"The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names’ sake. Yea, 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 mine enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Psalms 23 is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. It is commonly read at funerals and frequently depended on whenever someone needs comfort from God. The references to green pastures, still waters, comfort for the soul and having no fear in the valley of the shadow of death have strengthened the hearts of many over the centuries.
But is there more to this famous piece of literature than meets the eye? Certainly Jesus referring to Himself as the Good Shepherd immediately hearkens our mind back Psalms 23. However, comparing the individual verses to specific events recorded in the Gospels holds amazing discoveries. We find, embedded in this most famous Psalm, incredible insight into our Christian lives.
The first and most obvious truth to embrace from the start is that Jesus would love to personally be your shepherd. We are each called to be sheep in His pasture and because of that, every once in awhile we must take perspective and ask ourselves, “Am I presently being led, protected and comforted by the Good Shepherd?”
Truthfully, we can be committed Christians and easily fall into false religion or pseudo-faith instead of maintaining relationship based faith. In fact, religion has got an insidious ability to cause us to think we’re doing righteousness, but in reality we’ve actually walked away from the true path and are missing the mark. We typically will be attracted to some facet or portion of work or some cause that will consume our attention and keep us from focusing on the Good Shepherd.
Therefore, the essential relationship that we need to look to continue to cultivate and refocus on in our lives is our relationship with Jesus. Who is Jesus to you? Who is Jesus to you, personally? I’m not referring to what part of Christianity you like or what it is about Jesus that you relate to. What about you and Jesus?
In fact, there are hundreds of different agendas in our hearts and we are all just trying to gain ground, obtain satisfaction, achieve upward movement, and feel acceptance or some sense of true north. Many times this can lead to some pretty incredible double mindedness and confusion.
You’ll never be confused, however, if Jesus is your Shepherd. If you’ll spend a life eating His flesh and drinking His blood (John 6), looking to Him, focusing on Him and bringing your spirit back into orientation with the teachings and the person of the Good Shepherd, you’ll never be confused, distracted, led away or deceived. Your life must focus on the Good Shepherd.
Psalm 23, the first half of verse number two says, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.”
Consider Jesus’ earthly ministry in direct correlation with this verse:
Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. Matthew 14:19
Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass. Mark 6:39
Then Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. John 6:10
Three Gospel accounts specifically note that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, made His sheep to lie down in a grassy place. The original Greek meaning of the words used in the Gospels to describe this grassy place is “the place where the grass grows and animals graze,” in other words, a pasture.
“He makes us to lie down in green pastures.” When He was ready to feed the multitudes who had come to Him, Jesus asked them to lie down in green pastures. That should hit something in our prophetic mind. A flag should go up alerting us that this is a prophetic correlation that hooks Jesus directly to Psalms 23.
To the Christian, this teaches the responsibility of gathering in a calm place in a group to be fed by the Shepherd. Sounds like church! Our lives sometimes get filled with so much busyness and so much turmoil and so much confusion that we wouldn’t ever think about going and sitting down in a grassy place to be fed by the Shepherd.
Imagine, just sitting in a meadow somewhere quietly and allowing Jesus to feed your soul. Many consider themselves far too busy to gather together for a Sunday Church or a special meeting just to have their souls nourished from Jesus’ word. It is also interesting that Jesus fed the multitudes through the hands of His disciples indicating the correlation to the church as His means of legitimate ministry.
Remember the sisters Mary and Martha? They had a problem. Jesus was visiting their house and Mary simply sat at Jesus’ feet listening to Him speak. At the same time, Martha was acting responsibly. She was concerned about so many things; serving the guests and tidying up; she was doing the things that had to be done. After all, doesn’t God help those who help themselves?
But good-old ‘too-spiritual-to-be-earthly-good’ Mary over there, all she wanted to do was get out of the work. She wouldn’t move from Jesus feet. But when Martha finally complains about her sister, Jesus judges that it was Mary who chose the better part. Mary chose to be fed by the Good Shepherd.
You see, if Jesus is going to restore your soul, you have to sit at His feet. You have to sit down with the sheep. You have to see yourself as a sheep. Unfortunately, we tend to see ourselves, as John Kelly used to say, as ‘Lambo:’ the sole warrior sheep for God. We are part lamb and part Rambo; the lonely wounded warrior; never truly part of the flock.
Actually, we Americans don’t like to be a part of the flock at all. We think that people who follow a leader are mindless, weak and gullible. The Good Shepherd says goodbye Lambo and welcome to ‘sheepdom.’
The multitudes that Jesus fed in that pasture were following Him, one Gospel says, for three days. They were tired. They were worn. They had been following after Jesus, and Jesus, in effect said, “I want to refresh you now.” Some people do not feel refreshed in church because they are not following Jesus in between Sundays. I don’t refuel my car if I haven’t run the engine since last week. In the same way, I am not hungry for the Word of God if my faith motor is not running, motivating me each day to follow Jesus.
Psalm 23 prophesies of Jesus, the Good Shepherd saying, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Do you think God wants to send a message today? There is a time set aside each week for you to stop striving, sit down in the green pastures of the Church and be fed by His disciples so that the Good Shepherd can restore your soul. That is why it is important to be in a church where there is green, fresh grass growing.
You do not want lite-grass, diet-grass, or user friendly grass. You want fresh green grass and you want to eat it in church among the other sheep.
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