Pg 2, A Study of Psalm 23

A Study of Psalm 23  (continued)

Text: Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want."
Verse one speaks three truths about David's Shepherd.

A sovereign is defined as a person having supreme rank and power; superior to all others.

God claimed to be the sovereign majesty of the universe. Isaiah 44:6, "I am the first and the last; there is no other God."  Isaiah 45: 21-22, There is not other god beside me, a righteous God and a Savior, there is not one besides me. Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth! For I am God and there is no other."

David believed what God said of Himself and testified to it in 2 Samuel 7:22 (NLT), "How great you are, O Sovereign Lord, there is no one like you, there is no other god. We have never even heard of another God like you."

In Scripture the word Lord is the Hebrew name Jehovah. It is the personal name for God that distinguished Him from all the false gods that people worshipped.

 Egypt, for example, was a land of many false gods. They had 360 primary gods, one for each day of the Egyptian calendar. A false god in its simplest definition is anything that is esteemed, loved, feared, or served more than the God of Scripture. If we set up anything that is a rival interest in our hearts and minds that absorbs the love and service which belongs only to the true God our creator, then that thing becomes another god to us.

Fact: Whatever the heart clings to  - that becomes our God.

Examples:

• The proud man who idolizes himself makes of himself his god.

• The ambitious man who pays homage to popular applause makes his ambition his god.

• The covetous person who hoards possessions makes possessions his god.

• The immoral person who craves sex makes sex his god.

• The glutton who craves food makes eating his god.

• The doting lover  - whether husband, wife, mother, or father - who sets his supreme affection on the person loved more than upon God makes that person his god.

David kept himself from the folly of embracing false gods. He refused to honor or worship any idol made of his own or any other person's imagination or hands. He understood this: Psalm 115:4-8, "Idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not, eyes have they, but they see not: they have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: they have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is everyone that trusteth in them."

God had warned in Exodus 20:3-5, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me; thou shalt not make unto thee any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God..."

The choice as to whom David would claim as his Shepherd in life was not difficult for him to make. It would be the God that created man and not the god that man created. It would be "the Lord" the only true and living God.

Note:  David used the personal pronoun "my." He did not say "the Lord is the Shepherd of the world in general." He is saying, "The Lord is a Shepherd to me. He cares for me. He watches over me". He made it personal.

Fact: Our experience with God can never be vital until it is personal.