The Lord is my shepherd (part one)

The LORD is my Shepherd – I shall lack nothing

Psalm 23 part one

(I said I would blog my 3 sermons on 23rd Psalm after my initial thoughts a couple of weeks ago, so here is the first.)

They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I am not sure if that is always the case but I do think familiarity can lead us to take familiar things for granted. How many times have I walked past the Bank Buildings in the centre of Belfast without paying it a second glance and noticing the architecture and the clock and just the beauty of that grand old building which is now a burnt out shell.

How often do we take for granted the beautiful part of the world in which we live? We take once in a lifetime trips to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the Australian outback and then we come home and suddenly have a deeper appreciation for the simple beauty of the North Down coastal path. 

I was speaking to someone recently who was telling about a friend who had visited Sydney’s Bondi Beach. To say that they came away less than impressed would be an understatement. ‘It’s not even as good as the West Strand in Portrush and even the East Strand is better than the West!’

But we become familiar with all these things and we take them for granted.

And that, I think, is what happens with the 23^rd Psalm. We take it for granted. It is so familiar to us. These are perhaps the six most well known verses in the entire Bible. They are read or sung at many funerals, so that even people who only attend church to go to a funeral know these words well. A version of them even became the title music to a much loved sitcom a few years back – The Vicar of Dibley.

Well, over the next three weeks, I want us to pause and reflect afresh on these familiar words. What are they really saying to us? What have we missed in our over-familiarity with them? Do these words still have the power to challenge, comfort and inspire us? I believe that they do, because they are God’s words written nearly 3000 years ago, but written for you and for me today.

And the thing is that you don’t get very far into the 23^rd psalm before you come up against a shocking statement. ‘The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.’ Other English versions put it in different ways. The ESV says ‘I shall not want’. The newer version of the NIV says simply ‘I lack nothing’. The New Living Translation says ‘I have all that I need’ and Eugene Peterson’s Message version says ‘I don’t need a thing.’ 

Really?

Don’t we live in a world full of want? Don’t we see on the news every night people living with the lack of good health, clean water and basic human rights? Don’t we see people in conflict zones all over the world who just want peace? We see refugees who want a new life or the ability to return home in safety. Campbell Brown reminded us last week from his trip to South Africa that there are people in our world still living in corrugated iron shacks that they call houses.

In such a world, how can we encourage people to say, ‘The LORD is my Shepherd, I lack nothing’?

Even those of us who live in the well off, stable and peaceful countries of the West find difficulty with this phrase. We all have wants, don’t we? We have the normal desires for food, clothing, good health and shelter that everyone else shares. But having largely secured those things, we want more.

As I said in the newsletter, ‘We want the summer holidays to start all over again. We want this, that or the other thing for Christmas. We want a good harvest. We want a new car, a new house, a new TV, a new games console. We want five minutes of peace. We want our family life to be happy and our family members to be healthy.’

None of us are ever really that far away from the toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of the shop and screaming ‘I want it!!’ It’s just that most of us have learned to control the tantrum.

Think about your life at the moment. Think about the way things are right now for you in your family, your work, your church, your community. Think about your health and your happiness. Can you really say, ‘I lack nothing’? Can you honestly say ‘I don’t need a thing’?

Yes, you can. It is possible to live what Dallas Willard calls ‘a life without lack’ when the LORD, Yahweh, the covenant God is your shepherd. How?

Well, the first thing we need to do is to approach these words afresh and see them in context. We need to peel away the layers of familiarity that surround the 23^rd psalm and see again its power to shock and challenge us as well as comfort us.

Some of the most well known words in history suffer from this familiarity problem. Think of some world famous speeches from the past. We look at Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech as an inspiration. But he wasn’t seeking to inspire a generation as much as he was seeking to challenge the status quo. We look at Churchill’s ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ as a rallying cry to the people of the UK, but, at the time, with Britain on the brink of collapse, he was speaking as much out of a sense of sheer desperation  as of grim determination. When Jesus told us to love our enemies was that a realism that we need to live out or a romantic ideal that we can never achieve?

When David says, ‘The LORD is my Shepherd, I have all that I need’ he is not just exaggerating for poetic effect. He is declaring a reality? He is not simply offering these words as comfort for the dying or bereaved. He is sharing them as a foundation for every day of life – the good and the bad, the sad and the happy, the empty and the full.

And when we read these words today we need to read them through the lens of the gospel. We need to see how these words, like every other part of the OT are fulfilled in Christ. We need to picture ourselves sitting on a Galilean hillside listening to Jesus as he takes for himself the covenant name ‘I AM’ and then declares himself to be the Good Shepherd. We need to grasp the promise of abundant life that he offers to all who come through him to find what they really need. And we need to imagine ourselves walking along the road to Emmaus with those two disciples and listening to the risen Christ explaining how if they have HIM as their shepherd, they will lack nothing.

And let’s be clear it is nothing less than TOTAL satisfaction that Christ, our Good Shepherd offers us. Look at verse 2 of the psalm. ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.’ Do you notice anything strange about this verse? No? Neither did I until my attention was drawn to what these sheep are doing by Dallas Willard’s book ‘Life without Lack’.

These sheep are lying down in green pastures. They are not feeding in green pastures. They are not filling their stomachs with the nutrition that the pasture provides. They are lying down because they are satisfied. They don’t need anything because of who their shepherd is. They are satisfied in him and by him.

These sheep are being led beside quiet waters. They are not being led to them. They are not drinking their fill from the cool, clear stream because their thirst is satisfied in their shepherd.

Fast forward again to Jesus who declares ‘I AM the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ Complete satisfaction. A life without lack. A life of abundance is what Jesus offers to those who come to him – to those who trust him with their lives. 

Jesus is deliberately, consciously and clearly inserting his name in the place of the LORD at the beginning of Psalm 23. Jesus is saying that the one to whom David looked to provide complete satisfaction in life is him. Every time he uses that phrase I AM, he is claiming to be the covenant keeping God and the one true shepherd of Israel. He is saying that he and he alone is the all-sufficient one who meets all our deepest needs

So what is it about faith in Jesus Christ that allows us to live a life without lack? David tells us. He restores my soul and he leads me in right paths. He saves us. Our lives are restored and redirected through faith in him and in that restoration and redirection there is true satisfaction.

He restores my soul. Let me take you back again to that awful destructive fir in the middle of Belfast last week. That once beautiful building now destroyed and distorted by fire. You remember that initially it was thought that the building was in danger of imminent collapse. The hope, of course, is that it can somehow be restored to something close to its former glory.

This is a picture of our lives. Something that, in the beginning, was so beautiful that God declared it to be VERY good, has now been eaten away and distorted by sin. We are a shell of what God intended us to be, still reflecting something of what it means to be made in God’s image but everywhere showing signs of the devastating impact of putting ourselves on the throne of our lives instead of him. 

Our hearts, the seat of who we are, are corrupted by sin and there is nothing we can do to make them whole and healthy again. We have a longing to be truly ourselves. Our hearts are restless, searching for the one thing that will bring us satisfaction, fulfilment and purpose in life.

That search for fulfilment and purpose leads us in all kinds of different directions. We throw ourselves into a career. We devote ourselves to family. We get involved in a local church. We give ourselves over to sport and competition. Some of us turn to the cheap thrills of alcohol or drugs or casual relationships.

But after the thrill has gone or the success has been achieved or the family has been raised and left home where do we go next to seek fulfilment and purpose?

The only way to truly still that restlessness is to recover and restore the purpose for which we were made. We were made for God, said Augustine long ago, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him.

It is only in him that we find true purpose and fulfilment. It is only in him that we find true rest and satisfaction. Only he can restore us from our fallen, sinful state. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, that we can be ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.

And as we place our trust in him, he leads us in right paths. He doesn’t just restore us and then leave us to it. If the Bank Buildings are restored to their former state and then left without anyone using them, the restoration would have been pointless. The building needs to be used. It needs to be given a new task in the city centre. 

When you enter into a saving and restorative relationship with Jesus Christ, you also begin a journey with him. He restores you to a position of righteousness so that you will walk in paths of righteousness.

Jesus calls you to follow him as he leads you in right paths. You are not just saved to sit here and wait for heaven. You are saved for a purpose here on earth. You have a task to complete. He calls you to give yourself to him so that he can make you a fisher of men. He calls you to be a disciple who will go about the task of making more disciples. He calls you to spread the good news of his kingdom around the world, in your communities and among your friends and families. He calls you to be salt and light, making a difference for him in the corruption and darkness of this world. 

These are the right paths he will lead us on when we trust him to do it. But we will only find satisfaction in walking these paths when we walk them in the right way.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. I don’t share the good news of Jesus so that everyone can comment on what a great evangelist I am. I don’t spend time in the study preparing a sermon so everyone can comment on what a great preacher I am. I don’t teach my children the gospel and set them an example of Christian living so that everyone can say what a great parent I am. I am not diligent at my work, be that farming or teaching or nursing or business, so that everyone can say what a great farmer or teacher or nurse or businessperson I am.

I walk in right paths for his name’s sake. I, if I want true satisfaction will not want people to know or even care how great I am. I will want them to know how great, how wonderful, how gracious, how majestic Jesus is. I am not concerned about my honour but his. I am not concerned about my reputation but his. I am not concerned about my glory but his. I am not concerned about my fame but I want to spread abroad the fame of Jesus Christ the all-sufficient restorer of my soul. 

In Philippians 4, the apostle Paul thanks the Philippian Christians for a support package they have sent him. This is what he says; I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹ I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…. I can do all this through him who strengthens me. What is Paul saying here? He is saying what David said 1000 years before him. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.

I am satisfied in him - I can lie down in lush green pastures and not feel hungry or walk by still waters without feeling thirsty. I am saved in him – my soul is restored from the corruption and tyranny of sin by his saving death on the cross for me. I have abundant life in him, whatever my physical circumstances might be. This a life without lack and it is ours in Christ.

The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.