Psalm 23
A Psalm of David.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
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 my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The psalm for Sunday, April 21, comes from Psalm 23. A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul. He leads 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 my enemies, You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23. It's so beautiful, right? So many people know this song and love it. It's just a wonderful image. And we're going to try to take a look at it and break it down. Psalm 23, begins the first part of a number of readings about being a shepherd. Sometimes this is called Good Shepherd, Sunday, and we hear God being our shepherd in Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. This first statement is a statement about God's role. And mine. In in our relationship. God is a shepherd, which means I must be a sheep. And so he is the one who's in charge. I am the one who follows. He takes care of me, I let him and you know, you laugh about that, right? That's kind of a funny way of thinking about God, because many of us think about God as a relationship where we're constantly trying to do something, right. Like, we need to praise him, we need to shower him with our prayers and our love and devote our lives to Him and all of that. But the shepherd motif is really different. Right? The shepherd takes care of the sheep, because he wants to, and the sheep in its natural and normal state really can't do anything for the shepherd, the shepherd cares for the sheep, because he finds the sheep valuable, and the sheep, let him there is nothing the sheep can do for the shepherd, to cause the shepherd to love them. And that really important in understanding this, this little Lord is my shepherd thing is that the shepherd is the one who is active. And the next section is I shall not want. Now, when we read this, I think we often think about that as a thing of desire. Whereas I think it better said is I shall not be in want, I shall lack nothing, I will not be in need. And that's a statement of trust, rather than a statement of desire. It trusts that the shepherd will give the sheep everything that the sheep needs. And I think sheep are like that they're not smart enough to worry about the future or to wonder where the grass will grow or to think, I wonder if the shepherds gonna give me water, they kind of just eat. And that's about it. Right? And so it's a trust statement to say the Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing, I shall not be in want, I will not be in need. And it continues with support for that. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. And so the Shepherd leads us to places where we can eat. He gives us water where we can drink. The Shepherd is the one who's concerned about providing for us. And then it flips out of the out of the shepherd and sheep metaphor and goes directly to God's role with the human being. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Now sheep don't care about paths of righteousness. And, and it doesn't matter if a sheep is righteous or unrighteous for anybody, but for the human being for Christians righteousness is a big deal is that God restores us and leads us down the Path, our job is simply to follow, we go where our shepherd tells us to. And this path of righteousness can lead us to some pretty dark places, as other people might see it. And that's what this next section is, says, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. So now, it's even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because God is with us. And so this could be sheep metaphor, again, or human being walking through a difficult time. When God is with us, we don't need to worry, even when we enter into death itself. And so the joyful thing about being in Christ is that when we enter into the grave, we actually don't need to be afraid of it. We don't have to fear the evil of satan, trying to grab us and pull us out of God's grasp and dragging us down into hell. Because God, our shepherd, our protector, is with us. And there's more, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. I was once at a pastors conference where an African pastor demonstrated what they called the rod and the staff in shepherding. And I forget which one was which. But one was a rod, he had two things. One was a rod, one was a staff. One of them was this club that had a point that it came to. And he said that when the lions came to attack the sheep, you use the club, and you're whack it on the lion on the nose. And that's the one that you go and just like defend the sheep with. And the staff, or the other one was this thin little reed with a hook at the end that you could use to gently guide the sheep, or give them a little whack if they needed it. And it's interesting that with the rod and the staff, one is made to fight off the enemy, and the other is made to guide the sheep onto this path of righteousness, the way we're supposed to go. For Lutherans, we can easily see that the the club, the thing that you whack the roaring lion that is looking to devour the sheep, Satan himself, that is the gospel of God, His might and His power is used to destroy Satan by dying on the cross and rising from the grave. And the little staff is there as the law to gently guide the sheep when they start to go astray. And if they really start to go astray to grab them by the neck and drag them onto the path of righteousness, right. And what a joy it is that God used his big and beefy staff to knock down the devil and save us. And he's gentle guiding, to just draw us back to where we're supposed to go. And both of these are necessary, right? If we leave the path, we need to be pulled back. If we're attacked, we need to be defended. But both provide comfort when we go through the valley of the shadow of death. Because both are gifts of God, the guiding function of the law that tells us how we should change and pull away from our sin, and the gospel that destroys the power of the enemy. The next section, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. So now we've left behind the sheep metaphor all the way. There's no shepherd or sheep, because sheep don't get to sit at a table, and they don't really have enemies. They just have predators. So now it's talking about God, preparing a feast with all of these enemies around and it's, it's the person being honored the Christian being honored by God. What a joy that we can have, have a God who gives us this feast of Holy Communion. In a world that is filled with hostility. We can feast with God and be honored by him. Even as the enemies surround us. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. That anointing with oil is a kind of choosing. And God anoints all of us with the Holy Spirit by the power of Christ. And so we get to be filled with this choosing this anointing and have a full cup.
The psalm continues, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell on the house of the Lord forever. Because the Lord is our shepherd, goodness and mercy come from on him, they will always be with us. Jesus Christ, our God and shepherd constantly gives us goodness and mercy all the days of our life and beyond. With the promise that on his return, we will dwell with Him in eternity in heaven and on earth in a new creation, forever. That's all I have on Psalm 23. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai