Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: If you have your Bible, if you'll turn to a passage we read on last week, but I want to just begin sort of where we left off.
2 Samuel 23 is the sort of the. The release of King David's. It's not the last thing he said.
It is his final sort of official departing statement to the. To his nation, his goodbye statement. And I'm sure that it probably accompanied his will and testament.
But there is a verse of introduction and I was reading a pastor's commentary on this and he was blatantly confused. He thought David was saying verse one.
So it's like if I said last Sunday, Pastor Travis said and then I quoted and somebody says, why did pastor refer to himself in the third person?
The first verse is the introduction to David's final statement. So let's look at it. 2 Samuel 23, verse 1. Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of God, of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel said, Here is his statement. The spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was in my tongue. That's the first verse of his statement. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time together. Pray that you will open, enliven our hearts and minds. We believe you for it. In Jesus name, the strong son of God. Amen.
David, in failing health. We said on last, we were just giving you a little quick summary.
Circulation poor to the place that he is. His poor old body is just freezing all the time. They find this young girl Abishag to come and be in his bed in order to keep him warm.
No sexual implications of that at all. In fact it's very straightforward. Says and David knew or not.
And then David has to rouse himself on his deathbed, deal with the coup d' etat from Adonijah. He gives Solomon sort of, I don't want to say this too hard. He kind of gives Solomon a hit list.
He says, these are people that did me wrong. These people you can't trust.
Don't, don't fool around with this guy and tell Solomon what to do with it. And then David dies.
It is an Interesting thing that there is no account in the Bible of David's funeral that would not happen in the contemporary world, would it? That would be a huge thing, the state funeral. There's no account of that. It just says, and David died. And they put it in that Old Testament language. He slept with his fathers. He died and was buried.
Part of the reason for that is because of the Jewish law that he had to be buried before sundown on the day that he was. That he died. Well, it's hard to plan a state funeral, but part of it is an interesting notation that here is the most important man until Jesus of Nazareth, the most important man ever born to the people, to the Jewish people.
And his funeral speaks of the modesty and simplicity of his life. David lives this unbelievable, complicated, huge, bigger than life life.
And then it says, and he died and he was buried.
Now, let me just talk for a few moments of David's biblical significance.
He is now obviously anything I say that he is this or the most or the best or any of that is accepting Jesus.
He is the critical figure in Israeli history.
His name spans the entire Old Testament and New Testament.
Even when Jesus came and he's walking through the streets, the people who are sick and demon possessed and all, they cried out, what did they say? Heal me. Have mercy on me. Touch me. Heal my child, Jesus, thou son of David.
Now they had no one labored under the illusion that a thousand years later, he's the technical son of David. They mean he is the rightful heir of the throne of David.
He is. David is referred to at Pentecost.
There is a Jewish tradition. Let me use a generous word. There is a Jewish tradition.
It is not borne out in Scripture at all, but it is a Jewish tradition that David was both born and died on Shavuot, on Pentecost, that David was born on Pentecost and died on Pentecost.
There is a slight indication that the apostles believed that Psalm in St. Peter's Acts 2 sermon, the Great Pentecost sermon, he speaks of that David is dead and is with us today. Why, particularly in that moment of Pentecost, would he reference the body of King David?
Now, if you go to Israel today, they will take you to Mount Zion. If you go with me or with Pastor Travis, we also will. Any tour you go with that is dealing with New Testament sites. They'll take you to Mount Zion. They'll take you downstairs to a place that they say is the tomb of King David, and then upstairs to a room that they say is the upper room. The only thing about that is it's not the tomb of King David and it's not the upper room. But apart from that, it's a great place to go.
But it does serve to mark the connection between David and Jesus and Pentecost.
David Psalms are quoted throughout the New Testament. The most quoted verse of Scripture in the New Testament is Psalm 110, verse 1.
Let's take our Bibles and just turn there, if you will, to Psalm 110. 1The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies. Thy footstool is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament.
David's messianic Psalms 22, 69, 16 to 1, 18 and 41 by number are messianic.
The there are 73 Psalms that have the Hebrew superscription that they are Psalms of David.
Let me just give you those Psalms 3 through 9, Psalms 11 through 32, Psalms 34 through 41, Psalms 51, 65, 68, 70, Psalm 86, Psalm 101, Psalm 103, 108 through 110, 122, 124, 131 and 138 through 145 plus the New Testament. In the New Testament, Acts 4:25 credits Psalm 2 that David wrote it.
However, in the Hebrew Bible, it doesn't say a Psalm of David. These others say a Psalm of David, 73 Psalms. In other words, of the 150, nearly half of all the psalms recorded were written by David himself.
So he, when he, when he is referred to in the introduction to his final statement, the Sweet Psalmist of Israel, isn't it fascinating? Out of all of the military and geopolitical issues of his life, these huge things from the killing of Goliath up until the coup d' etat on his deathbed, and civil wars and the founding of a city and the, and the, the consolidation of a nation and all of that on his deathbed. What is remembered by the person who introduces him is that he's a psalmist.
That's fascinating to me.
And so 3,000 years later, there are people who know about King David.
They can talk to you about David and Goliath or David and Bathsheba, but they don't know the, the details of this enormously complicated life, but they can quote psalms that were written in a different language 3,000 years ago.
What a fascinating aspect of this complicated life.
A businessman, a politician, a warrior of huge dimensions, a city builder, a nation builder that's a hard, complicated guy, and yet he has this emotional side of himself, this deeply spiritual, creative side. We know he was a singer, but not every singer can write music. I don't know if you know this, but Elvis Presley never wrote a song.
He could just sing them better than anybody else, but he couldn't write them.
David could sing so well that by the time he was a small boy, he basically won the Hebrew version of the voice. He's taken to sing for the King.
But he also was a songwriter.
The Psalms themselves are largely written to be sung by a cantor, perhaps, or antiphonally back and forth with a sing, a lead singer and an answer, lead singer and an answer, or congregationally.
But they are also to be read, used in liturgical settings in synagogues and churches all over the world. So 14 of David's Psalms include specific titles, events in his life.
I wrote this psalm to commemorate this.
I'm telling this song. I wrote this poem because of this thing that happened in my life.
Let me just give you a few of those.
Psalm 59 he wrote to look back on the night.
Can you think back all the way back when David had to flee in the middle of the night from Gibeah, where Saul's palace was?
David's wife, Michal, made a kind of a dummy thing and put it in the bed, and David slipped out the back window.
But the guards, the secret police of the King Saul, have seen, surrounded his house.
And according to the Psalm, evidently they were like baying like dogs. Probably not really, that's a poetic expression. But you can imagine in the darkness they've surrounded his house and they're calling, come on out, David, come on out. We won't hurt you.
We won't hurt you. And so he writes Psalm 59 to look back on how horrible it was to be surrounded that night in his house.
Psalm 56 and 34. This will show you what a desperate event it was.
But Psalms 56 and 34 are both about when he had to feign madness in Gath.
How many of you remember that horrible moment in David's life when he was captured by the Philistines and he had to pretend to be insane? So let him go. If you remember that event, will you raise your hand? I don't mean remember it personally, but I saw several of the older people, so I'm not raising my hand for that.
Psalm 63,142 and Psalm 57 are about commemorating his time alone in the desert, in caves, living in Caves.
Psalm 52, an event that haunted David and I believe later on, and I said this to you, was the fertile seedbed of the betrayal of Abiathar at the end of his life, when David went to the town, the priestly town of Nob, and got Goliath's sword and bread by tricking the head priest, Ahimelech.
And then Saul came to Nob and finding out that they had given David bread, he ordered Doeg the Edomite to kill him. And they wiped out all the priests, all the priests of Israel, except for Abiathar that escaped. And I believe that he always held that against David. If you had not tricked my dad, he'd be alive.
And I believe it haunted David Because Psalm 52 is all about Doeg killing those priests.
Psalm 54 is about the betrayal of the Ziphites when he was hiding in the wilderness of Ziph and asked them if he. If he could stay there and be safe. And they said, fine, fine, fine. And they sent an email to Saul and said, david's here.
And so he wrote a psalm about this sense of betrayal.
Psalm 18 is about being delivered from Saul.
Psalm 51, probably one of the best known and most frequently studied of all his Psalms, is the psalm of repentance and confession because of his affair with Bathsheba.
Psalm 3 is about the rebellion of his oldest son, Absalom.
Psalm 60 is about conflict with Aramon Edom.
Psalm 7 refers to something that was in David's mind, but it's not listed in the. In the Bible. A conflict with Cush.
But there's no account of a conflict with Cush, so somebody didn't think to put it in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings. Nobody evidently thought it was important enough to put in the Bible, but it bothered David enough to write a poem about it.
And then one. Psalm 30 is about the dedication of his own personal house.
Now, what do we see from those? Why go through all those?
Sometimes I think that we get the feeling that Christians aren't supposed to ever feel anything bad or hurtful or wounding or frightening or any of those things.
If you read through that list, almost all of them are about dark moments in David's life.
One is about the dedication of his house.
But most of them are about betrayal and disappointment and struggle and fear and disillusionment.
So here's what I would say to you about the devotional use of Psalms, and that is this. Sometimes do you ever just want to tell God, this is a really bad day, and I just want you to know it.
Am I the Only one. The rest of y' all all look so religious out there.
So it's what I'm trying to say to you is okay that there, there are times when it's okay to vent on our Father.
He can take it and he's not going to get upset or mad at you or, you know, when you quit praying and leave your prayer closet. He's not going to turn to the angels and say, I'm really sick of that guy David. David shows us how to vent. How to say, I didn't like being betrayed. I didn't like this disillusionment. I didn't like when my son turned against me. I didn't like it when my friend betrayed me. But he always comes back to praise.
He always comes back to praise over and over and over again. The people that were sent by Saul, the soldiers that were sent by Saul surrounded my house and bathed like dogs in the night, longing for my blood. But I praise you.
That's what we can, how we can use the Psalms devotionally.
Let's talk about his Messianic psalms for a moment. I mentioned them.
Talk about one in particular.
The verse which I read and David's initial verse of his final public statement.
Do you realize what he's saying?
He is claiming, not arrogantly, but he is claiming prophetic authority.
He says, the Holy Spirit spoke to me.
The Holy Spirit spoke through me.
Listen, if nobody has told you this before, can I be the one that's like huge.
And sometimes I'm just saying this, sometimes we in the broader spirit filled, charismatic and Pentecostal world have been frivolous about that statement.
I just want to say this. I'm a straight out, 100 proof, tongues talking Pentecostal.
I believe in the gifts, all the gifts, all the gifts for today, all the gifts.
But I just got to say, when anybody says, thus saith the Lord, you better have the goods.
You know, thus saith the Lord.
See, when I grew up in the Methodist church, I was taught, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. I thought that meant you shouldn't use the name of Jesus to cuss people out. That's not what that verse means. Hey, you shouldn't do that.
Okay, let me say. Okay, I'm right out opposed to that. But that's not what that verse means.
What that verse means is you should never use the name authority, power of God for vain purposes.
You never want to use the gifts in order to make yourself seem something spiritual, empowered, anointed, whatever that means. All Those things I often think, wouldn't it be nice if God would help?
Have you hear anybody else? Am I the only one been in some Pentecostal church and somebody stands up to start to give a word of prophecy. And you can tell from the opening sentence, this guy's got one wheel in the ditch.
You can tell it right away.
And everybody just sits there, you know, praise God, praise God, praise. And wouldn't it be nice? Somebody stands up and says, thus saith the Lord. And the voice of God said, no, I didn't.
This sucker is on his own.
But that's the reason.
That's the reason, by the way, that we do not ignore and do away with the gifts, but the gifts manifest themselves in community.
So when somebody says, the Lord speaks to me or through me, no, no, no.
We decide that.
The community decides. Test the spirits.
So you can do one of two things. You can put the gifts all in a gun safe and lock them up.
Okay? Nobody does it wrong, right? But now you got no guns or you can just do.
You can get some training and get it where David says, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and spoke through me.
Well, let's test him on the cross.
Jesus is dying in unspeakable, unutterable agony.
He is hanging naked on a cross in front of his mother, dying in horror.
The Romans invented crucifixion in order to scare people. Don't cross the Romans, it took days to die on a cross.
That's the reason they were shocked when Jesus was dead.
They wanted that. They wanted that body hanging there, screaming, crying, so in. In horror.
When you're on the cross in that kind of unspeakable agony, you don't say to yourself, I need to think of a really clever quote here.
In other words, what comes out of you at that moment is divine utterance.
And Jesus cries out, if you remember on the cross, he cried out, probably in Hebrew, but maybe in Aramaic, Eli, Eli. And you remember the.
The Pharisees said, he's calling on Elijah because the start of the word Elijah sounds just like the start of the word My God.
So he says, eli eli lamah shabachtani. In Hebrew, eli eli lama Shabbachtani.
It's Psalm 22.
David wrote Psalm 22 a thousand years before the Romans invented crucifixion.
He talks about, they cast lots for my garments.
What could that even mean?
They pierced my hands and my feet.
I believe when David got finished with Psalm 22, I believe that he took it to Asaph, the seer. Asaph was to David what Matthew Hubbard is to Pastor Travis.
He's the worship leader in. In the tabernacle.
I think he took Psalm 22 to Asaph and he said, hey, let's sing this on Saturday.
And I think Asaph said, okay.
What's that? What.
What's this? I don't understand any of this.
Whose garments are being parted? Who is casting lots? Whose hands and feet are being torn? Who are we talking about here?
Who is crying out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Who's saying all this stuff?
I think David said, I don't know.
I just know the Spirit of God was on me and in me when I wrote it.
I believe there is a place where the creative impulse of our humanity coincides with the.
With the inspiring, the inbreathing of the Spirit of God.
And it's human. It is human.
It's divine. It's a confluence, a conflation of these two realities.
David's creative faculties are huge. They're huge.
But Psalm 22 is not all David. You can't explain that.
I don't believe David could explain it.
Now, having said all that, David's masterpiece is definitely Psalm 23.
It is the most quoted memorized passage of Scripture in the entire Bible in two of the world's major religions.
We've been saying it every Wednesday night.
Not because I would remember it, evidently, but we have been saying it.
Let's Turn to Psalm 23 now, if you will, and let's just work our way through it a little bit.
The very first part of it. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Now pause right there for a moment.
David is in strange territory for Hebrew theology.
He is expressing God as a personal and caring shepherd, guiding him, not just the sheep of his pasture, but him as a sheep.
He guides me. He leads me me. It's a very agrarian concept. It hearkens back to his childhood in Bethlehem, in his Father's sheepfold. And it. And it speaks of God as not just a shepherd, but my shepherd.
Now look at verse three.
He restores my soul.
Again, a fascinating passage of scripture.
I believe I can make a case that the heart of Psalm 23 is actually that brief passage.
It's about soul restoration, the rebuilding of a shattered life.
The soul is. Your spirit, is what goes to heaven with God.
But your soul is the creative faculty, your emotions, your thoughts, all of that. That is the soul of you.
And David says he Restores my wounded self. He builds me back.
He recreates me.
And I believe that little brief insert in the middle of Psalm 23 is actually key to understanding it. God watches over me. He protects me. He guides me, leads me. But the most important thing he does for me in this life is the restoration of my wounded soul. Look. Life, Light. Life beats up your soul.
Life beats up your soul. The death by a thousand cuts, the nicks and abrasions of life, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It's not the huge things, it's the rude clerk.
It's a little. Yeah. Am I the only one? You're driving around I285 and some Yankee with Michigan license plates cuts you off and say, the Lord is my shepherd.
All that is everyday life.
Life nicks your soul all day.
And one of the things that the Holy Spirit does, one of the great things he does for us is to restore the soul of us.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. I want to just connect verse three and verse four.
Most people in reading verse three stop, full stop. And they don't connect it to verse four, verse three. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. So he's leading me, right?
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Do you see that those connect.
Walking through the valley of the shadow of death may not simply be because your life went wrong.
God is leading you.
He may be leading you through the valley of the shadow of death.
Not everything. Quit giving the devil free advertising.
Not everything tough that happens in life is a satanic trick.
God is leading you through life. And life has good things. Life has flowers. Life has mountains. Life has valleys.
I called a friend of mine, Dr. Tommy Tyson. One time I was going through a valley. I had a pastor that I thought he got mad at me over nothing. And we were locked horns and it was obviously his fault and all the rest of it. And I called Dr. Tyson and I said, oh, Tommy, I'm in a valley. I'm in a valley. And he said, oh, praise God.
I said, you know, that wasn't exactly what I was expecting. He said, no, praise God, Mark. Valleys are where lilies bloom.
So I thought, you know, the next time I'm in distress, I'm not calling him, but.
But God is leading us.
He leads us into the high pathways where we can see the Rockies at dawn. He also leads us through the valley of the shadow of death. It doesn't mean he's left us.
In fact, it is there that he protects us. He watches over us. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me Again, that's hearkening back to the guardian shepherd. The shepherd stands there with a weapon. It's not to defend himself. It's to defend defenseless sheep.
By the way, part of my early childhood, I grew up in a family with very limited means. And some years were more limited than others. But part of the time, we lived in a rent house on a sheep farm in Missouri. And you can imagine what that was like. But I learned in that time, when God says, you're the sheep of my pasture, it's like, not a compliment.
Sheep are the weakest, most defenseless, stupidest creatures God ever made.
And the only hope for a sheep is for the shepherd to defend them. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me now. Verse 3, verse 5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over.
Now I want to show you something.
Look at the first.
The Lord is my shepherd. It is an agrarian basic concept. He sees himself as a sheep being led, guarded, guided and protected by the shepherd.
But beginning with verse five, it's like he shifts the metaphor of the poem dramatically.
He's no longer using an agrarian symbol. Now he. He speaks of himself as the like the guest of honor at an Oriental banquet.
Thou preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Let me give you an alternative translation of that passage.
He.
He sets a table where I eat, and he makes my enemies stand around and watch while I eat.
So it is a. It's not a frightening thing. I've got to eat in a hurry because I'm eating in the presence of my enemies. God says, your enemies are all around you. Sit down and eat.
And now the metaphor is not.
It's not an agrarian metaphor of a relationship between a sheep and a shepherd. It's a banquet metaphor that God has prepared this banquet for me. And he treats me.
He blesses me. He anoints my head with oil.
My cup runs over. He blesses, he anoints, he fulfills. So look at the progression.
I'm a poor, defenseless, stupid sheep. Sheep are so.
Let me tell you this. Sheep are so afraid of everything. A sheep will not drink out of a flowing water. They're afraid of rivers.
You have to take a sheep to a pond. Sheep won't drink. He leadeth me beside the still waters. It's not just because still waters are nice. It's because I'm too scared to drink out of a river.
That's not a compliment.
So he has this simple agrarian relationship of sheep to shepherd. In the middle of the psalm, he switches.
Now it's different.
He prepares a table before me, makes my enemies watch while I eat my blessings. My cup runneth over means blessings overflowing. More blessings than I can hold. They keep coming. They keep coming.
The blessings are flowing over in my life.
He anoints my head with oil.
It's a now it becomes joyful. And he makes me. God makes me feel special.
And then he takes the eternal look. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life while I live. I will.
I will walk in goodness and mercy doesn't mean I'll never walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, God is with me. He's protecting me.
And goodness is there.
I'm not saying that moment feels good, but goodness is with me.
In the very first church I pastored, a little tiny Methodist church, there was an elderly man there, Mr. Bill Kahili. I loved him very much and we were an odd couple to be sure. I was a 22 year old boy working on my master's degree and he was a semi literate farmer in his late 80s and, and we just fell in love with each other.
And this old guy had that. I never, I think of it so fondly every time I read it. He had two blue tick hounds and when he would open the door to his truck, those hounds jumped in that.
In that truck everywhere. They just fallen. And he named them goodness and Mercy.
They followed me all the days of my life.
But David doesn't stop there.
He says, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Now this is not a teaching on the Lord's Prayer, but I just would be remiss if I don't point this out.
The 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer. Think of the biblical coincidence of this.
The Lord's prayer and the 23rd Psalm are written by two men born in the same tiny village a millennium apart by the time Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
David's birth in Bethlehem happened a thousand years earlier. It's ancient history a millennium before and the two indisputable devotional classics of both religions, Judaism and Christianity, the Lord's prayer and the 23rd Psalm were written by two men born in the same tiny village a thousand years apart.
Let me show you Some of the confluence of the two.
They both begin with a statement of the isness of God, the indisputable fact of God's existence, His isness.
The Lord is my shepherd. Yes, but leave off my shepherd. The Lord is.
That's the fundamental truth of the whole universe, is the isness of God.
God is.
Once you've said that, everything else is icing on the cake. That's the reality.
The Lord is.
Jesus says not. The Lord is my shepherd. Our Father who is.
Our Father who art in heaven. Yes, Our Father who is in heaven. But leave off in heaven. Our Father who is the Lord is.
They both begin with a statement of the isness of God.
Then both of them deal with the realities of God's operation in our lives, of his concern with us, that God watches over us and protects us and is concerned for us and concerned with our our wounds. He restores my soul.
Jesus says, yes, he restores your soul because he teaches you to forgive your enemies. And he'll forgive you your sins if you forgive.
He provides for you. Give us this day our daily bread.
It's a statement of the simplicity of God's providential and protective care for us.
Begins with the isness of God and then catalogs all the ways that God takes care of us, watches over us.
I don't know what that means to you.
I know what it means to me that the most powerful man in his world, King David, depended on the protection and care and goodness and soul restoring grace of God Almighty. He restores my soul. Even David needed his soul restored. There are just some days when you feel your soul sinking.
Oh, let me not put that on you. There are some days when I feel my soul sinking and David says, God will restore it.
Jesus says, when you've sinned or when others have sinned against you, your God is a forgiving and loving God, and that restores your soul.
He'll provide for you.
David puts it as a banquet of grace.
Jesus puts it as the providential care of God.
And then look how they end.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Jesus ends. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
They both begin with the isness of God and they both end with the foreverness of God.
And in between is his relationship with us. Personally, I have a very good friend who lives in the greater Jerusalem area. He's not a believer yet, but a Jewish scholar.
When I wrote 21 seconds, I just, you know, you're saying things about the 23rd Psalm and I sent it to him and I said, would you just read this manuscript over? And if there's something that I'm saying that goofy.
I don't want some Jewish person to read it and freak out.
He said, no, it's good. He said, now let me tell you something that you may not know.
He said, Psalm 23 is almost never used in any kind of corporate liturgical setting in Jewish worship.
In a synagogue on Shabbat, you'll never hear him reciting Psalm 23 like we do, he said, except in. In some Ashkenazi Jewish rituals. On the last night of Pesach, on the last night of Passover, they might use Psalm 23. But he said, apart from that, it's not used in public worship.
I said, why?
He said, well, I'm going to tell you, don't use my name, but I'm going to tell you. I said, why not? He said, it sounds Christian.
He said, Psalm 23 doesn't sound Jewish.
He said, jewish prayer is always about the God of the people and the people of God, we, us, our.
It's never my God, the Lord is my shepherd.
He said, that feels personal and intimate and connected. David is saying, the Lord God Almighty Adonai is my shepherd.
He said, you know what Psalm 23 sounds like? I said, what? He said, it sounds like one of your old hymns.
I come to the garden alone and he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own and the joy that we share as we tarry there. None other has ever known. This rabbinical scholar's quoting in the garden to me.
He said, that's what Psalm 23 sounds like to us. And he said, it doesn't feel Jewish.
I said, wow.
He said, I'll tell you what feels Jewish, the Lord's Prayer.
I said, what? He said, listen to it. There's no singular pronoun there.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Give us this day our daily bread, Forgive us our sins.
He said, that's a Jewish prayer. And he said, why not? It was taught by a Jewish rabbi to a Jewish audience. He said, I don't mind you Christians praying it, but it's a Jewish prayer.
In fact, the whole exchange inspired him. He wrote an article for the Jerusalem Post that said there is no reason that any Jew couldn't pray the Lord's Prayer.
And they published it.
Just fascinating to me, the switch.
Well, let me bring this all to a conclusion.
Nine weeks I've enjoyed this teaching and being with you, and I want to thank you, Pastor, for letting me have this summer series. It means the world to me, and I'm looking forward to the second half of the Book of Luke.
So let me finish.
And I was in undergraduate school in Lincoln's second term.
I was at the University of Maryland, and I took a course in literature.
And the professor was just a few years older than we were.
I was 19, and he was probably 26, 27.
Arrogant, Jewish agnostic.
He denounced his own faith. He denounced mine.
He never passed up an opportunity to mock Christian references.
When we got to the poetry section, we're studying, you know, all the great poems of the world and everything. Finally, this one girl in the class said, look, you're always talking about what makes a poem great. What do you think is the greatest poem ever written? And he said, no, no, no, it's not about what I think. Well, you know, girls.
She wasn't letting that alone. She said, no.
She said, I want to know. I just want to know. What do you think is the greatest poem ever written?
And he said, okay, you ask me, I'll tell you.
Is the 23rd Psalm.
Well, we were all flabbergasted.
He's this arrogant atheist.
And she wouldn't let it alone.
She said, well, I don't understand that.
The whole semester you've been telling us that you don't believe in God. You've denounced every kind of religious poem. Now you say the 23rd Psalm is the greatest poem ever written. I don't want to know why you say that.
And he rubbed his face and he said, okay, I'll tell you.
He said, I'm an atheistic Jew.
My wife is a lapsed Catholic.
I haven't been to a synagogue since the day that I was bar mitzvahed. And she hasn't been in a Catholic church since she was christened.
But he said, and three years ago, our baby died of sids.
Beautiful, healthy little baby girl.
I woke up one morning, she was dead in the crib.
We were devastated, of course, he said, we had the funeral, and my lapsed Catholic wife demanded that we have a priest at the funeral. And he said. I was furious.
She said, have a rabbi. He said, I don't want a rabbi. I don't want a priest. I don't want anybody.
She said, well, we're going to have a priest.
And he said, as they lowered that tiny little coffin into the grave, that old Padre quoted the 23rd Psalm.
He said, my psalm?
My psalm.
He said, that's in my Bible.
That's not in the New Testament.
And he said that old priest quoted the 23rd Psalm and he said, for just a moment I knew there was a God in Israel.
And he said, if in the darkest moment of your Life, quoting a 3,000 year old poem can make an atheistic Jewish believe that there's a God in Israel, that's the greatest poem ever written.
Well, let's pray.
Lord, we thank you, we praise you. We give you all honor and glory due unto your name, Lord, in the brightest, most wonderful moments of our lives.
Blessings upon blessings pouring over us.
Help us, oh God, to praise you.
Keep us back from the sin of ingratitude.
Spare us from self pity and from unforgiveness and bitterness.
Restore our souls.
Give us joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Blessings that pour over till the cup won't hold them banquets while those who despise us have to stand around and watch us feast.
Praise you God.
Praise you God.
And God, that at the end of all things that what began will be that you are and that you still are and that you always will be.
Now let's stand together and one last time. Not the last time, one time in this context, let's just say the 23rd Psalm. And you know, can you sort of say it with David in mind and with Jesus in mind and with that Jewish scholar in Jerusalem in mind and with an atheistic college professor at the University of Maryland all in mind and all the millions and millions of people who have read and cherished the 23rd Psalm for 3,000 years. We'll read it in English.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr.markrutland or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
