The 23rd psalm is surely one of the best known and best loved poems in the world. Just before Christmas we received a "Thank You" note from a lady who'd undergone surgery saying, "Psalm 23 was a great help to me. I recited it over in my mind many times and found it a great comfort" - a testimony that could be repeated many times over. I can't think how often I've recited it myself to people in hospital, even when they're in their final coma (for the sense of hearing is the last to fail). For sheer beauty and simplicity of expression it ranks as a great work of literary art … though that's the least of its virtues. But like many familiar masterpieces it escapes close scrutiny more often than it ought. I preached on it here ten years ago, but having received more than one request to do so again, we shall spend two Sunday mornings looking at it in close-up.
Be prepared for a disillusionment or two, for in its translation from the Hebrew, this psalm has suffered more than it ought. The translators of the King James version in particular took certain liberties with it, which has lent a sort of sanctity to them; folk don't always take kindly to having them corrected. But it's truth, not sentiment, that "makes us free," and we should follow Jesus in this, as in all other matters and not make void the Word of God by holding fast to the traditions of men, even when those men were the translators of the Authorised Version of the Bible! (Mark 7:8,13)
Let me say first that the psalm's phrases must be understood in the light of a shepherd's life in Bible lands and Bible times, not in the light of modern sheep-farming methods.
I've stood in a shearing shed on a station outside of Roma and watched the shearers at work. The sheep was crooked between the shearer's legs while the powerful clippers fairly raced over the animal's skilfully manipulated body, and then with the heave of a boot the sheep was tumbled, legs sprawling, down a wooden chute to a man at the bottom armed with a hot tar brush to dab it wherever it was cut and bleeding. The station owner wouldn't see it again until it was rounded up and dipped, along with a couple of thousand others. He'd be able to tell you, to within a score or so, how many sheep he had, what their market value was in the abattoir or the price their wool would fetch. But as for knowing his sheep, he could hardly tell one from another any better than I. There passed before him so much stock, convertible into so much money.
Nothing could be further from the attitude of a shepherd to his sheep which David describes in the psalm. His sheep were kept for wool, not for meat, and in the hill country of Judea in the area of Bethlehem and Hebron, keeping a flock healthy was a hazardous and exhausting occupation. A hundred sheep was about the most a man could manage - a flock of fifty or less was much more common - so he knew his sheep. (That lends point, incidentally, to the saying of Jesus about the man with a hundred sheep going out after the one that was lost. Jesus deliberately suggested the largest flock a man might have in those days to make the point that in God's eyes, no one of us is ever lost sight of in the masses!)
In the psalm, David, once a shepherd himself, remembers the arduous life he lived in the hill country of Judea. He knew how hard a shepherd must work if his sheep were not to want. Grass was hardly ever sown or cultivated. Shepherds never owned land. What are called pastures were lonely, unfenced, uncultivated areas of land among the brown hills where for nine months of the year no rain fell at all.
In the wet season, a flock could be swept away by a sudden torrent roaring down a dry gully from a cloudburst in the hills.
And the stories of David tackling a lion or a bear are not fanciful. They are an accurate picture of the risks with which a shepherd lived every day of his life. The shepherd and his flock shared hardship and danger together day and night for weeks on end in vast solitudes far from human habitation. Between the two there was woven a living network of sympathy - a trustful dependence on the sheep's side, and a protective care on the shepherd's. So David conceived the relationship between God and His trusting people.
"Yahweh," he says, "is my shepherd: I shall lack for nothing." God has taken full responsibility for him, as a shepherd does for his sheep.
Now that's wonderful, but it's not a thing you can take for granted. This is not a psalm for just anyone and everyone. Many folk recite it or sing it to find comfort in some crisis in their life who have no right to do so. Before you can be sure of the rich comfort of which it speaks, something has to happen. That something is identified by two words in this first verse, the words "Yahweh" and "my"- Yahweh is my shepherd.
David refers to God as "Yahweh." If you've read the Translators' Preface in your Bible you will know that that's the Hebrew name for God which always lies behind the word "LORD" when it's printed in capital letters in the English. Now "Yahweh" is the Covenant name for God. It's the name by which He made Himself known to Moses at the burning bush, the name under which He established the Covenant with Israel at Mt. Sinai (as we saw last week). It's the name by which only those who are in a Covenant relationship with God may address Him.
When the Bible writers want to refer to God as the Creator - as the God Who is the God of all men because He created them, whether they acknowledge Him or not - they used the word "El" or "Elohim" … much as we might use the phrase "the Almighty."
Lest you think I'm trying to load too much meaning into a single word, let me draw your attention to a remarkable feature in the Book of Psalms to demonstrate the point. Have you ever noticed that Psalms 14 and 53 are identical? They're the psalms that begin: "The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.'" You need only to scan the verses quickly to see that Psalm 53 is an exact repeat of Psalm 14 ... well, almost. What has happened? Did whoever edited the book of psalms and put them together in the order they're in make an editorial boo-boo, and put in the same psalm twice? And whoever did the proof-reading - did he miss the duplication? The answer of course is "no."
Apart from a few small differences of phrasing, the difference between the two psalms is that one refers to God as "Yahweh" and the other as "Elohim," as you'll see if you glance at verse 2, for example. The point that's being made by the repetition of those two psalms with that one big difference - the difference in the names for God - is that the God Israel worships, "Yahweh," the God with whom they have a special, personal, covenant relationship, is not just their God, their national god, as though He were merely one god among many others equally real; He is the one and only God of the whole earth and of all its peoples. He is "Elohim" as well as "Yahweh."
"Our God," the Israelites are saying, "is the only God there is, and the whole world is answerable to Him, even if they don't know it or won't acknowledge it, just as we know we are."
And that incidentally is why Paul in his letter to the Romans ch. 3, when he wants to make the point that all have sinned and are answerable to God for their sins, quotes these psalms, because that's the one place above all others in the Old Testament where the same point is so effectively made.
David says, "Yahweh" - not Elohim - "is my shepherd." He's not saying, in a glib, off-hand sort of way, "The Almighty will see me right." If you're a wilfully disobedient man or woman, never having repented of your wrong-headedness, and never having thrown yourself on His mercy so as to be trusting Him to forgive you and make you His true child, He jolly well won't. The Almighty in that case, my friend, will have to cast you into outer darkness.
Before you can count on the comfort and confidence this psalm brings, we said, something has to happen. And that something that has to happen is that you consciously enter into a Covenant Relationship with God. In the most intensely personal way, you have to receive the Covenant of Grace direct from God. You have to confess your sin, and trust Him to forgive it, knowing that it cost Him, and His Son Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit the awesome ordeal of the Cross to atone for it; and you yield yourself body and soul into His hands to be God to you, and to be your God.
Then you can say, "Yahweh is my Shepherd ... Yahweh is my shepherd. The God and Father of Jesus Who gave Himself up to death for me, who shed His blood for me to make atonement for all my sin and buy me back - that God, whose name is Yahweh, has taken full responsibility for me, and I rest my life in His hands. He is my shepherd."
Can you say that? And if you can't, will you say it now?
Next we need to recover the sheer astonishment the first readers of the psalm must have felt when David's words appeared before their eyes.
"Yahweh my Shepherd?!" they must have cried. "You can't say that! Why, it's like saying, 'The Lord is my garbo.' You don't say that sort of thing about God - it demeans Him."
Let me explain.
Shepherds in Bible times were ranked among the lowest of men on the social scale. They were looked down on. To become a shepherd was to sink about as low as you could sink. Because you had to spend weeks and weeks with the flock out on the hills away from human habitation, with no other human being for company, these weather-beaten recluses were viewed by the rest of men as a bit queer; and it wasn't an occupation that paid well: "Once a shepherd, always a shepherd," they used to say, because it was an occupation that never led you on to anything higher - you were stuck with it for life.
And what was worse, the demands of their calling made it quite impossible for shepherds to observe the details of Jewish ceremonial law. The demands their flocks made on them were far too constant for them ever to hope to do that. So good-living, orthodox religious people looked at them askance … rather (I'm afraid to have to say) as a good many Aboriginal jackaroos are regarded in the outback.
To speak of God as your Shepherd, therefore, struck a sort of jarring note. The picture of the Good Shepherd has become so sentimentalised through centuries of Western culture that we never feel it when we say it now. But in Bible times they did. The Egyptians heartily despised shepherds and made them the butt of rude jokes.
To say of God that He was your shepherd was a scandalous thing.
It fits with what was said of Jesus, that 'He made Himself of no reputation' … humbled Himself to the level of a common slave to serve our salvation interests.
But it was said first in the Old Testament about God the Father.
He sank His dignity to take us on.
For Him, too, it wasn't an occupation that paid well.
For Him, too, it was a case of "once a shepherd, always a shepherd." Once He took the job on, He too was stuck with it … and is stuck with it still. The prophets stung the people of Israel again and again with rebukes about this. "You have profaned God's Name among the nations," they said. (Ezekiel 36:23 e.g.) God ruined His reputation in the world by taking them on ... stubborn, wayward lot that they were.
God is still rubbished in the world - all over the world, every day - because He has consented to be our God. And He is content to bear our reproach to be our God. Never forget that. Never forget what it costs Him - still - to be faithful to us, and His commitment to us.
That, too, is what it means that "Yahweh is my Shepherd."
Then it means also - and for that very reason - that God is our ruler.
If God is to serve His flock truly, if He is to succeed in bringing it to a state of total well-being, then He must rule it. Whilst the tenderness suggested by the close personal care of the Shepherd is true, (and we shall think about that together next week), yet His authority over his sheep must not be forgotten. He must rule their life, or he will fail in his task and the whole flock be lost.
That too belongs to the meaning of "The Lord is my Shepherd."
Phillip Keller, once a shepherd himself, says in his book 'A Shepherd looks at Psalm 23,' "Sheep are notorious creatures of habit. Left to themselves they will follow the same trails till they become deep ruts; graze the same hills until they turn to desert wastes; and pollute their own ground until it is rife with disease and parasites. Many of the world's finest sheep ranges have been ruined beyond repair by … poor management. David knew that if the flock was to flourish the sheep had constantly to be under his meticulous control and guidance."
God requires that our trust in Him be so real it finds expression as obedience. Either we put ourselves in His hands, or we don't. And really to put your life in His hands means that you trust … and obey - that you so trust Him that you obey Him in all things.
He has taken full responsibility for you, as a shepherd does for his sheep. You owe it to Him, therefore, to let Him decide for you!
And that means (finally this morning!) that you will lack nothing that is needful ... nothing that is needful, note, for you to come to your full maturity and usefulness in the flock! The confidence that David here expresses - "I shall not lack" - is by no means an assurance that you may have any useless luxury that your wayward sheep's heart may fancy!
One of the things you won't lack, for example, as a sheep in the Good Shepherd's care, is discipline!
Roy Gustafson, who has led many parties to Israel, tells in his book "In His hand" (p.46) that on one of his visits, on the road down from Jerusalem through the Judean wilderness to Jericho, they met a shepherd carrying one of his sheep with a splint and a bandage on its leg.
Said their guide, who'd lived nearly fifty years in that area, "The shepherd broke that sheep's leg himself."
And it was true! It was explained that this was a sheep that was always wandering off, and in the process leading other sheep astray. Membership in the flock carries certain responsibilities, and much as the shepherd feels a real affection for his animals, discipline is the only thing that will keep them together, as they must be kept together for their well-being and their safety.
So to cure this sheep of its self-willed ways, the shepherd had broken its leg, and then hand fed and carried it till the bone was mended ... and (hopefully) its waywardness.
That sort of thing, remember, is included in "I shall lack nothing needful."
Hosea 6:1 - 2 : "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up."
Isaiah 38:17 : "Lo, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but thou hast held back my life from the pit of destruction, and now thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back."
Now let's turn to the verses one by one.
Philip Keller, an experienced shepherd, says in his book, "A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23" (p.35), "Because of their very makeup, it is almost impossible for sheep to be made to lie down unless four requirements are met:
1. They must be free of all fear.
2. They must be free from friction among themselves.
3. They must be free from the torment of pests - the maddening irritation of flies, insects and what-have-you.
4. They must be free from hunger; sheep won't lie down while they feel in need of finding food.
Free from fear, friction, aggravation and hunger.
And the point is, Phillip Keller goes on to say, none of these freedoms can the sheep secure for themselves; they depend on the shepherd's good management for all of them! It's he who makes these things possible.
Only God, and our confidence in God, can free us of all fear.
Only God, by pouring His forgiving love into our hearts, can make us able to forgive each other, so we live in peace together.
Only God can protect us from Satan's harassment of our lives.
Only God can provide the green pastures we need - that is to say the genuine nourishment for our spirits of His truth, His love and His Spirit.
How very much to the point here is Paul's word to Timothy (II Tim. 1:7) "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and a sound mind." You get a sound mind by feeding it on truth; you get strength from good food and exercise; you get love by drinking in the Spirit of Jesus, i.e. a full balanced diet of God's Word, and by exercising the muscles of your trust in His promises. The Word and the Spirit are our green pastures - lie down in them, munch and ruminate!
"A hungry, ill-fed sheep," says Keller, "is ever on its feet, restless, on the move, searching for another scanty mouthful of forage to try and satisfy its gnawing hunger."
Are you like that? And is it because you've neglected God's provision of rich pasture in His Word and His Spirit? Then you know what to do.
Sheep won't drink from turgid, rushing streams, for two reasons.
First, because their nostrils are too close to their mouths and they don't like water up their noses any more than you do; and second, because if they lose their balance trying to drink in rushing waters, the sheer weight of saturated wool will render them helpless - and they have the same instinctive fear of drowning that you do.
So the shepherd has to provide for them to drink at still, clear, brimming pools.
Leslie Weatherhead has a story to illustrate this in his book, "A Shepherd Remembers" (p.63). A young officer in the Royal Engineers was directing operations in Palestine for the building of a tar macadam road. They needed stones, and there's no shortage of them in Israel! One of his men lifted a large slab of stone, and there, beneath it, was a stone cistern full of brimming, clear water ... in the desert, you understand! Some shepherd, during the rainy season, had found either a tiny spring, or a runnel of surface water down the hillside, and had prepared this stone cistern so that the water from above was trapped in it. He then took pains to conceal it so that he had a water supply for his flock in the dry summer.
"Waters shall break forth in the wilderness," wrote Isaiah (35:6), "and streams in the desert."
Happy the person who drinks from the waters that flow down from above ... "who has not (to quote God's word to Jeremiah [2:13]), "forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."
More than anything else in the world we need fellowship with God by His Spirit in the still centre of our being. Drink at those still waters, and we shall survive whatever desert stretches life may take us through.
Not my "soul." We think of the soul as the spiritual component in our makeup. But that's not the word David uses. He uses the word "nephesh," and it simply means "life." In Genesis 1:21 it is the word for "creature" ... "God created every living creature that moves." So this verse means, "He restores me as a living creature."
Two applications of this verse I'd like to suggest (among many others that could be explored - this psalm could occupy us for weeks!)
A sheep needs to be restored when it is "cast"; and when it has strayed.
1. A sheep is said to be "cast" when it has turned over on its back and can't get up again by itself. If a sheep rolls over - or is rolled over - too far, its centre of gravity shifts so no amount of struggle and leg waving can get its feet back in contact with the ground. As it lies there with its feet flaying frantically in the air, gases build up in its rumen; the animal swells up, and can die in a very few hours.
If a shepherd missed a sheep in the daily count, his first thought would be that it was "cast" somewhere, and the first clue he would look for in the urgent task of where to find it in those Bible lands would be the vultures in their long, slow spirals overhead. Once he found it, he would have to get it back on its feet, and then straddle it and rub its limbs to restore its circulation. "He restores my life."
No Christian is safe from being "cast down" or "bowled over" in this life. When that happens to us, remember that the anxiety we feel about ourselves at such a time is not a whit less than our Shepherd's anxiety to find us in time and get us on our feet again.
2. As to the sheep that strayed, we must remember that in Bible times there was a law that if a sheep strayed on to someone else's property, and could be proved to have been on it for twenty-four hours, it passed into the ownership of that landowner. And there were no fences, remember; property boundaries were marked by imaginary lines drawn between cairns of stones to mark the corners (remember Psalm 16:6,7? ... "the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places"). So it was easy for sheep to stray over.
How often do we stray over into "enemy territory" where our very life as a child of God is at risk, and we don't even know it!
Of course, unscrupulous landowners would dig pits and conceal them with lush green turf to lure sheep into them! Unless the shepherd came quickly and drew his sheep out of the pit, he would lose even the legal right to call it his own. With the twenty-four hour rule, the matter was so urgent that even the strict Jewish laws about working on the Sabbath were set aside. Jesus referred to this in Matthew 12:11 when the Pharisees had challenged Him whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day: "What man of you," He retorted, "if he has one sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath will not lay hold of it, and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!"
The Good Shepherd will restore our life. He will come out after us, and bring us back from our reckless waywardness before Satan can put his brand on us.
"Simon, Simon," said Jesus, "Satan has desired to have you ... but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not." And how Jesus did restore him - at the lakeside after He was risen, remember?!
If you have strayed, and in your heart you hear Christ calling as He searches for you, answer Him. Let Him know you want to be restored. Bleat!!
Those were days, remember, when you couldn't get a written reference from your previous employer. Your only reference was the good name you'd made. Once a shepherd had made a name for himself, he couldn't afford to neglect his sheep "for his name's sake." No-one would trust a shepherd who didn't know a true path from a false one. Some paths - or what appeared at first to be good paths - led along very steep hillsides, like narrow terraces, and then narrowed away to nothing. You can imagine what would happen if sheep were allowed to start off along such a path. The ones in front would reach a point where there was no path left, they'd be unable to turn around, and the other sheep following would bunch up behind and push them over. If that happened, and a shepherd returned without his sheep, his good name was lost for good.
So the Good Shepherd leads us along true paths for His Name's sake.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death," says Proverbs 14:12; "even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief." Small wonder David prayed (Psalm 25:4), "Make me to know Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths." Pray it with him.
And remember how jealous for His holy name God is in His shepherding of our lives.
Of course, the paths along which God leads us will sometimes be rugged and exhausting - even dangerous. There is no guarantee that feet will not bleed; but God's paths will always do what a right path should do - bring us out where He wants us to be.
It's the recognition that God's path for us may sometimes be beset with danger that leads David to say in verse 4 …
The word "death" is not present in this verse - or even necessarily implied by the Hebrew. The word means simply a dark ravine, a gloomy waddy. David has in mind those pressure zones in life, those times of ordeal, of which death, though the last, is only one.
When sheep were transferred from their winter to their summer pastures, they often had to be led through some pretty wild terrain.
Stephen Haboush, himself a shepherd for many years in Palestine speaks in his book, "My Shepherd Life in Galilee," of some dark valleys, 500 feet or more below sea level, where even he dreaded to take his sheep. Brigands used them as ambushes, and wild animals lay in wait in the shadows.
"My sheep," he wrote, "would sense the danger, and gather closely to my side. My continual calling and the sense of my presence gave them confidence and allayed their fear."
What a marvellous comment on the companionship of Christ with us in life's ordeals that is: "My continual calling to them (by their names) and the sense of my presence gives them confidence and allays their fear."
Notice the verse says, "Though I walk through the valley." It doesn't say we finish there. Even the valley of death is a valley we walk through - our Shepherd with us all the way - to the sunny uplands beyond.
And have you noticed that this is the place in the psalm where "He" changes to "Thou"? God's companionship is so real a thing, so precious a thing to David, that at the mention of it, he changes unconsciously to the language of personal address. "You are with me."
Christ does more than show the way - He is the way, for He takes us with Him in it.
And He is fully prepared for every emergency, for as David says …
The shepherd carried a club as well as a crook - a rod and a staff.
The handle of the cudgel was shaped to the shepherd's hand, and he could both strike with it as a weapon, and throw it with great skill. As we noted earlier, a shepherd's was a dangerous profession. That's why he went ahead of his flock in Bible times, so that he could deal with his sheep's enemies in advance.
The staff, a long stick with a hooked end, was used to pull back by its hind leg a sheep that was running off, or guide it by pressure on its side right or left into the right path, or to lift a newborn lamb and put in down beside its mother, or to free a sheep from entanglement in a bramble bush.
Thy rod and Thy staff - for the defence and management of my life - are my comfort. Christ is armed in our defence, and equipped to cope with every eventuality in our lives.
Contrary to what many commentators say, David does not at this point change the imagery - from a sheep in the flock to a guest in a tent. As both Phillip Keller and Stephen Haboush point out, the "tables" are flat, well pastured areas in the plateau country. Before the sheep could be grazed on them, they had to be prepared. Poisonous shrubs and weeds had to be eradicated. It had to be beaten clear of snakes, vipers' nests and the like.
The shepherd must examine it for the spoor of wolves and bears and other predators, and be sure the table didn't lie in their path to a water hole. Stephen Haboush recalls one shepherd who lost 300 sheep simply because he failed to "prepare the table" before he let his sheep loose on it.
This verse in the psalm says everything that the closing phrases of the Lord's Prayer say: "and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
VIII - THOU ANOINTEST MY HEAD WITH OIL
Again, let me suggest two applications of this.
i. To Heal.
When the flock was folded in the evening, the shepherd would pass each sheep by him in turn (he was himself literally the door into the fold, turning his body like a door to let each one past) and examine it. Perhaps its head had been bruised on a rock, or in a butting contest with another ram. From a stopped horn that hung at his side, the shepherd would pour oil on to the sheep's head and gently massage the bruising.
This is a picture of Christ's healing ministry - "I will restore you to health you, and your wounds I will heal," says the Lord in Jeremiah 30:17.
You will know that there are some aspects of the charismatic movement today about which I'm doubtful and even troubled, but they have one emphasis with which I am in whole-hearted accord, and that is what they call "the healing of the memory" - the application of the Holy Spirit's healing balm to wounds we have received in the past, even as far back as childhood and infancy, that are almost lost to memory, but which still bleed internally, so to speak, and weaken and warp us emotionally and spiritually.
Time forbids me to develop this, but if you're troubled by compulsive attitudes you know are wrong, ask God to anoint with the healing of His Spirit those memories that are the cause of them.
ii. To Disinfect.
The other application of oil was as a disinfectant against parasites and insects. Especially in the summer, sheep can be driven to absolute distraction, says Phillip Keller (p.43) by all sorts of flies and pests and ticks. Some will deposit their eggs in the damp mucus membrane of the sheep's nose; when the larvae hatch you can imagine the result! The irritation can be so intense, sheep may beat their heads against trees or rocks, toss their heads up and down in a torment for hours, stamp their feet, or rush about erratically until they drop from sheer exhaustion.
In Australia, sheep are dipped to provide against all this, but in the East it was the shepherd's application of oil that dealt with it.
Only the daily anointing of the Spirit of Jesus can give us immunity from the mass of irritations that plague our daily life, and free us from the torment of those things that "bug us"!
We've observed that a sheep's nose and mouth are too close together for it to drink disturbed water; for the same reason it can't lap water at a level lower than its feet: the water gets up its nose.
So the shepherd had sometimes to fill a large, two-handled stone basin from a nearby stream and place it where the sheep might drink from it in comfort.
You see the point? Christ's supply of refreshment is always full, always fresh, always brimming over.
"If any man thirst," He says, "let him come to me and drink."
There's time for only one comment on this verse: the remark passed by a schoolboy in the answer he wrote to a question on Psalm 23 from an R.I. exam: "David had two sheep dogs to help him when he was a shepherd boy; one he called "Goodness" and the other he called "Mercy" ... goodness and mercy shall "chase" me - yes, that in fact is the very word in the Hebrew ... shall chase me - hound me. The sheep dogs followed behind to keep the sheep bunched up behind the shepherd who went ahead of them, remember.
"Do you not know," asks Paul in Romans, "that God's kindness is meant to drive you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4)
If only we will respond!
God would far rather "herd us" into the Way by His mercies, than head us off from false paths by His judgements.
David has still not changed the imagery, for the phrase "the house of ..." doesn't have to refer to a building, like the temple. The whole land of Egypt was referred to as "the house of bondage," and Job refers to the wilderness area where wild asses roam as "their house." (39:6)
You see what David means? Because he knows that Yahweh is his Shepherd, and enjoys His protection, care and rule in every circumstance of this varied and even bewildering and sometimes threatening life, he has found an inner security that nothing can disturb.
The whole world has become His Father's House.
It might be helpful follow up our two study in Psalm 23 with the sayings of Jesus recorded in John's Gospel : "I am the good shepherd," ch. 10.14, and "I am the door," ch. 10.9.
The picture of the shepherd is deeply woven into the language and imagery of the Bible, and there is a reason for it, despite the generally low regard for shepherds, that it may be worth our while to see.
I remember on my first visit to Israel being surprised by the terrain. So much of it is rough, stony and hilly. Only the coastal plain of Sharon, the inland plain of Megiddo (since it has been drained), the Jordan Valley and the stretch north from Galilee to ancient Dan are suitable for agriculture. The central chain of hills stretching from Galilee in the north to Beersheba in the south allows agriculture, for the most part, only on narrow terraced strips on the hillsides. In particular the plateau running from Bethel just north of Jerusalem through Bethlehem to Hebron, south of it - the main part of Judæa - is gashed with rifts which make agriculture very difficult indeed. Olives, vines and fig trees are grown on hillsides here and there, but for the most part it is land for sheep and goats. Throughout the Bible period therefore, the shepherd was the most familiar figure of the Judæan uplands.
His life was very hard - indeed, is so still. There is little grass, and its growth where it does grow is seasonal. Flocks must for ever be on the move to find it, and the edges of the plateau - only 35 miles long and 17 miles wide - dip away sharply into craggy desert land below. No flock may ever graze without a shepherd to watch it.
The shepherd therefore was never off duty. His task was unremitting and dangerous: his sheep were prey to wolves, bears and lions in Bible times, to thieves and robbers and, in the wet season, to flash floods and land slides.
A great scholar, Sir George Adam Smith, wrote of him: "When you meet him, in some high place at night, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, leaning on his staff and looking out over his scattered sheep, wolf howls drifting on the wind in every direction, you understand why the shepherd of Judæa sprang to the fore in his peoples' history; why he gave his name to their kings; why they made him the symbol of providence; and why Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice."
Vigilant, fearless, patient, caring - that was the Judæan shepherd. He lived, not for himself but for his flock. That is why God is often pictured in the Old Testament as a shepherd:
• "The Lord is
my shepherd, I shall not want." Psalm 23.1
• "Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like
a flock." Psalm 80.1
• "He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the
sheep of His hand." Psalm 95.7
• "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the
lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently
lead those that are with young." Isaiah 40.11
• "Thus saith the Lord God: 'I, I myself will be the shepherd of
my sheep, and I will make them to lie down. I will seek the lost
… and bring back the strayed … bind up the crippled and
strengthen the weak; and the fat and the strong I will watch over.'"
Ezekiel 34.15
This picture carries over into the New Testament.
• Jesus is the
Good shepherd. John 10.11
• He is the shepherd who will risk his life to seek and to save
one straying sheep. Matthew 8.12
• He has pity on the crowds because they are as sheep without a
shepherd. Matthew 9.36
• His disciples are His little flock. Luke 12.32
• When He, the shepherd, is smitten the sheep are scattered.
Mark 14.27
• He is "the great shepherd of the sheep." Hebrews
13.20
We may easily miss the arresting significance of this. Familiarity with the image makes us forget that in applying it to Jesus of Nazareth the New Testament writers were ascribing divinity to Him. That He applied the language to Himself in a culture where the picture of the shepherd was an archetypal image of God was on His part, not a veiled, but an explicit claim to godhood.
Let me take you now a step further to help us understand a shepherd's life, for the Bible shepherd's task was not at all like an Australian stockman's.
i. His equipment first.
It consisted of …
• A scrip
A bag made of animal skin in which he carried his food … bread, dried fruit, olives and cheese.
• A sling
He was highly skilled with it. He could "sling a stone at a hair's breadth and not miss." It was a weapon with which to slay beasts as David slew Goliath with it.
There's another use to which he put it which is of interest too. Since he went ahead of his sheep, he would recall a sheep that had dropped behind by lobbing a stone just where it would make him jump the right way back.
• A staff
A wooden club, quite short, its knobbly end often studded with nails, which he slung from his belt. It was his weapon for close in-fighting with beast or brigand, as the sling was his long range weapon.
• A rod
The familiar shepherd's crook. With the curled end he could hook a sheep by its hind leg and haul it in to him. At the end of the day he held it low to the ground as the sheep entered the fold, obliging each sheep to "pass under the rod," when he would examine it for any injury it might have sustained through the day. Then, with the last item of equipment,
• A horn
A scooped-out, stoppered animal horn that hung inverted from his belt, filled with oil which he would apply to any wound the sheep might have sustained through the day for healing.
Do you "pass under the shepherd's rod" at the end of your day?
ii. The relationship between the shepherd and his sheep
Second, we should understand the relationship between the shepherd and his sheep.
Except for those around Bethlehem which were bred for the Temple sacrifices, sheep were not, for the most part, bred for killing, but for shearing. The shepherd and his sheep often shared life together therefore for years. A hundred sheep was about as large a flock as one man could manage, and the intimacy that grew between them was intense. He named them all. He developed a language in which he communicated with them.
H. V. Morton once described it: "He talks to them in a sing-song voice, using a language unlike anything I have heard in my life. The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order … a language the great god Pan might have spoken on the mountains of Greece."
I remember a minister in England recalling once that he visited churches in Germany with his son and daughter on a holiday there. They had lingered in one of them, and as he re-entered the church to fetch them out, he heard his son saying to his sister, crouched in front of the communion table where they'd been translating the words carved on it, "You know, when God comes here, He talks German." He speaks to us in our own tongue.
"My sheep hear my voice."
At the end of the day shepherds would bring their flocks to a shared fold, an area boundaried by a stone wall. The door of the sheepfold was a mere gap in one wall, no wider than a sheep, which the shepherd (or the gatekeeper) filled by standing, or lying down in it himself. A sheep might leave the fold, or a wolf or thief enter it, only over the body of the shepherd. He was himself the door. In the morning, when the sheep were led out to pasture, the shepherds would stand some way off ranged in an arc around the "door" and begin calling their sheep. They would trot out one by one and gather round "their shepherd."
Verses 3-5 describe the process exactly: "The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."
Do you listen for the shepherd's calling voice each morning?
And whose voice do you hear through the day? Do we heed the voices of strangers with our inner ear?
The saying that a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep was not an exaggeration in those times. It was the most natural thing to defend the flock with his life. Dr. W. M. Thompson in "the Land and the Book" writes: "I have listened with intense interest to graphic descriptions of downright and desperate fights with savage beasts.
"And when the thief and the robber come (and come they do), the faithful shepherd has often to put his life in his hand to defend his flock. A poor faithful fellow last spring, between Tiberias and Tabor, instead of fleeing, actually fought three Bedouin robbers until he was hacked to pieces with their changers, and died among the sheep he was defending."
Now let me walk you briefly through just some of the points where we may apply all this to the relationship we have with our Shepherd.
• vs. 1-2 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens …"
Jesus here claims to be the only one who can give you a place in His flock, among the People of God: "No man comes to the Father but by me." You are a stranger to God until you have a personal relationship of trust and intimacy with the Lord Jesus.
Do you have that? He offers it to you as His gift. There is no way we may receive it but as a gift. We can do nothing of ourselves to secure or fashion it. It is given to us, or we do not have it.
Wrote John (I John 5:12-14), "This is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life. I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life."
You have but to receive it, with simple trust.
Jesus reinforces what He says here in …
• vs. 7-10 : So Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."
When He says, "All who came before me are thieves and robbers," He is not writing off all the priests and prophets of Israel as impostors; they indeed, as we read in Hebrews 11, "all died in faith, having seen what was promised, and greeted it, from afar …"
They had "heard His voice."
Rather, He is saying that He is the one mediator between God and man. He is your only real introduction to God. God gives His Son into the world, and says to us, "I will meet with you in Him - in no other."
• To go to Him
is to go to God.
• To receive Him is to receive God.
• To know Him is to know God.
• To enjoy Him is to enjoy God.
No Eastern religion
can give you that.
No religion at all can give you that, not even Christianity itself if
it is conceived as a system, a mere ethic, apart from Christ
Himself.
No method of meditation can give you that.
No quest for truth in "inner space" can give you that.
Only Jesus can give you that.
He is calling to you … waiting for you to hear His voice, and go to Him.
"I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."
• v. 10b "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
The phrase "have it abundantly" is a Greek phrase which means "to have a surplus," to be rich. We are not truly alive until we have come alive to Him.
In the Greek the "I" is emphatic - "I came so they might have life."
Christ's interest in you is not a commercial interest; it is not a salesman's or an advertiser's interest. They offer to enrich your life, but their real interest is the enrichment of their own. Christ has no interest in His own enrichment. So true is this that "He lays down His life for the sheep." He is the only one who holds your interests so truly to heart that He may be trusted absolutely to seek no selfish gain from you. His one endeavour is to give … to lead you to "green pastures" and "still waters" and a "prepared table" and an "overflowing cup." The life He gives is the life God created you to enjoy. There is nothing niggardly in His bestowal of it. He will give you "good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over."
• v.11 " I am the Good Shepherd."
The word for "good" in the phrase "good shepherd" is not the usual word for "good" in the New Testament. The usual word is "agaqoß" which describes moral quality; here the word is "kaloß" and that is a word that means not merely that a person is good, but in his goodness beautiful. It denotes a quality of winsomeness, of loveliness, of beauty. "I am the shepherd beautiful."
There is more than faithfulness in Him; there is more than virtue in Him; there is more than truth in Him - there is beauty in Him.
"Sometimes," observes William Barclay, "in a village or town people speak of 'the good doctor.' When they speak of him that way they are not thinking only of his efficiency and skill as a medical practitioner; they are thinking of the sympathy and kindness, the genuine, heart- warming care he has for his patients which makes him, not just their doctor but their friend."
The Lord Jesus is the "altogether lovely one, the fairest of ten thousand." Who else inspires songs like …
Jesus, tender lover of my soul,
Pardoner of my sins and friend indeed,
Keeper of the garden of my soul,
All my lasting joys are found in Thee;
Jesus Thou art everything to me.More to me than all the joys of earth,
What to me is every sight I see
Save the sight of Thee, O Friend of mine?Here I lay me at Thy bleeding feet,
Deepest homage now I give to Thee;
Hear Thy whispered love within my soul;
Jesus Thou art everything to me.
He inspires, not just admiration, not just homage, nor even praise merely, but love - true, tender, glad, unbridled love. He generates the intimacy He describes in v.14: listen, for the words are astonishing …
• "I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father."
And if you wonder whether He indeed intends this to be your enjoyment, then hear what He goes on at once to say, "And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd." vs. 17-18
Finally note the astonishing claim in verses 17 & 18 :
• "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father."
It is the only thing in the entire record Jesus ever said He did of His own accord. The laying down of His life was His own act and deed. In all else, "the Son did nothing of Himself, but only what He saw the Father doing."
But in this one matter special power was given Him to take individual and personal action. The one thing in the flesh He was ever free to do of His own free choice was to lay down His life for the sheep.
How great, how very great, is His love.
Why has He loved us so? I cannot tell.
Surely the Son of God might have discovered, or made (!), creatures more worthy of His attachment. But it was not so. Love knows no reason, no law. He has loved us with the greatest love of all, the love that heeds not life itself in the service of the beloved.
There is nothing now of good that He will withhold from His own, His loved, His chosen, His blood-bought flock.
Believe in Him!
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