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Some things are tried and true. Some things never change. Some things are what you think they are. Psalm 23 is all of those . . . and more.
We need to remember the spiritual resources God provides. In our quest for the next “thing,” we sometimes overlook the tried and true, unchanged and consistently helpful; that’s Psalm 23.
Psalm 23 tells us about the Good Shepherd. He will restore your soul, and you’re invited to dwell in the Lord’s house.
Many of the Psalms are songs for deliverance and salvation by God, others praise and thanksgiving. Jehovah -jireh my provider, not my patron. What separated the Old Testament Jews from the Assyrians, Romans and Babylonians is Israel’s convenant relationship with God. Suzerainty. Benefits to the Jews if they were obedient to the law, otherwise curses and punishment. Psalms 23 gives a glimpse of a moment is David’s life when he sees himself victorious, and provided for by God, perhaps after slaying Goliath. But Psalms 140, catches David at a different moment, ‘deliver me O Lord from the evil man’, and Psalms 59 ‘deliver from my enemies o my Lord’, find David in a moment when he seeks God’s help. This seeking was based on David’s obedience to the Godly suzerainty with Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
David on his death bed told his son Solomon to obey God’s convenant, 1 Kings 2:3. On one end of the covenant blessings, on the other end of the covenant curses. To call the God of Psalms 23 a patron, and overlook the need to be obedient to the convenant to obtain Godly blessings, is to misread the nature and personality of the God of the OT. The fall of the northern Kingdom to Assyria in 721 BC, the fall of Judea to Babylon 587 BC, and to Rome 70 AD point directly to disobedience and unbelief in God, as well as the Jewish persecutions during the Inquisition and World War II, His apparent absence, says a lot about God as patron, beneficer, in relation to God as judge of covenant breakers and unbelief in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Many still cruising for a bruising!
If a patron is a helper, a provider of benefits, then he in one sense he/she fit the Romans mold of the Jewish idea of Messiah. But a patron-client relationship where there is no ‘agape’, is the anti-Christ, Rome itself. John 15:14 ‘you are my friends if you do what I command…’agape’ (love) one another’ . No ‘agape’, no friendship with Christ. 1 Corinthian 13, ‘agape’ ‘seeketh not its own, is not puffed up, suffereth long, ….etc’. ‘Give to everyone that asketh of thee, love your enemies,…..’, this is ‘agape’ love. This is Jesus the Christ. ‘Agape’ rings in the true friendship with God. Pilate told Jesus, ‘don’t you know that I can save you, if you will just talk to me, I can be your patron’. Jesus never uttered a mumbling word at the Roman bum. So much for (Roman) patronage, selling of Church offices during the middle ages, even patronage in the Church today.
God’s general blessings fall on the good and the evil, but not eternal salvation, the most desired benefit. 1 Chronicles 28:3 God told David, ‘thou shall not build a house for me because thou has been a man of war, thou has shed blood’. This after God delivered David time and time again from his enemies, no Godly patronage available to David in building God a house. The first generations of Christians were slaughtered by the Romans, at least seven recorded major persecutions, until Christianity became Roman state religion during Constantine’s rule. Be careful who you call patron, it may have negative personal connotations/results in the Kingdom of God.