What is to stop you from coming to Jesus and to the house of the Lord forever? That question is worth your consideration. Amen.