06-07-2026 - HOOKING OUR HEARTS TO HOPE - Psalm 23-Parte 1
- Lou Hernández
- Jun 16
- 12 min read
PASTOR DE LA IGLESIA BAUTISTA ROB INRIG DE BETHANY EN RICHMOND, BC. NOS ESTA LLEVANDO A UNA SERIE DEL LIBRO DE SALMOS EN LA BIBLIA, COMENZANDO CON EL MARAVILLOSO SALMO 23 DANDONOS COMO EL ESCRIBE, ESTE SALMO OFRECE UNA VERDAD INQUEBRANTABLE EN LA QUE PODEMOS CONFIAR.
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I invite you to pray together: O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servants for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon them with the eyes of thy mercy ( Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G, Rosy Ch, Patricia L. Lina J. Magda- Laci M. Gloria F, Miguel A H. Silvia H, Manuel D, Brianda M, Alejandro M, Natalia M, Oscar ND, Juan Carlos V. Comfort them with a sense of thy goodness; preserve them from the temptations of the enemy; and give them patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore them to health, and enable them to lead the residue of their life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally they may dwell with thee in life everlasting; And for those who have departed and are in eternal sleep, waiting for you to come, and with joy they will live eternal life with you.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
You can add names from family and friends who need prayer
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Of all the words of Scripture, few provide more comfort than the 23rd Psalm. In part it is because it gives us a powerful and re-assuring picture of God’s presence in our life when things are good and more importantly, His comforting presence when life gets hard. Of all the words in the Bible, those of Psalm 23 are probably the best known.
When life is good, it’s merely a picture to be looked at but when life turns upside down, it becomes more than just a picture of a Shepherd and his sheep. In the storm, it is a powerful metaphor that plants a Hook to which we hold, a hook that also holds onto us - in times like these not looking on as an interested observer but clinging on as desperate participant.
The second thing a good metaphor does is it penetrates our Heart – it doesn’t just give us some slogan to live by or some phrase to recite rather it gives us unshakable truth we can trust.
The third thing a good metaphor does is that it paints Hope. Hope that gives us a reason to carry on, telling us of a greater truth than what our present circumstances tell us to believe.
And that’s what the 23rd Psalm does – IT HOOKS OUR HEARTS TO HOPE. In times when life hurts and when life is hard, it reminds the LORD speaks hope, both in our here & now and in what’s to come.
It’s no accident that Psalm 23 is surrounded by the Psalms it is. The preceding Psalm 22 is the Psalm of the Cross - My God, My God why have you forsaken Me? and the 7 things Jesus would say from the Cross, those either said or the background given for what is said and then Psalm 24 which is the Psalm of the Crown - Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle :7,8.
And here, between these, Psalm 23 - the Psalm of the Crook - the Shepherd leading, protecting, caring, feeding. The certainty of our hope in the Shepherd’s Crook only possible because of the relationship we’ve given us in the rescue of our Saviour’s Cross and the reward of that rescue assured by the One we are told has the authority to wear God’s Kingdom royal crown.
It’s this LORD who we come to as we look at this promise:
‘The Lord is my shepherd.’
Like any good metaphor as with every great movie, the producer creates with the intention of having us enter into the story not for us to merely look on. The power of the story all determined by the relationship we have with the story - whether as observer or participant. That relationship is. Totally determined by how we understand the first 5 words of this Psalm, beginning with the first word that is usually ignored but is actually, crucially important - The Lord.
Beginning here, David points to an absolute that is very different from what we commonly hear today - the writer’s assertion that Jesus stands alone. He is not one among many. Not one among equals. He is THE Lord - not one who can be likened to another.
In a time when so many want to put Jesus as an ‘equal’, alongside other beliefs of Buddhism, Hinduism or materialism, He stands alone. He doesn’t fit alongside humanism, secularism, relativism or ‘mother earthism’. Jesus does not take place alongside anyone or anything as His equal. For in fact, Jesus is the THE far above all.
But why make such a big thing about such a small, why should we care word like the? Consider what you read in the Jehovah Witness’ version of John 1:1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. In the original Greek, the word is ‘ho’ - which is not an indefinite article. In other words, this Word wasn’t a god - one among many where we can choose the belief that best accords with what we want to believe, but He is the God - the one and only. When Jesus says, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, He is clearly saying there is no other.
Which brings me to the 2nd word we are considering that we can’t move past without making a decision because this word demands a decision. That decision changing everything.
2nd He is the Lord! When we read the 23rd Psalm, we usually move quickly into the ‘feel good’ descriptions of the Shepherd. No wonder. It’s a great picture with incredibly rich images of care and provision; warmth and comfort; strength and protection. It’s the Shepherd when we are lost and can’t find our way. It’s the Shepherd we need when we have been beat up and left in a mess. It’s the Shepherd we want when we need to be taken to new places to restore and refresh.
These and more are accurate pictures of the Shepherd but the writer, David, doesn’t begin with the Shepherd. He’ll get there soon enough but before he does, he begins not with a description of what the Shepherd does but with a declaration of who the Shepherd IS - He is LORD. Our problem is we want the Shepherd without first stopping here at the requisite, He is Lord. We want the benefit without the requirement.
His title, His power and His right are all given in His name. The Shepherd is what He does, but who He IS is LORD. And without acknowledging Him as LORD we will never fully understand Him as Shepherd.
LORD - the One to Whom we all must answer and to Whom all will one day bow. The LORD to we who know Him and THE LORD who will be acknowledged by even those who have refused to come to Him through Jesus. THE LORD - through whom the world exists. Who speaks and it is done. Whose name stands above all other names. GOD - ALMIGHTY - the all-powerful One. The KING above all Kings. The LORD above all lords who gives us hope for today and life for tomorrow. His role for us who know Him as Shepherd but to trust Him as Lord. This LORD who tells those of us who know Him that we are loved by Him, chosen by Him, empowered by Him. This LORD we are told is our, Mighty Warrior who saves and rejoice over us with singing and gladness. Zeph 3:17.
Kind of spectacular, don’t you think? That God Almighty is thinking of you, His presentation to you not given to you by a revelation of His power but an incomprehensible revelation of His love.
It’s when we forget this, that we get messed up. It’s when we forget this, we set out to lead our own lives. It’s when we forget this, we demand of God rather than bow to Him.
But God in His long suffering love wanting us to cast the assurance of our lives on Him as Shepherd but until He is LORD there is no true understanding of Him as Shepherd. A shepherd is only as good as the strength of who He is and the character of who He is. What’s the point of having a shepherd if He doesn’t have proven power to protect? Why follow a shepherd if there’s no evidence of His faithfulness to provide? Why trust a shepherd who has no testimonials from those who’ve been safely led? Why hope in a shepherd that has no storehouse of of resource far greater than all we have lost? But as LORD He has everything.
This LORD is Almighty. He is Unfailing in His Love. He is the LORD of Rescue. The Supplier of everything we need.
And for those who know Him, as loving LORD He provides us with that and so much more, assuring that because He is LORD, He will do what He has promised. This LORD who has the power to deliver what He promised even in the messiest of life.
3rd The LORD of whom the Psalmist writes, “IS”. Not was. Not will be. But IS. It’s easy to read the stories of old and see them as just that. Things once done but not presently done. God who delivered from Egypt, who tore down Jericho, who ended Babylon’s power, who gave sight to the blind. But present in our here and now battles, victorious in our ‘right now’ needs. Present even when He is not seen. Victorious even when the full evidence of that victory is still to come. Not a God who ‘was’, or one day, ‘will be’ but IS.
IS! as He reassures. Powerfully present and at work. IS! as He holds everything in place. IS! right here and right now. We don’t have to look in secret, hidden places to see it. Look up – galaxy upon galaxy, stars ablaze with light, mysteriously held in place. Look around – incredible wonders, like the woodpecker - it’s head shock absorber designed, its tongue super long, the end sticky and barbed to snag insects deep within crevices they believe to be safe. This tongue stored by being wrapped around its head. Or the gecko, nature’s ultimate ‘free climber’. Its toes covered in millions of microscopic branches, each strand 100 times narrower than a human hair, these allowing it climb vertically with no danger of falling. Scientists borrowing insights from this creature’s adhesion attributes, in things they are developing while admitting that the gecko’s sophisticated gripping system is impossible to replicate. Look deep, so deep submersible cameras will be the only way to see amazing colours painted on some fish that will never see the light of day.
All designed and painted by the God who IS – who promises us joy, peace and hope because He loves. A God so invested in us that He sent His Son so we could see far past the majesty of the heavens, the earth and the sea, so we could see Jesus – the One who made it all. It’s that God Who IS that our loved ones who have left us are in the presence of right now. Those like Harry, Hong, Bernie and Wilf. Those most recently like Jill’s Lindahl’s dad and yes, that loved one no longer with you - they looking on something far greater than stars, birds and fish – now marvelling in Jesus. The loss of our loved ones - undeniably great but unimaginably greater than we have words to tell. Jesus who is not mending things that are broken or patching up lives that are torn but making all things new. Waiting one day to welcome you and I into what awaits us. We, in the in between time awaiting the new that will be perpetually new. New that cannot be spoiled. New that will always be lustrous. New God always wanted you to know.
God Who IS who we will see in a time to come but IS in our here and now. Present with us, He having loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with lovingkindness. You did not choose Me but I chose you Jer 31:3, Jn 15:16. God who pursues us.
4th The first 3 words and many that will soon follow are descriptive but what we come to now isn’t descriptive, it’s possessive. And without this 4th word – MY, all we have is a picture that gives us nice feelings. It’s something we admire but possession determines everything.
Experiencing God as our Shepherd must be far more than some conceptual belief in God’s power or God’s love. All of us can do that. That He is powerful. That He is great. But we are called to experience far more than that. To, like the psalmist say, the Lord is MY Shepherd - the Saviour and Shepherd of my life. My Jesus Who I’ve trusted to forgive my sins and make me right with God. My Shepherd – to lead me in the day by day of life but far more importantly to lead with the knowledge that I have assurance of life everlasting with Jesus. That even as we deal with all the mess we can be thrown into, our Shepherd will take us through the pain to a far better that’s ahead.
It’s that ‘MY’ relationship with the Shepherd that allows me to say with complete assurance, that at this very moment those loved ones who made that relationship possessively ‘my’, are enjoying life unlike anything they ever imagined. Jesus said it this way, I come that you might have life and that you have it more abundantly. But my also puts before us that He we are to do more than just have Him in our life, we are called to enthrone Him as LORD of our life. If He is Lord, our obedience can’t be selective - choosing the things on which we will agree and disregarding the things we don’t. That He is LORD is not in question, but whether He is our LORD is very much the question - our LORD in everything? When we bow to Him as Lord, everything about our relationship changes. Lord doesn’t mean that all will go well which may mean there will be times of yelling at Him, crying out before Him and shouting out those unanswerable Why’s? to Him. Our Shepherd not turning away, those confusions and Why’s allowing us to know the Shepherd in ways we otherwise can’t.
In a post-performance gathering, Shakespearean actor David Garrick was asked to recite familiar passages. He had done so when one elderly man asked him to recite the 23 Psalm. In playful banter Garrick obliged with 1 condition, that the man who asked, would follow his recital with his own. When Garrick finished, loud applause burst out and then it was the old man’s turn. But when he finished, a hush came over the room. Not a sound was heard. After a few moments of silence, Garrick stood up to say, I know the Psalm, this man knows the Shepherd.
5th The Shepherd who leads, protects, provides in good times and in bad. When life isn’t always easy, not always clear – but always true. Because like the elderly man, we too have been given the Shepherd we are to follow. A Shepherd as Luke reminds who:
Watches over his sheep by night 2:8. As the sheep sleep, the shepherd watches. Just like God of Whom we’re told, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep Ps 124:1. While you’re sleeping, He’s watching - 24/7.
A shepherd who knows the sheep that are His. He knows our stubbornness, our weaknesses, our peculiarities. He knows the ones who think themselves strong when they’re not, he knows the wounds that have been done and the scars covered over. He knows the sheep that bleat loud and the sheep that are silent and alone. All these known by name and loved for who they are.
A shepherd doesn’t just watch, he jumps in to protect. In presenting his case to King Saul about battling Goliath, David says, Your servant has been tending his father’s sheep. Whenever a lion or a bear came and carried off a lamb from the flock, I went after it, struck it down, and rescued the lamb from its mouth. If it reared up against me, I would grab it by its fur, strike it down, and kill it. Your servant has killed lions and bears; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God. Then David said, The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine 1 Sam 17:34-37.
A Shepherd who has spilled his blood and who bears the scars. He doing whatever it takes to rescue the same stubborn, weak and foolish sheep He has claimed as His own.
A shepherd who leads - taking us from the places we lie down in that aren’t good for us whether we recognize the dangers in those places or not. He seeing what we cannot see. He knowing what we do not know. And whether by crook or by rod, He moving us out - even in those times and in those places we are determined to stay.
The images of the Shepherd are idyllic – lush hills, and streams of refreshing mountain waters, but the picture is more profound than that. By nature, sheep graze from the break of day to the dark of night, head down, eating away – oblivious to the surrounding world. Staying in familiar areas; grazing even when there’s nothing left to graze. Never stopping, never resting - just - just like us, busy pre-occupied. So busy but never at rest, hungry but never filled. So, the shepherd makes them lie down to rest which they do, because when they see the Shepherd they know they can safely rest.
This shepherd of Whom we are told is willing to lay down His life for the sheep. Jesus making it clear, I am the good shepherd. The Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep Jn 10:10.
And of this Shepherd of Whom we read, The LORD is my Shepherd, and as the NLT next renders,
‘I have all that I need.’
This story to be continued......
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