“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” – Psalms 23:3
Many of us have grown up reciting at bedtime, “The Lord is
my shepherd, I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…” and
so on. For some of us, Psalms 23 was the
first passage we ever memorized. But
sometimes in processing those words into memory, they become recited rather
than understood. We sometimes fail to
comprehend the words as we read them.
The word “restoreth” has deep meaning in Psalms 23:3. To have something restored to you, it must
have been yours at one time, and then was taken away. The word also means to turn back, or return.
The Hebrew word from which it is translated, shuwb (H7725)
is what is called a primitive root word. Primitive root words originated before
Hebrew language, and were written with symbols that are cuneiform logo syllabic
markings that had specific meanings. These
began as markings on clay tokens for record keeping. For example, as early as 8000 BCE
Mesopotamia, they can be found on clay tokens.
If you were keeping record of sheep, the token would have a symbol
etched in it that meant sheep. You’ll
find it prophetic that the symbol for a sheep was that of a cross marking on a
disk shaped token.
As it became difficult to manage multiple tokens, cuneiform
characters evolved to note more than one thing at a time. For example, a wedge meant one, and a circle
was ten. To write five sheep, you would write five wedges and the sign for the
sheep, a cross. The earliest markings eventually
became words, and those words are known as primitive root words. The word shuwb, or “restoreth”, is one of
those words.
To fully understand “He restoreth my soul” we have to
realize that it was once ours, and then was not, and had to be returned to
us.
Go back to Genesis 2:7 and you’ll find where the soul was
given to us. It says “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul“. God’s eternal life that flows in Him was given
to us, giving our SOUL life. We were made in God’s image, and (Genesis 1:26-27)
His breathed in Spirit was eternal, and we became eternal living souls.
But through our sin, that Spirit was taken. God warned in Genesis 2:17 that if we
rebelled and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of
Eden, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” But when Adam and Eve
did, they did not suffer a flesh death.
What they did suffer was a soul death.
The first effect of the fruit was that the “eyes of
them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Genesis
3:7). This wasn’t just a physical
nakedness, but spiritual nakedness - helplessness. The word eye is translated from the Hebrew
word ayin (H5869), which is both “of mental and spiritual faculties”. You’ll find the word eye often used in the
Bible to mean spiritual sight or blindness.
So through sin our soul died. Spiritual life was lost. This is why we refer to those that have not
been restored through the righteousness of Christ as “lost” and those that have
as “saved”. To be saved is to be
restored. For at that time of salvation,
we are given His Holy Spirit, our soul is given life again, and we receive
eternal life in us.
1 Corinthians 3:16 says “Do you not know
that you are the temple of God and that
the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
1 Corinthians 6:19 says “Or do you not know
that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”
Ezekiel 36:27 quotes God as saying to the
prophet regarding His people, “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to
walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
Ephesians
1:13, it tells us we are sealed (marked), with the indwelling of His Holy Spirit
as it says “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having
believed, you were sealed with
the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our
inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of
His glory.”
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we have been restored! We have been given back what was lost in
Eden. Why? The rest of the Psalms 23:3 tells us
why. It says, “…for his name's sake”. It is for God’s fame, God’s reputation, God’s
glory. For that purpose He shows His
glorious grace, love, and forgiveness to us.
As we live restored to Him, let us make Him famous! That is our purpose. Love as He loved, forgive as He forgave, and
always give Him praise.
