The Servant Master - Part One: The Lord is Shepherd (Psalm 23)
Word on the streets (campus streets during walk-up conversations with students) is that God is distant, nonchalant, and impersonal. He is detached from his creation. He is not bothered by the day-to-day living and struggles of mankind. To others, God is a means to attain prosperity and good fortune. For others, God does not exist. The world we know all came together by chance. The human race is sovereign and in charge of their own lives. The concept of God is just a man-made construct.
Who is God to you? What comes to your mind at the thought of God? It is well and good to have a sense and opinion of who God is. We are created with minds to think and to explore who God is. It is his purpose for him to be known by his own creation. He has made that possible through the scriptures. It is worth taking our opinions, thoughts, and constructs of who God is to the Holy Bible and challenging them with what God has to say for himself in his very Word - the Holy Bible.
Psalms 23 shows us who God is and how he is towards his creation. Psalm 23 shows us that the Lord is shepherd, servant, and hospitable as his character. Part 1 of this three-part series starts us off seeing the Lord as shepherd.
Note that the psalmist refers to God as Lord - meaning that God is master and superior over him and everything, in the earth below and the the sky above.
The psalmist calls the Lord his shepherd. A shepherd is known for looking after and caring for his flock. The psalmist speaks of how the Lord, like the shepherd, takes care of him. He takes him to “green pastures” and “still waters” where he is abundantly cared for and provided for. The shepherd knows what his flock needs and he leads them to where their needs will be met sufficiently. The Lord’s care and provision are sufficient to meet the practical as well as restore the soul of the psalmist. The psalmist knows that the Lord is for him. He leads him in paths of righteousness. Even when life’s circumstances seem uncomfortable, filled with suffering or death the dips of life’s valleys (v4). The Lord is still there, leading, caring, and providing, like a faithful shepherd. As a result, the psalmist does not fear evil, for the Lord is always with him - he trains and disciplines him. His training, discipline, and leading comfort him, for he knows that the Lord will never abandon him but build him up and mature him, despite his shortcomings and failures. His care for him is unconditional. The psalmist knows this and is confident of this because he has witnessed God caring for him plenty of times, he trusts the Word as it speaks of his care for his people and that it is in God’s nature to care, lead, train, and discipline his people whom he loves dearly.
God is deeply involved in the details of our day-to-day living and struggles, he knows what our needs are - the surface-level needs as well as the deep-level needs and he delights to meet our them and lead us to deep spiritual contentment. All this is available and possible for us through fellowship with his son Jesus Christ. Jesus laid down his life for us, so that we may have life, and to have it to the fullest.
