The Lord of Psalm 23: A Seven Day DevotionalSample

Where He Is

To be alone— really, truly alone—is one of the greatest hardships a human being can ever bear. A long-running study in loneliness conducted by Harvard University recently concluded that “loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”1 This is why the confession of faith that comes in this middle section of Psalm 23 is so beautiful:

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me. (v. 4)

Linger with me in the riches of the simple fact of the shepherd’s presence. It is an astonishing thing to be walking through a valley of deep darkness and to not fear it for the simple reason that you know you do not walk it alone.

It is at this point, for the very first time in the psalm, that we move from hearing about the shepherd to speaking to the shepherd. We transition from the third person (“he”) to now addressing him directly in the second person (“you”). The meaning of the words, which I think we just intuitively sense, is that it is one thing to be able to say that someone is with me but quite another thing to be able to turn toward that individual and address him personally by saying, “You are with me.”

It is somehow as if all other sheep are not really in the frame at this moment. The individual relationship that has been presumed and implied all the way through now takes center stage for this central confession of faith to resound so clearly: this is between you and me, personally, and the deepest comfort I have is that you are with me. The comfort of the good shepherd’s presence is all the more wonderful when we take seriously the reality of the darkness and the presence of evil. It is very important to be clear that David is not saying that the presence of the shepherd removes evil or eradicates darkness, as if being able to say “you are with me” means that the room is now somehow filled with light and happiness. No, the point is that because “you are with me,” I will not fear the very real darkness and the very real evil I am facing.

Psalm 23 teaches us in a beautiful way who the Lord Jesus is and what he does by what he holds. He is heavily armed. This is the further beautiful amplification of why we may not fear the darkest of valleys:

Your rod and your staff,

they comfort me. (v. 4)

We are so used to the gentleness of Psalm 23 that we may never have felt the steel encased in the velvet.

Dale Ralph Davis says: Jesus Christ, our Shepherd, is no emaciated weakling. Our Shepherd is a warrior, as shepherds had to be. No one can snatch his sheep out of his hand (John 10:28). The muscles of his arm are flexed to defend his flock; he doesn’t carry a club for nothing. He is obviously enough for whatever the valley throws at us.2 The rod helps us to know, as John Goldingay says, that having the Lord “with” us “is not merely a feeling. It does not signify mere presence but also action. . . . This presence expresses itself by aggressive action to defeat enemies and thus protect the one to whom Yhwh is committed.”3

Defeating enemies and protecting sheep: both of these are present in the shepherding work of the Lord Jesus for us. “My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). Such language implies of course, that some will attempt to snatch, that there are forces out there who seek to do sheep harm, and yet we are encased in the shepherd’s strong hand, which is, in turn, grasped in the Father’s strong hand (John 10:29).

Some of us reading these lines feel very weak. The circumstances of life have pressed us down, and we feel pretty broken. This shepherd, God’s servant, will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick (Matt. 12:20, citing Isa. 42:3); he is tender to all our brokenness. But this same Jesus “will faithfully bring forth justice” (Isa. 42:3; Matt. 12:20). So let the rod in Jesus’s hand also put strength into your failing heart; for, remember, he is leading you through the valley, and on the other side is the house of the Lord where we will dwell forever. We should always remember how the Bible ends: on the other side of it all, the Lamb wins. The Lamb wins because he is also a Lion. We should never mistake the tenderness of our shepherd for weakness or his care for us for carelessness about all that threatens us.

1) Robert Waldinger, cited by Zain Kahn (@heykahn), “Harvard’s 84 Year Old Study of Adult Development,” Twitter, May 11, 2022, https://twitter.com/heykahn/status /1524422842950975489.

2) Dale Ralph Davis, Slogging Along in the Paths of Righteousness: Psalms 13–24 (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2014), 168–69.

3) John Goldingay, Psalms, vol. 1, Psalms 1–41 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 351.