Word of Salvation – Vol. 13 No.50 – December 1967

The Lord... My Shepherd And My Host

Sermon by Rev. A. I. DeGraaf on Psalm 23:4-6

Scripture Reading: 2Cor.12:7-10

Psalter Hymnal: 111:1,2; 111;3 (after Creed); 463; 38:1,3,4,5; 490

Brothers and sisters in Jesus,

We saw it this morning: We may look ahead into the future, because there is one glorious fact today: THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD – He Who gave His life for the sheep and now lives for them, our Risen, glorious Shepherd!  Our loving and Almighty Lord Jesus Christ!

We saw that I shall not want and that He leads me in the green pastures and besides the waters of rest after hard work how He refreshed my soul and... how He leads me on the straight path – the paths of His good will, His good law.  How I thus may learn the JOY of obedience: I KNOW where I am going, He told me what to do.  But then... yet – the scene changes.  Then the sun sets, and high to right and left of me rise the cliffs which offer me no escape, no way to turn.  In the desert of Judah where David had to flee from Saul, still today you can see these valleys, where wild animals used to prowl and robbers used to wait for lonely men travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Even by daytime it never gets quite light there.  Shadows there are... shadows of death.  Brothers and sisters, as we look ahead, we may as well realize how true this YET is.

Still the creation groans in travail, and waits with outstretched neck for the sons of God to appear: the last Enemy still has not been put completely down.

What shall this year hold?  Shall we all sit in this church together next year?  Or shall some of us then have gone through that Valley?  That terrible valley of death?  Thirty years ago in my homeland things looked so snug and cosy.  And one of the cosiest places surely was the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam where a warm and hearty people shared life together and life was good.

When it started then to rumble beyond the horizon, most people thought: "It won't happen to us...!”

But it did.

And tens of thousands were called to walk that valley... that valley of death!  Such is our sin... and such is still this world.  We hear the rumblings in Viet Nam and many people may think: "that is far away, what will happen to US?"

But things CAN happen to us, alright, and to look ahead may mean to see the grim outlines of valleys... valleys of death.  The hospitals everywhere are still full, and not all come out alive, either.  The roads are dangerous places, and who has not learned to marvel at times when at night all his children were again safely round the table?

Will we – pardon me the expression – will we always be that "lucky"?  Well, when you have to depend on "luck" you don’t have much to say.  Look the other way!  Don't think of it!

But we may look ahead, yes, ALSO into that vale of Shadows, and learn to say it: so what.....?

For still the fact remains: "The Lord is my Shepherd!"  And now more than ever I ask you urgently: "Do YOU BELIEVE THAT?  Do YOU believe in Jesus, Who died for you, and made peace between a holy God and you, a miserable sinner?  Have you learned to say it: "Jesus, my Guardian, Shepherd, Friend...?"  For then learn the secret of the valley of death!  Yes, it CAN happen that the Shepherd comes at the awful mouth of that bitter blackness, and then says: "Come on, my child, THIS WAY...!"  Oh, we don't WANT to, but He goes ahead, and says again: "Follow Me...!"  Maybe he will say that to me, this year, or to my wife.  To you.  Or you.  Will that be the end?  Despair and a forsaking of the faith?  Oh if it were your or my doing, it would.  But look what happens to David!  Thus far he has been talking ABOUT the Good Shepherd.  He has said:
            "The Lord is my Shepherd...
             HE shall make me to lie down.
             HE shall bring me to the waters
             HE refreshes my soul, and
             HE leads me in the straight paths...!”

But now look at the change!
            "When I even shall go through the valley of deep, deep darkness,
              even then I shall NOT fear for... THOU art with me!
                THY staff and even THY stick.... they comfort me!"

No more talk ABOUT the Lord!  Now he learns to talk TO the Lord!

He learns to say it: "I am NOT alone; I can keep talking with Thee; I fear no evil, for THOU art with me.... right here!"

No more is the Shepherd far, far ahead at the head of the big, big flock like the cloud of smoke could be seen by some straggling Israelite way, way back in the nation of God, like many of us can feel that – oh yes, we are members of the Church, but you know – somewhere at the back.  Not all that good, and not all that holy!  Not as close to God as some...!

Our prayer life is maybe very shaky and often I don't feel much of this religion.... this Lord's Day 1 of Catechism I have learned as a boy: "My only comfort in life and death... but it was a catechism lesson, not so MUCH more than that, really.....!

I have then that feeling of HALF-belonging, of talking ABOUT a far-away Jesus.....  but all this melts away when the TEST comes and God takes other things from me, and I learn in bitter nights the wonder of prayer, the wonder of the fact that Jesus, MY Jesus, HAS BEEN THROUGH IT BEFORE ME... THAT HE KNOWS ALL ABOUT THIS DARK VALLEY OF DEATH, FOR HE WAS IN IT LONG BEFORE ME, AND HE TOOK THE STING OF IT AWAY.  For he was in the valley of MY Death, which I made with MY sins, and HE cried out: "my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" so that you and I in THAT valley may discover in wonder: "Lord Jesus...my Shepherd.... THOU ART WITH ME!  Thy stick beats away Satan which would rob God off me.  Thy staff may hurt, but it also defends.

Now I know, Lord Jesus NOTHING CAN SEPARATE ME FROM THY LOVE.... NOTHING... NOTHING!  Because THOU hast been afraid so as to sweat blood – therefore – I may then discover: "I fear no evil!"  That is what Paul learned... the chief of sinners... that is what people discovered at whose death bed I stood to hear them sing of their Redeemer as never in life they did!  The LORD is my shepherd!  Alleluia, what a Saviour!  THOU ART WITH ME...!

And then the scene of the Psalm changes.  I keep talking To the Lord.  I have learned that in the bitterness of God's test, but now the Shepherd becomes the Host.  He sets up a Table, and He puts on it an abundant meal, He anoints my head with oil, for I must go to that Table as to a feast, and He fills my cup till overflowing!  He can do that.  He earned the right and the power to do that when HIS cup was filled also – but then with the wrath of God for what I did!  Father is it possible that this cup pass away from Me?  But not my will..... but Thine...!"

Now my cup runneth over!

Brothers and sisters, Jesus invites you to His Feast this year.  To be joyful in Him, with oil on your head.  The Lord Jesus Who once had this very servant David dance before His Ark in holy joy and exaltation, wants you to discover that life is GOOD because God has redeemed it.  Not only shall the Lord's Supper tell you of that, time and again, but every meal you have tells of it, and every joy He gives you in this world where the valley of death IS NOT THE LAST REALITY ANY MORE but where it has been EASTER, and the RISEN LORD once ate with the disciples and what a Table, what an overflowing Cup that must have been, when He said: “Come and let us have a meal together, I am with you always, laugh and be merry because death is swallowed up in victory!  Life is good... is as good as it never has been: It begins again to be as I made it, and look, very good indeed!  I am your Redeemer and the work is done, the strife is over, the victory is won; Finished, Alleluia.”

Oh still the enemies are looking on, the psalm says.  But they are indeed.... LOOKING ON.  Yes, AFTER EASTER Christians were thrown before the lions and burned at the stake.  But hear them!  Just hear them sing for joy!  In a way they still are at that Meal table, and their cup still is running over!  There comes from the end of this psalm like from the end of the New Testament to us a song and rushing stream of abundant joy!  Not the stiff religious seriousness of some church goers I know, but the exuberance of Psalm 36.
            "From Thee o Lord are the fountains of life itself
             and in Thy light do I see light!
             O they shall be satisfied
             with the PLENTEOUSNESS of Thy house
             and thou shalt make them DRUNKEN
             with the overflowing fullness of Thy pleasure,
             Thou who givest Thy plenty to man and beast.
             Oh continue Thou thy loving-kindness
             to them that know Thee and Thy righteousness
             to Them that are true of heart!”

C.S.Lewis, in his wonderful children's books tells about it, how Aslan the Lion, who is a picture of Christ, comes alive again after he died and then there is feast!  The trees and the rivers and the beasts of the earth have feast together with the children, a feast in which all living things share, for isn't he the Lord of all living things who created them by singing of them?

That feast the Christian knows of, when as a Christian he seeks to make all God's creatures sing again, and I think of how Abraham Kuyper at this now Free University taught his students not only theology but also Aesthetics, the art of making things beautiful.  With his students he sought to learn again the song to the glory of a God Who redeemed us, which we then must teach to nature and art, architecture and music, literature – and why shall not the very dish Mum cooks in the kitchen sing a bit of that song of God's new creation: Behold, I make all things new?  The feast has started: we are no more going out of church.  The church goes with us: “We shall live in the house of the Lord forever!"  That is not only to know for sure that I shall go to heaven, because Jesus My Shepherd will see to it that not one of His sheep shall fall out of His hand... but that is also the wonderful Christian teaching that there is no such thing as secular life which has nothing to do with God.  All who shall know the Father shall pray to Him in spirit and in truth Jesus has said, and while the Jew already knew that the service of God has to do with... (look at the laws in Leviticus) with medicine and the building of houses, with wedding feasts and the borrowing of money, with school and vacation, with King and country – so much more we, who have learned to know Jesus, who proclaimed that to HIM was given all power in heaven and on earth, we shall live in this world as in the house of God.  The feast goes on.

After that One Grave sprung open on that beautiful Sunday Morning, the feast goes on, until all graves shall spring open and those who have known and confessed this Lord shall on a renewed earth discover that the Lord has not been sorry that He made this one, and has NOT been sorry that He made us, either!  Then He Who was our Shepherd shall only be our host, and again to quote Lewis, the reading of that marvellous book shall begin of which every page shall be better even than the one before.

This year, 1968 the Year of the LORD 1968, is getting us closer still to THAT day!  Maranatha!

Amen.