Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the life of a Christian from Psalm 23
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 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.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
So reads the Word of God.
Frequently when we wish to discuss something complex, the model we choose turns out to control the entire discussion. For example, supposing you want to talk about the church. If you think of the church in terms of a business model, then immediately you think about management, a chairman of the board, cost-effectiveness, accountability, productivity.
You may change your model to the family. Then you think about relationships, brothers and sisters in Christ, personal relationships, sibling rivalries. Then you remember the expression found in 1 Timothy. “The church is the pillar and ground of the truth.” Then you think in terms of the defense of the apostolic gospel, creating boundaries, erecting standards, articulating propositional revelation.
Then you think in terms of fellowship, and who knows what that means today. It sounds something like having warm fuzzies over tea after a meeting. Something like that. Then if we’re a little more biblically informed, it has to do with joint partnership in a shared enterprise under the lordship of Christ, with economic implications, no less.
If any one of these models becomes a controlling or exclusive model, serious distortion soon occurs and our understanding of the church is correspondingly shanghaied into some reductionistic subset of the biblical revelation. How then shall we talk about God? If we think of him as Creator, if we think of him as Lord, if we think of him as Judge, if we think of him as Bridegroom, if we think of him as Rock, if we think of him as Deliverer, if we think of him as Father, in each case there is a nest of associations that immediately come to mind.
Each model is only one model. If I think of God as King, I think in terms of his sovereign reign, of the exercise of his authority, but I do not necessarily think of his creative power or his fatherly care. I do not necessarily think of his stability as the Rock of our salvation. If I think of him as Creator, I do not necessarily think of him as Judge. If I think of him as Judge, I do not necessarily think of him as Father.
Each casts up an entire range of associations. Insofar as each is a biblical extended metaphor, each reveals something true about what God is like. None must ever become exclusive, lest my understanding of God be reduced to a small subset of the rich diversity found in Holy Writ. In Psalm 23, David reaches for the most comprehensive and intimate metaphor for God he can think of.
He says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” So far in the book of Psalms, most of the metaphors for God have been more distant. God is king. God is deliverer. God is rock. God is shield. David himself has been a shepherd a long time and he knows the long hours and hard work involved. He has experienced the kind of bond that is formed between shepherd and sheep.
He knows that a shepherd’s life is not a summer’s day of idyllic pleasure. We urban folk sometimes think a shepherd somehow sits under the shade of a palm tree, a rather boring existence, strumming a guitar and writing psalms that can perhaps be canonized. Yet a little research into a shepherd’s life shows that it is full of hard work, many decisions, not a little industry.
If there is a slower pace of life, it is certainly not a life of ease. The shepherd ensures the flock’s safety. He is the flock’s guide, protector, thinker, organizer, disciplinarian, and physician. So David says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” In this psalm then, David thinks about God as if he, David, were a sheep. This is, if you will, a sheep’s-eye view of God.
David himself has been a shepherd for so long that he thinks he understands how sheep think, if I may put it that way. This is, in a sense, the psalm of the sheep. It’s a sheep’s view of how he would try to describe God. From this perspective, David immediately begins with a view of the shepherd and the sheep that only a person who himself was a shepherd would view in such comprehensive categories.
Our task is to understand it, to apply it to us today, and to see also what further use is made of this metaphor in Scripture. This is not the last word. It is an important word along the line for the last word, who is Jesus Christ himself who declares, “I am the good shepherd.” What then do the sheep of God’s flock experience? What does this psalm tell us? What do the sheep of the Lord’s flock experience?
1. They experience contentment.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters …” Like so many psalms, this one begins with the Lord. “The Lord is my shepherd …” We must remember that when David writes this, there is antecedent revelation.
There is revelation that he has already read, known about, experienced. He has a Bible. It is not as complete as our Bible, but he already has the books of Moses. He already knows something of the early history of Israel. He knows about God as Creator. He knows about God as covenant Lord.
He knows that this term rendered Lord, Yahweh, is the name, the covenant name by which God revealed himself to Moses and others. “I am that I am,” the transcendent Lord who will not be reduced to the status of a local vassal king for one tribal grouping. This is the one who spoke and worlds leaped into being. This is the one who is Creator.
This is the one whose hand governs the farthest reaches of interstellar space. He is the one also who so sovereignly controls each pulsating microorganism, a billion of them in a handful of dirt that not one falls to death without his sovereign sanction. Yet he says, “The Lord, this Lord, is my shepherd.”
Some have said rightly that if the proper subject of this psalm is the Lord, the most sublime word is my. It is not the Lord is the shepherd of the universe. The Lord is the shepherd of all God’s people. The Lord is the shepherd of the covenant community. Here, despite all those who say that Old Testament saints only thought corporately, they had no idea of the individual, here David refutes them all and says, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
That forces every thoughtful reader to ask, “Can I repeat that? Is it true of me? Can I say where I am, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ or is that merely some ancient creedal formula used at deathbeds, funerals, romanticized ecclesiastical occasions? Or is this the very confession of my soul?” We remember the words of Jesus in John 10.
“My sheep hear my voice and they know me and they follow me.” “The Lord is my shepherd, therefore …” (That’s the logic that’s presupposed even if there’s no particle.) “Because the Lord is my shepherd, therefore, I shall lack nothing.” At the level of the metaphor, that means that the sheep will enjoy all the shade they need, all the pastureland they need.
They will be deloused on occasion. They will have adequate fodder, protection from wild beasts, provision when sleet comes down suddenly. They will be looked after in all their wants and their needs. If the Lord is our shepherd, what better protection could we have? Could there be a better shepherd? If I am the Lord’s sheep, could I conceive of a better shepherd?
“The Lord is my shepherd,” David says. “I shall lack nothing.” In other words, what David is articulating is the rare jewel of contentment. He expresses it in a variety of ways. “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Shepherds tell us that sheep never lie down when they’re hungry. They stand to eat.
They don’t lie there like rabbits, nibbling their way forward as they crouch in the grass. They stand to eat. They lie to ruminate. Sheep don’t lie down when they’re harried. Sheep don’t lie down when there’s danger about. Here are fat, well-favored, contented sheep with green grass, still waters. They are not spooked. We remember that Scripture teaches godliness with contentment is great gain.
We live in a most discontent society. We have so much and we are content with so little. We live in a generation that seeks some sense of fulfillment, of self-identity through travel or pleasure or bigger houses or more money. A young lady comes to see me and she tells me that she is going to pursue a course in business management. I ask her, “Why?” She says, “Because I think I would be good at it.” I say (because she claims to be a Christian), “So what? Are there other things you might be good at?”
“I’d like to earn quite a lot of money.”
“Why?”
“If I had money, I could spend it on all kinds of things that I’d like.”
“Why?” Then the Christian conscience kicks in.
“I’d be able to give a lot to missions.”
“Why? Do you really think it’s important or are you just easing the load of guilt? Do you really want to become excellent in business management so that you can earn a lot for missions? God bless you, my dear sister. Or is it because you think that in the acquisition of many things you will find contentment?”
Are you so blind? Have you not read, do you not believe, that he who seeks many things, he who seeks to find himself, he who seeks to discover himself, to identify himself, to fulfill himself is lost already? You find yourself by losing yourself. You live by dying. It is the elementary rule of the kingdom.
Christians are not immune from these pleasures. Here the sheep are content. Here the sheep are content. They are not like the sad picture portrayed by the prophet Jeremiah. What does he say? Jeremiah, chapter 2. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Not only have they forsaken me, the fount of life, the source of true contentment, but then they’ve had the audacity to build their own cisterns, their own pools. They’re so stupid and blind they can’t see that they’re cracked already and all the water has gone out. They are hungry and they are thirsty and they’re chasing everywhere for fulfillment.
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But, ah, the waters failed!
E’en as I stooped to drink, they fled,
And mocked me as I wailed.
Now none but Christ can satisfy.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.” This is not a picture of God in which somehow Christians living under his sway will chasten themselves with some kind of guilt trip, some kind of moral flagellation. “I may not like this religion stuff, but I’m tough. I’ll stick it out. Others may pursue their own interests, but not I. I’ll be disciplined, I will. I’m not the kind that’s going to feed all my own interests. I won’t pander to myself. ‘Death to self,’ I say.”
That’s not quite the picture here. Here rather is a person whose contentment is in the shepherd and all that the shepherd provides. “I love the Lord.” That’s what the psalmist is saying. “I’m happy with him, and therein is my contentment.” Do you remember the prayer of Paul recorded in Ephesians 3:14–21?
In the second petition of that prayer, the apostle says that he prays that his readers “… might have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge …” Is there any greater contentment than truly being loved, truly being loved, feeling loved, cherished beyond words?
Some of us in evangelical circles have been so strong on making Christianity a creedal religion that we have forgotten that God is to be experienced. Do not misunderstand me. I know well that if you try to build your entire Christian faith on mere experience, you will quickly be lead astray. But if faith is ever reduced to mere propositions, what do we have that the devils don’t have?
They know what propositions are true as well. Have you noticed the number of texts that speak of Christianity in terms of personal knowledge and experience? The kingdom of God, we are told, is not meat and drink but love and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. “My peace I leave with you,” he says. “Not as the world gives, give I to you.”
Indeed, when in Ephesians 5, the apostle draws a contrast between being filled with wine, in which is excess, and being filled with the Spirit, the idea is that wine will make you high and make you feel good, but there are nasty ramifications. You lose control. You lose accuracy. You lose responsibility. You become cruel. There’s a hangover. There’s a headache.
What do you want to be high on that ground for? Get high on the Spirit, instead. That’s the idea. Find your satisfaction and fulfillment there. I’ve overstated it a bit, but my point is that the Spirit is to be experienced in our lives. Read 1 Peter through at one sitting and underline all the places where the personal knowledge of God in our lives is to be manifested and felt, and God is to be known, not just known about.
That is the kind of supposition that is here. It is not, “The Lord is my shepherd and I am reasonably content because he’s filled my coffers.” No, “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore, I shall not want.” There is the ground for all, all contentment. All the provision that he makes for quiet waters and adequate nourishment all springs from this first point. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
2. They experience not only contentment but assurance.
Verse 3: “He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” What does this have to do with an extended metaphor on sheep and shepherd? Do sheep have souls? Has David abandoned his metaphor, as some argue?
No, first the word my soul, the word behind my soul as often in Scripture here means something like, my life, myself. He restores me. He restores my life. Shepherds tell us that a sheep can be cast. A cast sheep is a sorry sight. The sheep lies on its back, feet in the air, unable to turn over, flailing away, unable to stand up, bleating piteously.
It happens when certain sheep lose their balance. They may lie down on the edge of a small depression in the dirt. They lie down, contented, maybe roll over on their side and stretch. Then they roll into the depression a little bit. Their feet come off the ground. This happens when a sheep is overweight or is carrying too much wool or simply doesn’t have a good sense of coordination.
The sheep goes over and its feet come off the ground. Then it might panic, and it scrambles a bit, flailing those legs, but doesn’t do any good. Then it tips right over and it’s on its back. Now the center of gravity has guaranteed that the thing can’t get up again. After a few hours, gases begin to collect in the rumen.
What that does is simultaneously ensure that the sheep is top light when upside down. As well, the pressure begins to cut off the circulation to the legs. If the country is a hot country, such a sheep can die in a few hours. In a cool country where there is lots of rain to keep the sheep from becoming too bloated, it might last that way for several days.
One of the reasons why a good shepherd will constantly be counting his flock is because the shepherd is checking to see if one of the sheep have gone off behind a tree or around a hill somewhere and become cast. I suspect that that’s what the psalmist has in mind when he says here, “He restores my life.” For a sheep in such a position is dead.
It’s not dead yet, but it’s as good as dead. Its life is already counted for nothing. If there are any buzzards or vultures around, they will hone in on a cast sheep. If there’s a pack of dogs, this sheep can’t run. It’s had it. So a good shepherd is counting his flock. If there’s one missing, he looks hard and long and fast to restore the life of his sheep.
In fact, some have even argued that occasionally when David says something like, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” he has some of this same agrarian metaphor in his mind. Does not this happen sometimes with the Lord’s sheep now, escaping the metaphor and coming to that to which the metaphor refers?
Are we not, on occasion, we who are the Lord’s sheep going nowhere in our spiritual life, captured and snared, distracted by lust, chained by love of money, captive to pride of position, deeply bound to love of recognition, locked into prayerlessness, proud of our unconfessed sin, churning up clouds of bitterness and self-righteousness, and easy prey to every spiritual vulture, every pack of dogs that comes along unless the shepherd finds us.
David had been through periods like that when spiritually, morally he’d had it. He could say, “He restores my soul.” The shepherd finds the sheep and picks the animal up. Often the animal’s circulation has been so bad that the animal can’t stand anymore. The shepherd has to carry the sheep, massage its legs until the circulation returns.
Then after a few minutes, sometimes longer, the sheep scampers off and joins the flock again. It may be that it is a cast sheep that Jesus pursues in the parable of the shepherd in Luke 15, the one that was lost. There Jesus unpacks the parable for us and says, “Does not the shepherd rejoice over one sinner that repents more than over 99 that do not need repentance?”
We, who are the sheep of the Lord, need restoration. We testify as we progress along the Christian way, looking back along the various times when we too, to our deep, died shame, that we have fallen and shame the Lord who bought us, we too confess, “He restores my soul.” Restoration has both an objective and a subjective sense.
Indeed, the word used here is found in both sorts of contexts in Scripture. For example, in Psalm 60:1 the psalmist writes, “You have rejected us. You have removed yourself from us. You have become angry—now restore us!” We need to be restored to objective communion and linkage with God himself.
It can have a subjective overtone, as in Proverbs 25:13. “Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to those who sends him; he refreshes the spirit of his master.” Same verb. He restores the spirit of his master. The kind of restoration that this shepherd undertakes is not only the kind of objective thing that brings us back to the flock, but subjectively in our own spirits as we see ourselves we are refreshed inwardly, spiritually by this restoration.
We draw great confidence from the fact that it is written, “He who has begun a good work in you will perform it to the end.” The entire ground of our assurance lies in this truth. “He restores my soul.” At the end of the day, although all of the responsibility to persevere in God and with God is laid upon me, my assurance finally is in the shepherd of whom it is said, “He restores my soul.”
Indeed, “He guides me in paths of righteousness.” There is a kind of planned ambiguity in the original. At the level of sheep this simply means, “He guides me in right paths, not the paths that are dangerous or the paths that take me back to the same pasturelands where overgrazing can ultimately kill the grass and, therefore, leave me with nothing.
He guides me in right paths, paths that are good for me. He takes me on to fresh pastureland where there’s not danger, away from barbed wire or savage animals. He leads me in right paths.” The same expression also means paths of righteousness. The sheep don’t follow paths of righteousness, but insofar as the sheep represents me, the right paths I follow are paths of righteousness.
Thus, the planned ambiguity tells us what the metaphor means. This is what we are made for. This shepherd leads us in these right paths. This we are told, “… for his name’s sake.” Why does God save us? Why does God have a sustained interest in our holiness? Why does God lead us in right paths? There are many legitimate answers to that.
Because he loves us. That is a true and biblical answer. Because he sees that our sins have already been accounted for in the death of his Son. That is a true and biblical answer. If you have to give the highest answer, the ultimate answer it is this: he does it for his name’s sake. That is a wonderful ground of assurance.
Have you heard the prophet Ezekiel when he describes the new covenant in Ezekiel 36? Ezekiel 36, beginning at verse 22: “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name …’ ”
Then a little farther on he describes this cleansing in water and this sprinkling on the heart, the very language that Jesus takes up in the new-birth argument with Nicodemus in John 3. Then at the end of it all God says, “Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices. I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel.”
Now there is a sense in which he is doing it for our sake. Hebrew thought tends to put things antithetically when we would merely prioritize them. There is a sense in which he does it for our sake because he chooses to love us, but the foundational reason is the sake of his own great name. He has pledged himself to us in a covenant relationship. He can no more break that than dishonor his own name. He can no more break that than lie. He can no more fail than he can sin.
Thus when the psalmist says, “He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake,” he’s expressing profound assurance. He does not argue, “He guides me in paths of righteousness so that I will be good. He guides me in paths of righteousness so that I will please him. He guides me in paths of righteousness to get me ready for heaven,” although all of those things are true. He says, “He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Whatever God does, with all the mysteries of providence, with all the inscrutable ways of an omniscient God, we may be sure of this: that he will never, ever, not ever do anything that will compromise his own name. Never. For the believer, therefore, who begins to have a heart desire for God, for the glory of God’s name, for God’s reputation, then our prayers, our orientation, our values, our security rests in this truth: God will not dishonor his name.
That’s why Moses prays for the people as he does. “Lord, how can you threaten to wipe them out? I’m not saying that they don’t deserve it, but Lord, what will the nations say about you? Do you want your name to be dragged in the street? Do you want the pagans to say, ‘Uh-huh, God could take them out of Egypt but he couldn’t actually manage it through the desert.’ ”
What is Moses saying? He’s saying, “God, honor your name as you have said.” There also is great potential for prayer in the church today. Lord God, honor your name in the church of Jesus Christ today, in Canada, in this city. Honor your name in my life when I am tempted to sin and falter to seek the things that please me for time and space and have no bearing on eternity.
Honor your name. Work in me what is good and pleasing in your sight. Not that I might be thought spiritual, not that I might be thought powerful, not that I might be thought wise, but for your name’s sake. Therein is the psalmist’s great assurance.
3. They experience security.
Verse 4. In ancient Israel, valleys were thought of as dangerous places. In modern mythology, in modern literature, valleys are the happy places. How green was my valley. Up in the mountains were all the danger bits. Down in the valley, that’s where there’s lots of lush grass and free-flowing water.
In fact, in the language of Scripture, those two perspectives are reversed. The reason was two-fold. First, for a long part of Israelite history, their enemies had chariots and they did not. That meant that the danger places were down in the valleys were all of the roads were. If you could build up on the mountaintops, the chariots couldn’t get there.
There it was my man versus your man. Israeli soldiers, then as now, weren’t pushovers. If I could just build my city on the top of the hill, then I at least had a chance against these more powerful people and their ancient version of tanks. The second reason was that as far as the shepherd was concerned, where the animals came, the wild animals, lions as there were in those days in Palestine, where the wolves were, where the dangers were, they were all down in the valleys.
You got up a little higher, then there were not so many dangers for the animals. The valley is the dark place in biblical metaphor, even though it’s also the place where there’s often the water. What does the psalmist say? “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Many versions here have instead of the valley of the shadow of death, something like, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley.” Let me tell you the reason for the two renderings. The ancient Hebrew text was written only in consonants. There were no vowels. That’s the way they wrote.
In fact, modern Israeli newspapers with a few compromises are printed exactly the same way. You get used to reading it that way. Every once in a while, this leads to an ambiguity. If you put vowels in one way, it comes out with one meaning. You put vowels in another way, it comes out with another meaning. This is one of those places.
If you point the consonants, if you put in vowels one way, it means, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley.” Now you have a picture that’s purely bound up with sheep. The darkest valley with high walls on both sides. The sun is not coming in. You can’t see just what’s ahead. There might be a wolf pack around the corner.
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, you are with me.” If you point it another way, if you put in the vowels another way, then you are not simply talking about this particular metaphor, you are pushing the metaphor to the worst possible crisis. Now it’s the valley of the shadow of death. Clearly, that’s what the expression means in some places.
For example, in Job 38:17. There is a pair of lines and because they’re paired together, you can see what they mean. Line one says, “Have the gates of death been shown to you?” Line two, “Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?” Death is parallel to shadow of death. That’s the same expression as here.
If I understand the text aright, especially since all the ancient versions, all the ancient translations translate it in the strong way, the shadow of death, if I understand David’s argument aright, he is saying this: “Even though I walk through those dark valleys that all of us recognize are so dangerous, even the worst one, the one we all fear, the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil …” Why is that? “… because you are with me.”
He sets aside the metaphor just a little bit. If he’s pushing it all the way to death, he sets aside the metaphor a little bit and he is saying, “At this point, no other guide can accompany the traveler.” A couple of years ago a friend of mine died in England, in my arms, of cancer, a virulent cancer that took him out quickly. He had no family, no loved ones.
As he laid there dying, coming in and out of unconsciousness, they were dosing him up with more and more and more drugs to try and curtail the pain, by 3 and 4 in the morning, no matter what they gave him somehow it still didn’t kill the pain. Earlier on, he would talk about Turkish words. He had a great and abiding interest in Turkey and evangelism of Turks.
He had lead quite a number of them to the Lord. He would talk about Turkish words and what they meant. Each one was a Christian equivalent. Although he died in my arms and he took his last breath and was gone, he traveled that part without me. I didn’t leave his hospital bed for 48 hours, but that last bit was without me. Thank God, it was not without the Good Shepherd.
“For even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” He’s the only one who can be. All the friendships, all the honors, all the glories, all the praise, all the social structures, all the things that have entertained you and amused you and grasped your fancy and tickled your interest for 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, 60 years, 80 years, they can’t go with you then.
There is only one Shepherd who can go with you through the valley of the shadow of death. If you do not know him by then, you go through that valley alone. The psalmist said, “I will fear no evil for you are with me.” There again is the psalmist’s contentment in the Lord alone. Nor is this shepherd unarmed. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
The rod was a cudgel, carried on the belt, used for defense. Sometimes to cuff the sheep if they were uncooperative. Also, to drive off marauders. The staff was a walking stick with a hook used for control, for there is security in discipline. Thus we remember the Lord Jesus too on the night that he was betrayed, praying for Peter, “Satan has desired you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you.”
He comes to our defense through the darkest valleys, even the valley of the shadow of death. In Puritan times, Christians wrote books on how Christians died. We don’t do that today. We now hide Christian death, except in very romantic cases, with a plethora of euphemisms. “He’s gone on. He passed away. She went home.” We change the subject as quickly as possible.
It is a taboo subject in our society. We can talk about sex more freely than we can talk about death in our society. In Puritan times, Christians raised the banner. Come and watch how Christians die. Sex isn’t a sure thing. Death is. Why aren’t we preparing for it? Come watch how Christians die. They wrote books on how Christians died.
One minor English poet, minor for deservedly good reasons, nevertheless wrote one magnificent piece when he contracted the plague and knew that he was dying. He could not say, “I will immediately run to the National Health Service and they had jolly well sort me out. I pay taxes.” The recurring line in his poem was, “For I am sick and I must die.”
Into that poem, he weaved the very essence of his faith, for he wanted even by his passing to tell the world, “I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The terrors of hell will be beaten down by your cudgel, and if I stray, there is your staff to haul me back. I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
At this point, David gets so intimate he changes from describing the shepherd in the third person to the second person. No longer “The shepherd does that and he does this and he does the other.” Now he addresses the Lord himself. His eyes can no longer look down and talk to others about him. Now he looks up and he says, “… and you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Here, then, his security.
4. They experience not only security but safety.
Verse 5: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Some think that at this point, the psalmist ends his sheep metaphor, but I think not. Again, shepherds in many parts of the world have to prepare the pastureland.
Sometimes the pastureland develops certain dangers, noxious weeds of some sort, the white cama, which is often deadly to full-grown sheep and is always deadly to little lambs. Before a new pastureland, for example, can be used on any given season, the shepherd will walk up and down pulling out weeds. “The shepherd is preparing a table before me, and this even in the presence of my enemies.”
That is, the very enemies of the sheep that destroy the sheep. The malignities of nature, the dangers of weather, of wild animals, of buzzards, of eagles in Palestine. They might all laugh at my frailty, my silliness, my stupidity, my herd-like instincts, my inability to look after myself, but here you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Again the language is designed to be ambiguous. It fits the sheep, but it fits us too. Here is spiritual life that is not merely surviving, but triumphing. Even in the presence of my enemies I feast spiritually like a king, for the Lord has prepared the way for me. “You anoint my head with oil.” Both then and now sheep were subject to all kinds of lice and bugs and flies.
We use sheep dip today, but there are certain kinds of bugs where sheep dip won’t do. You can’t hold the whole head of the sheep under too long. It can’t breathe. You take a certain concoction (nowadays they use something like linseed oil, sulfur, and then some sophisticated drugs), and you rub it all over the sheep’s face, especially around the nose to keep away nose flies.
The nose flies get inside and deposit their eggs on the mucus membrane. Then when the larvae grow, they can cause inflammation and a lot of irritation and pain. You apply the ancient equivalent of Raid for sheep and you keep the blighters out. In the ancient world, they used olive oil and sulfur and various spices.
The anointing here works at the level of sheep. It’s protection against the irritants and the dangers, just as taking out the weeds is protection as well. Here there is safety provided by the shepherd. Yet at the same time, the same language is working at another level. For anyone who reads the Old Testament knows that the oil poured on the head is a symbol of good hospitality, of honor, of joy, of luxury, of plenty.
That is what the psalmist says again. He prepares a table. He anoints me with oil and thus protects me from the things that could harm me. I have safety in this shepherd. You who have been Christians for a while, what keeps you from spending a whole lot of time watching X-rated movies? What keeps you from wife-swapping parties and husband-swapping parties?
What keeps you from being abusive to your children? What keeps you from robbing a bank if you think you can get away with it? What keeps you from cheating on your income tax? I assume you won’t. What puts a curb on your tongue? Last night, my wife and I were out with a couple who have grown very close to us in the church.
They have taken an interest in our children, looked after them sometimes when my wife has been ill and I have been out of the country. They invited us out, and I found out some things about Mike that I hadn’t known before. He came from a rotten home, just a terrible home. He was abused. He was beaten. He left home at 16. His two brothers are still social misfits.
Here is this chap, Mike, who has one of the most solid, secure marriages, children, family relationships I have seen anywhere. That fellow is so mightily endowed with that least common gift: spiritual common sense. He is terrific. I trust my children with him above virtually any man on God’s green earth.
Then his wife started telling me what he was like when she met him. A vicious tongue that put down every single person he had to deal with. I have never heard Mike say an unkind word in eight years. Who brought that about? I said, “Mike, tell me. Was this just some sort of decision you made, you were going to turn over a new leaf? What brought this?”
He said, “I don’t know. It’s just all these years of being a Christian. It just beats it out of you. Sin like that isn’t attractive to me anymore.” He’s not a theologian. He doesn’t use big words like reconciliation and atonement and propitiation. He simply tells me that the Holy Spirit beat it out of him. He doesn’t find sin attractive.
For the Lord himself protects his anointing oil on us, and thus sins are repulsed. The noxious nose flies don’t have a chance to breed. He protects us from the dangerous, toxic weeds. He has renewed us and given us a clean heart and poured out his Spirit upon us. That which other sinners hunger for becomes despicable in our eyes. Not more despicable than when we ourselves clamor for it in times of weakness. There is safety in the shepherd, and there is great joy.
This is something of an Old Testament equivalent to a well-known passage in Romans. “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Just so. There is safety in the shepherd.
5. They also experience satisfaction.
“Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Goodness and love, steadfast covenantal grace, they’ll follow me, the sheep says. Not follow me in the sense of bringing up the rear, tagging along, but pursuing me. They will follow me. God will never let me go.
No matter how far I wander, they pursue me. They come after me. They follow me. Just as God’s wrath pursues and follows the ungodly, so his love and his steadfast goodness pursue me and follow me all the days of my life. Finally, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” I shall be with the shepherd. Sheep show a certain kind of contentment when the shepherd is around.
They can be startled and spooked by a jackrabbit that runs off or a dog that’s dumped into their flock. They are spooky, superstitious animals that run at the slightest concern. Then the shepherd walks into the flock, and if it’s a good shepherd, they are stilled. Their ideal of what is good is to be with such a shepherd. “… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
The word for forever simply means all the days of life. It does not by itself require eternity. Nevertheless, the thought is not far from the sweep of the argument. Does not Jesus himself argue in Matthew, chapter 22, verses 31 and 32 that if this God creates an unbreakable covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, must you not assume that they are still alive?
He is the God of the living, not the dead. That covenantal bond cannot be broken. This kind of shepherd does not lose his sheep. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” For these sheep, their home is God himself. This too is the end of Romans 8. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation, not height nor depth will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Before I close, I want to say two more things about this psalm.
First, Psalm 23 is not accidentally placed in the book of Psalms. One has to be very careful in Scripture about making arguments out of the order of things since sometimes the order of things in Scripture came about long after things were written and is not governed by any sort of theological principle.
For example, have you ever thought on what principle the letters of Paul are organized in the New Testament? Why does Romans appear before 1 Corinthians? Why is Galatians in front of Ephesians? Why is Philemon where … why isn’t Philemon put in front of Romans? Any survey of New Testament will tell you right away that they’re not put in the Canon in the order in which they were written, so what is the principle?
In fact, there are two principles that govern all the sequencing of Paul’s letters. The first principle is letters to churches go before letters to individuals. The second principle is long letters go before short letters. There’s one small exception. Galatians is put in front of Ephesians because probably in one of the earliest manuscripts when they were sorted out along this line, somebody wrote Galatians in a slightly bigger handwriting and made it look a little longer.
In fact, in a printed page, it’s about five lines shorter. It’s very difficult to make a big theological argument about why Galatians is in front of Ephesians. It’s the way the Canon was put together long after these things were written. In fact, the final form of the New Testament in our printed editions has no sanctity from the apostles.
The final form was determined in 1539, which is not usually considered part of the apostolic era. Sometimes there are orderings of things within the Canon that alert us to something special, especially in something like the book of Psalms. It is no accident that Psalm 1 is first. Psalm 1 begins with two ways. There is the way of the just and the way of the unjust.
It sets out a kind of bipolar view of life that governs everything in the Psalms. Or if you look at Psalm 120 and following, you have a whole list of songs of ascent. Songs that were sung probably as the believers ascended to Jerusalem for the high feasts. If I mistake not, Psalm 22, 23, and 24 are not put in that order accidentally but for a reason.
Psalm 22 begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The psalm is steeped in allusions to one who dies a horrible, sacrificial death, but whose death results in triumph. Scripture after scripture picked up and applied to Jesus in the passion narratives. Then there is Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then there is Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.”
Then the king approaches the city. Verse 7: “Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle.” It is as if already presaged by the ordering of the Psalms, the blessed Holy Spirit in the inscripturation of the truth was telling us, “The cross, before you can know the shepherd, in anticipation of the consummation.”
Finally, the believer’s joyful confession, “The Lord is my shepherd,” receives fuller exposition in later parts of Scripture. As important as it is for us read this psalm in its own historical context so that we think about these matters as David thought about them so far as we can put ourselves into the ancient Hebrew mind about a millennium before Christ …
As important as it is to do that, we are Christians. We live this side of the cross. We live after there has been much more self-disclosure from God himself. We have the right to know, the responsibility to know, how these themes have been developed in later Scriptures and later Scriptures and later Scriptures.
In what direction are they pointing? In what direction are they drifting? Are they establishing certain typologies that we can see more clearly perhaps than those first writers, still in line with what they are saying, but now more fully fleshed-out in the light of greater revelation that has come? And yes, there are many, many passages that teach us things that we should know. I mention only two, the first in the Old Testament and the second in the New.
First, Zechariah, chapters 11, 12, and 13. In Zechariah, chapter 11, God, who is so angry with his people, pictures two different shepherds on the last day. The shepherds who destroy the flock and ravage the sheep, the false religious leaders. Then in chapter 12, he pictures a time when he spares Jerusalem. In my understanding, a picture of the entire covenant people of God.
He spares them from the ravages of the nation and they look on me, the one they have pierced. In fact, the Hebrew text says, “They will look on me, he whom they have pierced,” as if there is an interplay between piercing God and piercing God’s messenger, the shepherd, who is more fully described in the next chapter.
“ ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” They will look on me, on him whom they have pierced, as if by the piercing of this shepherd, the shepherd who is stricken, God himself is pierced. That passage too is applied to Jesus in Matthew 24:30, in John 19, and in Revelation 1:7.
So then, is it all that surprising when we turn to John, chapter 10, and hear the Lord Jesus saying, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep and they know me. I am the good shepherd and my job is to lay down my life for my sheep. This command I receive from my Father. No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of myself in obedience to my Father for my sheep.”
All the themes of ancient Israel begin to coalesce in one who turns out in John’s terms to be not only the Good Shepherd, but himself a sheep, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. If you read through a thoughtful commentary on the passion narrative in John’s gospel, John 18 and 19, you will discover irony after irony after irony after irony steeped in this truth.
That the King is rejected as king, yet he’s still the King, yet the people say they have no king but Caesar, but on his headpiece, “This is the Jesus, the king of the Jews,” but the people would rather have Caesar. Irony. Irony. The people want to be pure so they could eat the Passover, and then they compound themselves with guilt in a conspiracy. Irony.
Passover symbolism everywhere. Passover symbolism. At the Passover feast, Jesus has slaughtered the real lamb of God. These are drawing together themes from Passover, from Psalm 23, and bringing these things together in one Good Shepherd. I love the old poem, almost doggerel, of S.W. Gandy that captures so much of this irony in four lines.
He hell in hell laid low,
Made sin, he sin o’erthrew
Nailed to the cross, destroyed it so,
And death, by dying slew.
For our Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. That is why the Christian has every right to think of the Lord Jesus Christ when he or she opens his Bible and reads, “I am the good shepherd … I shall lack nothing.” Amen.
