“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. 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. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100).
After 8 months of writing on the psalms, we made it to triple digits! I haven’t been writing on every psalm of course, but getting to #100 still feels like a great milestone. We still have 4 more months of psalms to go, so we’re not done yet!
We have seen a number of psalms of praise in our look through this book, but each one has its own character and feel, just as each of our modern songs has a unique feel to it. This one is short, only 6 verses, and it follows a repeating pattern of calling us to be thankful, remembering God’s promises, calling us to be thankful again, and again remembering God’s promises.
Verses 1-2 are the first call to thankfulness in this short psalm. “All the earth” is commanded to come before God to praise Him. Everyone is to worship Him with “gladness” and “joyful songs.” The Hebrew word in verse 2 that we see translated as “worship” also means to work or to serve. It’s our occupation and our obligation to praise God, but we should not simply praise Him out of a sense of duty but because we desire to.
Verse 3 tells us to “know that the Lord is God.” This verb for knowing is the most intimate way that someone can be known; don’t just know that God exists, but really get to know who He is. He made us, so as our creator He knows us intimately. We have the opportunity to get to know Him as well. He’s not some far off, distant God, but He promises to us that we are His people. He wants to be in relationship with us. The image of a shepherd and his sheep would be a common one for the era when this psalm was written. It depicts how God truly does take care of us and care for us, and how much greater His knowledge is than our own.
Verse 4 is another call to thanksgiving in this psalm. While verse 2 said “come before” and verse 4 says “enter,” those are actually the same root word in Hebrew, and these sections of the psalm have similar verbs to each other. Thanksgiving and praise go together. When we are truly thankful for what God has done, we naturally want to praise Him.
Verse 5 gives us more reasons to praise God for who He is. He is good, and He promises that His love and faithfulness will continue forever. The word translated as “love” here is a Hebrew word that we really don’t have a good English equivalent for. It’s like a combination of mercy, kindness, love, and loyalty all wrapped up into one. God is all of those things, and we should praise Him simply because that is His character and He will never stray from it.
Have you pondered God’s character and your relationship with Him lately? Perhaps today would be a good time to take a few moments and do that. Pray Psalm 100 to God and remember that He made us and will always love us. There’s nothing we can do to make God love us any less, and there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us any more. We are His people, and He loves us because of that relationship we have as His family. He will always be loving, merciful, faithful, and good to us.
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