The LORD is my Shepherd (Part I)

                                                           PSALMS  23:1-3

The word “psalm” comes from the Greek word psalmos, meaning “ a poem to be sung to a stringed instrument”. The book of Psalms forms the heart of the Holy Bible and speaks directly to our heart. All grief, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, anxieties – in short, all those tumultuous agitations man encounters in his short life – are addressed here. It’s simple beauty never fades due to familiarity; nor is it possible to study its contents to exhaustion.

1.The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

Its author is King David who was a shepherd boy, tending to his father’s sheep until his heroic encounter with the giant Goliath would change his life forever. It is safe to believe that David must have loved his sheep and tended them conscientiously and faithfully; otherwise, he would not have been able to paint this picture so sublimely. Spurgeon calls this psalm “David’s Pastoral Symphony.” John Schultz {who served many decades as a C&MA Missionary and Bible teacher in Indonesia) asserts it is one of the most famous poem in world literature.

 The Lord GOD says, "I myself will be their Shepherd. I will search for my sheep and take care of them’’ (Ezekiel 34:11). Jesus speaks at some length about His being the good shepherd in John 10.  The Bible says Jesus saw the common folk of His time who flocked to see Him as confused and helpless --  sheep deprived of a shepherd -- and was moved with compassion (Luke 9:36). The best description of a sheep’s nature is given by the prophet Isaiah: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 22:13). Moses pleads with God that His people must not be allowed to resemble a sheep without a shepherd (Num. 27:16, 17). It is mainly because of its lost status that the Bible frequently compares mankind to sheep. A sheep is one of the few animals that do not know the way to its own home, and hence, the comparison is appropriate. It is this metaphor that David, the profligate poet he is, chose to employ in the first two verses of our psalm.   To assert that the Lord is our shepherd is to confess our lost state, our need for a “shepherd”. It is also expression of our humility, our total dependence on Him.

As lost sheep and without God, human beings would be in want in a hard and hostile world. The presence of God - our relationship with Him - makes all the difference between destitution and sufficiency. This is what the poet implies when he says “I shall not want”. Very rarely does a person discover that he has no want, or, as The Living Bible puts it simply: “I have everything I need!” The greed of our hearts, our human nature, will usually try to convince us that we are not satisfied. As humans, we are never satisfied with what we have; we are always in one want or another. As Augustine puts it, our hearts are restless until we repose in Him. To say “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want” is, therefore, a complete confession of the soul. The two parts of the verse are parallel. With the Lord being our shepherd, we reach a state of complete satisfaction. There cannot be anything more we might want.

A sheep might be a dumb animal, but it is not incapable of recognizing the shepherd’s voice and following him. Jesus makes this amply clear when he declares: “The sheep know their shepherd's voice. He calls each of them by name and leads them out. He walks in front of them, and they follow because they know his voice.  I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and they know me” (John 10:2, 4, 14). The bond between a good shepherd and his sheep is strong and lasting. They know each other intimately and trust each other, like the relationship between the Saviour and the believer. This is another reason why David used the shepherd-sheep allegory. The psalm does not focus on the animal-like qualities of the sheep but on the discipleship qualities of those who follow. There is no doubt that Jesus’ words in John 10 are based on this psalm.

2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters,

We see the concept of rest continued in the second verse. A sheep that lies down has had enough to eat. This is a picture of complete satisfaction. Man has reached his goal; he has entered into the rest that God prepared for him.  The author of the books of Hebrews talks about this when he says: God has promised us a Sabbath when we will rest, even though it has not yet come. On that day God's people will rest from their work, just as God rested from his work (Heb 4:9, 10). God had promised the Israelites total rest and heavenly joy in Canaan, but the promised land turned out to be a place of strife, idolatry and sinfulness, due to the peoples’ disobedience and rebelliousness. But we see in David’s sheep a condition of true rest. Green pastures, quiet waters, righteous path – all in superlative degree! We see here a prophetical description of the goal of life, the hope of the believer, the ultimate bliss, the New Jerusalem.

It might be argued that David’s stress is only upon the physical aspect of the experience, the expression “the Lord is my shepherd” has an immediate effect has upon the physical needs of man. Man is a unity, and although our physical needs may not be the most important ones, they have to be addressed first. This cannot be separated from the mental, emotional, and spiritual needs in man. A person who is starving and weak can become an easy target for satanic attack. God is interested in our physical well-being because He loves us. There are umpteen instances mentioned in the Gospels when our Lord ministered to the physical needs of people, (the most famous of them being the feeding of five thousand people).

3 He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake..

For all practical purposes David seems to have abandoned the sheep analogy at this point, but we see the idea lingers on.  It is the human person and his soul that captures the poet’s imagination in the text ahead. When we allow God to direct our path, there is contentment in our lives. There is no apprehension of want; the heart is at peace with God. But if we choose to sin and go our own way, we create a Godless environment for ourselves and pay dearly for it. The green pastures and the peaceful waters won’t be there anymore. By rebelling against our divine shepherd, we only fight against our own interests.

‘He restores my soul’ and ‘He guides me in paths of righteousness’ both again mean the same, confirming to Biblical parallelism.  Righteousness is a complex word. In its simplest form it means acting in accordance with the character of God. If the Lord is our shepherd, there will be a moral change that takes place in our lives. For his name's sake, that His name may be honoured. It is not primarily on their account; it is not solely that they may be saved. It is that He may be honoured:

He makes us partakers of His Name; which means that we will start to resemble Him in the way we live and act. The ultimate goal of a Christian is to become like Jesus or confirm to His image. See Romans 8:29. 

God saves us, not because we are worth much in our present condition, but because of His Name. Salvation is not the result of anything we do, but what God does in us. We have all turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one (Romans 3:12NLT).  In spite of this truth, even in our fallen state, we are valuable for God, because we are the bearers of His image. Our souls have to be restored and sanctified. The daily practice of righteousness results in restoration of our soul, or sanctification in other words. The NLT Bible translates it simply ‘He guides me along right paths’.“He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them His way” (Psalms 25:9). This He will always do if people will follow the directions of His word, the teachings of His Spirit, and the guidance of His providence. No one who submits to Him in this way will ever go astray!

The Name of God represents His love and holiness, which are the pillars of our salvation. The Name of God is both the beginning and the end of our salvation. The name God gave Jesus, the name above every name, the name at which every knee bows, the name every lip confesses (see Philippians 2:9-11). No other name has been given under the sun for salvation except the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). Speaking of the devotees who serve God in the New Jerusalem, Revelation 22:4 says “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads”.  According to John’s Gospel (1:12)  ….He gave to them authority to become the children of God, to those who believe on His name. It is for the sake of this Name, that God leads us in the path of righteousness. What more can a poor lost sheep of a man hope for?

(to be concluded)