AUG 4 2019 | Things Adam Wants to Talk About S1E1 | Psalm 23 – Rest

Sea Change Church · Things Adam Wants to Talk About · "Psalm 23 - Rest" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · August 4, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Beautiful. Good to hear you all singing. My name is Joe Brandy, missionary for Unity 4 Offense. I'm going to read Psalm 23, 1 through 6. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This is the word of the Lord. Joe, good to have Joe back. Colombia, is that where you were? Mexico, Nicaragua. Okay, good. That's how you always say it.

If you've ever talked to Joe, you're going to get the great pronunciation. I've been working on that Spanish, dude. I'm stoked for you. One of our great missionaries, former pastor on staff here. We're just really blessed. We had a mission Sunday last Sunday, and I hope you're just super excited about the people we're partnering with. One of the ways you can know how your life's going is you just look around you and see who you're rolling with.

And it has just been pretty neat to see all the people that are kind of teaming with us to do some great things. And our missionaries are going to be here every month to talk about it. Joe is one of those. Go to Mexico and check that out. We are moving into a series. It's a one-week series, and it is called Things Adam Wants to Talk About. And we have little breaks in the schedule where we have little breaks before we get to our next series.

And every so often, I just got some things that I got to get off my chest. And so this is stuff I want to talk about. I've been doing it since 2014. And I realized this week, it was Wednesday. I didn't know what I was going to preach about. Usually, it's pretty well scheduled. And Jeff's hitting me, you know, from the front. Hey, what are you talking about? Chris is asking for the scripture. And I was feeling, not from them, but I was just feeling life pursuing me like a giant with a club.

I don't know if anybody else is like that. The first service just looked at me, so they're all perfect. But maybe there's more people that struggle in this service. Not saying. I'm just saying. And life was pursuing me, and I began to think, what am I going to teach about? And I began to have that thing. Do you notice when you start getting stressed? I had this thing where I rub my tongue on my teeth to where, like, my tongue goes raw.

I know, it's a weird thing, right? But it tastes like you burnt, you know, you put your tongue in some hot coffee. And I realized, okay, I've got to slow down. So I thought, rest. And it is one of our core values here at the church. Rest, it actually is our, if we have a number one value, I would say it would be rest. And finding Jesus in the midst of rest. And as a pastor, it's very tempting to begin to build things and perhaps not have Jesus aid you with the brick and mortar as you build.

I am not a guy, if you've been around for a long time, that tries to throw up a huge vision in front of the church and say, we're just going to pursue this vision. I believe that we are with a group of people that I don't think there's too many visions we could come up with that we couldn't do together. I was telling one of the elders before the service, if we decided we wanted to buy the jack-in-the-box on the corner and turn it into the best restaurant with Christian servers and bless people to be a restaurant, pretty sure we could do it.

There's a whole bunch. If we want to start a ministry school, we could do it. There's all these things that we could do. But the question is, what should we do, perhaps? And what is Christ calling us to? I went to a surf conference last night, and on the way up, I was spending time thinking about, okay, what's the vision? And because people, you know, without a vision, obviously, it says that, you know, the people will perish or they will not have a place to go.

And I was thinking about all these things that we could do. And by the end of my drive, I was thinking, wow, there's a lot we could do. And I went in, and the president of Christian Surfers United States got up, and he said, I had PowerPoints. I was going to wow you with what we were going to do over the next five years. And I scrapped them all because I felt like Jesus said, the vision is communion. I want to have communion with you.

And I had been praying out of James. I pray a lot of scripture because I find it really effective. And I've been praying for wisdom on what to do. And so I felt like God said, hey, you know, one, I picked rest for the sermon, which was a good call. But two, what are we going to do? We want to have communion with Jesus. We don't want to just have a spiritual cloud of dust and look at it and be able to say, well, we did something spiritual, so we must be spiritual people.

Just because we do spiritual things doesn't mean we're spiritual people. And so this idea of rest is something that I preach once or twice a year. It was a sermon I preached in 2014 when I got here. It was a four-week sermon series. And still to this day, people that were here at that time point back to that to being a huge shift in who we are as a church, where we're going as a church. I believe that I did hook arms or, you know, with the former congregations that have been here.

But also within me, I want to develop a spirit of rest. And I want to help people in a chaotic society. In a society where probably one of the things we most need is rest, to help find that rest. And we have just come out of a series with David, one of the biggest fails of his life with Bathsheba. But David did some great stuff as well. And one of the things that he did was learn how to rest with the Lord. And he wrote one of the greatest pericopes in Scripture, which is Psalm 23, which talks about the idea, which is not very kingly, right, of being a sheep.

The world tells you not to be a sheep. The world tells you not to be a follower. The world says that everyone should be a leader, which actually doesn't work. Because, actually, you're seeing the results of it. Everyone's leading in their own direction. And if you want to know how that turns out, read Judges, I believe, 23 in the Bible, where it says everyone did according to what they thought was right. And then the worst fail in all of Israel's history, in my opinion, besides crucifying Jesus with the Romans, happens.

We're all doing what we think is right. David here decides, even as a king, even as a leader, that he identified as a sheep. And I want to talk about being sheep-like today. And about how to live a life of peace, a life with margin. I had somebody ask me the other day, what do you mean, when you say margin, what do you mean? And it kind of caught me off guard. I'm like, well, of course you know what you mean by margin.

But actually, we've gotten to a place where people have to ask me, what do you mean by margin? And I said, I mean like you get home and it's six hours till you go to bed and you have nothing you have to do. And you can just think, should I garden? Should I, you know, besides just escaping into Netflix. Or if somebody comes to you, you have the emotional margin to enter into a conversation where you're not so stressed and overwhelmed and being pursued.

That you have nothing to offer anybody. That you are scraping from the bottom of the well as opposed to giving out from the overflow of your heart. And what I realize is, is me, I'm a sucker for momentum. I'm not the person, as I said earlier, that's going to wow you with a big vision. I just, I just, it's just not how I lead. But I am a sucker to start picking up the pace when it comes to momentum. Meaning, I look at really good things happening, which if you look around on our campus, it's pretty obvious that you guys are doing some pretty awesome stuff.

And so, and it's the moment, there is momentum in a really positive direction. I catch myself over the last six to eight weeks, I remember when it happened, I had this thought, you don't want to lose momentum. And if you lose momentum, then everything will fall apart. And about six to eight weeks ago, I slowly started getting on this track of, I'm not trying to grow some massive thing. But we better not slow down because we've got momentum.

And so let's get those plates spinning a little bit sooner. And now I'm six weeks later. Thank God, we're at a place of rest where we've built that culture here. Where I catch it pretty quickly these days before I take the church off on some campaign. The campaign for the fall is to know Jesus. So, full stop. And we'll do some cool stuff along the way. David says, the Lord is my shepherd. He identifies as a sheep. Do you identify as a sheep?

When was the last time you identified as a sheep? Do you even know what sheep do? I believe if you're a believer, a Christian, especially with Jesus calling himself the good shepherd, and you have no idea on the life of sheep and how sheep follow a shepherd, you might be missing something. And we want to be really good sheep. Now, this psalm could have gone awry really quickly, depending on where David's mood was that day.

Like, it could have been, the Lord is my accounts manager. Like, you don't want that. You know what I mean? Just keeping track. Oh, messed up again. And some of us have allowed Jesus to become our accounts manager, right? He's keeping track of everything we do, all the good things, all the negative things. Or, you know, thank God it wasn't Jesus is my warden, you know, or my commissar, or, you know, my sugar daddy, you know, because God isn't that either, although we live in a society that does want to have a God with no rules, no boundaries that lets you do whatever you want.

God forbid you tell anybody no. Somebody said to me recently, well, what do you tell this person? And I said, well, the answer to that would be no. But then they can't live a happy life. I'm like, well, I'm not sure. Our purpose is to live a happy life. Our purpose is to follow Jesus and to know God and to be his beloved. And as we live in a society, every one of us knows that telling everyone yes, no matter what you want, or never saying no is not a way to live.

Try that with a, have you ever had a three-year-old? Try that with a three-year-old. Put cake out for breakfast. What are they going to do? You know, he's like, well, this is my truth, Dad. I'm three years old. My truth is that chocolate cake. I'm like, okay, you be you. You just go be you, whatever you want, you know. Dad, my truth is this fork in that socket right there. That's my truth. You know what? I want to light your truth up, bro.

So you go for it, three-year-old. Why do we think that things that don't work for, you know, don't work for three-year-olds work for 28-year-olds? They don't. I don't believe in your truth. I believe in the truth. And we can talk about that on a different topic. But thank God that David sees himself as a sheep, which means there is someone superior to David's truth. And one of the things about being a sheep is it's very passive in a lot of ways.

It's very subtle. They are good at flocking together. And that's something we really want to do here as a church. Moving into the notes, as you'll see, he says, the Lord is my shepherd. And the scripture is portrayed, Jesus is a great shepherd. Christ is not a ruthless, hard driver. He is not the Clint Eastwood of heaven. If you remember, was it Rowdy Yates from what Clint Eastwood's work first in Rawhide? He was a cattle driver.

Maybe some of you, anybody, raise your hand if you know who Rowdy Yates is, right? Watch yourself some of that show. It was awesome. Clint Eastwood, you know, he's got the cigar thing there. He's chewing on it, spitting, and driving the cattle. Just getting them where they need to be. I want to say Jesus is not a cattle driver. Jesus didn't say, you know, I am the great cattle driver of heaven. He says, I'm a shepherd.

Shepherds deal with their flocks very differently than they deal with herds. You will see the care of a shepherd is different than the care of a rancher, hard driver. If you don't have to be in agriculture very long to see those differences, are you even aware of what a sheep's qualities are? And if you aren't, do you perhaps need to take some time to look at them? We were in Scotland last year, my wife and I, and one of our things we love to do, we love to be near the ocean.

We love to be in remote, remote locations. If you don't have internet, that's okay with us. And we like to be somewhere where we can see the ocean. So we went to this island way up in Scotland. And we were way out there. And the only people near us, I would see like one person a day and thousands of sheep. And then a shepherd would come. And they use ATVs these days, which is awesome. Even the lazy dog rides on the ATV.

And then he runs around and jumps on the ATV. It's pretty cool. And the guy just, he just, he got out there and he just had this, I don't even, I'm not going to try to do it. He just did this word and like all the sheep were like, huh? And boom, they just started, and they started coming in from all over the hills. They were everywhere. He yelled out this word and then they came and he fed them. And it was amazing to watch the sheep respond to the shepherd.

One of the things we're going to ask today is what voice are you responding to? What gets you out of your chair? What cracks the whip? What causes you to run? What causes you to rest? Jesus said, I'm the good shepherd. He's not a ruthless driver. Psalm 23 is interesting because it actually requires nothing of the sheep. It's interesting. There is nothing required of the sheep. There are things that are desired of the sheep that they might follow the shepherd.

But there is no ruthless driving spirit in the way of the shepherd, to know the way of the shepherd. It's very interesting that the sheep are constantly in a place of rest, in a place of actually correction, in a place of leadership. One of the things that allows us to not be like sheep, C.S. Lewis says when speaking about living in a world that tends to crush in on us, is we need to be careful not to let our outside to become bigger than our inside.

It's interesting. It says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and your soul is eternal. And if you want to think about it in mass and space, that because your soul is eternal and because God inhabits within us, within our hearts and our souls, you are actually eternal, that your being, your soul being, is actually bigger than the universe. Now, why is that? The universe is expanding. It means it has an end to it.

It is expanding. My 12-year-old asked me, what's on the other side of the expansion? I said, I don't know, but it's a great question. And so your soul, actually, which is eternal, is bigger than the universe. And while that universe can look overwhelming and huge and press us down, if you were to compare the eternity of your soul, which will last forever, and a universe which will pass away, a new heaven, a new earth will come, but it says that it will pass away, then if you were to measure the entire universe, galaxies upon light years, to the soul that lives within you, it would be such a small speck, it actually wouldn't even exist because you cannot compare eternity to something that is temporal.

Are you allowing the outside, the news, what's happening in the world, God forbid, look what's happening, to be bigger than your inside? One of the things knowing the shepherd does is it increases the margin and your inside, where you start living from the inside out instead of the outside in. And I'm very aware when I live from the outside in. I'm very aware when I live from the outside in. It changes the way I think.

It changes my desires. It changes the things that I feel like I have to do. I live in a life that is required as opposed to a life where I'm desired. See, that's a big deal. Are you being pursued by, as it says in a moment here, by goodness and righteousness and loving kindness? Are you being pursued, like I said at the beginning, by all the fears of the giants of your day that trail behind you, pushing you and whipping you into the next place?

You have to be something. You have to maintain a certain position to become something that you are not. We'll talk more about that in a moment. It's mostly about voices. Scripture is all about voices. And it's about the voices that cause habits. I want to say that one of the things we need to be careful about is the habits we make. You know, we always think of negative habits of like, well, you know, vaping or, you know, drinking or whatever it is.

We have all these negative habits. But then there's also these negative habits like overworking, which our society actually applauds. There's a lot of habits that you can create in your life that you will get a lot of applause for. Success will get you a lot of applause, even if you kill yourself in the business of becoming a success. And success is a hard driver. I was listening to an interview with Kelly McGillis. I don't know if any of you know who he is.

She's the original love interest in the original Top Gun, which, great movie. I'm sorry, but it is. Val Kilmer's in that movie, and he's Iceman. And I just, I'm a big Val Kilmer guy. So, nonetheless, he stole the movie from me. Steals our tombstone, he definitely, but nonetheless. They asked Kelly McGillis, why are you not in Top Gun 2? And she goes, probably because I'm fat and I look age appropriate. And I was like, a little hard truth there, but I mean.

And basically what she said, I don't know if she saw the interview, she goes, I just don't care. She goes, I got to a stage where I just didn't want to try to keep up with that. I wanted to raise my kids. I wanted to spend time with my family. And I don't care if I look age appropriate. And I thought, man, I can't wait till the backlash comes where age appropriate becomes the thing. Like, that's going to be a thing, right?

Right now it's like work really hard. But age appropriate will become the cool, the new cool, become the new black. But it was interesting to listen to somebody that was willing to lose the bright lights, that was willing to lose the paycheck, that was willing to lose it all in order to find herself. Now, I don't know that much about her, but the interview made a lot of sense to me. And while she's not Tom's love interest in the movie anymore, and we've got somebody 25 years younger now than him to be the love interest, she's just going on with her life and hanging out and loving her family.

And she has supposedly some great kids and this whole thing. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know that much about her, but it did make sense to me. What are the voices? Here's a few voices that you could hear. First is other people. I want to say when an attack becomes, when an attack comes on your life, it often comes with verbal taunts. Either a verbal taunt in your own head or a verbal taunt from someone else. The king of Assyria came to the walls of Jerusalem, to Hezekiah, and they began to shout out and yell to the people of Israel, trying to break their spirit with a verbal assault first.

Who will save you from the king of Assyria? Has anybody else been saved from the king of Assyria? And he starts talking all of this junk to the Israelites. And they went and bowed their knee before God and prayed. And the Assyrians were routed. And that king actually went home, went to the temple. And when he was trying to worship his God in the temple, his sons came and killed the king of Assyria in his own temple. That was what was happening.

But these attacks to who you are that oftentimes, back to the message, get your pace quickened up. Start with a verbal assault. Start with a thought. I'm not good enough. I'm not fast enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not this. And we talked about shame last week. David was aware of these verbal taunts. And one of the people we need to tell to actually to shut up is ourselves. I don't want to say shut up to anybody else.

But sometimes I need to say it to myself. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, dude, shut up, dude. Like, enough. I talked to somebody this week. And I was, you know, they were telling me. And they kept saying should. But halfway through the conversation, I'm like, you say should a lot. And then, you know, should came out like four or five more times. They're like, man, I do say should a lot. And I said, well, what if you change that to could?

What if you change that to would? And all of a sudden, should is a word that drives you. Could is a word of opportunity. A lot of times it's the voices that you're listening to it. And should or could you do it? Before I get to the scripture which I set up, one of the things I said in the first sermon, especially at 20 and 30 years old, is we live in a culture that tells you to have dreams that oftentimes are not feasible.

And if they are feasible, you will have to sacrifice something of great value in order to have that. Why do we tell 20 and 30 year olds that you need to have a house with five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a yard that your kids can have a tree house in when you're at the stage in life where you're earning probably the least amount of money you'll ever learn in your life, earning your life? Shouldn't that house be at a grandparents' house that we take kids to?

Is there a problem living in an apartment? Not everyone can have a huge yard and taking the kids to the park. But we have to miss our families growing up so that we can give them all these things when we're not in the house. There's a lot of huge compounds around here. By the way, that's the thing. You can't have a house. You have to have a compound. You know what I'm saying? Maybe you've seen that. That's the dream, the compound, you know?

It's funny. We never had the backyard. We just didn't. And I remember for years I had all this guilt. We don't have a backyard. There's a park around the corner, you know? I don't need a backyard. I moved into this house now, which is so interesting. This is a little Adam time. Sorry about that. We'll get to that verse in a second. We just moved into a house that had one bathroom. And I'm thinking, four people, two teenage girls.

How are we going to do it? We won't survive! I got to tell you what. Never been an issue. Just, you know what is amazing? You want to save $500 a month? Have one less bathroom. Unless you only have one. Then that's a problem. They need a shovel. Honestly, you want to save $500 a month? The world tells you you need all this stuff that you don't need. At 20 years old, people were giving our lives away to have something that probably is more age appropriate to a 60-year-old.

Whatever it is. What I'm saying is what is driving you? Are these other voices? And it's just that subtle voice that can get you on the wrong road. David knew this and he said it in Psalm 55, 2-3. Give heed to me and answer me. Who does he want to hear from? He wants to hear from Jesus. He wants to hear from God. I am restless in my complaint and I'm surely distracted because of the voice of whom? The enemy. The voice of the enemy.

This can be crazy makers in your life. This can be other people. This can be the media. This can be social media. Can we stop putting fuzzy filters on our face to make us look younger in a picture? First of all, everybody knows you do it. They're not good enough. They look horrible. Can I just say, can we just stop as a church? Look, I'm not talking about you, okay? Just put an age appropriate picture up of yourself.

Don't clean up the lines. I got it too. Look, I got this massive line on the floor of my head. It is going to be six inches deep within five years, okay? I've seen pictures of my dad. The guy had jowls, okay? And I'm going to have the same jowls as I get it. But can we be a people? I'm not saying look bad. This is just a little Adam time. Sorry, it's not scriptural. But can we just be a people when people look at us and go, they're comfortable in their own skin.

They're totally comfortable in who they are. This is not scripture. This is just Adam's thing. But I would love people to look at the church and say, wow, they're actually comfortable with who they are. They don't have to try to be somebody else. That was free. That was not scripture. That was just a little free something Adam wanted to say. I said this is what things Adam wants to speak about. But these are the things that drive us.

What is driving you? Another one is the devil. Now, this is a really good point. It says you, when he's talking to the Pharisees, and Jesus is bringing it here. He says you belong to your father, the devil. You want to carry out your father's desires. Man, can you imagine him saying this stuff? He was a murderer from the beginning. Not holding to the truth. For there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language.

For he is a liar and the father of lies. You know what's so interesting? We are so conversant in the language of the enemy. Which is the language of the world. Which is the language of advertising often. Not always. We are so conversant in the language. And we allow so many voices to speak to us. We're not even aware when the enemy speaks to us. Because we speak the language so well. It doesn't strike us as off-putting.

Let me say that my great-grandparents actually were from Germany. They never taught me German. My grandmother is from Poland. Her family never taught me Polish. But I will say if I'm in a conversation in a room. And I'm having a conversation with like, you're in the courtyard. Three to five people. We're all talking. And somebody rolls in. And starts doing some Slavic dialect. Like, and just roll into the conversation.

Just start talking normal to us. I'm going to be like, Oh, what just happened there? I just got hit with some Polish words. You know, I don't know exactly what happened. The reason I'm saying this. Is because I don't know the language. I understand it when I see it. We have become so conversant. In the lies. In the shame. In the besmirching of ourselves. In the lies about our character. Who we are as people. We are so conversant in the language of hell.

That when it is spoken to us. You don't even see. We, included. Me. We don't even see it coming. We don't even notice it. Because it's so normative to our speaking. I want to say if you want to know when the devil is speaking. You don't learn how to know when the devil is speaking. By studying his voice. You don't need to take classes in Wicca. To know how the devil speaks. You don't research the devil. So you can be better at understanding when he speaks.

What you need to do. Is spend time listening to the voice of God. And when you only become conversant with the voice of God. Who speaks a different language. When the enemy walks up to you. And speaks that native tongue. Which you no longer speak. Which you no longer are conversant in. It becomes so obvious. That that is the devil. And I don't even understand what you're talking about. Yeah. Preach. Mom. I just said preach to myself.

That was I amened myself. Have you ever seen that before? I just did it. If you haven't I didn't. But I got fired up. It's such a good point though. We're so conversant in the language of the enemy. That he just. You know. There's a lot of voices. He just throws it in there. And we don't even see it coming. He just slides right in there like everything else. Because it's just normative to us. But when you get to a place.

Where you've been being told by the father over and over again. That you are beloved. That I care for you. That you are my child. That you are royalty. When he comes up and he goes up to you. You know what? You're ugly. You're gross. You're disgusting. You don't measure up. You're going to be like. What is. I don't even understand. What do you. What is that? That. It'll be so counter. To. And antithetical. To what you know.

But you have to desire. And get a taste for the voice of God. And the voice of the good shepherd. He's a liar. And he will lead you to death. And let me tell you one other thing. This is not in your notes. Satan will encourage you to death. He can't. Discourage you to death. He will encourage you to death. Man. You're amazing at that. You should do it a little bit more. Matter of fact. You're so good at that. You should actually bail on.

On your family. They don't. They'll be fine. You have great kids. They're surrounded by great people. Go pursue that business. You need a legacy. Go pursue that. You need a compound man. Imagine what your house would have. If you had that compound. Now the problem with getting a compound at my age. And we finally have a backyard. Okay. Finally have an amazing backyard. That my kids spend no time in. Because they have a license now.

You know what I'm saying? So they're not even there to have that backyard. If I had pursued that my entire life. I would have missed growing up. Like growing up with my kids. We didn't have a backyard. But I got to say. I missed my kids when they were little. But I'll guarantee you. I did not miss my kids when they were little. Bedtimes every Friday at the school. Showing up. Sacrificing in order to be there. Things that just mattered to me.

Because you know what? It wasn't I was trying to be the greatest dad in the world. Because that's another whip. Satan will say. You know. You got to be a better dad. You know. You should coach five teams for your kids. No. It's just. I just want to be with my kids. I want to spend time with my children. And what will we sacrifice? Will you sacrifice the next book deal? Will you sacrifice the next business venture? Will you.

What will you sacrifice? Satan will encourage the hell out of you. He'll encourage the hell into you. And he will encourage you to death. And I'll tell you what. Some encouragement sounds great. The world will applaud things that look like success. And you will get applause. And people will. And you will think. I am on the right track. Because I have success. And all the time. He is robbing you. He is trying to kill you.

And he is trying to destroy you. What is important? And do you even know? The only way to know. Is not get into a place. Like I have been the last six weeks. Where I am rubbing my tongue. So fast on my teeth. Because I have to figure out. We can't lose momentum. And I have to go slow down. Simmer down. Listen to the voice of God. He loves you bro. And one day. This church will hopefully go on without me. You know somebody said to me recently.

They said. What do you want your legacy in La Jolla to be? It's a great question. Because I talk about legacy a lot. But I want legacy something that just happens. Not something I work for. If that makes sense. I said. You know what it is? I hope my legacy is. This church goes on. It's amazing. It's better than it's ever been. And I'm completely forgotten. They said. What? I said. Yeah. I just want to be. If I have a legacy.

It's to be forgotten. And this comes from a verse. A quote I heard one time. That I think it was by Zizendorf. I could be wrong. That said. Serve Jesus. Die. And be forgotten. I got to say. That brings so much peace to me. That I don't have to. You know. Have a collection of quotes online. Or a statue of me out the front. Or anything. Serve Jesus. Die. Be forgotten. And I would add. And be remembered for eternity. In heaven.

As you sup with the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. Whatever that is. Thank you. Perfect timing. Satan will encourage you to death. The other voice that we often listen to. As we come in for a landing here. Is the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit. And the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with one another. So that you are not to do whatever you want. What is so interesting is your flesh.

By the way. Loves death. Why? Because it is dying. And it. The flesh. There is nothing wrong. God created it. But the flesh is a dying part of your body. That will not go to heaven with you. You will have what? New bodies. I was with a kid yesterday. Who is passing away. And he is desperately excited about meeting Jesus. And getting a new body. We had a few moments. They go to our church here. And their son is passing away.

And I went and spent some time with him. He wants a new body. He has all these tumors and things. Our flesh is passing away. And your flesh loves death. And your flesh will call to you. And it will tell you that things that it likes are good for it. You say your flesh likes a lot of things that are not good for it. And the flesh is contrary to the spirit. And if you only follow this flesh. And I gave this example earlier with the three-year-old.

If you only follow what the flesh wants. And you feed the flesh whatever it wants. Which is what society is telling us is the right thing to do now. And that's loving. The most loving thing you can do is let people gorge upon their own flesh and themselves. Which is actually wrong. It will actually lead you to death. You will be led to death. But the spirit, it says, leads to life. And they are in conflict with one another.

And one will lead you to peace. It says in Psalm 23, if you go back to the beginning. It says, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not what? Want. Man. Can we say then that if you are truly living with the Lord as your shepherd. That your wanter is decreasing and shrinking to where you have less wants. You know, if you want to have peace in your life. I've said this many times. Want less. One of the best things that you can do for personal peace is to want less.

What you want is a personal decision. You know, you have, surprisingly, you have control over what you want. Surprisingly. I mean, you might show up. The flesh might cry for it. But you can say, I'm going to accept that as a want. Or I'm going to disenfranchise myself with that as a want. If the Lord is your shepherd, it says, you shall not want. Now, either he's giving you everything you need. Or the other way to look at it is he is so fulfilling.

And relationship with him is so fulfilling that he fulfills every desire. What more could you want? That is in the place where we come, where we start transitioning over and changing our wants. And I think one of the purifications of my own personal soul in the last five years has been changing my wants. And realizing that I want things. And the things I want now are so different than the things I used to want then. But making that transition is difficult.

There's a couple verses there. I'll let you read those because we're moving along. About Jesus saying that he is the good shepherd. They know his voice. You can read more into those. But Jesus picks up in John 10. And you could say that the corollary verse in the New Testament to Psalm 23. And you're going to see a lot of this bridging between the New and the Old. Is John 10. And if you want to get Psalm 23 and read John 10 with it.

It wouldn't be a bad exercise this week if you don't have a place to go in the scripture. To look at those and realize what it's like to be a sheep again. Here's results as we come in for the landing. We've circled the tower. And of following the good shepherd. The first it says I will satisfy your deepest needs. Verse 1 we just said. You shall not want. There's a complete satisfaction. The other thing I put in the notes is one of the keys to this idea of resting.

Because we'll see in a moment that he leads us beside quiet waters and into green pastures. Is that one of the keys to being restored. Is that you have to rest. Restoration is the precursor to restoration. To being actually restored. It's interesting. We want to be restored. But we never slow down. Restoration and rest. Rest is a way of life. Not a three week mark on your calendar. Where you go to Cabo San Lucas. That's not rest.

That's a vacation. But that's not rest. And a vacation will not satisfy your soul's deep desire for rest. Rest is a decision based on what you want. Who you think you are. What voices you listen to. The way you live your life. And as the monastics of the middle centuries learned. That they could work very hard. And still rest. Have you ever gone on a missions trip to build a house perhaps. And you come back bone tired.

But filled. That's way different than going and working to the bone. And coming home with nothing left to give to your family. What I have found is when I've gone on worthwhile missions. And done it in season. That I come home with more to give. And there's an abundance of the filling of these things. Maybe it's time to recalibrate. Some of you. You know what? Some of us. Because I need my tongue not to have that red spot anymore.

From rubbing it on my teeth. Because I'm just winning for Jesus. Right? We're just kicking butt for Jesus. Right? We all got to get there. And I got to lead you. Right? Give me the football. We'll just follow. You know. At the same time. You know. You got to check your blood pressure. Are you sleeping? I'm not going to. You know. About every six weeks. The Lord just got to kick me. You know. Wake me up a little bit. Make me lay beside quiet waters.

Second. We'll just talk about what that looks like. And if you turn your scripture to the beginning. Where it says in verse two. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. You know. How often are you beside the quiet waters? How often are you in the green pastures? And there's a change in the personality of the sheep here. That you might have missed. Verse two. In the first one. He makes you lie down.

And he's done. He will make you lie down eventually. If he's a good shepherd. He will make you lie down eventually. I don't want to be made to lie down. If you offer me to lie down. I just want to kick it. I want to. I. I had a friend that had kept a day bed in his house. And I just let. You know. Australia has a lot of day beds. I don't know if you have. It's kind of a thing now. You go to world market. You see a day bed.

And he would say. Because he worked from home. That any time. If he kind of just slipped and tripped. He could fall in and have a nap. At any time during the day. And he just left it there. As a day bed in the house. I don't want to be made to lie down. I want to be a person who lives in this rest. And so it says in verse two. That the sheep at first need to be made to lie down. But then it says. They are led beside quiet waters.

So they're made to do something in the first time. But the second part of that verse. They have changed their personality to the point. Where hey man that lay down stuff. Was pretty good. I tell you what. I think I'll follow you to the quiet waters this time. Because you don't need to make me lie down no more. By taking my feet out. And I've studied some of the shepherds. Where you know. They will actually sometimes even bind the feet of the sheep.

To have them lay down. To have them be quiet. Although I saw him pick sheep up. And lay them on their side. He would do things to make them lie down. There's some interesting things about sheep. If you study them. But he makes them lie down. But these other times. There is a change in what the sheep want. I say what do you want. Do you want to lie down. A lot of us don't want to lie down. You know why. Because I can prove how much worth I have.

If I'm working. Because no one applauds anybody while they sleep. You ever seen any professional sleeping leagues. You know what I'm saying. Woo. Shh. He's asleep. You're going to wake him up. I'm not talking about being lazy. I'm talking about rest. Closing the shop down now. He leads us. Makes us lie down by green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. And then he what? Restores my soul. And then finally. I love the landing place.

Of where the sheep end up. Surely goodness and loving kindness. Will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. First thing I like. Surely. Like for sure. David is saying. Like surely. Like this is a for sure thing. The reason that word is there is. Is guaranteed. The new word now is 100%. Everybody says 100% all the time. I just want to say 98%. I'm not quite sure. When you look behind you in your life.

What do you expect to find following you? Is it goodness and loving kindness? Are you like a bride who looks behind her. And sees the train of her robe. And the bridesmaids that follow. That are meant to represent the beauty. And the gentility. And the kindness. And the love. And the support. When you look behind you in your life. And you feel your life behind you. Because we all feel something behind us. A little bit.

Do you look behind you. And see loving kindness and goodness. When you look behind you. Do you feel that those are the things that follow you. Or do you feel that enemy. That is approaching from behind. That you always got to keep an eye out. You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Jesus is the good shepherd. It says that you will know. That surely. For sure. 100%. That good things are going to happen to me next.

That good things are on the horizon for me next. That those things are following. And then the final is this. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now this is. I've said. I've preached this before. But it's so good. We have pets. Okay. We have a French bulldog. Who's very French. And he. He's ready to rebel at any time. I am his Marie Antoinette. And he is coming to the castle. To Versailles. And going to take me out at any time.

Twice in the last two weeks. I have gotten up in the middle of the night. And stepped in one of his. Beautiful gifts to me. In the middle of the night. Never fun to go clean your toes. At two in the morning. Nonetheless. This is my dog. I don't know why we let him live in the house. I don't want him in the house. We were in war together. But he's a great dog. Big ears. We have fish. We have two cats. We have animals.

We have stuff. To tell you the truth. I would love to have a barn. Right? Like I would love to have a barn. I don't need a compound. But a barn. So I could take the animals at night. I could kiss them. I could hug them. And then I go put them in the barn. And then they stay out of my house. Okay? Because I want animals in my house. I want a barn. That's how it's supposed to work. Interesting. And in this scripture. Where do the sheep end up?

In the house of the Lord. Can you imagine what a crazy ape show that would be? A bunch of sheep in your house. You know what I'm saying? Like everywhere. Like who wants sheep in your house? I can't even have a French bulldog. Psalm 23 takes the sheep. Where do they? And you will dwell in the pasture of the Lord. He's going to go to his mansion. But you will dwell in his pasture. And that's pretty good. Right? God's pasture.

You will be on his farm. You will be out in his barn. You will. No. Where does he take the sheep? Into his very house. Matter of fact. He's probably one of those people that lets him sleep on the bed. You know what I mean? They got a little stairway. Jump on your bed. That's where God is taking you as the sheep. That you will dwell richly in the house of the Lord forever. This is God's destination. When you want to be a sheep.

That you will live with the master. And you will come to find out that sheep was just a metaphor. That you are a son. That you are a daughter of the living king. And that he has called you into his house. And he says, you know what? You don't even have to move out. You can stay here forever. And we can dwell together in peace and prosperity. In the family compound. In the family business. Of knowing you and loving you.

And he says to you, rest. Maybe it's time to recalibrate. Amen? Amen. Let's stand. We're going to take communion together. Amen.