# “He is my shepherd” by David Gibson

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2024/05/16/he-is-my-shepherd-by-david-gibson/
- Published: 2024-05-16T11:00:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“_The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want_.” (**Psalm 23:1**)

“Here is the point of this meandering start to our study of **Psalm 23**: the one
whom you need to shepherd you neither needs you nor needs to be shepherded Himself
as He gives Himself to shepherd you. He shepherds you from His eternally undiminishing
fullness, and He is never the poorer for it.

Look how needy David is in **Psalm 23**. If the Lord is his shepherd, then he is
of course portraying himself as sheep-like in all the things he needs. He requires
food, rest, water, guidance, shelter, comfort, housing, helping. You name it, David
needs it.

And here is the question **Psalm 23** asks: _Can you see who gives David all that
he needs?_ It is the God who needs nothing and no one. The one who essentially says
to his people: “ ‘_I AM WHO I AM.’ Before you were, I was, and after you are no 
more, I will be. I am the first, I am the last, I am a God outside time before time
began_.”

So in this psalm, David comes alongside you as you read and puts his strong shepherd
crook around your shoulder and pulls you in so that you can hear him tell you that
the God of heaven can meet your every need precisely because He is the one who has
no need of anything Himself.

This is where the next phrase in **Psalm 23:1** (which we will come to in a moment)
receives all its meaning: “_I shall not want_.” Despite my best intentions and my
most fervent wishes, I am not the kind of father whose children are able to say,
every day, for the rest of their lives, “_I shall not want_.”

I might love them very much and pray for them always and long for their best, but
I am a finite, sinful man with limited resources on every hand. I cannot supply 
their every need as I shepherd them through life.

But God is not like that with us. It is one thing to have a shepherd, but it is 
an utterly staggering thing to have as a shepherd the one who is strength itself,
who never tires, never slumbers, and who never needs protection Himself.

So here is where we touch the wonder of the fact that this one, a God like this,
the Lord, might ever be described as a shepherd. Just consider for a moment: _What
kind of pictures does the idea of complete and utter self-sufficient, self-existent
deity conjure up in your mind?_ I think you would agree that this aspect of who 
God is lends itself most naturally to pictures of strength and power.

In John’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus declares, “_I am the good shepherd_” (**John 10:
11**). It is a familiar title we know and love, and we are right to see him as the
true fulfillment of what it means to call the Lord our shepherd. But in doing so
we must remember what Jesus also declared a few chapters earlier in John: “_Jesus
said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am_’ ” (**John 
8:58**).

This is an astonishing claim. Jesus took the divine name that God revealed to Moses
in the burning bush and he effectively applied it to himself: “_I am the LORD_.”
The Lord Jesus, our good shepherd, is Yahweh himself, which means He is our sufficient
shepherd.

I hope you can see new layers of beauty to the simple phrase “_The LORD is my shepherd_.”
It is a portrait to communicate that the One at your side has matchless strength
and indescribable power, which He is stooping to lend to your aid.

The self-sufficient God is not the _self-absorbed_ God. The self-existent God is
not the _self-centered_ God. Rather—wonder of wonders— the God who is so _strong_
clothes Himself in a picture of the closest tender care for those who are so _weak_.

It is a way of saying that He puts all the resources of His _infinite_ fullness 
at the disposal of _finite_ creatures. He is a shepherd. As Martin Luther says:

> _‘The other names sound somewhat too gloriously and majestically, and bring, as
> it were, an awe and fear with them, when we hear them uttered. This is the case
> when Scripture calls God our Lord, King, Creator. This, however, is not the case
> with the sweet word shepherd. It brings to the godly, when they read it or hear
> it, as it were, a confidence, a consolation, or security like the word father.’_

More than this, He is _my_ shepherd.”

–David Gibson, [_The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/143358798X?tag=toletaupanre-20)(
Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 16–19.

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