Tony Evans - God Is More Than Enough: The 23rd Psalm

G OD I S M ORE T HAN E NOUGH
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version 1984 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com . Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1960, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2004 by Tony Evans

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Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

M ULTNOMAH and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

The Library of Congress cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Evans, Anthony T.
God is more than enough / by Tony Evans.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-60142-412-9
1. Bible O.T. Psalms XXIIICriticism, interpretation, etc. 2. GodBiblical teaching. 3. Christian lifeBiblical teaching. I. Title.
BS145023rd .E93 2004
223.206dc22

2003023593

v3.1

Contents

Introduction

T HE A TTACK

There is not a single need you could possibly have that isnt addressed by the words of Psalm 23.

Not one .

No matter what inadequacy or hardship youre facing and how deeply youre facing it, no matter how problematic or distressful or exacting it may beif the Lord is your Shepherd, He can meet all of your needs. The Twenty-third Psalm was Davids way of saying God is more than enough to meet whatever lack or constraint or extremity or impossibility you might ever encounter.

And thats why, although this immortal psalm is one of the most evocative and poetic passages ever written either inside the Bible or out, it is so much more than a sweet-sounding set of verses to console your heart in tough times. It is magnificent and enrapturing as a literary masterpiece, yet its depth goes far beyond.

Beautiful as it is, this psalm is an attack .

Its an attack on our debilitating lack of trust in God and the great trauma of insecurity thats brought on by such doubts and disbelief. Most Christians do not actually believe that God is more than enough. Too often, God is the last one that we appeal to. And so we wind up becoming spiritually emaciated, unable to handle the ups and downs of life.

This profound psalm is an attack on our chronic inclination to look for fulfillment in all the wrong places. So many Christians are living lives of profound dissatisfaction. We go hungrily from one table to the next, experiencing one disappointment after another, and were just not satisfied . We all discover, once weve lived long enough, that theres no friendship, no relationship, no ownership, no championship, no scholarship, no fellowship that can fully satisfy our wants. Psalm 23, however, offers us a vastly different approach to the question of satisfaction in life. At the heart of it we find what we could call, in popular terms, the secret to a happy life.

Furthermore, this psalm is an attack on our very serious sin of self-sufficiencythe stubborn independence that makes us determined to deal with our own needs in our own way. Of all the sins a person can commit, at the top of the list is self-sufficiency, for it is fundamentally the sin of pride. Its thinking, I can function independently of God; Im all I need to take care of myself . But what were actually able to do for ourselves is utterly infinitesimal compared to what God can do for us, and thats why He designed us to live in utter dependence on Him. So the result of our foolish self-focus is that we narrow our existence to an uncomfortably restricted dimension.

Years ago I took my children on a certain attraction at Walt Disney World. As our floating vessel cruised along a winding stream, we were taken alongside elaborately staged representations of different cultures with different children dressed in different ways, all of them singing the same song in different languages: Its a small world after all, its a small world after all

The first time I heard the song, it was okay. The second time was tolerable. The third time, it started getting on my nerves. On the fourth time through I wanted to jump in the water and swim out of there! This small world, being endlessly sung about by small people, was becoming acutely irritating.

Were each of us so small, after all, and the world of our own resources is so pitifully insufficient. When you try living within those confines it can only mean a cramped existence, and eventually you cant help wanting something more. Youre like a plane circling in a holding patternevery time you look down, the ground looks oh so familiar, and you want something else, somewhere new, something more. You cant help wanting to break out and see whats different and wider and better, to see life unfold as you believe it ought to, as you so deeply desire it to.

Thats Gods desire for you as well, and the kind of relationship with Him that Psalm 23 portrays is the pathway to get you there.

As we move, alertly and reflectively, through this tender psalm, youll soon see that my driving message in this book is simple, not deep; you dont have to be a theologian or a Bible scholar or have a set of commentaries nearby to quickly understand where Im headed. The good news of the Twenty-third Psalm boils down to one essential point: If the Lord is your Shepherd, He will meet all your needs . By allowing Him to freely do this for us, we can rest assured that whatever possible need arises, our Good Shepherd is sure to be there.

Chapter One

T HE B ASIC Q UESTION

Just Who Is Your Shepherd?

Right there in the opening line of Psalm 23, we find the essence and climax and consummation of what the whole psalm is about: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

But immediately a problem reveals itself in our reaction to these well-known words from David. While everybody likes part two of the versenaturally we want our wants and needs provided formany of us would just as soon skip part one, the bothersome part about making the Lord our Shepherd.

So my simple question for you is this: Im assuming the Lord is your Savior, but is He also your Shepherd? In other words, do you want the promise of the second half of verse 1 bad enough to get the first half right?

I assure you that youll be better prepared to answer that question after we take a closer look at each word in this brief opening phrase of this most famous psalm and we experience the deep and true encouragement to be found there.

T HE L ORD

First of all, David identifies his Shepherd as the Lord. What does David really mean by that name?

The Hebrew word for Lord in this verse is Yahweh . Thats Gods formal name, and it takes us back to Exodus 3, where God was leading Moses into a tough situation that was too big for him to handle. On that occasion, God revealed to Moses that His name is I Am That I Am. Thats Yahweh , the same Lord that David talks about.

What kind of name is this? If Yahweh the Lord is the one who meets all our needs, we really do need to know and understand His name.