"The LORD is my shepherd." Look at the very first word — LORD, in small capitals. That's the covenant name of God, Yahweh, the "I AM" from the burning bush. David isn't saying some god is his shepherd. He's saying the God, the Maker of heaven and earth, stoops down to do the lowly, dusty work of a shepherd. And a thousand years later, in the chapter we read this week, a carpenter from Nazareth stands up in front of everyone and says, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). He's not borrowing a nice image from David's poem. He is taking the name of David's God and putting it on himself — and in the same breath he says, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Then he promises what Psalm 23 has been saying all along: "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28). That's "I shall not want," that's "I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever" — spoken by the Shepherd himself. So Psalm 23 isn't just a comfort we read at funerals. It's a claim about who Jesus is. The Shepherd of the twenty-third Psalm has a face and a name, and he laid down his life for the sheep.
