Hey, Cobblestone,
The one thing that puts the Twenty-Third Psalm almost out of
reach, in my mind anyway, is the shepherd/sheep metaphor. You and I could drive
all the backroads of our nearby counties and not find a lot of sheep-herders.
I’ve driven hogs a time or two, and rounded up a couple of cows, but the
concept of a whole segment of the population who spend 24/7’s with a flock of
sheep has had no visual manifestation during my lifetime in this part God’s
good Earth. I have to turn on my Old Testament brain to receive much of what
Scripture says about our Shepherd King.
Psalm 23 is roughly 3,000 years old. From what I gather, back
in the day a shepherd had two tools: the rod and the staff. Good shepherds were
set above the rest of the pack by their ability to wield both with efficiency
and justice. To do that, the shepherd would first need to know what each tool
was made for.
Let’s look at the staff first. Unlike Little Bo Peep, a good
shepherd is someone who has lost a sheep but knows doggone good and well where
to find it. A good shepherd would use the staff – or shepherd’s hook, as it is
sometimes known – to pull a wandering sheep out of the thicket, or the ravine,
or the not-so-still waters. The staff is a tool for guidance and retrieval – or
we could just as easily say it’s an instrument of discipline.
The rod is a weapon. In a world before bazookas, the rod was
a good tool for a shepherd to have. With enough skill and determination, a
predator could be run off. Or killed. The rod is an instrument of punishment.
The sheep should be glad if their shepherd knows how to use that rod.
…your rod and your
staff, they comfort me (Psalm 23:4).
In this latest segment of our leisurely meditation on Psalm
23, we’re getting an idea of what the shepherd – or more precisely, our
Shepherd King – has at his disposal. He has a tool for discipline and he has a
tool for punishment. And he never gets them confused.
But we do.
The Father’s wrath is not for his kids. Jesus changed that
all up: …but God shows his love for
us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since,
therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be
saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:8-9). If you’re a saved person – a little brother or
sister to Jesus – and you’re thinking the Father is punishing you, please let
the work of your eldest brother give your thinking a tune-up. True enough, For the moment all discipline seems painful
rather than pleasant, as the writer to the Hebrews has said, but later it yields the peaceful fruit
of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Hebrews 12:11). This
is the Shepherd King using his staff, and using it well.
When the wolf or the bear or the predator of any species
makes an appearance, the Shepherd King is not shy with the rod. Skeptical?
Check this out:
Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked (Psalm 3:7).
Toothless predators don’t prey much once they become
toothless. And for your part (and mine) it’s OK to ask the Lord of Glory to do,
in this walk-around world, what he’s going to accomplish in eternity anyway.
May his kingdom come.
The sheep/shepherd metaphor may stretch us a bit, at least
for now. But there’s coming a time when faith will be sight, and metaphors will
be completely redundant. Meanwhile, the Shepherd King wields a skillful staff
and a mighty rod, for our comfort.
Grace and Peace (under his careful gaze),
John
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