Stability For Our Time

Part 1 is here.

In verse 4, the promise in verse 3 is confirmed and given detail.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

As a kid, I always read this part to mean if I am in the valley of the shadow of death, implying that it wasn't a permanent condition. As I look at this verse today, from the perspective of a middle aged man, I realize that we are always in the shadow of death, both physically and spiritually. Our bodies can die at any time. We are subject to disease, accidents, random events, the evil machinations of other people, and any number of things that could lead to our deaths. As some have it, we begin to die the instant we are born. Physically, that isn't far from the truth. Spiritually, however, that isn't accurate.

Spiritually speaking, we are born dead, and remain so unless we are reborn in the spirit through the Grace of God. Ezekiel 37 gives an excellent description of this:

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. l And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and l cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

One of the very neat things about this passage is that it is an Old Testament reference to both the resurrection, and to Salvation through faith, not works. Too few Christians recognize how much the New Testament teachings rely on an Old Testament foundation.

So, Psalm 23 tells us we are always in the shadow of death, which means that God is always with us, and we have no need to fear evil.

Now the next bit of verse 4 is interesting because we are told how we know God is with us:

"Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

Remember, I started this because I was asked about the difference between a rod and a staff? Well, we're finally going to find the answer.

Rod comes from the Hebrew word shebet, which is a stick used for beating or striking. Staff comes from the Hebrew word mish'enah which is a stick used for support. A shepherd would use both tools, the shebet for fighting off predators or managing the flock, and the mish'enah to support himself, or to guide the flock. The two sticks were of different sizes and performed two different functions. When we look at those functions in context of the rest of the psalm, what we see is an extension of the authority of the shepherd over his flock. The shebet is used to protect the flock from attackers, but also to correct or control the flock, while the mish'enah was used more to support and guide the flock. So what David is saying in this psalm is that whether God is using the shebet to correct us, or the mish'enah to guide us, we should be comforted, because in that correction or guidance is our proof that He is with us. It is when God stops correcting us that we should be fearful;.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The final two verses paint a picture of the consequences of our obedience to God. If we accept him as our shepherd, we will be blessed even if surrounded by enemies. God will take care of us, and work everything that happens to us for the good. Many times, we interpret this to mean that only good things will happen to us as long as we follow God, but this is an overly simplistic view, and one that will discourage many from remaining faithful through hard times. Too many pastors, trying to build their congregations following the Purpose Driven model, fall into the trap of preaching prosperity as a result of faithfulness, and this is not what the Bible says. The reward for faithfulness is not physical prosperity, but the salvation of our souls and the promise that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That's far more important than any amount of earthly wealth or comfort. God will protect us, but sometimes that protection will be in the form of the grace and strength to handle adversity with conviction and faith. John, the apostle Jesus loved, was exiled and eventually executed, as were all of the apostles, and Paul. None of them were rich or prosperous, despite living in faith and subservience to God.

But they all were wealthy in the only way that really matters; they dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I want to talk for a bit about this psalm because there's a lot going on here, some of which we don't often think about.

I got started on this because my buddy Chris asked me what the difference was between a rod and a staff. I hadn't really thought about it, and as far as I knew, it was a short stick and a long stick, but his question got me to thinking, so I started studying.

And you lucky people get to go along for the ride!

1: The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

Obviously, if the Lord is my shepherd, then that makes me His sheep, a member of his flock. There's a lot of important things bound up in this image, not the least of which is subservience or submission to His guidance and care. In order for me to benefit from His Watchfulness and His Provision, I must submit myself to His Leadership.

Now I don't know about you, but that does not come easily for me. As a man, I've been raised to do everything I can to provide for myself and my family, to stand independently, and most importantly, freely, submitting to no man or authority. Here in America, we've fought wars in order to allow men that right to stand freely, so it doesn't come easily to me or many others to bow our stiff necks and allow God to provide.

Of course, there's another side to this as well. When Adam and Eve fell, the earth was cursed, that we would have to work in order to eat. God's promise to provide does not replace that curse. We are still required to work for our survival. So does that mean our submission is worthless? If we still have to work our butts off to make a living, then why submit to a Shepherd?

Let's try an experiment and break the verse into two pieces and make it an if-then statement. If the Lord is my Shepherd, then there is nothing I shall want. Have we changed the meaning of the verse, or have we just clarified it a little bit? Because now, it says something very clearly. It's not saying that all of our needs will be met if we submit to Our Shepherd; instead it says that there is nothing we shall want. There's a big difference there. Basically, what the cverse says is that if we have the Lord God taking care of us, we don't need anything else. In the most extreme case, I could be starving to death or locked in a jail somewhere because of my faith, but as long as I have the Lord, I've got everything I need.

How many of us feel that in our hearts? How many of us believe that even if everything were taken away from us, our health, our family, our prosperity, everything that the world teaches us to value, how many would be able to say that as loong as we have Jesus, it's enough?

I'll be honest and say that I'm not there yet. I want to be. But I'm not. I wouldn't turn from God if He took everything from me because I know He works only for what is good, but I would grieve in my heart and soul for everything I lost. I've talked to people who claim they could withstand the loss of everything because they know it all comes from God anyway, and they've already given it all back to Him. I met a family who lived it when they lost their daughter. Her father stood before the church during her funeral with dry eyes and a serenity and he told everybody who asked that he knew his little girl was with God, and was better off. My faith is strong, but not that strong. I know what he said is true, but at the same time, I would grieve. I would be angry. I would want my kids back.

But the promise is still there. When the Lord is my Shepherd, when I turn it over to Him, as hard as it may be to do, and no matter how many times I try to take my life back from Him, when I am in His Will, I will want nothing. I will be sustained through trials, and provided for, which is what the next verse is all about.

2: He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

While this is often read to mean that God will provide for us materially, and it does mean that to some extent, the more important part is that God has prepared a place for us and He is leading us to it. John 10:19 uses the word pastures to refer to heaven:

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

A pasture is a place of rest and renewal, as the flock can feed on the good grass and drink from the clear waters. So not only are we told we will gain an earthly serenity by being in the flock, but we will also gain access to a place where we can rest, and be renewed. This renewal is of both the body and the soul.

This verse also continues the theme of submission, a theme which culminates in verse 4, in its use of the words makes and leads. Clearly, we don't reach the pasture of our own accord or through our own efforts; we have to be lead there and made to lie down. It's very interesting that the literal translations of this verse all use the word makes. That compulsory element is intentional, not a poetic invention of the King James translators. When we become part of God's flock, He will compel us to do HIs Will. If you don't believe me, just ask Jonah.

3: He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Most of the time, we think of that first sentence in a very narrow way. It follows right after we get some food and something to drink, and we tend to think of being restored in a purely physical sense, as in, "Gee, I feel much better now!" The problem with this is that this verse isn't talking about our body; it's talking about our souls being restored. When I read this verse, what I see is a prophecy of Jesus Christ, who truly restored our souls when He died on the cross for our sins. Let's go back to John 10 and look at it in a little bit more detail.

11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,
15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.
18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

The Lord is truly my shepherd, and He did lay down His Life for me, that my soul might be restored and I could be one of His flock. And He does lead me in the paths of righteousness that I might bring glory and honor to His Name, the name that I take for myself:

Christian. A Christ follower. A sinful man trying to walk a sinless life. As long as I do my very best, I know that I will inevitably fail miserably. I need help. Fortunately, in Part 2, we'll find that help is promised in verse 4.

All quotes from ESV Online Study Bible Psalm 23. unless otherwise attributed

What is a holograph?

If you've seeen those freaky sunglasses with the 3D images of eyeballs inthe lenses, then you've seen a holograph. It's a photographic technique where two lasers are used to create an image that retains all of the 3 dimensional information of the original object. Unlike a photograph, which loses that information as it converts the image into 2 dimensions, the holograph maintains all of the information, and if you view it under the right circumstances, you can retrieve that information. If you've ever had a chance to play with a hologram, you can tilt the film to look at the sides and part of the back of the object.



It's pretty cool.

One of the neatest things about a holograph is that if you cut it in half, you don't get half the image. You get two copies of the image with half the definition. Since the image is produced based on the interference pattern of the two lasers, then, unlike regular photography, each segment of the holographic film is exposed to all of the light used to make the hologram. Think of it like looking out of a window. If you cut a window's size in half, you don't cut what you can see though it in half. You just have to move around to see everything. IN holography, the interference pattern does the moving for you.

So why is this important, and what does it have to do with the Bible?

Hang on, I'm getting there.

Computer wizards are working right now to develop computer memory that works on holographic storage principles. For example, right now, information is written to a specific part of the hard drive. Each section of the hard drive only carries its specific information. If that sector on the disc fails, that information is lost. IN a holographic system, losing a section of the disc would not mean that the data is lost. Since it was stored in a manner where each sector of the disc contained all of the information as a whole, the loss of a section could be overcome, and data could be reconstructed using the information in the rest of the memory.

The other advantage to holographic storage is you get automatic error correction to protect against read/write errors. In traditional data transfer schemes, after sending information from the disk to the CPU, the computer performs a mathematical operation on the data and generates a checksum. It passes on the checksum to the CPU, which performs the same operation on the received data, and verifies the checksum. If the numbers don't match, an error code is generated and sent back to the data storage unit and the information i sent again. In a holographic memory system, this operation can be modified to take advantage of the interconnectedness of the data to do a checksum without requiring a checksum.

So, let's take a look at the Bible.

'If you've read it, I'm sure you've noticed the same ideas coming up over and over again, but slightly different each time. Take salvation for example. In one place, the Bible says all you have to do is say that you believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and you will be saved. In another, it says you must confess with your mouth AND believe in your heart that Jesus is the Son of God in order to get Salvation. In still another, it says you must take up your cross and follow Him if you want to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. And it goes on and on.

What you are seeing is holographic information storage in action. The entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was written as an integrated whole, despite the fact that it consists of 66 books, written by about 40 different people over hundreds of years. The reason that every piece of archeaological evidence found, every manuscript that's been dug up has confirmed to a tremendous extent the accuracy of our modern Bible is due to that holography. Scribes and translators could not only use line by lin verification in a process similar to computer checksums, but they could also use the holographic properties to verify that what was written in one place matched what was written in another.

It's a truly remarkable book.

But we already knew that. Why is it so important to understand the nature of the Bible?

Simple. In a hologram, if you lose a piece, the whole thing gets more fuzzy. If you drop parts of the image, you still get the whole thing, but you lose detail. In the Bible, if you start discarding verses, or chapters, or entire books, you are losing resolution in your study of the whole book. You throw out one part, and suddenly, you have trouble understanding another part. The connections are broken. Only when you restore those connections can you begin to get a clearer picture. And since this book is the Word of God, and Jesus is the Word made flesh, then what we're really doing is clouding our picture of Jesus Christ.

While that's bad enough, there's another danger, one more subtle, and more devastating in the long run.

If we narrow our focus, and only read a few selected verses, picking only the ones that we like and understand because they fit our pre-existing beliefs, then we neglect to study the rest of the book. Again, we lose the focus on Christ and replace it with a fuzzy picture that might look a lot like Christ, but isn't really Christ. The devastating thing is that we fall into this trap while we're studying, and doing what we believe is right in the eyes of the Lord. We get so wrapped up in our study of little pieces of the Word that we lose sight of the Big Picture. This is the mistake of the Pharisees, and Jesus had nothing but contempt for them, as the Scriptures clearly told of His coming, yet the best scholars of the time missed it. As a side note, while most scholars concede that Daniel accurately predicted to within a few weeks Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, there are others who believe he got it right down to the very day. The prediction was so accurate that historians have tried to throw doubt on the validity of the book of Daniel.

They have been unsuccessful.

So what is the take away from this? Simple. The Bible is a wondrously constructed and tightly integrated holographic memory storage system. Using words instead of laser beams, the Author, working through the hands of prophets, kings, slaves, and poets, produced a book that accurately predicted the future, giving dates for significant events 400 years prior to the event. This is not coincidence; it's not an accident. It's a design.

And that means that each and every word in it, from Genesis through Revelation, is important to the whole.

Before I close, a quick word on Inerrancy. This is a widely debated and misunderstood doctrine that exists in many flavors. Some believe that every word of a certain text is inerrent. Others believe that the original manuscripts were inerrant, but that errors could have crept in over the centuries. Others believe that the Bible is totally uninspired and is simply the work of men. At its heart is the idea that the Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and is therefore inerrent in all details. In errant means that every word is there for a reason; not that every word is accurate. Given the undeniable fact that early New Testament texts do show differences, it is clear that inerrancy cannot be claimed for these texts. That's why the predominant view is that inerrancy attached only to the original manuscripts as written by the authors. This seems like a cop out to me. If the Holy Spirit inspire the original manuscripts, then He could have inspired the translators, copiers, etc.

My personal conviction is that the only Inerrant copy of the Word of God was made flesh, lived, and died for our sins. All other copies, like all things of the earth, are corrupted. However, the Bible is as accurate as is humanly possible to make it, and it was written under the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The verifiable prophesies alone attest to its inherent accuracy. Some versions are better than others, some deliberately introduce distortion of the language. I favor more literal translations, which is why I use an ESV most of the time, although I'm also fond of the NKJV and the venerable KJV. One of the advantages of working with multiple version is that I get a fuller flavor of the original by seeing how various translators approached the passage. So, I recognize that mistakes have been made, both in translation and in copying, but I still have faith in the message as a whole, and now we're back to the holography thing. I allow the Bible as a whole to guide my reading of individual passages and verses. If something doesn't make sense, I try a new translation. I research the original Greek or Hebrew. I read up on other commentaries that explore these details.

And I pray.

One of the things I've found about the Bible is that it is like a jigsaw puzzle. With a jigsaw, you take all the little pieces and you put them together to make the picture on the box. If you don't have the box, well, you are in for a very long afternoon. On the other hand, if you have the box and the picture, you can sort through the pieces much faster and put the puzzle together with much less effort. When reading the Bible, all we can see are the little pieces. We study them, twist and turn them, and try to get them to fit into the puzzle, We may even force a few pieces into place if they kinda fit, but it isn't until God grants us a glimpse of the picture on the cover that we can truly understand where the pieces fit, and how they work together. That moment of revelation, the Holy A-Ha, is the reward for the patient study of the Word.

Trying to pass on that A-Ha to somebody else? That's another adventure.