No One in Our Lives “Always” Acts a Certain Way—Except God
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Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
forever. (Ps. 23:6).
I’m sure you have seen a police escort of an important dignitary where some armored vehicles go ahead and some follow, with the special person in the middle, and there are usually police escorts on either side as well. Is there any safer way to travel? Complete security, perfect protection, full provision: ahead and beside and behind. The sense of Psalm 23 is exactly the same as Psalm 139:
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me. (Ps. 139:5)
But now see something else that elevates these words to a stunning vista. Notice the modifier that begins the verse: “Surely.”
Richard Briggs is right to say of this translation that “there is a hint of gathering up the earlier lines of the poem”1 so that it is a way of summarizing the effects that will certainly follow in the wake of the Lord’s shepherding and hosting. “Surely” is an intensive, affirmative word: this will definitely happen.
But I wonder if this penetrates deeply enough to the profundity of what David is claiming about this shepherd’s care. The same word can, in fact, be rendered “only” (as the ESV footnote recognizes). Translated like this, it has a restrictive sense (which necessarily includes the intensive sense) but goes beyond it and says more.
The Lord of Psalm 23
David Gibson
David Gibson walks through each verse in Psalm 23, thoroughly examining its 3 depictions of the believer’s union with Christ as sheep and shepherd, traveler and companion, and guest and host.
The meaning is that David is looking back over his shoulder at all that has gone before, and he is able to confess that he can see the goodness and the steadfast love of God in every single circumstance of life, the valley of the shadow of death as much as the green pastures and still waters. “In all that happens to me,” David is basically saying, “I see only his goodness and loving-kindness.” As commentators who offer this translation recognize, quite simply, “The expression is remarkable.”2 It is an astonishing confession of faith that the changing scenes of life, which are full of evil, pain, and suffering, never indicate a bad God. Rather, in all that happens—despite all that happens—those who are led by the shepherd and walk with the shepherd all the days of their lives can see that God is only ever good and only ever loving to his sheep all the time. In Davis’s words, “There is a certain chemistry in believing faith that can combine brute facts with buoyant faith.”3
“Always”
Just pause to feel the intensity of this. The intensity is not just in the circle it draws around all that happens but so too in the line it draws through all that happens: the Lord is “only” like this “all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6). Every. Single. Day. Always. He has no off days and no half-hearted days. No days where instead of pursuit he dawdles in his goodness or forgets to follow in his mercy. No days where he drops the ball and sends badness and hatred instead of goodness and love. “You are good and do good” (Ps. 119:68).
If you have ever had a heated argument with a close family member, then you have heard yourself say, or heard it said, “You always do such and such.” It is usually a telltale sign that all sense of proportion and balance has been lost in the heat of the moment. Such language indicates we would do well to retreat to calm down and regain perspective!
“You are forever doing this . . . you are always doing that . . . always.”
But, dear friend reading this, can you see what David is saying? He is using this kind of language about God, but in reverse. It is intense, it is personal, it is so direct in telling God what he always does, but it is the reverse of a heated outburst. Instead, it is a love song: “You, Lord, you always do this: you are always good to me, you are always only ever merciful to me. I’ve blown it so many times, and yet every single time I turn around, I only ever see your goodness and loving-kindness in close pursuit.”
Isn’t this amazing? Imagine just for a moment saying to someone not “you always get it wrong” but, instead, “you always get it right.” What kind of person must someone be for that to be true? “You always do no wrong, you never commit injustice, you are always merciful, you are always faithful, always compassionate, always forgiving, always kind.” It is so beautiful. Human steadfast love, eighty-one years of love, can be amazing. But can you take in being pursued by God himself, by the goodness of the Lord of the burning bush, by the steadfast love of the Lord Jesus our good shepherd? There is only ever goodness and mercy because this is who God is himself.
“Only”
Yet we must reckon with the staggering implications of this word “only.” Can it really be true that there is “only” goodness and steadfast love following me. Really? In my life, and in yours, I’m sure, it often looks like there are plenty of things that are not good and not loving, and those things seem to be winning.
Is it possible to believe this “only” and to live with this hope?
I tremble as I write these lines, and some of us will tremble to read them. Maybe right now you are in the realm of raw, brutal realities that have ravaged your life, and it seems impossible beyond belief that you might ever combine these with “buoyant faith.” Death. Illness. Injury. Infertility. Grief. You are right there in the valley of the shadow of death. Darkness seems your closest friend, your only friend; bewilderment and perplexity pursue you. Goodness and mercy are nowhere to be seen, never mind the “only” things to be seen.
Let me say, as we wrestle with this theology, that if your own current experience cannot handle this perspective, just take time to note the vantage point of the guest here in Psalm 23:6: goodness and mercy are pursuing him. He is moving forward, and they are behind him. Sometimes, only when we look back on events will we ever be able to see the goodness and steadfast love of the Lord in them. If you cannot feel it now, the Lord is still with you in the valley. He will still walk with you without fail all your days, and one day it may be that you look back on the worst of experiences, the most dreadful of times, the deepest of dark valleys, and you will be able say, “I see it now: God’s goodness and God’s mercy never left me, even then.”
Many commentators helpfully suggest that David’s own experience teaches us this. A sordid affair, incest, murder, civil war, and the death of his children—we should not underestimate the lived wilderness experience of the ordinary man who penned this psalm. “Perhaps some of the good was behind him, protecting him, but he chose to turn aside from it. Yet as he looked back he could vividly remember the good that followed him.”4 Lived experience does not have to be the only lens for our circumstances.
If you cannot feel it now, the Lord is still with you in the valley.
An Anchor in Pain
It is also possible in the life of faith to come to a lived conviction “that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28). This conviction does not erase the pain in the moment, but it can anchor it and provide a compass point in the valley as we lift up our pain to God. There is a chorus of faithful witnesses—stretching all the way back through church history, into the pages of Scripture to King David, and back beyond him in the storyline of redemption—who proclaim to us in our pain that the shepherd has not abandoned us. Each one teaches us that God is working out his sovereign purposes for our lives perfectly in keeping with who he is as the great “I am,” our Lord of covenant faithfulness.
This is the story of the Bible. Jacob, one of Scripture’s scoundrels, who knew such pain and heartache in his own life through his own sin and the sins of others, still confesses at the end: God “has been my shepherd all my life long to this day” (Gen. 48:15). It is remarkable that the first reference to God as shepherd in the Bible is personal before it is corporate. Think of Joseph, Moses, Hannah, Naomi, Ruth, and David, to name just a few in redemption’s great story. Ask believers who have been through the darkest valley, the fiery furnace, the deep waters—ask them what it was like, and they will each say to you, “The Lord was with me.”5
The Lord is with you.
At the funeral of my niece, Leila Judith Grace, who arrived into the world stillborn, we sang a glorious hymn that some attribute to John Calvin, “I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art.” It contains this beautiful verse:
Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness,
no harshness hast thou and no bitterness:
make us to taste the sweet grace found in thee
and ever stay in thy sweet unity.6
As my brother and his wife have often mentioned since Leila’s death, sometimes these things are best contemplated by reverent, patient silence as we acknowledge that the shepherd’s true and perfect gentleness is pursuing us by a sore providence.
Sometimes, with Job, we need to learn to cover our mouths and to wait on God, lest we accuse the shepherd of bitter harshness toward his sheep. Sometimes these things are best sung through tears and sung by faith in the night, not by sight.
But each time the confession of faith is the same: the Lord is good, and he is only ever good. And in all his ways with all his people he only ever sends goodness and mercy.
Notes:
- Richard S. Briggs, The Lord Is My Shepherd: Psalm 23 for the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), 113.
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 5, Psalms (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 209; Dale Ralph Davis provides the same translation in Slogging Along in the Paths, 171.
- Dale Ralph Davis, Slogging Along in the Paths of Righteousness: Psalms 13–24 (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2014), 171.
- Kenneth E. Bailey, The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament (London: SPCK, 2015), 61.
- Jonathan Gibson, “The King of Love My Shepherd Is,” a sermon on Ps. 23 preached in the chapel of Westminster Theological Seminary, April 6, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/.
- https://hymnary.org/.
This article is adapted from The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host by David Gibson.
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