The Shepherd’s Song 1
Sermon Transcript
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Well, please take your Bible and turn with me to Psalm 23, Psalm 23. And I want to begin by reading all six verses of Psalm 23. I’ve titled this morning’s message “The Shepherd’s Song”, and it goes like this. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads 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 for me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” You know, somebody once suggested that every major portion of scripture is written by somebody who’s going through a difficult time to somebody or to a group of somebodies who are also going through a hard time. That might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think it’s probably true that those portions of scripture that we love the most fall into that category. And maybe that’s why we love the book of Psalms so much, because the circumstances behind a lot of the writing of these ancient songs are David and some other psalmists in some very, very difficult, difficult times. The 23rd Psalm, which I just read, is among the best-loved chapters in the entire Bible. You can read it in about less than 60 seconds, but it will nurture your heart for a lifetime. Many of you have fallen in love with this passage many, many years ago, and it has helped you through different times. It has ministered to your heart in a variety of ways. The 23rd Psalm, or the Shepherd’s Song as we call it, stands alone among the classics of poetic literature. But we don’t love this psalm because the scholars praise it, because the poets out there just think it’s wonderful verse and rhyme and lyric and all of that. No, we love it because every word of this psalm, all 55 of them in the original Hebrew language, every word of this psalm pulsates and point to how the shepherd of our soul meets our needs in a very real and personal kind of way.
0:02:58.5
King David probably wrote this psalm in the latter years of his life. And he’s reflecting on his boyhood days when, as a lad, he took care of his father’s sheep. Which, by the way, made him sort of despised in his brothers’ eyes, because shepherds were not respected back then. The work of shepherding was kind of grudge work. It was drudge work. It was not something that was esteemed in the society of the day. And yet, it was this childhood experience that gave David the ability to write some of the most exquisite verses found anywhere in scripture, let alone all of literature. And it also reminds us that God never wastes our experiences. I mean, David’s able to write this most incredible psalm, Psalm 23, because, as a little boy, he was willing to shepherd his father’s sheep.
0:03:51.8
Now, scholars have noted that it’s no accident that Psalm 23 comes between Psalm 22 and Psalm 24. And some of you are saying, “Really, Ron. I got up for church this morning so you could tell me that?” Well, the reason is because these are really a trilogy of psalms, a trilogy of three prophetic hymns that deal with different aspects of Christ’s ministry. Psalm 22 actually points to the death of Christ. Psalm 22:1 is actually words that Jesus quoted verbatim while He was on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?” He spoke those words, at least the beginning of those words, from the cross. And Psalm 22 is what we call a messianic psalm that points to the suffering savior and the death of Jesus Christ. Well, you go to the other end of this trilogy, Psalm 24, and this particular psalm crescendos with a triumphant Christ returning to this earth. We look forward to the day that Christ returns. And this psalm says, “Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of glory.” It points us to that day when Jesus Christ will return. So you have the suffering servant in Psalm 22. You have the triumphant return of Christ in Psalm 24. And between those two psalms is nestled this wonderful pastoral psalm known was Psalm 23. And it pictures the present ministry of Christ, who is our Great Shepherd, our Chief Shepherd. And He relates to us as a shepherd does his sheep.
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Now, verse 1 of the psalm sets up, really, the entire psalm. And I love to read it in various translations. You’re most familiar with the one that says, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” The New International Version says, “The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.” The Good News translation says, “The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need.” And then a paraphrase known as The Message says it this way- “God, my shepherd. I don’t need a thing.” I love that. I just love the various ways in which we can nuance the words there. And, really, the first five words are some of the most reassuring words in all of scripture. David says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Let’s break that down a little bit. He says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” He was specific. He wouldn’t do with any old shepherd out there. It was the Lord who was his shepherd. And that word “Lord” is a name that God takes to Himself. It’s a name by which He reveals Himself in scripture. It’s the name Yahweh. And it was a name that was most respected among the Jews. In fact, the Jews would only pronounce the name of God Yahweh once during the year, and it was on the Day of Atonement. And only the high priest could pronounce the name, and he could only pronounce the name when he was in the most holy place in the temple or in the tabernacle. It was the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush. Do you remember that scene in the book of Exodus? Moses is on the back side of the desert herding sheep for 40 years. And God reveals Himself in the burning bush. And Moses said, “Can you tell me your name?” And the Lord said, “Yahweh.” The best translation we have for it is “I am that I am” or “I am who I am”. He is the Great I Am. He is the all-powerful one. He is the all-sufficient one. And David says it is this all-powerful one, it is the Great I am, it is the one who is all-sufficient, the one who is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the cause and the effect. This is the one who is my shepherd. You see, I believe David lived long enough to come to the end of himself and realize that he wasn’t all-sufficient in himself. In the vernacular of our day we would say, “He ain’t all that.” David was a celebrated king and a warrior and a poet and a musician. But he was also an adulterer and a murderer who covered up his sin. And he probably came to the point in his own life, as he’s reflecting upon the length and the breadth of his life, as he’s going back to his childhood memories of herding his own father’s sheep. And he says, “The Lord, the all-sufficient one, the one in whom there is no lack, the one who depends on nobody but Himself- it’s that one who is my shepherd. Because when I depend upon myself, I have moments of glory in feet of clay.” That was David.
0:08:51.1
So he says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then he says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” I love that personal pronoun. Just circle it in your Bible. It’s probably the most important word in the entire psalm because it personalizes this psalm. He says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” He doesn’t say the Lord is a shepherd, as if He is one among many shepherds that we can choose from. If David had said that, he would have heard applause from the politically correct corners of our world. “Yeah, Jesus is just one of many shepherds, many religious leaders that we can follow.” David doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say the Lord is a shepherd. He could have said the Lord is the shepherd. And if he did, he would have gotten applause from the theologians because he would have been theologically correct. He is the shepherd. But David didn’t even do that. He settled upon, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It’s very personal to him. And it begs the question, is Jesus Christ your shepherd? Do you have a personal relationship with Him? By the way, how do you know if you’re one of His sheep? How do we know that? Well, Jesus said Himself in John 10:27-28. Listen to this. He says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” And then He goes on to say, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” How do we know that we are His sheep? It’s very simple. He says, “My sheep hear my voice.” We listen to Him. And He says, “They not only hear my voice, but they follow Me.” We listen to him, and we do what He says. It’s just that simple. That’s one of the characteristics of a sheep. They know their shepherd’s voice. They hear his voice. They listen to him. They listen to him through his word. And then they go do what the shepherd tells them to do.
0:10:57.2
So David says the Lord, this all-sufficient One, “He is my shepherd.” “The Lord is my shepherd.” It’s a very personal thing to him. And then he says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Now, here we are probably 3000 years removed from this biblical scene. And the word “shepherd” is rather odd to us, isn’t it? I mean, come on now, we live in a high tech world with cold, hard edges. And it’s far, far removed from the woolly sheep and the shepherds and the rolling pastoral hills of Psalm 23. It’s really hard for us to identify with the shepherd. Most of us don’t know a shepherd personally. We don't know what shepherds do. And so we’re tempted, maybe, to update the analogy here a little bit in our high-tech world and say something like, “Well, the Lord is my tech support and he keeps my life running smoothly.” But it just doesn't sound right, does it? It kind of takes away from what the Scripture is trying to tell us here. The Lord is much more of a shepherd than He is a computer geek. No offense to those of you in the high-tech world. But I say this simply to tell us that, as we go through Psalm 23, we’re gonna have to force ourselves to transport back to an unfamiliar time. We’re gonna have to get to know the Shepherd. We’re gonna have to understand His ways and how He leads His sheep. We’re gonna have to somehow get ourselves inside the wool of the sheep. And as we do, to understand that as David said, “the Lord is my shepherd,” by implication he's saying, “I'm a sheep, and that's all I am.”
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Now, most of us don't want to be compared to sheep because, you know, sheep are not the smartest animals on the planet. All right? They’re dumb, they’re dependent, and they’re defenseless animals. In fact, I found it interesting when you look at the major nations, the superpowers of our world like the United States or Great Britain or even Russia. And they go into the animal world to choose an animal that kind of identifies them as a nation. I mean, the United States, what is it? It’s an Eagle. For Great Britain it's a lion. For Russia it's the bear. Find me a country that chooses the sheep as its national symbol. Nobody wants to be compared to a sheep. And yet God must see something in us that is more like the sheep than a saber tooth tiger. There’s something about us that is defenseless. There’s something about us that is dependent. There’s something about us that isn't as smart as we think we are, no matter how many PhD's or how many degrees we have behind our name. David said, “The Lord, this all-sufficient one, is my personal shepherd.” And David understood that he needed a shepherd for his soul just like his father needed a shepherd for his sheep. And that’s what he’s trying to say to us in these first few words.
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Now, he goes on to say some amazing words that follow. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he says, “and because of that, because this all-sufficient One is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We could translate it, “I don’t lack a single thing. All of my wants, all of my desires, it’s all fulfilled in Him.” And I’m gonna go out on a little bit of a limb here and suggest to you that the God of the Bible, the Shepherd of our soul, wants to give you everything you want. Some of you are saying, “Pastor, I’ve been waiting for you to say that. How do I get in line for it?” Hold on one second. He wants to give us everything we want, everything we desire, but He’s got to do a little work on our wanter, our wanter.” You say, well, what’s a wanter? Well, everybody has a wanter. You have a wanter. I have a wanter. We want this. We want that. Sometimes we don’t know what we want, right? And that’s why our wanter remains unsatisfied. And it’s complicated by this bombardment of advertisements that hit us every day that tell us to want this and to want that. Our wanter is just all kind of out of whack. And God has to do a little bit of work on our wanter. A little bit later in the psalm, Psalm37:4, David writes this. He says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Now, I remember years ago coming in contact with that verse of scripture, and I’m thinking, Yippee, yippee, God’s going to give me everything that I desire! But there’s a catch to it. He says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” In other words, the Lord, this all-sufficient One, this all-powerful One, the Great I Am, make Him the supreme delight of your life. And then what He does is He puts His desires into your heart. When Christ becomes the supreme delight of our life, we’ll find our wanter being shaped and molded after the wants of our shepherd. And when our wants align with His wants, then He can give us everything we want. You follow me there? So David says, “The Lord is my personal shepherd, and there’s nothing that I lack in life because He has simplified my life so much that my wants align with His wants. My desires align with His desires. His kingdom come. His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, Jesus taught us pray. And because I am so one with my Shepherd, He can just give me everything I want and desire, because my wants are aligned with His will.”
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Now, you say, what is it exactly that we want that He fulfills? Well, that’s what the rest of the psalm is all about. Verses 2-6 expand on this idea “I shall not want.” I have nothing that I want in my life because He perfectly fulfills all of my needs and my desires and my wants. He is the all-sufficient One. Where I lack, He fills in that void. I shall not want. And we’re gonna spend the next couple of weeks exploring the rest of Psalm 23. But I just want to touch on three of those “I shall not wants” or “I shall not lack” today. The first one simply says this. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Or let’s just say it this way, “I shall not lack His rest when I am weary.” David goes on to say in verse 2, “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He makes me lie down in green pastures. I shall not lack His rest when I am weary.” You know, sheep are easily excited. And sometimes they have difficulty finding rest. They may be coming back from a long journey as the shepherd has herded his sheep across a long trek of land. Or maybe they need to rest to get ready for a long trek that they will take. But a sheep is easily excited. Something as simple as the bark of a dog or the growl of a mountain lion can excite them. And they’ll find themselves, rather than lying down and resting, scurrying around the pasture, okay. And that’s when the loving and caring shepherd, it’s amazing what he does. He goes into his flock and he very gently puts his hand on the back of the sheep, and kind of forces that sheep to lie down in the (0:19:00.0) cool, green grass. The shepherd knows that the sheep need rest, that they’re easily, kind of, spooked and they’re easily excited. And he walks in and he just kind of…he makes them, he forces them, he gently pushes them down into the grass so that they can quietly rest. Has your Shepherd ever done that for you? Have you ever needed some rest, and you just sensed that the Shepherd of your soul was stepping into your life in some very deliberate way and making you lie down in some green pastures? You know, again, we’re so far removed from the imagery of Psalm 23. We live in this high tech world. We live in fast-paced world. City life, even suburban life, is fast-paced. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the fast pace of the city. I love the excitement of the city. I remember (0:20:00.1) a couple years, a couple years out of college, I was living in New York City. My first job took me there. And I love the Big Apple. I came out of Indiana. I was just this hayseed from Indiana, and I end up in New York City of all places. I loved it. I love the excitement of the city. It’s truly a city that never sleeps. But you know what I found over the five or six months that I was there in a training class? I found that it was a hard place to rest. There was just this hectic, you know, frenzied lifestyle. And I just had a hard time getting physical rest, let alone resting in my spirit. And so on the weekends I would often go to Central Park. And I would…just looking for some green grass that I could lie down in and then look up into the blue sky without a tall building blocking my eyesight. Sometimes we just find ourselves so fast-paced in this life, it’s hard to find some rest. The Shepherd of our soul knows that. David says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Sometimes the Lord does that in the form of a hospital bed or some extended unemployment. He knows we need some rest, some time to get refreshed and refocused on Him. And those are times that we fidget and we squirm. And I just want to encourage you to take that time to just rest in Him, to replenish yourself. He makes me lie down in green pastures.
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There’s also a spiritual rest that the Lord knows we need. The idea of salvation by grace and through faith alone that the scripture talks about, not of works lest any man should boast, invites us to put our faith in the Shepherd of our souls, apart from this scurry of good works to try to appease and to gain the favor of God. The whole idea of the Sabbath rest in scripture, which goes all the way back to the creation story where God rested on the seventh day, He wants us to rest in Him. Jesus is our Sabbath rest, where we rest from our works as a means of trying to achieve a right relationship with God. And we rest in Him by grace and through faith. Some of all of that is pictured here. “He makes me lie down in green pastures. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want or lack His rest when I’m weary.” He knows the weariness of our soul. And He knows the weariness of our fast-paced life. And the Shepherd of our soul comes in to take care of us there. Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And He said that to a group of people who’re worn out with the religiosity of the Pharisees of His day. Religion will wear you out, friends, every time. It’ll put you on this unattainable spiritual treadmill where you’re trying to do all these things to gain God’s favor. And Jesus just says, “Come unto me. Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, burdened with all the do’s and the don’ts, and rest in Me. Rest in My grace. Rest in the finished work that I did for you on the cross. Rest in my forgiveness.”
0:23:24.7
Well, let’s move on. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want, or I shall not lack His rest when I am weary. How about this one. I shall not lack His peace when I am afraid. David goes on to say, “He leads me beside still waters.” You know, just as sheep are easily excited, they’re also easily scared. And nothing frightens a sheep more than fast-moving water. Picture a shepherd who is herding his sheep across a long trek of land. And then he comes down to the end of the day. He knows they need to be watered and refreshed, and he bring them to this river or this brook. But the water is moving by too quickly. Sheep will literally stand there paralyzed in fear because they seem to instinctively know that if they jump into the water, their wooly coats will weight them down and waterlog them and they might drown. And so, again, this loving and caring shepherd, what he will do is he’ll go find some rocks. And he’ll dam up a portion of the riverbed to still the water. And that’s the picture David has in mind here. I wonder how many times he did that for his father’s sheep, where he would lead them besides some still waters. You know, the words “fear not” are some of the most commonly found words in all the Bible, and there’s good reason for that. Because, like sheep, we’re easily scared. Some of us are scared of an economy that seems out of control, and we wonder if we’re gonna have a job tomorrow or if we’re gonna be able to meet all of our financial needs. There are all kinds of things that we become scared of, and that’s when the Shepherd of our soul, He leads us. He leads us besides those still, still waters. It could be translated “the stilled waters”. In other words, he’s got to do a little work to still the raging river and the rapids that are all around us that are speaking fear into our hearts. I think it’s interesting that this is the first of two times the words “leads” appears in Psalm 23. “He leads me beside still waters,” and then later in verse 3, “He leads me in the paths of righteousness.” By nature, a shepherd leads his sheep. And by implication, his sheep, as Jesus said, follow him because they hear his voice and they do what he says. But he leads them. And if the imagery is understood correctly, it may be that he leads them to those raging rapids. You may feel like you’re in a place right now which is turbulent, very difficult. You’re not quite sure why He’s put you in this place. But make no mistake about it that the Shepherd of your soul leads you to every place that you go. But even if you’re standing on the shoreline, as it were, paralyzed by fear, He will still those waters. He will speak calm into your hearts and bring stillness to your heart. That’s what He does as a shepherd, as a good shepherd. “Be still and know that I am God,” the psalmist would write a little bit later in the Psalms.
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So the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not lack his rest when I am weary. I shall not lack his peace when I am afraid. And that peace of God refreshes my soul when I need the refreshment. But then, finally, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want or I shall not lack His discipline when I go astray. Listen to how David says it. Four words in verse 3, “He restores my soul.” Now, just as sheep are easily excited and they’re easily scared, sheep also easily wander away. And I’m sure this happened on more than one occasion in David’s life as a young shepherd boy. He might have had, I don’t know, 99 or 100 sheep or maybe 200 sheep. And some of them have this propensity to just kind of wander away. And if a particular sheep was too strong-willed and wandered away too often, believe it or not, a shepherd would sometimes break the leg of the sheep in order to kind of discipline that sheep and to train that sheep in dependence on him. Train that sheep to know that that sheep needed to stay right by the shepherd’s side. And he would do something, as horrible as it sounds, as to break that sheep’s leg to teach him and to train him. And I think there’s a wonderful picture for all of us here. I’m reminded of Isaiah 53:6 that says, “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” The writer of Hebrews in chapter 3 and verse 10 says, “They always go astray in their hearts.” Even the hymn writer wrote these words, “Prone to wander; Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” I think all of us can identify with that, even as followers of Jesus Christ. There’s a part of us that is just prone to wander and prone to go astray. You know, I ‘m a big believer in the security of the believer. That is that once you become a follower of Jesus Christ and you are saved, you can never lose your salvation. But you can get out of fellowship with the Lord. You can go astray. You can live a life of disobedience. And while our relationship with God never needs to be restored, our faith with Him does need to be restored. And God is always in the business of restoring us, of bringing us back, first into relationship with Him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then in fellowship with Him when we go astray somewhere.
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All of this reminds me of three parables that Jesus told in Luke 15. There was the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and then the parable of the lost son or the prodigal son. You probably remember most the parable of the prodigal son. But Luke 15, and as these three parables are all in one chapter, what they tell us is that God is very concerned about lostness, the lostness of our souls, the lostness of our way. He’s concerned about a son who runs away. He’s concerned about a sheep that goes astray. And if you are without faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you don’t know Him as your personal savior, the Bible would describe you as lost. Dead in your trespasses and sins. But in the parable of the lost sheep, this shepherd has a hundred sheep. And one of them goes astray. And the Bible says, Jesus says in this parable that the shepherd left the 99 and went after that one sheep that had gone astray. That says something about how much God loves you personally and intimately. And when you go astray or when I go astray, He goes looking for us. Somebody once pictured the Lord as the hound of heaven. Well, change our imagery a little bit from the shepherd who goes after a stray sheep to the hound of heaven. He’s always after us. He’s always after us. And I can remember some times in my life, especially during my college years where I, like a sheep, went astray. But the Lord sent this person to rebuke me. He sent this experience. He sent that…He was like the hound of heaven. He was like that shepherd who goes after that one stray sheep. And He disciplines us when we go astray with the goal of restoring our soul and restoring our fellowship with Him. Think of Hebrews 12:5-6, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son whom He receives.” Even when that Shepherd breaks the sheep’s leg to teach him dependence upon the Shepherd, He does it in love. He does it as a father loves his son and disciplines his son. The Shepherd loves His sheep. And He shepherds them in a way that they will never lack His correction, His disciplines, His loving correction and discipline when they go astray.
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Well, there’s so much more to this psalm, and we’re gonna have to leave it right there. we’re gonna have to come back to it next time. But I just wonder this morning how all of this hits you. If the Lord your shepherd? Have you come to that place in your life where you realize you’re not all that and you’re not all sufficient in and of yourself and you need an all-sufficient One like the Great I am, who is the Lord, who is the Great Shepherd? Maybe you’ve thought of Him as a shepherd, one among many. You know, choose among a litany of religious leaders out there. Jesus is just as good as any others. Maybe you’ve thought about Him theologically and intellectually. “Yes, He is the shepherd.” But you’ve never personalized that relationship. And you find yourself a little bit afraid, a little bit disquieted in your spirit. Maybe a stray far, far away from Him. And this morning the Shepherd of your soul is calling you home. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” Some of you may be right there this morning. The hymn writer goes on to say, “Here’s my heart. O, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.” I hope that’s your prayer this morning as the Shepherd of your soul calls you home, calls you home to be tenderly cared for under His flock. Let’s pray together.
Father, thank You so much for Your Word. And thank You for this beautiful, beautiful verse found in the pages of scripture, this Psalm 23. Thank You that You so tenderly and gently care for us and love for us. Not as a tech support person in some call center across the ocean in our very cold and calculated high tech world, but as a shepherd who loves his sheep and who cares for them in a very personal and intimate way. Father, maybe there is somebody here this morning who has never trusted Jesus Christ as his Great Shepherd or her Great Shepherd. I pray that today would be a day of salvation, where You call them into a relationship with You by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins and was buried and rose again from the grave. Lord, I pray that today they would meet the all-sufficient One, the Great I Am, the One who can satisfy every longing of their heart and meet them at the point of every need that they have. For others here today, Father, who maybe have known the Lord Jesus for many years but have gone astray. There is an area of their life that is not rightly related with Him. They’ve wandered in their hearts far, far away from God. We’re all prone to do that, Father. Protect us from that and go after that one sheep- maybe two or three or four here today- but go after us until we’re safely back within the fold again and fellowship with You and enjoying a relationship with You. And we pray this in Jesus’s name and for His sake, amen.
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