What the Old Testament Means to Us. . No. 11

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

In this series on what the Old Testament means to us we have seen that the grace of God is the overarching theme. In this installment I want us to see how God’s grace is dramatically demonstrated in the Bible’s most famous passage, the 23rd Psalm. This psalm is the centerpiece of all the OT, and it is unique in that it is the favorite passage of the Jew, Eastern Orthodox, Western Christian, and even the unchurched man on the street. While we have already studied the psalms in this series, we are looking at “The Shepherd’s Psalm” not so much as one more psalm, but as a canon of Scripture unto itself that captures the essence of religion. If we make the gracious truths of this psalm our own, we go far in realizing what the OT means to us.

One of the marks of great literature is that one can go back to it again and again and find it refreshing each time. However familiar they are, the rich phrases of the 23rd Psalm yield deeper meaning each time they are turned to. Like a great painting, we can never turn away from it with a “I’ve seen it before.”

It is significant that this short canon of Scripture was written by a king who had once been a shepherd. This is why we can think of David as a shepherd-king, one who ruled over his people with tender loving care, one who could look back to his boyhood days when he watched over the flock in the craggy hills of Judea. David’s perilous life with his flock led him to think of God as his shepherd in troubling times, which gives us the most meaningful metaphor of God in all the Bible and the most frequently used. Sheep and lambs are referred to 340 times in the Bible and shepherds 80 times, and never are shepherds referred to in a disparaging way.

Among the references to God as a shepherd are these impressive lines from Is. 40:11:

He will feed His sheep like a shepherd;

He will gather the lambs in His arm,

and carry them in His bosom,

And gently lead those who are with young.

The first line of the 23rd Psalm is so familiar to us that we might miss the significance of the term shepherd. Its significance becomes clear when we try to substitute some other metaphor, such as “The Lord is my grocer” or “The Lord is my stock broker,” which are grotesque. We might say “The Lord is my physician” because a physician like a shepherd can be thought of as giving of himself to help those he serves. Or we could say “The Lord is my friend,” and it is interesting that shepherd and friend come from the same root word in Hebrew.

One of the riches of this passage is that it states in a positive way what God is and what He does. There is no beseeching, such as, “Lord, be my shepherd” or

“God, please lead me beside still waters.” Neither is David arguing that God does this or that. He is stating facts and glorying in them. This is the grace of God. David’s life was stained by sin, but still he could look to God as caring for him just as he watched over his sheep. David was not all that good, but still God was with him when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

Too, this psalm is rich in emotion, which is so necessary to true religion. Religion must be of the head but it must also be of the heart. The feel of this psalm is in pronouns like! and my. Luther had a point when he said that the heart of religion is its personal pronouns. That glorious first line, “The Lord is my shepherd,” is captivating because it gives us the security of belonging to God. I am as near to God and He is as near to me as are the lamb and its shepherd. He is my shepherd! What could be more comforting than that?

The feeling in the hymn is also evident in the tender scenes of pastoral life, such as the intimacy between sheep and shepherd. One shepherd in Palestine told a minister that he could identify his sheep blindfolded, by feeling of their faces. While sheep can see only a few feet, they never mistake the identity of their shepherd. A visitor once put this to a test by putting on the robe of the shepherd and walking among his sheep. At first they did not seem to notice, but the moment he spoke they fled in panic. That gives meaning to Jesus’ likening himself to a shepherd in John 10: “My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me. But a stranger they will not follow but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.”

A stranger they will not follow. What pregnant words those are! If we stay close to our Good Shepherd we will not be led astray by the false values of this world, such as secularism and consumerism, however attractive their voices may be.

An old story comes out of Wales of two ministers who were vacationing in the Welsh mountains and came upon a shepherd boy attending his flock. The lad had been deprived of education and knew nothing of the Christian faith. The ministers taught him the 23rd Psalm, especially the first line. They went on their way and thought no more about it, but the next year when they returned for their vacation they chanced to call at a humble cottage nestled in those same hills. When the lady of the house was serving tea she noticed that one of them was studying the picture of her son on the mantle.

They thought they might have met him, but she explained that it was unlikely since he worked as a shepherd back in the hills, and that he recently died from a fall on a cold night while attending his sheep. They told her the story of how they had met him the year before. She told them that there was something unusual about his death that they might be able to explain. He was clutching the third finger of his left hand, she told them. They then told her how they taught him to count off the five words “The Lord is my shepherd” on the thumb and fingers of his left hand, and noted the significance of the fourth word, “The Lord is my shepherd.” The shepherd boy was holding to the my when they found him frozen to death.

It is impressive how that third finger of the left hand in many cultures has come to stand for possession. The ancients believed that a nerve ran from that particular finger directly to the heart, the seat of affections. Women through the centuries have worn a ring upon that finger because the man of her life placed it there, saying, “She is mine.” Can we, like that shepherd lad, hold that finger in our hour of trial with the assurance that we belong to the God of heaven and He belongs to us?

One need not travel far in the rugged and barren terrain of Palestine to marvel how David could ever have said, “I shall not want,” if he depended upon that land for his sustenance. If it was “a land flowing with milk and honey” to ancient Israel, it was only as they compared it to the desert of Egypt wherein they had wandered for forty years. One can hardly find a more desolate place than the Sinai desert with its granite mountains and ever-drifting sand. Stones are everywhere, which may be why they are so frequently referred to in the Bible. It was an arduous task for a shepherd to find food sufficient for the sheep. But when David in his after-years reminisced on his years as a shepherd he could write, “I shall not want.” it is one of the great affirmations of Scripture.

It was a matter of trust on David’s part, which gets to the heart of what religion is all about. The God who commanded the ravens to feed Elijah in that same barren land would care for him as well, regardless of circumstances. I shall not want! While that assurance refers primarily to physical needs, it is a promise that relates to all of life’s troubles. The problem for most of us is that we have never been in absolute want, and we tend to rely upon our own strength and resources. We know that in some parts of the world God’s children are suffering from want, often because of famine. But God in His providence never allows famine to afflict all the world at the same time. Over all there is always enough for all God’s people, if only we will share. It is crucial that we learn that life is a family affair. When enough of us are controlled by the spirit of Christ there will be worldwide wellbeing.

Green pastures and still waters were scarce in the land where David worked as a shepherd. In fact there was no such thing as “a pasture” as we understand that term in the western world. The sporadic patches of green grass were scattered over the barren land, unfenced and unenclosed. It was difficult for the shepherd to find enough of these to sustain his flock, and there was always competition with other shepherds, who sometimes fought bitterly for a cool stream or a scrap of green. The shepherd, therefore, had to contend with wild men as well as wild beasts. So delicate was the balance between survival and extinction that the shepherd always slept near his flock, even when they were in a sheepfold.

All this adds poignancy to those majestic lines: “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.”

The reference to lying down points to the fact that the sheep are comfortably fed and are relaxed. I recall seeing such scenes in New Zealand, where there are one million people and six million sheep. Until they have grazed sufficiently the sheep scurry about looking for luscious grass, which is no problem in New Zealand. But on most any hillside where one might see hundreds of sheep, there are those who are lying down, full and satisfied.

This is saying to us that we don’t have to worry, fret, and cope the way we do. God provides green pastures and still waters. He blesses us with our needs if not our wants, even when times are hard. For the Christian the ultimate green pasture and still water is Jesus, for he is the bread of life and the water of life, God forbid that we be starving sheep or a frightened flock when abundance and security are ours as the free gift of grace. If we know the voice of our shepherd, we will follow wherever he leads, whether over steep and rugged mountains or dark and precipitous valleys.

When David goes on to say “He restores my soul,” he is saying, as a British theologian translates it, “He brings me back from wandering,” which was a large part of the work of a shepherd watching after straying sheep. If a lost sheep lingered too long on another’s land it became the property of another shepherd. Too, a wandering lamb or sheep was vulnerable to wild beasts. This reality of pastoral life led Jesus to liken a wandering sinner to a lost sheep. One lost sheep has such value to the shepherd of a hundred sheep that he will leave the ninety-nine and search for the lost one, our Lord noted. And when he finds it he greatly rejoices. God is like that, Jesus is saying, for when a lost sinner is brought back the angels of heaven rejoice. That is what “He restores my soul” means. Like David’s sheep we are always nibbling ourselves lost, but our Shepherd-God always brings us back.

Here we have an important part of what the OT means to us. It reveals to us a God who not only has the tender loving care of a shepherd, but one who even pursues us in our foolish wanderings. What an impressive truth it is that it is not the sheep that finds the shepherd but the shepherd that finds the sheep. If we love God, it is because He first loved us. We didn’t choose Him, He chose us. We can trust Him to do a Savior’s work. This is why we must “try” less and trust more. It is more by yielding than by trying that our souls are continually refreshed. While Paul could say, “I can do all things,” he aptly added “through him who strengthens me.” Jesus spoke a truth that has difficulty getting through to us in our “Do it yourself culture—“Apart from Me you can do nothing.”

There are other goodies in the 23rd Psalm that underscore what religion in the OT is about. These we will study in our next.—the Editor

While we live our life here on earth, so long as we live it “with” him, and allow him to live it “with” us, then we experience the deep joy, satisfaction and security that the sheep knows in the presence of its good shepherd.—George A. F. Knight