Simple Faith

Bill Henry: But here's the beauty, guys and gals. Even though we're living in these last days, number one, remember that you've been selected to live in this day. That God created you, he knitted you in your mother's womb. You've been placed here for such a time as this.

It's radical to think of any time in history that we could have been born. God chose each one of us to be born here and now. And take comfort because our good shepherd has already gone before us to prepare the table, to prepare the plateau as well.

Host: Welcome to Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry. Guidance and continual care is something we will always need. It's because we're like sheep, and sheep need a shepherd. It explains a lot. It's why we are always in need. Well, the Lord knows, and he is close at hand in his care for us.

So, if the Lord is your shepherd, you'll not lack any good thing. With more on this reassuring truth from Psalm 23:5, once again, here's Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: My old pastor, Pastor Chuck, used to use the illustration of when you go to a parade. You get a seat and you're sitting at the parade. The Rose Bowl Parade when we lived in Southern California was always a really big thing, and a lot of people still watch it on television today. But when you go to a parade, you sit at one place, and you see what's happening in front of you. You kind of can see a little bit back here and a little bit, but that's it. And that's us in time.

But God is almost like in the Goodyear blimp, if you will. He sees the beginning, the end, he sees all in the middle. He's outside of this. And what I love is he's going ahead of us and preparing. God is omnipotent; he is all-powerful. He is omnipresent; he is everywhere. And he is a God who is in complete control.

You look in the world around us, and sometimes you wonder if things are falling apart. But when you open your Bible and read, it's like everything's falling into place. God is in control, and we need to understand that. What I love about that is there's a peace that comes with that. There's a security that comes with that. "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies."

Let's apply this spiritually, just of what we just learned about mesas and tables. So now think of this table as a mesa that the Lord is leading you to. Notice, "before me in the presence of mine enemies." Just as the shepherd checks the table or the mesa for his sheep, so too our God, the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, goes ahead, and as he's preparing, he checks for things too.

There are three main things that they check for. Number one, they check the water. They check for the water supply as we talked about earlier. They make sure that it's clear, that it's vibrant, that it's healthy for the sheep. We already talked about the water if you look back in verse 2 within our text here in Psalm 23 where it says, "He leadeth me beside the still waters." I'm not going to cover that again this morning. You can go back and listen or watch that study.

But our shepherd does check the waters. He makes sure they are clean, that they are good to drink because they're him. He is our water. He fills us with living water. I love that picture. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is he checks for poisonous weeds and plants. Let's look at this a little bit spiritually, but let's first talk about sheep.

Sheep are basically very dumb or dull creatures. How do you guys like being called sheep in the Bible? I'd rather be called a lion or a tiger or something. But one thing I love about sheep, if you think about it, even for their dullness or their dumbness, it's always like a sweet dumbness. It's just kind of this innocent dope-dee-dope-dee-dope. We'll just go wherever we're going to go, eat whatever we're going to eat. And that's the thing; they're pretty stupid.

They could come up and they'll see these flowers. It was interesting, one writer who was a shepherd would talk about this certain kind of weed. There was the yellow form of this weed with yellow flowers, and they were okay to eat. But if it had a white flower, it was a poisonous weed. But the sheep, they didn't care what color it was. It was bright; let's go eat it.

This is how stupid sheep are. They could come up, there's a whole group of them, it's like, "Joe, you want to eat those? Check those out, see if it's pretty good." Joe says, "Yeah, I'll eat some of those white ones." So Joe eats it. All of a sudden, the poison within the weed paralyzes Joe. He flips over and he's dead. Well, Marv right next to Joe says, "Well, I'm going to give them a try now too." He gets paralyzed and he falls over dead. Mary right there goes, "Okay, it's my turn. I'm going to try some." And that's how sheep are.

It's interesting though, put this spiritually. Sometimes we can be that dull spiritually as well. Somebody will come up to us with a strange doctrine or they'll come up to us with gossip or some legalistic thing. "Oh, can you believe they're wearing their hair like that?" "No, I actually can't believe they're wearing their hair like that. That's, wow, I don't know if that's very biblical or they're not very spiritual." But it's poison. It comes in in so many different fashions.

I remember years ago meeting somebody who I really looked up to as a Christian. I'd known them for a year or so, and all of a sudden I come up and they're smoking a cigarette. I was like, "Oh, they're just not as spiritual as I thought they were." And the Lord brought me to his word. It was like, "Bill, I'm sorry, where did it say that part about not smoking cigarettes?" "Oh, that's right, it's not in here." It was poisonous. It brought these poisonous thoughts that weren't biblical thoughts, and we have to be careful with that.

Jesus warned us throughout the scriptures about poisonous foods. We're warned throughout the New Testament and the old, but let's just focus on the new. Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John, they all warned about false teachers who would bring poison into the church. They would bring false teaching, and it could bring death into a church. An example of this would be the Galatians. "Oh, foolish Galatians, who has so easily bewitched you?" They're turning away from the grace so quickly and going back to the works.

I was reading in the book of Acts the other day where you had these guys that were coming in. "Okay, it's great that you believe on Jesus, but now you need to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and all this." It turns into this big argument with Barnabas and Saul, or Paul at this time. They go back to the Council of Jerusalem. I love when Peter stands up. He's like, "You know, guys, are you guys nuts? You're expecting them to keep the very laws that we can't keep ourselves?" But again, these false teachings, these poisons, can come into the church.

Here's the interesting thing, in the last days we're told that even this is going to be more so. So if you look throughout church history, you can go back to the book of Revelation and in chapters two and three, the letters to the seven churches. The church is what, 55, 60 years old? And the Lord's already having to write all these corrective letters. "You're blowing it here, you're blowing it there, you're blowing it here. Repent, come back to your first love."

But then again, if you look at most of the letters of the New Testament, it's Paul correcting this church, it's Paul correcting that church, it's John correcting this false teaching, it's Peter correcting that false thing, Jude addressing this error. Crazy. I mean, read the book of Jude. It's such a dynamite thing. "Hey, I wanted to write you to encourage you, but man, there's some bad stuff coming into the church and I gotta warn you about it. There's some poison."

Turn with me please to Matthew 24, because again this is going to increase in the last days. Matthew 24:3, as he, Jesus, sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, "Teach us when these things will be. And what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?" And Jesus answered them, "See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray."

Again, they will bring poison, they will lead many astray. Hop up to verse 23 with me, please. "Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand."

Turn with me please to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. These poisons that come into the church. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, starting in verse 9. "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders," sound familiar from what Jesus just said? "And with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

You don't have to turn there, but in 2 Timothy 4:3 Paul wrote this: "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." Spiritually you could say wander off into spiritual poison.

There are countless poisonous beliefs within the world today. Turn on your television, turn on the radio, look at a billboard sign. It's crazy today. Watch a Disney flick or a children's show. And like 97.5% of the times, it seems like they're actually trying to teach bad morality. They're trying to uplift sinfulness, and again, these poisonous beliefs that are all within our world today.

I was just yesterday, I saw an article on one of the streaming television or movie channels, I think it's Amazon is doing something on the Antichrist. And the Antichrist, I watched the trailer; I wanted to see what it was saying. Basically, the Antichrist, I think he's a kid about 12 or 13 years old with these supernatural powers. And they knew that the four horsemen of the apocalypse were coming to destroy the earth.

And so a bad angel and a demon got together and said, "We gotta stop this apocalypse, we gotta stop this destruction of the earth." And they got together with the Antichrist, who ends up being the good guy to stop God Almighty from pouring out his judgment upon. I mean seriously, I'm sitting here going, "Dude, this is Revelation just coming to life." They put it, but they've turned it all around, which is what Satan does.

I've always wondered at the end, when Jesus has reigned for a thousand years upon the earth and you see there where it talks in Revelation where Satan is unbound for a time and people from all over the earth come against the Lord. And it's like in one sentence, it's like, "And they're gone." Basically, God wiped them out, he's done, they're going to the lake of fire. And there's not a big battle, it's not like... but I always wondered, how in the world would they even imagine?

Well, you watch shows like this and what do you think it's doing? It's planting seeds in people, those seeds of rebellion. We can stand up against anything. But here's the beauty, guys and gals. Even though we're living in these last days, number one, remember that you've been selected to live in this day. That God created you, he knitted you in your mother's womb. You've been placed here for such a time as this.

It's radical to think of any time in history that we could have been born. God chose each one of us to be born here and now. And take comfort because our Good Shepherd has already gone before us to prepare the table, to prepare the plateau as well. And you know how he's done us with all this? By giving us his word, his truth. This is how we know in the days that we're living in, is this true? Is this false? Is this poisonous belief, is it a good belief? Well, what does it say in God's word?

We don't have to guess. We don't have to say, "Well, this is what Pastor Bill says and that's where I'm sticking my flag." Never do that. I don't care who the pastor is, I don't care how great they are, whatever they are, you come to the word of God. That's where we find the truth, that's where we find the light. Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." This is how we find out, "No, this is a poisonous belief, this is bad," because God has gone before us and he's prepared.

Imagine the days that we're living in. I have a Bible here, I have multiple Bibles here, my phone's over there, I have multiple Bibles on there. I even have a Bible on here. There's Bibles being broadcast and Bible studies around the world like never before on the internet, over radio, in prints. Man, the Lord has prepared us for these days. Our Good Shepherd goes before us. He goes before us first by checking the water, second by rooting out these false and poisonous beliefs, and thirdly by looking for signs of enemies without and within.

We have to understand that the Lord goes around us. You know, it's interesting, the third main thing that the shepherd would do as he's on the mesa, once he's got the sheep up there, he'd still be watching continually for the enemies of the sheep. They would continue to check and look for wild dogs, bears, or wolves, or whatever it would be as they continued to prepare that table before them in the presence of mine enemies. You see, even though they're in the mesa, even though it's been cleared out, even though it's safe, there are still enemies all around and the shepherd knows it.

They're in the trees farther off the mesa, they're in the rocks. Sometimes he would say they would see these coyotes or wolves standing up on the rocks just looking down at the flock, but they were far enough away to where they knew that they could be there in time to save. And again, I love this because even though the shepherd had cleared the mesa, he still kept watch for all the enemies that were without. And so even as the sheep are quietly feeding and feasting, the shepherd is keeping watch.

Do you see the spiritual application? We can come like day to day and we can feast. I can go in the morning and spend time with my Jesus on my knees and my face and just like, "You know what, Lord, even though my enemies are all around me, I'm just resting here at your feet, Jesus. I'm resting here, I'm trusting that you are watching out for me."

You know, I found there was an interesting side note that this shepherd had said. He said in all his years of tending sheep, there was one enemy that he never saw. He saw the footprints, he saw the leavings behind, he saw wounded sheep, he saw dead sheep from it. That one thing that he never laid eyes on was a mountain lion because it was so stealthy, it was so sneaky.

But it was interesting, he would never get them on the mesa because the shepherd was there watching. The shepherd was keeping constant. But even if they did, here's the beautiful thing: our shepherd, even all human shepherds have human limitations, but our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ has no such limitations. Period.

But you see, the lion would come in and it would be stealth and it would be sneaky and it would take these sheep and tear them apart or kill them. And sometimes he said it was as if like you could tell they'd just played with the sheep like a cat plays with a mouse. It's interesting, turn with me please to 1 Peter, because we read something quite interesting, quite familiar to everyone here I'm sure. But again, within this context I think there's a little clarity.

1 Peter chapter 5, starting in verse 8. "Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world." You see, guys and gals, in Jesus Christ we are able to resist the devil and he will flee from us.

We need to stand and stay close to our Good Shepherd. Hey, yes we are in his mesa. Hey, yes, even along the way and he is our protection. But if we start to go off the path and even sometimes on the path we will still be attacked, as we talked about last week, as we go through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet we rest and we trust in our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ, that whatever he allows, he allows for a reason, he allows for a purpose.

But I'm telling you what, the cool part is here, let's be those who don't take chances and get too far away from the Lord. You know, there are those who say, "Well, I don't really need to read my Bible, I got born again, I'm good. I don't really need to spend that much time praying. I pray on my way to work or before I eat dinner, I'm good, or before I go to sleep at night. I don't need to be in fellowship that often."

"I don't need to be witnessing or fasting or doing any of those spiritual things really. It's all good, it's all under grace anyway." How about we do just the opposite? Because all those things take us a little further away from the shepherd. Let's lean hard into Jesus. And how we do that is just come to his word and say, "Lord, teach me how to lean hard into you." And he teaches us here. You do this and you do that, stay away from this and don't do this.

I love where it says in James, actually let's just turn there. James chapter 4. I love this. To be leaning hard into Jesus, to be drawing near to God. James chapter 4, verse 7. "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Notice, "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." Take that in the context of Psalm 23 what we've just been reading. Draw near to God, resist the devil, he will flee from you.

Notice how he goes on though, he goes on to tell us here in verse 8 how to draw near to him. "Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded." Let's not be double-minded anymore. Let's be single-minded about the Lord. "Be wretched and mourn," he goes on to say, "and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom." Hey, here's the greatest Sunday morning preaching, huh? You come to church and it's like, "Hey, I want you all to be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. God bless you, we'll see you next week."

But this is the word of God, guys and gals. If you want to learn how to draw near to God, it's not just by only singing "Kumbaya, my Lord." We need to be those who are cleansing our hands, purifying our hearts, not being double-minded, be wretched and mourn over the sins that we do, turn away from them. And notice verse 10: "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will exalt you. He will lift you up."

Hebrews 4:16, you don't have to turn there, but it says, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need." Hebrews 7:25: "Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them."

God is going before us, beloved in Christ. Find comfort in that. He's preparing the table in the midst of our enemies. And let's draw near to him in those points, continually in our lives, turning away from the world and coming closer and closer to our beloved Jesus Christ.

In close, I love this. Within our lives here on the earth, we just read that Jesus is going in front of us, he's preparing our ways, and doing this. But he's also gone ahead of us to prepare something else. As we close, turn with me please to John chapter 14. He prepares even here on the earth, but in John chapter 14 we read about something else Jesus is preparing for each one of us here, each one in Christ here.

John chapter 14, as we close, verse 1. Guys and gals, would you just hear this from the Lord to you today? This is to you tonight, this day. "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go," notice, "to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be. And where I go, you know, and the way you know." God has gone before us also and is preparing a place in heaven for each one of us. Glorious.

Host: Thank you so much for joining us for Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. Now, if you were blessed by today's message from the 23rd Psalm, you can go to our website and watch the video or download an audio MP3. And we have a large number of Pastor Bill's messages archived there. You can find them all at simplefaith.org. That's simplefaith.org.

And if you'd like to contact us via the US mail, our mailing address is Post Office Box 55, Battle Ground, Washington, and the zip code is 98604. Here at Simple Faith Calvary Chapel, we have two services on Sunday morning at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. So if you're looking for a church home, make plans to join us for fellowship, worship, and a great time in God's word at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM every Sunday morning.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and be sure to set aside another half hour next weekend at this same time as our study in Psalm 23 continues here on Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry, brought to you by Simple Faith Calvary Chapel. Have a wonderful week in the Lord.