Psalm 23:1 Jehovah is my Shepherd - forever! John 10:18; Psa 23:1

There is a wonderful little book written by Phillip Keller who was himself a shepherd in east Africa and he was given the opportunity to teach in a community church for several months.

 

The book is called, “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23.” I highly recommend that every believer have a copy of it on their bookshelf and every once in a while they read it as a reminder of this amazing relationship between the Shepherd and the sheep.

 

John 10 along with Psalm 23 reveals the simplicity of our relationship with Christ.

 

Most of the Bible is written by men of humble origin. All scripture is God breathed and every person, whether it was the genius Paul or the uneducated fisherman Peter, wrote under the inspiration of God the HS.

 

David was a shepherd in the Middle East. Most people think a shepherd is someone who sits on a rock out in a field just looking over sheep and that’s the extent of his job, but that is far from the half of it.

 

Today we live in urban, man-made environments. Most of us have no reference to the nomadic folk of the old testament who lived in the outdoors, in nature, who’s very lives depended upon livestock, crops, and the working of the land.

 

   

Ps 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

 

The Lord is my shepherd, but who is the Lord? David uses the sacred Jehovah, so we know it is the Lord God of Israel.

 

However, in John 10 we see Christ identifying Himself as the good/beautiful Shepherd. Once again we are acquainted with the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are also given a deeper glimpse into the specific nature of the Shepherd.

 

Jesus Christ is the God Man, the unique one of the universe. He is undiminished deity and true humanity on one person forever. We studied in John 10 that the good shepherd has to lay down his life for the sheep.

 

Deity cannot die. It was the humanity of Christ that died spiritually for the sheep. Therefore, the Lord who is the shepherd in psalm 23 is the humanity of Christ.

 

But also we see that the Shepherd cares for all the sheep at once. There is not one detail that He doesn’t know about fully and is fully concerned with. Only deity has this power of omniscience and omnipresence and omnipotence.

 

Therefore, the Lord who is the shepherd in Psalm 23 is the deity of Christ.

 

So which is it? It is both. The Lord Jesus Christ in hypostatic union is your very own Shepherd.

 

It is He who created the universe is COL 1:15-20 and it is He who is the first born. This is both deity and humanity.

 

And yet, the person of Christ is always in agreement with the Father and the HS. All three indwell us, and all three work tirelessly on our behalf.

 

This is who is shepherding you. Is it no wonder that David would say, “I shall not want.”

 

This immediately implies a profound yet practical working relationship between a human being and his Maker.

 

It links the lump of common clay that we are to a divine destiny that the Lord Himself is protecting and leading and so the sheep become the cherished objects of divine grace.

 

The Lord, like any good shepherd, is deeply concerned about the sheep.

 

David is speaking as someone who has experience with this. He was also a good shepherd and he witnessed the harm done to the sheep of bad shepherds.

 

I belong to Christ simply because he deliberately chose to create me as the object of His own affection.

 

And He did so knowing fully that all of us would go astray.

 

ISA 53:6

All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

 

A shepherd has to purchase his sheep, usually as young ewes. The fact that he has to dole out hard cash that was earned through another hard labor makes those sheep his own.

 

Remember in John 10 that a hireling is not concerned for the sheep and that’s because they didn’t pay for them.

 

The Lord didn’t dole out cash for you. The price that He paid for you was His very life, His very soul. After paying that price do you think now He is concerned about your welfare?

   

ROM 8:31-39

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? 33 Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; 34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 Just as it is written,

"For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long;

We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [I shall not want]

 

So the work of Christ doesn’t end at the cross, it’s continual.

 

The reason is that sheep can never take care of themselves. They require, more than any other class of livestock, endless attention and meticulous care.

 

Therefore it is no accident that God has chosen to call us sheep.

 

The way sheep behave is similar in many ways to human beings.

 

Our mob mentality, our fears, our timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity, our perverse habits are all parallel and become very important to note.

 

And so in spite of us Christ purchases us, chooses us, calls us by name, and makes us His own, sharing everything that He is and has with us.

 

David, like all of us who know the Lord, takes great pride here in proclaiming that the Lord God is his shepherd as well he should.

 

I quote from Keller:

“In memory I can still see one of the sheep ranches in our district which was operated by a tenant sheepman. He ought never to have been allowed to keep sheep. His stock were always thin, weak and riddled with disease or parasites. Again and again they would come and stand at the fence staring blankly through the woven wire at the green lush pastures which my flock enjoyed. Had they been able to speak I am sure they would have said, “Oh, to be set free from this awful owner.”

 

This is the state of every unbeliever and every believer who does not know the Lord and allow Him to shepherd them.

 

Christ is no tyrant as He is falsely proclaimed to be in the kosmos. Anyone who knows the character of Christ rests in knowing that He is their very own shepherd.

 

You belong to Him, rest in knowing that you can never be taken from Him.