“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters” (Psalm 23:1–2).
Virtually every educated mind in the English-speaking world has heard the words of this psalm of King David. These words to our loving Shepherd have been spoken by many a soldier under a star-filled sky during a dark night in a foxhole on some faraway battlefield. These are the words whose syllables have been formed by, and whispered through, the lips of many while dying on a bed of affliction. These are the very words, like a lullaby for fear, that have brought hope and peace to millions across the centuries.
When, in a Galilean setting, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep” (John 10:11), every hearer’s mind must have raced back to these words of the psalmist: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). One of…
