“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).
Of all the passages in the Old Testament, none is more widely loved and quoted than Psalm 23. Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “This psalm…has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world.” The author: David, who left his father’s home in Bethlehem to shepherd a flock of sheep in the Judean hills, where he soon learned how important is the task of a shepherd. In Hebrew there are but 54 words; in English more than twice that, yet nothing ever written comes close to bringing the same kind of comfort in distress as this shepherd psalm.
Though the words reflect the experience of David, who battled the bear and the lion in protecting his father’s sheep, these are not the words of a youth, but rather they reflect the experience of a veteran who looks back from the vantage of age and speaks of the entire landscape of life.
“The Lord,” says David, “is my shepherd.” The image of a shepherd, then, as now, was a familiar one to those who lived in the Middle East. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been shepherds. Even today, Bedouins will take their sheep and move from pasture to pasture as their forebears have done for countless centuries, carrying on the vocation of shepherding.
In completing the picture, David says we are the sheep, and in doing so, it is a fair but not very complimentary analogy. Why? Of all the creatures which God created, none has a smaller brain in proportion to the size of the body than do sheep. Lacking the strength of a lion, or the cunning of a fox, sheep are easily misled and, apart from the protection of a shepherd, are easy prey for marauding animals. Another Psalm says, “We are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3).
Isaiah, the eighth century prophet, likened God’s people to sheep which are easily led astray. He said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). On at least two occasions, Jesus referred to the people who came to hear Him teach as “sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36, Mark 6:34).
With no one to guide and protect them, sheep easily stray into danger. Perhaps the somewhat uncomplimentary analogy of likening people to sheep is better than you first might think. Robert Robinson knew that it reflected the condition of his heart, for he wrote the words of an old hymn: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.”
In His ministry, Jesus also used the analogy of the shepherd as He cried, “I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep” (John 10:14). Again, He said, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost”(Luke 19:10). But Jesus was not only a shepherd, He was also the Lamb which became the sacrifice for the sins of the world. Hear John the Baptist, dressed in the skins of animals, as he cries out, “Behold, the lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.”
Peter, one of the twelve who walked with Jesus, said we are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” referring to the lamb which was sacrificed in the temple to atone for sins (I Peter 1:19).
Friend, can you say with David, “The Lord is my shepherd?” It’s the personal pronoun, my, which means a relationship exists between you and the Great Shepherd who loved you and gave His life that you might have eternal life. Is the 23rd Psalm more than beautiful poetry to you? It can be. Make it a picture of your relationship with God, and the reflection of your heart. (Note: Scripture quotations in the 23rd Psalm series are from the New King James Bible).
Resource reading: Psalm 23
