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Resources IndexSeveral centuries ago, the great theologian, Martin Luther, said: "If I were God, and the world treated me the way it treated God, I would have kicked the whole thing to pieces and started all over again." Fortunately for us, Luther wasn't God, and God saw fit in Christ, to redeem the world in an act of love.
But Luther's observation echoes many of our own sentiments today. Certainly the world has changed since that time. We have all the advances of technology, and life is not the same as it was in the 1500s, and certainly not the same as in the time of King David, the supposed author of the 23rd Psalm.
However, the world still continues in a state of unrest. People still suffer from anxiety, from grief, from loneliness. We still hurt the way people hurt thousands of years ago, and we still feel joy in much the same way as the men and women of old.
And that's why, this morning, as we reflect on our own lives, it seems terribly relevant to take a fresh look at a very familiar Psalm.
The Psalms come alive in the presence of grief. The Psalms come alive in the presence of joy. The Psalms come alive in bitterness and in anger...the Psalms celebrate life!
Psalm 23 describes what it feels like to be back at home with God. It's expressed in a language which many attribute to David, King of Israel, and it spoke about home to the people of Israel.
David had been a shepherd; now he was the shepherd for thousands. He was the King of Israel. THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD. In ancient Near Eastern literature, Kings are called shepherds of their people. THE 23RD PSALM IN THE 20TH CENTURY...HOW DOES IT...HOW CAN IT SPEAK TO US TODAY!
THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT. God is our guide, we need not want anything. Do you believe it? Tell people they don't need to want, fill them with heady words that fall like sand to the ground but when you and I walk out of here today, we will want! We want good health; we want a good education for our children: We want security for ourselves and for our loved ones; we want less crime in Los Angeles...we want. That's the way of our world, and we are only human, but thank God, God knows it!
THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT. Maybe there's something about the word Shepherd that addresses our needs.
In the nineteenth century a story is told about two ministers who went on holiday together, wandering about the hills of Ireland and Scotland. High on the moors they met a shepherd boy and stopped to talk with him. They found this boy had never been to school, and that he knew nothing about the Christian faith. The two ministers finally read him the 23rd Psalm, and to help him find a personal faith, they got him to repeat the words— "The Lord is my Shepherd." The next year they were back in the same hills. This time, they called at a cottage to ask for a drink of water. The lady of the house noticed them looking at a photograph of a boy above the fireplace. "That's my son," she said. "He died last winter while tending the sheep in a snowstorm, but there was a curious thing about him. His right hand was clutching the fourth finger of his left hand."
"Well now," replied one of the ministers, "we met your boy last year. In fact, since he was a shepherd boy, we taught him to repeat the first line of the 23rd Psalm, and we told him whenever he said it to himself, to pause at the fourth word. The Lord is MY Shepherd and then to think this Psalm was meant for me!"
We aren't shepherds, but maybe this Psalm was meant for us. Doesn't the sincere shepherd take care of his sheep?
But I still want. I want a world where children can play and run without fear of being hurt. We want this church to blossom and flourish as we approach the 21st century. We want life to go well for us.
Trust the Shepherd when the load gets too heavy.
"Our Lord makes us to lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters." Is our life like still waters—smooth, calm, no problems, no anxieties, free of worry. And how about those green pastures, the ones which have been turned into polluted waste sites, communities uprooted because of toxins and poisons bubbling beneath the surface. Yet have we not been blessed with green pastures and still waters. We all have, but sometimes we don't realize it.
Go to the stream, to the waters of life, for there God calls you and "the Lord restores our souls." I can't imagine a single individual here today, including myself, that couldn't stand a little restoration from the Lord.
"He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." I know all of you have led righteous lives, so I don't need to dwell on this...Well, maybe just a little...
One man once told me that if his sins were fashioned into an anchor, he could secure and anchor the largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy fleet. Now that's a lot of sin. Isn't it great the way we hurl insults around about other people. You know what—we're usually guilty of the very things that we find fault with in others. Our paths aren't always righteous.
There's a story told about Philip Brooks, a great Boston preacher of years ago. Brooks lay upon his deathbed and instructed his nurse that no visitors were to be received. But a man named Robert Ingersoll went to see him, and Brooks told the nurse to let him in. Ingersoll said, "I appreciate your receiving me, but I don't understand why you received me and not the others." Brooks answered him, "Well, I have the assurance that I shall see my Christian friends again in the world to come, but perhaps this is the last time I will ever see you." Some paths find the self-righteous walking along them.
"He leads me in 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."
Hamlet spoke of the "undiscovered country from whose land no traveler returns." But God's loving presence, declares David, will be as real and true then, as it is now. God's light is in the darkness, in the shadows there is a real presence.
I think back to a time during the draft years, when I served at Bitburg Air Base in Germany. The scenery was beautiful. I was in the farm country. The pastures were green, the waters were still...peaceful.
I think about the night that we were put on alert at 6:00 in the evening.
In the early 1970s the President issued an alert status to the main defense bases of Europe. We went from what was called a "green light," normal operation, to standby alert—something about a crisis in the Middle East. We put on our field gear. It was kind of fun, kind of exciting at first, but two nights later at 4:00 a.m. the excitement had worn off. The alert was still in effect.
I remember standing out on the flight line, the runway of the Bitburg Air Base, on a cold, chilly night, watching the little flakes of snow falling to the ground.
I remember the sudden roar of the F-4 Phantom jets cutting through the night air. The sound was ear shattering. A truck drove by, and the air police yelled out that we had been moved to yellow alert, and I remember being scared. That base, the main defense center for Europe, had not been placed on yellow alert for years.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Yellow alert meant one step away from red alert—war imminent. It was no joke.
Bomber jets loaded with nuclear warheads were lining up in flight pattern. And I can remember thinking: does the civilian population know what's happening?
Does the Bible address issues like this? I feared the evil, but I placed my trust in God.
"Thy rod and they staff, they comfort me."
The radar towers were scrambling all of the communications. One more step, and we would tune out the world, the planes would fly, the missiles would go up from their silos...one more step, and we would cut off all communication. You see, once red alert was called, at least back then, the outside world was cut off—nothing could be accepted from the Pentagon or even the President. We were a first strike base, the main defense center for Europe—the mission was to strike and destroy. About seven tense hours went by before the engines finally shut down on the planes. We had been taken back from yellow alert to standby alert and several days later, to normal operating conditions.
While we live our life here on earth, we live in the shadow, but as long as we live it with the Lord, as long as we place our trust fully and completely in the Lord, then we can experience the deep joy, the satisfaction and security the sheep know in the presence of the good shepherd.
It doesn't mean our lives aren't placed on alert from time to time. You can probably come up with a few of your own alerts in your mind.
"Thy rod and they staff, they comfort me."
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies."
Here we have the notion of a heavenly banquet table spread out for David—for all Israel—and their enemies. God calls us to sit at the heavenly feast, even with our enemies.
But most of the time we're not interested in table fellowship with our enemies. We want revenge. We want to get even. People can be cruel and vicious, can't they? We barely have the log pushed out of our eye before we look for the speck in another person's eye.
How, then, do we respond? How does the Bible address the issue? Maybe forgiveness is one answer.
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." God calls us to make tough decisions.
"Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over." We serve God. We are called by God. The grace God pours into our lives by the Holy Spirit is so great that our cup is overflowing, but sometimes we don't think so.
Have you got it tough? Have you endured trial? You're not alone. Jesus found himself in the same place. He knelt in agony in Gethsemane. God knows your need!
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Really? Not always. If we were to translate this into its original Hebrew it might read— 'I know that God's being good for me will pursue me all the days of my life.' That meets needs!
This Psalm was meant for us.
Francis Thompson was a poet. He wrote "The Hound of Heaven." He says that God is the Hound of Heaven. He will never let us go. I love the Lord for that. There was a time when I tried to push God out of my life, and every time I'd turn around God was still there, loving, forgiving me. He does the same for you!
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."
In a world which seems on the brink of insanity at times, listen to the final promise of Psalm 23— "And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." This Psalm confronts the lonely and gives companionship; in fatigue, refreshment; in error, correction. The Believer knows times when he or she feels like a king and times when he or she feels like a lost child. The Shepherd is a mixture of strength and tenderness.
To gather the sheep into the fold, the shepherd must face the wolves. The Lord does this for you.
In closing, a writer once paraphrased a part of Psalm 23:
"There would I find a settled rest,
while others go and come;
no more a stranger or a guest,
But like a child at home.'
The words of the 23rd Psalm really are meant for us!
Rev. William K. Voigt
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