First off, I just want to share that I’m ditching my message series derived from Robin Sharma, and will be going a new direction when it comes to speaking to the Junior and Senior High kids… starting tomorrow.
I think it’ll be a good idea for me to revisit Psalm 23 with them, and I intend to start off with verse 1 tomorrow: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Here’s how I’ll start it off. We’ll first talk about the word, ‘Lord’. We’re assuming David was the one who wrote this Psalm, especially considering that he was once a shepherd himself, and knows the intricacies and the intimacy involved in that role. Now, he could have chosen to refer to God, well, as God in this first verse… why did he choose to call Him ‘Lord’?
Let’s see what it means to be a Lord in the first place. It’s far more than those recent YouTube sponsorships, of people who can have the title of ‘Lord’ appended to their name, just for owning as small as a square foot of land in Scotland. No, we’ll take our definition from the good old Merriam-Webster Dictionary. We see it in the first definition – A Lord is “one having power and authority over others”.
The Mayor of the city you live in can make decisions that can affect your life. He has power over you. Therefore, your Mayor is a Lord over you. Your guardians watch over you, and make decisions for you – if they aren’t helping you in making your own decisions. They have authority over you. Therefore, your parents, your guardians – they are Lords over you.
By referring to God as Lord, He is implying that He has power and authority over His life… but He’s not just A Lord over you – No, friends, do you see the difference between the different lords I mentioned, and God? God is THE Lord – meaning, while you may have many lords over many aspects of your life, it is God who is THE Lord over all these lords; It is God who has complete and absolute power and authority over your life.
And, friends, I could understand how this could sound, well, scary, if not, arrogant for me to say. Personally, if I hear someone claiming to have power and authority over me, without my consent, I’d probably question his or her being a lord over me, much more if I hear about Someone who could have power over all aspects of my life, and authority over all angles of my being.
But this is not the end of the verse – far from it! For see, this God, who is not only Lord, but Lord of Lords – He is a Shepherd to us!
Again, David could have said, the Lord is King. Or just cut to the chase, and say, that the Lord is God – and he would be right! No, David intentionally chose to talk about how God is a Shepherd, to point out that not only is our God great beyond greatness, and powerful beyond our imagination, much more powerful that our definitions of power itself.. God IS great, but we can also say that God is good, as a Shepherd is good to His flock. Jesus is a descendant of David by adoption through Joseph and by blood through Mary… and He would say the following:
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
John 10:11
This Lord of Lords, whom we established has complete and absolute power over us… He is willing to let go of everything, to relinquish all of it. And for what purpose? He is willing to lay it all down for you and me to have what’s best for us – that is, to be reconciled by His resurrection, for us to be saved!
David called God the Lord, because He is great and powerful.
David called God a Shepherd, because He is good and gracious.
And to top it all of, look – He did not call Him just any Shepherd… But David said, ‘The Lord is MY Shepherd’; He is not just a Shepherd over a nation, but over all nations, but more importantly, He is Lord, and He is a Shepherd to Him, personally – and He is OUR personal Shepherd as well. He may know all there is to know about us, but in His infinite power and eternal knowledge and wisdom, He chooses to be OUR Shepherd, laying down His life, not only for mankind as a race, not only for Israel as a nation, but for you, personally, and for me, personally!
Finally, He is not merely our personal Shepherd – Take note, David said, ‘The Lord IS my Shepherd’; Friends, Christ will not only be our Shepherd in the future, and He is not only the Shepherd who covers our past… But He IS our Shepherd, here and now. No matter what you see before you, He is your Shepherd, today. At this very moment, and even as you read this, You can say that the Lord of Lords, greater than all that there is, supreme and superior over all things seen and unseen – He is your Shepherd, loving you, and being good and gracious to you, right here, right now.
What a great and good God we have, and it’s all because of Christ and His finished work!
I think this is a good place to stop; I could have covered the second part of the verse, where it said, “I shall not want”, but I feel as if I should recap all of this, and throw in my thoughts about that second part, when I see them again on February 10. It’s a good start, and I think it’ll be a good lesson to cover with them, as we continue learning about God’s goodness and glory.
I pray that all of this, these words would fall on good soil.
Until the next post, God bless you.
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