Verse 4 deals with safety. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” What is this valley of the shadow of death? The popular way of looking at this is to regard it as a promise of God’s presence in the moments of dying, that is, the shadow just before we actually die. That verse has been used that way many times, helpfully, I believe. But, even though that is true as a principle, I do not think that is what the verse is dealing with. Because, if you follow the flow of the psalm, you find that it covers the progress of the Christian life from the moment of belief in God (at the beginning) to our heavenly home (at the end). And this verse is not the step before the end; it is in the middle. So I think what it is dealing with is not death but the shadow or threat of death, the fact that we go through difficult times, sometimes when even our life is threatened.
I said earlier that the Christian life also has activity, and that is what comes next. The next portion of the psalm stresses guidance: “He leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Guidance is the proper way to approach this matter because activity itself is not everything. This is because a person can be active in a wrong cause as well as in a right one. As you know, in the Christian life there are areas that seem ambiguous. We do not know which way to go. We do not know the right road to take. We do not know the proper direction to turn. We need a guide. We need somebody who knows the way, who has been over this course before. In fact, we need somebody who knows us and knows what he wants to do with us. That is precisely the kind of guide we have in Jesus Christ. He guides us in paths of righteousness.