Attitude of Thankfulness

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Thanksgiving Service, November 24, 2011

You’re not going to probably get away without seeing the commercials already that are going to be there for Black Friday. What do you want for Christmas? What do you want? What do you want to drink? What do you want to eat? The question is given to us in a number of different ways. What do you want?

It’s interesting to come across the 23rd Psalm. As I was preparing to figure this out, what is it we can be thankful for again this year? How do we have a new focus on trying to find content in our world of discontent? But it’s time to take the focus off of ourselves and put it where it belongs, the Lord.

I want to take you to Psalm 23. Many of you know it by heart and it’s probably the second most memorized passages in all of scripture behind John 3:16. “But the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Can you imagine, as we hear those words, it should be in stark contrast to what we understand in our world today? Because it’s not about wants. It’s wants turning into needs, needs being things that need to be met yesterday.

It’s interesting talking about wants. Pastor Burcham stopped in my office here this afternoon and he said, “You know, you were talking about wants. I read a USA Today article. The millennial generation is all of a sudden going to start their focus and shift their attentions away from wants and they’re going to grab everything just when they want it. “I’ll eat when I want to eat. I’ll go to bed when I want to go to bed. I will read what I want to read. Don’t tell me what I want to read. Don’t show me. I’ll go get it myself when I want it.” It’s this culture that’s shifted around no longer looking at just what I need. I’m going to start pulling what I want and when I want it.

When we look at Psalm 23, it’s often recited and talked about at funeral times but it often gives us great insight into the understanding of who God is to us. David, being the lonely shepherd, is the one who penned this Psalm. He was a shepherd himself, spent many lonely nights out in the field watching the sheep and yet, here he is in the 23rd Psalm saying, “The Lord is my shepherd.” All of a sudden, he takes a role reversal because he’s been around sheep. He knows sheep. He’s seen the sheep and now what he’s saying is, “Guess what? I am the sheep.”

Kind of the interesting thing in Scripture when we see this picture of a shepherd, it’s a picture that’s often seen, not just in the Old Testament but also in the New. Jesus Himself calls Himself The Good Shepherd, the good shepherd who knows His sheep and the sheep know His voice. Well, who is He calling a sheep? That’s us.

Don’t you love being called sheep? Anybody really like being called a sheep? I’d just like to know that. Maybe there are some cute sheep that you know of, but I don’t know of a single sheep that I would ever say, “I’d like to be that sheep.” They have the picture of the sheep for a reason. Sheep and especially the sheep He’s looking at in the Middle East, they’re just out wandering in the fields. They’re dirty. They’re smelly. They’re not very smart.

This is good for us to be able to identify, primarily because when we see that all of a sudden, David wants to take the identity of the sheep, what is he saying? He’s saying, “I need something that I cannot find for myself. I need something and it has to be provided by a shepherd because I don’t have what I need.”

When we start to look at the 23rd Psalm and it opens up in that way, he’s saying, “All of us are those sheep,” because we try to help ourselves by gathering around everything we think is going to make us happy. The things we think are going to bring us contentment, we find in reality they end up being empty.

When David starts the Psalm, he says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Now what did David find? We know David wasn’t a perfect man, but what did he find? There was a moment that all of a sudden, he said, “The Lord is my shepherd. He’s my guide. I don’t want anymore. I don’t want anything.” Is there a secret? Is there something he can show us here because we don’t live in a world where we can declare we don’t want anymore.

It’s especially at Thanksgiving that we come around the one day of the year when we have a focus on thanks, on the thanksgiving. We focus on things that are around us. We focus on family and friends and we focus on the yummy turkey that’s sitting in front of us. So what else do we need?

When we start to look at it, we say, “We need a shepherd,” because we, too, have gone astray. Like Isaiah says, “All of us have been like sheep that have gone astray.” So we need a shepherd to be able to understand what we need because we, like those sheep, don’t make the best decisions. We tend to wander off and yet, the Lord is our shepherd. He’s there to guide us, bring us back in.

There was a book I came across the last couple of days. It’s written by a guy named Phillip Keller. Now what’s interesting is it’s written from his perspective and he is, in his profession, a shepherd. So the book itself is Reflections From a Shepherd on the 23rd Psalm. And what he does is he kind of looks at what is it that’s in this 23rd Psalm that we can find meaningful from a perspective as a shepherd because we’re not all shepherdminded. How is it that we can start to look at this in a different way? Because this Thanksgiving, we can be thankful and not just for the things that are around us but we can be thankful because we can take a shift away from the stuff and put it back on the shepherd.

So the first primary reason why we can give thanks this Thanksgiving is because the shepherd, The Good Shepherd, provides everything that we need. In that book, we find it starts in the passage of Psalm 23 and the next verse says, “Then He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.” Now I didn’t catch this one but in that book, this is the interesting part I found. The author, when he talks about the sheep lying down, he says there are four things that are required for a sheep to even think about lying down.

He says, first of all, they have to be full. Hungry sheep stay on their feet searching for another mouthful of food. He says secondly, they must be unafraid because they’re not going to lie down if they’re fearful. The least suspicion of wolves or bears and they stand ready to flee. Thirdly, they must be content. If flies or fleas are bothering them, they won’t lie down. They must be comfortable before they lie down. And finally, sheep won’t lie down unless there is harmony in the flock. If there is friction over the budding order among them, they simply can’t relax and lie down.

These things, these elements of the shepherd, that he knows his sheep so well, he knows what they need at every given moment, in order to be able to say we can lie down, we can lie down in the presence of God when we’re fed by Him, when He knows what we want, when He knows what we need. We’re content.

That’s when Paul, when we read that Philippians passage earlier, says, “I’ve known what it means to be content in every situation, whether hungry or well fed.” We can rely and trust in this great Good Shepherd because He allows us to be able to lay down in His presence and a sheep won’t do that unless he’s comfortable and content.

God makes us lie down once in awhile, doesn’t He? Especially as we get into the season of Advent, we’re preparing for Christmas. There are a lot of things that are going on. Everybody is busy from one place to the next. God sometimes says, “Why don’t you relax a little bit? Why don’t you hold back and try not to do so much? Why don’t you try to listen to me every once in awhile.” Sometimes we get so busy going from place to place, we simply don’t have the time. But God makes us lay down every once in awhile. Maybe it’s in a illness. Maybe it’s when we’re really struggling and all of a sudden, we say, “I just need to relax.”

And in that moment, that’s when you can hear God and He can say, “I’m your Good Shepherd.” You need to take some time. You need to relax. “Rest your burdens and cares amongst me because I am the Good Shepherd. You can trust my voice.” Once in awhile, God has to say, “It’s time to lie down.”

We see in the next part, “He leads me beside quiet waters.” Sheep themselves are a little frightened at times by anything that moves around them. So the shepherd has to lead them beside those quiet parts so the sheep aren’t frightened, so the sheep won’t just stop and stop following the shepherd. The shepherd knows what the sheep need, not what the sheep want.

We can trust in the Good Shepherd because the number one thing is He knows what we need and He supports us with everything that we need for this body and this life. We can trust Him for that because He says that He knows and He says that He will provide.

As we move on in the passage, Verse 3 says, “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His namesake.” There’s only one place He leads us beside, that He will actually be able to restore our soul back to the way He intended it to be. The Good Shepherd is the one who is able to do that, the one who can lead back to that place of restoration. There are plenty of times when we wander off just like the other sheep. The shepherd Himself brings us back around once again to that place where He wants us to be safe, where no harm will come to us, where there is safety and comfort with everything around us.

We also can be thankful in the face of evil. As we look at Verse 4, he says, “Even tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” There’s only one reason why we will not fear any evil. Because the Good Shepherd is guiding and leading us. We go through a lot in this life. We can see a lot of suffering, a lot of pain and yet, the thing is, we can still rejoice knowing the Good Shepherd is there standing next to us. That will be easy. But it says, in that, we can fear no evil because no evil will come upon us.

Death as we try to face that in everyday life, we see that death is a thing that is conquered by Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd who says, “There is no obstacle in this life that you will face that I will not be with you to lead you through it.” God takes us through that valley of the shadow of death and He brings us to the other side. We can be thankful for the Good Shepherd knowing that this is not it. There’s something greater for us and something greater that He’s going to lead us to. The Good Shepherd promises eternal life as He’s standing in the presence of our enemies, of everything that’s tried to persecute us, that’s tried to tempt us, the Good Shepherd. We stand in front of that evil on the last day knowing there will be judgment.

There are a lot of things we can turn away from, our wants, and we turn towards what God has provided us. We can look with thanksgiving and praise upon everything that’s there. As we’ve walked through the 23rd Psalm, we can see that the Good Shepherd provides us with all that we need for this body and life. We can lift up praise and thanksgiving knowing that He leads us, that He provides everything we need, that He walks beside us in the place of evil and that He promises eternal life is given to us.

Those are reasons we can be thankful this year. We turn our attention and our focus away from the commercialization of the world and we turn it back towards God as our Good Shepherd. I’d encourage you this Thanksgiving to be able to sit down with family and friends to share that good news, that you have a Good Shepherd who provides everything that you need and there is nothing for you to fear. Amen.