A psalm of David.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides 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 love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Does David literally mean that I will not want for anything?
I’m pretty sure David had plenty of wants…I’ve read about some them in the Bible.
Is this poetic unreality?
Maybe you are thinking…
I know I am supposed to need Jesus and that he is supposed to supply what I need…but frankly, I just don’t see how that is realistic in what is my actual life.
I work in an office with a computer and budgets and bosses and difficult employees/co-workers…what does a shepherd and still waters have to do with all that?..besides maybe emotional comfort from a spiritual poem?
I have a body that hurts…I want it to stop.
I have loneliness and anxiety and fear…I also want it to stop.
Nice poem, David…thanks…Jesus may be my shepherd…but in the real world, the not “poetry world”, I’m a person not a sheep and I have plenty of wants.
Maybe David is speaking of “a life without want” in a different way that we normally think of it.
In the context of David’s poem, he is not saying we will have all that we might want…but we will not want for anything that we need.
This sounds like a kind of bait and switch…you will have all you want, as long as you want God what wants you to want.
There is, however, some truth to that last statement.
But it is no bait and switch…to truly want what God wants is the best possible thing that could happen to a human heart…this is a free heart.
It is the heart that Jesus had and has.
Let’s go to John and see what Jesus has to say about this…he doesn’t use poetry, but he does use the same figures of speech…shepherd and sheep to talk about who he is and who we are.
John 10:1-21
Truly I tell you, anyone who doesn’t enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a robber.
Here the sheep, are in a pen…not out in the pasture.
The gate is under guard…waiting for the shepherd to lead them to the fields.
These sheep pens were often community owned…several households shared them with a guarded front gate.
The thief is going to climb over the fence to avoid the guard…the shepherd comes through the front gate.
2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will never follow a stranger; instead, they will run away from him, because they don’t know the voice of strangers.”
Middle eastern shepherds are known to this day; to stand outside the sheep pen and sound out their own peculiar calls, their own sheep gather around that known shepherd…then he takes them out to pasture.
Western shepherds will drive the sheep, often using a sheep dog.
In the middle East, both now and in Jesus’ day, they lead their flocks, calling them from out in front.
6 Jesus gave them this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.
John acknowledges, That Jesus is using figurative language to describe a reality…one that they failed to understand.
We use figures of speech all day long, so much so that have no clue that we are using them.
Like, “All day long” and “have no clue”
But figures of speech are used to accurately and often poignantly communicate reality…and to do so in memorable fashion.
Here’s some I’ve used.
Sunset is 8:15 tonight
Hang in there (texted to a friend in difficult situation)
You can say that again
I know the sun doesn’t move, and my friend is not literally hanging, and I didn’t really want the person to repeat himself.
These communicate reality…when it will get dark, stay strong (I’m pulling for you), I agree with what you just said.
David and Jesus are giving us figurative speech to powerfully communicate important reality.
What a shepherd is and does…is a good way to understand the role and work of the Lord Jesus in our lives and our relationship with him.
His original hearers, would have had much more personaly experience with the world of sheep and shepherds than we do.
7 Jesus said again, “Truly I tell you; I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.
Jesus is referring to those who pretend to represent God but lead people astray.
In Ezekiel 34 we read:
The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. (Spiritual and political leaders, both priests and kings, were called shepherds) Prophesy, and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says to the shepherds: Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding themselves! Shouldn’t the shepherds feed their flock? 3 You eat the fat, wear the wool, and butcher the fattened animals, but you do not tend the flock. 4 You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty. 5 They were scattered for lack of a shepherd; they became food for all the wild animals when they were scattered. 6 My flock went astray on all the mountains and every high hill. My flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth, and there was no one searching or seeking for them.
Ezekiel writes that since these under shepherds have failed so miserably, THE Shepherd is going to take care of his own.
“‘For this is what the Lord God says: See, I myself will search for my flock and look for them. 12 As a shepherd looks for his sheep on the day he is among his scattered flock, so I will look for my flock. I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and total darkness
This is another passage that pointed forward to Jesus…he is THE Good shepherd.
Jesus had this OT passage in mind when he told the parable of the lost sheep…where the good shepherd leaves the larger flock and goes searching for the single lost sheep.
9 I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Since this is figurative speech, Jesus can be both gate and shepherd…each indicate different aspects of who he is and what it means to live in relationship with him.
He is THE gate…the only way to salvation, the only way to safe pastures.
AND
He is THE good shepherd; his goodness is indicated ultimately by the fact that he will lay down his life for his sheep.
He is both the only gate to salvation, and he is the one who continues to lead his sheep into a life without lack…keep these two functions in mind.
We tend to have mental pictures of shepherds as soft, Mister Rogers kind of guys… with arms full of cuddly lambs.
This idea of softness is enforced with the English word…”good” shepherd…which equates to “nice shepherd”
The word for good used here actually means nobility or worthy…not good as nice, or friendly.
A shepherd is “good” if he keeps the sheep healthy and alive…not if the sheep “like him” or think he is “nice”
The noble shepherd. THE “faithful” shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep
A good shepherd isn’t going to be nice to wolves…and very often his own sheep aren’t going to think he is particularly “nice.”
When he is tending their wounds (and it hurts), driving them through mountains to green pastures.
My grandson in this past year said to me, “I don’t think you are nice.”
*He did however, soon after saying this, want to wrestle and play with me. So, take it with a grain of salt, I did.
“Nice” for him at that moment was letting him be in charge…do what he wanted to do.
So, he said, “You aren’t nice”
I replied, “I don’t care about that…I care about you.”
I want to be a “good grandfather”
And whether my grandkids, in the moment when they need to be lead… think I’m “nice” or not is irrelevant to me.
I want to be a “worthy” or a faithful shepherd…leader…father…grandfather.
I want to be like Jesus…he is the “noble” “faithful” shepherd.
If I was literally a sheep and had enough sense to know it…I would take the rough and tumble shepherd on the right, over the one walking around barefoot with a hairdo and a halo on the left.
I like Mr. Rogers…but If I’m a sheep in the wild facing actual dangers…I’d rather have Rambo than Rogers as my shepherd.
Now to be sure, I’d rather have Mr. Rogers as my neighbor…just not as my shepherd.
Jesus is the faithful shepherd…and shepherds are far from soft and passive…they are tough, they lived outdoors, they fought wild animals and the elements.
Jesus gave us this mental image…we must not distort it, or make it other than what he had in mind.
Shepherds led the sheep to life giving pasture, through difficult valleys and dangerous mountains.
It is not that Jesus as our shepherd is not gentle and kind…those are fruits of the Spirit…of course he is.
But he is those things as defined by his role as Lord, not by our own emotions.
We are his sheep; we don’t get to tell Jesus how to be a GOOD shepherd.
He tells us how to be good sheep thriving under his care…we follow him in faith.
In Psalm 23, he doesn’t just make his sheep lie down in green pastures beside quiet waters…he is, you have to assume still in the lead when the sheep are walking through the valley of death, and in the presence of enemies.
Why did he lead his sheep there? Well, he is the good shepherd and he has good reasons.
Let’s go back to verses 9-11 and land there.
I want to talk about what it means to experience, “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not be in want.”
9 I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
First, this life without lack requires that we follow Jesus in faith.
He is the Gate…not A gate
He is THE gate.
We must be saved, born again…these are words that Jesus used to describe placing your faith in him.
We can trust him…because he has laid down his life for us.
Second, this life without lack requires continually following Jesus to find good and safe pasture…to live in this abundant life we have to keep following him.
He is the gate, turned Good shepherd.
We learn to know his voice…we train to keep trusting him.
Let’s unpack those two points:
1. A life without lack requires belief (putting your whole faith) in Christ. He is THE gate.
There are a lot of voices out there confidently saying this is the “truth” this is the “way” this is how you live “life”
This is the way to “green pastures” a thriving life.
The democratic party is saying they are returning “joy”…as if a political platform could provide what is only an internal reality.
The republican party is offering a return to “safety”…make America “safe” again.
As if a political platform can address and solve the fear that animates people.
“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life”, Jesus asked.
The solution to fear of the future was not, politics…but faith in him.
No political party can address the heart issues that drives people to worry and anxiety.
People listen to the voices that offer them what they want to hear.
Because they lack, they listen.
Out of deep need and emptiness people respond to voices offering them solutions…that are not real solutions.
People follow “hired hands” who tell them “feed your desire and you will be satisfied.”
“Your desire defines you; having this or that need met is your right…no one can stand in the way of you getting what you want.”
Betrand Russell, who was one of these hired hands (false shepherds) who said,
“Outside human desire there is no moral standard.”
So, he wrote a book on marriage and family…that was utterly false and empty and ruinous.
These books are written everyday…these ideas are espoused nonstop.
These hired hands don’t stay around when the emptiness, and brokenness, and death comes…they can’t because they live and die in emptiness themselves.
Jesus says, “I will give you abundant life, I will shepherd you to a life without lack…now pick up your cross and follow me to the place of death to your own will and desires.”
This is not Buddhism where the path to peace is the death of desire.
For the Buddha we suffer because desire, the way to eliminate suffering is by eliminating desire.
The Good shepherd doesn’t say, “Stop wanting”…but I will lead you to the place where you have what you want.
In Jesus we find what are hearts are made for…the problem is not desire, but desired uncoupled from relationship with Christ.
Dallas Willard wrote that:
Human desire is infinite by its nature; it cannot be satisfied. You must take your stand against it because you cannot satisfy it. You can never get enough money, if you want money. You can never get enough power, if you want power. You can never get enough love; you can never get enough glory. It is impossible.
Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all of our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God the desire for the infinite remains, but it is misplaced now on things that destroy us.
This brings us to our second point of living this life without lack.
2. It requires continually following Jesus, to the GOOD Shephered, to find pasture…to live in this abundant life we have to keep following him in faith.
So, we follow him in faith, initially…we are born again…he is the gate.
We continue to follow in him faith over a lifetime…we are training to trust. He is the GOOD shepherd.
A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance
Life in abundance is not just postmortem fire insurance.
Eternal life in Christ is life with God that begins at conversion and doesn’t end….it is a different kind of life.
It is life without want…a life that is already ours, but not yet fully ours.
Abundant life been turned into the heresy of Jesus being the lottery…who if we hit the faith jackpot…he will give us everything we desire.
This is a perversion of the truth.
If are not dying to self…then our desires are misguided, they are selfish and broken.
He will not give us that which is ruining us.
Willard again:
Only when we are prepared to let go of the things that tempt us to keep life under our own control are we prepared to give up our lives—even to the point of death.
Death to self means releasing all our desires, our reputation, our glory, and having our way with other people. Everything.
Yikes!
I want this…this is what I was made for.
This tough…to live the life without lack is about training, not merely trying.
We train for godliness…because this is what we are designed for…it is what is neccesary to be prepared for living a life without want, even in the valley of the shadow of death.
Willard again:
But what about pain, failure, sickness, helplessness, or injury by others? Unfortunately, most Christians today have not been trained in how to meet these inevitable realities of life.
So instead of rejoicing in tribulation, as we are instructed in James, they give up and sulk, closing themselves off from God.
The self remains alive and on the throne of our lives as long as we take what happens to us as the ultimate point of reference.
WE must train to trust him because…we have too often trained our hears to trust ourselves.
I wrote a story for my grandkids, it’s called, “That’s not true, Kangaroo.”
In the story, Haddie and Eva turn into kangaroos and bounce frantically from feeling to feeling.
They lose joy, they lose hope, they lose relationship with each other…because they are believing what they feel not what is real.
The solution comes when they begin to train themselves to believe truth not just feelings.
It’s a kid’s story with a grownup point.
We must train to believe the truth, or we will become frantically pushed around by lies fueling our feelings.
This is absolutely essential for a life without want
In an age when people are taught to live by feelings, not by every word that comes from the mouth of God, we have to be very attentive.
All around you people are embracing, celebrating, broadcasting their every fleeting feeling…desire…want.
They are embracing these feelings and wants as absolute truth. They are destroying their lives and they fail to find contentment, joy, or peace.
They live a life of perpetual lack because they follow their feelings not the Good Shepherd.
What Jesus has said to you must be believed, completely, absolutely.
If what he has said comes in conflict with what you currently feel, you must tell your feelings to get in line behind you as you get in line behind Jesus.
We have to begin with faith.
What do I really believe?
Is the gospel true, is Jesus THE good shepherd…will following him lead to a life without lack?
When we trust him we will wait for him in hopeful expectancy and not demand he do things in our ways and on our time frame.
Last week I told my youngest grandson, Joseph, I would take him to lunch.
I called Crystal just before lunch to see if we were still on.
She said, “Well since he got up this morning he has been asking about it and now he is sitting on the garage step waiting for you.”
“I told him, I was tracking you and you would you be here…but he said, ‘I’ll wait here on the step.'”
He had learned to have faith “in” me, so now he could sit on the step, “hoping” for me to show up.
His hope was not blind, or like “I hope it doesn’t rain.”
It was a hope built on his faith in me…finite though I am…he trusts me, so he puts his hope in me.
We have faith in a God whose will cannot be stopped, so we live our lives putting our hopes in him.
Hope is knowing that God’s purposes will stand in our lives.
This is not misplaced hope, or emotionally drummed up feelings of hope.
This is hope based on faith in Christ…he is all for me learning to live in his abundant life.
External forces cannot stop me, God is for it…I can, if I will
And this kind of hope inspires agency.
Agency leads to actions.
Actions are the things that show up on your actual calendar
Hope is not a strategy…but it can inspire one.
The strategy has to include the basics of training to abide in Jesus.
It means more than daily time in prayer and in the Word and commitment to community…but it certainly doesn’t mean less than that.
If you are not doing at least these three things…you will not live in this life without want.
We must be making regular time in the basic spiritual disciplines habitual.
You don’t like idea of discipline…it is the same root as “disciple” that thing Jesus told us to become and to reproduce.
By habitual, I don’t mean mechanical I mean that they are a non-negotiable part of their lives.
When we understand the importance of training for godliness then we understand that time with God in prayer and his word and community are as essential for our lives as eating, sleeping, and breathing are.
Habits need not become mechanical or heartless. If they do become those things then we don’t drop the habits, we adjust our hearts.
Discipline serves to form us into disciples.
Disciples are disciplined so they can be fit to follow Jesus. This is not about earning something from Jesus, it is about training to be like him.
You may have seen an old movie where a radio operator has each hand on a separate dial trying to tune in a good signal.
You can look at heart and habit like those two dials.
Habits are the choices we make, over time, to build good reflexes into our lives.
We tell our kids endlessly, “Say please” and “Say thank you.”
We don’t stop at that point to worry about whether they mean it or not. We know that on the way to meaning it they have to form good habits.
This brings us the heart part. We don’t want kids who are simply parrots, repeating what we have taught them. We do want them to become adults who are not entitled and who are grateful…at the level of their hearts.
We know this will make them happy and healthy adults.
As we teach them to say “please” and “thank you” we do other things to help them become humans with real hearts of gratitude.
The habits are not ends in themselves; they are a means to a greater end. That greater end is to know, please, and become like Jesus.
This doesn’t mean that that the spiritual habits are in themselves merely a means to an end. To read God’s word, to talk with God in prayer are good and things to be enjoyed.
We are back to the old radio. We are after music not static. To dial in the music, it is both habit and heart. We do it whether we feel it or not.
At the same time, we are not content with just simply doing the discipline. We want warm, changed hearts.
I hope you are not disappointed that there is not a new, more flashy application than the old “disciplines of a disciple”
But there aren’t.
You can add some things…to read, pray, live in community…
You turn off that program or movie or web page that violates your conscience and the holiness of God.
You don’t need it; it doesn’t help you train for godliness.
You could fast for a meal or a day to train yourself that you really don’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God.
You could forgive, let that offense go…you could discipline yourself to give the anger to God.
There are lots of ways to train, they are not flashy, but they are real training in godliness.
You will not become a person who experiences the shepherd’s life without want by some flash of insight or miraculous experience.
You will learn to trust Christ for his sufficiency as you train to trust him.
This training is day to day, in the real world.
It includes doing the hard mental work of keeping Christ before your mind as you move through the day.
What do you want?
I personally want to live in the sufficiency of Christ…I want to experience this life without wanting anything other than what the Good shepherd provides.
So, I’m training…and I fail a lot…but of course training unlike merely trying…includes both success and failure.
I get discouraged by my failure…but I am resolute in training because I have hope fueled by faith in the Good shepherd.
I hope you will join in training to live this life without want.