Ps 23 - the well-know but misunderstood Psalm
Each verse, each instrument, blended into a symphony, a jazz band…
Lesson Seven
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life . And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
The disciple having been taken through all six verses by the Spirit of God has begun to live in spiritual maturity and fruitfulness. It is important to understand by ‘taken through by the Spirit of God’ we are not imagining an intellectual exercise as if discipleship is an academic process – as if reading these blogs and answering a ‘test’ leads to spiritual maturity!
Jesus put it like this: ‘When the Spirit comes, He will lead you into all the truth’.
Truth is something that we are led into, to experience as much as understand. The Psalmist put it like this ‘The entrance of Your word gives light; it gives understanding to the simple’ Ps 119v130. The word has to ‘enter’ us not just be true. It’s not enough to acknowledge the bible is the word of God, the word must be inscribed on our hearts by the Spirit of God. It’s not head knowledge.
The apostle John pictured the stages of spiritual maturity in three phases:
• I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven…you have known the Father
• I write to you, young men, because you are strong, the word abides in you and you have overcome the evil one
• I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning
The parallels with ordinary physical life are easily understood, but it is important to realise that these phases are not time-related in quite the same fashion. For the disciples’ 1:1 time with Jesus it took approximately three years. By the time Peter stood up of the Day of Pentecost they had passed through each phase.
Stage One: Little Children, salvation and forgiveness
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul:
When we initially yield our lives to Christ, He forgives our sins and restores our souls. A good picture is the returning prodigal son. It is a beautiful thing to realise that we have been forgiven, justified, acquitted, ransomed, redeemed, that we are clean in God’s sight and that He loves us as sons, just like He loves Jesus: ‘See what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God’ 1 John 3v1
Stage Two: Young men, strong in the word and overcoming
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
In this phase, we have moved out of the quiet waters, and the green pasture. We know the Lord is our shepherd and we are ready to face rougher terrain, the trials and tribulations of life, but we are not alone living by our own resources. Not only is the Lord with us but something very curious becomes our new normal, our new reality.
In the heat of the battle, we discover a new source of sustenance: the very words of God, like a celestial or heavenly food supply. We ‘know’ the truth of ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. Like Jesus who told His disciples at the well with the Samaritan woman, ‘My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me’. God had given Jesus what we might call a ‘word of knowledge’, God had revealed to Jesus, facts about the woman’s life, her marital status, and much else besides and Jesus passed it on to her. He had received the word and ministered it to the woman. We shouldn’t think of the banquet in the Psalm as either physical food or a theological degree, but , like Jesus with the woman, it is dynamic and life-giving. In Hebrews, we read that the ‘word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart’.
Equally, the disciple learns to operate with the same anointing as Christ. John the Baptist said ‘I baptise with water, but One is coming who will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’. The word for Christ is Messiah which means ‘anointed one’. True Christianity can only work if the disciple is baptised in the Spirit and is operating with the anointing of the Spirit. Until this is normal, we will limit our experience to kindergarten Christianity in Stage One.
Stage Three: Fathers
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
The distinction between a father and a young man is that children and young men left to their own devices are less likely to mature. In fact, many very young children will be led astray and perish.
That is true physically as it is spiritually. For young men, the temptation is to be convinced that now you have the celestial food supply and the anointing of the Spirit, you can go it alone, whereas fathers know that annoying though brothers and sisters can be it is important to remain together, and in contact with ‘fathers’. But the eventual aim is that ‘fatherhood is reached’. In John’s gospel he wrote that Jesus was ‘full of grace and truth’ and ‘of His fulness we all receive grace upon grace’. In terms of Ps 23 these are disciples who have never lost sight of the need for forgiveness and restoration, or the life-giving dual supply of Word and Spirit, but in everything, in every action and relationship and circumstance they minister from the fullness of grace and mercy.
It is important to note that not all fathers are apostles but all apostles, operating in their apostleship, must be fathers. During the first few days on Saul/Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road Ananias gave Paul the word of God that he was to be an apostle. But on that day, he had simply been ‘born again’ he was a little child amazed at what he had discovered that God had forgiven him and loved him. He was ‘filled with the Spirit’ and began to learn a completely new way of dependence on God, living as he wrote later as a son of God ‘led by the Spirit’. Some years later he began to operate in his calling as an apostle. In the interim years he had matured and ministered as an apostle but also a father.
So, you may not be an apostle, or a prophet, or an evangelist, or a pastor, or a teacher (Ephesian 4) but you are a father. And others will recognise that. You know you don’t need a title! However your gifts and ministry are defined you know you abide in Him and you dwell in His house and that you minster to others from that perspective, grace and mercy flow through you to others and those who are ‘little children’ or ‘young men’ continue to grow and move forward in their giftings and callings simply by spending time with you.
A father will not be interested in forming you into their image, but they are able to say to you, as did Paul, ‘imitate me as I imitate Christ’. He was talking spiritually, not specifically. In other words, although he was called to be an apostle, he did not force Timothy, his ‘son in the faith’, into the same mold, but he did pass on to him his spiritual dynamic and discipline of hearing from God so that Timothy could fulfil his calling. A true father rejoices over your growth and maturity whatever your calling may be, just as a physical father releases his children to fulfil their potential whatever career/occupational path their choose.
‘Even if you have ten thousand teachers in Christ, you would not have many fathers but I became your father in Christ Jesus in the gospel’ 1 Cor 4v15
This is how the apostle Paul saw his relationship towards the church in Corinth. The earliest converts were due to his preaching and the church grew from that starting point. Although he came to then initially as an apostle, now he sees them more as his ‘children’ and ministers to them from that perspective. If you read 1 Corinthians, you will see that some of the serious pastoral issues in the church were the inevitable outcome of spiritual immaturity and that the solution Paul was urging was to go on to maturity, whatever the short-term disciplinary action was invoked.
‘I cannot speak to you as spiritual but as fleshly, as babies in Christ…for where there are divisions among you are you not fleshly and acting like mere men…’ 1 Cor 3 v 1 – 3
He says to them there are three types of me in terms of spiritual maturity
(i) Mere men – not born again, not forgiven, living life from their own resources
(ii) Fleshly believers – born again by the Spirit but not being led by the Spirit but by their own ability to think, feel and act
(iii) Spiritual – believers who have died to living from their own resources and live according to the Spirit, eating the celestial food and knowing the anointing of the Spirit
The spiritual believers are like those maturing through Stages 2 and 3 in John’s list – young men and fathers.
Concluding comments
How important it is to ‘go on to maturity’ - as the writer to Hebrews says.
All the verses of Ps 23 are simultaneously alive in someone who has matured. Each verse has become part of them i.e. the Holy Spirit has led that person into the truth of each verse. They know what it is to be restored, to walk in paths of righteousness, even under the shadow of death in its various forms, to feed on Him and know the reality of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And they are filled continuously with fresh grace and mercy and each day know the One who is from the beginning because they live in His house.
And continues to do so, to mature, and grow in Christ, deepening their experience of the love of God in each circumstance however testing.
Spiritual MOT?
Periodically assessing where we are on the 1 John scale of maturity is a healthy exercise. Perhaps we should hand ourselves over to God once a year when we put our cars into the garage for an MOT?
Check one – forgiveness, any issues? Any advisories?
Check two – feasting and anointing? Oil change? Fresh anointing?
Check three – abiding in the house? Am I still deriving everything from Him?
Thank you for reading the Ps 23 series! God bless.