It was many years before I could say, “I love Psalm 23. “I can still see the cover of my son’s storybook version. There’s David, ruby cheeks and curly hair, a shepherd’s cane next to him, immaculate sheep nearby. The model son? Everything that wasn’t. This perfect boy condemned me.
It was more than twenty years and a great sadness before the key turned on the lock. This boy didn’t write this psalm. The David of Psalm 23 needed the restoration of the soul (v. 3): he visited “the valley of shadow of death”; confronted him?(v. 4); had enemies (v. 5). He was a proven believer who spoke of a long experience with God, and his confidence in the future was based on past experiences.
- But David wasn’t just betting on his own experience.
- He was not the first person in the Bible to say.
- “The Lord is my shepherd.
- “He simply applied to himself something he had learned from Jacob.
Genesis 48:15–16 records the moving scene at the end of Jacob’s life when he blessed Joseph and his two sons:
“The God in whose presence my parents Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has supported me all my life to this day, the angel who saved me from all evil, bless these boys. “
Jacob had not been the nicest of sheep. Even after meeting the angel in Jaboc, I needed more correction. His sad repetition of his parents’ madness of having favorite children led him to family dysfunction, jealousy, sin and sadness. He returned with a clear vision and marveled at how the pastor had accompanied and preserved him, wounded him only to protect him, and provided him with so much good. His son Joseph had already seen him (45:5-8), and he would then confirm: what did others mean to evil, God did well (50. 20)?Old Testament version of Romans 8. 28.
David had learned that what was true for Jacob was also true for him, and not to mention any specific situation in his own life, describes the Lord’s pastoral care in a way that shows how this applies to all situations in our lives.
When you know that the Lord is your shepherd, you can be sure that nothing will be lost. Elsewhere, David recounts that, even in old age, had he never seen the righteous abandoned or their children begging for bread?(Salt 37:25).
The verb used by David (? Nothing missing?/?Won’t anything be missing?) It happens somewhere else. During the pilgrimages in the desert, was there?(Ex 16:18). Moses could say, “These forty years, the Lord your God is with you. Did you miss something? (Dt 2. 7). God promised that this would also be true for the country He gave them (8:9). He had foreseen this in the law of the harvest (Leviticus 19:9-10).
So David was probably also thinking about how Yahweh had guided the multitude through the wilderness (Salt 77. 20; 78. 32) and revealed himself as him?Pastor of Israel? (80,1). If Yahweh could sustain this huge flock, David concludes, he could surely hold a sheep. And now the Lord had justified his faith by fulfilling all his needs.
What seems at the beginning is that a pastor’s pastoral lessons end up generating the trust of a believer based on the truth of God’s Word and the revelation of his character, perhaps less pastor David thinks about caring for the sheep. and more exposing David by applying the Word of God to himself. Thus he came to share Jacob’s faith and experience the sovereign character of God in the exodus.
Jesus saw the depth of meaning in these words; He must have sung them with joy. He turned to his parents Jacob and David and how they trusted their father to meet all their needs. In fact, as he explained to his confused disciples, his Father provided him with food: “I have food to eat, which you do not know?Is it my food to do the will of the one who sent me?(John 4:32, 34).
But Jesus must also have read Psalm 23 with a deep sense of responsibility, because He knew that He was ultimately himself?Good Shepherd, who gives his life for the sheep?(10. 11. 14). What Jacob and David saw only vaguely, Jesus saw clearly: the shepherd must suffer for his sheep.
Like the Good Shepherd, Jesus would take the place of his sheep and take him to the slaughterhouse (Is 53:7), so he would be wounded (Zc 13:7; cf. Mt 26:31). He would do everything he could to provide us with everything, Participation?Since He was not forgiven, but all of us free Him, we can be sure that He will give us everything we need (Rom. 8,32).
This is what a Christian means when he declares, “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not miss anything. “