Psalms 23:1-4. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the 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: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
The Redeemer’s love and relationship to His people are represented under many striking figures. Are you one of Christ’s people? There will be no end to your happiness. Consider if you can lack any good thing. With Christ pledged and wedded to your soul, what can you lack? If you are His, and He is yours, you have all that you can ever desire. You are as precious to Him as He is to you.
Christ is your prophet, priest and king. He exercises on your behalf the functions of each of these mediatorial offices, and does so unceasingly. With the Lord Jesus Christ to instruct you by His Word and Spirit – to make intercession for you at the mercy seat, to rule over and defend you, to subdue your spiritual enemies under you – your portion is a good one. You may and must complain of the treachery of your own heart, but never of Him who has redeemed your soul. With Christ as your head – and you a member of His mystical body – He will care for you. No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Christ is more careful of the members of His body than a man is of his own flesh.
Christ is the true vine. If you are a branch of it, you shall have your share of nourishment. See that you are a true, fruit-bearing branch. Such branches the Father purges that they may bring forth more fruit. The barren branches are cut off and cast aside to be burned. There are many such branches always hanging about the true vine but never truly grafted in – dead branches though professing Christians. If you are such, you shall perish; you must be truly grafted in. If you are a living, fruit-bearing branch, you shall be cared for and have a due portion of nourishment from the root and stem on which you grow.
Christ is your elder brother. He “sticketh closer than a brother”. He is an elder brother, who has the interests of all His brethren at heart. He divides the inheritance among them. He purchased it for them with His precious blood. What an inheritance Christ shares amongst His brethren! Each shall have his portion. If you are His, you will have your portion – whatever blessings God has to bestow and your soul is capable of receiving. You cannot get the inheritance in all its fulness yet – a part of it now and the fulness of it when you come to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus, when He has perfected His own image upon you and infinitely enlarged the spiritual desires and capacities of your soul.
Christ is your advocate with the Father. In the heavenly places He is a prevailing intercessor. His plea cannot be resisted. What He gets for His people he gets, not of grace, but of right. The inheritance is Christ’s by right of purchase. He gives it to His people out of mere grace, but He obtained it for them by the bitter travail of His soul. Are you one of His? He pleads for you day and night without ceasing: when you are awake, when you are asleep; when you think of Him, when you do not think of Him. Manifold are the relationships in which Christ stands to His people, all of them full of comfort – wells in the wilderness overflowing with living water. Drink deep; the well cannot be exhausted. Though the whole world would drink, the spring would still overflow with living water.
In this Psalm, Christ is shown as a shepherd.
Why speak at large on the duties of a shepherd? Most of you know what these are. He must care for the flock. In calm and in tempest, by night and by day, in summer and in winter, he must feed it, protect it, keep it from wandering, keep it from the paw of the wolf and the lion. Even in this country, a shepherd’s work is arduous, but much more arduous in many other countries. In no country is it an idle, dreamy, sentimental life.
Christ is the Shepherd of Israel. “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph as a flock, Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.” He is the good and watchful Shepherd. “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” “I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine.” He gathers the flock when it has been scarred and scattered. “Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.”
The fact that Christ is the shepherd of Israel, the good and faithful shepherd, continually watching over His people, is not enough for the Psalmist. He gets much nearer to Christ than that. No true comfort, no sure peace with God, is to be had from a distant, vague view of Christ. We must be personally interested in Christ if we would know Him in the power of His salvation. Many have had, and anyone may have, a distant view of Christ and of the glory and excellency of His work, without having a personal interest in Him. They have beheld, wondered and perished. Balaam could see the glory and beauty of “the Star of Jacob”. He could see the glory of Christ and of Christ’s work, and the blessed portion of Christ’s people. Seeing it, he was constrained to admire and commend it: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel. As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side. He couched, he lay down as a lion, as a great lion; who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.”
The preaching of the gospel, of the excellency of Christ and His salvation, was pleasant to the ears of the stony-ground hearers. They could have sat all day to listen to it. Their ears were ravished and their eyes were dazzled. They heard the Word and rejoiced in it. Nothing was half so pleasant to their hearing as the blessings unfolded in the gospel – nothing so ravishing to their sight as the beauty of Christ. Balaam and the stony-ground hearers rested there. They got a far-off view of Christ but not a personal interest in Him. Even lost souls, if they can get a glimpse of paradise, as the rich man did, must discern its excellence and admire it, but only to the increasing of their torment. Do not rest content with such far-off views of Christ; do not rest content with anything short of a personal interest in Him. The Psalmist invokes the Lord as the shepherd of Israel, also as his shepherd – there the comfort lay. “The Lord is my shepherd.” You must get as near to Christ, or you can have no comfort, no saving benefit from Him.
The Psalmist concludes that, since the Lord is his shepherd, he will not want. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Being sure of Christ, he could come to no other conclusion. A soul thoroughly converted, strong in the faith, assured that God will abide by His word, must be shut up to this comforting conclusion. Is there any good thing that the Lord has not included in His promises? Has He power to do as He has promised? Is He faithful to do as He has promised? If these conditions hold, to what other conclusion can a ransomed soul come?
Surely each of God’s promises contains abundant blessings, far more copious blessings than anyone is aware of till put upon trial. The believer can exhaust none of the promises here. The utmost comfort he gets from any of them is but a small portion compared with its inexhaustible fulness. Each promise contains much; all the promises together contain whatever the regenerated soul can desire of spiritual good. The believer cannot name a blessing which is not to be found in some promise. If anyone thinks that some aspect of his case is not provided for in the promises, let him examine the matter attentively; let him inquire about all his needs. Then let him take the Word of God, examine the promises, and see if his wants are not all anticipated there. Do the promises not bring many blessings you never thought of and quicken many desires that lay quiet within you?
No believer has at any moment of his life a full perception of all he needs. He sees but a little way. He discovers his needs one by one, as providence shifts his circumstances and places him in positions he never imagined. He will find every need provided for, as it arises, in the abounding fulness of the promises. He will discover that Christ has gone before him – considering all his case and arranging for it. If the specific blessing which you need is not in the promises, your case differs from that of all the other children of God. If you cannot discover the precise blessing you need specifically set down, do not conclude that it is not in the Lord’s mind to bestow it. If you cannot find it at the moment, yet remember it is there. You will discover it at another time. Meanwhile support your soul with this: all things are yours; for you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.
The Word, ordinances, and providence of God – all by which He graciously reveals Himself to his people – are to be esteemed as green pastures and still waters. All believers have found them such. Through them Christ reveals His loveliness to them and fills their souls with ardent longings after Him. We should be much concerned to watch how we improve in divine ordinances – whether we are growing in grace, getting more of the spirit of holiness and truly enjoying God in His ordinances.
All events in providence are devised and brought about by Christ’s infinite wisdom and in His abounding love, so as to minister to the good of His people. The good often lies hidden from them; it often appears evil to them. Often they cannot see how good can result from particular dispensations; they cannot see one beam of light in them or feel any glow of warmth. Everything, so far as man’s eye can reach and his reason comprehend, is arrayed against them in fierce, uncompromising battle order. “All these things are against me”, is their language, and it comes from the heart. It requires strong faith on the part of God’s people to believe that everything is ordered for their good.
Faith always has to maintain a conflict with sense – “we walk by faith, not by sight”. Were we to walk by sense, to be guided to our conclusions by its dictates, we would abandon faith, which looks to what is above sense and walks accordingly. The world walks by sight, and the things of faith are incomprehensible mysteries to it. Sense concludes against all that cannot be seen, tasted, handled or demonstrated. The life and enjoyment of faith lie in apprehending what is beyond the range of sense. At a death bed, sense sees and hears nothing but the decay of the body, the subsiding of the pulse, the moaning and sighs of departing life. It sees nothing of the soul departing from the body, has no glimpses of the future world; it does not see the dawning of eternity or behold the presence of God or the glories and terrors of His judgement seat; it feels little difference between the death of a man and the death of a beast. Faith beholds these things. These are its realities.
As faith has to maintain a conflict with sense, so also often with feeling. A believer may be cast down, as the Psalmist often was, into darkness and great depths, having the great billows of terror, anguish and divine judgement tossing round his soul and breaking over it. He requires much faith to believe, against present feeling and experience, that all is well-ordered, all for his good – his real and permanent advantage. Yet it is so. When brought to the point where all the dealings of God with his soul converge, he will admire the beauty and order of them all, see a hundred mysteries unravelled, and be satisfied that he was walking in the sunlight although, at the time, it was all darkness to him.
Faith and experience should walk hand in hand, not crossing and thwarting each other – which makes walking uncomfortable to a child of God. The believer’s salvation rests not on his own experience, but on Christ’s work and his interest in it. God does not look to the believer’s experience. He looks to the believer as he is in Christ Jesus. This should comfort believers in seasons of trial, when doubts and fears arise and prevail for a season. But it should not make them negligent in seeking for more and more of a gracious experience. It should strengthen their confidence in Christ but render them no less jealous of themselves.
A gracious experience of the presence and favour of God is of unspeakable importance. Believers tried by darkness and perplexity have been thrown into great alarm, and have cried out to God that they cannot live without a sense of His presence and must have it. Where Christ is the hope of glory in the soul, there will be tokens of His presence. When Christ dwells by His Spirit within the soul, He cannot but make His presence manifest. It will often happen that this is seen by way of troubling the soul for sin, spiritual sloth, unfaithfulness, and by moving great struggles of conscience on account of these; yet not always so. There will be seasons of deep, inexpressible communings of love between the soul and Christ – outshinings of the glory of Christ upon the soul to its ineffable comfort and joy – the possession of the peace of God which passes understanding. The holier, more tender and more Godward the walk, the more of such gracious experience. In such seasons, the care of Christ will very plainly be seen and deeply felt; the soul will distinctly know that the Shepherd of Israel is leading it in green pastures and beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
The shepherd goes out after the sheep when it has wandered from the fold and pasture into the wilderness. The wandering habits of sheep are well known – a fitting emblem of believers. They often wander in vain ways, out of the richest pasture the Lord has provided for them into the desert where there is no pasture and no rest for the sole of the foot, into the wilderness of vain thoughts – of wicked, doubting, unbelieving thoughts – still farther astray. The world allures them and they draw after it, making its dross to sparkle as if it were gold and precious gems. They are taken in the snare like foolish insects in a spider’s web.
After the falling rains have bemired it, the whole path will often glisten before the traveller as if spangled with innumerable lustrous gems. The god of this world has used a like art to deck out the world’s vanities. We pursue them, grasp at them, fill our bosom with them, and they are vanity. Still the path glistens before us, and we push on farther to secure a booty – on and on till, awakened to our folly by some warning sent home to us from the Scriptures or by some sharp stroke of providence, we observe how we have despised God’s mercies and gone so far from His presence.
When the prodigal son came to himself, he resolved to return to his father’s house and cast himself on his father’s mercy. It was death to remain where he was; to return could, at the worst, be death. We know what reception he had. It is to teach sinners to return to God, to encourage them to return with the assurance of a gracious reception. God’s love exceeds that of the father in the parable. He sends out into the far country, after the wandering sinner. If He does so to invite unbelieving sinners to come to him, then much more, when any of His people stray from the fold, does Christ hasten out after them to fetch them back. He will chastise them for their sins, but He will not forsake them; they are too precious to Him. He purchased them at too dear a price to part with them. He restoreth their souls.
The provision made by Christ for His people is so complete that, but for their own carelessness, sloth and sin, they need never be in straits. To exhort believers to rejoice in the Lord, and to set before them the grounds of their joy, is useful for many ends, chiefly to stir them up to seek after greater advances in holy walking and communion with God. But to insinuate that believers shall have nothing but joy and comfort here below is vain talk, wide of all Christian experience.
Our Lord exhorts His people to be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world; but at the same time He tells them that in the world they shall have tribulation. There is no record in Scripture of any believer having uninterrupted spiritual comfort here below. Often in great joy – but not in continual, uninterrupted joy. In what confusion and perplexity of spirit do we often find believers! How often was the Psalmist at his wits’ end, through fear and trembling? How often plunged, as it were, to the bottom of the deep, with the terrors of the Almighty passing over him? “O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath, neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure. For Thine arrows stick fast in me, and Thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.” “Innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me.” And so in many other passages. As with the Psalmist, so with others of God’s servants whose experience Scripture records.
Out of such fearful troubles and depression of soul there was no one to deliver the Psalmist. Man’s help was of no avail. He could no more deliver himself than if he had been lying under the weight of the mountains. Beyond the reach of all other help, the Lord remembers him, stretches down His hand, lifts him up and restores his soul. The Lord’s people are often called to praise Him in the words of Jonah: “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever, yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God!”
Having restored the souls of His people, Christ leads them in the paths of righteousness – in the statutes, ordinances and commandments of God. Except in these, there is no safe walking. All other paths are confused, and lead to confusion. Even godless sinners may know this if they would consult their own experience. They have no true peace in the ways where they walk. They can have none. These are paths of destruction; they lead to death; they take hold of hell.
In the fourth verse, the Psalmist comforts himself still more in his Redeemer.
The believer, walking in the fear of God and doing his utmost to keep his heart and steps from the ways of temptation, cannot make too great demands upon the grace and favour of God. All that he asks is short of what God has promised. The Psalmist now comforts himself not only by reviewing God’s merciful dealing with him hitherto but looks forward with confidence for the time to come. Whilst he has any being, he expects to be praising the Lord for his mercies. He here anticipates the time when he shall be called on to depart this life. He speaks of the valley of the shadow of death, and of his passing through it.
If we could follow his thoughts whither they have now gone and get a glimpse of our own walking through this valley, we might see our need of having Christ for our guide and comforter there. It is a dark and dismal place; to the mere natural apprehension it is the most terrible place except hell. There is no peace, and can be none, unless Christ is with us. We have come within the shadow of eternity. We are going, breath by breath, out of this state of things, so familiar to us. The sun has gone down beneath the horizon; the light of this world is fading from our eye. Our senses, which brought us into contact with the things of time, can do nothing here; they bring us no information. The objects of time are left behind. They have become shadows.
Many other things make death terrible. Sin and Satan lurk and work in the shadow of death. The unforgiven sins of men’s lives start up to scare them and intensify their fearful apprehensions. They had forgotten their sins, had supposed they were dead and buried, no more to be seen or heard of. They had only gone before them to judgement, to meet there again in this evil place, to haunt their steps and pursue them to the judgement seat. This sudden onset of sin has driven many to despair in passing through the valley of the shadow of death; and brought even many a redeemed soul, whose sins were all pardoned, into a season of inexpressible anguish of spirit – though before their departure the cloud passed away, and sunshine and calm returned. Satan is busy with his temptations here – nowhere busier, shooting his bolts on every side, wounding the soul, and making it pass through a shower of fire. God often lets loose all His terrors here against the wicked, so that they are utterly confounded. It is all horror and darkness and conflict and struggle. To the awakened but unconverted sinner, death is unspeakably dreadful. And the believer would sink helpless were he left to himself.
The Psalmist could contemplate the terrors of death. All passed before his mind. He left none of them out. He did not look with a careless eye – not with the kind of glance which men will now and then throw sidelong at some evil in their path, which they must one day met. But because it is yet at some distance, they are glad to look more at its hopeful than at its dark side. He knew what was to be encountered and struggled with in death. In the face of all death’s terrors, he concludes, “I will fear no evil”. His reason is: “For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me”. Christ goes with His people through the whole journey of life and does not forsake them at death. He draws near them then. Whatever the ungodly trusted in, it leaves them here; whatever the ungodly feared, it meets him here; whatever the believer feared, it leaves him here. Christ takes him by the hand and leads him through, for Christ has conquered the terrors of death and hell. In His hand the believer is safe and shall be brought in peace to his expected end.
Some fruits of redemption God intends for growth only in another soil; such as freedom from pain, diseases, death and sin. And therefore the last day, when believers shall be gathered together is called, by way of excellency, the day of redemption, as if we had nothing of redemption properly in this life, because we have it not complete.
Stephen Charnock