Psalm 23, pt.2
A Different Look

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

And how does He shepherd us? He gives us the food and the water that we need when we need it. But beyond the ordinary provisions of life, we have access to spiritual food and spiritual water and that in such form as we are able to consume it. The shepherd does not provide dry grass when green is available nor running water (which sheep cannot drink). He does not provide meat for sheep for they cannot use it. He gives us such as we need and in the form that we can use.

The language of heaven, of God, is such a language that men cannot hear it and know it’s meaning. Nor can they speak it so as to converse with God. But God Himself descended as the Word and was made flesh and dwelt among men. He brought the glorious truths of heaven to earth, couched them in human language and gave them to men in such a form as they could use and consume, that is, those who are His sheep.

What a blessed thought that we have the words of God in our language, phrased in concepts that we can grasp and given to us as a free gift!! And what a further blessing that God has opened our hearts and minds, enabling us to grasp with the eye of faith those blessed realities and appropriate them as our own. Was ever any creature so cared for, so fed, so watered as the sheep of God?

3 He restoreth my soul:

And how did we come to be sheep of the Great Shepherd? Shepherds acquire sheep by purchase and by birth and on both accounts He has acquired us to Himself. When we were in the slavemarket of sin,
He bought us with His own blood.

1 Cor 7:23
23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. (KJV)

Was ever such a price paid for any thing as was paid for the purchase of God’s sheep? Was ever a treasury so emptied as the treasury of heaven when the Precious Lamb of God stepped forward to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?

Oh, to be the sheep of God is no small and ordinary thing, it is to be bought with a price so fine and so rare that no one but God Himself could have paid it.

When we were dead in trespasses and sins, He birthed us into His kingdom by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Romans 6 tells us that we got our life when we were raised from the dead in Him. We ourselves were the offscouring of the world, loathsome and in every way putrid to the eyes of the Holy God. But in love the Son of God embraced us into His own bosom, taking to Himself the guilt of our sins and died with us in Him before the judgment bar of God. However neither we nor Him were left in the grave, but on the third day He rose and we rose in Him to newness of life.

We have seen many things restored in our lives. We have seen old furniture get a new look at the hands of an artist. We have seen old cars restored beyond the wildest dreams of their original builders. We have seen old buildings made better than new with the talent of a great builder.

But never was anything ever been restored like the souls of God’s people. First of all, no creature of God surpasses the man He created in the garden of Eden. And no creature has ever fallen so far as did man in that original sin. But nothing has ever come from such a decrepit state to that state of glory which God has given to His people.

Eph 2:4-6
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (KJV)

Truly He has restored our soul.

— May 5, 2020