Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3006
Psalm 23:1.
I CANNOT say anything that is new upon this text. I have not even the desire to do so, but if I can remind you of old and precious Truths of God and also put you in remembrance of sweet experiences which are past, this will not be an unprofitable topic for our meditation.
I like to recall the fact that this Psalm was probably written by David when he was a king. He had been a shepherd and he was not ashamed of his former occupation. When he had to wear a crown, he remembered the time when he had handled the shepherd’s crook and, as a lad, with his sling and stone, had kept watch over his father’s sheep in the wilderness. Some persons are too proud to remember their early employments, though such pride is both their folly and their shame. Many persons would not like, in their public devotions, to make use of expressions which would have any reference to their secular calling, but it seems to be perfectly natural, in David’s case, to hear him say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” for he had, himself, been a shepherd and knew just what the word implied.
By the gracious help of the Holy Spirit, let us see what we can get out of the metaphor used in our text. We must, of course, remind ourselves that we are not in the country where these words were written. We must, in thought, go to the East in order to get the full meaning of them. It is a great mercy that the Bible was not written according to the fashion of the West, for everything has changed in our part of the world. If this Book had been written, for instance, in the style of the earliest literature known in England, probably we would not have fully understood it, and other nations would have been altogether puzzled by it. But, in the East there has been little or no change for centuries. Oriental manners and customs are almost the same today as they were in the days of David, so that if we could go to Palestine at the present moment, we might find just such a shepherd as David was and, in examining his habits and actions, we would learn the meaning of the metaphor that David used when he said, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
We shall notice three things about the text. First, this sentence, if it is true to us, guarantees us certain privileges. Secondly, it involves us in duties. And thirdly, it suggests to us enquiries.
First, if this sentence is, indeed, true of each one of us, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” then THIS GUARANTEES US CERTAIN PRIVILEGES.
And first, the Eastern shepherd was the guide of his flock. The sheep never thought of going before him—it would have been an anomaly in nature for the sheep to go first and for the shepherd to follow. They had no need whatever to know the way across the trackless dessert—it was enough for them that the shepherd knew it. They need not know where the green pastures still remained throughout the droughts of summer, or where there were quiet resting places where they might lie down at noon. It was sufficient for the sheep that the shepherd knew—all that they had to do was patiently to follow where he led the way. David had, no doubt, often gone on in front of his flock, thinking with an anxious heart of the place where he would lead them. And as he looked back at them, he could see that they were patiently following him, with no distraction to trouble their poor brains and no vexations to worry their quiet minds. Happy that they were provided for, they grazed as they went along the way, not knowing and not needing to know where they were going, but quite content because their shepherd led the way.
Transfer this thought, Christian Brother or Sister, to yourself, and see how the Lord is your Guide. Look at the past and note how He has guided you. How very little you and I have had to do with it, after all! We have struggled. We have
fretted. We have repined and we have fumed against the working of Providence, but, after all, I do not know that we have had much more to do with it than the sheep in the stream has had to do with the way in which it has floated to the other side! There is far more of the hand of God in our life than there is of our own hand—if our life is what it ought to be. Think of our childhood, of the home where our lot was cast, of our youth, of the place where we were bound as apprentices, or where we first learned the rudiments of our various callings. And since then, what strange paths some of us have trod! If we had been told, years ago, that we should be found here today, in the circumstances in which we are now found, we could not have believed it. There have been times, in our past history, when it has seemed as if a single straw might decide our destiny. We were at the crossroads and the left road might have led us into endless sins and sorrows, but we were guided in the opposite direction, and so we were made to walk beside the still waters and to lie down in green pastures. There have been many times when only a word was needed—no, when a weight no heavier than a feather from the wing of a butterfly was all that was needed to turn the scale against us and to send us into quite a different orbit from that in which we now move! We can truly say that we have been Divinely led until now and, although the journey has been like that of the children of Israel in the wilderness—in and out, backwards and forwards, progressing and then retrograding and often standing still—yet the Lord has led us by a right way up to this present moment and we can truthfully say—