“1 The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. 3 He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. ”
“My life is but a weaving, between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors. He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow and I in foolish pride
forget He sees the upper and I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly
will God unroll the canvas and reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the weaver’s skillful hand
as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares; nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those who leave the choice to Him.”
People love that poem by Corrie TenBoom because it reminds them that there is a point to life and that God makes that point. Without God there would be no way to make sense of the dark threads. Without God there would not even be a way to make sense of the threads of gold and silver. Without the knowledge of God, your life would appear as the underside of a tapestry. It would appear senseless and purposeless.
What you see in this first slide is the underside of what TenBoom described. It looks like a mess. Please show the next slide to reveal what is seen from above.
If you only saw the underside, you would think life was a mess. You would think life was senseless and purposeless. There are any number of people who do believe that life is senseless and purposeless. “If I want a long boring story with no point to it, I have my life,” said Jerry Seinfeld. Perhaps you believe that life has no point. You will believe that if you don’t believe in a God who has a plan for your life.
Is life just a series of loose threads or is there a pattern? Thousands of years ago a poet believed there was a pattern. He believed that God had purposes for each of his days. We are studying David’s poem tonight not because of some academic interest in poetry. We are not studying this because David describes the way we wish it were. We are studying David’s poem tonight because this is how life is for the people who say, “the Lord is my shepherd.” This is a description of life made clear from the perspective of the shepherd.
The man, woman, or child who is shepherded by God can confidently say that life has a purpose. If this is you, you can know for certain that God has a plan for your life. God has a plan for the lives of His people and it is very good. That is the claim of this sermon: God has a plan for the lives of His people and it is very good.
We will study this in two points. First: the right paths. Second: God guides for your sake and His.
First: the right paths. God knows what is best for you just as a shepherd knows what is best for the sheep. You would make a mess of it. He can bring a pattern out of it. Left to themselves sheep would destroy their own pasture. They would overfeed. They need to be regularly moved and a good shepherd knows when and where to move them. “No other single aspect of the ranch operations commanded more of my careful attention than this moving of the sheep,” writes shepherd turned pastor Philip Keller. “It literally dominated all my decisions. [Every day] I would walk over the pasture in which the sheep were feeding to observe the balance between its growth and the grazing pressure upon it. As soon as the point was reached where I felt the maximum benefit for both sheep and land as not being met, the sheep were moved to a fresh field.”
Shepherds need to move their sheep and so they need to know the paths to other green pastures and quiet waters. This movement is what David has in mind in verse 3, “He guides me in the right paths.” What makes the paths right? They lead to green pastures and quiet waters.
Now the translation before you reads, “paths of righteousness,” as do many others. Many other versions translate this “the right paths.” I think that “right paths” is a more sensible translation because we haven’t left the sheep/shepherd metaphor. It wouldn’t make sense for a sheep to be led in the direction of righteousness. Calvin agrees, “As [David] continues his metaphor, it would be out of place to understand this as referring to the direction of the Holy Spirit.”
The right paths are those that lead to green pastures and quiet waters. Paths of righteousness are moral paths. Now, there are plenty of Scriptures that refer to God leading us along moral paths. “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths.” There are Scriptures that talk about paths of righteousness. I just don’t believe that verse 3 is one of them.
To this point the entire Psalm has been about the abundance the shepherd provides. That is what lies behind the phrase, “I shall not be in want.” That is what lies behind the green pastures and quiet waters. To me it makes much more sense to read tonight’s passage as, “he guides me along the right paths,” as in the paths that lead to green pastures and quiet waters.
The sheep don’t know the right paths. Sheep will overgraze a pasture to the point of destroying it. Sheep will urinate and defecate in water and then drink it. They are constitutionally unable to guide themselves with the wisdom necessary to arrive at abundance. In short, they are like us. ‘We prefer to follow our own fancies and turn to our own ways,” writes Keller. ‘“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.’ And this we do deliberately, repeatedly even to our own disadvantage. There is something almost terrifying about the destructive self-determination of a human being. It is inexorably interlocked with personal pride and self-assertion. We insist we know what is best for us even though the disastrous results may be self-evident.’
Consider your own life. Consider the ways in which you act as if you know what is best for you even though the results are harmful for you and others. Consider that you keep acting foolishly in the face of overwhelming evidence that you are harming yourself and others. Paths such as worry, regret, lust, and bitterness have never led you to green pastures. Such paths have never led you to abundant waters. Such paths have never led you to a restored soul and yet you take them. You, my friend, need to be guided. “He guides me along the right paths for His name sake.”
Now there is a good deal of overlap between the “paths of righteousness and the “right paths.” There is a good deal of overlap between the moral paths and the paths that lead to green pastures and quiet waters. Obedience does, in fact, lead to blessing.
I find this phrasing of the right paths helpful, however, because it reminds me that the end goal is green pastures and quiet waters. Even when you are walking the moral path, the end goal is green pastures in quiet waters. This is a helpful corrective because sometimes I can get so focused on keeping the commandments that I forget the purpose of the commandments. I keep them simply because I’m afraid of doing wrong rather than because they lead to what is right and good. Jesus pushed back against this tendency that is in me and perhaps in you when he said of the Sabbath, “the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.” In some ways, you could say that the commandments were made for people. People were not made for the commandments. The commandments exist for your sake. You don’t exist for the sake of the commandments. God doesn’t adopt the commandments as His children. He adopts us as His children. He adopts us to lead us into abundance. He adopts us to lead us in the right paths just like an adoptive parent does.
Israel’s journey from slavery into the Promised Land is a perfect picture of the right paths. Moses and the prophets used shepherding language to describe the way in which God led His people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The people, like sheep, didn’t always want to be moved along the right paths that would lead to green pastures and quiet waters. They grumbled. At times, they expressed a longing to return to slavery. When they arrived in the Promised Land, they could do nothing other than look back over their journey and say with David, “He guides me along the right paths.”
That is the paradigm for God’s people. Those who are led by God are led along the right paths. That means that if you belong to God, you are being led along the right paths. “He knows; He loves; He cares,” as Corrie Ten Boom put it. If you take enough steps back, you can see that is the case in the final view. You are being led to the new creation and that is described saying. “Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” If you are thirsty, be led by God. If you want life, be led by God. He will lead you along the right paths.
The question that matters for you, then, is whether or not you are being led by God. Can you say verse 3—“He guides me in the right paths”? Your answer to the question depends upon whether you can affirm verse 1 for yourself—“the Lord is my shepherd.” Whether or not you are being led in the right paths, depends upon whether the Lord is your shepherd.
Now if the fact that the shepherd leads only His own sheep sounds too exclusive to you, ask yourself how someone who won’t follow the shepherd into green pastures can ever find green pastures. If a man won’t follow the Lord, he won’t arrive where the Lord is leading. Left to ourselves, we humans will never find green pastures. We, like sheep, will dirty our water sources and overgraze our green pastures until we are left with nothing but filth and barrenness. That is a description of hell.
A man will only avoid that end if someone leads him out of it. He will only avoid that end result if someone leads him in paths that lead elsewhere. God is the only one who can save humanity from itself and that is why He takes up the task.
If you are not being led by the Lord, you can be. He will lead you. Now no one make that happen for you. If I were offering a product, I could just give it to you, but I’m holding out a relationship and you have to choose to bring yourself in a relationship for it to be a relationship. You have to choose to come to Jesus. To be led by the Good Shepherd you have to come to the Good Shepherd.
He will be happy to lead you and He will do it for your sake and for His own. We see that in our second and final point: God guides for your sake and His.
The shepherd obviously guides the sheep for their sake. He leads them into green pastures so they can eat. He leads them beside quiet waters so they can drink. He also does it for his own sake. Philip Keller wrote about this saying, “As soon as the point was reached where I felt the maximum benefit for both sheep and land as not being met, the sheep were moved to a fresh field. On the average this meant that they were put onto new ground almost every week. In very large measure the success I enjoyed in sheep ranching must be attributed to this care in managing my flock.”
Keller wanted his sheep to eat well. He wanted them to enjoy abundance. He wanted them to enjoy it, in part, so that he might be successful. He did it, in part, for his own sake. The same is true for God as we see in verse 3, “He guides me in the right paths for His name’s sake.”
So what does God get out of His shepherding? Well, God guides His people in the right paths because He delights to see His people enjoying what is at the end of the right paths. Think of it in terms of giving presents. My hope is that you love to give presents. You love seeing the excitement in the eyes another person. The joy you receive in giving is the way is which you do it for your own sake in the language of verse 3. Up to this point in the Psalm, we’ve been studying the sheep’s joy in receiving. Now we see the shepherd’s joy in giving. Now we see the Father’s delight in delighting us.
God blesses you, in part, because blessing you blesses God. I bless my children, in part, because blessing my children blesses me at least when my heart is in the right place. God’s heart is always in the right place. So God leads His people in the right paths for the same reason a gracious Thanksgiving host happily prepares a meal—for the enjoyment of the recipients and her own joy in watching the joy of her guests.
There is another aspect to the words, “for His name’s sake” in verse 3’s, “He guides me in the right paths for His name’s sake.” This aspect is what is referred to as the glory of God. God is concerned with His own glory. Take His words through Isaiah for example, “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.”
Glory in this sense is reputation. God was concerned lest He be defamed by the nations. Now God isn’t concerned with His reputation because He is an egotist. He isn’t concerned about His reputation because He has low self-esteem. God is concerned about His reputation because it is imperative that people recognize Him for who He is.
Think of it in terms of a high school counselor. Imagine a high school counselor who has a heart to help the students in her school. She loves to listen to their problems and come up with creative solutions. She is a gift to that school. However, due to a number of coincidences and miscommunications she gets a reputation for being unsafe. Teachers stop referring students to her. Students stop opening themselves up to her. The change is due to a change in her reputation. Now that woman could rightly say with God, “How can I let myself be defamed?” That woman would do anything to restore her reputation not merely for her own sake but also for the sake of her students because her current reputation alienates the students who need help.
God is concerned about His reputation because anything that would defame His glory alienates people who need the help only He can offer. He guides His people in right paths so that others will know He is that He is reliable and that His leadership can be trusted. He leads people along right paths competently so that others will see this competence and entrust themselves to Him.
These words, “He guides me in the right paths for His name sake,” are also an expression of God’s freedom in shepherding us. He shepherds us not because He has to but because He wants to. He does for Himself—for His own sake. As Calvin puts it, “His choosing us to be His sheep, and His performing towards us all the offices of a shepherd, is a blessing which proceeds entirely from His free and sovereign goodness.”
No one compelled God to love you. No one convinced God to love you. God isn’t shepherding you to please some sort of higher power. He is doing it because He wants to. Let that soak in. God doesn’t just love you. He loves to love you.
All of this means that God will keep loving you even when you aren’t all that lovable. The shepherd doesn’t lead the sheep in the right paths because of anything in the sheep. He leads the sheep because of something in Him.
We now arrive at the doctrine of election in God doing it for His own sake. Part of the glory in belonging to God is the recognition that He loves you because of something in Him, not because of something in you. A woman once put it this way to John Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace. She said, “sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards.”
That woman recognized that she was only walking the right paths because she was being led along the right paths. She recognized that she was only being led along the right paths because she was loved by a God who loved her because of something in Him not something in her.
God freely loves by way of His own choice—for His own sake, and you enter that choice by way of coming to Jesus. If you have come to Jesus, you have no reason to doubt that God loves you for His name sake. If you won’t be led for God’s sake, you wont’ be led. If you won’t be led, you will not find the right paths. If you try to write your own life story, it will be a senseless, pointless mess. You could be wealthier and more successful than you ever dreamed and your life would still be pointless. Remember it was Jerry Seinfeld who is worth $950 million who said, “If I want a long boring story with no point to it, I have my life.” Are you somehow going to outdo Seinfeld in the next few decades? So be led.
You see what is to be led in Jesus, Psalm 23:3 could be his life verse when it comes to the Father, “he leads me in the right paths of his name sake.” Jesus was free from worry because he knew His Father would lead him down the right path and even the path that seemed most wrong – public execution – led to green pastures and quiet waters for him and for you. So, yes if you are led by God you are not in control – neither was Jesus – but if you are led by God you can know that you are on the right path and where this right path will lead and isn’t that what you really want out of life? Amen.