In my message this morning, "Worship Elements: Blessing," I shared about the English translation of the Septuagint's Psalm 23:1. Instead of the more widely known, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," the Septuagint reads, "The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing."
The Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. It was the Bible of the New Testament Church. As a matter of fact, in almost all instances of a New Testament quote of the Old Testament, the New Testament writer quotes the Septuagint. For several hundred years, the Bible that was used by the Church was the Greek Septuagint. The English translation I am using is the New English Translation of the Septuagint, published by Oxford University Press. You can go here and download PDFs of the whole thing, pretty generous, I think! (BTW, if you go there, realize the number of the Psalms is different in the Septuagint than what we're used to. For instance, Psalm 23 is Psalm 22. You might want to take the time to read the intro to the Psalms in the beginning of that PDF).
The active verb, "shepherds," is meaningful to me. It's a nuance, but an important one. It reminds us that God's leadership of our lives is active. He's not passively sitting around waiting for us to conform to his will. Instead, he's actively pursuing his rightful place in the guidance of our choices. The rest of the psalm attests to the goodness of God's leading. He leads us to waters of repose, he nourishes our souls, he comforts and protects. This is another vision of the gracious God that we serve.
One of the blessings of worship has to be the offering of God's good guidance for our lives. Far too often we're only following ourselves into despair and hopelessness, whereas God's leadership is always into life and joy. Indeed, the God we worship is a God of grace, mercy, hope, and love. Trusting his leadership in my life is the greatest decision I can make.
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