Keeping close to the Shepherd

This is going to get a little wild. Psalm 51 is in the corral. Or should I say, sheepfold? David’s shepherd background comes out, full on and up front.

But first a little background. David has done something radically wrong. It is so wrong that Nathan the Prophet comes to him with this story. It seems a rich man had a guest over for dinner. Rather than slaughtering one of his own sheep, the rich man goes over to his neighbor’s place and takes the only lamb that family owns, a little ewe lamb that was the family pet.

Outraged, David demands to know the identity of the rich man so he can be made to pay restitution four times over before being executed. Nathan looks directly at David and tells him that the rich man is him. David has taken Bathsheba, another man’s wife, and succeeded in plotting that man’s death. Nathan reminds David that God has given him a kingdom, riches and so much more, yet somehow all of that was not enough. Nathan then tells David what God is going to do about it, even though David is forgiven.

Most of us would have breathed a sigh of relief at that point and hoped that the matter was dropped, for good. But not David. He composed a psalm and sent it to the chief musician, to be sung at the tabernacle. It was a public confession of wrongdoing.

It was also a public request for God’s mercy and cleansing, even as it acknowledged the coming consequences. That is why verse eight sounds so odd to us. “Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have broken may rejoice” (Psalms 51:8).

In those days, when a sheep repeatedly wandered away from the shepherd and the flock, the shepherd might use his staff to break one of the sheep’s legs. He would then carry the animal around draped across his neck and shoulders until the leg healed. From that point on, the sheep would never leave the shepherd’s side because it’s longer lasting memory was not the pain, but the voice, the closeness, and the care it received from the shepherd. This new and lasting obedience, staying close to the shepherd, is what preserved the sheep’s life as it traveled with him and the flock seeking pasture and water in the wilds.

The picture of shepherd and wayward sheep was a metaphor everyone then in Israel understood. It was a picture of a loving God that would do whatever it took to get the attention of His wandering people in order to correct their errors and preserve them through the hazards of life.

David made it more than a metaphor. First he put himself directly into the place of the sheep, addressing the core problem when he wrote, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalms 51:10)

He knew what would result with a divided heart, in part because he was already feeling it. He wrote, “Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” (Psalms 51:11-12)

Then, a few verses later David put God firmly into the place of the shepherd. He wrote, “For You do not desire sacrifice; or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” (Psalms 51:1617)

As has already been noted, Jesus told us in Mark 7:21 that it is what comes out of someone’s heart that defiles him or her. Here in Psalm 51, as in Matt.12:35, we see what it takes to ensure that what comes from the heart is uplifting: nothing else but a close relationship with God. Only that will finally, effectively, fully, and permanently keep us close to our Shepherd.