Psalm 23

A number of years ago, I stood at the bedside of a patient in an ICU, but not as a physician, I stood there as a grandson. My grandmother had a clatskin tumor and ultimately would die from that. And as I stood by her bedside, she was intubated, but the eyes are so expressive.

And I looked into her eyes and I saw wide eyed terror. My father was there and he said, why don't you quote to her Psalm 23. And so I began, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 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.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And as I looked down, she had took a tighter hold of my hand. But the lines of anxiety and the whites of her eyes began to relax to a normal facial expression that I think really was verging on a smile.

Difficult in that situation. The Lord had ministered to her through the words of this best known, best loved Psalm, Psalm 23. And I want to spend some time with you today, deriving some spiritual benefit from this wonderful Psalm of David.

The Psalms are poetry. They are full of metaphor. They express that metaphor in a poetical form, which really makes the meaning so much deeper.

So many Christians turn to the Psalms at any time because they contain the full palette of human emotion. Whether you are sad or joyful, whether you are in triumph or defeat, whether you're excited or depressed, there is a message for you. There's help for you.

There's encouragement for you in the Psalms. I think the Psalms are very precious to us as well because they reveal to us the emotional life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel writers, when they describe their crucifixion, are rather dispassionate and they are to the point.

In fact, they are designedly brief. There they crucified him. But if we want to understand as much as we are able to understand what transpired at the cross, we turn to the Psalms.

Now the Psalms are really a second Pentateuch. Moses wrote the first one, but the Psalms, as you would probably know, are divided into five books. I only want to talk about the first book today, that's Psalms 1 through 41, because that's where our Psalm is and I just want to see how it's positioned in that book.

The Psalms of David are... I should say the first book of the Psalms is almost exclusively from David. Psalm 33 may be the one exception to that. And in that we have what we might call the Genesis portion of the Psalms.

Man is very prominent. We have the perfect man in Psalm chapter 1, or the first Psalm, we might call it. And we meet the perfect man again in Psalm 40.

But after the ideal man blessed by God, we find, of course, that the rest of the Psalms take us into a dark path, just as Genesis must take us into a dark path after the original beauty of the creation. In Psalms 2 through 8, we see man in a fallen condition. And in 9 through 15, we understand that man is full of enmity toward God.

In fact, Psalms 9 and 10 really prefigure the man of sin for us. So things have become desperately dark in this portion of the Psalms. And yet in Psalms 16 through 41, the balance of the book, we're going to find out how God's anointed will bring restoration.

And of course, initially, that has much to do with the life of David himself. And we see David being faithful, David crying to the Lord, David being delivered and being assured of deliverance, and David reigning ultimately. Psalm 16, he is assured by the Lord that he will not abandon him.

In Psalm 17, the Lord is protecting him under the shadow of his wing, similar to what Lindsay was talking about last week. In Psalm 18, he's our rock and our fortress. Psalm 19 is a bypass into the law of the Lord, the Torah.

And then in 20 and 21, we find that David can be confident that he will be secure as God's king. Now in our section, 22, 23, and 24, we are going to see this recapitulated. We're going to have the same themes of faithfulness, crying to the Lord, deliverance, and reigning.

Again, initially, this is David's experience, but in this trilogy of Psalms 22 through 24, we see prophetically the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know you've been through this before, but I'll remind you of some of the ways this has been described. Psalm 22 is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

Psalm 23 is the great shepherd. We get that from Hebrews 13. God brought again from the dead the great shepherd.

That is the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant and so forth. And of course, in Hebrews, we think of the priesthood of Christ and it is the priestly ministry of Christ today and to his people Israel in the future that we discover in Psalm 23. In Psalm 24, we have another shepherd expression from the New Testament.

This is from 1 Peter 5, and we discover that he is the chief shepherd who shall appear to reward his own. We have him as the savior in Psalm 22, as the shepherd in Psalm 23, as the sovereign in Psalm 24. We have, I'm not a big alliterator, but I'll indulge myself a little bit here again.

These are well-known. The cross in 23, the crook in 23. I said the cross in 22, of course, and the crown in 24.

There's a past and a present and a future. The past work of Christ in 22, his current work in 23, and his future coming in 24. Now, Psalm 23 is universal in its application.

It had great meaning to David. It had great meaning to people who read it at his time and afterwards. It has great meaning to us today.

It will have very great meaning in a coming day in the tribulation. And of course, I think it will have meaning for us throughout eternity. If we wanted to be strictly dispensational in looking at these three Psalms, and I'll be brief on this, we understand that Christ came the first time and gave his life for the sheep.

Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, but we see from Israel's perspective that he is giving his life for his people. They have pierced their Messiah. They have put him to death.

There is a coming a day though, when for a time, times and half a time, as Revelation 12 tells us, God will nourish his people. He will prepare a table before them in the presence of their enemies, and he will promise them the kingdom at the same time he delivers them through that dark valley. And then in Psalm 24, we have an antiphonal Psalm, which is great, and it tells us of the coming of Christ.

Who is fit to ascend that holy hill? Only the Lord Jesus and those who have been made righteous by him. And we discover he goes through two sets of gates, the gate of the city and perhaps the gate of the temple as he enters in to the millennial temple and the millennial reign that he will enjoy with his people. All that said, I think we can take Psalm 23 very much for ourselves, which is what I'd like to do today.

Now, we have, just to look at this Psalm a little more carefully, there's a couple of things we notice. First of all, there are two basic metaphors going on here. The first is the obvious one of the shepherd and the sheep.

And then we have a host who has prepared a festive banquet for his people at the end. And both of these are prepared by someone who is called the Lord. Notice that the Lord occurs twice in the Psalm.

It only occurs twice in the first verse and in the last. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

So the Lord, Yahweh in modern Hebrew, we are familiar with the word Jehovah, a kind of manufactured word, but when it's more familiar or taking our cue from the Septuagint originally and the King James Version, we substitute the word Lord for this holy name of God, which is the name of his ineffable being. I am who I am. We're reminding ourselves though that the Lord, this great being who made all things, this great covenant-keeping God has a care for his people as Matthew has been sharing with us.

He sees our need. He sees our plight. He comes down.

It is Yahweh or Jehovah who comes down. And so when he comes down to deliver, we discover that he is our personal shepherd. There's something great about this psalm.

There's many great things. One of the things I enjoy so much is the one-on-one relationship I have with him. Much of what Israel did was at a communal level.

And so things happen to them as a people. But we go back to the beginning. We remember that Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

That was a one-on-one with God, the creator. And now we have the one-on-one each of us enjoys with God, the shepherd. And so he's my shepherd.

And if he's my shepherd, that means I'm his sheep. If I weren't his sheep, he couldn't be my shepherd. So I love that personal relationship I have with the Lord.

It reminds us though of our helplessness. And in the COVID-19 crisis, we feel helpless because we are helpless. This has been a real eye-opener, a real shake-up for many people, especially in the West.

Their intrinsic needs have been met. They assume that they will always be there for them. Their health, as long as they behave themselves, and their food and their clothing.

And so they go after what we call extrinsic needs, creating much anxiety because they can never find them. That centers on things like looks, wealth, and status. And so while they're chasing those things, they have no reason to fear that the very wealth that they have accumulated and the health that they have enjoyed will ever be jeopardized.

But now we see a little RNA virus coming out of China and spreading throughout the whole world. At first, we thought it might be contained within China. And then we saw the Italian experience, where it went roaring through that country, especially Lombardy, and has been accountable, has been responsible rather for over 10,000 deaths.

The United States has surpassed its 2000 mark. And it is estimated that we may see 100,000 deaths in this country before this epidemic is over. So we are sheep, we are helpless, and we are anxious, and we need a shepherd, and we have a shepherd.

We're going to see how God addresses the fears that I've brought up, even by saying those few things about the virus in this psalm. David enjoys God as his shepherd at the beginning of the psalm. David is in the pasture with him, and we see this bucolic, Arcadian, perfect scene, a pastoral scene of a sheep lying down in contentedness.

There are waters of quietness on the side. There is green grass underneath, which he has indulged in, obviously, because he's able to lie down. He's lying down to chew his cud.

And he has enjoyed the blessings the Lord has brought him into. Now, there really is a future orientation to the verbs in these verses. So this doesn't mean that there has never been otherwise in the life of David, but he knows that God as his shepherd will bring him into this beautiful experience.

But then the scene changes, and David no longer talks about God in the third person, he, but rather he starts to talk about God in the second person, you. And sometimes it takes an experience like the valley of the shadow of death to make us that much closer to God. We're not talking about him as an abstraction or even as one that we know facts about, but we sense his very presence in these times, and we can speak to him as you or thou, if you prefer.

And that's what we have in the fourth and fifth verse. And then the final verse, David speaks to himself, I shall dwell, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Those two statements go together, because if the Lord is my shepherd, then nothing that I truly need could possibly lack in my life.

I think the fact that we have the Lord himself is our shepherd shows that he is interested in our individual lives. He knows our every need, and he will meet those needs. Now, that doesn't mean he will meet every carnal want we might have, he knows better than to indulge us like that, but he will take care of every need that we truly have, especially our spiritual future, our spiritual welfare.

The next verse, which is so well loved by us all, he makes me to lie down in green pastures, and he leads me beside the quiet waters. If we think about the arid country that David is used to inhabiting, we're tempted to think of the springs of En Gedi, where David spent so much time, because despite how hostile the land can be in that area, there's a watershed from Jerusalem that goes to the east to the Mediterranean, but of course to the west down to the Dead Sea. And so the water coming through that arid area will leave some of the areas green and lush.

And even perhaps as David, we don't know the experience behind this psalm, was fleeing from Saul, at the same time he could look across and see sheep grazing in some of these green areas, and be reminded that he was as secure with the Lord as those sheep were with their shepherd. When the next phrase tells us that not only is he the one who can give us all that we need and provide for our spiritual future, but he leads us in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. The Lord is seen as walking in front of us as Eastern shepherds do, and we are to follow him.

Reminds me of a song we used to sing, my Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow. And we're reminded that in a crisis time, as in all times, good times, bad times, we must learn to follow the shepherd. We have the Savior with us.

He will lead us into paths of righteousness. And I love the next expression for his name's sake. Perhaps that is the most accented phrase in this entire psalm.

I say that because the psalm has what's called a chiastic structure, and it would be a little bit difficult for me to go through all of that with you right now. So you can Google chiastic structure, Psalm 23, and enjoy it for yourself. We've already seen the first and last element match.

We have the Lord who is our shepherd in the first verse, and the Lord who has a prepared table and a house in the last verse. As you move up through the chiasm, if you're not familiar with what that is, it's a X-shaped structure where the elements, one in the last, the first and the last match, the second and the second to the last and so forth. It will funnel you to a specific phrase at the beginning, excuse me, at the middle, which is the crux.

It is the pivot. It's the turning point of the psalm. And that would be for his name's sake.

Now, God has a reputation. God has a name. And one of the greatest things in terms of our security is understanding that God is God.

And for the sake of his name, he will never leave us. He will never forsake us. It was on account of the name of the Lord or appealing to the name of the Lord that Moses pled for his erring people.

And so we understand that for the sake of God's name, he will lead us and he will guide us and he will save us. We never need to worry because God cannot renege on any of his promises. God cannot lie.

He cannot fail. He will always be with us, always be our shepherd. After David makes these great affirmations about the Lord, his shepherd, he then starts to talk about this very precious part of the psalm.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Many people take this to be the time of David's death or the fact that death was imminent. But if you think about it, David survives this because he goes on to eat at the table of the Lord and dwell in his house forever.

So I don't think David is speaking of his own death here. I think this is a place where death casts a shadow. That's what it says, the shadow of death.

Death is near. Death is always a possibility. He's in danger.

And perhaps death has taken others. So he may be alone. But there's a valley here.

There's a mountain on either side. And the sun has disappeared and it's now a dark place. And David knows that just as the Lord was with him in better times, the Lord will not leave him now.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, no misfortune, nothing that was not in the plan of God. For thou art with me. As we think about the risk that we have from COVID-19, we're simply reminded that life carries that risk at all times.

And we need to understand something. I'll speak for myself. God knows whether I will be alive at the rapture or whether I will die.

He already knows that. He has not told it to me and I suppose that's a good thing. He knows the exact day if I do die, when I will die.

Until that day happens, I am impervious to death. That doesn't mean I'm cavalier. It doesn't mean I'm going to risk my health.

What it does mean is I can be absolutely content that I am safe until the time when God calls me home. God may call some of his people home through COVID-19 infection. That may happen.

He calls them home for many reasons and at many times. Always lovingly, always because he has longed for all of us to come to his house, the Father's house that the Lord has prepared for us. So we should not fear death in general.

Christ has taken away the fear of death according to Hebrews 2. And we should not fear dying from COVID-19 because we will not die of this unless God has already ordained that for us. So let's be content in his will. And let's be confident that this is not to be feared any more than a number of other threats.

As we get older, of course, other things may supervene before COVID-19 ever gets a chance to touch us. And again, we have to trust in the Lord. We are so used to being healthy and so confident in medical science, but medical science has been brought a blow of, well, shall I say the virus has brought the economy and science and government to its knees.

It just reminds us that this was a normal thing and that God has blessed us. And he has blessed us through medical science without any doubt. He has blessed us through public health.

He has blessed us through good governance in many countries. If we think about the history of plagues, we could think of the Justinian Plague that struck the, it was the first major bubonic plague we know of in about 541 through 750. 50% of Europe died.

Up to 10,000 deaths per day at the peak. The Black Death we're familiar with from the time of John Wycliffe, 1331 through 53 was the first wave of many that went through the centuries up until the 1800s. 75 million people perished.

England was depleted again by 50%. The Spanish Flu from 100 years ago may have taken as many as 100,000 lives, excuse me, 100 million lives. I was off by a major factor there.

100 million lives. 675,000 people died in the United States. Perhaps the most devastating plague, and remember plagues will be coming in the tribulation days.

The rider on the pale horse. The two witnesses who have the power to inflict plagues. We're just not used to it right now.

Many people don't realize this, but the native peoples, the First Nations of the United States and of Mesoamerica and South America, over the years, 95% of them perished when the Western peoples, excuse me, when the explorers came and brought old world diseases, particularly smallpox and influenza. 95%. So what we're seeing today is a very small thing compared to what many of our ancestors faced.

But then they viewed life differently. They were more dependent. They were more tenuous on their hold on things that are earthly.

They were less materialistic. They were more heaven oriented. I say that in general, perhaps not all of them were, and many of you may be that way now.

But I think for Christians, this has been an excellent opportunity for us to let go of some things that we hold dear and to understand that we need to, we need to build up treasure in heaven. Or moth and rust and COVID-19 can't affect our future and our reward. And we need to let go of some of the things that are such priorities to us today.

People felt their health was, it was absolutely in their control. It's not. They felt that their wealth was in their control and it's not.

And we see them so anxious and so concerned now as these things are flittered away. Now I would say about anxiety, as we think of the valley of the shadow of death, anxiety is a normal thing when we are confronted with significant stress. It's how we process that and what we do with it that is important.

We're anxious before a test. We're anxious on the first day of a new job. We're anxious to meet our in-laws for the first time.

And when we do, that actually can help us to improve our performance. We're definitely all awake and alert. But then anxiety can be a problem because often when we start to focus on things that really we shouldn't be focusing on, our looks, our status, our wealth, then we realize that we're not attaining what we want and we're losing what we have.

And ultimately it leads so many in the world to depression and anxiety. But it's normal to be anxious about your own health. It's normal to be worried about your children.

It's normal to be worried about your finances. Right now, some of you may have been laid off or on furlough, whatever you call it. Some of you may have already lost your job.

Many people are certainly taking home less money. And so the question is, what do we do about these anxieties and these worries? And the answer is we have one to take them to. The Lord, our shepherd, wants to bear our burdens.

He will give us the needed help to deal with every one of these things. And we need to commit our trust, commit our welfare to him. So he leads us through the valley of the shadow of death and we do not need to fear evil.

We need to have faith and confidence that God will do what is best. All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. There are big sweeping things in Romans 8 that are the actual interpretation of that passage, but I think you can apply that quite liberally to all things, because all things are all things.

And I think all things include the current problems that we're facing with this virus pandemic. Then we have the psalm, as we wrap up the psalm, turning to the future. And he's now leaving the pastoral image.

He's enjoyed it. The Lord has been his shepherd through all his days, as Jacob could say at the time he was blessing the two sons of Joseph. He's been my shepherd all the days of my life.

But now David's anticipating dwelling in the house of the Lord. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Before I go there though, he says the Lord's going to do some things to me.

He's going to do them because he is a host. He's going to do them because he has made a covenant with me and he's going to make a covenant meal at a table and he's going to sit me down. He's going to be, as the Song of Solomon says, his banner over me is love.

He has sat me down at his banqueting table. Before he's done that, he's anointed my head with oil. I don't think this is anointing so much for being a priest or a prophet or a king.

I think this is an anointing of refreshment and a blessing as he has brought this David and us to his banqueting table and spread a wonderful feast for us. And where has he done it? In the presence of our enemies. We're not in heaven yet.

And yet this precious fellowship is something that we can enjoy today. He will take care of his own. As I mentioned before, this will have great implications and meaning for the Jewish remnant as they're being kept and nourished by the Lord during the time of Jacob's trouble.

But it also applies to us. Even though situations around us may seem out of control, everything's under control at the Lord's table and he's there to bless us. Now the covenant-keeping God who does things for the sake of his name, he's going to make sure that we are in his house forever.

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I will feast at the table set for me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Many of us, again, have used this psalm in times of trouble and times of difficulty. And we're in such a time now. So let's think about how we can be encouraged by the fact that God is our shepherd.

He is there to help us, to guide us. We need to follow him. He's there to bear our burdens and he will bless us and help us even when opposition is all around us.

And we have the confidence that he will call us home on the day he has designed and ordained to do so. And when he calls us home, we will be in the Father's house forever. Meanwhile, let's take this opportunity as Christians to minister to those around us.

Many Christians have risked their own lives helping people with malaria, with dysentery, with cholera, with tuberculosis. And they have perished in many cases because of that. The number of missionaries who went to Africa in the 1800s was much larger than the number who came home because of these illnesses.

But I would remind you that COVID-19 is different because you can be a vector to bring disease to other people. You may have no symptoms and yet be shedding virus and you may either not be ill at all or you may have a mild illness ultimately. But during the incubation phase, it's most important that you not bring this virus to other people.

But in the Antonine Plague of the 2nd century, when even the emperor Marcus Aurelius died of it, and when millions ultimately died, there was no precedent in Greek culture. There was no precedent in Roman culture. There was no precedent in any culture, but in Christianity to take care of the sick, to take care of the helpless.

People were leaving their children out to die. They were leaving their sick in the streets to die. There was no governance that would help them.

And yet the Christians rose to the challenge. And according to Rodney Stark in his history of Christianity, this was one of the times when Christianity really moved forward as people saw practically what it means to be ministered to others who love them. It wasn't all about theology at that point, except theology and shoe leather.

It was people helping others in need. And every charitable organization with very few exceptions, and almost all hospitals since then with very few exceptions, have come from the Christian tradition. And we need to rise to the opportunity that is before us to help other people in whatever way we can.

Don't be socially distant. Be physically distant, but don't be socially distant. Think about those believers in your assembly who are alone right now.

They don't have family members and they're isolating. They need some kind of encouragement from you, whether it's typically it's going to be a phone or a text or some other way of using technology to reach out to them. And then I would say to all of us personally, let's not lose this opportunity to draw closer to the Lord.

If the Lord is our shepherd and he has met our every need, what a wonderful opportunity if we have more free time in the next few weeks. To pray more than we pray, to read more than we read, to get to know God better than we know him now. Please, please don't spend all of your time scrolling through newsfeeds.

That will make you more anxious. And please don't waste your time on Netflix or other pursuits that will ultimately depress you and will not help your spiritual state. Draw close to the Lord, your shepherd, and he will draw close to you.

I'm going to just finish by reciting Psalm 121, which Matthew said a little bit of. I think it's great because it's so intentional. The psalmist says, I'm in trouble.

I am going to do something about it. I am going to lift up mine eyes, he says, onto the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

And the Lord, we discover it, will preserve us from evil. The Lord will save our souls. And he ends by saying, the Lord shall preserve by going out and by coming in.

From this day forth and forevermore. Let us rejoice in the Lord, our shepherd. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus, who is the great shepherd, the one at thy right hand, who ministers to us. He is our shepherd. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

I lay down my life for the sheep. We thank you for the one who died and gave his all. We thank you that the shepherd had to actually become a lamb in order that he might die as the lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world.

And we thank you as well. He is the shepherd who now leads us and guides us, protects us and encourages us, enables us and leads us as we go through life's various circumstances. We certainly have known the times of green grass and quiet water.

We have known the times and are experiencing the time currently of a dark valley with death's shadow passing over us. We thank you in each case the Lord draws near. The Lord helps.

The Lord is our shepherd. We thank you for the prospect of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever and feasting at his banqueting table. And yet we can feast at that table today in the presence of our enemies because the Lord is our portion.

We give thanks and again we pray for thy people. They have many, many needs, many pressing needs right now. Some have been infected with the virus.

Some have lost their jobs. Some are worried about their children and their grandchildren. And we pray Father that thou will quiet them as the shepherd quiets the sheep.

And give them confidence in your will. We ask these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.