I shall not want (Psalm 23:1)

David here means that he shall not lack what is needed for his journey through life. It is certainly a statement of confidence, but is it merely wishful thinking on his part? What grounds does he have for making it?

Two qualifications

To begin with, we can say that one of the grounds for this claim is that he is a sheep in the flock of the shepherd. This means that his statement is not a general statement. Rather it is a statement that describes a specific people, those who have brought into the flock when they trusted in Jesus. If someone expects this promise to be fulfilled before they belong to Christ’s people, then they are mistaken because they will not experience it.

A second introductory point is that he is a sheep who is following the Shepherd. This is obvious because the needs will only be met if he goes to the places that the Shepherd goes to. The Shepherd does not go everywhere in the sense of leading his people to them. The places where he leads them are described in this psalm. There are the waters of rest, there is the valley of the shadow of death, there is the table in the midst of his enemies, and there could also be what is meant by the house of the Lord in the last verse.

So we can say two basic features that are required to have this blessing of not having any wants is faith in Jesus and following Jesus. David could not have sung this psalm with meaning during the year after his sins with Bathsheba and Uriah when he had refused to repent of what he had done. It is clear from his interaction with Nathan, after God had sent the prophet to confront him about his sin, that it had not entered the mind of David that he should repent. He had become like the people Peter describes in the first chapter of his second letter who had forgotten that they had been purged of their sins. We might think that is an unlikely place for a believer to get to, but all we need to do is ask ourselves what our repentance has been like recently.

But David had known the great blessing of having been brought to repentance by his God. Sin leaves its mark on us, but it is also the case that genuine repentance leaves its mark. We know that sheep can be identified by marks of ownership. One of the marks of divine ownership is the possession of penitence. This mark does not only come to the surface after a believer has fallen into a great sin and repented of it. Instead, it should be there all the time because sin is constantly affecting us. It would be appropriate, for example, for a believer to go home from a church service and spend five minutes privately with the Lord and confess to him with tears that he had not worshipped his God as he should have done, given the amazing degree of grace that has been shown to him.

The God of the covenant

In addition to him being a sheep, and the consequence of him therefore being able to affirm the certainty of his spiritual needs being met, there is the other aspect found in the opening statement of the psalm, which is that the Lord is his shepherd. The personal pronoun ‘my’ points to the wonderful relationship that David possesses with the God of the covenant of grace. It is good for our spiritual equilibrium for us to think frequently of this covenant tie that we have with the Lord.

There are different ways of describing the covenant of grace. One way of doing so that we may find helpful is to realise that it is the experiences of God’s people of all that was promised to them in the covenant of redemption. There are three covenants that we need to think about.

First, there is the covenant of redemption which took place within the Trinity before time. In that covenant, which is eternal, the Trinity agreed that each of the divine persons would contribute to the salvation of sinners. The Father’s role was to choose them before time and adopt them in time when they believe in Jesus. The Son’s role was to become a man and provide salvation by paying the penalty of their sins and to function eternally as the head of the church with all the benefits that come from that position for his people. The role of the Holy Spirit is for him to regenerate them, and to sanctify them in this life, and to indwell them forever. Each of those roles has aspects that we can explore at any time. But this covenant is the basic factor in us being able to say, ‘I shall not want.’

Second, there is the covenant of works made with Adam as our representative at the beginning of time. It promised life on the condition of ongoing perfect obedience, and it also promised ongoing punishment if we failed to obey in that way. We, as a race, failed to keep it when Adam our representative failed. But our failure to keep this covenant does not mean that it has disappeared. Indeed, it is the covenant that will be used on the Day of Judgement. But even before then, the principle of ‘this do, and you shall live’ rises repeatedly.

For example, when Jesus met the rich young ruler, which covenant requirements did Jesus mention to him? We know the story. The man said that he had managed to keep all the commandments of God. Jesus did not say to him, ‘You have not and what you need is forgiveness.’ Instead, he told him to do something, which was to show total love to his neighbour by selling all that he had and giving it to the poor. The man did not want to do that because he was not as good as he thought he was, and he went away.

We cannot get help from Jesus if we want to live according to the covenant of works, but Christians often forget that. We can see what happened with the Galatians when they moved from living by grace to living by works. Paul warned them that it was not a slight indiscretion. They were in danger of changing the whole relationship they had with Christ. And I suspect we can do in lots of ways, and when we do that, we cannot say, ‘I shall not want.’

Third, there is the covenant of grace which can be explained for us in the terms of the new covenant in which God promises to do everything for us. The covenant of grace does not mean that we will not do certain things, but it does say that there will be a difference in why we do them. In the covenant of grace, the Father adopts us into his family. In the covenant of grace, Jesus is our prophet, priest and king. In the covenant of grace, the Holy Spirit will be at work within us. He lovingly works faith in us and we believe; he lovingly works love in us and we love; he lovingly works determination in us and we continue to serve him; he lovingly makes us heavenly-minded and we become heavenly-minded; and we could continue the areas of such consequential behaviour into every area of life. Of course, we do things to strengthen our faith such as meditating on the Bible, but who gives us the desire to do so, the insight when we do so, and the enjoyment when we have done so? We can almost say that a Christian works harder than any legalist, but he works for a different reason which is that the Holy Spirit enables him.

It is important that we have works, but we must remember why we must have them. As someone has said, ‘In the first covenant, works were required as the condition of life; in the second, they are required only as the signs of life.’ The presence of the signs of life reveal that we can expect the Lord to continue his side of the covenant arrangement.

It was the opinion of Thomas Brooks that ‘the main reason why so many gracious souls are so full of fears, doubts, darkness, and disputes about their internal and eternal estates, is because they have no more clear and full understanding of these two covenants’ (those of redemption and grace).

I shall not want

We have seen that, because we are in this covenant relationship with the Lord, we can expect his blessing. But how do we show that expectation? First, we will take steps to find out what he has promised to give. That information is stated in his Word. It is possible that I could convince myself that I need something not mentioned in the Bible, but which my faulty wisdom thinks would be good for me. Yet since the Lord does not promise it, I have no basis for assuming he will give it to me.

For example, the Bible does not say that God’s people will not suffer adversity. Indeed, it says that sometimes it is God’s will that they will face opposition. Nor does it promise that believers will not suffer hunger in a famine or lose out financially in a crash. The Bible does not say that they will escape illness or that they will not have difficulties in their families. So when those things occur, we should not assume that we are unable to make the statement of David about not lacking something. David had personal experience of most of the troubles mentioned in this paragraph.

The more we know of the Bible, the more our desires will be regulated by God’s revealed will. In any case, we know that the Bible contains numerous descriptions and promises of divine blessings that are available for us. We could take the fruit of the Spirit as an example of the blessings that the Lord has for his people. Or the list of features mentioned in the Beatitudes. We cannot say that the Lord has not told us what he can give to us. His word is full of such blessings and benefits.

Thomas Brooks expands on this reality: ‘The covenant of grace is so well ordered by the unsearchable wisdom of God that you may find in it remedies to cure all your spiritual diseases, and cordials to comfort you under all your soul-faintings, and a spiritual armoury to arm you against all sorts of sins, and all sorts of snares, and all sorts of temptations, and all sorts of oppositions, and all sorts of enemies, whether inward or outward, open or secret, subtle or silly, Eph. 6:10-18.’

The second step that we can take is to pray for those blessings. There are numerous exhortations about prayer in the Bible and there are also many encouragements for prayer there as well. We are encouraged to pray according to God’s will and that will us revealed in the Word of God. There we find the benefits that we should pray for, which we should pray for earnestly and eagerly.

The third step that we can take is to make use of the means of grace. Although this psalm focuses on a sheep, the assumption is that all the sheep will do what is best and receive what is best. We can put it this way. If a shepherd has twenty sheep, and nineteen follow him and look healthy and one goes off by itself and looks unhealthy, which sheep has made the mistake? God has told us not to forsake our assembling together because he desires to bless his people together. Millions of Christ’s sheep have found their needs met in the public means of grace.

A fourth step that we can do is think about what the divine persons are doing for us now. Jesus is our prophet, our priest, and our king, and one reason for why he has these roles is to meet the spiritual needs of his people. Similarly, the Holy Spirit has come to indwell his people so that their spiritual needs are provided for in a powerful and plentiful manner.

Application

The basic point here is that Christ’s sheep are called to live by faith whether or not their feelings are in tune. They experience discouragement at times, are tempted severely by the devil at times, and let down by others at times. When those kinds of experiences occur, they are called to have the same outlook as when they are encouraged, not tempted and everyone is fine. They live by faith in the covenant God.

Connected to that point is the truth that biblical faith is grounded on what the Word of God says. It defines their view of life. It tells them what to expect definitely from God and it tells them what they can expect possibly from God. They know that they will not lack what he has promised will be given to them and in that sense they will say, ‘I shall not want.’ And even when he does not give them something that could be theirs, they still say, ‘I shall not want,’ because they realise that their faithful God knows that they do not need it.