Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Jenny Lusko: Life can be messy, but you don't have to figure it out alone.

Levi Lusko: Hey, it's the Luscos. Join pastors and bestselling authors Levi and Jenny Lusko on "Hey, it's the Luscos" for honest conversations about faith, marriage, family, grief, ministry, and all the unexpected moments in between. You'll laugh, you'll be encouraged, and you'll be reminded that God is faithful through every season.

Jenny Lusko: He will always come back to Jesus in the end.

Levi Lusko: That's right. Tune in to "Hey, it's the Luscos" with Levi and Jenny Lusko, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Guest (Female): Hello, and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies.

To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That’s calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now, here’s Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Hello again, everyone. Trust you're well. Trust you're having a good summer. It's hard to believe we are approaching the middle of August already. We've had a great summer here on God in Our City. We've been studying the Sermon on the Mount, Kingdom Quest, we called it. We finished that up last week, and now we have the privilege of doing something very different.

We don't usually share with you our morning sermons from the pulpit of Calvary Chapel, but we're going to do that now, really almost to the end of August. For the next three weeks, we've done a really special series at Calvary called One Summer, One Shepherd, One Psalm. We're going to be talking about that, moving through that for the rest of the summer. What we're going to do is actually give you the sermon in parts, the five sermons in parts over the next three weeks so that you can understand, you can grasp that amazing Psalm, Psalm 23.

That Psalm has given people so much comfort, and we're going to see that that's not unmerited. That Psalm deserves our study, deserves us going deep in it. We're praying and hoping that it will be a tremendous blessing to you. We still have our same format. If you're just joining us, we always provide a few things. Our theme is One Summer, One Shepherd, One Psalm, a deep dive in Psalm 23. I don't know if we could have gone much deeper, but we were there.

Our format is always that we provide you with a free downloadable study guide. That study guide is designed to help you follow along. If you go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc, you will find all those study guides. Download them; they're yours for free. In addition, we want to give you the book "A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm" by W. Phillip Keller. It's a great book, a classic. We want to just send it to you absolutely free.

Please let us know if you want it, and we will get it to you. I'm going to do it a little bit different this time; just call us. It makes it easy. 718-720-5390. While you're at our website, if you want to make a donation to God in Our City, especially in these sunny summer months, it would help tremendously. We're doing a lot of outreach, doing a lot of ministry. Any help that you would give us would be a huge blessing. Without further ado, I'm going to take you to the pulpit of Calvary Chapel as we talk about One Summer, One Shepherd, One Psalm, a deep dive into Psalm 23.

Everyone has the book free of charge, "A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm." We have those. Please take these tracts. I don't want any of these tracts left over. I want you to give these to everybody that moves. It's a great way to get the gospel out. I know it'll be a blessing to someone. We're on One Summer, One Shepherd, One Psalm. We're going to talk about Psalm 23 until you beg me not to.

Because most of us memorized Psalm 23, or were told to memorize Psalm 23 using the old King James, I brought the King James back for you today. Are you ready? The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Sounds familiar?

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Help each of us, Lord, to understand it and appreciate it and to apply it, God. Lord, we need your help in understanding your word through your Holy Spirit. As has already been prayed, Lord, we pray for Venezuela today. We pray, Lord, for miracles. We pray that people who will be found who were thought dead. Lord, we pray that you will drop the estimated number of people who are to die on this.

We pray for your church in Venezuela; help it to rise up. We pray for your church here in the States to rise up to help these people. Lord, as we're praying for Venezuela, we pray today for our city, for its safety. Lord, it's great to have FIFA here, but it does present much danger. We pray you'll watch over our first responders and keep them safe. Please keep our city safe. Lord, as our troops are in harm's way, we pray for their safety as well.

We pray for the end of this Iran war. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We pray not only for that, Lord, but we pray for just your somehow intervening in Ukraine, Lord, to stop that endless war. Touch us now, Lord, we pray, as we hear your word. Help us, Lord, to respond to it. In Jesus' name, Amen. Today, we begin a study of one of, if not the most quoted portion of scripture, Psalm 23.

How many of you remember memorizing Psalm 23? I first got introduced to Psalm 23 when I was told to go to the congregational church in Sheffield, Massachusetts. I think it was in the second grade when my mother decided she was going to make me go. And she did; she made me go. I came into the classroom, and the thing that I was required to do first thing was memorize Psalm 23. As a seven-year-old, it wasn't hard. I tell you, if I had to rememorize it 60 years later, it might be hard, but it is truly a beautiful Psalm.

This Psalm is associated with funerals. I bet you have heard this Psalm at almost every funeral you've ever been to. But the Psalm is not really meant as a funeral Psalm. There's only one portion of it that speaks of death. It says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," and that may not even mean death. That may mean a valley in Israel. But we make it about death, when really it's for everyday life.

This particular Psalm is so familiar that you already know how you feel about it, so it's hard to change what you think about it. This Psalm is so familiar you already know how you feel about the Psalm, so it's hard to get a different grasp on what it means, maybe to see it in a different light. Over the next weeks, what we hope to do is help you to see the Psalm in a brighter light, in a different light, so that you appreciate it more, you hold on to it better, and you know how wonderful it is.

Let me just share one thing that maybe will help you understand what I'm saying. When we read this Psalm, we say these words: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Almost every translation translates this "mercy" now. It's not the word mercy. It's the Hebrew word hesed, which means steadfast love, a word that's used throughout the Old Testament. But the translators, the modern translators, didn't want to mess with you because you memorized it in the King James.

So you know it as surely goodness and mercy, and they didn't want you running around saying, "Surely goodness and hesed shall follow me all the days of my life." So it's a challenge for me and anyone who would share about the Psalm to get you to look at it a little bit deeper. Now, the first words of the Psalm are "A Psalm of David," which is two words. David was a shepherd par excellence. He wrote 75 out of the 150 Psalms. That's a lot of Psalms.

This particular Psalm has become, in so many ways, everybody's favorite. How many of you here, this is your favorite Psalm? A lot of us. We just love the Psalm. We know David was a shepherd because when Samuel the prophet was looking for the new king of Israel, God led him to the tribe of Judah. Within the tribe of Judah, he led him to a family, the family of Jesse. He's going through all the sons of Jesse, and he can't find which one the Lord wants to be king.

So these are Samuel's words. He said, "Are all your sons here?" And he said, "There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep." Samuel said to Jesse, "Send out and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here." David winds up being anointed the next king of Israel, but before he was the king of Israel, he was a shepherd keeping sheep. In 1 Samuel 17, David is lobbying to go out and fight Goliath. Goliath is a giant, and David wants to take him on.

David makes his case to go out and fight Goliath the following way. David said to Saul, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him." So David's saying, "I can take on a giant. When I was a shepherd, I took on a bear and I took on a lion when I was a shepherd."

When God is saying how much he blessed Israel, this is what he says: "He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand." David's preparation for being king was shepherding sheep. This shouldn't surprise us. One of the great truths in scripture is that shepherding animals prepares you for doing amazing things.

Does anybody know who the first shepherd in the Bible was? Abel shepherded sheep. Anybody know what Moses did for a living? Moses was a shepherd, and then later he shepherds the people of God, the people of Israel. How many people was that, by the way? It was 2.4 million people. He shepherded in the wilderness, the same wilderness he had shepherded sheep. He shepherded a congregation the size of Brooklyn. Brooklyn has 2.4 million people. Moses shepherded that many people.

And what was their favorite line? "Moses! Moses! Moses!" How do you say that with a Brooklyn accent? "Yo, Moses!" When did David write this Psalm? We don't know. Was it when he was in the field with the sheep? That's my favorite view because I like being outside. I like being outside by myself, and as a shepherd, you get to be that way. David maybe was outside; he played a small guitar-like instrument. Maybe he wrote the Psalm then as he looked over the sheep, as he was taking care of the sheep. He said, "You know what? The Lord is my shepherd."

Perhaps it was when he was leading the armies of Israel. Maybe it was when he was king of Israel, and he thought about the years past, how he had been a shepherd and now the Lord was his shepherd. I'm not sure. But David took a profession he had early in life, and he wrote about it as an experience that he could relate to, and hopefully he would help us to relate to. The beautiful thing is when you are a good shepherd, what do your sheep look like? They look healthy. They look well. You don't lose a bunch of them.

It's obvious to all that you know what you're doing. Does God know what he's doing as we look at his sheep? This Psalm has a very interesting structure. It is 55 Hebrew words in the Psalm. If you were to number 1 to 26, it would take you to a certain place in the Psalm if you went from the beginning. And then if you went from the last word of the Psalm and you went 26 words in, you would find that the middle phrase of the Psalm is "Thou art with me," because that is the essence of the Psalm. Thou art with me.

Last week, I talked about Dad, the family shepherd. The most comforting thing that should be true of your family is that your kids say it's going to be alright because Dad is with me, our shepherd is with me. Truly for you and I as followers of Christ, Jesus is the good shepherd, Jesus is the great shepherd, Jesus is the chief shepherd. Surely the greatest thing about this Psalm is it tells us that God is with us as our shepherd.

I like this particular outline. I'm just trying to give you some different insights on the Psalm. The basis for the Psalm are these words: "The Lord is my shepherd." The blessings in the Psalm follow: "I shall not want," "maketh me to lie down in green pastures," etc. The benediction of the Psalm is, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever." One of the craziest things about this Psalm is how it suddenly leaves the shepherd illustration.

He's working his way through the shepherd illustration, and then in verse six, he abandons it. Where are we going to dwell? I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. After all, the life that we have here is just a sheep's life. From a heavenly perspective, what is my life here? A sheep's life. "Baa, baa, baa. Give me some grass. Give me some water. Protect me from the wolves. Baa, baa, baa." If I said to you today, "Listen, I'm getting up a group; we're going to the great sheep's pen in the sky," how many of you would be in on that? Where are we going to dwell? In the house of the Lord forever.

A couple of other outlines that I've come across: one says the first three verses are sheep and shepherd, "I shall not want." The middle verse is the traveler and companion, "I shall not fear." The final phrases are the host and guest, "I shall dwell." Another author said it's hard to improve upon: the secret of a happy life where every need is met is "The Lord is my shepherd." The secret of a happy death where every fear is removed is "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for you are with me."

The secret of a happy eternity where every desire is fulfilled is "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." That's enough of structure. Let's look at the Psalm, the shepherd in the Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd." Psalm 80 verse one is a cry to God saying, "Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth." The people of God saw God as their shepherd.

Psalm 28 verse nine: "O save your people and bless your heritage; be their shepherd and carry them forever." We want God to be our shepherd. Just so we understand the converse, if the Lord is our shepherd, what are we? Sheep. The phrase here is literally in Hebrew Yahweh Rohi.

I hope you enjoyed that. I hope it was a huge blessing to you. We have just really enjoyed going deep in this Psalm, so we're going to make sure that we do that for another 14 programs. By the end of it, you will say, "I know Psalm 23, and I never knew there was that much in it, that much that could minister to me, that much that could encourage me, that much that could make such a huge difference in my life."

When we apply the word of God to our lives, it changes us. We're blessed by God, but even beyond that, our lives are radically changed. People see it, and we live right. We live with strength, we live in his presence. We're not always popular, but we're always where the Lord wants us to be. Again, I would just encourage you to think about getting some of the resources we have. Download the study guide, request the book, and while you're at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc, think about making a donation to God in Our City.

Please get the free book; just call us. 718-720-5390, and we will get it to you. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for our study even today in this Psalm. Please help us, Lord, to take what your word has said and help us, Lord, to apply it in every single way in our life. Lord, we need you today. We need you every day. We pray, Lord, that as we come to that recognition, we will cry out, "Lord, you are our shepherd. Lord, you take care of us. Lord, you are what we need."

We pray all these things in the precious matchless name of Jesus, Amen. Thank you for joining us. Please join us again tomorrow for another edition of the daily edition of God in Our City. God bless everybody.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to God in Our City with your host, Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That’s calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Please check out Pastor Dave’s blog at nycshepherd.com. That’s nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.

Jenny Lusko: Life can be messy, but you don't have to figure it out alone.

Levi Lusko: Hey, it's the Luscos. Join pastors and bestselling authors Levi and Jenny Lusko on "Hey, it's the Luscos" for honest conversations about faith, marriage, family, grief, ministry, and all the unexpected moments in between. You'll laugh, you'll be encouraged, and you'll be reminded that God is faithful through every season.

Jenny Lusko: He will always come back to Jesus in the end.

Levi Lusko: That's right. Tune in to "Hey, it's the Luscos" with Levi and Jenny Lusko, available now wherever you get your podcasts.