Hope - Summer in the Psalms - Sermons - Josh Navey - 7.26.26

**Josh Navey** (0:00)
Okay, turn in your Bibles with me to the Book of Psalms as we make our hard right pivot here. Over the course of the summer, we have been working through emotions, so maybe it's not that hard right of a pivot, okay? We've been talking about living our whole life before the face of God, and a lot of the emotions that we've been walking through are feelings that honestly we'd rather avoid, or maybe at the very least minimize. Collin did a phenomenal job preaching on loneliness last week, or we've gone through lament or anger, and next week we're going to be talking about anxiety. But today we get to look at an emotion that you want to hold on to and never let go, that you can't have too much of it, and when you stop feeling it, when you stop having it, life starts to lose its flavor or lose its joy. So today we're going to be in Psalm chapter 23, and we're going to be talking about hope. In the 1950s, there was an experiment that actually got labeled the hope experiment. A guy named Curtis Richter was a Harvard grad, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, and he conducted an experiment with a jar that he filled full of water, and then he would put a rat inside the water and close the lid, okay? It was pre-PETA times, all right? And his experiment was to see how long the rat would last in the water. The first one, second one, third one, he saw the rats not find any way to escape. They swam around the top of the water, they went down to the bottom of the jar, explored, and then after about 15 minutes, they would give up.
Then he tried to experiment in a different way. He would fill a jar with water, leave in a little room at the top again, same setup, and he would put the rat in, close the lid of the jar, same setup. But at just the moment that the rat was giving up, he would open the jar, pull it out, and he would let it rest for a couple minutes. Then he would put the rat back in the jar, close the lid again. And instead of 15 minutes of fighting for survival, these second set of rats lasted up to 60 hours of being able to swim in this jar. Nothing changing in their setting except they were given hope. Hope that something in their circumstances could change, that there could be a rescue from what they were stuck inside of. Hope is a powerful thing. And as we begin to talk about it this morning, I want us to get on the same page with what it is. This is how John Piper defines hope. He breaks it down like a confident expectation and a desire for something good in the future. Okay, so there's two things here. One is the expectation part. I think it's going to happen. I believe and I expect it. But the second one is that you want it to happen. So not only do you think it's going to happen, but you have a desire for it, for this something good to happen in the future. I want to walk through a psalm with you today that though it doesn't mention hope one single time as a word, it lifts our eyes to a God who yes gives us hope, but more importantly, I hope you see this morning, to a God who is our hope. So start with me in Psalm 23 verse one. It says, the Lord is my shepherd. I have what I need. He lets me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He renews my life. He leads me along the right paths for His name's sake. And even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger. Why? Because 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. Only goodness and fateful love will pursue me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live. This psalm has been a personal source of hope for me because it tells me three things that I know to be true, three truths that I can take to the bank and ultimately that lead me to know why I should hold on to hope. The first one is that I have a shepherd. Look with me in verse one. He says, the Lord is my shepherd and I have what I need. Now, this isn't just the picture of Jesus holding the fluffy sheep and has his shepherd staff beside him that might have been in your grandma's living room. It's not a trivial statement. This is actually the culmination of a plan from the beginning of time. One of the ways that you can understand the story of the Bible as it unfolds is the search for a true shepherd for God's people. Much of the Old Testament, those first 39 books of the Bible, are filled with pages about God's people being led by kings who were supposed to shepherd God's people towards what was good for them, towards loving the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. God even told David, who wrote this psalm in 2 Samuel 5, you will shepherd my people Israel. This is as David was becoming king. And God says, you're gonna shepherd them. This is the job of a king, to shepherd my people Israel, to be a ruler over them. But instead of doing what God asked them to do, these kings led their people far from God. Pursuing their own selfish desires, worshiping other gods, and even forgetting about God altogether at some point. In the cycle that you might be in if you're reading through the Bible in a year right now, you see God's people sin, they are punished, they repent and say, God, help me. And then God sends a rescuer, and then that cycle happens again and again.