From fed up to fed

There was a time when I got a bit fed up with the 23rd psalm.

Admittedly, it’s not a great way to feel about a piece of Scripture, but I’d come to associate the psalm almost entirely with funerals of unbelievers. While an Anglican minister, before moving to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC), I conducted many such funerals, and the default hymn choice for the generation of non-churchgoers I was burying was Abide With Me and The Lord’s my Shepherd, the latter always sung to the tune of Crimond.

Fortunately, I’ve repented of my previous attitude towards the psalm, and in this issue and the August issue we’ll be engaging with this most familiar of poems from the Psalter. This month we’ll look at the first three verses; next time we’ll dip into the final three.

The psalm’s opening has a rather neat who/ where/why vibe going on. Who’s leading us? The LORD, who is our shepherd. Where’s He leading us? In green pastures and by still waters. Why? For His name’s sake.

David Gibson points out in his excellent book The LORD of Psalm 23 (Crossway) that we all have shepherds, in the sense that we all follow people and things, but the shepherd of Psalm 23 is unique. Unique because He’s also the LORD. The One who wants to shepherd us, with all that implies in terms of protection, care and leadership, is the creator, sustainer and LORD of all things. No wonder that, with such a shepherd, we lack nothing. But not only is He the LORD, He’s our LORD. Martin Luther is alleged to have said: “Many are lost because they cannot use possessive pronouns” and there’s something both precious and important about the psalmist’s use of the word “my”.

These days we often hear people saying that “the journey is more important than the destination”. As we’ll note next time, when we arrive at verse 6, that’s not David’s take on things; his eye is very much on “the house of the Lord” where he’ll dwell forever. But verses two and three take us into the territory of the journey and the here and now. I used to think that the “green pastures and still waters” were about God’s presence with us in times of ease, to be contrasted with His presence with us in times of trial (the “valley” of verse 4), and while I still think there’s an element of that in the psalm, I’ve come to conclude that the green pastures and still waters are less about life when everything is hunky-dory, and relate more to the nourishment that our shepherd provides for us. We’re well fed and watered by the experience of His presence and the knowledge gained from His word, which sets out in principle the right paths (v.3) for us to follow. In that nourishment we discover restoration from the Good Shepherd who came to seek, save and restore lost sheep, with each sheep that is found precipitating a party in the heavenly realms.

If the first verse tells us who the shepherd is and the second where He leads us, the third verse, which ends the first section of the psalm, gives us the purpose and tells us why we’ve been found, fed and restored. We’ve been restored in order to walk worthily and to bring glory to God. The latter we do consciously, as we seek to live in the manner that the shepherd desires by walking along the right paths in which He guides us, and unconsciously, purely by virtue of having been elected to salvation, each saved soul serving to bring honour to the LORD’s name as His power is displayed in His ability to turn “the lost” into “the found”.

Next time, we’ll see a shift of perspective as David moves from third-person grammar (the LORD) to second person (you) and addresses God directly, but for now let’s rejoice and draw comfort from the LORD who, as our shepherd, nourishes us and saves us for the sake of His name.