The sight of sheep grazing peacefully on a grassy hillside brings a sense of well-being to even the most troubled heart. Perhaps it is because of the symbolism the image carries - helpless, defenseless creatures able to munch contentedly under the watchful eye of one they have learned to trust.
Jesus called His followers sheep, and as His sheep we long to comprehend what it means to find contentment under the watchful eye of our loving, trustworthy, heavenly Shepherd.
In this excerpt of Psalm 23: The Song of a Passionate Heart, author David Roper examines the first two verses of this well-known psalm. He looks at the importance of the shepherd metaphor throughout Scripture and then gives practical help in experiencing the rest our Shepherd has for us.
M. R. De Haan II
CONTENTS
A Portrait Of God
David And The Shepherd Metaphor
Others Who Used The Shepherd Metaphor
The Shepherd Metaphor To Describe Jesus
The Rest And Renewal Of The Shepherd
Taking Time Alone With God
Listening To God Through His Word
Responding To God In Prayer
A PORTRAIT OF GOD
The problem with most of us is that we have no clear picture of the God we long to worship. Our image of Him is clouded by the memory of cold cathedrals and bitter religions, by pastors or priests who put the fear of God into us, or by all that we suffered as children from fathers who were absent, emotionally detached, brutal, or weak. All of us have inexact notions of God.
So the question is God Himself: Who is He? This is the question to which all others lead - the question that God Himself put into our hearts. (And if He put it into our hearts, there must be an answer in His heart waiting to be revealed.)
David gave us a comforting and compelling answer: "The Lord is my shepherd" (Ps. 23:1).
"Yahweh is my shepherd" is what David actually wrote, using the name that God gave Himself. An older generation of scholars referred to the name as the "Ineffable Tetragrammaton" - the unutterable four-letter word. The letters that make up God's name (written without vowels as YHWH) were rarely pronounced by the Jews for fear of arousing God's wrath. Instead, they substituted some lesser word like Adonai (my Lord) or Elohim (the generic name for God).
The term Yahweh, sometimes shortened to Yah in the Old Testament, comes from a form of the Hebrew verb "to be." This suggests that God is a self-sufficient God. But that explanation is cold comfort to me. I prefer David's description: "Yahweh is my shepherd."
Shepherd is a modest metaphor, yet one that is loaded with meaning. Part of the comparison is the portrayal of a shepherd and his sheep; the other is David's experience and ours. David painted a picture and put us into it. The genius of the psalm is that it belongs to us. We can use David's words as our own.
David's opening statement, "The Lord is my shepherd," introduces the controlling image that appears throughout the poem. Each line elaborates the symbol, filling out the picture, showing us how our Shepherd-God leads us to that place where we shall no longer want.
DAVID AND THE SHEPHERD METAPHOR
David himself was a shepherd. He spent much of his youth tending his "few sheep in the desert" (1 Sam. 17:28). The desert is one of the best places in the world to learn. There are few distractions and there is little that can be used. In such a place we're more inclined to think about the meaning of things than about what those things provide.
One day as David was watching his sheep, the idea came to him that God was like a shepherd. He thought of the incessant care that sheep require - their helplessness and defenselessness. He recalled their foolish straying from safe paths and their constant need for a guide. He thought of the time and patience it took for them to trust him before they would follow. He remembered the times when he led them through danger and they huddled close at his heels. He pondered the fact that he must think for his sheep, fight for them, guard them, and find their pasture and quiet pools. He remembered their bruises and scratches that he bound up, and he marveled at how frequently he had to rescue them from harm. Yet not one of his sheep was aware of how well it was watched. Yes, he mused, God is very much like a good shepherd.
Ancient shepherds knew their sheep by name. They were acquainted with all their ways - their peculiarities, their characteristic marks, their tendencies, their idiosyncrasies.
Back then, shepherds didn't drive their sheep; they led them. At the shepherd's morning call - a distinctive guttural sound - each flock would rise and follow its master to the feeding grounds. Even if two shepherds called their flocks at the same time and the sheep were intermingled, they never followed the wrong shepherd. All day long the sheep followed their own shepherd as he searched the wilderness looking for grassy meadows and sheltered pools where his flock could feed and drink in peace.
At certain times of the year, it became necessary to move the flocks deeper into the wilderness, a desolate wasteland where predators lurked. But the sheep were always well-guarded. Shepherds carried a "rod" (a heavy club) on their belts and a shepherd's staff in their hands. The staff had a crook that was used to extricate the sheep from perilous places or to restrain them from wandering away. The club was a weapon to ward off beasts. David said, "When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth" (1 Sam. 17:34-35).
Throughout the day each shepherd stayed close to his sheep, watching them carefully and protecting them from the slightest harm. When one sheep strayed, the shepherd searched for it until it was found. Then he laid it across his shoulders and brought it back home. At the end of the day, each shepherd led his flock to the safety of the fold and slept across the gateway to protect them.
A good shepherd never left his sheep alone. They would have been lost without him. His presence was their assurance.
It's this good shepherd that David envisioned as he composed each line of Psalm 23.
OTHERS WHO USED THE SHEPHERD METAPHOR
Jacob: God Accepts Us. The patriarch Jacob was a shepherd and the first person in the Bible to make use of the shepherd metaphor for God. As he lay dying, he looked back over his life and summed it up with these words: "God . . . has been my shepherd all my life to this day" (Gen. 48:15).
Jacob was born with a difficult disposition. Gripping his twin brother's heel at birth, he continued throughout his life to try to trip him up and get ahead of him. In fact, Jacob's whole life was characterized by wheeling, double-dealing, grasping, grabbing, and jerking people around to gain selfish advantage. Yet God was not ashamed to be called "the God of Jacob" and to be his shepherd every day of his life.
Jacob is reminiscent of those who come into life with a pervasive tendency to go wrong. They inhabit inherited hells - saddled from birth with insecurities, insanities, and sinful predilections. They are addicted to food, sex, alcohol, drugs, spending, gambling, or working. They have disturbed and difficult personalities, and have, as C. S. Lewis said, a "hard machine to drive."
God knows our tiresome stories. He understands the latent forces and all the sources and possibilities of evil in our natures. He sees the hurt and the heartbreak that others cannot see and that cannot be explained, even to our closest friends. He's aware of the reasons for our moodiness, our temper tantrums, our selfish indulgences. Others may be put off by our disposition, but God never turns away. He sees beyond the prickliness to the broken heart. His understanding is infinite.
How damaged we are or how far wrong we've gone doesn't make a difference to Him. Our vileness does not alter His character. He is eternal love - the same yesterday, today, forever. We are not what He wants us to be, but we are not unwanted. If we will have Him, He will be our shepherd.
Fredrick Buechner marvels at the folly of God to welcome "lamebrains and misfits and nit-pickers and holier-than-thous and stuffed shirts and odd ducks and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists," but that's the way He is. Whatever we are, wherever we are, His heart is open to us.
Isaiah: God Knows Us Intimately. Isaiah envisioned a stellar Shepherd who each night called out His star-flock by name:
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing (Isa. 40:26).
It's not by chance that the stars have their assigned orbits and places in the universe. They do not rise at random, nor do they wander haphazardly through space. They rise at God's beck and call. He brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name. Not one is forgotten. Not one is overlooked. Not one is left behind.
It's a terrible thing to be unknown. We live in fear that we will never be known enough - that others will never know who we really are, what our dreams are, and where our thoughts are taking us. Yet we have nothing to fear. God knows every one of His sheep by name.
He's aware of each personality and peculiarity. There are the little ones that have to be carried, the cripples that can't keep up, the nursing ewes that won't be hurried, the old sheep that can barely get along. There are the bellwethers that always want to be out front, the bullies that butt and push to get their way, the timid ones (the sheepish) that are afraid to follow, the black sheep that are always the exception. There are those who graze their way into lostness and others more deliberately on the lam. The Good Shepherd knows us all.
The Sovereign Lord comes with power, and His arm rules for Him. . . . He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young (Isa. 40:10-11).
God knows our pace. He knows when grief, pain, and loneliness overwhelm us. He knows when the full realization of our limitations comes home to us. He knows when we're shamed and broken and unable to go on. God does not drive His sheep, He gently leads them. He allows for hesitation and trepidation. He gives credit for decisions and resolutions that are strenuously tested. He understands courage that falters in the face of terrible odds. He can accommodate a faith that flames out under stress. He takes into account the hidden reasons for failure. He feels the full weight of our disasters. He knows our pain as no one else knows it. Our bleating reaches His ears. He even hears our inarticulate cries.
When we lag behind, He does not scold us. Rather, He gathers us up, encircles us with His strong arm, and carries us next to His heart. The essence, the central core of God's character, lies here: He has the heart of a tender shepherd.
Jeremiah: God Pursues Us In Love. The prophet Jeremiah saw a flock of ruined sheep:
My people have been lost [ruined] sheep; their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains. They wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place. . . . But I will bring Israel back to his own pasture (Jer. 50:6,19).
We readily forget God, our "resting place," and wander away. Yet He pursues us wherever we go, with no complaint of the darkness, the cold wind, the heavy burden, the steep hill, or the thorny path over which He must pass to rescue one lost sheep. His love does not count time, energy, suffering, or even life itself.
His pursuit is not a reward for our goodness but the result of His decision to love. He is driven by love, not by our beauty. He is drawn to us when we have done nothing right and when we have done everything wrong. Jesus said:
What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost (Mt. 18:12-14).
Lost sheep are not doomed. They're the ones He came to find.
Ezekiel: God Tenderly Cares For Us. Ezekiel announced the birth of that best of all shepherds long before He was born. He said that when He came He would tend God's flock with tender, loving care:
My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. . . . For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: "I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after My sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. . . . I will tend them in a good pasture . . . . There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture . . . . I Myself will tend My sheep and have them lie down," declares the Sovereign Lord. "I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak" (Ezek. 34:6,11-12,14-16).
It was Ezekiel's task to care for scattered exiles far from home. He described them as sheep that were scattered "because there was no shepherd . . . . and no one searched or looked for them" (Ezek. 34:5-6).
Israel's disbanding was their own fault, the result of years of indifference and resistance to God. They had looked to their idols and shed blood, and they had defiled their neighbors' wives and done other detestable things (Ezek. 33:25-26). That's why they were estranged. Yet God said, "I will search for the lost and bring back the strays" (34:16). Good shepherds don't look down on lost sheep; they look for them.
Sheep don't have to go looking for their shepherd - it's the other way around. He's out looking for them. Even if the sheep aren't thinking about the Shepherd, He pursues them to the ends of the earth. Simon Tugwell wrote, "He follows them into their own long, dark, journey; there, where they thought finally to escape Him, they run straight into His arms."
There is, in fact, no way to escape Him except by running into His arms. Though we are stiff-necked and stubborn, He is equally stiff-necked and stubborn. He will never give up His pursuit. He cannot get us off of His mind.
Furthermore, Ezekiel said, when the Good Shepherd finds His sheep He looks after them: "As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after My sheep" (34:12). "Look after" suggests careful examination of each animal. Our Shepherd-God is a good shepherd. He knows well the condition of His flock. He sees the marks of sorrow on each face. He knows every cut and bruise, every ache and pain. He recognizes the signs of hounding, misuse, and abuse - the wounds that others have given us and the residue of our own resistance.
He promises to do what other shepherds cannot or will not do: "I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak" (34:16). He has compassion on the afflicted and the handicapped, on those wounded by their own sin. He understands sorrow, misfortune, broken homes, shattered ambition. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Ps. 147:3). He applies the balm that makes the wounded whole. That's the comfort of God to our beleaguered hearts.
But there is more. Another Good Shepherd was on the way - One who would be one with the Father in pastoral compassion:
I will place over them one [unique] shepherd, My servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken (Ezek. 34:23-24).
God was speaking of David's long-awaited Son, our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep (Jn. 10:11).
THE SHEPHERD METAPHOR TO DESCRIBE JESUS
Some 600 years after David composed his Shepherd Song, Jesus said with quiet assurance:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me - just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father - and I lay down My life for the sheep (Jn. 10:11-15).
This is our Lord Jesus, "that great Shepherd of the sheep" (Heb. 13:20). He was one with the Father. He too saw us as "sheep without a shepherd." He "came to seek and to save what was lost" (Lk. 19:10). He's the one who left the "ninety-nine on the hills" and went "to look for the one that wandered away," forever establishing the value of one person and the Father's desire that not one of them should perish (Mt. 18:12-14).
F. B. Meyer wrote, "He has a shepherd's heart, beating with pure and generous love that counted not His own life-blood too dear a price to pay down as our ransom. He has a shepherd's eye, that takes in the whole flock and misses not even the poor sheep wandering away on the mountains cold. He has a shepherd's faithfulness, which will never fail or forsake, leave us comfortless, nor flee when He sees the wolf coming. He has a shepherd's strength, so that He is well able to deliver us from the jaw of the lion or the paw of the bear. He has a shepherd's tenderness; no lamb so tiny that He will not carry it; no saint so weak that He will not gently lead; no soul so faint that He will not give it rest. . . . His gentleness makes great."
But there's more: The Good Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep. Since the beginning of time, religions have decreed that a lamb should give up its life for the shepherd. The shepherd would bring his lamb to the sanctuary, lean with all his weight on the lamb's head, and confess his sin. The lamb would be slain and its blood would flow out - a life for a life.
What irony! Now the Shepherd gives up His life for His lamb. "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:5-6).
The story is about the death of the Shepherd. "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet. 2:24). He died for all sin - the obvious sins of murder, adultery, and theft as well as for the secret sins of selfishness and pride. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross. This was sin's final cure.
The normal way of looking at the cross is to say that man was so bad and God was so mad that someone had to pay. But it was not anger that led Christ to be crucified; it was love. The crucifixion is the point of the story. God loves us so much that He Himself took on our guilt. He internalized all our sin and healed it. When it was over He said, "It is finished!" There is nothing left for us to do but to enter into forgiving acceptance - and for those of us who have already entered it, to enter into more of it.
The Shepherd calls to us and listens for the slightest sounds of life. He hears the faintest cry. If He hears nothing at all, He will not give up or go away. He lets us wander away, hoping that weariness and despair will turn us around.
Our discomfort is God's doing. He hounds us. He hems us in. He thwarts our dreams. He foils our best-laid plans. He frustrates our hopes. He waits until we know that nothing will ease our pain, nothing will make life worth living except His presence. And when we turn to Him, He is there to greet us. He has been there all along. "The Lord is near to all who call on Him" (Ps. 145:18).
But, you say, "Why would He want me? He knows my sin, my wandering, my long habits of yielding. I'm not good enough. I'm not sorry enough for my sin. I'm unable not to sin."
Our waywardness doesn't have to be explained to God. He's never surprised by anything we do. He sees everything at a single glance - what is, what could have been, what would have been apart from our sinful choices. He sees into the dark corners and crannies of our hearts and knows everything about us there is to know. But what He sees only draws out His love. There is no deeper motivation in God than love. It is His nature to love; He can do no other, for "God is love" (1 Jn. 4:8).
Do you have some nameless grief? Some vague, sad pain? Some inexplicable ache in your heart? Come to Him who made your heart. Jesus said, "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Mt. 11:28-30).
To know that God is like this and to know this God is rest. There is no more profound lesson than this: He is the one thing that we need.
The word shepherd carries with it thoughts of tenderness, security, and provision, yet it means nothing as long as I cannot say, "The Lord is my shepherd."
What a difference that monosyllable makes - all the difference in the world. It means that I can have all of God's attention, all of the time, just as though I'm the only one. I may be part of a flock, but I'm one of a kind.
It's one thing to say, "The Lord is a shepherd." It's another to say, "The Lord is my shepherd." Martin Luther observed that faith is a matter of personal pronouns: My Lord and my God. This is the faith that saves.
