The Lord is My Shepherd, the Good Shepherd
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1 KJV).
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me,
Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.
And I lay down my life for the sheep.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
So there will be one flock, one shepherd”
(John 10:14-17 NRSV).
Many biblical scholars say that David’s Psalm was a direct pointer to the coming of the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah. But I’m not so sure about that. David was a devout Jew, a superlative poet, and a great king of Israel. But David, son of Jesse, lived before the major prophets, before the fall of Jerusalem, before the captivity of the Jews, and before the messianic movement arose in the remnants of the Jewish people. King David, successor of Saul to the throne if Israel, lived and reigned approximately 1,000 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The Shepherd of David was, and his Psalm makes very clear, the LORD God of Israel.
I point this out only because, in David’s time, Israel wasn’t looking for, and in fact did not need, a Messiah (or so they thought). The need for a Messiah, a Savior, came later. After David, after Solomon, after Israel and Judah collapsed under their own misrule and corruption, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews, did the survivors of those terrible (if self-inflicted) tragedies, did the people look for someone to save them.
Things only got worse. Palestine was conquered by the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and ultimately by imperial Rome. No doubt the Jews thought the shepherd of David’s Psalm had deserted them.
And Jesus of Nazareth did not fit the conceptual model of the Messiah. After being conquered and enslaved by so many nations and empires, most Jews believed the Messiah would be a great military warrior who would drive out their conquerors and re-establish the kingdom of Israel. You’ve heard the old saying, “Man proposes, but God disposes.” That’s just a paraphrase of Proverbs 19:21; “The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established” (NRSV).
What they got was a young rabbi who wanted to re-establish the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom not of this world. As Christians, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, the Messiah. John’s Gospel says John’s Good Shepherd is, and it is very clear because Jesus said so Himself, that Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
In the end, I think David’s Shepherd and The Good Shepherd are one in the same. Perhaps the Holy Spirit influenced David’s Psalm to foreshadow Christ. Or perhaps Jesus felt He needed to make it clear that the Good Shepherd would lay down His life for the sheep. Then He did so. And on the third day, He rose from the dead.
A song says:
“I will follow Him.
Follow Him wherever He may go.
There isn’t a river so deep,
There isn’t a mountain so high it can keep,
Keep me away,
Away from His love.”
One flock. One shepherd.
Something to think about, isn’t it?
Just another stray returned to the fold,
Jerry Lipscomb
