Psalm 23: The Good Shepherd — Keith Price

Words, I appreciate your kindness. All I can think of as I look back over the six months is all the things that I'd intended to do and didn't do. So I'm glad you didn't know what I intended to do. But as I look back on life, too, there are a lot of things I'd intended to do.

As I look back in my study at home, there are a lot of piles of paper I'd intended to go through. One of these days, maybe I won't and somebody else will have to. I don't know. But anyway, there are a lot of things that we try to do in life and we're not able to.

But thank you. You've been so wonderful and so encouraging and you've been so grateful for any little thing. It's just amazing. I appreciate so much being with you all. I had a sweater on tonight. It was a little colder coming and here I am.

I'm too hot to keep it on. No, just leave it there. So I hope you're not going to be too warm. If you are, just drop off to sleep. Don't worry about it. I promise my last night here, at least I will be coming back probably a couple of weeks from now when Doug is preaching and just for one Sunday just to be around.

But then it'll be the end of October. So if you drop off, don't worry. I'm not going to tell you off on the last night. But we've got a wonderful, wonderful psalm to look at tonight and it's the last of our evenings, Summer in the Psalms.

And you know, I'm amazed to see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven in the front row there. I very much doubt whether your Bible falls open to the psalms, you know, because mine didn't at that age.

And maybe you've read a few, I don't know, but it's mainly the kind of passage of scripture that you get used to in life as you go through life and you come to feel the knocks and the hits of life and you realize that this is what life is about, what's in the psalms.

The Psalms and the Good Shepherd

So I hope what I'm going to do today, and I'm so glad you're right there in the front row, and I realize if I don't keep your attention... Oh, I thought it was a skateboard, sorry. That's just great indeed.

I thought you were going to get out there quickly like, but I'm glad you're there because I hope that you will come to see, just like all of us will, something tremendous in these psalms. We've done a number of them, I can't remember the different ones, I know it's included Psalm 19 on the Word of God, Psalm 131 on contentment, Psalm 42 and 43, we did at least four sessions on Psalm 139, and tonight we're going to come to this final one in Psalm 23.

Now if you don't have a Bible with you, I am using the New International Version, but you'll find that, apart I think you may have the British one on your sheet there, a couple little expressions that are different on the sheet you've got, but you'll understand as we get to it.

So would you like to look at it? All I'm going to do tonight, if I had decided what I was going to say on this psalm, I would have wanted to include everything and we'd never got away from here. So what I've done is I've just saturated myself with the psalm and the author of the psalm and the one who inspired it, the Lord Himself by His Spirit.

And I'm saying, Lord, I don't know where I'm going to go in this psalm tonight, but you decide what it is you want me to share from this psalm, because we're just going to go through it. That's all I'm going to do, give you the sense of it.

And as we do it, maybe you've got a special need, which I wouldn't have planned, but God will allow me, allow that to come to my mind tonight. So if you haven't got a Bible, then by all means turn to the psalm on the back of your worship folder tonight, would you?

And I'm going to read Psalm 23. Let me read it two ways, and I'm sure you'll understand why. We've just been singing a lovely song, My Lord and I, or what is it, The Lord and I, or God and I, it says on the top, but The Lord and I.

This psalm is all about the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, and me. It's all about how we're thrown together. Let me read it the first way. Listen to this. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His namesake. 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 before me in the presence of mine enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

It's all about Him. But let me read it the other way now. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for His namesake. 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 before me in the presence of mine enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Isn't that marvelous? That's what this psalm is all about. It's about a beautiful relationship. A relationship between my God and myself. And everything that happens in this psalm is dependent entirely upon that relationship.

Nothing you can concoct yourself. No clever ways I can think up that I could get through all these problems. No. It's all dependent on a relationship. That He is the shepherd, and I am the sheep. And we've been thinking about that now for a couple of weeks, and I don't think we're going to go on to it after tonight, but it's wonderful to think about this lovely psalm in this great way indeed.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

You know there actually is a valley of the shadow of death. I don't know whether you know that, but there is one. And in fact it's about four and a half miles long, and it's south, just south of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, or Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.

And if you've been down that road, you know the one we read about in Luke's Gospel about the man that was robbed and the Good Samaritan and so on. It's just south of that road. And this is a terribly dangerous valley.

It's the most dangerous valley that many, many people, that many shepherds have ever seen. In fact, most shepherds, they say this is the most dangerous valley they'd seen. And about every five or six years, Reader's Digest reproduces an article that came out I think during the Second World War first of all, and it reproduces telling you all about this valley of the shadow of death.

Every shepherd from Spain to Dalmatia knows all about this for hundreds of miles around. And it's so dangerous and so narrow, in fact at some points the walls are 1 ,500 feet high, and the distance across at the very bottom may be no more than 10 or 12 feet sometimes.

And there are gullies even with that. So you can imagine that the sun really, even at midday, never gets down there. And it's dangerous and it's filled with all kinds of animal enemies and all kinds of problems.

And in fact, two flocks of sheep can't pass one another in some of those places, so as a result there's an unwritten law. The unwritten law is that the sheep, the shepherd will take his sheep up the valley in the morning and down the valley in the evening, so that two flocks won't have to pass one another.

And sometimes those gullies are 6, 8, 10 feet deep, you know. Sometimes there's a drop across a gully, particularly one part where you have to cross over from one side to the other. And as you cross over, you have to drop down about 18 inches, and there's about a 7 or 8 feet wide gully.

And the sheep stand on there and they've got to get across. I'm not sure how he does it, but he does it in a marvellous way, and he just steers them across. But it's a terribly dangerous place. And in fact, if one owner of a Christian bookstore told me some four or five years ago that this psalm is so well known that if somebody comes into the bookstore and wants to buy a Bible, and they certainly don't know much about Bibles, they say, oh, I'd like to buy a Bible.

Well, which version would you want, man? Oh, are there different versions? I didn't know that. Well, show me one and I'll sort it out. All right. So he says, now this is a very good version. And they look around for a little while and they say, where is Psalm 23?

And so they find Psalm 23 and they look at it and they read through it until they come to that place that says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

If that says the valley of the shadow of death, they say, that's fine, I'll have that Bible. Why? Well, because that's probably along with John 3 .16, the verse that is known best by people who know maybe only very little of the Bible.

But somehow or other, even though that thought is there, and it's an important thought, this expression, as we'll see when we get to verse 4, includes far more than the valley of the shadow of death. It includes all of the valleys of life.

In fact, the literal translation of it, according to most scholars, although some will say you can just see that word death in there, is, as you see in the footnote there, if you've got an NIV, it says in the bottom, underneath verse 4, if you look down in the footnote, or, yea, though I walk through the darkest valley.

The expression is, the deepest darkness, the darkest deepness, the valley of deepest darkness, and the valley of the greatest crisis in life is death, and it's the deepest and darkest perhaps in some cases, although it's the one of the briefest.

There are other valleys that are much longer than that, the valley of bereavement, the valley of doubt and questioning, the valley of loneliness that comes about after the valley of the shadow of death.

But frankly, that's the one they want to use, they want to use that verse and say, that Bible must be okay. So, of course, no translators would put anything else other than that, because they wouldn't sell their Bibles, but it includes more than that, but listen, it includes that, and it's absolutely there, and it speaks about it, it's something that we can face.

As Christians, we can face death. You don't want to think about it when you're your age, but frankly, you do as you get through life, you come to realize this is life's greatest crisis. So, what I'm going to do is just go through it as quickly as we can, and just give a few brief thoughts on each one.

The Shepherd Provides Every Essential Need

We'll just go through the verses, we'll just milk the text, all right? You milk it, and then you go back tomorrow morning again, there'll be more there, more milk again, ready to be milked. But, I want you to notice the kind of way in which it's laid out.

Look at the expression in the first line, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. Doesn't mean you say, I shall not want, well, I won't want anything. Of course you want things, you want all kinds of things.

God isn't interested in what you want, he's interested in what you need, and he knows that he's only going to supply what you need, because much of what we want, like a motorbike at eight years of age, isn't good for us.

So as a result of that, he says, no, I know what you need, so I hold back some of the things you want, but I'm going to give you the absolute essentials of life, so I won't be in want of anything I need.

That's the idea, not the old English, I won't want anything. Now, what will we not be in want of? And the rest of the psalm tells us that. Look, verse 2, I'll not be in want, verse 2a, I'll not be in want of rest.

He makes me lie down in green pastures. Verse 2b, he leads me beside quiet waters, I'll not be in want of refreshment. Verse 3a, he restores my soul, I'll not be in want of restoration when I need that.

3b, he guides me in the paths of righteousness, I'll not be in want of guidance. Verse 4a, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll feel no way before you are with me, I'll not be in want of companionship.

You are a rod in your staff, they comfort me, I'll not be in want of comfort. Then verse 5, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, I'll not be in want of sustenance or provision.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, I'll not be in want of joy. In fact, I'll not be in want of anything, because if my cup overflows, there's more there than I really need. Not only that, but surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.

I'll not be in need in this life, I'll not want anything, I'll not be in want in this life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, even though that means all the days of this life is a parallel thing, yet, looking at it from a New Testament, I'll not be in want eternally.

So right through this psalm, you can see that in want side, and he just takes care. It's only because Jesus is the companion, because he is with me, because he's the shepherd, because I'm the sheep that's waiting upon him in every respect, that I can say, I know I will not have need of any of these things, because they'll be there, because he's there.

Now having said that, there are many fine scholars that look at this psalm, that look at it in equally valid ways, and they say, well, it's not all about the shepherd and the sheep. They say, the first two verses are all about the shepherd and the sheep.

The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not be in want, he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. And they say, that's all there is about the shepherd and the sheep.

Then they say, because we need different analogues, different analogies, in order to bring out all the wonderful things about the relationship between my Lord and I, he moves on to a different motif then.

He starts talking about the traveler and the guide. Now he says, this isn't a sheep now, this is a traveler and guide. He guides me still, the same Lord, but he guides me now as a traveler, they say. He guides me in the paths of righteousness, all for his namesake, and even when I'm traveling, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

And they say, in actual fact, that there's the traveler and the guide. Then they say that the last two verses, five and six, is in actual fact a different motif again. It's now to do with the host and the guest.

Now you've arrived at your destination, or you've come to a place where you're a stranger and somebody's received you in like a good Jew will, and you prepare a table before me. In the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy, or goodness and love, will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now, I wouldn't quarrel with people that want to break it up like that.

I still like to see it all as the sheep, but that's fine, I understand that too. But I'm only going to cover, if I can tonight, the first four verses, because we won't possibly get through the rest of it.

And we know that most people who do divide it up still say the first four verses are to do with the shepherd and the sheep. When you get the rod and staff, it's pretty hard, perhaps, to think of it as traveler and guide, but anyway, that's the way they are.

So let's have a look at this just one by one. The Lord is my shepherd. There's the two thrown together. Sometimes, you know, when we're in deep, deep trouble in the valleys of life, we need to know victory in those valleys.

The thought is, if you can't think of anything else, just think of the Lord on one side, the shepherd on the other, and then say, this Lord is capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. This is the covenant God of Israel.

This is the name that God showed himself as to his people. This was that beautiful relationship with that deep, wonderful love of God, that beautiful, beautiful chesed love of God, which is the prime quality of this God to his people.

And now this God is the one up there, the creator of heaven and earth, the Lord. He's my shepherd. And you throw those two things together. Or you say, he leadeth me. Or he guides me. Always put those together in smallness.

But the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. All right, let's have a look at what we won't be in want of. Firstly, we'll not be in want of rest. Now, sheep need rest. They often get up in Israel about 3 .30 or 4 in the morning.

They're eager to get going, as I indicated this morning. If they're going to get some good pasture, then they need to start early, but also to get a lot of moisture in even the rougher pasture early in the morning, because the dew is still on it.

And you know, it's not very generally known, but a sheep can actually go a month or more, two months maybe, without actually drinking. Did you know that? It can actually go a month or two without drinking.

But only if they get up early in the morning and they make sure that of course they get all that good grass with all the dew in it. And of course the two of them are combined there. He makes me lie down in green pastures, although he leads me beside quiet waters as the actual drinking.

But let's look at the green pastures. He makes me lie down in green pastures. You must know shepherds. We have a very famous one that died not too long ago, as you know, in British Columbia, lived in Victoria, over there with us, just on the coast, and his name was Philip Keller.

And you know, Philip Keller wrote those two wonderful little books, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, and then another one, A Shepherd Looks at the Good Shepherd in John 10. Two wonderful books, you should get those.

Another excellent book to buy, by the way, is F. B. Meyer's book, The Shepherd Psalm, a little booklet just about as big as that Paths to Power that you got from Dr. Tozer's book some weeks ago, and which will be available again with my own book next Sunday, I believe.

So a little book like that is The Shepherd Psalm by F. B. Meyer, and Philip Keller's book. But Philip Keller says this, now he's pastured, he looked after sheep, and pasturing sheep and shepherding sheep, as we saw this morning, it's the same word.

You're out to pasture, you're a pastor, you're a shepherd. It's all the same word. That's what a pastor does, he shepherds. But he says, if I'm going to get my sheep to lie down in any kind of field or anywhere when we're out, there have got to be several things that must obtain, things that must be in place or they won't lie down.

And he says, the first thing that must be in place for a sheep to lie down is there must be, it must be free from fear. Fear particularly of other animals, or fear of something that may be in the field, or fear that the shepherd isn't around.

In fact, he says, if only the shepherd walks into the field when the sheep are fearful, you can sense this calming effect come over the sheep. But if there's fear there, if they know they're in a place where they've previously seen some animals, or if they're lying down there, and suddenly they hear a jackrabbit just move a twitch of muscle or something in the undergrowth there, or the loose leaves perhaps, suddenly one sheep will start off and the whole flock will start to go across the field.

Because if they are fearful, they cannot lie down, they will not lie down. They must be completely free from fear. You and I, as we are Christians, as we are sheep in the hands of our shepherd, we completely trust him.

We know when he's in the field that all is well. We don't need to be fearful because he will have checked it out for us to make sure there's none of those wild animals around. He'll walk around to make sure there's none of the poisonous plants there on the field that I'm going to eat.

I know I can feel safe. There's no fear of eating the wrong thing, and there's no fear of having someone attack us. And if he's in the field, and if they do come and attack us, he's got his club, and wow, he'll take care of them all right.

As Christians, we know that we can't rest when there's fear. When we rest, it's because there's perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear. And so when we know our Lord, when the shepherd becomes special to us, when in our times of communion we get to know him and read the word and draw from all the things he has to give us, that love deepens and deepens and deepens.

It becomes so enriching and enlivening and enriching in our lives that in actual fact, enriching in our lives, that we will just not have any fear, because that perfect love casts out fear. A sheep will not lie down not only when it's fearful.

Rest From Tension in the Flock

It must be free from fear, but also secondly, it must be free from tension. If there's tension in the flock, the sheep won't lie down. If there's sort of, you know, what do you call it? I guess you call a pecking order, right?

With chickens, we call it a pecking order. With cattle, I guess you call it a horning order. With sheep, you call it a butting order. And they know exactly where they are. Once they determine that butting order, at the beginning of the day, they know they better stick to it.

But sometimes, that old domineering old ewe that's been around there for a long time and thinks she's got the run of the whole place there, you know, she just, people don't like her very much, those other sheep don't.

And they start to get fussy, and they don't like this, and they start to compete. They say, it's about time she gave up. She's three years old now, you know, it's about time she packed up. And as a result, there's sometimes tension, and there's competing, and they're vying for position in the flock.

And when there's this kind of tension, a competitive spirit, then the sheep won't lie down. In the Church of the Living God, the Church of Jesus Christ, when there's a competitive spirit, there's no way the sheep will lie down.

There's no way there's rest in our hearts. We sense one person vying against another, itching to get into that top place, or itching to be recognized for this or that. Those who are the shepherds ought to recognize all the sheep, because all of them have unusual gifts.

Not one person exactly the same gifts as the others, but the combination of their personality traits, their natural talents, and their spiritual gifts are unique as a Mosaic, and there's nobody else like them.

That's why the shepherd loves to have that time with each one of those sheep each day, and that sheep feels there's something special. We haven't been doing it the last few months, but very frequently we would have one of our grandchildren all the time over to breakfast, run them off to school after, they don't live too far away, and it's always nice to have one of them there, just one.

Sit them in the place of the guest of honor there, you know, lay the table properly for breakfast, and lay it all out there just like it's a dinner with candles at breakfast time. But you know what I mean, I mean they sort of look at this and they say, oh, can't I just stuff this in my mouth and run to school?

No, this is proper breakfast. And you have them over there, they feel different. And you know, one at a time it's nice to do that, well that's what the shepherd does, and in order to break that tension oftentimes he just calms that sheep down.

Now if that isn't calmed down, if there's still this tension and competitive spirit, then the sheep won't lie down. The Lord Jesus enables us to avoid that, because as I said this morning, he shows us that he came not to be served, but to serve.

And as I've said a dozen times in these six months, there isn't any competition at the bottom. That means that if we are servants, have a servant spirit, there won't be this competitive vying for position, this butting order, and the sheep will lie down.

Rest From Annoyance and Hunger

A third reason why sheep will not lie down is not only when there's fear, to lie down they've got to be free from fear, to lie down they've got to be free from tension in the flock, but thirdly they've got to be free from aggravation, from annoyance, from the things that annoy them, particularly those parasites.

And they get in the field, particularly in the hot months, you know, and all those little flies, particularly all those different flies that come, particularly some of them just lay eggs in the sheep's mucous membrane here, and they get up through the whole system, and the sheep can't get rid of them.

Sometimes sheep are so utterly devastated and annoyed at all these insects that they'll shake themselves and they'll go and rub against a tree. Sometimes they throw themselves against a tree. Sheep have been known to kill themselves by virtue of the fact they've been annoyed with insects or parasites.

When there's annoyance by one member of the body on the part of another, you can't stand them. You see them come in here, you go and sit over there. Or when you see that person and you can't stand them because, you know, I don't know how people can stand me because I'm always talking, you know.

And I understand that. Some people are so nice and quiet, and boy when they talk I lift up my ears. And I came to the conclusion some years ago, as I thought about how can I be quiet, I thought about there's no one more obnoxious than someone that's got an opinion on every subject.

And I thought, Lord am I like that? I've got an opinion on every subject? But you know there are all kinds of ways we can annoy one another. But you know the gracious thing is that the Spirit of God pours in grace to put up with even the most annoying characters.

And when the shepherd is there with you, then his life is ministered to you by that Holy Spirit who pours in that grace so we can put up with one another. And then you can lie down and you can be at rest even though that person's sitting right next to you and even rubbing shoulder to shoulder.

There's a fourth reason though why sheep won't lie down, and it's the main reason. Not only must they be free from fear, free from tension, free from annoyance, but they must be free from hunger. That's why he makes me lie down in green pastures.

Probably this is the middle of the day now. A sheep will perhaps start off in the early hours of the morning before most of us are awake and they'll go out then to pastures. They start with the rougher ones and then they gradually make their way towards a nice pasture.

But about 10 o 'clock, maybe 10, 30 in the morning, in Israel in particular, the sheep need a rest. So the shepherd says, OK, it's time now. I'll just check out this field. Everything's fine. I'll make sure I've got my sling there ready to throw.

I've got my club here and I want to make sure that everything's safe. So they can lie down as long as they're free from fear, free from tension, free from annoyance. But now they have to be free from hunger.

And if they're still hungry, they're only now getting to the richest pastures. Now they're only getting to the green pastures. There aren't many green places in Israel, as you know. But if they're in the green pastures, they know they've got the finest pasture they can get.

And as they feed on that and as they eat that, then they're contented. Oh my, so contented. And then they lie down. If they're free from those four things, they can lie down. Now the Lord Jesus has made it so that we won't be, we all be hungry for him.

There's a sense in which we never cease to hunger. We never cease to thirst. I've told you a number of times over these months. In fact, it's the essence of my book, Thirsting After God, that frankly, the more we drink from the fountainhead, the more thirsty we will become.

I don't mean in that sense. I mean if the sheep have had enough just for the time being, they lie down. And with us, of course, when God feeds us and when he gives us to drink, then what happens is we are absolutely satisfied only momentarily.

And then just like that, with that, he gives us an increased capacity. So we still keep on hungering and thirsting. So the ones that are most hungry and most thirsty are the ones that keep on eating and drinking.

However, with the sheep, they must have enough right there and then. If they've had enough to eat, then they'll lie down. Now God has made his wonderful word available to us. And the more you take of that, the more hungry you will become.

The more you read it, the more you'll want to read it. Some people say, I don't understand this. I read it in the morning and I'm going through my Bible. I'm going through the one-year Bible here and I read my Old Testament chapter and I read my New Testament chapter and I read my psalm and my proverb.

Well, you know, it's okay, but all these people killing one another off and all these Levitical offerings, I haven't got a clue what it means that the fat on this part of the animal goes there and there.

It doesn't mean, you know, the more you read in the scriptures, the more hungry you'll become. And as you become hungry, you'll just long more to go beyond the scriptures and come to the Lord himself.

But in this situation, when we're hungry, he feeds us from his word and his spirit enables us to understand that increasingly. And the more you read it, the more you'll understand it. And the more satisfied you become temporarily until he gives you a bigger appetite again, right?

So those are the four reasons why. Not only does he make me lie down in green pastures, but also I shall not be in want of refreshment for he leads me beside quiet waters. I don't have to tell you that sheep won't drink from rushing streams.

They don't like fast flowing streams at all. And sometimes they would build a dam perhaps in the river so that there'd be not such a fast flowing part in the stream. Or sometimes at the side in a little backwater there, the shepherd may just dig a kind of a deep hole there if he can with his hands, with the stuff underneath if it's soft enough.

And somehow it's a little bit quieter. But the sheep doesn't like fast flowing water. He has to have still waters, quiet waters, or as the literal translation is, he leads me beside waters of rest. For the rest comes not only from the green pastures when they're lying down, but they have rest because these waters don't trouble them.

The Spirit of God is the water that flowed from the rock of Christ as we've seen in the last few weeks. He was the rock smitten. The Spirit of God came and he just satisfies our thirst only to the point where in the end we have this increased capacity and keep on crying out for more.

But he leads me beside the quiet waters, the places I love to drink from, all to put the Spirit and the word together. The green pastures and the quiet waters if you like, although again I wouldn't argue over what that means.

I think sometimes we go too far in insisting that every little analogue has to have some spiritual meaning. It doesn't always have one, you know, but I guess you can read it into it as long as it's in the rest of Scripture I won't argue, but if it's against Scripture be very careful.

But he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. Isn't that marvellous? He leads me. He is over there in all his greatness and wonderful, wonderful person. I am over here. He, me.

But in between, is it equal? No. He leads me. All I've got to do is to follow. I don't have to worry about anything. Just like a little child, they don't have too many worries about money or how they're going to get the mortgage put together or where the next job's going to come from.