I Shall Not Want (Psalm 23:1)

Sometimes a sentence can seem so unrealistic that we are tempted not to take it seriously. Perhaps that is how we respond to the claim of the psalmist in this statement. If he had said ‘I shall not want sometimes’ or ‘I shall not want most of the time’, then we would think his words as more realistic. But are those alternatives statements of faith or statements of fact? ‘I shall not want’ is a statement of faith.

The statement ‘I shall not want’ we can describe as the link between the opening statement, ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ and the various details mentioned in the rest of the psalm. Of course, the term ‘want’ means ‘lack’ here and not ‘desire’. It is a deduction of certainty based on a permanent relationship with the Shepherd, and from this deduction several specific statements could be made, which the psalmist did do, and in doing so provided a wonderful picture for us of the true spiritual life as a sheep in the flock of Jesus Christ.

It is helpful to go through the remainder of the psalm and see what is promised to believers. We can start with the next sentence of the psalm and say, ‘I shall not lack rest because the Shepherd will provide it for us.’ And then we can do the same for the remaining details as well. When we do so, we will be amazed at the range of situations covered by the psalmist. So this assertion about lacking nothing is based on the reality of the faithfulness of the Shepherd.

The first comment that can be made is that the statement is true for everyone who has a relationship with the heavenly Shepherd. The blessings described are not dependent on the height of one’s spiritual experience or the length of time one has been a member of the flock. The blessings are for the lambs of the flock as well as for the mature sheep who have been following the Shepherd for many years. While we know that there will developments of degree within each described blessing, we should also see that each blessing is given to every sheep.

A second comment is that the blessings described are not dependent on the circumstances of the sheep. In a literal flock, one would not expect all the sheep to be in the same situation – some may be in one part of piece of ground, others may be elsewhere. The same is true at another level of all the sheep in the flock of Jesus. Yet wherever they are or will be, they will never be in want, and that is because the Shepherd would know where they were and be able to reach each of them simultaneously and deal with each of them individually. Some may be in the quiet resting places and others may be in the valley facing enemies, and obviously they cannot be together. Yet the Shepherd would be with all of them all of the time despite the differences they faced.

There is a third comment that can be deduced and that is that each sheep is given such wonderful provision that it would think it was the only sheep that the Shepherd had responsibility for. When we think about how many sheep there are in the flock of Jesus, we should be amazed that this is the case. Obviously, this would depend on the competency of the Shepherd. And we get the measure of his competence in the name that is used of him, ‘Yahweh.’

The competence of the shepherd

When the Lord spoke to Moses in Exodus 6:2 and informed him about this divine name, he said that it revealed more than the name by which he had revealed himself previously to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That previous name is El Shaddai, which is usually translated as God Almighty or God All-Sufficient. The latter is the best option because the little word El in itself means almighty God. So Shaddai must be pointing to something else about God. Shaddai is a word derived from the breast, and we know that the breasts are the source of sustenance for infants. So El, the almighty God, is revealed as the one who uses all his divine power and resources to bless the neediest and the weakest of his people.

So when God appeared as El Shaddai to Moses, it would have been a wonderful encouragement to him as he received a divine call for a difficult task, a task that was far more difficult than he would have realised initially. Moses may have imagined that the Egyptians would be his main problem because they were the enemy, but he would eventually discover that the Israelites would cause him much more troubles, and that even the ones who knew him best – such as Aaron and Miriam – would let him down. In such a situation he would need someone he could rely on totally, and that one was Yahweh, the one who is El Shaddai but who is also much more than El Shaddai. He is the God of the covenant, he is the promise keeper, he is the one whose commitment is total.

The type of blessings

We live in a materialistic age and we are inevitably led to regard some of its features as part of the blessings mentioned in the psalm. The problem with having such an assessment is that if we lose them, then we have to conclude that we have lost the blessings. Yet the blessings in the psalm cannot be lost by a change of circumstances. Obviously, we can ask God to bless the benefits of our society to us, but we should not regard them as core spiritual blessings. The Christian life can easily be lived without those benefits and the majority of our fellow Christians in the world prove daily that is the case.

So the blessings here are not material ones, which means that they must be spiritual. Yet even here we need to be more specific, because it is possible to have a spiritual outlook that is far removed from the spirituality of this psalm. In fact, today the world is very spiritual in the sense that there is a lot of interest in finding one’s inner self and searching for inner fulfilment. The problem with those who have those outlooks is that while they have realised that there is a problem they are looking in the wrong place for an answer. They are looking within, whereas the message of the psalm is not to look within, but to look without, to look to the Shepherd.

In a sense, what a member of the flock has to do is continue the same attitude as he had when he joined the flock. He became a sheep because he had a sense of sin, that he had been convicted by the Holy Spirit about the fact that there was something wrong within. But he did not become a member of the flock by looking at his sin or at the sins of the other sheep. Instead he discovered that the way into the flock was by looking at the Shepherd, by trusting in Jesus alone. Christian spirituality depends upon looking to the Shepherd. As McCheyne put it, ‘For every look within, take ten looks at Christ.’ When we look at Jesus, we see the Shepherd and right away we sense his capabilities, that he can help us.

The blessings that are described here are connected to the experience of salvation. When we thing of the different locations described in the psalm, we must remember that what the psalmist is doing is describing opportunities to know what salvation means and how it can be known. Hopefully we will think about some of them in more detail as we make our way through the psalm. But today I want us to think a bit about the big picture of salvation.

The God we know

I mentioned earlier that Moses received a bigger revelation of God than did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We could say that a great step forward had taken place. It did not mean that Moses was more secure than Abraham, but it did mean that Moses could have more informed assurance than Abraham because he had more information about God. This does not mean that Abraham lacked assurance, but it does mean that he had less information to base his spiritual hope on.

We have received more knowledge of God than did Moses, and that is because of the coming of Jesus. The greatest of the servants of God who belonged to the period commencing with Moses was John the Baptist. Yet Jesus said of John that the one who was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than him. Jesus did not mean by ‘the kingdom of heaven’ the eternal home of the redeemed. After all, when Jesus gave that commendation, John was already in his heavenly home. Instead Jesus meant that anyone in the church would have greater privileges than even John had as the forerunner of the Messiah. This means that you and I, as Christians, have a revelation of God greater than John knew.

What we know about God is this – the One who is Yahweh, the One who is El Shaddai, is a trinity of divine persons called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When God sent Moses into Egypt to serve him, he said that he was Yahweh. As Jesus sent his apostles out into the world to serve God, he reminded them of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and assured them that he would be with them all the days until the end of the age.

When we think of the Trinity, there are at least two ideas that come to mind. The first is communion because they have always interacted with one another. It is not possible for us to understand the nature of divine communion because the fellowship we know is through human words. An animal may hear its owners talking to one another, but it is incapable of understanding what they are sharing. There is a huge gulf between an animal and humans, but it is not as large as the gulf between the highest creatures and God. Even the best of us finds it difficult to think about more than one thing at a time, so how do we understand a Trinity of divine persons who can think about everything at the same time?

The second detail about them is that they function in harmony when they act together, with each of them playing their own roles, but doing so aware of what the others are doing. The passage that explains that reality best is probably Ephesians 1:3-14 where Paul summarises the roles of each Person in the Trinity. It is possible to approach those verses from a variety of angles, but since we are thinking of Psalm 23 we can apply the details of the passage to what the Psalm says. The Psalm, as far as we are concerned as Christians, tells us that Jesus is the shepherd, or as he said himself, the good shepherd.

In Ephesians 1, we are told that the Father elected and adopted his people, which means that they were chosen to be the sheep of his Son and they were adopted as sheep in the Elder Brother’s flock. As far as the Son is concerned, in that passage he is described as the one who redeems his people by paying the penalty of their sins, so that they could be forgiven, and so that they will participate in the future wonderful new creation that will be their eternal home. This means that they are purchased sheep, pardoned sheep and sheep with an amazing prospect. As far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, he is the seal of ownership and the one who gives to them foretastes of the glory ahead. So he is the sign or mark that identifies the sheep and he is the instrument that the Shepherd uses to prepare his flock for glory.

As we said earlier when observing some features of Psalm 23, all the sheep of Jesus share the blessings of the psalm and all of them share the blessings mentioned in Ephesians 1:3-14. So we can ask ourselves what effect this reality should have on us as the recipients of such a wonderful salvation?

The first effect should be confidence in the Shepherd. Our Shepherd knows us all by name, and knew our name long before we joined the flock. He came to pay the penalty of our sins, and when we actually came into existence he arranged events in order to bring us to know him eventually. There is no reason why we should not trust him, so therefore we can say as far as his care of us is concerned, ‘I shall not want.’

The second effect should be recognising our identity. One of the biggest problems facing people today is a low self-esteem in which they struggle to find their place in the world. As the sheep of Jesus, we don’t get our identity by what we do for him, but from what he has done, is doing and will do for us. Whatever else someone thinks of us, all that really matters is what God thinks of us. God the Father has adopted us and one day it will matter to be his sons when we get the inheritance; God the Holy Spirit is sanctifying us, and one day all that will matter is that we were sanctified in this life;  and God the Son is leading us through this life as the Shepherd, never taking his eyes off us and providing for our needs, and one all that will matter is what he thinks of us. After all, if we have a lack today, we must be out of touch with the Shepherd because the one who is in touch will say, ‘I shall not want.’

The third effect will be to participate in the enlarging of the flock. How does the flock grow? It grows by the sheep telling those who are not yet sheep that they can become sheep. And each sheep should tell others that they all they have to do is talk to the Shepherd and ask him who is the door of the sheepfold to let them into his flock. When they do that, they also will be able to say, ‘I shall not want.’