The Lord Is My Shepherd
I am currently taking a class on Psalm 23. Eventually, I plan to preach this as a sermon, but I thought that since we all have a little time on our hands for reading, I’d like to invite you along the journey with me. I plan to write a blog post for each phrase in the Psalm. So, pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea, grab your Bibles, and let’s look at Psalm 23 together over the next couple of weeks.
“The Lord is my Shepherd.” This statement opens one of the greatest and most well-known (and well-loved) Psalms of David. And who better to know this than David, the shepherd who was the son of a shepherd?
If anybody knows the nature of sheep, it is David. And if anybody knows the character traits required of a shepherd, it is David! Where was David when Samuel came to anoint him King of Israel? He was out tending his sheep. When David was about to battle the giant Goliath, he recalled how God had helped him defend his sheep by killing a lion and a bear. Yes, David is the right person to draw the parallel between how a shepherd relates to his sheep, and how the Lord relates to His people.
This Psalm gives us a rich look into the character of God and His attitude toward us. And this first phrase lays the foundation for all the rest that follow.
THE LORD is my Shepherd.
Not just any lord. THE LORD. The ONLY LORD.
As God is speaking to Moses, He clearly identifies how unique He is. “See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god beside Me;” – Deuteronomy 32:39.
Furthermore, as God is delivering the Ten Commandments, He clarifies again, “I am the Lord your God… You shall have no other gods before me.” – Exodus 20:2-3
He is the One True God, and there is no other like Him.
The LORD is my Shepherd.
This is not just a casual title. If you notice in your Bibles, each letter in this word is capitalized… LORD. When used this way, it refers to God’s proper name, “YHWH”, or Yahweh. This identifies that it is the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe, the Most High God who is our shepherd. This should give us a lot of confidence, because who else would we want leading us and caring for us right now?
Because of who He is, there is nothing that matches Him in power. As we read in Jeremiah 32:37, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?”
The LORD IS my Shepherd.
It’s not that He was my shepherd, and now He is not. He is my Shepherd. Even in the midst of trial and tragedy, He is my Shepherd. God doesn’t stop being God in the face of a pandemic. In fact, that is when the shepherd is most important to the sheep: when life gets dark, and the path becomes hard, and the enemy prowls, the shepherd is never more needed than he is at that time.
Because our shepherd is the One True God, we can have confidence that He knows what to do and has the ability to do it.
The LORD is MY Shepherd.
Before I believed in Jesus and accepted His free gift of salvation, He was a shepherd, but He wasn’t my Shepherd. But once I believed, He became my shepherd, and all of the promises contained in the rest of the Psalm became promises intended for me. If you are a Christian, then these promises are for you, too, because you can also say, “The LORD is my shepherd.”
And if He is our Shepherd, then that means that we are His sheep. By way of the fact that He created us, we belong to Him. And by way of the fact that through His blood He bought us, we belong to Him. Through Creation and Salvation, we doubly belong to Jesus!
But in saying that He is our shepherd, we are acknowledging His right to us, and we are respecting His authority and ownership.
And if, in your life, He is merely a shepherd and not your Shepherd, know that you can make that change this very day by believing in Jesus and accepting Him as Lord of your life. I invite you to reach out via our contact page if you want to know more about that.
The LORD is my SHEPHERD.
Now we come to the crux of the matter. The LORD is my Shepherd! He is the one who cares for us, who provides for us, who loves us, who protects us.
Sheep do not just take care of themselves. They have a flock (or mob) mentality. They can be fearful and timid. They can be stubborn and stupid. They get down and then can’t get up again without the shepherd. Any way you look at it, it’s not surprising that this parallel between sheep and people, and a shepherd and Jesus, is so prominent in the Bible.
Yet still Christ takes us as His own and cares for us.
If sheep have a poor shepherd, they will be gaunt, and week, and full of parasites. They will look through the fence and long for the green grass of the meadows that are tended by the good shepherd.
But if sheep have a good shepherd, they will be healthy and well-nourished, protected and watered, grazing peacefully in lush meadows where they are safe from predators. The good shepherd will spend his life caring for his sheep in all ways.
I am so happy that my Shepherd is The Good Shepherd. Jesus said in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And in John 10:14, He said again, “I am the good shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me…”
During this time of confusion and fear, we can be assured that we have a Good Shepherd who is watching out for us, and will guide us through this challenge with wisdom that only He has.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be studying the character of the Good Shepherd, as described in Psalm 23. I hope you’ll come along with me for the journey.
Pastor Bryan