May 8, 2022 Sermon
Sermon title: "The 23rd Psalm"
Scripture: Psalm 23
(Other lectionary choices include Acts 9:36-43, Revelation 7:9-17, and John 10:22-30.)
Psalm 23
The Divine Shepherd A Psalm of David
1The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me 5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Since it's Mother’s Day, I thought I'd preach on the 23rd Psalm. Also, Psalm 23 is one of the lectionary choices for today. I could have preached on the Acts 9 selection, which is the story of the apostle Peter raising a woman named Tabitha from the dead. The Revelation suggestion for today (from Revelation 7) talks about all those in Heaven dressed in white because they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. That passage also has the phrase - taken from Isaiah – about God wiping away every tear from their eyes. Or I could have preached on the selection from the Gospel of John in which Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." But it's the 23rd Psalm that got my attention, so I chose to preach on it, probably everybody's favorite Psalm.
Those of you who were in Bible study when we read this Psalm may find what I say familiar. Did you know that King David, who lived maybe a thousand years before Jesus, may have written this Psalm? Almost certainly, David did not write ALL the Psalms, as some people think. But he may have written this one! After all, he was a shepherd himself, and how does this one start? "The Lord is MY shepherd." David may have written this after he became king, realizing now that he must care for his people as a shepherd cares for his sheep. According to commentator George A. F. Knight, this Psalm is in 3 stages. The first stage declares that - as long as we live "with" God and allow God to live "with" us - "then we experience the deep joy, satisfaction, and security that the sheep knows in the presence of its good shepherd." That's stage one. However, next comes stage 2, and we are reminded that "Life is not all a bed of roses." This is why I like the Bible so much: it doesn't pull any punches! It acknowledges that life is hard sometimes, and not only that: Life ends in death! But for the Psalmist, and for us, that's not the end of the story. Says George A. F. Knight, "We can be deeply and gratefully aware of God's continuing presence with us in days when all goes well. It is just because of that; however, David declares, that we can be sure of him when all does NOT go well, even when the light fades and we find ourselves in darkness."
The actual term in Hebrew is "Valley of Deep Darkness". "So, the idea is that God's comfort and strength are 'with' us in all kinds of darkness, in times of depression, serious illness, rejection by one's friends, horror at discovering the disloyalty of one's own heart, and so on, as well as the experience of death itself. David does not argue that this is so. He TELLS us that it is so!" Knight goes on to say that "God's loving presence....will be as real and true then as it is now when all goes well. We are to remember that in Biblical thinking, although God IS light, yet he dwells in the darkness into which we must go in our turn."
As in other sermons I have written, I learned something while writing this sermon, and that is this: Verse 5 says that "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies...." I learned that in the ancient Middle East, if a person was being pursued by his enemies, if the one being chased made it to the tent flap of a friend, the enemies who were so close had to stop and let the pursued one stay in that tent unharmed! Isn't that interesting? It probably was the law stemming from the ancients' view of hospitality. You HAD to show hospitality, and if you didn't, it was close to being an unforgivable sin! Modern day Jewish people just HAVE to have something to offer to unexpected guests who might drop over! One MUST offer HOSPITALITY! Therefore, the guy being pursued really can enjoy eating a meal provided by his host. That's why there's that great verse, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies....." The enemies can curse and glare all they want at their would-be prey, but he is safe as long as he is in that tent! Something else: the imagery has changed. Now the Lord is not my shepherd; rather, the Lord is now my HOST. And all my enemies can do is look in and be angry! But God is so loving that he also longs to be hospitable even to David's enemies, "if only they also would come home and share in the feast." What's up with the phrase, "My cup overflows"? We know that it means that we are happy, but why? Says George Knight, "the sheer excitement we feel at being anointed to serve God is more than we can absorb, take in, realize; such is God's unspeakable grace." I mentioned earlier that the Psalm is in three stages. We've looked at two - now how about stage 3?
Says George A. F. Knight, "Since God's covenant love has been the very basis of my life at stage 1, that is, when all went well; and since, when I reached stage 2, I found that God's grace was still with me in the Valley of the Shadow; then SURELY, that is, 'I KNOW', that God's being 'good for me' (as the Hebrew means) and God's HESED, his unswerving loyal-love, will pursue me all the days of my life." Isn't that great? God's love will PURSUE me! Think about that for a minute. You thought you were searching for God? This part of the 23rd Psalm says that GOD will chase YOU all the days of your life! There is a poet by the name of Francis Thompson, and he calls God the HOUND of HEAVEN! God is not going to let you go! Isn't that a marvelous understanding of God? Jesus talks about the good shepherd searching for the one lost sheep. Now just where do you think he got that idea if not from right here in the 23rd Psalm in the Old Testament? So, NO WONDER the Psalm ends with...."and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." I mentioned at the top that King David really may have been the author of this Psalm. If so, we need to remember that the temple in Jerusalem had not been built yet. (Solomon, David's son, had it built.) So, when David says, "the house of the Lord", he could not have meant an actual building. I think David's faith was such that the phrase "house of the Lord" actually meant "in the presence of God". So King David was actually saying,...."and I shall dwell in the presence of God forever." Amen.
Pastor Skip
