[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

In Psalm 23, the famous "The LORD is my shepherd" psalm... we have 3 possible [NT, or Christian] readings.

1. Jehovah shepherds (guides, leads, cares for) the righteous man, personified in this case by David, the now-grown shepherd boy.

2. Jehovah shepherds the Son of David, the human, righteous Messiah, who we Christians believe was Jesus the Nazarene. In His human life, led always by His Father in heaven, Jesus fulfilled and fully completed David's type in the Psalms.

3. Jesus is Jehovah (John 8:24) shepherding the christian flock (John 10:11).

Lee presented us with the third interpretation. Surely that is not incorrect. But Lee ignored the second reading (please note that these interpretations are not mutually exclusive -- seeing one doesn't preclude another). Somehow in Psalm 23 Lee simply could not see Jesus the righteous Son of David, the fully obedient Son of God. He could only see Jesus/Jehovah shepherding Lee. My point is that you don't get to experience the third without the second. The incarnation is fully expressed in Psalm 23.

In spite of Lee's talk of "the humanity of Jesus" I cannot find the humanity of Jesus in his review of Psalm 23.

To some extent, reading number 1 is true. If David had not sought out God with all his heart, then he would not have been successful to the extent he did, in subduing his foes and uniting Israel. But David of course was not perfect. So his ability to live in the reality of his declaration was only partial.

For option number 2, we perhaps see Jesus as the Lamb of God. Fully obedient, fully submissive. Heb 10:7,9 quote Psalm 40 and say "I (Jesus) have come to do Your (the Father's) will". The Father's will are the rod and staff of Jesus. They guide and comfort Him; doing the will of the Father is Jesus' food, His "green pasture" (Psa 23:2; cf John 4:34).

John 14:24 "Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me." Jesus says that His words were actually not His but came from His Father in heaven. And as much as Jesus was obedient to and shepherded by the Holy Father in heaven, in both His words and good works, so His example of obedience becomes our guide home. As we see the obedient Son, we repent of being self-willed, obstinate "goats", and we follow the Lamb. We allow His words to abide in us, we keep them and the Paraclete comes to guide and teach. The chief Sheep thus becomes the chief Shepherd. Peter's epistle touched on this in saying that the elders should not shepherd by compulsion but by being examples. Peter knew that this is what Jesus had done, and publicly acknowledged that the flock leaders should discipline themselves to Jesus' path, and also become obedient examples to the newer and weaker ones.

Certainly option 3 is also true from the Christian perspective. I argue that it's best fulfilled by appreciating and applying option 2. But my question is: why would we deliberately miss the incarnation? In Psalm 23, the obedient Jesus "in the days of his flesh" (Heb 5:7) is simply passed by in WL's teaching.

Of course I also have "fallen concepts" which I read onto the Bible's text. I miss stuff, and a lot of what I think I "get" I don't fully live; thus I'm a "hearer" and not a "doer" and my ideas are vain. So if I try to judge the blindness of WL I merely prove my own.

But still, I'll make this point: our speaking to one another should lead us to "see Jesus", ESPECIALLY the one made "a little lower than the angels" (Heb 2:9), in the sacred text. The NT and OT constantly reference each other, and together they constitute a seamless narrative of divine reality manifest in the Word of God, made flesh. This is the way home, the way to "glory and honor" - see the obedient Son and follow Him. Any Bible teacher who glosses over this has little value for us. And WL, inexplicably panning David's declarations of fealty as vanity, and regarding his words as merely those of the soulish, fallen Adamic race, and ignoring in them the clear image of the coming Son of David, totally missed the boat here. Again and again the expositors in the NT held up the OT text and said that it pointed to the incarnate Christ, Jesus the Nazarene. If you look at his expositions of the Psalms, WL agreed with this only to the extent he was forced to by the explicit NT examples; otherwise he rejected it.

What can I say? How could I, or any seeking Christian in good conscience, follow this kind of teaching?