My Sheep Hear My Voice: A Deductive, Rational, Expository, and Informative Study of the 23rd Psalm

By Charles H. McGowen MD

My Sheep Hear My Voice is a deductive, rational, expository, and highly unique and informative study of the twenty-third psalm, written by a Christian physician with a fifty-year history of teaching God's Word. It is a text that will prove valuable for a personal study and enlightenment of the Holy Scriptures and the mentoring of new Christians or profitable in the teaching of Bible classes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798891120372

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1: I Am the Lord

Chapter 2: The Difference between Sheep and Goats

Chapter 3: Provisions from the Gift Giver

Chapter 4: Rest in Him; Work for Him

Chapter 5: Ample Provision

Chapter 6: Peace with and from God

Chapter 7: Regeneration and Refreshment

Chapter 8: The Path of Righteousness

Chapter 9: Dying Grace

Chapter 10: Comfort through Protection and Guidance

Chapter 11: Holy Communion

Chapter 12: The First Filling and Further Fillings

Chapter 13: Sustaining Grace

Chapter 14: Eternal Life

Epilogue

Addendum

About the Author

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My Sheep Hear My Voice

A Deductive, Rational, Expository, and Informative Study of the 23rd Psalm

Charles H. McGowen, MD

ISBN 979-8-89112-036-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89112-037-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Charles H. McGowen, MD

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Prologue

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

—John 1:1

The most obvious question that many of you may be thinking now, having read the title of this work, is, How can anyone hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, following His resurrection from the dead and subsequent ascension because He is currently sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven? The question is reasonable, and so is the answer. As a member of the Trinity, the Second Person of the Godhead, He first speaks through the act and flawless results of His creative nature and powers, and then having received propositional truth from the Father, the First Person, He then spoke to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person, who, in turn, told those truths to the prophets and apostles, following which they gave us, His sheep, the sixty-six books comprising the Holy Bible.

Though now eternally occupying a glorified human body and no longer ubiquitous, Jesus continues to speak but not directly to us; instead, He speaks for us to the Father on our behalf. The Bible tells us in many places that Jesus communicates with the Father concerning each one of His sheep. Paul's letter to the church in Rome teaches that Jesus is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us (Romans 8:34). In 1 John 2:1, we read from the well-informed pen of the beloved Apostle John that Jesus is our advocate with the Father. In that legal position he performs in the role of a defense attorney when the enemy of our souls (Psalm 143:3 NKJV), the accuser of the brothers (Revelation 12:10), alleges that we, sinners, should not be the recipients of God's merciful love and grace. Additionally, from the author of Hebrews 7:25, we learn that Jesus always lives to intercede for us.

In his classic trilogy on Christian apologetics, the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) assured us through impressively infallible and logical evidence that, contrary to the assertions of die-hard atheists, there exists The God Who Is There. Furthermore, he made it patently clear that He Is There, and He Is Not Silent, and to disavow those two facts, that he used as titles for two of his books, is tantamount to an Escape from Reason—the title of the third in Schaeffer's tremendous theologically sound trilogy.

God being sovereign, infinite, personal, and possessed of profound reason created us as rational, personal beings as well in order that He could establish several lines of communication with us. Hebrews 1:1 teaches us some of those ways of speaking to His sheep: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. Being composed of three eternal Persons Himself, a Trinity, He had been communicating with the other two members of the threesome, forever. The Bible makes that salient point early on, for when they had conjointly finished creating the universe, God the Father said to both God the Son and the Holy Spirit, Let us create mankind in our image (Genesis 1:26). Note the plural, personal pronouns used in that discourse.

Now, since God is an immaterial spirit, His image would not include a material body such as we humans possess. Ergo, the divine image that is shared by humans must be immaterial and enjoined by intellect, reason, emotion, personality, volition, and eternal existence, each being a characteristic in common with God. Those attributes are seated within our divinely implanted, immaterial, and invisible soul. One of the many signs of our sense of rational thinking that is discussed in the Bible is found in Isaiah 1:18 where God says to his chosen followers, His sheep, Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. But if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword."

The late Dr. Charles Stanley (1932–2023), a well-known TV evangelist and pastor emeritus of the First Baptist Church congregation in Atlanta, Georgia, was also an amateur photographer. He once told of an incident that occurred while working in his darkroom preparing some visuals for the coming daily vacation Bible school. On the flat surface of his desk, there was a purely white cardboard poster with the word sin spelled out in large red block letters. Also, on his desk was a red filter that he often used on the lens of his camera to take photos under certain conditions. As he was moving the filter out of the way, he casually passed it over the cardboard and the word sin. When he did, he observed that the cardboard appeared red, and the word sin was now white. To Dr. Stanley, that was a perfect object lesson of what the Lord was teaching His sheep in Isaiah 1:18. When God views our sins through the atoning shed blood, the metaphorical red filter of His Son, Jesus, they appear white as snow and resembling the white, spotless wool of the Good Shepherd's sheep we have, through saving grace, become.

God has sovereignly chosen to communicate with us through two major forms of revelation: one being general and the other known as special. General revelation, so called because its audience is general, is manifest in nature and attested to by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Rome.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:18–22)

Now let us unpack that passage, which is pregnant with objective, propositional truth on general revelation.

First, we read that God is extremely angry; He is irate, full of wrath, and justifiably so.

Second, that irate spirit is directed against godless, wicked people.

Third, their increasing, depraved character is the result of suppressing so much obvious, palpable, and unambiguous truth provided by God. The Greek word used for suppressing an object, katastello, means to strain to hold down something, like an undeniable truth that would otherwise spring up and smack you in the face.

Fourth, they cannot stand before the Almighty God and claim, I didn't know that you existed! Because what may be known about the God who is there