Faith
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Psalm 23:1-3
STORY
On March 26, 1862, while the Civil War was raging throughout the United States, Pastor Joseph Gilmore stood and preached at the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He wanted the people to turn their eyes off the war for a moment and look to Jesus. His sermon text was Psalm 23, the Shepherd’s Psalm. His sermon became the title for the hymn He Leadeth Me.
Gilmore’s own recollection on the hymn’s formation: “I set out to give the people an exposition of the 23rd Psalm, which I had given before on three or four occasions, but this time I did not get further than the words ‘He Leadeth Me.’ Psalm 23:2, ‘he leadeth me beside the still waters,’ became the theme of the song”
Three years later, while preaching at another church, he opened their hymn book and found his words set to music. To his surprise his wife had sent the words to a Christian periodical and William Bradbury of Maine set the words to music.
The refrain reads of the hymn He Leadeth Me reads:
He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand he leadeth me
DEVOTION
The 23rd psalm best describes the Lord’s relationship to Israel, which is one of caring. The Shepperd-God leads the psalmist to the paths of nourishment and rest. If that path must go through the dark voids of life, the psalmist has nothing to fear of the dark shadows. There is no fear of the pitfalls of daily living nor enemies he will encounter from the terrorism of others, for the shepherd with his rod and staff is ever present to defend the psalmist.
As we endure the trials and tribulations of daily living, this too is our psalm of reassurance and comfort.
Little more can be said of the comfort that Psalm 23 brings, so I will let the early Church Father Augustine, who preached on verse 2, on which the hymn He Leadeth Me is based, bring us guidance and comfort:
The pastures that this good shepherd has prepared for you, in which he has settled for you to take your fill, are not various kinds of grasses and green things, among which some are sweet to the taste, some extremely bitter, which as the seasons succeed one another are sometimes there and sometimes not. Your pastures are the words of God and his commandments, and they have all been sown in sweet grasses. These pastures have been tasted by that man who said to God, “How sweet are your words to my palate, more so than honey and the honeycomb in my mouth!”