The Lord of Psalm 23: A Seven Day Devotionalનમૂનો

Where He Leads

Christian readings of Psalm 23 offer many layers to understanding our soul restoration. On the most obvious level of opening Psalm 23 and simply following in David’s footsteps, there is a restoration of the soul that takes place when I cease striving to master the world, and I am content to lay down the tools of work and instead be nourished by the provision of the shepherd.

Sheep benefit enormously from regular, daily, weekly reminders that we are sheep and not the shepherd. A renewal of the soul takes place in seeing afresh who I am in the world—not master and commander but a frail and prone-to-wander sheep with a good shepherd—and that my experience of soul rest will always be dependent on my proximity to him. The idea of time for soul restoration is so important and is the main way to express the fact that what David is celebrating in verses 1–3 is that he is not the one carrying out the main activity in his life. The shepherd is the primary agent in his life: making him rest, leading him, restoring him, leading him again.

When we move too quickly through life, we tend to make poorer choices, we often prioritize the wrong things, and we can begin to equate our very selves with the status we have achieved or the accumulation of possessions we have amassed. In none of those modes of unreflective living is there space to say, “The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing.” Most specifically, it is in coming close to the Lord Jesus that we enter this rest. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28–29).

Jesus is not talking about the kind of rest you get from putting your feet up at the end of a long day. Immediately following these words, he rebuts the Pharisees over the true meaning of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:1–8). No, the point of these words is that everything the Sabbath rest pointed to is fulfilled by Jesus himself; the rest that humankind was meant to enter from the very start, and which we still long for, is found in him.

The story of the exodus is the story of God’s people failing to enter the promised rest. Unlike the unfaithful Israelites who fell in the desert and did not enter their rest (Ps. 95; Heb. 4:1–7), Jesus was faithful unto death and has now entered the Sabbath rest that was the goal of all creation and that we will one day share in with him. “Jesus recapitulated in himself the history of Adam and Israel in order to bring us not only out of ruin into a state of innocence, or guilt into forgiveness, but to bring the whole of creation into the everlasting Sabbath.”1 Our experience of this rest now, in this life, is anticipatory. We enter this Sabbath rest in advance each Lord’s Day by believing and treasuring the good news of exodus salvation won for us by the Lord Jesus. In him, and in him alone, we find rest for our souls.

1) Michael Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 220.