Psalms 23

Psalms 23:1-6

“THE PSALM” Psalms 23:1-6IN passing from the nineteenth to the twenty-third Psalm we leap from a marvelous mountain peak to the top of the loftiest in the range. We do not pass over the lesser eminences of the twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second because they are unworthy of consideration. Far from it! The prayer in the twentieth chapter, though uttered thousands of years since, provides phraseology for many present-day petitions. The thanksgiving of the twenty-first chapter involves speech also that the true Christian often finds occasion to employ, while the despairing cry, yea, even cries, of the twenty second chapter still precede phrases of praise just such as that with which that chapter concludes. But, as I have suggested, what Pike’s Peak is to the Rockies and the Matterhorn is to the Alps, the twenty-third Psalm is to the whole range of revelation recorded in this poetic book.On that very account one approaches it with perturbation. There are some tasks that we only undertake when circumstances compel them. Though forty years in the ministry I have yet to prepare a sermon on John 3:16. It was a courageous undertaking, that of my friend who published a book on “The Ten Great Chapters of the Bible”. Inconspicuous portions of the Word of God contain meats unimaginable and drinks that are strangely sweet, and present delightful surprises to students; but who shall ascend into God’s holiest hill, who shall undertake His highest, as found in this twenty-third Psalm? By what reasonings shall we unravel its riches? With what descriptives shall we present its glories and by what inventions shall we ascend into its heights?And yet, lying in our very path as it does as we travel on through the book, and demanding attention, yea, even attempted interpretation, I can only say, “There is not a tongue” adequate. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Psalms 139:6).We crave indulgence therefore for the attempt, and call attention to some of its evident truths, particularly to these three: God’s Intimate Relationship; God’s Definite Reality, and God’s Freely Bestowed Riches.GOD’S “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want”.He, then is the True Shepherd. Men have speculated as to whether David wrote this Psalm in his youth or in his old age, and have pretty commonly agreed that it was the expression of more advanced experience, the result of more mature expression, the wide observance of the ways of the Lord.Personally I am not convinced of that fact. There is much in this Psalm that has in it the exuberance of youth, the undulled sense of Divine favor, the jubilant hopes of inexperience.Be that as it may, we will all agree that David was thinking upon his former occupation, and the affectionate love the lad bore to his flock, and the green pastures he had hunted out in its behalf, and the quiet brook at the bottom of the deep glen, down beside which he tolled them when the noonday heat baked the plains as an oven bakes; and he converts his position into that of a sheep and sees in his God—his Shepherd—the One truly typified by his former office, and recognizes in his own sheltered and favored estate the Father’s love and care. The various flocks of God have their undershepherds and one day when His will is wrought perfectly for the earth He will set over them “shepherds that shall feed them and they shall lack no more”.But even in this time when “false shepherds” are multiplied, “shepherds that scatter His flock driving them away”, “shepherds that will not visit them”, God never forgets to brood over and bless, and in the person of His Son prove that all believers are shepherded still. What a Shepherd is ours!He is the source of all our needs. David said “I shall not want”, nor shall we who are “the sheep of His pasture”. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalms 24:1).

Dr. Mason Good once said in addressing his students: “I wish to impress upon your minds by the incontrovertible facts of living examples that nothing lies beyond the reach of His benevolence or the shadow of His protection.

God alike supplies the wants and ministers to the enjoyment of every living creature. He finds them food in rocks and in wildernesses, in the bowels of the earth, in the depths of the ocean; and it is He that has given cunning where cunning is necessary, and wariness where caution is demanded, and has furnished with rapidity of foot, or fin, or wing, where such qualities appear expedient; and, where might is of moment, has afforded proofs of a might the most terrible and irresistible. His mercy is over all His works.”All nature attests the truth of God’s words; but it is also true that man alone is conscious of this source of blessing and man alone can voice any sentient appreciation of it. It is true that the animals know something of gratitude and express it in the joy of living, and that birds are supposed to lend to the harmonies of earth, voices in praise; but it is perhaps equally true that man alone has the thought of God and the sense of Divine protection.However the proof of appreciation of Divine blessings is not in speech alone, even though that take the form of thanksgiving and the colored melody recognizes that fact—’Everybody what talks about Heaven is not goin thar” for “not every one that saith, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of My Father”. David, in this Psalm, phrases what every grateful heart appreciates; but the finest proof of appreciation is to be found in conduct like that of Florence Nightingale who said, “If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her.” And then she concludes, “And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all, and I have never refused God anything.”Think on that! “I have never refused God anything.” If any sentence could show an appreciation of God as the source of all needs that sentence shows it, for, after all, the proof of our loyalty to the Lord is not in what we say, but in what we do.There are men who know God as the “Giver of every good and every perfect gift” and yet they are not only guilty as charged by Malachi, “Ye have robbed God in tithes and offerings” but there are hundreds who have named His name, who recognize no obligation to Him and make no sacrifice whatever for the setting forward of His Church or the hastening of His Kingdom; nor do they seem to concern themselves upon the subject.

To them Christianity consists in having their name upon the church book and not in sacrificing for Christ’s sake nor even in seeking to know His will that it might be done. But if one truly believes the opening sentence of the twenty-third Psalm and counts the Lord his Shepherd and regards Him as the source of all supplies, he cannot indulge himself in stinginess nor continue robbing God in tithes and offerings.But the Psalmist saw more than supplies in God.

Learn from the next sentence:His succor is our sufficiency. “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”.We have been too much disposed to limit the Lord’s succor to the interpretation of a single text, “In that He hath suffered, being tempted He is able to succour them that are tempted”. The Standard Dictionary tells us that “succor” means “to run to the aid or relief of, assist when in danger or difficulty; to help.” Truly then, David knew the succor of the Lord and voiced it when he said,“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”.It would almost seem that Ezekiel was thinking upon this Shepherd succor of His flock when he wrote:“As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.“And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.“I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be; there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.“I will feed My flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God.“I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick” (Ezekiel 34:12-16).Alexander Maclaren, the great English preacher, writing upon these verses imagines the shepherd calling the flock from the burning desert into “a little green glen with a quiet brooklet and the moist lush herbage all along its course, and great stones that fling black shadows over their base and there will the shepherd lead his flock, the sweet silences providing their food and drink, couching in the quiet until He calls them forth again”, and then he says, “So God leads His children”!A writer in one of our religious magazines speaking of Jehovah’s promise to Abraham, “I am the almighty God, walk before Me, and be thou perfect”, says, “It is a better translation, I am the All-sufficient One, walk in My fellowship and be thou sufficient,’” and then he remarks, “We cannot fail to notice that Abraham’s walk follows God’s revelation, and Abraham’s efficiency is the result of God’s sufficiency.” The evidences of our strength depends upon how great a God we have and how high is our conception of His faithfulness and resources. We must not fail to note that the last clause is in the imperative mode, “Be thou sufficient”! The word carries with it the possibility of every righteous demand, and he reminds us of the time when Gideon was skulking in cowardly fear, trying to hide from the Midianites, “And, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour”.That sounds like a joke; and certainly carries with it the ludicrous; and yet at the same time it was spoken in all seriousness, for he knew that when the Lord entered him his cowardice would be gone, and so it was for “the Lord looked on him and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites’.How significant then, the words of Scripture, “The Lord hath commanded thy strength. Strengthen, oh God, that which Thou hast wrought”. People come to me from time to time and say that they “cannot do this” and they “are afraid to undertake that”.

Did it ever occur to you that that is not humility at all? All your humble speeches to the contrary notwithstanding; it is not altogether cowardice either; it is infidelity, lack of faith; it is an utter failure to appreciate and appropriate the Divine resources placed at your command, and the succoring help provided by Him with whom is valor, strength and conquest. Let me plead that we shall make more of our relationship to God. He is our Shepherd. He is the source of all need and His succor is our sufficiency.But this all leads to our second suggestion:GOD’S REALITY The trouble with most of us is that we have no God at all, or if we have a God He is a poor, pitiable and weak one.There are people who try to make it out that God is an evolution of the intellect and the more man develops the more mighty his God becomes as a pure consequence; or “It is only the energy back of all!” Bishop Brown, lately and justly convicted of heresy, worships only “as Maker those universal laws which govern infinite cycles of change.” Only a few days since the North Carolina State University voiced, through the columns of its University magazine, that “The only truly Divine power that ever was or will be is super-hygiene.” But the one thing that is made clear in this Psalm is the fact that David’s God was no poor god developed in the process of evolution, but with Him was “all power”, “all wisdom”, “all might”, “all justice”, “all truth!”In His presence the Psalmist placed confidence. The text voices it, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil”. Death! man’s greatest enemy, the most terrible foe he has ever faced since his history on earth began. Death! the giant against whom no mortal has ever been able to stand. Death! at his touch the strongest succumb, at the sight of his face the staunchest heart fails, yea, his icy breath lays us powerless, and yet the Psalmist said, “I am not afraid of him. I will not fear him, nor any evil that he can work!”Why?

He had a God. No, I beg pardon, he had The God, “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”, the God “who neither slumbers nor sleeps”, the God before whose face every enemy must fall, the God who, by His appearance in the person of His Son, coming “the second time without sin unto salvation”, shall slay death and snatch from his bony hands every trusting soul; yea, entering the dark and cavernous temple of the grave, He shall take out of it the bodies of His beloved, and stripping Death of his last possession, defy him to his face and drive him ‘‘into hell.”That is the God of David, the God who created all things by the word of His power, the God who holds the universe in the palm of His hand, the God who stretches out space into infinity, yea, the God who numbers the hairs of our heads, who lets not a single sparrow fall to the ground and perish without His presence, the One being in the Universe, and the only One who combines all power and all grace, all justice and all love.

Aye, His presence is our comfort!What sort of a God have you? If He is a God of might why cringe you with a sense of weakness? If all power is with Him in “Heaven and in earth” why blanch you with fear? St. Theresa had it in her heart to build an orphanage and in her purse but three shillings. When some one laughed at the suggestion, she answered, “With three shillings Theresa can do nothing; but with God and her three shillings there is nothing Theresa cannot do.”His Presence is our assurance. It is the speech of emboldened confidence, “Thou art with me”! Dr.

Culberth Hall charges against modern Protestantism that it is declining in its sense of God. “Rome”, he declares “supplies to the popular heart a certain sense of Divine majesty that provokes the impulse of worship. Where Rome speaks, be it in London or Cologne, in Milan or Venice, in New York or in a factory town or a prairie hamlet, she speaks to the people and they answer, flocking to her altars, worshiping at her uplifting of the symbol of the body of God. This is not the prevailing modern experience within the area of Protestantism.”And the reason is not far to seek; intellectual infidelity has wormed its way to the very heart of Protestantism and has made one persistent, and even devilish, attempt to destroy the personality of God. They even deny the appropriateness of His name. From a dozen different sources within a month, including in some instances, men that actually name the name of Christ, have I seen claims that the whole universe is simply “the product of energy,” working without consciousness of its own power, but with definite ends in view, which is only another attempt to dethrone the Almighty and re-introduce the old Pantheism that fruited in the frightful savagery of former days, without even the decency to name it God. But, stripping Him of every spiritual trait, modern science would reduce the Creator to an insentient physical force.

All of this profoundly impresses one with the opportunity of Christianity.If there was ever an age or a time when we should testify to our own personal experience with God, to our first hand knowledge of and acquaintance with Him (as did John [1 John 1:1-3]), that time is now. If there ever was a time when we should desist from the poor muckrake business and turn our faces upward to catch the light of His countenance and reflect it to our fellows so clearly that they could not question that He had looked upon us and lightened us, that time is here!

If there ever was a moment when we should climb the mount and be clothed with the light from His transfigured face, that moment is now. I have been in the Rockies, in the later afternoon and have seen the darkness creeping down into all the valley and yet all I needed to do was to lift up my face, and lo, the giant peaks about me were brilliant with the glory of the descending sun and even more beautiful than they had been at noonday. I have watched until that sun shown no longer, even on the loftiest peaks, and then, lifting my face a bit higher, lo, the clouds were still within the range of the light from the face of the Sun and were robed in garments of glory. In the language, then, of another, “When we want our souls to be transfigured and our lives ennobled by the perpetual sunshine of God’s Presence, where no sorrow can enshroud us and no sin can live, we have but to seek higher fellowship with Him in His secret place, and live more delightedly among the things that are above.”Meanwhile, His power is our comfort! “Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me”. The rod and the staff-instruments of power in the hands of the shepherd for the defense of the sheep-symbols therefore of God’s power employed in our behalf! Who can measure it!

How many thousands have shared in it! It would be difficult to employ a figure more full of comfort than that here used.

What the Psalmist means to say is that just as his sheep used to feed and drink, with hungry wolves watching them from the hill-top unable to touch them because of the Shepherd’s presence, so he could live with his enemies about him, but every one of those enemies, though ringing him round with greedy eyes and yearning to leap upon him and make short work of him, by the mighty power of God was kept at certain and definite bay. Oh, to know the truth of it! Down in Annapolis, Mo., March 18th, 1925, when that awful tornado raged across a narrow section of six states, and swept the little town with its deadly and destroying breath, Mrs. Shirley Johnson, a young Christian woman, gathered her three babes close about her and kneeling on the floor, lifted her face to David’s God. For a few minutes the most terrible cyclone that has ever touched America tore that town to pieces. The roar of the storm was in her ears, the flying timbers were close to her and the bodies of her babes; the walls of the building were torn away, the roof crashed in, sweeping just above her, but in the midst of it all her voice went on radioing to Heaven and her spirit soared in trust till the wind’s fury had abated and the great calm came, and opening her eyes and ceasing her prayers she looked into the faces of three children as healthy and unharmed as though no cyclone had ravaged the land.

If you want to preach your atheism don’t go take the untried, inexperienced and unsophisticated mind of the youth and blacken it with your blatant unbelief! Try it on Mrs.

Johnson, and your words will strike the armor of her faith and be hurled back into your own unbelieving lips and she will go unharmed; for, she knows God, and His power was more than comfort, it was keeping!Finally, once more to the text to seeGOD’S FULLY RICHES “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever”. Briefly: The favor of the Lord then follows one. David said so, and so some of us have found it. The past has not been with all of us one round of merriment; the course of life has not been to all of us a path of opulence and ease; the experiences of life have not left us all unscarred and unscathed; and yet, though David has been dead these thousands of years, his God lives; lives, and those of us who have dwelt with Him cannot review our experiences without saying, “Surely goodness and mercy have followed me”.His faithfulness will never fail. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. We have a habit of asking the little children who present themselves for membership in this church, “How long do you expect to live for the Lord”? Almost uniformally they answer in one sentence “All my life”! Surely only such a decision would be any adequate response to His faithfulness—“All the days of my life”.A friend called attention to the fact that in one of Murillo’s paintings a young woman is represented as in her kitchen cooking dinner, and as you study the picture, all about her faces are finally seen, and closer inspection reveals the fact that they are angels hovering near and looking on.

It is rather a sweet suggestion, namely that when we are about the commonest, and yet at the same time, the most essential drudgeries of life, our good angels not only hover around, but help. There is, however, a still better thought in this Psalm, and voiced perhaps even better in the thirty-fourth Psalm, “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him”.

Many people believe that “the angel of the Lord” of the Old Testament is none other than the Lord Himself. So our watchful attendant is not an angel even, but the mighty God. Sir Oliver Cromwell said, “I bless God I have been inured to difficulties and I never found God failing when I trusted Him.” But the Commander of all commanders, and the One who knew God the Father from all eternity voiced a gracious confidence when He enjoined, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”. I raise the fundamental question, What is the victory that overcometh the world? And answer it forever, “Even your faith!” And it was David’s faith that apprehended and appropriated the faithfulness of God. Dost thou believe?Finally, His Fatherhood is to be eternal. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever”.

Why is the house a home? Or rather, when is the house a home?

Only when the right relationship is established between parents and children. The prodigal son, sick and suffering in the far country, facing starvation from which he was restrained by the husks only, would never have turned with longing to the house he had left, but for the memory of the father whose former love had been his, and his belief in the permanence of that father’s affection.Never in my life have I received letters of more interest than those that have been coming to me in consequence of the recent sermon broadcasting.From Boston to New Mexico, Montana and Wyoming, and from Texas to North Canada and far away California, these messages of appreciation have been written or wired. Among them came a letter a few days since from Augusta, Mont., from one of our former girls and student in the Bible Training School, Miss Mae Morton, now Mrs. M. August. After having voiced her pleasure in hearing the sermon and the entire service as clearly as though she had been present, and having referred to the happy memories of her childhood days in this church and school, she said, “During the war I was permitted to serve in France with the Salvation Army; and while on duty in the little town of Bouillionville, right behind the lines, we met a Chaplain Diamond, a Presbyterian minister from Minneapolis, who was killed on Sunday the 29th of September.

Shortly after conducting a baptismal service for a boy who had felt the need of such a service and had crawled in from the lines through the night, we heard the Chaplain singing with the boy, and joined them in prayer. Early next morning we received the word, The Chaplain has been killed.

One of the first Minneapolis boys we met during the St. Michiel drive was a seventeen-year-old lad brought into an old barn that had been turned into a receiving station. A boy a year or so older brought in, just a moment before, had said to me, ‘Don’t bother with me, I’m on praying ground. I’m all right, but get to my buddy; they’re bringing him in; He needs you!’ Finding the buddy, I, at a glance, saw it would not be long till he would be ‘going West’. I looked at the blankets spread on the floor. They did seem hard for such a young lad. Calling to a boy to help me I asked them to lay him in a manger in the rear end of the barn. Then dipping some gauze in lemon juice and placing it to his lips, I said, ‘Sonny, what can I do for you?

Haven’t you a little word you would like me to send home to mother? I’m going to write her and tell her what a wonderful boy you have been, how hard you have been fighting all night.’ He stopped me by putting his hand up to my face and said, ‘Can you pray?’ I said, ‘Yes, sonny. Shall I pray for you?’ ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘What is this you said they put me in?’ I said, ‘Why, this is a manger, sonny! It isn’t very soft and nice, but it will do for a few minutes, won’t it?’ Then faintly he asked, ‘Wasn’t the Saviour born in a manger?’ ‘Yes, sonny. Perhaps just such as this.’ ‘Just such as this,’ he repeated. I said, ‘Yes, just such as this.’ ‘And I am going to be with the Saviour soon. Please pray! Help me to pray.

Yes, Lord, I believe. From the manger to the Saviour, here I come, Lord, here I come.’ Then stroking my face he said, ‘Tell mother I’ve gone to the Saviour from the manger.’”“In the house of the Lord for ever”!