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.
- Psalm 100, The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House) 1984.
Dear Friends in Christ,
Thank God! It’s a common two-word phrase that we hear often. Depending upon whose mouth it comes from and the inflection of their voice, sometimes it’s a short prayer of gratitude; other times it’s nothing more than an expression of relief; and sometimes it’s a combination of the two.
It’s also the reason for our gathering today. We have come together in worship to
THANK GOD!
Our text, Psalm 100, will help us do just that. Compared to many of the other Psalms, it may be short in verses. But it’s long on meaning. In it the Psalmist interweaves two thoughts which are most appropriate for our consideration on this Thanksgiving Festival, as he reminds us
1. How we must thank God, and
2. Why we must thank God
Following the order of our text, we’ll first briefly take up the matter of how we must thank God. Our Psalm begins by describing the response that knowing the Lord and His goodness calls forth from the believer: Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. How are we to thank the Lord? The Psalmist suggests three ways: Shout, Serve, Come.
#1: SHOUT for joy to the Lord. In other words, praise God in such a manner that it cannot help but be noticed. After all, why does a person shout in the first place? To be heard. Therefore, shouting for joy, besides the obvious meaning of lifting up our voices in praise, can also have the broader meaning of shouting, or proclaiming, with the tenor and timbre of our lives that God is the One we praise and adore and the center of our universe. This manifests itself before a watching world as we...
#2: SERVE the Lord with gladness. Service is the activity; gladness is the attitude. Neither is difficult for the clear-minded believer. The Apostle John put it this way in his first epistle: This is love for God, to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. Meaning: when we understand who we are and what God does and continues to do for us, we gladly and willingly serve Him. Another way of putting it: We gladly and willingly...
#3: COME before Him with joyful songs. Coming before God with joyful songs certainly conveys the important and God-ordained idea of corporate worship (as we are doing today). But worship in its basic sense is more than a group activity confined to a designated building at a designated time. The Apostle Paul casts worship in a greater light and in very personal terms when he talks about believers being "living sacrifices" and our entire lives as being acts of "spiritual worship." And the predominant mark of worship in whatever form it takes is joy. So we come before God not only with a song on our lips, but with a song in our hearts...
We might put it this way. In the field of medicine within the last couple of decades there has arisen an interest in what has been termed "holistic" healing. Behind this is the understanding that people are not just robots and the body is not a machine that can be mechanically fixed once a proper diagnosis is made, but that a patient’s emotional and spiritual well being must also be taken into account. It’s one of those things that good doctors (and certainly Christians) have known for years, but seems to be popular to talk about now.
Using this as a model, when our Psalmist tells us to shout, serve and come we might say he is encouraging us to a holistic approach to thanksgiving and worship. That is, we are to incorporate a spirit of thanksgiving and worship into every facet of our life.
But why? Why such a life of thanksgiving and praise and service and joy? Our Psalmist now provides us with the answer: 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. Here we are given the two essential reasons for thanking God: we know Him and He knows us.
Let us contemplate this simple, life-changing fact that more often than not we take for granted: We know that the LORD is God. If you were watching closely as we read this Psalm you would have noticed that the word "Lord" is capitalized in its entirety. This is an English device to communicate that in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament a special word was used. It is a word that reflects the fact that God is the great "I AM," the only true "Existing One" who has shown Himself throughout history to be the Savior God of free and faithful grace. But here is the main point that is being made: We know this God. More than that, we have a relationship with this one, true God...
And not everybody does. There are those who have rejected Him as well as those who are not yet informed. But by God’s grace, we are not counted among them. We know (in the sense of understand and believe with all our hearts) the Lord. Through the power and work of the Holy Spirit we know who God is, what He has done for us through His Son in the past, and what He promises to do for us in the future. For that knowledge (which to us seems to us so basic) and all the comfort and strength and confidence for life it provides: Thank God! Because everything else in the world is secondary to knowing the one, true God.
Let me give you an illustration. (Somewhere along the line I may have shared this with you before, but it bears repeating.) My father, who is a retired minister, tells the story of coming to a new congregation and visiting the shut-ins for the first time. One particular lady he came to visit was bound to a wheelchair and for some reason, perhaps a debilitating stroke, did not have any use of her arms or legs. She was completely dependent upon others at the care facility to attend to her physical needs. But her mind was sharp, and she could talk. So they did...
Sometime in the course of the conversation my father acknowledged the burden the Lord had allowed to come into her life, and then made the remark that, difficult as her life may be, their were plenty of people who had functioning arms and legs but didn’t have Jesus. To which she replied: "I wouldn’t trade places with them for the world."
This shining saint serves as a powerful witness to the truth of our text: When we know God, who He is, what He’s done for us, and where He plans on taking us, everything else is secondary.
The first reason for thanksgiving: We know Him. The second reason for profound thankfulness: He knows us. It is he who made us and we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Here we are reminded that God is the Creator of all things, including us. Every single one of us is an act of His creation. If all of us were paintings, we’d all be originals. Martin Luther calls attention to this in his explanation to the First Article which we confessed earlier: "I believe that God made me and every creature, and that He gave me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my mind, and all my abilities." So this we truly know: It is he who made us.
And as our Creator He is also our Preserver. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. In other words, He knows us. In fact, He owns us. We are His, and, as such, He will take care of us according to our individual needs. The imagery is a familiar one and found throughout the Bible... Like a shepherd who watches over his sheep, so the Lord watches over us and takes care of us.
And at no time is that more evident to us than it is on Thanksgiving Day. The blessings that the Lord has showered upon us both materially and spiritually are too numerous to mention. Many families have the custom of counting their blessings around the Thanksgiving Day dinner table, and upon reflection there is never a lack of things to say. If you haven’t been in this habit, you may want to try it...
But as you do, don’t forget to also thank God for what He hasn’t given you. For instance, He hasn’t given you so many riches that you forgotten about God and lost the riches of Christ... He hasn’t given you the whole world so that in the process you’ve lost your own soul... He hasn’t given you so many friends that you have forgotten what a Friend you have in Jesus... He hasn’t given you so many good days in a row that you have forgotten to look upward and remember the words of Psalm 121: "Where does my help come, my help comes from the Lord"...
And in all the difficulties that accompany living in a fallen world, He has not let us forget this promise: "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out, so that you can stand up under it." Yes, let us thank God that regardless of what our personal troubles and hardships may be, we have never had a trouble that has taken away our faith in Jesus...
Thank God! Thank God for what we do have. He is the One who’s given it to us. Thank God for what we don’t have. He is the One who has spared us from evil. With that in mind, let us always, in the words of our Psalm, Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
Our text concludes by enumerating some of the characteristics of God, which, in turn, provide us with more reasons for thankfulness and praise. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Why thank God? Because He is good, loving and faithful.
We could spend considerable time on each of these qualities, but let it be sufficient to say that the highest expression of his goodness, love and faithfulness to His creatures comes in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. The hymnist put it well:
Jesus, the name that calms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease,
‘Tis music in the sinners ears, ‘Tis life and health and peace.
He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoners free;
His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood avails for me.
See all your sins on Jesus laid; the Lamb of God was slain;
His life was once an offering made, that we might live again.
Yes, the Lord is good and loving and faithful. And Jesus Christ is the ultimate proof. For Him – thank God!
Today we observe another Thanksgiving. There is so much to be grateful for. But nothing we have or own is greater than these two facts: We know God and God knows us. How do we respond to that? The Psalmist gives us the answer. Please join me in closing by reading Psalm 100 together...
Read Psalm 100
Thank God! Amen.