As you remain standing, turn in your Bibles over to Psalm 23, which is where we were last Lord's Day. And we'll wrap that up today, Psalm 23. And even though we're only going to be in verse one today, I am going to read the entire Psalm for our hearing. Psalm 23, I'll be reading from the legacy standard version. Hear the word of God. I hear the word. Yahwey is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside waters of rest. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of dark 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 mine enemies. You have anointed my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of Yahwey. Way forever. That's the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, as we receive your word today, I pray that you would give us the gift of faith to join Davids, I believe, who join the saviors, I believe.

I pray that the author and confessor of our faith would give us the faith to trust this trusted word, this word that has been a treasure to God's people from the moment it was written, and will continue to be a treasure to God's people all the way until the good shepherd returns to bring about the fullness of all things promised and purchased. So I pray today, as we receive this word, that it would be a word to us, that each person here would be able to say in response to these things, I believe Yahwey is my shepherd. I shall not want. And that together we might say this is a covenant people before the world. Oh, open our grasping hands, change our discontented hearts, and lead us to the better pastures and the better rest that is found in Christ. And in Christ alone, we pray in Jesus name and Amen. I don't always do this, but if you were not here last Lord's Day, I would encourage you to go onto our website and listen to last week's sermon as I basically covered the structure of the entire Psalm. And the whole Psalm is there for your listening.

And today we're simply going to be looking at verse 1. And so it might feel like things are left out, but if you listen to the other sermon, all of that will be there for you. As we come to Psalm 23, we are coming to a Holy Spirit, breath out, personal credo of David. This is David's personal confession of faith. This is David's, I believe. We want to see where it is, though, that David confesses this. Yahwey is my shepherd, I shall not want. This Psalm is in between Psalm 22 and 24. And Psalm 22 begins with these gut-wrenching words, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then we move into Psalm 23, and we get, Yahwey is my shepherd, I shall not want. And then we move into Psalm 24, and it's a Psalm of ascension. It's in the Psalm of the ascent of the King. This is Christ, the King's Sunday. And so you'll notice the move from Psalm 22 to 23 to 24. In Psalm 22, we are in the Valley of humiliation. We are in the darkness of death. But in Psalm 23, we are in the place where the Psalm is clutches to Yahwey as his shepherd before God transforms things and changes things and leads the King up to ascend to an exaltation.

And this is where we always live our life. We always live our life in between humiliation and exaltation, in between the highs and the lows, in between adversity and prosperity. We always live our lives right in the middle of all of that as God's people. And so as Jesus would later on take the words of Psalm 22 to himself from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And you'll notice that that itself is a credo. From the cross, Jesus is not saying, God, oh, God, who are you? He is saying, my God. My God. Of all the people in the universe, why are you forsaking me? And Jesus took that cry of dereliction on the cross in Psalm 22, so that Psalm 23 could be yours and always yours. Yahwey is my shepherd. I shall not want. You see, in Christ, the credo of David becomes your credo. Because of Christ and because David is a brother of yours and the family of Christ, David's credo becomes your credo. David's words become your words. And because we always live our life of faith between the tension of the already and the not yet, this credo is always ours for confessing.

It is always ours as a needful confession. We will always be returning to Psalm 23 to confess this Psalm throughout our lives. It doesn't matter where we're at in our lives, what our circumstances are, what the situation is that we face. Psalm 23 is always the appropriate credo for the moment, and it always returns us to reality, and we need that. We need to be returned to reality. And Psalm 23 does that. It comes to us and it shakes us out of our mediated, unrealities that assault us every moment of our lives through our phones and other media that comes to us and tries to re-narrate our realities into something that they are not. And Psalm 23 comes home to us, and it resets us to what is real and what is always true, what you can always say yes to, and what you can always find to be true in whatever situation that you find yourself. And this is a very personal Psalm. This is not a corporate psalm. Martin Luther loved this psalm because Martin Luther was always saying, The gospel is for me, right? For me. I claim it as my own.

And this is a psalm that is full, as I talked to you guys last week, it's full of mes and mys and is. This is a very personal credo of David. David, who had faced the humiliation of being in exile, out away from the throne while it was rightly his. David, who knew what it was like to say, Wait a minute, that throne over there belongs to me. Why am I running from Saul? Why am I running from my son who's trying to kill me? David knows what it's like to have the throne over there and the promise over here and to be in exile over here and to say, Yahwey is my shepherd. In the desert. I shall not want. The Credo, Yahwey is my shepherd. I shall not want. A simple handful of words in the Hebrew, every one of them, explosive for our faith. He begins by confessing the covenant name of God. He does not begin with Adonai. He does not begin with El Roy. He does not begin with El Shaddae. He begins his credo with the word the covenant name of God, Yahwey. The covenant name of God, Yahwey.

And there is so much ink that has been spilled on trying to explain this covenant name of God. These four letters in Hebrew that don't have any grammatical and nothing grammatical about them at all, what's called a tetragrammaton. And we will spend all of the rest of eternity trying to figure out the mystery of why God chose to reveal Himself the way that He actually did. And so why is it that this is what brings David such comfort that of all of the names of God that he could Marshall to tie in with the shepherdhood of God? Why is.

It that Yahweh is the important one. Well, let's go back in our Bibles to the time in which God opened this up for us. Turn back to Exodus chapter three. We're going to be in Exodus chapter Three for a moment, so please turn. There this name that will come down to David that will be so precious to him that will be the first word out of his mouth in his personal credo.

He would have had this story in the back of his mind and heart knowing where this name came from. As we come to Exodus three, moses and the Lord are in a conversation with one another. And like you with the Lord, moses and the Lord are in a bit of a disagreement with one another. Have you ever been there? Verse ten, moses has seen a bush, but it's not a fire and a bush, right, a burning bush.

But the fire is not using the bush for fuel. And so Moses goes over there to see what's going on and the bush begins to speak to him and he realizes that it is God who is speaking to him. And they enter into a conversation that eventually brings them to a point where they are in a disagreement with one another. Verse ten, god says, so now come and I will send you to Pharaoh and so you shall bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt. Moses, you are my chosen one to lead the people out of 400 years of slavery.

Verse eleven, moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt. Who am I that I should do such a thing? God says, Moses, I've chosen you. And Moses says, I have unchosen myself. So we have a little bit of a disagreement between God and Moses at the present time.

And one of the issues is Moses is thinking for some reason that God's asking him to do this on his own. And so we get a little bit of an advance on what the name of God means. In verse twelve, god lets it slip out a little bit in advance in verse twelve he says this and the Lord God said, certainly I will be with you. That word there, I will be with you, is one word in the Hebrew. A yeah.

And so God simply says to Moses, look, you can go a yeah, because I will be with you. And you will notice that the tense here is future. I will be with you. So Moses, when you go to do the thing you know you cannot do, when you go to do the thing that you know you cannot do, know that I will be with you in that moment, to meet you in the moment and to meet the moment. This future tense is important.

When you go to do this, I will be there, okay? I'm going to be there. I will be with you. And this shall be a sign that I have brought you. You're going to come back to this mountain.

And so we get a little bit of slippage here. God lets his name out just a little bit as the god who is with. Okay? But then Moses doesn't pick up on that. Okay?

So verse 13 begins the issue. Verse 13. Then Moses said to God, behold, I am about to come to the sons of Israel and I will say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they will say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them?

They've been living for 400 years under all of these named false gods, all of these false gods of Egypt who have names. And if you want to manipulate those gods, the way you manipulate those gods and the way you manipulate the false gods of Egypt and the false gods of all the other nations is that you use their name to manipulate them. Okay? That's how it okay. You would try to bend and manipulate the false god of the other nations by saying the name of the God over and over and over again in such a mantra like way to get that God to do your bidding.

Because you knew when you went to that God at first that that God was unwilling to do your bidding, right? The gods of the nations were always like fickle junior hires, all right? They are the juvenile gods is what they were, okay? The same thing that happens amongst the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders of a given school are the same things that were happening in the heavens amongst the false gods and the demons. That's the way they acted, okay?

Nothing we love. All you 6th, 7th and 8th graders know that you have a divinity to you in some way, all right? But that's the way they acted. And so you had to treat them as such by manipulating them. And this is all that Israel has known for 400 years, is that you manipulate the gods by the name.

And Moses is saying, who am I going to say is their god? God's going to make sure that he can't be manipulated, that he cannot be controlled, that his name cannot be used in that way? And he's going to lead us into a mystery. He's going to lead us into wonder when he decides to tell us what his name is. And you'll notice the way he does it.

He unfolds his name after giving us the hint of a yeah, I will be with you. He unfolds his name in three ways by three definitive statements. Look at verses 14 and 15. And God said to Moses, I am who I am. He said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I Am has sent me to you.

And God furthermore, said to Moses, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. So notice three definitive statements. God said god said god said and he unfolds his name in three ways. All right, but let's back up a little bit, because this name I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. It can be translated either way in the Hebrew.

The Hebrew has no tense here, and that's on purpose. It's very important that you get that, okay? The Hebrew not having a tense here again, all of this is separating the God of Israel from the gods of the nations. Okay? This is important.

So the tense here can either be I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. I will. Or I am. And then yahweh. Okay?

But the background of that, we back up to verses two and three, and we see this. The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight. Why is this bush not burned up? So before we get the name of the Lord, we get something mysterious happening in the bush.

And the mysterious thing that we get happening in the bush is that the bush is on fire, but the fire is not using the bush for fuel. Okay? This is important because what that means is whoever is the fire in the bush who's speaking out of the bush has fire in himself. He has life in himself. He has self existence.

In other words, this God who is speaking from the bush that doesn't need the bush as fuel for the fire is a God who does not need anything outside of himself to be himself. He doesn't need anything outside himself to sustain himself like everything else does. Everything else in the universe is dependent upon something else for its not only origin, but also for its preservation and sustenance. But here he meets a fire that burns of itself, a fire that burns by itself, a fire that doesn't need the bush as fuel, a fire that can simply burn on its own because it has its own fire in itself, you see? And then we move down from that.

And in verse twelve, he is the God who can commit and pledge himself to something other than himself. You got to see how this works, okay? First we have the God who has life in himself, needs nothing outside of himself. But in verse twelve, we get a hint that this God who needs nothing outside of himself can actually pledge himself to something that's not himself, can pledge himself to something that's outside of himself, like Moses into the future and guarantee that future. And then we come to verse 14, and we have the three sayings of the Lord.

And God said to Moses, I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. Listen, this can be said about nothing else in the universe that this God is, he will be. Listen, he will be who he is, always who he is, only who he is, as he has always been, the one who will remain constant as who he is, because he is the God who has life in himself, is sufficient unto himself, and is independent from everything but himself. Do you get that about your God?

He is the God who will be who he is, always who he is, only who he is, as he has always been, and will remain constant because of who he is into the future. He is the God who is who he is, and he will be who he will be, and he will always be himself and nothing else. There's a constancy in God that as he is the same God to Abraham, he will be the same God to Moses, he will be the same God to David, and he will be the same God into your future. You see, there is something about God being able to say, I will be who I will be. And I want you to listen to what it is in Hebrew.

Remember what I will be with you. Is it's a yeah, well, here it's ayah ashir. Aye. The I will be who I will be is the one who told Moses, I will be with you. You see, we're starting to see who this God is.

And then God does something that I've been doing in my entire academic life. He gives the second answer, which is absolutely ungrammatically possible. All right, so some of you who love to break the rules of grammar, this next word is all about breaking every rule of grammar in the history of mankind. All right? 314 B.

The second thing the Lord said is say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you. That's just ungrammatical all the way. But you want to know what it is? It's the same Hebrew word. A.

Yeah. So you get I will be with you. I will be who I will be, and I will always be who I will always be, because I am who I am, and I was who I was, and I cannot and dare not change. I am constantly all that I am, all the time, in every way, in every possible situation. I am that I will be, that I will be.

And then he says in verse 15, tell them that my name is Yahweh, which absolutely means nothing. It's four Hebrew letters. It's four Hebrew letters, and there are no vowels attached to it. And those four Hebrew letters, yod, hei vav. Hei guess what?

They sound like a yeah. They sound like a yeah. Yave sounds like a yeah. The God who will be and the God who will be with you. So what?

God's name is church. Why? I've done this Bible study, this is important. We have done this because God's name is a play on words, okay? Yahweh, god's name is a play on words.

And so God first uses the I will be as though it is his name. He's doing this mysterious thing so that he can separate himself from the other gods. But he's doing something also underneath this to covenantally tie himself to, you see, he's doing something here that unless you get in the deep weeds, you're never, ever going to get. What God does is he takes and he gives himself a name and he explains the name in terms of eternal constancy. And then he ties that eternal constancy to your life and to David's life by calling it the covenant name of God, you see?

And so if we put this all together, if we do put all this Hebrew math together, when David says, Yahweh is my shepherd, this is what David knows, the one who is the I am, the one who is the I will be, the I am who I am, the I will be who I will be. This is the God who is always fully himself. He depends on nothing outside of himself. And he will constantly be in the future what he has always been. And he has pledged Himself to his people to be all that he is for all of his people, for all of time.

You never get a different God than the immutable, constant, unchanging, holy, loving, gracious God who never has a bad day. He always is who he is, and he is that for you in covenant. You see, that's why that Hebrew math is important. That Hebrew math is important because God takes all of who he is and he pledges it to his people. He pledges it to his people and he says this I pledge my loyalty and my love to you, and I put my name on it.

Did you hear that, Church? I pledge my covenant love and my loyalty to you, and I put my name on it. So I will always be for you what I have always been for my people. You never have to worry about me not being who I am, because I cannot be other than I am, because I am who I am. And I will be who I am always, and I will be that for you, and I will be with you.

You see? And so that's why the writer of Hebrew says this jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, because Jesus Christ is Yahweh. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Yahweh. And he has sealed that covenant that he will be who he is for his people. He has sealed that covenant with his own blood.

So when David says Yahweh is my shepherd, the most important word of that is Yahweh. The constant, immutable, unchanging, always will be the God who is with his people. It's unbelievable. Let's turn back to Psalm 23. I told my wife we're going to have a Bible study in the middle of the sermon this morning.

It's either going to be hit or miss. I'll leave it in the air.

So it's this God, this Yahweh, that David says is my shepherd. Not that Yahweh is a shepherd, not that Yahweh is the shepherd, but this Yahweh is my shepherd. See, David can make a personal credo claim that all that God is. Now, listen, it's one thing for me to say all that God is, he is for his people. It's another thing for me to say all that God is, he has pledged to be that to me.

You see, the credo, all that God is, he has pledged to be that to me. If God is faithful, he has pledged his faithfulness to me. If God is gracious, he's pledged his grace to me. If God is love, he's pledged his love to me, right? All that God is, he has pledged to be that to me in a covenant ultimately ratified in blood.

You see? Yahweh is my shepherd. I want you to be able to leave this morning saying this God, the God whose name is full of mystery and wondering, cannot be pinned down. But whatever it means, it means that he is who he is. And all of that he's put for me.

He's held nothing back of himself to be there with me and for me as my God in everything in my life. He is my shepherd, you see? My shepherd. But he's my shepherd. And a shepherd in the Ancient Near East, and this is important a shepherd in the Ancient Near East assumed total care and complete responsibility for his sheep.

He left nothing out. So, Church, when David says that Yahweh is my shepherd, he is claiming that the God who will be who he will be always is David's God. And that God who has pledged his covenant loyalty to David, has assumed complete and total care and responsibility for David's life. And he's left nothing out. He's left nothing out.

But let me bring something home to you that I think is important this morning, and that is the danger that we have to look to other caretakers in our life to somehow give us hope. Let me tell you something right now, Church. Listen. If you look to any other caretaker in your life than God, you are looking to someone else who needs a caretaker. Why would you do that?

Why would you look to anyone else who needs a caretaker when that person needs the same caretaker that you need? And that caretaker is going to die? You see? But we do that right we put this pressure on people. We put this pressure on the world, and we tell one another, find me the pastures.

Find me the rest. Find me help in darkness. Find me feasting in enemy territory. Find me care for my soul. Find me guidance in this time.

But all the caretakers that you're looking to do, that all need to be taken care of in the same way that you need to be taken care of. You see, there's no person, there's nothing in creation that can assume the total care of your life other than Yahweh. Yahweh alone is the one who can come in and says, I know what I will be tomorrow. I don't know what I will be tomorrow. I don't know what you will be tomorrow.

We don't know if you will be tomorrow. We don't know whether you will be tomorrow. All of our lives are always on the precipice of being completely other than they are, and we are always on the precipice of being completely other than we are. But there's only one who can say to you, I will be tomorrow. What?

I will be tomorrow. And guarantee you that that's the case. There's only one caretaker that can say that, and his name is Jesus Christ. There's just one, you see? One.

And so we got to take it off of other people putting so much pressure on them to be these many saviors because they can't measure up. And we got to take it off ourselves of looking in those directions, because they can't. There's only one chief shepherd, only one great shepherd, only one good shepherd, and he is the only one who can assume the total care of your life. And he has and he has the scars to prove it. And this brings us to the very end.

Then, yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. How'd that get in there?

You see, church. If Yahweh is your shepherd, you will not lack for anything that you need to live the life that he has scripted for you. Let me say that again. Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. If Yahweh is your shepherd, you will want for nothing.

You will not lack anything that you need to live the life that he has scripted for you. You may and you will lack the things that you want for the life that you have scripted for yourself absolutely 100%. But you will not lack and you will not want for anything for the life that he has scripted for you. Yahweh as my shepherd, I shall not want. Your response should be, but I do want, and I want a lot, and I want more.

Right. Freddie Mercury sang it. I want it all. I want it all. I want it all, and I want it now.

Then there's a great guitar mean, and Freddie Mercury is facing the music, right?

But if Yahweh is your shepherd, you shall not lack for anything that you need for the life of faith. Today.

You see, part of our problem is that we feel like we deserve more. We compare ourselves with other people, right? So we have the 10th commandment problem. I've looked over into my neighbor's backyard, and I don't have their backyard. I actually really do this.

If you see my neighbor's backyard versus my backyard, you'll understand the difference. Hers is a putting green. Mine looks like a bomb went off. I'm just saying. But the 10th commandment is what?

Right? I compare my life to another's life, right? I compare my life to another's life, and I want that's discontentment. There's also memetic rivalry, right? Memetic desire.

I want to imitate people who have what I don't have. So I live discontentedly with what I don't have because I want to imitate that person, but they have what I don't have until I get it. I have a desire, all the while missing out on the life that God's actually put in front of us to live for Him. Or you are what you consume. It was not lost on me that I was writing this sermon on Black Friday, right?

Where we are, what we consume was on fire, right? But we have to understand that this is why this psalm takes us back to reality, right? Because let me remind you of the four s's of what the Lord provides no lack for in your life, okay? Never think I would do this, Pastor John. I'm sorry.

There's four s's. Four S's of the Christian life. I never thought I would do this, but here it is. Here's the things that you can know that you will never lack for in your life, of God providing for you. And this is what the Christian life is, okay?

Four S's. Sacrifice, service, suffering, and stewardship. You will never lack for those. You will never lack to be able to make sacrifices for other people. God will always provide you opportunities to make sacrifices for other people.

You have enough to sacrifice for others. You have enough to serve other people. You have enough time. You have enough cash, right? Any of you that moaned Thursday night from how much food you ate, you're not in a situation where you can go, man, I need more.

You're just not right. Suffering and stewardship, right? Those are the four S's. Those are the life of faith that God's given to us and God apportions to our life exactly what we need to fulfill those four S's in our lives. You don't need a dime more, and you will not have a dime less to fulfill those four S's in your life.

And if you want to know how to fulfill those four S's in your life, it's exactly where God has you right now to fulfill those things. John Newton said, everything is needful that God gives.

Nothing can be needful that he withholds if he's withholding something from your life right now. It's simply not need full. It's not needful for the script he has for your life. It might be needful for the script that you're writing, but it might be time in your life to flip the script, right? Flip the script.

It might be time in your life to bring yourself over under his script and not your own anymore. So there's nothing needful that God is withholding from you right now in your life. And everything that is in your life is needful for what he's actually accomplishing in your life, including sore necks, ripped shoulders, numb arms, if you're me. I don't understand that. I don't understand why I suffer every day the way that I'm doing right now physically, but it is part of what he's trying to do with me right now.

Matthew Henry notice I have to go back like 400 years to get people that write on this stuff. You can't find anybody that's today except for maybe John Piper, who's writing on sacrifice and so forth. But Matthew Henry said this I shall not lack anything that is really necessary and good for me. I shall be supplied with what I need. And if I have not everything I desire, I may conclude that it is not fit for me and I am not fit for it, and that it's just not good for me somehow.

You see, God has pledged Himself to you in Jesus Christ to give you everything that you need to fulfill the life of sacrifice and service and suffering and stewardship. The script that he's writing for you right now, he is enough to be your shepherd, to give you enough of Himself to go through all of that, and to give you enough stuff in life to go through all of that. Yahweh is my shepherd. I shall not want. And I'm going to close with this.

I wonder if in the back of the writer of Hebrews mind was Psalm 23. It's hard to kind of get away from that when you actually hear the words that he uses. But in Hebrews 13, which is the same exact passage that says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the writer of Hebrews comes right out and just kind of says it like a pastor that just doesn't care what people think.

He says this, make sure that your way of life is free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will give you Joel Osteen someday. No, that's not what he said, right? Actually, let me actually read what the Bible says. Make sure that your way of life is free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. In other words, a yeah, I will be with you.

So what can we confidently say? What is our credo? The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, take your word and seal it unto us. And bring us to the luscious table of grace in the midst of our enemies today.

In Jesus name we pray and amen.