It's really pathetic that this post is coming in response to working on a paper for my Human Stress psych class (Nope. Took me three weeks months for these [almost] three verses) studying for finals, but procrastination's energy is procrastination's energy. Besides, I love meditating on this psalm before Sunday worship.
Much of this is merely being fleshed out from the notes I made for the Sunday School I taught a couple months ago to the adults at Westminster.
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There have been seemingly more deaths in the family and church body and more overt tragedies in this year. For this reason we lovingly approach Psalm 23 this morning: the psalm of the slain man whose only hope is in Yahweh as his shepherd and king.
The first question I bring to you is in the title: is Psalm 23 appropriate to be famous for the dead and the dying? It is a psalm of great hope in the resurrection and the salvation of God, and before we even delve into the psalm itself I will prove that it belongs to the lips of the quickened and the saved who are dying.
Firstly, Psalm 23 has historically been stipulated as the centerpiece of the deathbed cries of Christ, who, on the cross, once cried "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?," which is the beginning of Psalm 22, and gave up His spirit with the beginning of Psalm 25: "To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul." If this psalm is comfort to the Son of God, despised of men and forsaken for a moment by God though He was obedient to the point of death (even death on a cross!), then this psalm is sufficient for YOU, O Christian.
Secondly, Jesus is the Good Shepherd of the sheep given Him of the Father. He will lose none of them, save the son of perdition. He lays down His life for the sheep; He alone has the power to lay Himself down to sleep and to wake His soul from death, for the Protector of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps. Because He lives, YOU, O Christian, have assurance before God that YOUR valleys of the shadows of death will NOT be the death of you, that your enemies will NOT harm you in the presence of the wedding banquet of the Lamb, that you will ALWAYS be welcome in the house of Yahweh. You are promised the oil of gladness, running down Aaron's beard to cover the garments of His Body. You will not want, in this life or the next. And you will walk in the paths of righteousness without stumbling when you see His Face, the light of life.
1. The LORD is my shepherd;... (v.1-4)
a. What is a shepherd? A shepherd is one of the lowest menial jobs around. It is the duty handed to the youngest son (1 Samuel 16:11). It is, however, a very serious duty to be the shepherd of Bethlehem, for from the flocks of Bethlehem come the spotless Passover lambs exchanged for the spotted lambs of the pilgrims, a pittance of an offering pointing to the true and final spotless Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. A shepherd violently guards his sheep, such that even the fiercest of beasts or of men will not harm them; none of the sheep will be taken from His hand. A shepherd throws stones to prevent his sheep from straying from the right paths, a shepherd is wise about where to find pasture and quiet waters, a shepherd leads his sheep by name.
b. Who is our shepherd? John 10:3,4, 14 --> our shepherd is named. He is the I AM. What does this mean to us, the sheep of His pasture? It means that the great Shepherd is unchanging and is faithful to His covenant. It means we can discern who our true shepherd is and who are the faithless shepherds, who scatter when times get tough. It means we can follow in the footsteps of the only wise God, who leads us in paths of righteousness for His name's sake and for our benefit.
2. I shall not want.
a. He makes me lie down in green pastures; ... What are these green pastures? I can assure you, David with his sheep and our dear Lord on the cross were not thinking of the waving alfalfa fields of New Zealand. They were referring to something startlingly like the manna of the wilderness: merely daily bread. In the deserts of Judea, small leafy shoots of grass peek up from the rocks with the cold morning dew, quickly razed by the sheep. You see, in small countries like Israel or, from my own personal experience, South Korea, there isn't any space for wasted land. If you can grow people-food in a plot of ground, you grow people-food with that real estate. The sheep and the shepherd must venture out looking for manna among the dewy rocks of the desert.
What was this manna?
1. It was God-GIVEN.
2. It was TASTY.
3. It was DAILY bread. (No more; no less)
4. It was provided with an eye towards the Sabbath rest+worship.
Keep these things in mind as we continue. When the Psalmist says "He makes me lie down," it is important to understand what it means to lie down. Lying down to us signifies rest, comfort, ease, domestic tranquility. Lying down can be indicative of mealtimes (if your culture incorporated horizontal eating postures) or of sleeping. "Lying down" is juxtaposed with "rising up" (Deut. 6:7), which is spoken as a corollary to "sitting in your house and walking by the way" (Deut. 6:7). But this is still not quite sufficient to understanding this psalm. David is speaking from the voice of the sheep. A sheep was often a common domestic animal, the pet of the house. As such, it's easy enough to think of the times when our own pets, our cats and dogs, choose to lie down. This beautiful phrase "He makes me lie down in green pastures" is the Psalmist saying that the LORD, the great Shepherd, SATISFIES his needs enough that he lies down as a sheep, content with the bare and stony ground of the desert that brings forth shoots of grass like the miraculous manna. Day by day, His compassions fail not. Great is Thy faithfulness.
b. He leads me beside quiet waters;... What are these quiet waters? Fresh, clean, and living water is a scarce commodity in desert lands like Arizona and Israel. Rivers tend to create small and narrow canyons called "wadim" (wha-deem). This strengthens the river by creating shady natural aqueducts over time through the processes of erosion and the tendencies of the heavy concentrated duration of rainfall, resulting in potentially fatal flash-floods. When these rivers aren't flooding and creating a dangerous wall of water that pressurizes through the narrowness of the canyon walls, the streams are mild and the waters are quiet, or "still" as other translations have this verse.
What does this mean? We are not sheep; we have complex irrigation systems in place that siphon tons of water from Colorado every minute! O Christian, this verse speaks volumes to your heart. This verse tells you that exactly as the shepherd must certainly know the cycles of floods, the weather signs, which wadim are more dangerous, which wadim have the least number of "miry pits" (Psalm 40:2), and all sorts of other signs in order to water his flock safely, without fear of losing even one of them, SO ALSO your Savior is wise and knows all the different variables to your situation and circumstances. He does not lead you to destruction, nor does He send you in the valley of darkest shadows, even the pit of Sheol. He leads you beside quiet waters, because He cares for you.
c. He restores my soul:... Vocabulary is important. What does it mean to "restore" something? It means "to bring back, to reinstate, to return something/someone to a former condition, state, standing, position, place, etc." To understand whither our Good Shepherd restores our souls, we must know whence we have fallen and gone astray. But perhaps this is still too much of an assumption in today's post-modern world. Restoration also presumes a need for restoration. Restoration is not always necessarily a good thing-- as an example, my father used to work on the baby he never had, his 1967 Ford Mustang. He had placed even better things in it, a souped-up engine, a nice leather interior, higher quality oil, and a nicer convertible top. To restore this Mustang back to its original state might buy points at an auction-house for classic cars, but practically, it would damage the performance of the car.
But let us move onward, Christian brethren, for you all are intimately familiar with the fall of mankind as manifest in your own hearts and homes, much less made known through mass media. Because the souls of men are fallen, gone astray, the Good Shepherd must seek and save the lost sheep. He interposes His precious blood for those sheep, and He nestles them in His arms like a gentle mother carrying her firstborn son. He goes to great lengths to find these lost sheep from His pasture, and like David, He battles like a soldier against man and beast in order to bring His lambs home. He is not unwilling to leave the 99 justified persons in the wilderness in order to find the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-7). Your shepherd is faithful and will bring all His flock to the pastures of paradise. By restoring you to life, Jesus converts you, soul and body, to loving right things, hating wrong things, true worship in spirit and truth & not after the strength of men and horses. This restoration is the salvation of the sinner and it frees us to live in honor and not shame. It restores us (already! But not yet) to the estate of the unfallen Man, who sits at the right hand of the Father, happy and holy.
d. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake...
Let us begin at the end to establish our perspective. Our restoration, provision, protection, and guidance are for His name's sake. It is not without reason that our Westminster Confession Shorter Catechism begins with "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever"; many verses such as Psalm 23:3 will attest to the fact that this is the theme of the Scriptures and of all Creation and especially of the history of redemption. And what is a shepherd if not a redeemer? He who guards the sheep guards the sacrifices of atonement for all of Israel.
This is the "how" Yahweh satisfies you.
Continuing backwards, the paths of Christ are right, true, good, and easy. Jesus walks ahead of you; you never are called to walk unbeaten ground. Though you may be a bruised reed or a smoldering wick that He promises He shall not snuff out, the ground before you has been laid on much finer stones than yourself. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus calls out: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." As the philosopher Steve Tyler once screamed: "Walk this way!" Jesus isn't kidding when He says that His road is easy. Following Jesus is fraught with promised trials, tribulations, swords, ridicule, spittle, hunger, and sorrow, but it is a much easier yoke than the yoke of the Pharisaical human heart, which is the only alternative (beyond the cross of grace) to voluntarily plunging one's self in sin.
The final portion of this third verse in reverse is "He guides me." This is important to remember (especially with the valley of the shadow of death and the rod+staff combo of the following half of this psalm!) because it is often hard to remember that "it is He who made us, and we are His, the sheep of His pasture." Because He guides me, I shall not want, for He leads me like a shepherd towards safe waters, satisfaction in daily bread, and salvation from the temptations of the wilderness of sin.
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The rest shall follow in August or September 2013! But now I need to pack for Prague!
