So take your Bible or your device and turn to Psalm 23. A lot of you know it. We're gonna do something a little different with it in just a minute. But I was just thinking as I was sitting there, Sierra, that this is your first communion after your baptism. So make sure you save your cup.

No, seriously, like, put that on a shelf somewhere and put a little marker and date it, because every time you see it, it'll remind you of how special today is. And, you know, I just kind of wonder sometimes when I look out and I think about Sierra's story, I think about my daughter Emily's story and other stories to come. That what I'm hearing a lot of times young adults say to me is, like, well, I was baptized when I was so young. I don't feel like my baptism was mine. And so that might be you.

Maybe you like some kind of Marvel movie. Need to get your timeline right and get your baptism on the right side of your salvation. If you want to come, come talk to us. We. We'd love to help lead you through that.

So I'm going to ask you to stand with me, and we're going to read this together out loud. So rather than you listening to me read it, I want you to read it with me. Some of you memorize this, but this is out of the New American Standard, so the words may be just a little bit different. Well, let's do this. You ready?

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul.

He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You have prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil.

My. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And everyone said, father, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer, in Jesus name, amen. You can have a seat.

So if you're following with me in the study guide, as you can see at the end of this message, we're going to come to the table together. The Lord has prepared a table for us, and he prepared this table with his own body and his own blood. And we get to come to that table. But the word this week that we're studying is Yahweh Rohi, R O H I, Yahweh or Jehovah Rohi, our God, our shepherd word. Rohi means to shepherd.

It means to pasture, to lead and to feed. And this is our God, shepherds. Our English word means literally to herd sheep. So it's to care for sheep. The shepherd leads a flock from here to there so that the sheep can have food and water.

But sheep are very needy animals. How many of you? Please tell me you grew up cutting your teeth on old veggietale cartoons. Anybody? All right, so you know that in there, when they told the story of David and Goliath, there's a giant pickle, by the way, that the sheep would fall over.

And if they didn't get help, they couldn't stand back up. Sheep require shelter. They require aid, help, guidance, direction. When they're hurt, they need assistance. To quote one author, he said, without the shepherd, the sheep are absolutely, absolutely helpless.

Our word shepherd means that God cares. And I have a feeling that somebody in here today has had problem on top of problem on top of problem. Everything that the world has has been thrown at you. And you just need some voice in your life to say, God loves you and God cares for you.

In your shame and your guilt, in your insecurities, when your feelings are blowing out of whack, you need somebody with a calming voice to come and say, God cares about you.

And the thing is, is that we are like those dumb sheep. I know we don't like to call ourselves dumb, but in light of a God who knows everything, we don't know as much as we think that we do. We have a tendency to wander astray. We have an impeccable way of getting ourselves into trouble and getting hurt, don't we? Left to our own devices, we are lost.

But our good shepherd loves us so much that he'd be willing to leave 99 sheep just to come look for you. Is that you today? Do you know? Do you know our good shepherd? Because if you don't by the end of this message, I hope that you do.

Because he's looking for you. He's looking for you right now. You may be sitting there in all kinds of anxiety, but that good shepherd wants to take your needs on himself. You know, when you look at the Old Testament, I mean, we're introduced to this idea of shepherding from the very beginning. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all had sheep.

Jacob's sons, himself a shepherd, his Sons were shepherds of the flock. Jacob shepherded for Laban and then acquired his own sheep for himself. Moses was tending sheep when he when he encounters God at the burning bush. David was a shepherd before he was a warrior and tells of his own pedigree that I killed a lion and a bear while I was tending sheep. And the kings and the priests were charged with shepherding the people of God Israel.

And so caring for people is very important to God. It should be no surprise that the first time we hear this reference is in Genesis 48:15 when Jacob is blessing his son Joseph. He says, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked. The God who has been my shepherd all my day to this day. Is he your shepherd?

Can you say today with confidence that God has shepherded your life up to this point? If not, I want you to meet my good shepherd today. We primarily read of these images in Psalm where David prays in Psalm 28:9. Save your people and bless your inheritance. Be their shepherd and carry them through forever.

Psalm 80, verse number one. Oh, give ear, shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. Psalm 95:67. Come, let us worship and bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand. One of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 100, verse number three.

Know that the Lord himself is God it is he who has made us, and not we ourselves, and we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. If I'm going to claim to be his sheep, then by inference I'm claiming that I'm following the shepherd. Because, see, here's the thing. The shepherd can't protect you if you don't follow him.

Do you know Jesus today? Do you know our good shepherd? You know why he's so good? Our shepherd laid down his life for his sheep. Jesus did that for you.

Why? Because he cares about you. And caring about you is important because it bothers God when his sheep are abused. Ezekiel 34, 2, 3 says, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God.

Woe to you, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding themselves and not feeding the flock.

I count it an absolute privilege to do what I do up here every Sunday. But when I stand before God, I'm taking a big responsibility with me.

I want to give you the best nourishment that you can ever get. And it's right here.

I'm not food. My message is not food. But this right here is sustenance beyond measure.

Jeremiah 23:1 3 says, Woe to you shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture. You have scattered my flock, he says. He said, I'll gather them together from the countries where they've been driven and bring them back to their pasture where they will be fruitful and multiply.

The the herd of sheep benefits the shepherd.

Why would the shepherd spend his time shepherding if the sheep had no benefit? As his sheep we are, we are his glory on earth. Unless. Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I love this.

In Zechariah 10:2 he says, for the teraph talking about idols speak iniquity and the diviners see lying vision and tell false dreams. They comfort in vain. Why? Because they're just wooden statues. Therefore the people wander like sheep.

They are afflicted because there is no shepherd. Your greatest need today is to know that someone cares about your future. To know that there's someone who is actively involved in leading you spiritually. Now that may seem a little bit self centered, but left to our own devices, we will always wander to lostness. Jesus made this observation in Matthew 9:36.

He said seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Why? Because those who had been put in charge of leading them were not doing their job. So can I go ahead and meddle now? I've heard a lot of people say this.

I'm probably going to offend you with this statement. I don't mean to. Well, I left that church because I wasn't being fed. Okay, I don't know in this day and time if we have any excuse to not be fed by the word of God. But hold on, hold on.

Let me balance that a little bit because that's not all the way false. It's not a matter if you're being fed, it's whether you're being led. Because what we just read said that there are people not leading well. And if you are not being led well, get yourself out from abusive leadership. But the flip side of that is, are you letting those who have been put in charge of you lead you?

Because here's the truth. If you won't follow those God's put in charge of you to lead you, then why will you ever follow the good Shepherd?

You with me? That's a hard thing to chew on, isn't it? But it's because God is the one who feeds us It's God who nourishes us. We know that there's the reality of bad shepherds and bad leadership that will lead us astray, that will consume us. But we've got to step out from that and realize that our God wants to shepherd us individually because he cares for you.

How many of you have ever walked, driven by and seen a herd of cattle or a herd of sheep or horses that are in a pasture? Are they just standing there? What are they doing? Usually they're grazing. They're grazing.

And if there's not enough grass in the pasture, what does a farmer usually do around here? They back up, get a big bale of hay, and they dump it out because sheep and cows are supposed to graze. And what we read about in this psalm, I found, I think, 21 different things that I'll summarize at the end of the message of how God provides for us, because he cares. He is our shepherd. So I want you to walk with me as I'm going to break this down into three chunks.

How God provides, how God protects, and how God promises. And we'll start in verse number one and just walk through these verses again. First point is this. The provision of God sustains us.

Can I just. I don't know. This seems to be a theme that just continually keeps coming up over and over and over again. Want in this verse is not want.

Want in this verse is not want. We think that, hey, I would like to have a new bass boat. That is a want. But one of the greatest blessings in your life is actually one of the greatest curses you have, too. And that is that you're an American Christian living in absolute abundance.

And a lot of us, if we don't get our way, or we don't get what I want, or our refrigerator goes down, we think the world has come to an end and that God hates us. The Lord is my shepherd. I am not lacking.

Everything from this point on, from verses two through six goes right back to this idea that there is nothing that God has not provided for us.

David Kidner wrote as he begins to observe this, he said, depth and strength underline the simplicity of this psalm. Depth of God's provision and strength of how God acts on our behalf. He says, the climax of this reveals a love which hones toward no material goal but God himself. That as God is making provision that will sustain us, what it's pointing us to is, is an intimate relationship with God where He provides everything we need. Ephesians 1:3, that he's given Us everything.

He's blessed us with everything in the heavens. My God will supply all your needs according to his riches and glory. We are lacking nothing. That word lack in the scripture means that it's receding, it's pulling away. And so he's saying, no, you don't have just a little bit.

You have the fullness of what God wants to give. Nothing. I have no want. But wait a minute. I live in a world where I do want.

Matthew Henry wrote, more is implied than is expressed. Not only shall I want, but I shall be supplied in whatever I need. And if I have not everything I desire, then I have to conclude it's either not fit for me or not good for me. Or I shall have it in due time. Because my good shepherd knows exactly where I need to be and what I need.

Do you trust him in that way? When conflict and lacking comes, how do I respond to my good Shepherd? To lean in and trust him? One of the things we see implied in this is patience. I mean, it's a beautiful tapestry of not just a one time event as you read Psalm 23, but a lifetime journey.

I mean, look again at verse number two. He makes me. There's four verbs I want you to notice here. From verses one through three. The subject is God.

He says, I make, I lead, I restore and I guide. This is God speaking. He's doing these things for us. He makes me to lie down in grassy pastures, green pastures, full, full, full of grass. You know, when you.

I picture this like in March, April, holding my nose after some chicken house has scattered manure, all in some pasture land. But then the rains begin to come and just. I don't know about you, but I love when spring comes and there's this fresh green, not the green we have right now that's been eaten up with, with caterpillars and stuff. The fresh green, the new growth you see. I mean, the most beautiful thing you'll ever see is to drive up to Helen and look across the valley there where the Indian mound is, and see that grass coming.

It's beautiful and it's gorgeous and it's abundant. And that's the image I want you to see here, that God is providing for you and me sustenance. And he provides that from this right here to feast on his word.

As Paul Peter wrote in 1st Peter 2:2, to crave the word like the milk of a newborn babe. When's the last time you just sat down and you just read it over and over again? Some of you have verses that You've memorized Why? Because as you were reading it, you came to a place and you're like, man. That's for me, like Romans 8:1.

There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You know why that's important to me? Because I live in my own self under a lot of condemnation. I'm my biggest, worst enemy. I'm my biggest critic, and I have to remind my soul.

So stop listening to yourself and listen to the voice of God who says that in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation letting the Word give you life. But how weird would it be to lead a flock into green pastures and they just stand there? I mean, there's only so much cud that a cow can chew and starve themselves. We, oh my gosh, we have a bountiful table sitting right here in front of us.

I remember a song that Hillsong came out with years ago, and it started off, I'm not going to sing to you again, I promise. I say on Sunday how much I want revival, but then on Monday, I can't even find my Bible.

Bountiful. He leads us beside quiet waters. He didn't say he sat you down in the water. See, you have to understand that for grass to grow, there has to be water in that area, probably only 30% of the land can grow. The grass needed to bring a flock to it.

And a lot of times it was around a water source.

Still, I just want you right now I'm going to be quiet for about 10 seconds. I want you to imagine going on a hike today, finding a little waterfall and sitting there and listening to the water as it flows over the rocks. See, I about put half of you to sleep right there. It's calming and it's soothing, and that's what God wants for your soul. Our soul stays anxious, but in the midst of troubles and trials, God can speak peace to your soul if he can.

If Jesus can calm the storm on the water, he can calm the storm in your heart. Do you know that, shepherd? He restores my soul. So I made a reference to Veggietales because that it was just hilarious that he'd be going by and the sheep would just go, eh, and just fall over. It's kind of like those goats.

Those goats you can scare and they just fall over. But here's the truth about a sheep that is cast. That's the word, cast sheep. If they flip over on their back, they will sit there doing this.

And the other sheep are going, and they're just sitting There, eating the sheep's over here doing this.

If they lay there long enough, the circulation in their legs starts cutting off.

And if they lay there even more, they exhaust themselves and the blood flow stops going to their abdomen and they will die.

He restores my soul. That's not a partial work. A lot of us think we almost halfway there or. Or halfway this or halfway that. God wants to make you wholly whole.

Complete, restores your soul. This is a work that God. This is intensified in that text. In the Hebrew language, the stem of this verb is an intense action. It's almost like the picture you get.

He runs to that sheaf to flip him over as quick as he can. He also does that because if he does it, the other sheep around them begin to be affected by the. That keeps going on.

God cares for you. It's almost like you can see, here's this. Have you ever seen any videos of like a deer getting caught in a fence and these guys are over trying to help them out and the deer's kicking them and you're just going like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, I'm trying to help you. But it's. But the animal's fighting back.

Stop fighting God. He wants to restore you fully as you are waning in your wanting. God wants to fill you with his fullness. But then that next one, that last one is the one that really begins to start focusing on me because he says he guides me in paths of righteousness.

You see, sheep are dumb and they will wander off. And as we see later down in the text, he'll use a crook to pull them back in line. One scholar commented about how if you had a sheep that would consistently run off, that the shepherd would actually maim that sheep so he couldn't walk. But then the shepherd would then for weeks carry that sheep on his back while that leg healed. And at the end of that process, guess what that sheep didn't do?

He didn't run off. You see, because there's not just that one herd in the valley there, there's other herds. And the sheep in my herd, if they're not acting the way they should, can affect the sheep in the other herd, give me a bad reputation. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

I apologize to Micah profusely, regularly, because we had a dog who could leap a four foot fence and terrorize our neighbor's animals. So we had to get him adopted. We did. He's adopted. He's good, he's okay.

But we had to get him adopted.

But the truth was, we had to because we couldn't keep him in the pen. And it's the same thing here. God says in Ezekiel 36, Israel, I'm about to act on your behalf, but it's not for your behalf. It's for my name's sake, because you have disgraced my name. And I wonder how many of us, if we're really honest with you, we recognize God sustains us.

We recognize that God is trying to lead us in paths of righteousness. But I've decided your path isn't the path I want to walk on. I'm going to walk on my own path. And you know what I'm doing? I'm disgracing the shepherd.

I'm disgracing the shepherd because he has to keep running over to the other herd and getting me back and bringing me back in. He has to continually, over and over again, bring correction to me.

Psalm 31:3 says, you are my rock and fortress. I love that part. Don't y' all love that part? God is my rock and my fortress. For your name's sake, will you lead and guide me?

For your reputation, why? Because the herd of sheep exists for the shepherd. And if I'm not walking in his paths of righteousness, then I am disgracing the name of my shepherd.

Many of you have made professions of faith in Christ. I'm asking you today, how. How are you following him? Would you rather that Jesus drag you with a leash, or would you rather follow him willingly? Because I'm telling you, when you follow him willingly, he'll bring you to this pasture and you'll realize the sustenance that God provides for you to live in a spiritual life of bountiful blessing and joy.

Do you know that, good shepherd? Do you know God as your shepherd? Have you willingly submitted your life to the good Shepherd? Because point number two, if I recognize the sustaining power of God, then the next thing I do is I understand that he protects me and that protection secures me. The protection of God secures me.

Now he shifts from talking about God in third person to himself. And he says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, well, first thing I want you to notice here is sometimes this journey, this valley of the shadow of death, is exactly where the shepherd wants you to go. In fact, the valley should probably be more like a ravine. A steep, kind of like Tula Falls, deep down in the ground. And you know what ravines have?

They have shadows. They have shadows. Do you Know what a shadow is? It's nothing. A shadow has no sustenance of its own.

It does not have matter. You can't touch it. I can't, like Peter Pan, sew it back to my, to my shoes. I can't do it because a shadow doesn't exist. Shadow is the absence of light.

Now wait a minute. Listen to me. The Master leads us down these valleys because he wants to get us to better pasture land. But here's what I can promise you. At the end of the shadow is always light.

At the end of the shadow is light. There's a border to the shadow. I mean, I'm looking up here and I can see there's a bunch of lights on me and there's a lot of different angles coming in from those shadows. But I'm telling you, at the end of that tunnel, at the end of that valley, no matter how bleak it may be, the, no matter how much death may be coming in on around you, the valley is taking you to the pasture and there's light at the end of that. And you know what's cool about that?

Because I have that. I have no fear. I don't have. It's not because I woke up, said, you know what? I'm going to renew my mind today and I'm going to have courage.

Oh, I've got two or three guys that are around me praying for me. It's not that I have no fear. I have no fear because of. What's the next verse? What's the next phrase say?

Because God is with me.

I really believe. If I could just pastor you for a moment. A lot of the reasons why you're walking insecurely in your faith is because you really don't believe God is with you.

When you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, what happens to you?

Most people cannot even answer that question.

I'm saved from my sin. My sin has been forgiven. I have repented and turned away from it. And now what? The Bible explicitly says that he puts his spirit inside of me.

Now who's with me? God is with me always, everywhere I go. I don't have to go looking for his presence to be a little bit more powerful. His presence is with me. He told his disciples on the day of his ascension.

And lo, I'm with you always, even until the end of the world. And I think that we can take that with us as well. Why? Because we are spirit filled Christians. I'm not living this life based on my power or my knowledge or my intellect or My will or my way.

I'm living it according to the shepherd's empowering in my life. And it's not a matter of me just getting a little more bolder or get a little more courage. It's a matter of recognizing that my shepherd is right there with me and he can lead me down the darkest path. And I'm okay. Now wait a minute.

You want me to bring up Charlie Kirk publicly assassinated. No matter where you agree or disagree on his politics, the man was publicly assassinated. And. And he was a voice of the gospel. No one can deny that.

And he was murdered.

Was God with him in the valley of the shadow of death? You better believe it. Matthew, chapter 5, verse number 10 says, Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Whatever. Whatever man can take from me here.

There's a blessing in heaven waiting on me. Do you believe that? We live a lot for the day, and we forget we're living for the day. The day that is coming when Jesus Christ is going to return and he's going to judge the quick and the dead. And then we get to experience forever eternal life in an immortal body void of sin, death and pain.

That's the light at the end of that ravine. I have no fear. Let you tell me. The disciples. Most of them but one, all of them but one died a martyr's death.

Why do you think they did that? Because they knew. Take my life. But you take my life. I get so much more.

Are you with me today? That's what the substance of your hope is. Not that tomorrow's gonna be a little bit better than today. But you're living for a day when Jesus is gonna come back and he's going to do all that he promised he was gonna do. That's what I'm living for.

Focus on the light. I gotta watch my time. I'm sorry. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The rod was that which a shepherd would take to drive away our enemies.

And the shepherd's crook would be to pull the sheep back in line. Those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. And discipline's not fun. Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 11 says, all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

He guides me down the paths of what? Righteousness. But through my discipline, God produces in me righteousness. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. There's a shift here.

One author says that there were mesas like these plateaus where shepherds would go and prepare the field, much like we do around here. We prepare these field and. And we'll move our cattle from this field to another field. Well, the shepherd would go and get it ready. God's always looking for your next step.

He knows the current step you're in. But God's looking at your next step. Why? Because he's leading you. He's guiding you.

He doesn't want you to stand still. He doesn't want you to become stagnant. He wants you moving because in movement, there's life. And if he doesn't take your enemies out of your presence and he doesn't pull you out of the presence of your enemies, you know what he'll do? He'll just bring the food right to you, right where you are.

Unless I allow my surroundings to pull me down so much that I lose sight of what God is doing. I don't like that God makes me suffer. Do you? I don't like. I mean, I read James, Chapter one, verse two, and it says, consider it all joy, brethren, when you encounter various trials.

I'm going to. Oh, I hate that verse.

Because it's not if I'm going to suffer, it's how will I suffer? How will I let that journey develop me? How will I let it build my faith? He puts a table right in front of me in the presence of my enemies. And then it says, he then anoints my head.

This is in perfect tense. He anoints my head with oil. Whether that would be a traveler, weary traveler coming and is being hosted by someone, and they're dusty and they're dirty, they would pour oil on them to soothe them. Or whether it's the sheep that's got a cut and a bruise, and it would serve as an antiseptic or as a repellent to bugs. He has anointed my head.

You have been anointed with the Holy Spirit of God. If Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, he's giving you what you need. My cup, then. And this is imperfect tense. It just keeps on overflowing.

Overflowing. You know why God wants it overflowing? Because then my overflow flows over to others and they get a taste of the overflow. I think the greatest, greatest challenge in your faith is when you come to that point where you realize your faith is not. Not your own.

That the faith life and your walking does affect the other sheep around you. And you can choose to lay in a Field of abundance on your back, flapping your hands like this, or draw close to the shepherd who cares about you. Do you believe today that God cares about you? Because point number three, the promise of God, it's satisfies us.

It satisfies us. Goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life. We're always worried about the devils behind our back and never looking around to see God's goodness and his mercy following right along.

There's more than just the boogeyman behind you. You know what that provides? That provides security. I can look back and not see pain and heartache. I can look back and see blessing and goodness.

And I love that. It's in this translation is loving kindness. This is that benevolent action of God toward his people in a merciful way. And then it says, and I will dwell. Dwell is in the perfect tense and it's the same word for restore.

I will dwell, I'll return over and, and over and over and over. Why? Because God is the source of my life. And you see how I told you it wasn't just an instantaneous situation. This is a life journey.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever. You know what God's last point there is? I can have hope because God cares. I can have hope because God cares. There's a chart at the bottom of the your study guide.

Don't let me scare you. That's the reason I didn't leave blanks there, because you'd be like, oh my gosh, we'll be here forever. But These are the 21 things that I saw in this chapter that God has provided for us. A place of rest, sustenance, refreshment, restoration, guidance, righteousness, purpose, courage, protection, correction, direction, hospitality, security, intimacy, anointing, abundance, blessing, goodness, grace and mercy. Dwelling place, and all of that.

I have certainty. I have certainty in a world where I don't know what the next day is going to bring. I need to have something secure. I'm going to go ahead and invite our men to come down to get ready to serve you guys as we get ready to. This is worship.

This is worship. In fact, as they serve the elements, our worship team is going to lead us singing. And so you can choose either to sit while we sing or, I mean, you might feel led to stand. Whatever, whatever that is for you. But I want you to hear this last verse before we start the communion part.

Jesus in John 10:14 said, I am the good shepherd and I know my own, and my own knows me. If you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You do not have to stay that way. He can be your good shepherd today. The reason you're separated from the good shepherd is because of sin.

And you can't take your sin away. You can't do enough good stuff to cover up your sin. Stop. You can't. It's impossible.

But Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this earth and died the death that you and I deserve so that he could take your sin away fully, completely and make you whole. And how do I know he won that battle? Because three days after he was buried, he was raised again and is alive forevermore, sitting at the right hand of God, praying for you and me. Today, he defeated death and he can defeat death in your life and he can awaken your soul if you'll just put your faith and trust in him and him alone. Have you done that?

And if you're here today because we're about to take communion and the Bible teaches us don't take this the wrong way, which means don't take this if there's sin accumulated in your heart. Right now, I'm gonna ask you to bow your head and close your eyes. We invite you to partake in this if you're a born again believer, if you have trusted Christ as your Savior. We're asking you today to partake communion with us. But I'm challenging you because Paul said the reason some of you are sick and dying is because you're taking this without respect.

Because this represents the table that he's prepared for before our enemies. He set this table before Satan himself, that his own body was broken and his blood was spilled so that we could know him. So right now, pray and ask the Lord to forgive you of your sin. Confess before him. Lord, I know I've sinned and I need to be cleansed.

So Paul wrote, for I received from the Lord that which I delivered to you. That the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said this. This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. So, gentlemen, if you would please distribute the bread to our people.

Jesus said this. He said, for the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. I am the bread of life. And he who comes to me will not hunger. And he who believes in me will never, never thirst.

So as you look at this piece of wafer, this bread, this represents the very body of Christ that was brutally beaten and crucified for you and me. This should have been us. This should have been us. We put Jesus on the cross, but he did this for you and me. So take in reference to our God.

Eat.

Paul continued in the same way. He took the cup after supper, saying, this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Gentlemen, if you would.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst. But the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Jesus, the good shepherd, laid down his life for his sheep so that you can have life.

Can we worship him by taking this now?

So as you leave today in just a minute after I pray, I want to ask you, have you yielded to the shepherd? Have you given him your life? Are you following him? If not, you can do that today. Randy, myself and others will be down here at the front if you want to come talk to us.

We'd love to take a few moments with you. But maybe in your life worry and care have consumed you. Can I encourage you to get in his word and learn to live in the comfort of those 21 things that God has given us that we can have confidence that he's with us? Philippians 4. 6 says, Be anxious for nothing.

But in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your request, be made known to God. Can we thank him today for what he's done for us? Can we thank him today? That's what we just did. We did this to thank Him.

So let me leave you with this scripture now. The God of peace to who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus Christ our Lord, may he equip us in every good thing to do his will, doing that which is pleasing in his sight. Through Jesus Christ, to him be glory forever and ever. Father, as we leave today, would you be with us? Would you guide us?

Would you direct us if we're holding back? If there's things in this life and in this world that is keeping you, keeping us from being led by you, Lord, let us die to those things. Let us repent of those ways and commit our life to you. Lord, we love you. In Jesus name, Amen.