A Sunday School teacher once challenged all of her five and six year old students to memorize Psalm 23 over the course of their quarter together. She would regularly test them all on certain verses and they repeatedly did very well. The end of the quarter came and all of her students lined up against the wall ready to recite and one after another did an admirable job. Some had to be coached at certain points but it was obvious they had all put forth a tremendous effort. Finally little Billy’s turn came and he stepped forward confident that he was ready to repeat each word without any trouble. He summoned all of his courage and began to recite, “The Lord is my Shepherd…” but in the heat of the moment he could not remember how the remainder went. So after several seconds of awkward silence little Billy simply concluded by saying, “…and that’s all I need to know!”
I never think about that story without laughing to myself a little bit, having been in situations at times when I could not recall what I intended to say next and wishing that I could have come up with so humorous a quip as he did. But it also makes me stop and pause that at the heart of the matter what he said was exactly right. If I can honestly come to grasp that the Lord is my Shepherd and know exactly what it means for Him to be my Shepherd and for me to be one of His sheep that covers many of the bases of Christian living. As Shepherd God has authority over me and I must respect that authority by submitting my life wholly under the control of His will. That involves initial obedience to the gospel, faithful living, proper worship, righteous works, etc. It means respecting the authority of His teaching in all matters including the unique and exclusive nature of His church, moral expectation, heaven and hell, and all other matters on which we commonly either unite or divide. Just study and apply Jesus’ parable of the Good Shepherd in John 10 to David’s consideration of the Lord as his Shepherd in Psalm 23 – the full implications of the two together far outweigh any watered down version supplied by many pulpits around the world.
It’s amazing how the simplest and even unintended statements in life often turn out to be the most profound and uplifting. Little Billy taught me a lesson that is virtually unrivaled by the greatest theologians of history, if I will fully place myself into the care and under the authority of God as the Master of my life and commit myself to serving Him as a faithful servant should then everything else will naturally fall into place. Or as little Billy put it, “The Lord is my Shepherd…and that’s all I need to know!”