The LORD Is My Shepherd

Read Psalm 23 in full before proceeding; it is only six verses, and you may well know it by heart. Read it slowly, as if for the first time, and notice how the Shepherd is with His sheep through the green pastures and the dark valley alike. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Even when I must walk through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me.
Psalm 23:4

We come to the most beloved psalm in the book, perhaps the most beloved passage in all of Scripture. It has been prayed at more deathbeds, memorized by more children, and carried into more dark valleys than any other six verses ever written. And it comes to us, after all the crowds and cities and gathered tribes of the Songs of Ascents, as a psalm of the quietest intimacy: a single sheep and its shepherd, walking together through green pastures and dark valleys alike. The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing (v. 1), or, in the words so many of us learned by heart, I shall not want. After the togetherness of the assembly, the soul speaks now in the singular (my shepherd, I lack nothing) and finds, in that one Shepherd, everything it needs.

David wrote it, and David knew what he was writing about. Before he was a king he was a shepherd boy, out on the Judean hills with his father’s flock, and he had done for sheep every single thing this psalm says God does for him: led them to pasture and water, guarded them from lion and bear, gone after the strays, walked them through dangerous country. So when he says the LORD is my shepherd, he is not reaching for a pretty figure of speech. He is saying: the LORD does for me, His creature, all that I once did for those helpless animals, and infinitely more. The God who made heaven and earth stoops to shepherd His people with a shepherd’s tender, attentive, personal care.

The psalm moves through a whole landscape. It begins in green pastures and beside still waters, in rest and provision (vv. 1–3). It passes through the valley of the shadow of death, where the fear is gone because the Shepherd is near (v. 4). It sits down at a table spread in the presence of enemies, with an overflowing cup (v. 5). And it ends at home, in the house of the LORD, forever, with goodness and mercy in pursuit all the way (v. 6). Watch for one small thing as we go: the psalm starts by speaking about the Shepherd (he takes me to lush pastures, he leads me), but in the dark valley it turns to speaking to Him: you are with me. The intimacy deepens exactly where the darkness does.

And the whole of it, the series will not let us forget, is finally about a particular Shepherd. For the Lord Jesus took this very image onto His own lips and made it His name: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The Shepherd of Psalm 23 is Christ, and He is the Shepherd who became a Lamb, who walked the valley of the shadow of death ahead of His flock and came out the other side, and who leads His sheep, through every pasture and every valley, all the way home to the house of the LORD.

So we will walk the psalm slowly, line by familiar line, and try to hear it as if for the first time: the Shepherd’s provision, the Shepherd’s presence in the dark, the Shepherd’s table, and the goodness and mercy that chase us home. And we will rest, with David, beside the still waters, and learn to say with him the most contented sentence in all of Scripture: I lack nothing.

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing (v. 1). Everything in the psalm flows from that first clause, and from one small word in it: my. The LORD is not merely a shepherd, or even the Shepherd of Israel in general; He is my shepherd, mine personally, bent on the care of this one soul. The same God we have met in this volume as the Maker of heaven and earth, the King at whose right hand the nations are subdued, the Judge before whom none could stand, that very God stoops to be the personal shepherd of one frightened sheep. The majesty does not cancel the intimacy; it makes it the more astonishing. The God of the galaxies knows His sheep by name.

And the result of having such a Shepherd is stated immediately: I lack nothing. It does not mean the sheep will get everything it craves; it means the sheep will lack nothing it truly needs. To have the LORD as shepherd is to have enough: always, finally, enough. This is the secret of Christian contentment, the thing Paul learned in plenty and in hunger: not that the believer’s circumstances are always easy, but that the believer’s Shepherd is always sufficient. A sheep with a good shepherd does not lie awake calculating whether there will be grass tomorrow; the shepherd is its sufficiency, and that is enough. I lack nothing is not a boast about the sheep; it is a confession about the Shepherd.

We should let the sheer humility of the picture land, too. Sheep are not flattering animals to be compared to. They are not clever; they are prone to wander, defenseless against predators, easily frightened, unable to find their own way home or right themselves when they fall. To call ourselves sheep is to confess that we are exactly this needy, this dependent, this unable to manage on our own, and that all our security lies not in our own resources but in the competence and care of the Shepherd. The whole psalm is the song of a creature who has stopped trying to shepherd itself and has entrusted everything to the One who shepherds well.

And there is real rest in that confession, the moment we are willing to make it. So much of our anxiety is the anxiety of a sheep trying to do the shepherd’s job: to provide for itself, to guard itself against every danger, to find its own way through country it cannot read, to never put a foot wrong. It is exhausting work, and we are no good at it, and we were never meant to do it. The first line of this psalm sets the burden down. It does not say I am a careful sheep or I have learned to look after myself; it says the LORD is my shepherd, and lets that be enough. To believe it is to be released from the impossible labor of self-shepherding into the rest of being shepherded, to stop scanning the horizon for ourselves and trust the eyes of the One who never stops watching. The sheep that has truly grasped who its Shepherd is can graze in peace, because the worrying has been handed to Someone far better equipped to do it.

Green Pastures and Still Waters

He takes me to lush pastures, he leads me to refreshing water. He restores my strength (vv. 2–3). The Shepherd’s first work is to provide and to give rest. Lush pastures (the green pastures of the older translations) are food and abundance. The water is refreshment and peace; the Hebrew is literally waters of rest, the still waters of the older translations, quiet pools rather than rushing torrents that frighten a thirsty sheep. And notice the lovely detail in the Hebrew verb, which the NET renders takes me to but which means, more literally, he makes me lie down. Sheep are anxious creatures; they will not lie down while they are hungry, or frightened, or harried by predators, or at odds with the rest of the flock. A sheep that lies down in the pasture is a sheep at peace, and it is the Shepherd who brings it to that peace. The rest is His gift, not the sheep’s achievement.

He restores my strength (older translations, my soul; the Hebrew nephesh is the whole living self). The verb means to bring back, to revive, and it carries both senses. The Shepherd revives the soul that is faint and weary, breathing new life into the exhausted; and He brings back the soul that has wandered, going out after the straying sheep and carrying it home. Every believer needs both, again and again (to be revived when faith runs dry, and to be brought back when we have wandered off), and the Shepherd does both. Peter would later describe conversion itself in these very terms: you were going astray like sheep but now you have turned back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. The restoring of the soul is the Shepherd’s work from first to last.

He leads me down the right paths for the sake of his reputation. The Shepherd does not only feed and rest the sheep; He leads it along the right paths: the safe ways through difficult country, and the way of righteousness itself. And the reason He gives is striking: for the sake of his reputation. Not because the sheep deserves it, not because the sheep has earned its keeping, but for the sake of the Shepherd’s own name (older translations say for his name’s sake): His reputation, His faithfulness, His glory. This is grace at the root of the whole psalm. The Shepherd’s care does not depend on the worthiness of the sheep but on the character of the Shepherd. He leads us rightly because He is who He is, and that is a far steadier ground for our security than anything we could ever supply.

It is worth dwelling on that little phrase he makes me lie down, for it speaks to a restless age that has forgotten how. We are not, most of us, good at rest; we drive ourselves at a pace no flock was meant to keep, eating the bread of anxious toil, suspicious of stillness, half-convinced that to stop is to fall behind. And so sometimes the Shepherd has to make us lie down: to stop us, by one means or another, when we will not stop ourselves; to bring us, through an enforced quiet we did not choose, to the green pasture we would never have lain down in on our own. What feels at the time like a hard providence is often the Shepherd’s mercy, laying a driven sheep down in good grass beside still water because it had forgotten how to rest. The God who commands a sabbath, who gives to His beloved sleep, is the same Shepherd who makes His sheep lie down, and the rest He gives, however He gives it, is a gift and not a defeat.

The Valley of the Shadow

Even when I must walk through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me (v. 4). The pasture does not last forever; the path leads, sooner or later, into the dark valley: the deep ravine where the sun does not reach, the place of danger and of death itself. The psalm does not pretend the valley away. It says the sheep must walk through it, and notice, through: the valley is a passage, not a destination, something the sheep goes into and comes out of, with the Shepherd. But it is real, and it is dark, and it is named for the very shadow of death. (The Hebrew word behind the NET’s darkest is tsalmavet, which older translations render, as generations have learned it by heart, the shadow of death.)

And yet, I fear no danger. Not because the valley is not frightening, but for one reason only: for you are with me. Here is the turn we were watching for. Up to now David has spoken about the Shepherd: he takes me, he leads me. Now, in the dark, he turns and speaks to Him: you are with me. The closer the danger, the more direct the address; the deeper the shadow, the nearer the Shepherd is felt to be. This is the heart of the psalm’s comfort, and it is worth stating plainly: the believer’s confidence in the dark valley is not that there is no valley, but that there is no walking it alone. The Shepherd does not wave us through from the safety of the pasture; He walks the ravine at our side. Presence, not absence of trouble, is the comfort.

Your rod and your staff reassure me. The shepherd carried two tools, and both are named here. The rod was a stout club, the weapon with which he beat off the lion and the wolf, the instrument of the sheep’s defense. The staff was the long crook, with which he guided the flock along the path and hooked back the sheep that strayed or stumbled, the instrument of the sheep’s guidance and rescue. Defense and direction; the Shepherd both fights for the sheep and steers it. In the dark valley the sheep cannot see the way and cannot fend off the predator, but it can feel the staff against its side and know the rod is raised on its behalf, and that is comfort enough to walk on without fear. And we who read with the gospel know whose hand holds the rod and staff: the Good Shepherd has walked this very valley Himself, into the shadow of death and out the far side of it, so that the sheep who follow Him through it follow where He has already gone and conquered.

This is the verse that has gone down into more dark valleys than any other in the Bible, and it is worth saying why. We spent six sessions in the laments, learning to bring our griefs and fears and even our rages to God; and this single verse is, in a sense, the quiet answer they were all reaching toward. The believer in the valley is not promised an easy life or a short shadow (the psalm grants the valley its full darkness), but he is promised company, and that turns out to be everything. When the diagnosis comes, when the grave is dug, when the night will not lift, the comfort Psalm 23 offers is not a denial that the valley is real but the presence of One who walks it at our side. And that is precisely why dying saints have whispered these words for three thousand years: at the last valley of all, the one we must each walk, the sheep does not go alone. The Shepherd who has been through death and out the other side walks the final valley with His own, His rod and His staff in hand, until the valley opens, as every valley in this psalm does, onto the house of the LORD.

A Table in the Presence of My Enemies

You prepare a feast before me in plain sight of my enemies. You refresh my head with oil; my cup is completely full (v. 5). The picture shifts, and the Shepherd becomes a host. The word the NET renders feast is literally a table, and the sheep that walked the valley now sits at a spread table, served and honored, and it does so in plain sight of my enemies. The enemies are still there, watching; the table is not set in some safe place where all danger has been removed, but right out in the open, in full view of those who wish the guest harm. And yet the guest feasts in peace, untouchable at the host’s table, while his enemies can only look on. There is a holy defiance in the image: the people of God dine in calm abundance in the very midst of a hostile world, because the Host Himself guarantees their safety.

You refresh my head with oil; my cup is completely full. This is the lavish hospitality of an honored guest: the fragrant oil poured on the head in welcome, the cup filled past the brim and running over. The host does not measure out a careful, minimal portion; he pours until it spills. The Shepherd-Host treats the once-frightened sheep not as a beggar grudgingly fed but as a cherished guest extravagantly honored. The God who makes us lie down in the pasture also seats us at the feast, and fills our cup until it overflows.

And the believer cannot read of a table the Lord prepares, with a cup that overflows, without thinking of the table the Lord Jesus has spread for His people. At His own Supper He prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies (in the midst of a world, and a flesh, and a devil that still oppose us) and gives us, with the bread and the cup, His own body and blood, the pledge of our safety and the food of our souls. The overflowing cup of Psalm 23 anticipates the cup of salvation Christ puts into our hands; and that table, in turn, is itself a foretaste of the great feast at the end, the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the flock will sit down with their Shepherd in a land that has no more enemies at all. The Host who spreads the table now will keep the feast forever.

There is enormous comfort in that phrase in plain sight of my enemies for any believer who has to live and work and worship surrounded by opposition. God does not always remove our enemies before He blesses us; often He blesses us right in front of them. He does not wait until the hostility is over to spread the table; He spreads it now, in the thick of it, and bids us sit and eat in peace while the watching world looks on. This is the strange calm of the people of God in every hostile age: able to give thanks, to break bread, to rejoice, not because the threats have vanished but because the Host is sovereign and the guest is safe at His table. The believer need not wait for a world without enemies to know the Shepherd’s abundance. The cup overflows now, in the presence of all that opposes us, because the One who fills it has already secured the outcome.

Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me

Surely your goodness and faithfulness will pursue me all my days (v. 6). The psalm draws toward home, and it does so with a word picture too often softened in the older wording. Reading goodness and mercy shall follow me, we imagine them gently trailing along behind us, like a pleasant afterthought. But the verb is stronger than that, as the NET’s pursue shows: it means to chase, the word used elsewhere of enemies hunting a man down. Here, gloriously, it is not enemies who pursue the believer but God’s own goodness and faithfulness; and that second word is our old anchor chesed, the loyal covenant love (older translations, steadfast love, and here mercy) that has held every psalm in these last sessions. So the sheep is not only led by the Shepherd from in front; it is pursued by His goodness and loyal love from behind. Every day of its life it is, as it were, hemmed in by grace: led by the Shepherd ahead, chased by His mercy behind, with nowhere to go but onward in the company of His love.

And I will live in the LORD’s house for the rest of my life. Here is the destination, and it is home. The whole journey (the pastures, the valley, the table) has been a journey toward the house of the LORD, and the psalm ends by planting the believer there for good. The Hebrew is literally for length of days; the NET renders it for the rest of my life, and the older translations, which many of us learned by heart, forever. We have followed this longing all through the volume: the pilgrim climbing to the house of the LORD, the exile weeping for the lost Jerusalem, the heart that set the city of God above its highest joy. Here the Shepherd brings His sheep all the way in: not merely to visit the house of the LORD, but to live there, and not for a season, but forever. The sheep that could not find its own way home is brought home by the Shepherd, and kept there to the end of days and beyond.

This is the assurance Psalm 23 has whispered to dying saints for three thousand years. The Shepherd who has led me through every pasture and every valley of this life will not lose me at the last; His goodness and mercy will run me down all the way to the door of His house, and there I shall dwell with Him forever. It is the same keeping we found in Psalm 121 (kept all the way home), now sung in the gentlest of all keys. The believer does not hope he might make it home; he says, with the quiet certainty of a well-shepherded sheep, I will live in the LORD’s house.

Notice the word the psalm chooses to open its final verse: surely. Not perhaps, not if all goes well, not I hope so, but surely. The believer’s assurance of arriving home is not wishful thinking or fragile optimism; it is the settled confidence of one who knows his Shepherd. And it must be so, for the same reason the leading was for the sake of his reputation: the certainty rests not on the sheep’s strength but on the Shepherd’s faithfulness. If getting home depended on the sheep (on its sense of direction, its surefootedness, its refusal ever to stray), there could be no surely at all, only anxious hope. But it depends on the Shepherd, whose goodness and faithfulness pursue the sheep all its days and whose grip no power can break, and so the surely stands. To the believer who fears he will not make it, who knows his own weakness too well to be confident in himself, Psalm 23 says: you are not getting yourself home, and that is exactly why you may be sure of arriving. The Shepherd will not lose what He has bled to save.

The Shepherd Who Laid Down His Life

We cannot leave this psalm without looking the Shepherd full in the face, for the Lord Jesus claimed it as plainly as words allow. I am the good shepherd, He said; I know my own and my own know me … and I lay down my life for the sheep. Every comfort of Psalm 23 is gathered up and secured in Him. He is the Shepherd who leads to green pastures and still waters, who restores wandering souls, who walks His flock through the valley. But He is the good Shepherd above every shepherd before Him in one staggering way: He laid down His own life for the sheep. The hired hand runs when the wolf comes; the Good Shepherd stands between the wolf and the flock and dies in their place.

And here is the wonder at the center of the gospel. To save the sheep, the Shepherd became a sheep: the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He who leads the flock was Himself, as Isaiah says, like a lamb led to the slaughtering block; the Shepherd laid Himself down on the altar as the sacrifice, and bore in His own body the death the sheep deserved. This is why the valley of the shadow holds no final terror for those who are His: the Shepherd has been all the way to the bottom of it, into death itself, and has come out alive forevermore. He did not send the sheep through a valley He had not walked; He went first, through the deepest dark, and broke the power of death so that for His flock it is now only a passage, a walking through, and not a dead end.

And the Lamb who was slain is, in the end, the Shepherd still. In the last book of Scripture, John sees the redeemed gathered home at last, and is told who tends them: the Lamb in the middle of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There are the still waters of Psalm 23 at their source, no longer quiet pools in a passing pasture but the very springs of living water; there is the house of the LORD, no longer glimpsed from the road but entered forever; and there is the Shepherd, who was the Lamb, leading His flock beside the waters of life in a country where there are no more valleys and no more tears. The sheep that once could only say the LORD is my shepherd now sees His face, and lacks nothing, and is home.

And there is one more note in the Lord Jesus’ claim that we should not miss, for it answers the deepest longing of the lonely soul. I know my own and my own know me, He said; the good shepherd calls his own sheep by name. The Shepherd of this psalm is not running a vast and faceless operation in which we are one anonymous animal among millions. He knows His sheep, each one, by name. He knows the particular griefs and fears and failings of this one soul, knows where it has wandered and what it is afraid of and exactly what it needs, and He calls it by a name He has known from before the foundation of the world. This is what lifts the whole psalm out of the merely poetic and makes it unbearably personal: the my in the LORD is my shepherd is answered by a my on the Shepherd’s own lips: I know my own. To be a sheep of this Shepherd is to be known, utterly and by name, by the One who laid down His life for you in particular; and to be so known, and so kept, is to lack nothing at all.

Gathering the Threads

We walked, slowly and as if for the first time, through the most beloved psalm in the book, and found it the song of a single sheep utterly secure in its Shepherd. From the one word my flows everything: the LORD of heaven and earth stoops to be the personal Shepherd of one frightened soul, and so the sheep can say, I lack nothing, not because it has everything it craves, but because it lacks nothing it needs, having a Shepherd who is sufficient. We watched Him provide and give rest in green pastures and beside the waters of rest, restore the fainting and the wandering soul, and lead in the right paths for the sake of his reputation: grace at the root of it all, the Shepherd’s care resting on His own character and not on the worthiness of the sheep.

We followed Him into the valley of the shadow of death and found the fear gone, not because the valley was not dark but because the Shepherd was near. The psalm turned, just there, from speaking about Him to speaking to Him (you are with me), with the rod raised in our defense and the staff against our side. We sat at the table He spread in the very presence of our enemies, anointed and overflowing, and saw in it the Supper the Lord Jesus prepares for us now and the marriage feast He keeps for us forever. And we let His goodness and faithfulness pursue us home, chased by chesed from behind as we are led by the Shepherd ahead, to dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Above all we looked the Shepherd in the face and knew Him: the Lord Jesus, the good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep, who became the Lamb to save them, who walked the valley of death ahead of them and rose, and who leads them, the Lamb upon the throne, to the springs of living water and home. The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

For Discussion

The psalm begins, The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing (v. 1). What does it mean to say the LORD is my shepherd (personally, and not only the shepherd of the flock), and how does having Him as Shepherd lead to I lack nothing?
The Shepherd takes me to lush pastures (literally, makes me lie down) and leads me to refreshing water (v. 2). Sheep lie down only when they feel safe and satisfied. What does the Shepherd provide that lets His sheep rest, and where are we tempted to look for rest instead?
He leads down the right paths for the sake of his reputation (v. 3). Why does it matter that the Shepherd leads and keeps us for the sake of His own name, and not because of anything in us?
In the darkest valley, the valley of the shadow of death, the fear is gone, for you are with me (v. 4), and the psalm shifts here from speaking about the Shepherd to speaking to Him. Why is the Shepherd’s presence, rather than the absence of the dark valley, the believer’s comfort, and how does it help that the Lord Jesus has Himself walked through the valley of death?
The Shepherd becomes a host who spreads a table in plain sight of my enemies (v. 5). How does God provide for and honor His people even in the midst of a hostile world, and how does this point to the table the Lord Jesus spreads for us now?
Surely your goodness and faithfulness will pursue me … and I will live in the LORD’s house for the rest of my life (v. 6). The Lord Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11). How does it deepen the whole psalm to know that the Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep, and leads them all the way home?

Looking Ahead

Psalm 23 sang of the Shepherd in the singular: my shepherd, I lack nothing. The next psalm gathers the whole flock together and turns the same truth into a shout of praise. Psalm 100, one of the best-loved calls to worship in all of Scripture, summons not one sheep but all the earth to come before the LORD with joy: Shout out praises to the LORD, all the earth! Worship the LORD with joy! Enter his presence with joyful singing! (Psalm 100:1–2).

And right at its heart it keeps the shepherd image we have just been pondering: Acknowledge that the LORD is God! He made us and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. We will move, with this psalm, from the quiet trust of the single sheep to the glad thanksgiving of the whole flock, asking what it means to enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, and why the God whose loyal love endures is so abundantly worthy of it. After resting beside the still waters, we will lift our voices with all the earth.

Read Psalm 100 in full before the next session; it is only five verses. Notice how it calls the whole earth to joyful worship, and how it grounds that worship in who the LORD is: our Maker, our God, our Shepherd, whose loyal love endures.

Closing Prayer

O LORD, You are our Shepherd, and we shall not want. We confess that we are like sheep: prone to wander, quick to fear, unable to find our own way or right ourselves when we fall; and we bless You that our security rests not in ourselves but in Your care. Make us lie down in Your green pastures; lead us beside Your waters of rest; restore our fainting and wandering souls; and lead us in right paths, not for any worth of ours, but for Your own name’s sake.
When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, let us fear no evil, for You are with us; let us feel Your staff at our side and trust the rod raised in our defense. Spread Your table before us in the presence of our enemies, and fill our cup till it overflows. And let Your goodness and mercy pursue us all our days, until we dwell in Your house forever. We thank You above all for the good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus, who laid down His life for the sheep, who became the Lamb to save us, who walked the valley of death ahead of us and rose, and who leads us, the Lamb upon the throne, to the springs of living water and home. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, our Shepherd, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.