The End of the Journey

The psalmist tells us that the Lord is the shepherd, and we are to perceive of life as a journey, a starting point obviously at our birth, and an end of life here, but not an end of existence, for in the Father's house are many mansions, and there he's gone to prepare a place for us. So let's reflect upon our pilgrimage, and just assess how we're making out before the throne of grace. Now the instruction I received was we're only going to sing verse 1, but verse 3 is too precious to let it go by, isn't it? Friends will be there, I've loved long ago.

Some people sometimes ask me, will we know one another when we're in heaven? In one sense it's almost an absurd question. Could you be in my home and enjoy the comforts of our home without me benefiting by knowing you, and to some degree hopefully you benefiting by knowing us, my wife and myself? Could we be in Father's house and our joys be incomplete if we did not know the people who are also in Father's house? Friends will be there, I've loved long ago. Joy like a river around me will flow, yet just a smile from my Savior I'll know, will through the ages be glory for me.

Friends will be there, I've loved long ago. Joy like a river around me will flow, yet just a smile from my Savior I'll know, will through the ages be glory for me. Glory, glory, glory for Him, glory, glory, glory for Him, and by His grace I shall prove of His grace that through me today be glory for me.

The God we adore, the faithful and changeable friend, whose love is as great as His power, whose pride, no less, is Jesus first and the last, whose spirit shall guide us day long, we'll praise Him all that is love, and shout unto Him for all that's to come. I'll be starting to read the passage in a version that you're not perhaps familiar with, it's the Jerusalem Bible, not a Bible version we often read because it's not always accurate, that's my opinion, but on some occasions in the Old Testament it portrays, it translates scripture a little more vividly. Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

In meadows of green grass He lets me lie, to the waters of repose He leads me. There He revives my soul. He guides me by paths of virtue for the sake of His name.

Though I pass through a gloomy valley, I fear no harm. Beside me Your rod and Your staff are there to hearten me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. In the holy tent, after the throne in my role, there I'll finish my gloomy tent, perfect, but nearer, O Lord.

I'm found, and thou dost abide, O Lord, my soul for ever. O saints, where wilt thou gather? We hear you, we know we are sad, but I'm glad I'm somewhere with you. Do sit down.

And let me take you to Psalm 23. It's an apocryphal story, you've probably heard it, but most apocryphal stories have a kernel of truth about them. I don't know whether it was insensitivity on the part of the village organist, or whether he or she deliberately chose the piece, but the story goes that at the funeral of the village butcher, as the coffin was brought into the church, the piece was being played, Sheep May Safely Graze.

Humor aside, the reason for the 23rd Psalm is that human sheep may safely graze with utter confidence as they make their journey through life. This Psalm, as I shared with you last Sunday, is sometimes referred to as the Nightingale of the Psalms. If you like, it's the Pearl of Great Price in the Old Testament.

I don't know of any other hymn, any other psalm that is selected and requested so often in funeral or memorial services as this one. There is a sense in which you can, providing you know the Lord Jesus is your own personal Savior, refer to this as My Psalm. It repeats what you want to say, it speaks into your fears and your worries, it puts to rest your anxieties, and it gives you a focal point towards which you are moving in your life.

Now, we're sort of in between series here on a Sunday morning at the Tab and it's been my privilege just to take these two Sundays, not to expound this psalm, but to open up the first verse and to close it down in the final verse, and to allow you, so to speak, to do your own homework in the intervening verses 2 to 5. I believe that there is a sense in which all the psalms are messianic and certainly our Lord Jesus hovers behind this psalm. That must be the case because of that great declaration He made, you remember, in the middle of His ministry when He said, I am the Good Shepherd. And here in this psalm we get the definition, the delineation of the character of God, the Lord is My Shepherd.

And when you move to the sixth verse, what you find is really a summary statement of all that has gone before in this beloved psalm because reference has been made to copious blessings. I mean, look into the third verse and the fourth verse especially. You are with me, your rod, your staff, verse 5, a table you prepare, latter part of verse 5, my head you anoint, my empty cup has been filled by you and overflows.

Now this is the thinking, this is the reasoning, because these men who wrote the scriptures, they reasoned their way as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost, as you should reason your way when you study scripture. He came to this conclusion that with all these smaller blessings, so to speak, you could do none other than make this affirmation, if God has been so faithful to me in all these things, then surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. You find exactly that same type of reasoning, that same approach to logic on the part of the Apostle Paul.

Let's go to Romans 8 for an example. Here towards the tail end of that glorious chapter, once more, like David, he has been setting down some of the blessings of being a Christian. Look at the 29th verse of Romans 8. God knows, He knew before you were born that you would come to a knowledge of Him.

Verse 30, He predestined you, He called you, He justified you, He glorified you. Well, says the Apostle, as He's gathering together all these heaped up blessings, if that is the case, then what can be our final conclusion? How will He not, verse 32, with Jesus Christ give us all things? You see, here again is this general conclusion. God has been faithful in this, He's been faithful in that, then He will surely, as a result, give us all things.

This is the only conviction that you can go away with when you have been considering something of the benevolence, something of the tender dealings of our great God. So I suggest to you that we run through verse 6 taking each word or couplets of words as, if you like, our outline. I can't really do better than the psalmist has done in making this praise see.

Surely, do you remember in Handel's Oratorio of the Messiah, that when it is well executed by a choir, they come to a point, quoting from Isaiah actually, where they use that word, surely. They speak it out in terms of our beloved Lord, what He has done. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

But if the conductor knows anything about the mind of Handel or even more particularly, if he knows anything about the heart of God, then he will get his choir, both the tenors and the contraltos, both the bass and the sopranos, to really emphasize the surely. And this is what you find in our psalm. Surely.

You see, encapsulated within that word is what is known as the Christian doctrine of assurance. Now don't go too quickly through the psalm or through this verse. Assurance is not the same as faith.

Faith is something that when God gives you, is not taken away. But assurance is different. You see, you don't always feel so assured.

I've known wonderful men and women of God towards the eventide of their lives lose at some stage the assurance that they seem to have at other points, that they really belong to the Lord. It's not that in any way he has taken his gift of salvation from them but because the body and sometimes the mind plays upon the spirit and it's not always easy to cope with the eventide of life or the mid-years or the younger years for that matter. Assurance can ebb and flow.

Assurance is something that is given you by God. In one sense assurance and the baptism of the spirit are very much related. It is by the latter experience that we know without a shadow of doubt that we are the sons of God.

His spirit within our spirit causing us to cry, Abba, Father. And as Thomas Goodwin, professor of Magdalene College, Oxford said in the 17th century this side of heaven there is nothing more blessed than that than to know with a full assurance of faith that you belong to the Lord. And assurance is something for all Christian people to enter into in its fullness.

But it can ebb and flow. And David, for reasons for which he is really culpable has probably, prior to writing this psalm been bereft of assurance because of the multiple sinning in which he is engaged. And probably when he wrote this psalm as I argued last week it was not in the early days of his life as a shepherd but in the middle years towards the end of the time when he was a king.

And now he is a fugitive. His son Absalom has led a coup d'etat. David has had to flee from Jerusalem and he is in the wilderness.

And he is hounded. He calls himself like a partridge. He flies from place to place.

And he feels it. The snapping at him. The yelping at him.

His adversaries. And David knows that one of the reasons for his predicament is his own fast and loose approach to fidelity with God. But God whose heart is ever, as I was reminding you on Wednesday inclined to be gracious comes upon David again.

And David realizes, yes the Lord is my shepherd. And though he has been through the valley of deepest shadows for him a self-caused experience nonetheless the Lord has been with him. And David has this overwhelming experience of the sureness, of the assurance of the Lord in his presence.

And for that we pray for everyone within our beloved Tabb family that you might know, not just because the Bible says so that is assurance. But it's not the strongest assurance. It's not the only assurance.

Yes, to know that you belong to the Lord. God so loved the world that he gave. His only begotten Son.

To bring you to a knowledge of salvation of sins forgiven. There it is in the word of God. You write your name in the place of the whosoever.

But may you know from the depth of your being through the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit this assurance that the Lord is yours. It is what one Puritan called the Optimus Maximum. The best and greatest blessing which God gives only to his best and dearest friends.

David came into an experience of this after great difficulty. And may be stopping and reasoning with himself as to the circumstances that have led up to that point in his life. Now once again you've heard me on this so often from this pulpit and it's incipient, it's basic to all that you ever get from Brother Tim Saunders.

And that is that your mind is given you as a Christian to reason things out. Christians are not folks who are just hyped emotionally by fast moving choruses. There's a time and a place for those as well as the more somber and serious hymns.

But Christians are people who are caused to think things through. And one of the reasons why I suggest that your spirituality may be at a low ebb is that you have not paused and thought through your circumstances and maybe the precariousness of the position in which you find yourself in. Now that's not always the case.

I mean by that feeling a little spiritually numb is not always attributable to your sinfulness. It can be for the reasons that I just outlined especially for all the friends. But for some of you here the reason why you don't know this assurance is because your circumstances are incompatible with a life of one who wants to be close to God.

So David stops and he thinks it through and God in his grace receives him as he always does the prodigals and he gives him this overwhelming reassurance that he belongs to him. Goodness and love will follow me. Let me give you another translation.

Goodness and love will hunt me. Or even another one that's allowable from the original. Goodness and love will dog me all my life.

You folks who are parents you take your children to sports perhaps, maybe sometimes you take them to motor racing maybe you take them to football. Let me suggest something. If you're a Christian parent, do this.

A little bit of advice from the pulpit. Ensure that on some occasion you take your boy, your girl, your children to sheepdog trials. Some of the choicest memories I've got of my boyhood are from North Derbyshire.

Watching the wonder of shepherds and the relationship that they have with their dogs as they use their expertise in bringing sheep to the place where they want them to be. Now there's an old Puritan, a quaint preacher who says of God, the Father he has two sheepdogs. One is called goodness and the other is called love.

You know, some of the shepherds back in my home county of Yorkshire and really Sheffield spills over into North Derbyshire as well so I'll include Derbyshire some of them don't just operate with one dog they operate with two. And it's one of the most wonderful things to see these dogs as they're yards away sometimes as much as half a mile away from the shepherd as they're still taking instructions from him sometimes it's almost like an imperceptible radar that exists, a relationship between the shepherd and the dogs. And the sheep sometimes are surprised by the dogs they don't even realise they're around and they're jolted as they see the dogs suddenly appear from over a wall and they go off in one direction and then in the other direction and sometimes the sheep are completely unheeding of the fact that the shepherd is in control but he is.

Now, the Lord is like that. He has his goodness and he has his mercy. David is concerned about the goodness of God I have yearned to see the goodness of God in the land of the living he says in Psalm 27 and later on the psalmist will say daily he loads my soul with blessings and you and I know from our knowledge of the New Testament every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above you see he has his sheep dog goodness that leads us into green pastures and often by still waters as well as sometimes frightening us and making us move down the valley of deepest shadows but not only his sheep dog goodness he also has mercy mercy mercy is a wonderful word again as I was teaching on Wednesday it's really the key word for the prophecy of Hosea mercy in the Hebrew is keseth and it's not too easy to get an English equivalent of keseth I always appreciated Miles Coverdale he was really the person who got in before the authorized version of the Bible in Bible translation there was life in the Christian church before the authorized version of the Bible incidentally and Coverdale's Bible was accepted up and down the country now Coverdale did what many preachers often done if you can't get the right word make one up generally speaking it happens in the pulpit accidentally with Coverdale it was deliberate and he wanted a word for mercy to translate for the Hebrew keseth and he didn't opt for mercy he went for loving kindness and in one sense I'm sorry that loving kindness has been compressed to mercy because it's a grander term thy loving kindness is better than life goodness he supplies all my needs loving kindness he blots out all my sins and there are times when he has to snarl with his sheep dog to terrify me to bring me back into line you see sometimes the goodness and the mercy of God can be as far as the latter is concerned what C.S. Lewis called a severe mercy that is he disciplines you see the shepherd who was always compliant with the wishes of the sheep would really be no good for the sheep at all after all sheep are stupid creatures they're very dumb that's the reason why human beings are often referred to compared to in the Old Testament and in the New Testament as sheep not because the good Lord wants to insult us but he tells us quite frankly what his reaction is to the folly into which we so often get ourselves the only analogy he can use is that of sheep so he'll send his sheep dog goodness and sometimes mercy and mercy can come under a different guise or seemingly so he can shock, he can shake us he can cause us to have a fit of nerves he can frighten us that's what we call conviction and it's all within the overarching purposes of God why? well because he's concerned about you the straying sheep you see there is within the tab a straying sheep there are within the tab straying sheep not those in the category that I defined earlier whose chemistry in their body is changing and causing them sometimes great problems even spiritually to sense the presence of God I'm referring to those who are deliberately out where they know they ought not to be and as a result they have forfeited that assurance that they so desperately want and that gets God, so to speak, almost in a dilemma and so he sends his sheep dog mercy and he makes you feel uncomfortable and you know in your heart of hearts you're not where you ought to be and thank God you know that once you are immune to that realisation then you are almost beyond the boundaries of God's grace surely goodness and mercy will follow me aren't you glad that this psalm is a personal psalm look this psalm cannot however be sung by everybody or anybody sometimes I blush when I take memorial services funeral services and sometimes it's your relatives your neighbours who die and because they don't go to church they happen to know of the tab through yourselves or knock on through family relationships and I'm very often and Tim as well and increasingly I suppose Eric invited to take funeral services for people who don't normally go to church and invariably they'll pick this psalm let's sing it it does us good it's emotionally soothing it's therapeutic and indeed it is but it's not their psalm and you have to tell them gently and kindly for a funeral is not a place to start biffing people with a thick volume of the authorised version of the Bible but you have to tell them that that the Lord can only be their shepherd on certain conditions look I break my heart every time a Jehovah's Witness knocks on my door I really do I get a feeling of shame a feeling of sorrow it's the same with the Mormons I think that the cults exist because the church has not been doing its job but shall I tell you something a Jehovah's Witness cannot sing this psalm a Mormon cannot sing this psalm common denominator throughout the cults they cannot sing this psalm why not? surely they don't know because there is no assurance in the cults within Mormonism there is no assurance within the Watchtower Society there is no assurance within the Moonies if there was assurance then there would not be this seeming frenzied activity that you often find for the reason for the activity is not just a concern for the lost but trying to secure their own salvation which is dependent on the work that they do invariably the case I tell you with the cults but it's not with the Christian surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life you see you can be personal Martin Lloyd-Jones was constantly quoting a man in the 19th century by the name of Lord Morley politician that he was he knew very little about theology Lord Morley not Lloyd-Jones let's get that clear on the tape or else I'll be in trouble Morley would say it comes to a pretty pass when religion is taken as personal well there is no such thing as Christianity without it being personal I was in the spirit on the Lord's day this is John on the Isle of Patmos that's personal he loved me and gave himself for me that's personal you see I can't talk about my faith abstractly I can't give you a lecture on Christianity I'm too absorbed in it to quote Spurgeon I've too often laid a soak a soak in the Bible a soak in the scriptural truths you speak personally about this psalm this is David's psalm it's the psalm of the believer surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life aren't you glad that God is listen to this this is not a sergeant word it is in the dictionary I promise you is totally undiscourageable if God were not totally undiscourageable would he have coped with Jacob and yet the end of Jacob's life and you can read of it in the 49th and 48th chapter of Genesis he talks about the Lord being my shepherd and yet prior to that the 48th chapter the 49th is the Lord is my shepherd Jacob speaking prior to that he's been in the presence of Pharaoh you remember Joseph has shown this decrepit elderly man who is so esteemed by Pharaoh because age in those days was something to esteem and Pharaoh says how old are you? and Jacob goes on to say few and disobedient have been the years of my life I've not attained even though I'm 120 or so I've not attained to the years of my father or my forefather few and evil and yet down the whole course of his twisted pilgrimage mercy and love hounded him and brought him back to the shepherd mercy and love hounded David we would not have had David not in the leadership of Worthing Tabernacle David had sinned in such a grievous way and sometimes evangelicalism cannot cope with the multiple sinning of a man like David but God could cope and he had his sheep dogs and he brought David back all the days of my life says David all the mad times the times when I took myself so to speak through the valley of the shadows the times when I afflicted myself surely goodness and love follow me all the days of my life what is more now he's in a better frame of mind now having reasoned himself to a rational position he makes this declaration I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever you see there are no ifs now there are no maybes there are no perhapses you see the rubbers touch the road David knows that he has been a fool and he wants to dispense with all the foolishness of former years I will dwell as Abraham dwelt in Canaan so I will dwell I want to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life dwell there in the original means to sit, to be still, to be at rest to take up my residence in a plague on liberals who tell us that because David makes reference here to the house of the Lord this couldn't have been a Davidic psalm because the house of the Lord equals the temple and the temple wasn't built and therefore QED this couldn't have been a psalm of David that's a load of nonsense what does David mean by the house of the Lord? let David be his own commentator well let's have a look at what David has to say in psalm 15 and verse 1 shall we because this will throw light on the question it's the psalm of David it says so at the top there it's not contested so he says Lord who may dwell in your sanctuary who may live on your holy hill now the word sanctuary and holy hill they do specify geographical positions but David is a poet and very often within the psalms you will find metaphors studied throughout the whole of the Bible there is a metaphor our Lord says I am the shepherd metaphor I am the door metaphor Lord who may abide in your sanctuary what is a sanctuary? what is this sanctuary? well quite frankly when you're not here it's nothing I had to disabuse a lady within my first few years of being at the tab in believing that this place was holy I mean this is no more holy than Caffyn's garage when there are no people here it's a beautiful building far more beautiful than the garage but the thing that makes this a sanctuary is that the Lord is here and he's here with his people and what David has in mind is that he wants to be in the place where God is he wants to live on God's holy hill who can be in that place? verse 2 he whose walk is blameless who does what is righteous who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue here is if you like a confession of David at least it's an expression of the things that he has not been the crimes that he has committed and he knows that it's that that has caused this sense of the presence of God to be taken from him so he's not, is he? thinking in terms of a physical dwelling let's go to the 27th Psalm and the 4th verse here is David and he is espousing what I advise all of you to espouse Psalm 27 4 one thing I ask of the Lord this is what I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple here is David really telling us that the presence of God is all over the place he is the omnipresent God he is everywhere let's go to Psalm 91 and verse 1 it's good for us to exercise our fingers it stops arthritis and it also keeps your mind alert as you physically as well as mentally are engaged in considering the scriptures Psalm 91 verse 1 he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty I will serve the Lord he is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust and the last reference let's go to Psalm 140 and towards the end of that of that Psalm I know, verse 12 that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy the punchline, verse 13 surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you when David speaks in the 23rd Psalm about being in the house of the Lord forever he is speaking in terms of experiencing the presence of God wherever he, David, is and you know that's possible for you and me we're help when we gather together in community Christianity knows of no hermits it knows of no isolated members we're all part of the whole when we come together we sing songs not only to the Lord we sing them to one another seek ye first the kingdom of God you're not singing that to God he doesn't need to seek first the kingdom he's the king he owns the kingdom but you need to remind me you need to remind one another that the fellowship of the saints is so blessed, it's so glorious and there are peculiar times because it's the gracious provision of God when amongst his people he discloses his presence but pity the geriatric who can't come out to the tab if coming together in community is the only way in which I can know him you see, knowledge of God is not only communicated when we are together in community it's also communicated when with spiritual disciplines attended to we seek for God on our own in fact the professor of religious philosophy at Leeds University a man by the name of Whitehead once said that religion is what a man does with his solitariness I don't think it's exactly an accurate definition but I do think that there is truth in this that when you're on your own when you're in your solitary place when you're on your room when everyone else is away from the house even then you can know the presence of God although at times it's not always easy to feel but you can ask this great God in his love and in his mercy to come down and minister to you surely surely surely goodness and love your attributes which are playing in my life will constantly be activated down all the days and I know that ultimately I'm going to be in your immediate presence but even now Lord I can know you I can feel you do you live with a sense of one day being in the presence of God? you see a man is not to live for his job the man who lives for his job is a man who needs to be pitied you are not to live and die as a banker or an accountant you are not to live or to die as a teacher you are not to live for your job your job services you you do not service your job you are to live for the Lord God Almighty I am not to live to preach for the time could come God forbid when the speech faculty is taken from me and I can no longer formulate my sentences the time could come like it was with one of our dear beloved former pastors of this church when he could hardly hold his body together his bones shaking with Parkinson's disease had he lived only to preach what a bankrupt specimen he would be at the end you live to serve you live to know him and each day and each week and each month and each year takes you further to that remarkable time when you move out of the presence of God on this earth to know him more wonderfully and more intimately in the glory that lies beyond beyond our American friends do wonderful things with the English language I love the Americans and the input that they've made especially to world missions now we've got it in the English idiom over here in the United Kingdom because of McDonald's have a good day they'll tell you that throughout the states have a good day do you know what David is saying here? have a nice forever I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever don't just have a good day not even a good week have a good forever why? because sheep can safely graze the enemy of our souls has been dealt with by the captain of our salvation the good shepherd makes it possible not for an easy passage but for a safe passage through the pilgrimage of this world the green pastures and the still waters and sometimes the barren places where there are only the outcrops of the rocks he takes you through and ultimately brings you safe to the green pastures and the stillest of waters in the Father's domain the Lord is my shepherd surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever may this be the experience of all of you dear friends Amen