The long-awaited continuation of this blog, and a brief insight on Psalm 23
Sorry guys, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in life made more abundant. My wife’s sister has terminal cancer, and so we’re struggling with the issues that come along with that. In fact, she took the kids and dropped them off with my family up in Georgia so she could turn around and drive to Nashville to see her sister, so I’m all alone at home, and thus have a lot of time on my hands to think and write. School and work both have become very hard to keep up with, so this gives me an opportunity to get myself well (I’ve been dealing with sinus and ear infection over the last week) and focus on catching up with both of those.
Today we took a look at the always popular 23rd Psalm in Sunday school. It never ceases to amaze me how alive the Bible is, and that I can reread a piece of scripture I’ve had memorized since I was a child and suddenly the Holy Spirit will reveal something new. As I read the first four verses, I was struck by how similar the subject matter is to the human requests in the Lord’s Prayer:
“Give us today our daily bread,” Jesus prayed, and hundreds of years prior, David wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.” Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily needs, and David shows us how to trust Him that they will be taken care of.
Jesus: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” – David: “he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Again, Jesus shows us how to pray for forgiveness, and David shows us trust in the regenerative nature of His grace.
Jesus: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” – David: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” All of life is the valley of the shadow of death, since the wages of sin is death and all have sinned and fallen short. Jesus teaches us that we should pray for the regeneration that is a part of the transformative nature of His forgiving grace. Only through being born again in the Son can we begin the transformation into something else, something suitable to be presented to the Father. David, in the Psalm, speaks of the glorious freedom that comes with surrender, the same surrender to God’s will that is required of us today.
Think about this: David, umpteen generations before Jesus ever walked this earth, described the character and effects of God’s grace, a grace that would only be truly evident to the world as a whole after Jesus’ death, resurrection and subsequent ascension to sit at the right hand of God the Father. David could not have known what was to come, of course, he was speaking about his own experience with God’s grace and mercy in his own life… but how amazing is it that he would describe it so timelessly? And how amazing a God that never changes, who has been the same from creation until the end of the world. That is, of course, the only conclusion possible when we see here that the character, nature and effects of God’s transforming, saving Grace have not changed throughout history.
-Evan