Redeeming PleasureSample

"David's View of God"

The exception to the diminishing view of shepherds we saw in Day 5 was King David. In speaking to David, God acknowledged that He was the one who plucked him out of obscurity and brought him into royalty. Shepherding was not a career stepping-stone to becoming king and God made it clear it wasn’t David’s doing. As a result, David never lost his roots as a shepherd, which caused him to relate with God as a shepherd. He had a bizarre but valuable vantage point.

David was the one who wrote Psalm 23 about God being our shepherd. This has become one of the most quoted passages of Scripture today. While the psalm brings comfort, we miss the complexities of it when we assume David’s view was reflective of how the Israelites viewed shepherds.

David’s view was unique. While the nation of Israel around him continued to demean and devalue shepherds, David saw something about God that others wouldn’t see until Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd and defied the cultural stereotype of his day. That’s why David’s psalm about God as a shepherd says, “[His] goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.”

Jesus is good. He’s better than you can imagine. He’s even better than you could hope for. He’s so good He can redeem the idea of a shepherd with all of the thousands of years of baggage it brings. That’s why we can trust His ideas about how to find pleasure.