I Shall Not Want For Restoration

In Psalm 23:1-6, I want to do what we’ve been doing every week. Let’s lift our voices together in unity and read.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads 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. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

In verses 2-3, David makes these statements, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.” The words “He restores my soul” are among the most precious in this priceless psalm. Why? Because I believe they summarize and say two things. There is so much that can be said from this one statement, “He restores my soul.” I want you to grab these two implications in this one statement.

Number one, it implies that we, as foolish sheep, are prone to wander and prone to leave the God we love. The Bible says that “All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We’ve turned everyone to his own way.” So when David says, “He restores my soul,” it indicates that we need restoring; that our soul becomes cast or we wander away from God, and we need to be brought back into the fold.

The second implication of this statement is that the Lord, our faithful shepherd, is a wonderful restorer. David is a wonderer, and God is a wonderful restorer. “He restores my soul.”

That statement that David makes in verse 3 is a Hebrew idiom that means “He brings me back to repentance” or “He brings me back to life.” The statement has the idea that “He brings me back,” and it came to be used in the Hebrew culture of that time as meaning “He revives me back” or “He brings me to repentance” or “He brings me back through repentance.” “He brings me back to life” some translations have.

It’s a beautiful picture of a shepherd finding and restoring a lost, fallen or cast sheep. I mentioned that in times past I had made a lot of trips to Australia. Back in 1984 I started traveling to west Australia to preach and teach, and we adapted some of the churches there and they came and interned in our church here in the United States. On my first trip to west Australia, we stayed at a large sheep ranch, and one morning we took a drive with a rancher down a dirt trek (they called it) and we discovered this one large sheep that had gotten tangled in the fence, was hanging on its side and couldn’t free itself or get up. So we stopped, the shepherd got out and helped the sheep free itself. The sheep had this fear and panic in its eyes. He released the sheep and it took off on its happy, little sheep way to go off and feed on green pastures once again. That sheep, in that condition, would certainly have died had it not been for the shepherd freeing it and setting it on its feet and delivering it from its plight.

When sheep are in that situation, they will cry out. It’s the bleating of the sheep. “Baa. Baa.” The shepherd would hear the sheep and come to the sheep. Many times sheep would become cast or fallen, and they needed to be restored. This is what David was referring to in Psalm 42:11 when David cried and said, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?”

I mentioned Phillip Keller’s book A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. He himself had shepherded in New Zealand. His book mentions that many times sheep, when they have eaten a lot and lie down, their equilibrium can shift due to gases in their stomach and they can roll over a little too far. The sheep can get onto its back and can’t right itself or get back on its feet. It’s what’s called a “cast sheep.”

David, being a shepherd, said, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” So this was a word picture of being cast away from God or walking away from God and being unable to come back or to be restored.

Many times these sheep that are cast wonder off God’s path, get on their back and they can’t right themselves. In Psalm 119:176, the psalmist said, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments.” So we, like sheep, walk away, we get cast; we get in a place where we can’t get back to God and where we need His help.

In Keller’s book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, he mentions a few reasons why sheep become cast sheep and can’t get back up on their feet. Sometimes they’re just preoccupied with eating. You know, if you really want to mow your lawn, get a sheep in the back yard. They’ll just take it down to dirt; they’ll practically eat the roots right out of the ground. They will just wipe out that grass. Just release them into the back yard. Who needs a lawnmower? Just buy a sheep.

They get so consumed with eating that sometimes as they are pursuing and eating the grass, they get farther and farther away from the fold and from the shepherd. Then they look up and the shepherd’s not there in view, so they start to cry out. “Baa. Baa.” They get lost because they have no sense of direction. If a dog gets lost, it’ll find its way home. A horse gets lost, it can find its way home. A cat gets lost, you just let it stay lost. Sorry, cat lovers. Nobody owns cats anyway. They just go all over the place, and nobody knows who owns the thing. But a sheep gets lost so easily when it loses view of the shepherd.

Sometimes we drift from God unknowingly. We’re just busy with our jobs, with our marriages, raising our children, getting them married and sent off to China. You know, all the things that we do; just the affairs of life, so we get consumed and we get busy. And it’s easy to begin to drift away from our love and our devotion and our relationship with God.

When Jesus gave the parable of the sower and the seed, there was one category of seed which represented the Word of God that took root, and it began to grow, but it was choked out by weeds. And He said those weeds are the cares and the deceitfulness and the riches of this life. So just the cares and concerns—legitimate things that everyone has to do just living life—choke out the Word of God, and our lives become barren and unfruitful because we are so preoccupied with life. You’re so busy raising your kids that you don’t have time for the Word of God. Or you’re so busy working around the house or going on vacation or making ends meet that you forget to seek the Lord.

Secondly, sheep will look for a soft spot to lie down on. Sometimes a little dip in the ground covered with soft grass. They get very comfortable. They roll a little too far onto their back, and their feet go up in the air and they can’t right themselves. “Baa.” They become like cast sheep.

And a lot of Christians are looking for the “comfortable” Christian life. Jesus said, “Take up your ‘couch’ and follow me”; did He not? “I don’t want to go to prayer meetings. I don’t want to sacrifice. I don’t want to serve the Lord. I just want a ‘comfortable Christianity.’ Don’t rock the boat. Don’t get too spiritual.” Then they get complacent and apathetic.

When the Lord spoke to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2, He said, “You have all these works, and you’re doing all these great things, but I have somewhat against you because you’ve drifted away. You’ve left your first love.” He said, “Remember from whence you have fallen and repent and do your first works again.” Remember when you prayed and read your Bible and loved going to church and sing the songs? Get back to loving God.

A third reason that sheep become cast is because of their wool. They have too much wool, and they simply get too fat. Fat sheep tend to get on their backs and can’t get back up on their feet again. So it is spiritually possible to become a fat sheep. It can happen at this church. You’re getting taught the Word of God. You’re getting fed the Word of God. You know the Word of God. You take in the Word of God, and you grow but you don’t give out. You’re not serving. You’re not sharing what you’ve learned. You’re not using it. You’re not putting it into practice. You’re just receiving, but you’re not giving; you’ve become a fat sheep. Many times you just slowly drift away from your walk with God.

But why do we, as God’s sheep, become cast? Let me give you some reasons. You won’t be surprised by this list, especially the first three. Number one, you neglect prayer. You become a cast sheep in need of restoration when you’ve neglected prayer. The famous author on prayer, E.M. Bounds, said, “Apostasy generally begins at the closet door.” I like that. One of the first indications that you are backsliding is your prayer life. You begin to cut it out, and you don’t pray like you used to. You only pray when you have a need, or you want something from God. You don’t get up early in the morning and just talk to God and talk to Him through the day and spend time praying and lifting up your heart to God. This is one of the areas—trust me—that the Devil will do all he can to keep you from being on your knees or talking to God in prayer, spending time in your closet alone with God. So one of the first indications that you’re drifting into a state that needs to be restored is that you neglect prayer.

Secondly, you neglect God’s Word. Again, I realize that when you hear this you’re going, “Okay. Here’s another pastor telling us to pray and read the Bible.” You’re right; that’s what I’m doing. Because it is absolutely essential for your spiritual life, health and growth. You cannot grow apart from the Word of God. You can’t grow by just coming to church on Sunday. You can’t grow by doing Christian activities. You grow by spending time in prayer, talking to God, and in the Word, God talking to you. When we talk to God and we read His Word, God speaks to us. I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and God speaks through what He has spoken. When we read the Scriptures, we’re actually hearing God speak. And the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to change the child of God into the image of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. And there’s no shortcut.

We know we are in need of restoration when we neglect prayer and we neglect God’s Word and, thirdly, when we neglect Christian fellowship. “I don’t want to go to church today. I’m too busy. I’ve got other things to do. Church is boring.” And you don’t make a commitment to be in God’s house with God’s people.

This isn’t a legalistic thing; you don’t have to go to church to go to heaven. But you go to church because you’re going to heaven. You go to church because you love God and you love God’s people, and you want to worship God with other people. You want to hear God’s Word. You want to be challenged and encouraged and pray with other people. Read all the “one anothers” in the New Testament. There are so many: “love one another,” “forgive one another,” “bear one another’s burdens,” “wash one another’s feet.” How do you do that if you don’t have any “one anothers” in your life? So you need to be connected in fellowship and be involved in a church. So you’re praying, you’re reading God’s Word and you’re in church, or else you’re drifting away.

And then, fourthly, you neglect holy living. We forget to live a holy life, a righteous life. We are thinking thoughts that are unpleasing to God. Did you know that many times your sin will start with a thought? Did you know that your thought itself can be sinful? Jesus said that if you look lustfully after someone, you’ve committed adultery. Jesus said that if you have hatred in your heart toward someone, you’ve already murdered them in your heart. Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. It all starts with our thoughts.

The Bible says that as believers, we should “set our thoughts on things above, not on things of the earth.” We are to guard our thought life and the things we meditate on. We are to “meditate on the things that are pure, holy, lovely and praise worthy.” Sometimes we are drifting away from God when we begin to allow our minds to go places that we know are unpleasing to God. And let me just remind you—no surprise—that God knows what you’re thinking. You’re busted. You can’t just say, “Well, I’m only thinking it; it’s okay.” God knows what you’re thinking. And the psalmist says, “Let the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O God.” “Let the things I think about, Lord, be pleasing and acceptable to you.” So we neglect holy living.

And fifthly, or lastly, we neglect confession and repentance. When I’m reading the Bible and it confronts me with some sin, attitude or action, I don’t really confess it to God. I don’t forsake my sin. I don’t turn from my sin. I find myself embroiled in sin. I’m not living holy. I’m not praying. I’m not reading His Word, and I’m drifting farther away from God. The psalmist cries in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” If you allow and harbor and regard sin in your heart, God will not hear you. God’s ear is not too heavy or His hand too short, but your sins have separated you from God. Even as a Christian—you can be a child of God and still be distanced from God. You can be far away from God. You can wander off God’s path by rebellion and hard heartedness and disobedience. But “He restores my soul.” God will not let His sheep wander too far before He comes to them and restores them back into fellowship with Him.

If anyone knew what it was to be a cast sheep in need of restoration, it was David. When David says, “He restores my soul,” he knows from bitter experience how much he needed to be restored. The story is recorded in 2 Samuel 11. It’s the story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba. We all know the story. In the springtime when the kings go out to battle and love was in the air and the troops were out battling, David was walking along the rooftop of his palace instead of going out to fight. The common understanding is that “idleness is the Devil’s workshop.” David should have been out fighting the Lord’s battle. He should have been busy in the Lord’s work. Instead he was walking on his rooftop. In those days, they had flat roofs, and they still do. It’s kind of a great idea; you turn your rooftop into a patio.

He’s walking around his rooftop, and then David looks over into the next courtyard and he sees a woman taking a bath. Her name was Bathsheba. She loved to take baths, so her name was Bathsheba. I’m kidding. But the moment David saw this woman bathing, he should have said, “Oops. Time to go into the house. Time to get off the roof.” Instead, the Bible says he “looked after her” and he “inquired of her.” So it goes from walking on the roof—idleness—to lusting after this woman. The “lust of the eyes.” He saw the woman was very beautiful to look upon. Then David inquired after the woman, and one of David’s servants actually said, “It is the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.” Underline the word “wife.” The minute David heard that—another warning—he should have gotten off the roof and not looked at this beautiful woman bathing.

But the Bible says David yielded, and he took her and slept with her. Several days after that, Bathsheba sends word back to David saying, “David, I’m pregnant.” The Bible says, “Be sure your sins will find you out.” Especially if you’re a child of God, He will not allow you to get away with sin. So David says, “Oh, no. What are we going to do now? She’s pregnant.”

David tried to cover up his sin. I want you to get the context here. For one year of David’s life he lived with the guilt and the shame. What he did to try to cover his guilt and his shame was he called Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from the battle. He inquired of Uriah saying, “How’s the battle going? Okay, great. Now go home and spend the night with your wife. Enjoy the comforts of home. Enjoy your wife tonight, and then you can get back out to the battle.” But Uriah went home and slept on the front porch. He wouldn’t go in and spend time with his wife. It kind of ruined David’s plan. So when David found out, David called him back the next night—David wasn’t done yet trying to cover his sin—and gave him something to drink and said, “Have another” and another. He got Uriah drunk, then David said, “Okay, Uriah. Go home and spend the night with your wife, and then the next day you can go back to the battle.” Uriah goes back to his house and falls down drunk on the front porch and spends the night on the front porch again.

David, the man who with his pen would write the beautiful psalms of praise like “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” wrote a letter of murder. He wrote a letter to Joab and said, “Take Uriah and put him at the front of the battle, and when the archers are shooting, pull back the troops and allow Uriah to be killed in battle. So David’s lust led to adultery and then it led to murder, all in an attempt to cover up his sin.

This is what David wrote during this period of time when he covered his sin, the murder of Uriah and the adultery with Bathsheba: Psalm 32:3-4. “When I kept silent, my bones waxed old through their roaring all the day long. Night and day Thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture was turned into the drought of summer.” Those words were uttered by David during this time when he felt the guilt and the shame and the isolation of his sin, when he tried to cover his sin with Bathsheba. So David was far from God. His “moisture was turning into the drought of summer.” Every day and every night he’d lay on his bed, and his conscience bothered him. He felt this load of guilt and shame.

How about you? Are you living far from God with unconfessed sin? Have you been thinking thoughts that are unpleasing to God? Have you been doing things that are unpleasing to God? Have you been disobeying God? Have you been rebelling against God? Turning from God? Or are you just cold toward God and apathetic? Maybe you don’t pray. Maybe you don’t read your Bible. Maybe you are standing in a place where you need God’s help to be restored. We, like David and foolish sheep, sometimes wander off God’s path and we need to be restored.

At this time, David also lost his joy. In Psalm 51:8, David said, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which You have broken may rejoice.” And in Psalm 51:12, David said, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.” So David was far from God and needed restoration from God. David had fallen into sin, and his heart was black with the guilt and shame and he needed his shepherd to hear his bleating and to come to rescue him. So the Good Shepherd sent the prophet Nathan to restore David.

Do you know that God loves you, so He won’t allow you to go into your sin? He won’t allow you to continue in your sin. The amazing part of that story of David to me is that God, in His love, sent a man by the name of Nathan the prophet. Nathan said to David, “David, there’s been an injustice in your kingdom.” David sits on his throne and says, “Tell me about it.” Nathan said, “Well, there’s a rich man in your kingdom who has many flocks and many herds. And he had a visitor come to see him. Instead of taking one from his flock and his herd and slaughtering it and killing it to feed his visiting friend, he went down to a poor man. This poor man had only one little ewe lamb. It was like a pet to him and his family. It sat in the kitchen in a high chair with a bib on [just kidding] and they would feed the little lamb. The kids named it; they had it as a pet. And this rich man went and took this poor man’s one ewe lamb, and he killed it and fed it to his friend who was visiting.”

When David heard that story, the veins popped out in anger on his neck. He probably pounded on his throne. He said, “The man who has done this will surely die!” And then I can see Nathan reaching out with his long bony finger pointing it at David’s face. All prophets have long bony fingers. I’ve seen the pictures in the Bible story books. Nathan said, “David, you are that man.” Wow! When David heard that, his sin swept over his soul, he dropped to his knees and said, “Nathan, I have sinned.” For a whole year he kept it stored up in his heart. But God, in His compassion, but God, in His kindness, but God, in His mercy, would not let David continue, so He sent Nathan the prophet.

Maybe God, in His mercy, and God, in His compassion, and God, in His love, has sent me today, as the preacher, to let you know that God wants you to repent and come back to Him. Maybe through this message, God will expose your sin. Maybe it’s adultery. Maybe it’s an illicit affair that you’re involved in. Maybe God wants to wake you up to the dangers that you’re doing now and bring you back to Him.

Nathan the prophet said, “God has forgiven your sins, but the sword will never depart from your house.” You know, God forgives our sins and restores us, but the scars remain. God doesn’t undo what our sin does; if we sow to the flesh, we’ll reap corruption. If we sow to the wind, we’re going to reap a whirlwind. We can’t go out and sin and then ask God not to let it come to harvest. God does forgive our sins, but the scars remain. The scars remain.

I heard a story recently about a woman who was taking her son to karate practice every week, and when she was at karate practice she would strike up a conversation with a father who had his son in the class. They would talk and they would talk and they became good friends. Eventually they got involved with each other. And then her “lover” murdered her husband. Now her husband’s dead, their children lost their father and her so-called “friend-lover” is in prison for the rest of his life. Her whole life was destroyed and ruined because she wasn’t keeping guard over her heart and watching carefully.

It may simply start with a little flirtation or a lunch kind of thing where you go out to lunch with someone. You start being attracted to somebody, and you play with things in your mind, and you don’t cut it off and guard yourself and you don’t protect yourself. It’s so dangerous. You’re drifting away and God wants to restore you.

Nathan said, “David, God has forgiven you, but the sword isn’t going to depart from your family.” All the heartache and pain and misery came into David’s life because of the sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah.

I believe that God loves you so much that He won’t just leave you in that state. How does God come to us and restore us? Let me give you some ways that God comes to us to restore our fallen souls. First of all, it’s called chastisement. Hebrews 12:5-6 says, “You have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as unto children. My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives.” You know what God does to His kids? He takes them to the wood shed. God gives spankings. He’d be arrested for that today. God spanks His children. Sometimes we say, “We love our kids; we don’t spank them.” Please, please spank them, if you love them. Appropriately. You don’t beat them. You don’t smack them around. You appropriately use that to correct them, if you love your children.

So God actually spanks His children. You know why? Because He loves you. Remember when you were little and you got a spanking? All of us old people got a spanking when we were little. “I thought you loved me. If you love me, you wouldn’t spank me.” “No. It’s because I love you that I spank you.” And because God loves you, He will chasten you.

You might be a Christian and your love for God has grown cold. Maybe you’re not reading the Word the way you used to or you’re not praying the way you used to or seeking the Lord the way you used to. Maybe you lost your job so that God will bring you to your knees so you’ll pray. Maybe that diagnosis was because God wants to get your attention. Someone put it in a poem years ago that I’ve never forgotten.

I thank God for bitter things;
They’ve been a friend to grace.
They’ve driven me from paths of ease
To storm the secret place.

I thank Him for the friends who failed
To fill my heart’s deep need.
They’ve driven me to the Savior’s feet,
Upon His love to feed.

I’m thankful, too, through all life’s way
No one could satisfy,
And so I’ve found in God alone
My rich, my full supply.

Has God ever spanked you? Has He ever gotten your attention? Maybe you lost a job. Maybe you lost your health. Maybe there were situations, or something happened and God’s trying to get your attention. You know, God brings these things into our lives to perfect us or to correct us. To perfect us in order to grow us, or to correct us and bring us back to the straight-and-narrow, to the path we’re to walk on close to the shepherd. So God uses chastisement to restore His fallen children.

Secondly, God uses conviction of the Holy Spirit. Psalm 51:11 says, “Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” I believe in this dispensation of the church that when we’re born again, the Holy Spirit comes as a permanent, abiding possession. Once you’ve been regenerated, the Holy Spirit’s never going to leave you, but you can grieve Him. You can resist Him. You can lose the sense of His presence in your life. So you’re praying, “God, cast me not away from your presence” in the sense of “Lord, I want to sense your presence in my life.” And the Holy Spirit has been grieved or lied to.

As a Christian, you don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit. You don’t want to quench the Spirit or resist the Spirit. He comes to convict you or convince you that your attitudes, your thoughts, your actions and your sin is wrong, and you need to repent of it.

The third thing that God does to restore us along with chastisement and conviction is confession. I want you to look at Psalm 51:1-4. These are the words that David penned after Nathan the prophet had exposed David’s sin, and David had confessed his sin to God. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness. According to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight; that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.”

This is David’s confession. For a whole year he kept this guilt and this shame. His “bones waxed old.” He physically was sick because of sin in his life. His soul needed restoration. And when God, in His love, and God, in His mercy, and God, in His grace, sent Nathan the prophet to confront David about his sin, and David repented and turned back to God, then David cries, “Have mercy upon me…according to Thy lovingkindness.” And then in verse 2, David says, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” In verse 3 he says, “I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” He says, “I confess my sin; I acknowledge my sin. I’ve sinned against Thee, and Thee only.”

You say, “Well, didn’t he sin against Bathsheba and Uriah? And didn’t David sin against his other wives?” David did sin against other people, but sin first of all and foremost is against God. There is nothing more important than for us to understand that sin is an offense to God. When you lose your fear or reverence or respect for God, it’s over. When you’re only worried about if your wife or your husband finds out or your friends find out or you’re going to lose your job, you’re in bad shape. If you’re not concerned what God thinks and God sees and God knows, and you don’t want to be right with God—nothing between your soul and the Savior—that’s such a dangerous place to be. You need God to come, as the faithful shepherd, to restore you.

When a shepherd would restore a cast sheep, he would actually straddle the sheep, get it up on its legs. He would have to massage its legs to get the blood circulating back into its legs and help it walk on its path. And if a shepherd had a sheep that would stray continually or constantly—if it kept getting off the path or getting lost—the shepherd rescued that sheep—this is kind of radical—and the shepherd would break the sheep’s leg, purposely break the sheep’s leg, and then he would set it and carry the sheep for days. He would carry the sheep on his shoulder until the sheep was knit back together with that shepherd. That sheep would never wander off again.

Thank God that He does those drastic measures in our lives so as to bring us back onto the path of obedience. If God left you to yourself, we would just continue to wander off and be destroyed, self-destruct. But God comes to us and He rescues us, and He sets us back upon the path. In Psalm 32:5, David said, “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord,’ and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” God forgives sin when it is confessed and forsaken. And God “restores the years the canker worm has eaten,” Joel 2:25. All the years that are ravished that the sin has brought into your life God will restore. That’s what David means when he says, “He restores my soul” or “He brings me back to life.”

My question to you again is, “Do you need your soul restored?” Have you lost your love for God? Has it grown cold? Have you drifted off of God’s path? Have you forsaken your first love? Don’t take days, don’t take weeks, don’t take months, don’t take years, but come back to God today.

Jesus told a story about a shepherd that had 100 sheep. In Luke 15:4, He said, “What man of you, having 100 sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after that which is lost until he finds it? And when he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he invites his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’” Now I would say, “I’ve got 99. I’m not going to go out on the dark hills at night. I could fall off a cliff and kill myself. If that dumb sheep wants to go off and get lost, well, let him learn his own lesson.”

Why would the shepherd leave the 99 sheep safely in the fold to go after one? I was that lost sheep. I was living in darkness and sin and disobedience and rebellion, and Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came out into my darkness and rescued me. You are that lost sheep. And Jesus came in His love and in His mercy and in His kindness to rescue you. He left the 99 and He came after you. Why did He come? Because He loves you.

You know why you are here, Christians, loving the Lord? Because He came out and found you and He bought you. Jesus died on the Cross so that you could be forgiven. Jesus died on the Cross to pay the penalty for your sin so that you could have eternal life, so that you could come to know the Good Shepherd. He leaves the 99 and seeks that which is lost. Jesus said it like this: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke 19:10. When the Lord is your shepherd, then, and only then, can you say with David, “He restores my soul.”

Do you need your soul restored? Maybe you have never trusted Jesus Christ. Maybe you’ve never become His sheep. So you need to come to Him today, and He sent me to give you this message that He loves you and that He is seeking you. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in and have fellowship with you.” He can forgive you and give you eternal life.

Or maybe you are His sheep, and you know His voice but you have drifted far away from God, and you need to come back and get right with Him.