Psalm 23 1st Peter 5:1-7 Rev. 7:17 John 10:1-18
I grew up in innermost inner-city Toronto. And I grew up without a car. The result was that I walked everywhere or rode the streetcar (there was no subway back then). I’m at home in big cities. I’m not at home in the country, in rural areas. My grandchildren comment that I’m a deep-down sixer, not a fiver.
Do you know the difference between a sixer and a fiver? A sixer is someone whose phone number has a 416-area code; a fiver is someone with a 905-area code. Fivers like to live in the suburbs or small towns or villages or the countryside. Because I’m a sixer I am exhilarated when I have asphalt under my feet and polluted air in my lungs.
Then I turn to Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ Do you know when I first saw a shepherd? I was born in 1944, and in 2011 (at age 67) I went to Israel. My tour group was bussing from Jerusalem to Jericho when we came upon a flock of sheep with a Bedouin shepherd. To be sure, I had seen sheep before, on farms in Canada. But a shepherd? Never. Among their other tasks, shepherds protect sheep. Sheep in Canada, however, are protected by electrified fences. In Canada a predator isn’t driven off by a shepherd; the predator gets a shock it won’t forget.
Despite my being a sixer, however; despite everything about me that is more citified than countryfied, Psalm 23, ‘The Shepherd Psalm,’ speaks profoundly to me. As often as I immerse myself in it I am instructed, moved, and taken deeper into the life and care and keeping of him who is the Good Shepherd, Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today we are together going to probe Psalm 23. The sermon will be somewhat different from the customary three- or four-point sermons we hear on Sunday; the sermon today will take the form of a continuous exploration and application of the psalm, verse by verse.
Verse 1 ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ THE LORD—YAHWEH in Hebrew, is God’s proper name. A proper name specifies uniqueness. I am not humankind-in-general, nor maleness-in-general. I am Victor. uniquely me. I am irreplaceable; I am unsubstitutable. As much can be said for any one of you. A proper name always points to someone who is unique.
Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, is not an instance of divinity, other instances of divinity being Allah or Gitchi-Manitou or Zeus or Thor or even the North American Way of Life. Yahweh, who alone delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt and alone pledged himself to Israel at Sinai and pleaded with the people to pledge themselves to him; this Lord is unique, incomparable, unsubtstitutable.
And he (not it) is our shepherd. What if God weren’t a shepherd? A shepherd cares. What if God didn’t care? At best he would be indifferent; at worst, he would be tyrannical, even a tormentor. But God is neither indifferent nor tyrannical nor tormentor. The shepherd cares.
To be sure, the bible speaks everywhere of God as king. This king, however, is king and shepherd at once, king and shepherd at all times. To say God is king is to say he rules effectively. His rule isn’t merely symbolic. (King Charles III is only a symbol, a figurehead, who has no political power. All power, all effectiveness, is vested in the British parliament.) To say that the Lord is king, on the other hand, is to say God isn’t a figurehead; he’s a genuine ruler. And to say that this king is also shepherd is to say that the one who rules the cosmos he has made; this one cares for everything and everyone he has made. This king cares so much for us that he will suffer to save us, and suffer for our sakes until his suffering entails nothing less than the sacrifice of himself.
If the Lord weren’t also shepherd he would be a royal ruler who could never be trusted. (After all, he might turn out to be nasty. History has seen no shortage of rulers who were vicious.) Yet a shepherd who isn’t sovereign ruler is ultimately ineffective. (However benign he may be, he might turn out to be useless.) The shepherd who is king is always effective; and the king who is shepherd can always be trusted.
Scripture insists that our shepherd-king will sacrifice himself for us, so very much does he love us. For this reason, our shepherd-king is also a lamb, the lamb of God. In Rev. 7:17 we are told, ‘The lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.’ Who rules over the vast cosmos? Who is simultaneously closer to us than our own breath? It is the king on the throne (only kings get to sit on thrones) who is shepherd and lamb all at once. How much does he care, and how effective is his caring? ‘The lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd…and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’
Because the Lord is king, his comforting us is effective finally. Because the Lord is shepherd, his rule over our lives will always be blessing ultimately. And because the Lord is lamb, we know he will always love us even more than he loves himself. This is the God whom David of old, the shepherd-king in Israel, knew and loved and forever holds up before us in Psalm 23.
Verse 2 ‘Green pastures and still waters.’ Since much of Palestine is desert, green pastures are hard to find. Left to themselves sheep will never find green pastures in a country where grassy meadows are scarce. Sheep have to be led to them or else the sheep will fail to thrive, even perish. To be sure, the shepherd safeguards the sheep against predators; but there is no point in fending off predators unless the sheep are also provisioned. The Lord who is our shepherd can be counted on to ensure our survival.
Make no mistake: our survival needs to be ensured, since threats abound. ‘Still waters’ are God’s gift in the face of raging waters. Raging water, whether storm or torrent or flood, is the biblical symbol for chaos.
Chaos, biblically, is creation de-creating. Chaos is the world on the way to being a wasteland. Chaos, as environmentalists rightly remind us, is planet earth on its way to uninhabitability. Green pastures are green and will remain green only if water is present and water is ‘still.’ Raging water, however, is the biblical symbol for threats of all kinds from all quarters.
We watch the news, and we see horrific depictions of both floods and fires. The material destruction and the human devastation are heartbreaking. Don’t pictures of burnt-out Maui and earthquaked Turkey look like morning-after pictures of saturation-bombed cities in World War II? Alert now, we think of the chaos that laps at us at all times. Disease is biological chaos at the door. Social upheaval is communal chaos around the corner. That’s why all police departments have riot squads at-the-ready: we know that social upheaval, quickly swelling, will readily collapse the social order essential to our survival. We fear mental illness just because we are aware that psychosis is chaos overtaking us and overwhelming us. Every economist knows that financial chaos is closer to us than most people grasp.
And then there is the chaos not without, this time, but within. Every day a thousand different voices tell us that we are this or that, or we should be this or that, or we are no more than this or that. Every day a thousand different voices tell us that already we are this or that but are too naïve to see it. Then who are we, finally?
And then there is the chaos of sin. Sin is self-willed contradiction of who we are as children of God. Sin is self-willed contradiction of our being made in the image of God. Sin contradicts my identity before God.
In the midst of myriad threats, the psalmist knows that God can be counted on to furnish us with green pastures and still waters. He who protects us will also provide for us. Who I am before God just because God has made me who I am before him; that ‘me’ God knows and preserves in the face of threats from without and threats from within; my identity, who I am before him and therefore who I am in myself—this is what God keeps inviolate, regardless of what howls down upon me from without or whirls up from within.
God knows who I am; God preserves who I am. Green pastures (nourishment) and still waters (chaos subdued) are God’s guarantee for God’s people.
Verse 3 ‘He restores my soul.’ It means ‘He restores me.’ The Hebrew verb that the English text translates ‘restore’ is fathomlessly rich.
One meaning of ‘restore’ is reconcile. When God restores us he reconciles us to himself. We need to be reconciled since we ornery sinners are bent on estranging ourselves from him. To say God reconciles us to is to say he’s always bringing us foolish people home. There is always a home to go home to, and there’s always a welcome warmer than we can imagine.
Another meaning of ‘restore’ is return. Everywhere in the older testament to repent is to return; that is to turn so as to turn around, make a U-turn, an about-face. Such a turning, therefore, is always a re-turning. The prophet Hosea cries out to his people, ‘Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.’ (Hos. 14:1) God restores us as we return to him.
Another meaning of the Hebrew verb ‘restore’ is revive. Jeremiah insists that God restores his people as he revives their strength and courage. (Lam. 1:11, 16)
Not least, Proverbs (25:13) reminds us that as God restores us he refreshes us. Proverbs paints the picture of perspiring, fatigued farmhands labouring under a Middle Eastern sun when cool winds from the Mediterranean refresh them.
The psalmist tells us God’s restoring us, in all of the senses mentioned above, serves his leading us into paths of righteousness. Paths of righteousness are simply right paths. God’s people are to walk uprightly and do what is right and therefore righteous. Paths are meant for walking. Throughout scripture, walking is the commonest metaphor for obeying. We are restored for the sake of walking rightly, walking uprightly. ‘This is the way; walk in it’, Isaiah reminds us. (30:21)
We are not to deviate from this road. We are not to depart from it. We are not to leave off following Jesus Christ even when discipleship is difficult or unpopular or dismissed as irrelevant or mocked as silly. At all times we are accompanied by Jesus who has pioneered the way ahead for us. Since we are accompanied at all times by the One who has already traversed this path victoriously to its end, we are without excuse if we quit. And why would we quit when, on either side of the path of discipleship is, there is nothing but swamp or quicksand or desert?
The psalmist tells us that everything God does for us in restoring us, he does ‘for his name’s sake’. ‘Name,’ in scripture, means ‘person, presence, power, purpose, and deserved reputation.’ In other words, God restores us and appoints us to righteous living just because he is who he is in his person, presence, power, purpose, and reputation. Therefore we can trust him. Therefore we can be sure the path he has appointed us to walk isn’t a dead end. Therefore we can know that he won’t abandon us or give up on us. God is always and everywhere dependable.
Verse 4 We can depend on our Lord even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Here we have to spend a little time acquainting ourselves with what scripture means by ‘death’. In our everyday conversation we modern folk equate death with the cessation of biological life. Death is simply the disappearance of biological life. But in scripture death is much more than this. In scripture death is a cosmic power, a cosmic power that works evil, and works evil to the extent that such evil is finally lethal. Evil isn’t a little wrinkle that renders human history somewhat mysterious or renders human existence occasionally inconvenient. Evil attacks, sometimes frontally but more often insidiously; evil attacks, weakens, corrupts, perverts, and finally slays.
We should note precisely what the psalmist says in this regard: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ Death and evil are synonyms. Evil is a power that deadens. Death is a power that works evil. As cosmic powers, death and evil are identical.
The psalmist knows he can’t avoid walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Evil is a ‘force-field’ no Christian can avoid. At the same time, as we walk the path of righteousness we also walk through the force-field of evil; we walk through it without lingering in it or becoming infatuated with it or succumbing to it.
As the psalmist reflects on all of this he exclaims, ‘You are with me; your rod and staff comfort me.’ Do we grasp what’s happened? Up until now the psalmist has been speaking in the third person: ‘The Lord—he is my shepherd.’ Now the psalmist is speaking in the second person: ‘You are with me. He has moved from talking about God to meeting God in person; he has moved from a discussion about God to an encounter with God: ‘You are with me.’
The God who is engaged with him is equipped with rod and staff. The rod was the shepherd’s cudgel, the shepherd’s club. With it the shepherd drove off predators who wanted to rip up the sheep. The staff, on the other hand, was the shepherd’s implement with which he rounded up sheep who otherwise went astray. The rod dealt with attack upon the sheep from without; the staff dealt with the sheep’s proclivities to wander from within. Aren’t God’s people both under attack from without and prone to wander from within?
The text says the One who is shepherd comforts us. In contemporary English to comfort someone is to make her feel better. Originally, however, the English word ‘comfort’ was formed from two Latin words, ‘con’ and ‘fortis’: ‘with strength. The good shepherd comforts us profoundly; he strengthens us in the face of that evil there is no way around. We are comforted to the extent that we are strengthened and equipped to resist.
Verse 5 The result of it all is a table prepared for us in the presence of our enemies, a table prepared for us precisely in the midst of our worst harassments. ‘Table,’ of course, is a reference to the Messianic Banquet, the end-time feast when all God’s people—Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Moses and Zipporah, Joseph and Mary and Mary Magdalene, together with all God’s people from every era—are going to sit, in peace, without fear. All God’s people long for this day. But we aren’t there yet. And therefore we anticipate it. We anticipate the Messianic Banquet every time we celebrate Holy Communion. We anticipate it too every time we eat any meal. Isn’t this why we pray at every meal?
The psalmist insists that to be comforted by God; to be strengthened and equipped—this in itself is an anticipation of the Messianic Banquet, at which Banquet evil, now defeated in the cross, will finally have been destroyed.
In speaking of the table prepared for him the psalmist mentions oil and wine. Olive oil was used in preparing food for a feast. The same olive oil was used as a cosmetic, to make one’s face shine, a sign of radiantly good health. (Ps 114:15) Not to use oil was a sign of mourning—and there’s no place for mourning at the Messianic Banquet.
As for wine; wine, says the psalmist, wine gladdens the human heart. (Ps 104) Wine renders a meal a celebration. To be taken up into God’s own life through faith in him can never be joyless or humdrum.
Verse 6 The psalmist concludes by reminding us of a wonderful certainty: for sure, surely, most certainly, goodness and mercy are going to follow us all the days of our life.
Goodness is God’s character, God’s eternal nature. Mercy is the expression God’s goodness takes when God’s goodness meets our sin and our suffering. Mercy is God’s goodness overtaking us amidst all of life’s negativities and overcoming them.
Goodness and mercy are going to follow us, follow along behind us, tag along behind us? No. ‘Shall follow’ is a Hebrew expression meaning ‘God’s mercy is behind us as the driving force of our life.’ God’s mercy is the engine behind us driving us ahead, always driving us ahead until we reach our appointed destination.
There are days when we readily see as much and rejoice in it: ‘My life is wondrously propelled by God’s mercy!’ There are other days, however, when we soberly assess what assaults us, and we find it somewhat difficult to grasp the truth that our life is propelled by God’s mercy. And there are days, let’s be honest, when we can’t see any evidence for this at all. What do we then? (i) We trust God for the truth and reality that right now we can’t see. (ii) We look to our Christian friends to support us, stunned as we are, as surely as the friends of a paralyzed man brought him to Jesus. (iii) We await that glorious day when we shall be able to look back on our entire life and see, finally, that indeed goodness and mercy have brought us to our goal. For then we shall be standing in the house of the Lord, which for our Hebrew friends of old meant God’s unspeakably intimate presence, and there we shall remain forever and ever.
Victor A. Shepherd September 2023