The twenty-third Psalm. You may have grown up reading this favorite passage at church or hearing it read in multiple places. It may even be on one of your refrigerator magnets. Without question this is the most famous of the psalms.
Visually this psalm is usually depicted with Christ as the good shepherd, gently cradling a sheep in His arm, and always in a very serene setting. It’s a beautiful picture—a poetic and tranquil song of Christ as provider, protector, and comforter. But if all the psalms were like this, I don’t think I would like this book that much. Let me explain.
In music, if the composer uses only soft melodies and never varies the piece with loud crescendos, we may not appreciate the dynamics that exist. What I love about David (one of the writers of the psalms) is that he throws all aspects of life into his songs—the soft, the loud, the beautiful, and the ugly—because the psalms are not just a collection of poignant Hallmark moments.
In fact, if you look at the psalm right before Psalm 23—before David said, “The Lord is my Shepherd”—the tone is much different: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). As we read on, David writes of being surrounded by his enemies to the point of death. He cries out to God in agony, begging for deliverance. But in true “David style” he praises his Lord before the chapter closes. Though obviously afraid in the situation, he doesn’t get stuck there. He knows who his enemies are; but more important, he knows who his Deliverer is.
In Psalm 23:4 David says that even to the point of death he “will fear no evil, for you are with me.” For me, this is the deep meaning—the essence of Psalms. Whether David is dancing for joy before the Lord, or in hell on earth, he gets through it—walks through it—because he knows God is with Him. You can take the phrase “for you are with me” and put any preface before it. “I can get through the loss of my job, through this terrible diagnosis, this broken relationship . . . ‘for you are with me.’ ”
Looking back to what David said in Psalm 22:1 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), do you know where you have heard this elsewhere in Scripture? On Calvary it looked as if evil had triumphed. But Christ rose again and won. And because of His victory we can say, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
Charles Spurgeon, famed preacher and author of the nineteenth century, wrote that “you are with me” is the “joy of Christianity!” But I think he summarizes the beauty of the twenty-third psalm best when he says: “Come what may, if famine should devastate the land, or calamity destroy the city, ‘I shall not want.’ Old age with its feebleness shall not bring me any lack, and even death with its gloom shall not find me destitute. I have all things and abound; not because I have a good store of money in the bank, not because I have skill and wit with which to win my bread; but because ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ The wicked always want, but the righteous never; a sinner’s heart is far from satisfaction, but a gracious spirit dwells in the palace of content.”*
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* Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) references are from his Exposition of Psalm 23, in The Treasury of David.
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Linda Chalmers writes from Redlands, California, where she works as a project director in the blood banking industry. She enjoys freelance writing and public speaking. This article was published June 14, 2012.
