Please turn with me to Psalm 100. We’ll read the whole thing. This is a short and sweet psalm––only five verses, not like some of the psalms that are very long and have a mix of bitter and sweet. This is an uplifting song of praise.
According to Enduring Word,
This Psalm is simply titled, “A Psalm of Thanksgiving” and it is the only Psalm in the collection to bear this title. It speaks of an invitation to the whole earth to know and to worship God.
G. Campbell Morgan said, “It is jubilant with confidence for the whole earth, as it contemplates the glory of that earth, when all its people are submitted to the reign of Jehovah.”
Charles Spurgeon said this psalm, “…is all ablaze with grateful adoration.”
Rick Ezell a Baptist pastor in South Carolina said that: “This psalm is a literary masterpiece. It has been said that the Bible is shallow enough that the immature can play without drowning, but it is deep enough that the most mature can never touch bottom. Such is Psalm 100. This Psalm does not contain a single concept that is not expressed elsewhere in the Psalms.”
Scripture:
1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. 2 Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.
Our way or expression of praising God can change from generation to generation; from one culture to another; from one person to another, from one church to another. We may use different instruments, new songs, old songs, and many different styles of music, we may not even use music at all to praise God. We may praise God through our simple words; that’s how I usually do so.
There are some churches––and I’ve even participated in this a couple of times, where painters would paint while the worship band was playing or during the entire service as a way of expressing worship.
Now I just used the word, ‘worship’ twice, and I hesitate to use that word because a little more than a year ago, I preached a sermon titled, “What is True Worship?” and in it, I talk about the subtle difference between praise and worship.
In it, I quoted Gotquestions.org on the true meanings of praise and worship.
Here’s what it said on worship: “It is through true worship that we invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us, convict us, and comfort us. Through worship, we realign our priorities with God’s and acknowledge Him once more as the rightful Lord of our lives.”
But praise is subtly different: Praise is the joyful recounting of all God has done for us. It is closely intertwined with thanksgiving as we offer back to God appreciation for His mighty works on our behalf. Praise is universal and can be applied to other relationships as well. We can praise our family, friends, [coworkers], or paperboy. [We are taught to praise our puppy when we train it, and we praise our children for doing a good job]. Praise does not require anything of us. It is merely the truthful acknowledgment of the righteous acts of another. Since God has done many wonderful deeds, He is worthy of praise (Psalm 18:3).
So worship is more of a quiet and humble heart attitude. It is a moment of surrender. It is placing God first in our daily lives. It is making sure we don’t have any idols in our lives that are taking the place of God on the throne of our hearts. As Jesus said, “It is impossible to worship God and anything else at the same time (Luke 4:8).”
Today, I am going to focus more on praise than worship. The point of praise is that it should be a natural expression of thankfulness and gratitude that comes from our hearts. No matter your age, no matter your financial status, no matter where or when you are placed on earth, there is always something to be thankful to God for. And like any time when we express our love for someone, we also receive God’s love in return in that moment as well.
You’ll notice right off the bat that this psalm calls for all the earth to shout to the Lord. This is an invitation for everyone. When this was written, there was a lot of paganism and false religions all over the world. There was no ‘gospel’ yet. There was no evangelism. There were no missionaries.
Israel could rightly claim their God as the One and Only. And we get the idea when Jesus walked the earth that they kind of liked to keep it that way. They separated themselves. There was Jew and there was…everyone else.
There was this eliteness to being a Jew, to having the exclusive temple of The One and Only Most High God.
We can kind of be like that now, can’t we? We can look at others who are not Christians and think we have something that they don’t. We have God and we’re better. Well, we’re not better, we’re better off. And our hearts should turn towards those who do not have God so that they can be just as ‘better off’ as we are.
The Thanksgiving holiday is an open invitation for the whole world to set aside a day in addition to Sundays to thank God. And the Christmas season is a perfect time to invite the whole world to know this God of ours.
In another Psalm, Psalm 34, the writer challenges people to, ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’ Wouldn’t you want the whole world to experience the goodness of God that they’ve been missing out on? Think about how much joy the world needs right now.
Division might end up as part of our holiday get-togethers this year. But how many of you know that the love of God melts away all that division? The love of God melts away all of that bitterness. The love of God melts away all of the stress and worry. And there are people who need the love of God, but they’re missing out. Tell them, “Just taste and see for yourself. You’ll know that the Lord is good.”
Giving God our praise and thanksgiving isn’t just a duty, it is an experience. Praising God is how we enter into the presence of God. And this psalm is an invitation for the whole earth to know God, and to enter his courts––in other words, to enter his presence and know Him. It reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present who said to Ebenezer Scrooge, “Come in, — come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the likes of me before!”
Imagine not only inviting your friends and family to church, but to have them experience the presence of God in such a way where they can come and know him, and look upon him, the likes of whom they have never seen before. Now, obviously, we cannot literally see God, but when we are in a place of praise, we can sense his nearness. And his presence is unlike anything else found on Earth.
Almost a year ago, I preached a sermon on abiding in God’s ‘secret place,’ which was also based on a couple of psalms. And I said in that sermon, that the secret place is a place that the world cannot find. It is not a physical place made by human hands––though God does dwell in our physical sanctuary. But God’s Holy and Secret Place is His spiritual sanctuary. There we will find a refreshment and a renewal and a place of safety that cannot be found anywhere else on Earth.
Our praise and thanksgiving and the experience of finding God in His secret place demonstrate to everyone who enters that there is more to Christianity than just a religious service. It’s a relationship. It’s real. It’s like I said, not only where we express our love for God, but also where we receive our love from God, too.
Taste and see that The Lord is good.
The Lord calls ‘all the earth’ to worship Him. And again, this was at a time in The Old Testament when Israel was warring against other nations. Yet the call, the desire of God, was actually that all nations would come to Him, not just exclusively Israel. Kind of ironic that God would war against nations as a way to evangelize, isn’t it? But in The Old Testament, warring was how God demonstrated who He was to the other nations––that He was real and not just another “idle idol.” In other words, an inactive statue or a demonic idol that was inferior to God. Some pagan gods were demons in disguise, 1 Corinthians 10:20 tells us that. And so God revealed himself as all-powerful and many nations feared Israel because God demonstrated himself powerfully to those nations who worshipped demonic gods.
2 Chronicles 20:29 says, “The fear of God came on all the surrounding kingdoms when they heard how the LORD had fought against the enemies of Israel.” So, the nations knew who the real God was as he demonstrated his power. That’s how God got to be known throughout the world in the Old Testament times.
Now, I could go on and on about that, but the idea for us today is that God wants to display his power through love, not might. You could say, maybe through the mightiness of his love rather than the mightiness of fear. Love is stronger and more effective than fear, we read that not too long ago when I preached on Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 13. How do people get to experience God’s love? One way is through our example of Biblical love. Another is through His presence. How do people experience his presence? Well, if they’re not already going to church, then they have to be invited into His presence.
The Great Commission, the great mandate of Christ, the last thing he commanded his disciples was to do what? Go into all the world and make disciples of all men. Jew and Gentile.
Revelation 7:9-10 says this:
9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
So you see, all the earth will praise his name!
Getting back to our scripture verse this morning, Verse 4 of Psalm 100 says:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
So like I said, God wants to display his love and his power. But he does that through praise, and we have to come to him. It’s part of our humbleness before God, that we come to Him. He doesn’t come to us, that’s where I think a lot of people become doubters because they think that God should come to them. No, they have to humble themselves and come before God.
In this particular Psalm, David talks about gates and courts. And of course, we don’t have gates and courts anymore. David is referencing the gates and courts of the Jewish Temple at the time. The outer wall of the Temple in Jerusalem had gates to enter through. Inside the outer wall was a large courtyard and then there was another wall with gates that led to a smaller inner courtyard. It was in the courtyard areas where the worship took place. So the idea that the psalmist is getting at is that we should enter his house, his dwelling place, and his presence with praise already in our hearts. We should be entering His presence with praise, not entering His presence then praising.
There is always something to be thankful for. So before we even walk through those doors, we should have had gladness in our hearts all week long. When we come here on Sunday, we should be ready, willing, and able to praise God as we enter into the House of God.
How many of us do that? I’m not going to make you raise your hands or anything, but do you come to church having had gladness all week long? Do you come expecting to meet God? Do you come with great anticipation to engage in praising God?
We should get out of our cars with expectation and joy and worship already filling our hearts ready to have an experience where we meet God with thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is the name of the holiday which we will celebrate this week; and Thanksgiving Day is more than a meal, at least it should be. The original intent of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans was to give thanks to God. And that was the original intent when Thanksgiving Day was instituted as a national holiday––a celebratory day set aside in addition to our regular Sunday mornings to specifically give thanks to God.
And we do that by inviting family and sharing a meal together. It’s interesting how that correlates with a thanksgiving sacrifice they had in the Old Testament, which is what the psalmist is referring to here. So as we had our own Thanksgiving feast, at the time this Psalm was written, Israel had their own Thanksgiving ceremony. It wasn’t called that, but it was a special kind of sacrifice that was also a meal.
Remember a few weeks ago I talked about pagan religions having sacrifices and eating meat that was sacrificed to an idol? The Israelites had animals sacrificed to God. Who knows, maybe Paul was referring to this particular Jewish sacrifice when he wrote about eating sacrificial meat in Romans 14?
This is what Joy Mosbarger had to say about the Thanksgiving sacrifice in a blog on the Talbot School of Theology website:
“It was not prescribed or required by God. It was offered by the worshiper on those occasions when he was motivated to express thanksgiving to God. The sacrifice was willingly presented to the Lord with a heart of joy and gratitude.
“In addition, the sacrifice of thanksgiving, again like all peace offerings, was shared among the Lord, the priest, and the worshipper. This contrasted with other types of offerings, which were either entirely consumed (except for the skin) on the altar as an offering to the Lord or partly burned on the altar and partly consumed by the priest. But for a peace offering offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving the protocol was different. After the Lord and the priest received their portions, the worshiper who brought the sacrifice would take the remaining portions of the meat and the bread and prepare a feast in which family and friends who were ritually pure could share. Any of the meat not consumed on the day the sacrifice was offered had to be destroyed by burning.”
There’s a Rabbi whom David Guzik quotes as saying, “All sacrifices will be abolished; but the sacrifice of thanksgiving will remain.” Think about that. Because of Jesus, our once for all sacrificial lamb, all sacrifices have been abolished. But our sacrifice of praise remains. And it is a voluntary sacrifice.
The temple itself is obsolete because it was built to be a place where sacrifices were made in the courts, and the inner sanctuary was reserved for the priests. Then inside that was the Holy of Holies where there was a curtain from floor to ceiling. Behind that curtain was the Ark of the Covenant.
This is from Gotquestions.org:
The Holy of Holies was accessible only to the Israelite high priest. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest was permitted to enter the small, windowless enclosure to burn incense and sprinkle the blood of a sacrificial animal on the mercy seat of the Ark. By doing so, the high priest atoned for his own sins and those of the people. The Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of the tabernacle/temple by the veil, a huge, heavy drape made of fine linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn and embroidered with gold cherubim.
David Guzik said, “Under the new covenant, not only are the gates and courts open, but even the way to the Holy of Holies is thrown open.” And of course that is in a spiritual sense.
The writer of Hebrews said in chapter 10:
19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
This is the kind of relationship we have with God now. Thanks to Christ. This is something that we often take for granted. But we have access to God through the blood of Jesus. And we can draw close to him. But even though the sacrifices are obsolete. We still have a ‘sacrifice of praise’ that will continue forever.
The psalmist concludes with the reason why it is so important to come to God with thanksgiving and praise. And it’s simple:
“For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
Look at that––all generations. We’ve just talked about the obsolete temple; the obsolete sacrifices; the obsolete veil that separated the Holy of Holies. Even the Ark of the Covenant is obsolete. There’s the big mystery of what happened to the ark. There’s the myth and legend of it that has been exaggerated thanks to Hollywood. But if you really want to know, if it is ever found, it’s actually obsolete. Thanks to Christ, it has no power because the power was God himself dwelling there. But now, God isn’t going to dwell there. Thanks to Christ, he dwells in our hearts.
But, his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. That’s something to be thankful for. Those are things that will never end. His love and his faithfulness.
I’m going to keep this brief because I’m already running a bit over time, but I’m going to reference another sermon that I preached a year ago. I called it, In God We Trust. And I think it goes well with some other things I said earlier about Israel and other nations in the Old Testament.
In that sermon, I said: If you read The Bible from cover to cover you’ll find that there was a lot of strife among God’s people over thousands of years. Much of it was caused by themselves, or were consequences of their own actions for not obeying God. In Revelation and in Daniel, there is strife by a particular ruler called The Antichrist that has yet to be fulfilled.
Humanity has a history of strife. We live in a cursed world. We have blessings and curses. We have instability. We have unknowns. And much of the World looks to its leaders for answers. But who should we look to? Who should we trust? We can use our right to vote and I would encourage that, but even then can we fully trust Washington D.C.? Can we fully trust Albany, NY? I don’t know about you, but no matter who is elected to either the presidency or governorship in any election, I am glad that my faith is in God, not humanity. I’d go crazy if my hope was in flawed, sinful, imperfect human beings.
As our currency says, “In God We Trust.”
No matter what happens in our government or our society, the true kingdom to which we belong is not of this earth.
1 Peter 2:9 says, “9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His love is the same. His goodness is the same. He will always be on the throne. He will always be all-powerful. He will always be God.
He is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. And that is something to truly be thankful for.
As we close, I want us to focus on thanksgiving as a way of life.
Have you thought about thanksgiving as a lifestyle? Have you thought about giving thanks and having a grateful heart as a lifestyle?
We all could use a greater sense of gratefulness. I know I could. But because we keep running into some kind of mechanical trouble lately (if it’s not one thing, it’s another), I’m becoming more and more grateful for the simple things––like a roof over my head, heat, hot running water, food, clothes, a car, gas in the tank. A family. Those simple things. That’s what the Thanksgiving holiday is all about. But it should be year-round. So won’t you join me in starting a new habit, a new lifestyle of thanksgiving?
Prayer: Lord, we come to you today, to give you our praise. We come to you with joyful hearts. With great gratitude. With a great sense of thanksgiving. You are worthy of our praise. You have watched over us and provided for us. Sometimes it was difficult, but you proved you were there. You came through and you answered our prayers. And Lord, we commit today to making Thanksgiving a lifestyle. To make praise and worship both a lifestyle.
Lord, even remind us, nudge us a little when we should focus on you and not on ourselves or our circumstances.
Remind us that there are many things to thank you for. Remind us that we should praise you for your love, your mercy, and your faithfulness. And may we receive your spirit as well. May we be open to receiving your love. May this be a two-way relationship where we praise you and tell you how much we love you, and may we receive your spirit and hear you tell us your love for us as well. May this be a moment where our relationship becomes stronger and more intimate. May your spirit fill us, almost overwhelm us as we praise you. May we draw closer to you in those moments. May they become deep, intimate moments, Lord. I pray that it would happen at home, on drives in the car, in the waiting room, wherever we might be where we have a moment alone with you. And may we come here on Sundays with great anticipation of praising and worshipping you. May we meet you here.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash
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