Psalms 23:4

Psalms 23:4

I. The place where the words come in the Psalm would of itself be sufficient to refute that interpretation. The Psalm is a series of pictures of a believer's life and confidences, and after "the valley of the shadow of death" come the prepared table, and the anointed head, and the mantling cup, and goodness and mercy following to the end, and then the death, or rather no death at all, for it is leapt over, or left out as almost a thing which is not. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;" and then, without one break, "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." These greatly misunderstood and too limited words mean times of mental suffering and spiritual dread, and so they rightly fit in with the resolution not to fear.

II. Hope is the right attitude of a Christian's mind. And the difference between fear and hope is this: fear looks at circumstances; hope looks at the God of the circumstances: fear deals with the visible, hope with the invisible: fear at the best gives only the obedience of a slave; hope is the animation of the heart of a child of God.

III. We are indebted to David for the suggestion of the greatest, the only real, preservative from fear the realisation of a Presence. "I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me." "Presence" in the Old Testament was "God for us." In the Gospels it is "God with us." In the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles it is "God in us." Thus our whole life is hid with Christ in God.

J. Vaughan, Sermons,15th series, p. 13.

I. Mark with what exquisite simplicity the anticipation of the valley is introduced. It is part of the Psalmist's religious forecast and provision. The godly man never forgets that the course of life leads that way. But the anticipation, while it does full justice to the gloom and horror of the coming change, is not one that discomforts or even troubles the soul. This thought will give to life a certain solemnity and pathos which nothing else will give. It disenchants earthly life of its illusions, and aids the soul's detachment from all created things. It teaches every period, from youth to extreme age, its one lesson: to "remember the days of darkness."

II. The singer sings his way into the valley that he had predicated for himself. The language of his poetry blends wonderfully the future and the present. "I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me." (1) Notice, first, that the pilgrim is guided into the valley by the Shepherd Himself. The blessedness of all our religion, whether in life or death, is union with Jesus. (2) The Pastor's crook, the Shepherd's rod, is no other than the Redeemer's mediatorial sceptre swayed over one special region of His vast empire: that which is under the shadow of death. He extends His jurisdiction in a special manner over all the accesses, preparations, and circumstances of the final hour of His saints. If we live under His sceptre as the Lord of the living, we shall enter the mystical and sacred region of death under His sceptre as the Lord of the dead and dying. (3) The Redeemer's presence in the valley is also the pledge of the last sanctification for heaven of the pilgrim-spirit. "Thou anointest mine head with oil." The emancipated soul is sealed for the day of redemption, when the body will be restored, and goes on its heavenly way rejoicing with this oil of gladness of its head.

III. And now our hymn suddenly and abruptly leaves the valley. There is a blank, a pause, an omitted verse, then suddenly "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." The resting-place of the pilgrim is the eternal temple. To dwell in the temple of God, to go no more out that is the highest strain of the Christian hope.

W. B. Pope, Sermons, Addresses, and Charges,p. 36.

References: Psalms 23:4. W. Lindsay Alexander, Christian Thought and Work,p. 289; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1595; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 99; Congregationalist,vol. viii., p. 227; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 25; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 36; A. C. Tait, Lessons for School Life,p. 161; R. Collyer, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 206; G. Bainton, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 21; Bishop Thorold, The Presence of Christ,p. 129; J. Service, Sermons,p. 243.