Christians get a bad wrap. Why? Because most of the time, we preach a message that comes off “holier than thou” to a world that is comfortable in their sin. I can’t count how many times unsaved people have said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, I’m gonna live it up with my friends at the big party going on in hell when I get there.” And I know it’s meant to be a joke, albeit not a very funny one, but it just goes to show how tightly people will cling to their sin and their comfortable pleasures, despite the fact that those things will never add up to eternal salvation.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He gives a lesson on a mountainside. There is a great crowd of people around Him, and they are all attentive to what this Messiah has to say. For the Jews, they believed that Jesus was here to free them from Roman occupation and rule, restoring them to political power and peace, and reigning over them victoriously whilst pouring out spiritual and material blessings over His chosen people the Jews. But in Matthew 5, the beginning of what has more popularly become known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets a very different tone than what the Jewish people assumed of a Messiah for generations. Instead, Jesus lays out more of a foundation to discipleship; what daily life looks like for someone who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and how His followers should ethically live.

Over the last month, we’ve been picking apart Psalm 23, one of the most recognizable passages of scripture there is. David, the author of the psalm was a king, a shepherd, a son, but most importantly, a man that was passionately invested in a relationship with God. If anyone understood the deep nuances of every line of this psalm, it was David himself. If there was anyone qualified to compare God to a shepherd, it was David.In six, short verses, we were taken through the green pastures and still waters of a life laid in submission to the Lord; a life that allows God to lead and take care of our needs. From there, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, an ominous valley surrounded by the trials of life on all sides. Then, we sit down at a table prepared by the Lord, but a table set in a room full of our enemies, an oasis of comfort and rest in the middle of a not-so-wonderful situation.