Psalm 23: 1-6 (ESV)
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul.He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Even 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.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;you anoint my head with oil my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
This is perhaps David’s most famous Psalm, and since I briefly mentioned it in last week’s sermon, I thought now would be the perfect time to look more closely at it. To those of us who do not live in rural places, or are not familiar with the lives of shepherds, this idea that “The Lord is my shepherd” might not mean very much to us. We know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are sheep, but the metaphor might not be very meaningful, because for a lot of us, all we know about sheep is from movies or county fairs, and that isn’t much.
Interestingly, the concept of people being sheep has become an insult. Today, at least in the United States, if you say that someone is a sheep, you are implying that he or she just goes along blindly with the crowd, not thinking for themselves. But within Scripture, when believers are called sheep, it is meant as a positive term and the negative term for people who don’t follow God is goat. Which again, in our current culture, people have turned the word goat into a compliment and say someone who is the “greatest of all time” is a G.O.A.T.. Rather interesting, isn’t it? How typical of the world, and frankly, how typical of the devil to take important concepts that are found in God’s word, and turn them around and manipulate and pollute them. We have to approach this text through the correct lens that regards shepherds and sheep in a complimentary light.
Speaking of how concepts get misinterpreted, in researching the Biblical context of shepherds, I was shocked by the amount of articles and sermons that have been written asserting that shepherds were despised and regarded as social outcasts. These people all seem to be basing this idea off a few popular commentaries that floated that idea and people ran with it. They all parrot this idea that shepherds were ‘unclean’ and social pariahs. But I could find no Biblical basis for that idea, just people repeating something they read. Not everyone believes this idea though, and in his book Urban Legends of the New Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions, David Croteau debunks this false idea. So, all that to say, as we delve into this text, we need to shake off any of these biases we might have unknowingly picked up and view shepherds and sheep in a positive light.
Right away in Genesis 48:15, we see this concept of God being our shepherd being a positive thing. It says, “And he blessed Joseph and said, ‘The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.’”
It’s important to note that the Lord is a shepherd to individuals. Just as Jacob said when he blessed Joseph, and just as David says when he says, “my shepherd,” and not our shepherd, the Lord is not universally the shepherd over all creation: He shepherds those who have become His sheep. Jesus says this when He says in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus’ individual sheep hear Him and follow Him. They may move together as a group, but they individually hear and respond to His voice leading them.
The other important context to hold in our minds is the fact that nearly all the early Old Testament leaders were shepherds. Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds. Even right before God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Exodus 3:1 tells us, “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.” I think the role of shepherd must be near and dear to God’s heart. As Ezekial 34:12 prophesies, “As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.”
Now, with all that background, let’s look at verse 1, which says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Reading this same verse in the ERV, it says, “The Lord is my shepherd. I will always have everything I need.” I really like how they translated that: it’s not a matter of us not having wants or desires, it’s a matter of God providing everything we actually need. That is a world of difference, is it not? There are many things we may want, but God knows what we actually need, and He is faithful to provide those things for His sheep.
Moving to verse two, it says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.” This ties together with the first verse of the Lord providing our needs. The green pastures and still waters represent peace, and David’s basic necessities. David is saying that he has peace knowing the Lord gives him food to eat and water to drink. If you have ever been without those two things, you know how vital they are for survival. David wasn’t always pampered in a king’s palace. He was on the run, hiding for his life. Without God’s provision, David knew he would die from hunger and thirst, but he’s testifying that God provided those things for him.
We, too, are to seek the Lord, and trust Him to provide for our necessities. We are to ask Him to provide for us, and we are to trust Him. I will talk more about this when we get to verse 5. For now, let’s look at verse 3, which says, “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
As God’s sheep, we are to follow Him. If we do so, we will find rest for our souls. We will be refreshed and led along paths of righteousness. If we go astray, as sheep are prone to do, we will find ourselves walking in sin, and we will end up in a world of hurt and trouble. But God is faithful to show us our errors and lead us back along the path of righteousness. He does all this “for His name’s sake.” This is done as Benson’s commentary states, “Not for any merit in me, but merely for the demonstration and glory of his mercy, faithfulness, and goodness.” It is to preserve the loving and righteous name of God. He does this because this is in His character to do. And He forgives us and restores us to righteousness, which, unknown to David at the time He wrote this, is for the sake of Jesus. For Jesus, through His death and resurrection, has imparted His righteousness to us through our faith in Him.
Because of all this, David can say in verse 4, “Even 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.” This verse contains many important points, and I’m surprised it wasn’t broken up into two verses. The first half says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” This statement is positing three ideas. One, even though the Lord is our shepherd, we still have to walk through difficult valleys. Two, the difficult valley is only the shadow of death, not death itself, for God is with us. Three, we don’t have to fear evil.
In looking at that first thought, being God’s sheep does not mean we have only green pastures and calm waters in our lives. We still go through difficult seasons and still have to walk through trials and tribulations. But as Charles Spurgeon wrote about this Psalm, “it is not ‘the valley of death,’ but ‘the valley of the shadow of death,’ for death in its substance has been removed, and only the shadow of it remains…Nobody is afraid of a shadow, for a shadow cannot stop a man’s pathway even for a moment. The shadow of a dog cannot bite; the shadow of a sword cannot kill; the shadow of death cannot destroy us. Let us not, therefore, be afraid.”
David didn’t know this, but it is only a shadow of death, because Jesus took the sting out of death when He died on the cross for us. For David, it was only a shadow, for he knew death was not the end of his existence, and God was with him. That is why he feared no evil.
Quoting Spurgeon again, he says, “He does not say there shall not be any evil; but ‘I will fear no evil;’ as if even his fears, those shadows of evil, were gone forever. The worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination. If we had no troubles but real troubles, we should not have a tenth part of our present sorrows. We feel a thousand deaths in fearing one, but the psalmist was cured of the disease of fearing. ‘I will fear no evil,’ not even the Evil One himself; I will not dread the last enemy, I will look upon him as a conquered foe, an enemy to be destroyed, ‘For thou art with me.’ This is the joy of the Christian! ‘Thou art with me.’”
Those words really resonate with me. How much of our worry is due to the fear of what if? God is with us. Why should we fear? As David says in the second half of this verse, we don’t need to fear evil, for “your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Again, that doesn’t mean there isn’t evil, but that we do not need to fear it. That is because God is with us to watch over us and protect us. David says that God has a rod and staff. Those things are what shepherds used to protect and guide the sheep. The same way a shepherd doesn’t take a rod and staff and beat the sheep with them, God doesn’t either. The shepherd uses those tools to ward off attackers and to lead the sheep in the way they should go. They could use the staff to lift up a sheep that has fallen into a ditch, for example. God metaphorically does the same thing for us. And both tools, David says, “they comfort me.” If those tools were used in a painful way on the sheep, then the sheep would fear those items. If God used those tools of His on us in a painful way, then David would not say they comfort him.
It’s important to understand this metaphor of the rod and staff because it can skew our idea of God’s character if we don’t. For example, in Proverbs, we see a verse where this gets bizarrely misapplied. Proverbs 13:24 says, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” People use that verse to justify spanking children. Setting aside whether it’s right or wrong for a parent to spank a child, it is wrong to use that verse as a proof of why you should. I really like how the ERV translates this verse. It says, “If you don’t correct your children, you don’t love them. If you love them, you will be quick to discipline them.” They knew when translating this verse that a shepherd doesn’t beat his sheep with the rod or the staff. This verse has been so warped, it’s wonderful that the ERV communicates what the verse is actually saying: the rod is a rod of correction. It is a rod and staff that brings comfort and correction to us. It’s not used to threaten us.
Then David mentions God’s provision again. In verse 5, he says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
This verse was most likely referencing the time when David learned that his son Absalom was trying to kill him and take the throne. A man who had been one of Saul’s servants brought David food right after he flees the city. This man seems to be conspiring to take over a valuable property that David had given to Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth, and so he meets David and gives him food and provision that technically belonged to Mephibosheth, but he sets up a feast for David and his men.
God’s provision and care for us is so great that not only can God provide for us in the middle of our enemies, but he can use the most unlikely people to do this through. Just think about this for a moment: God’s blessings are so great that He can even use our enemies to provide the table and the gifts laid on it.
One of my favorite verses on the abundance of God’s blessing is in Malachi 3:10 which says, “’Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it’” (NKJV). God’s word tells us that He will be faithful to provide for needs if we will trust Him by following Him.
Back to the Psalm, the second half of this verse might be harder for us to understand today. Anointing the head with oil is a custom that most of us are not familiar with. Jesus gives us a clue to understanding it in Luke 7:44-47. He says, “Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.’”
Again, in the ERV translation, it helps explain verse 46, which says, “You did not honor me with oil for my head, but she rubbed my feet with her sweet-smelling oil.” It was a customary show of honor to take oil and place it on a guest’s head. David says, “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” He’s saying that God is treating David like an honored guest. God has invited him in, set before him a feast of provision, poured oil on his head and filled his cup to overflowing: all to show David that he is welcomed and loved.
And this ties in with the last verse, verse 6, which says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Since God’s goodness and mercy, or goodness and lovingkindness, as some translations say, have followed David thus far, he trusts that God’s goodness and mercy will continue to follow him for the rest of his life.
Maybe I’m the only one who struggles with this, but do you ever feel like eventually God will stop wanting to bless you? I have zero reasons to think God will stop loving me, and God has never failed me, yet I struggle with trusting Him. For I know that if I truly fully trusted Him and never doubted that His goodness and mercy were following me, then I would never have any worry or anxiety. Yet, I still worry. That is a lack of faith. I’ve mentioned this George Mueller quote before, but it’s worth repeating: “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.” If we could truly believe that God’s goodness and mercy are following us all the days of our lives, then why would we ever have any worry? Like David models for us, it is good to remind ourselves and declare this truth: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
That last part of the sentence is so important, isn’t it? Our end goal of this life is that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. If that is our ultimate aim in life, then all the things we worry and fret about don’t seem so important after all, do they? If that end is our goal, then the problems we face in this present world don’t seem all that worrisome, for after all, these problems are actually temporary. But if we lose sight of our goal, and we aren’t spending time in the Word and in prayer, then the problems of this world will overwhelm our faith and we will begin to worry. The key is, we must think more like sheep.
American missionary W.M. Thomson, who spent 25 years in Syria, wrote a book in 1880 called The Land and the Book. Thomson wrote about the role of shepherds and what he had observed while there. He said, “Some sheep always keep near the shepherd, and are his special favorites. Each of them has a name, to which it answers joyfully, and the kind shepherd is ever distributing to such, choice portions which he gathers for that purpose. These are the contented and happy ones. They are in no danger of getting lost or into mischief, nor do wild beasts or thieves come near them. The great body, however, are mere worldlings, intent upon their mere pleasures or selfish interests. They run from bush to bush, searching for variety or delicacies, and only now and then lift their heads to see where the shepherd is, or, rather where the general flock is, lest they get so far away as to occasion a remark in their little community, or rebuke from their keeper. Others, again, are restless and discontented, jumping into everybody’s field, climbing into bushes, and even into leaning trees, whence they often fall and break their limbs. These cost the good shepherd incessant trouble.”
Is this not like God and His sheep? I know it’s a theological land mine to imply that God has favorites, but certainly we see evidence of that in Scripture. The most obvious one being the Apostle John, who refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved (John 13:23). I think it’s as simple as James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” When we draw near to God and we want to be close to Him, He answers that cry of our heart. It’s also as Isaiah 66:2 says, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” And when we draw near to God and seek Him, He looks on us with favor.
David knew this. He wrote in Psalm 30:7, “By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong.” In the NIV it says, “Lord, when you favored me.” David had been literally anointed with oil, and God had miraculously provided for him time and time again. David knew that he was favored by the Lord. Even Acts 7:46 tells us that David found favor in the sight of God. That is why he had confidence that the Lord would continue to be with him, and would continue to bless him all the days of his life. He had confidence that God’s goodness and mercy would never run out.
If we continue to follow God, and we draw near to Him, seeking Him with our whole hearts, then we too never have to fear. We too can declare, as David does, that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives until we dwell in the home He is making for us. But if we are straying away from His side, and are going off on our own, then we open ourselves up to greater attacks from the enemy. And, using this same metaphor of the sheep, we could fall into ditches or be devoured by lions. But if we are walking with our Shepherd, even when we encounter trouble and danger, God is with us and therefore we do not need to fear.
But I have a question for you: are you looking for evidence of His goodness and mercy? If you are looking at what other people have, or are focused on what you don’t have, then you might miss it. But I think you will see it all around you, if you look for it. For as James 1:17 tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Everything good and lovely in our world is a gift to us from the Father. He is our provider, protector and leader. He is our Shepherd. We can trust Him.
Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You for all the many gifts You give us each day: the sun that rises, the rain that falls, the birds that sing, but we thank You most of all for the greatest gift You gave: Jesus coming to earth and dying on the cross for our sins. Thank You for the goodness and mercy given to us through Jesus, for His name’s sake. We pray that You would fill us with Your Holy Spirit so that we can have faith to trust You no matter what valley we are walking through. Help to realize that You are with us and will never leave us. We love You and thank You for Your care and provision. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
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