PURPOSE: To help listeners understand that God sometimes leads us into difficult and dangerous places.

I. There is a comparison and a contrast between verse 3 and verse 4.

In verse 3, David is saying that God guides him, and in verse 4 he says that one of the places in which God guides him is the valley of deep darkness.

Early in the year the shepherd leads his flock in the lowlands. But when the snows melt, he leads them to higher ground.

To get there, he often has to take them through a threatening ravine with dangers on every side.

Yet the sheep does not have to be afraid because the shepherd is with him. How does the sheep know that? Because the shepherd has led him there.

There is also a contrast between verses 3 and 4.

In the first three verses, David talks about the shepherd, but in this verse he talks to the shepherd.

He turns a psalm of praise into a prayer.

Perhaps some threatening situation came to his mind, and with a chill in his heart, he turns to speak directly to God.

II. What a shepherd does for the sheep and God does for David, He also does for us.

We’d like to think that if we follow Jesus Christ, all of our meadows will be green and all our days will be sunshine.

But God’s purposes for us sometimes mean that we must go through the valley of deep darkness to get to higher ground.