In his sermon titled 'Tender Bond of Father & Daughter,' Scott Brown delves into Psalm 23, emphasizing the profound bond it illustrates between fathers and daughters. Brown shares his personal journey of memorizing Psalm 23 through his mother's influence and how it has been a source of strength throughout his life. He discusses six key observations about the Psalm, highlighting its personal and worshipful nature, its poetic context, and its capacity to address fear. Brown recounts a poignant family story involving his daughter Kelly to illustrate the peace and strength derived from a shared spiritual bond. He emphasizes the importance of fathers leading their daughters with an understanding of God's role as a shepherd who knows, provides, feeds, leads, and restores. The sermon underscores the necessity of a mutual bond between fathers and daughters, grounded in the understanding of God's guidance through life's trials and joys, ultimately for His glory.

Tonight and tomorrow we want you to turn to Psalm 23. So if you could open your Bibles there and I'll read it a Psalm of David the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want He makes me 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 you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort 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 mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Now I'm going to be covering just the first three verses, and Paul Carrington will finish it up tomorrow, beginning in verse 4 to verse 6. As I was reading this, it brought back to mind how it came about that I memorized Psalm 23. I memorized it without knowing that I'd memorized it.

I memorized it without trying to memorize it. I memorized it because my mother had memorized it and she said it so many times that at some point in my life, I think in my mid-teens, I realized I'd memorized it but it was because of my mother. I'm very thankful for that. The words of God on the lips of a mother are so powerful. And Psalm 23 has been a very great help to me all my life long.

Now, Psalm 23 defines a bond that fathers and daughters ought to have in this journey through life. Fathers and daughters should have the tenderest understandings between one another. And this psalm declares what I believe should be one of the indispensable common understandings about life that should exist between a father and a daughter. In other words, it's an agreement. It's a bond.

It's an understanding about life as it really is. And I pray that we all would have such a bond upon such helpful, powerful, tender principles that are here before us. And the greatest bond that a father and a daughter can ever have is their connection with the awareness that the Lord is their shepherd. And it's very wise for fathers and daughters to make sure that they have together an intimate understanding and agreement about what is happening in this world, what is happening to them, what forces are really at work. And it's such a critical thing that fathers and daughters have this understanding.

Fathers should send their daughters out into the world with this understanding without question. Let me illustrate. It was several years ago that there was an event in our family that that really brought this to my mind. Now you know that I have a granddaughter by the name of Iona and she's named after an island in Scotland And Iona is a remote island off the coast of Scotland where the gospel was preserved in the fifth century as a result of the work of the Spirit of God through Columba. And so we were on the island of Iona several years ago, and my daughter Kelly was with us.

And she had just had a baby, Geneva, I believe it was, but when we were on that island she started hemorrhaging. She started having really significant internal bleeding because there were still parts of her placenta that hadn't passed unknowingly. And this was happening at a moment when we were on a very remote island. The travel time to a real hospital was probably 9 or 11 hours and you had to go from island to island and between them through ferries. And so there we were with no one to treat her and her bleeding was so severe that the people looking at her, and we had a doctor with us, thought she was bleeding to death.

Kelly thought she was bleeding to death, she was losing all of her strength. And she believes she was in the process of perishing. And she got weaker and weaker with the with the strength draining out of her and she very very easily could have died. She tells me that when she was at her weakest, thinking that she was going to leave this earth, she had the most peace she's ever had in her life. Of everything she's experienced in life, she had more peace at that moment.

And so a life-flight helicopter landed on that rocky island and flew her to a hospital. But just before she was taking off, she was on the gurney. They just strapped her in and I was by her side and I was holding her hand. And she was reciting a song. She was uttering something that was our agreement as a father and a daughter.

She was declaring the truth about God in her life. And we were both reciting it together in the words in the version that we memorized it in when she was a little girl. And she was, We were reciting together, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help and trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea. There is a river which makes glad the city of God.

God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God is with her just at the break of dawn. So this is what was on her lips and mine as she was being lifted into that helicopter. And so Deborah and I got in a car and we made this, I believe it was a nine or 11 hour journey to the hospital.

But what happened there on that little island was a demonstration of what I pray will be demonstrated in your lives and in my life and in my daughter's lives that we have an understanding about life We know that we have a shepherd we know him and We understand the things that we're going through only because we understand him and we know that we can go anywhere we can go through anything it doesn't matter because we have fellowship with God and with his son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit because when you have fellowship with God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It doesn't really matter where you are because you can have fellowship with God. Somebody said if you have to move more than 18 inches to be happy, you'll never be happy. But if you have fellowship with God, you will be in a place where you have fellowship with God, which connects you to something real, to a life source. Because the Lord Jesus Christ said, I am the vine and you're the branches.

So, you know, whether in time of peace or in a time of hardship, there should be an understanding between fathers and daughters regarding God and the world that He's put us in. You know, in a way, it's a way that you preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace as a father and a daughter. And that bond that I've had with My daughters and was seen in that scene with my daughter Kelly has always been centered on the goodness of God on His sovereignty on his might on his beauty. This was our bond. This was our agreement This is the interpretive grid through which we see everything.

And Psalm 23, I think, helps us to understand elements of that bond that every father and daughter ought to have. And we've, as I said, we've broken it up into two sections. You have an outline in front of you and what what these first three verses declare is that you have a good shepherd he'll take care of you through all the roads you ever walk on through every joy or trial every delay every disappointment every failure every loss everything is covered under his shepherding. His rod and his staff go everywhere. And So I'd like to make six observations about this Psalm before we actually get into the Psalm itself.

First of all, I want you to notice that this Psalm is intensely personal. The entire Psalm is spoken in the first person. And that's why it begins, the Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd now that's a sermon in itself he is my shepherd he is a personal God he knows me I know him he is my shepherd There's nothing more helpful in life to know that you are his and he is yours. And number two, this psalm is in praise of worship.

And I just want us to make the observation of where this text exists in the Psalms. Well, the Psalms are summed up. All of the Psalms really can be summed up in these two words, true worship. The Psalms are about true worship. So this Psalm explains what it's like to worship God as the other Psalms do as well.

And that's why you read in the Psalms, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. And this this phrase characterizes what's meant to be the supreme effect on the soul of the Psalms. And so the focus of the Psalms is worship through all the events and ups and downs and threats of life. There are 150 Psalms that span from Moses to the post-exilic period, and they express dozens of kinds of human experiences of joy and sorrow and abandonment and tears and renewal and refuge and fear and war and peace and failure and hope and enemies and evil and love and lamentations and praise through it all. The third observation is that the genre of this is poetry.

Of course, the Psalms is one of the great poetical books, but you might think that the Psalms is the only book of poetry in the Old Testament. Well, that's just not true. You'd be surprised, maybe, to know that there are only five Old Testament books that don't seem to have poetry. Almost all of the 39 books of the Old Testament, except five, are full of poetry. The ones that don't include poetry are Leviticus, Ruth, Ezra, Haggai, and Malachi.

But all the rest of the books of the Old Testament are like the Psalms. They're just full of poetry. The fourth thing I'd like us to understand is the context of this Psalm. Many believe that the context is revealed in 2nd Samuel 15. This was perhaps one of the darkest times of David's life.

His son, his son Absalom, had rebelled against him, toppled him from the throne, and David had flown into the wilderness and he became a hunted man. His own son, whom he loved was tearing him apart So it was a dark time this you know the interesting thing about walking with God is The times of most light in your soul come when you are experiencing darkness outside of your soul. And this is a psalm that exists in a very remarkable context. The fifth thing is that this psalm deals with fear. So this psalm is a perfect remedy for all those who are experiencing some kind of fear.

Maybe it's a current upheaval that you're in the middle of right now. It might be very helpful to a person who's anticipating some kind of upheaval. But here's the truth about life. You're either in a time of difficulty or there's one just around the corner. That's it.

There are really only two times that you have in life and you can guarantee that they'll both come upon you. And the message to those who are in times of difficulty is that there's a good shepherd. He sees you through and he's such a good shepherd. And then the sixth is that there's a triple application to this psalm. Most commentators have recognized this and written about it, but when the the whole matter of being a shepherd comes up, it really applies to at least three different spheres of shepherding.

There is the shepherding of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, number one. Number two, there's the shepherding of a father in a home. And number three, there's the shepherding of elders in a church. And so there's a triple application here for shepherds. Now I've listed six items that I'd like to walk through in the psalm phrase by phrase and I want us to understand that these are placed here for many reasons but I want to just appeal to to all of you to make these understandings your bond with your daughter, and you as daughters make these understandings your bond with your father, so that both father and daughter understand how the world is wired, So that you'll know how to go through the times that are ahead.

So the first element of this bond is this. He knows me. The second is he provides for me. The third is he feeds me. Number four, he leads me.

Number five, he restores me. And then number six, why does he do all these things? So that's where we're going. So there are these seven tender understandings that should be between fathers and daughters. The first is he knows me.

The Lord is my shepherd. I have the Lord, the Lord, the creator of all there all there is. Jehovah Jireh. List all the names of God you know this is who is with you the angel of the Lord the the one who commands all the armies of heaven all the angels of heaven are under his absolute sovereignty this is the one nothing can stay his hand and and he is your shepherd and he knows you and the there are many qualities of good shepherds here's the one that's declared here he knows me Shepherds must know their sheep." And so this whole metaphor here of the Lord being your shepherd means that he's your diligent shepherd. He's your intimate shepherd.

He's your protective shepherd. He has superior knowledge. He knows where to go. The shepherd is always wiser than the sheep. And so the Lord is my shepherd.

So I have a shepherd who knows me and whatever joy or trial that falls from above you can know this one thing if you know the Lord Jesus Christ that you have a shepherd who knows you. Secondly, he provides for me. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. That means that when the Lord is your shepherd, you have everything that you need. Everything that you actually need is given to you by the good shepherd.

And he might not give you everything you want, He might not give you everything you want, He might not give you everything you dream about, or think that you need, but He will satisfy you with the goodness of His house. Which is why the apostle Paul said, My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches and his glory. And that's why when Moses was speaking to the children of Israel, in their time of walking through the wilderness in Deuteronomy chapter two, verse seven, Moses spoke a truth that's just as true today as it was at that time. Moses said, these 40 years, you lacked nothing. I gave you everything that you need.

If a person finds themselves unsatisfied, if a person finds themselves in want, then they have to examine their hearts. Because God has declared that when the Lord is your shepherd you have everything that you need. And The only thing that you really need in this world is his presence. It is your only fundamental need, because when you have his presence, you really do have everything that you need. And God will supply all your needs according to his riches and glory.

The third is that he provides for me, or he feeds me. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. Now here there are a number of things that could be said about this phrase at the beginning of verse 2, but the one that I want to focus in on is the fact that he feeds you and he puts you in green pastures, green pastures, and in order to feed you he must make you lie down. He must make you stop in order to feed you. And I believe that he's Speaking metaphorically about the feeding of the Word of God that man shall not live by bread alone But by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God That the Lord Jesus Christ makes his children stop, he makes them lie down, and he has a word in season for the weary, as Isaiah says, that the Lord Jesus Christ will have for his children, and that he nourishes us by his word.

And that as a result, we have a lamp unto our feet. And we know the very next step to make because of the word of God that he gives us. Because God always leads his people through his word. If you're ever confused about where you should go, you should always go to the word because there you'll find the interpretation of what you're going through. And the most important fuel for your life is the word of God by the Spirit of God.

And it'll keep you from following the people of this world off the cliffs that are on every side. It'll keep you from being starved as a result of eating the grass of this world. This world and her people are eating the wrong grass. They're not being nourished. They're eating what doesn't satisfy.

That's why that's why the Lord says in Isaiah, Ho, everyone who thirsts come to the water. You who have no money come, buy, eat, because this is real. And the world is feeding itself on what doesn't satisfy but God gives the daughters of Zion something that actually does satisfy and when a daughter's heart is filled up with the Word of God she doesn't she doesn't desire the dainty morsels of this world because she's full she doesn't want the leaks of Egypt anymore she's satisfied And one of the critical works of a father is that fathers must protect their daughters from following the ways of the world and eating the grass of this world. And they do it by directing daughters to the Word of God so that their daughters don't become puppets of the world, so their daughters don't become followers of this world and all the silly women that are out there. The world is full of them.

Don't follow them. You know, there's a story that hit the news and it was in 2009 from Aksam, Turkey and the story was that that that 1, 500 sheep walked off a cliff. And it happened because one sheep walked off, and 1, 500, one by one, followed that one sheep off the cliff. And there they were, laying at the bottom, 1, 500 sheep. Only 450 of them died.

Because once they started piling up, you know, they were landing on this pillowy billowy you know cotton and But it's very important that daughters do not walk off the cliff with the other sheep. And this is our liability as sheep. And every daughter faces this liability to follow the other sheep off the cliff, just one by one. And this is the great danger of worldliness in women, because women tend to wanna follow women. If they respect another woman, they might follow her right off that cliff.

But it's the Word of God that keeps a daughter from following the sheep off the cliff and finding themselves at the bottom of that cliff. The most important deposit a father makes are his investments in the Word of God in his daughter's hearts and and so a father should recognize that he must make his daughter lie down in green pastures. And that this becomes a bond, this becomes an understanding of the way that life should be lived. That we stop and we lie down in the green pastures and we eat and We don't we don't follow the other men and women in this world We follow a good shepherd and then the fourth Understanding that Fathers and daughters should have this very tender bond and understanding that they should have with each other, this agreement, this joy that they share is that he leads me. He leads me.

He leads me beside still waters." Notice that the the term for water is waters, it's in the plural, and I believe he's talking about the various kinds of waters of blessing that a good shepherd brings his sheep to and he really is speaking of the peace that comes from following his shepherd That you can be still and know that he is God no matter what storms are blowing. You can be still, you ought to be still, and know that he is God. You can have peace with God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. You can have peace with God through a cleansed conscience. You can have peace about your future because you know He holds everything in His hands, that your times are in His hands, and that the world's water just cannot satisfy.

And then he says he leads me in the paths of righteousness. Now he's speaking about paths, Ways that you wind your way through the world and what? What he is saying and what? What understanding and bond a father and daughter ought to have is that this shepherd knows the best roads He knows the roads that lead to righteousness, and He'll lead you in the way in which you should go. He'll save you and He'll put you on the highway of holiness, and there you'll walk, and the parched ground of your life and the confusion, it'll become like a spring of water, and you'll pass by on the highway of holiness.

Now, when you know that you have a shepherd who leads you, then it doesn't really matter if you know everything about where you're going. It doesn't matter. It's a legitimate response to say, I don't know exactly where I'm going, but I know the Lord does. It's very unpopular today to say you don't know where you're going. But think about Abraham.

The Bible says in Hebrews that Abraham left Ur, and he didn't know where he was going. But God was taking him to the place where he was going. And you don't really know where you're going to end up in this life. You don't know where you're going to live. You don't know what experiences you're going to have.

But here's what you can know absolutely for sure. And this should be the tenderest and tightest bond between a father and a daughter. And that is this, where he leads me, I will follow. Where he calls me, I'll go, I'll hear, I'll open up my ears, and I'll take one step at a time. You know, in many ways, I don't really know where I'm going.

Deborah and I were just talking about this last night in bed. I'm just taking one step at a time. I'm doing the things that God's put in my hands. That's all I can do. All I can do is be faithful with the little things that I have, and God will take me to the next step when He's ready.

But when I look back in my life, it really hasn't happened by some strategic plan. No. If it were a strategic plan, I never would have come to North Carolina. And I never would have done a lot of things I'm doing right now. But what a precious and tender bond it is when a father and daughter know that he's the one who leads and he is faithful, he will tell you what the next step is in his own time.

And so you can be patient, you can be at peace, and you don't have to worry about your life or what you what shall you you eat or what shall you wear or where you'll go or anything like that. Because you know And you have a bond with your father and he has with you that where he leads you'll follow And he will and he will lead He leads you in the paths of righteousness and that takes care of the uncertainty of life about where you're going and what you'll find is he'll he'll lead you through meadows he'll lead you through narrow paths he'll he'll take you up on a high cliff and it's straight down. He'll walk you through a storm, he'll put you in a desert, he'll walk you through the rivers. Isaiah says that you'll walk through the fire, but you won't be burned. In other words, you're going to go through the fire okay he says you know he'll he'll take you into the flood but you won't drown there so he will take you through trials but through the trials he will take you And this is the whole matter of the leadership of God.

And God has charged fathers to lead. And a father must go first. He must go to the green pastures. He needs to lead his daughter into these paths and into these, and to drink these waters, the very best waters. Fathers must understand that they go first.

Now, I don't know if you've heard this story. There is a story of a tour bus traveling through the countryside of Israel. Some people are taking a tour of the Holy Land and the bus you know passes a flock of sheep and the tour guide says oh do you notice that that Shepherd the Shepherd is in the front of the sheep and he makes the comment that that Shepherds don't drive their sheep they lead them So he made make this dramatic point that was so heartwarming to everyone and the bus kept on going down the road and they saw another flock of sheep. But it was different because the shepherd was at the back of the sheep. And so the people on the bus said, hey, what's that all about?

You said the shepherds always lead from the front. That shepherd seems to be driving from the rear. So the driver pulled over, and the tour bus guide got out and went over and talked to the sheep and they talked to the shepherd and they they had a battle back and forth you know everyone in the bus was wondering what was going on and so the tour guide came back to the bus and he said he's the butcher He's the butcher, he's not the shepherd. And you know, it's critical that fathers lead, That they go to the waters first they they walk down the right paths first and they take everybody with them This is what the Lord does He goes before you You know when my father was getting ready to go off to war His his father met him for the very last time that he would see him until he was shot down over Japan. And my grandfather handed him a Bible And he said, the Lord goes before you.

And he found that to be true. But shepherds lead, and they go to the best places themselves. They set an example. They're real. They sincerely love the good grass.

They love the cleanest waters and they lead their flocks to them. And they want to keep bad grass and bad water out of their sheep's way. And good shepherds lead to the best pastures and the clearest waters. Now, you'd never really know though, which pastures will be of most help to you. And because often the greatest difficulties end up being the very best pastures for you.

And you know our family we were reading the biography of J.C. Ryle the other day. Ian Murray just wrote a biography or maybe it was just published or something recently. And we were reading it the other day in our house on Sunday afternoon. And he, JC Ryle was born into an aristocratic family, they were incredibly wealthy.

And he was on his way to Parliament, he was on his way to society and everything like that. His father was the owner of a bank which collapsed literally overnight and their entire net worth evaporated in about a 24 hour period. It's remarkable what happened. They lost everything, and J.C. Ryle's family became commoners in an instant.

So instead of this critical path to parliament and society and all this kind of stuff, they were now commoners. And all those doors had closed. They lived in a very different society than we do, where there were aristocratic barriers, enormous amounts of pride that drove the strata of society and how certain people just weren't worthy to be relating with those of the aristocratic set but he lost all that overnight but in the biography he says it was the best thing that ever happened to me and it's the reason that I became a preacher. I wouldn't have become a preacher he says, I don't think, if my father hadn't lost everything and we had to move into mean circumstances. So these pathways do sometimes have their difficulties, but you have to recognize God has his reasons.

And you should never doubt him, and you should never get discouraged about it. Because God is working. God is always weaving. He's always moving. He's always leading you down the right path.

And then fifth, he restores me, he restores me. There There's an element in the wording that David uses here that leads us to believe that he's talking about energizing someone. In other words, you're worn out, you're exhausted, like my friend Lester says, war slap out. Just tired of it, ready to throw in the towel, unhappy, just weary. And he restores you.

He restores your soul. Notice he speaks about the soul because the power of God always works from the inside out. This is Christianity. The Spirit of God energizing you and your soul. This is why you should always feed your soul.

This is why you should always fill your mouth with the Word of God and your ears with it and feed on the finest of wheat, because the Lord puts you back together, and even though you might get tired, even though yous may get weary and stumble, and maybe they have gone to the wrong place to get their strength restored. But the Good Shepherd is the only one who can restore your soul and bring you out. And this should be one of the tenderest bonds of a father and daughter, that they know something about this life. They've agreed, they understand that if they are going to be restored, there really is only one place to go. To the place where souls are restored.

Prayer, preaching, reading the word of God, crying out to God. And then why does he do it? Why does he do this? Why does he know you? Why does he provide for you?

Why does he feed you? Why does he lead you? Why does he restore you? Why? For his name's sake.

For his name's sake. And this is where a father and a daughter need to recognize together that God does all things for his own glory. He is glorifying himself. It should never scare you that God wants to glorify himself because as God glorifies himself, as God fulfills his plan, we know that our glorification is only possible if he glorifies himself. He's bringing many sons to glory for his own glory, right?

And so we should never fear that God wants to glorify himself because God is good, because God is love. He wants to glorify himself, and everything he does is for good and for love. So you never have to fear God's primary motivation to glorify himself. He does everything for his name's sake. The Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4 15 through 18 he says, for all things are for your sakes that grace Having spread through many may cause thanksgiving to abound To the glory of God therefore we do not lose heart Even though our outward man is perishing yet the inward man is being renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. God does everything for his own glory. Isaiah 48 verses 9 through 11 makes it clear that he does all things for the sake of his glory. He says, for my sake I will defer my anger and for my praise I will restrain it from you so that I do not cut you off. Behold I will refine you but not a silver.

I have tested you in the furnace of affliction for my own sake for my own sake I will do it for how should my name be profaned profaned and how shall I not give my glory and I will not give my glory to another. God does all things for his own sake. He leads you for his glory so that He would take you to glory. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead to raise you from the dead. And He does all things for the sake of His glory, for His own namesake.

His name is wonderful, His name is beautiful, His name is the name above all names. In His name you have salvation, in His name you have every comfort, in His name you have all the power that you need. In His name resides everything that's good. And so these things really should be the tenderest bond between a father and a daughter. You need to know who you are in this world.

Fathers and daughters should clasp hands and say This is our bond. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me 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 namesake. What a tender bond. What a marvelous way to walk through this world. You pray with me.

Lord we thank you for the beauty of these words unforgettable. I thank you for the guidance that you give us as such a good shepherd. We pray oh Lord that you would you would work in all of us a bond like this, all our life long. And when things seemed to collapse around us, that we would go back again in clasp hands and recognize the bond that is true and glorious for the glory of God and his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thanks for watching!