June 4, 2023
A Shepherd’s Reflection: God’s Character Revealed Jehovah-Jireh
Psalm 23:1 & Genesis 11:1-14
Psalms 23:1 - The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
The 23rd Psalm has to be one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry ever written. Its beauty (as in all good poetry) comes through the writer's personal experiences. In the 23rd Psalm, it is no different, because King David is reflecting upon his experiences with God. God’s character had been shown to David in many different ways throughout his life from the time God sought him out to anoint him King at the hands of Samuel, to David standing in front of Goliath knowing God was with him, and to the protection God gave during Saul’s pursuit. As David reflected upon these events he started seeing them through his old shepherding eyes. It’s in these 6 simple verses that we can see the character of God revealed. I’d like us to take a look at this 23rd Psalm to understand more about God’s character that is revealed as a former shepherd pauses to reflect upon the character of the Good Shepherd.
David starts this Psalm by making it very personable. He states that the Lord is MY shepherd. The children of Israel (as recorded in the Old Testament) sometimes had an issue with making God impersonal. They would talk and sing about the God of Jacob, but very rarely do we see that they say something like David is stating here. He wants everyone to know that God is not just the shepherd of Israel as a whole, but He is also a very personal shepherd as well. He is a shepherd who not only watches over His chosen people but is watching over him personally. God is just as concerned for all of us as individuals as He is for the nation as a whole. We also need to notice that David uses the word Lord when he states the LORD is his shepherd. The Lord is the one who had a vested interest in him as a metaphorical sheep, the one who paid the price for the sheep (the sheep again being David), as well as the one doing the shepherding and will continue to do so. That one sentence sets the stage for the rest of this Psalm but there is so much meaning in it for us as well. As Christians, we know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-14), that we can make Him our personal Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9), and that He is constantly shepherding us (Hebrews 7:25). Through Jesus we can and do experience as well as understand the character of God, just like David did.
David reveals the first characteristic of God in the sentence, “I shall not want.” David is stating that God is Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides. Can you imagine being in a place in life where you have no wants? Sounds like paradise to me. So many times our wants can get in the way of our walk with God and our growth as His children. Sometimes those wants can be innocent, but other times they can be sinful wants. We can rest assured that we are in the hands of the Good Shepherd and He will provide everything we need. What exactly does this look like in real life? It’s one thing to say He provides, but it’s another thing to see Him do it and know how He goes about providing for us, His sheep. I think the best way to approach this is to go back and look at the events surrounding God being given the name Jehovah-Jireh for the first time. It happened way back in the book of Genesis almost 1,000 years before this Psalm was written. Let’s take a look at the events laid out in Genesis 22 as we try to understand what it means to have a shepherd who provides.
God provides through trials. - Genesis 22:1-2
1 Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” 2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
Abraham had very little to go off of in order to understand who God was. He knew from verbal accounts how God had created everything. He knew of God’s judgment through the flood, and about God from the few times God spoke to him directly. Other than that Abraham was left in the dark. What a privilege it is for us to have God’s Word, The Bible, literally at our fingertips any moment we want it. Can you imagine if God had told Abraham that a few thousand years from now, God’s entire revelation to man would be easily available to almost everyone? We really don’t understand how blessed we are to live in the 21st century. While we can open God’s Word to see how God’s character is revealed through the pages of the Bible, Abraham didn’t have that luxury. God had to reveal a new aspects of His character to Abraham through experiences for his benefit and ours. It’s true that we can also experience the characteristics of God in our lives, but we need to understand that these experiences will NEVER go against God’s word. What God wants us to know about Him, in its entirety, is contained within the pages of the Bible. God knew Abraham had a need to know Him more and this trial was how God chose to provide that for Abraham. Abraham was over 100 years old at this point in scripture. He had been through a lot and seen God move many times in different ways throughout that century. He didn’t know everything about God that God knew he needed to know so He sent a trial for Abraham, the hardest trial Abraham would ever have to face. This was a trial to test Abraham’s faith in God. James 1:3-4 tells us that when we experience these types of trials or tests of our faith it will cause our endurance to grow. When our endurance grows and is fully developed we will be perfect and in need of nothing. It sounds a lot like the sheep that David describes in Psalms 23:1 - a sheep who needed nothing. You would think that since he was over the age of 100, Abraham would have known enough about who God was, that God would have backed off and given him a break from trials. However, never forget God is the author and finisher of our faith. While we are still breathing on this side of eternity, God is still working on us whether we are 10 or 110. God’s not finished with us yet and He wasn’t finished with Abraham. Abraham was called to give God the thing he prized the most, the son that was given to him in his old age. God did this to provide something to Abraham that he couldn’t experience any other way than through a trial. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever looked back upon your life to see the trials God put you through and even though you didn’t see it at the time later you realized what He was providing for you through that trial? Sometimes we wonder why God doesn’t just tell us these things, but He did, it’s in His Word. Our pride, or just ourselves, will get in the way of really learning more about God and growing in Him. The trials come so we can know God more intimately. God is the one shepherding us and providing for us through the entire testing.
God provides through our trust. - Genesis 22:3-8
3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”
6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.
As we said before, Abraham’s faith was being tested and faith is really your trust plus your actions (obedience in this case). It’s through that trust and obedience that God provides. Let’s take it back to the shepherd analogy of Psalms 23. When a shepherd leads a sheep to safety and leads it to a place where it will have everything it needs, does the sheep have any right to say that it’s not being provided for when it keeps running off to do its own thing instead of following its shepherd? Remember in Psalms 23, that we are the sheep. Therefore let’s ask the same question another way - do we have any right to complain that God isn’t providing everything we need for us when He lays out exactly how we are supposed to live and instead of following the Good Shepherd we just do what we feel is right so we are left feeling unfulfilled? Obedience is the key to God providing us with everything we need. We must trust Him and act on what He commands us to do. Abraham did just that, even though it must have been painfully difficult to do. Let’s look at exactly how Abraham carried out his obedience because it says a lot about how we should be obedient to God as well.
Abraham acted with a swift obedience.
Abraham got up early and left. Abraham didn’t say, “Well, maybe I should pray about it” or “I’m not sure what Sarah would think about this, maybe I should talk it out with her first”. Instead, after God told him to take his son to Moriah and sacrifice him on a mountain, Abraham obeyed. Abraham took some servants, got his donkey ready, chopped some wood, shared God’s command for a sacrifice with the others, and went early. Many times our provisions are delayed because our obedience is delayed. When God commands us to do something, it’s always for our good. After all, He is the Good Shepherd, and the quicker we are in our obedience the quicker we receive what God has in store for us. Is this easy? Not at all, but we can rest assured it’s always going to be for the best.
Abraham acted with an unwavering obedience.
For three days they traveled and I’m sure Abraham thought about what God had commanded him to do the entire time and those thoughts could have brought up doubts. At any time during that journey, he could have turned back and no one would have blamed him. True obedience does not waiver. It does not waiver when the road gets long, when the journey gets tiring, or when the task is tough. True obedience is consistent. We have a tendency to obey once or twice and then go back to our old ways and feel really good about ourselves. Obedience isn’t for just once or twice, but it’s for every moment of our life. Abraham’s obedience didn’t waiver and neither should ours.
Abraham acted with a focused obedience.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of this story is recorded here in verse 8. Isaac asks why they have no offering when they have everything else they need to make the sacrifice. Abraham responds by saying God will provide. Hebrews 11:17-19 tells us that Abraham was focused on obedience because he was focused on God and His promises. Before this time we have no record of resurrections in scripture. Abraham's faith was so focused on God that he knew because God had promised that it was through Isaac that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. God could do anything to fulfill that promise, even bringing Isaac back from the dead. Abraham didn’t know how God would do it. All he knew is that God would do it. He was focused on God and he knew that God never fails.
God provides through His timing. - Genesis 22:9-14
9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” 12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” 13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
What a scene this must have been. What a moment to see Isaac’s trust in his father and see Abraham’s trust in God. Abraham was obedient to the moment God said stop. It would have been convenient for God to say stop after Abraham got up that first morning. It would have been easier if God had stopped Abraham at any time during those three days they traveled to Moriah. It would have been easier as they walked up the hill to say that was enough, but those would have been in men's timing, not God’s. God is always on time. God sent the ram to be the substitute just at the right moment. God always provides in His timing, not ours. Abraham knew this and trusted not only God but His timing even when (at least to Isaac) time was about to run out. God provides for us as well, in His timing. That happened when as Abraham said, “God provided a sacrifice” because about 2,000 years after this event God provided another lamb when (as Paul states in Galatians 4) when the fullness of time had come. Jesus was that lamb that came and was the sacrifice, not on the hill called Moriah, but on a hill called Calvary. It was on that hill that we, as Christians, can call and experience Him as Jehovah-Jireh because the Lord provided what we all need - a Savior. Jesus is the only way to be saved from our sins and the consequences of our sins. The sacrifice was provided and that sacrifice is Jesus.
Trials and tests will come in our lives where we look around and might have the tendency to think God has left us or abandoned us. I’m sure this happened in Abraham's life even after this event as well. When these times of doubt came, I’m sure Abraham just reminded himself of the Hill Moriah because that’s when God provided at just the right time. When we experience this kind of doubt we can do the same, not to remember the hill at Moriah, but rather we can remember the hill called Calvary. As Paul says in Romans 8:32 if God didn’t spare His own Son, for all of us, then how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? He is the Good Shepherd and He will provide all we need. We must understand that sometimes it’s through trials - it’s always through obedience and always in His timing. When we understand that, we can be the sheep of Psalms 23:1 and experience Jehovah-Jirah like we never have before. We can declare in our own lives that the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
