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The opening call of Psalm 100 is a fanfare to all the earth: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs." This is not a quiet audience before God, but rather a public summons to the earth to recognize his greatness and goodness and to respond to his rightful claim over all idols as ruler over every part of life.
When we imagine Psalm 100 as it may have sounded outside the temple in Jerusalem, the opening shout for joy would not have been timid—it would have echoed around the city. This public acclamation of God is like a victorious king entering the city, recalling Jesus' noisy and triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, where even the stones could have cried out.
When we are called to come before the Lord, we are not invited into half-hearted worship. No matter how uncertain we may feel about the weight of approaching God, we are called to come. We're called to shout for joy, to serve with gladness with all the strength we have, and to sing joyful songs from the heart.
As Augustine said, "The one who sings prays twice." This helps us understand why singing matters in worship. It's not for the gifted alone—it's for everyone. It's not an optional extra, but a prayer delivered from your heart in love for God. We sing at All Souls not out of obligation or to impress with our tuneful voices, but out of gratitude for what God has done for us.
Our worship can sometimes feel joyless and our service can feel heavy. Yet Psalm 100 does not shame us for having those feelings. The Psalm does not say, "Feel joyful and glad before you come and see me." It says, "Come as you are." As we come before the Lord in worship, the Holy Spirit begins to lift our eyes away from ourselves to God. Joy grows in the coming, not necessarily before it.
Christian joy and gladness don't come from our own strength and our own efforts. The joy is in the Lord. The strength is in the Lord, not in us. Joy, which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, comes from the Lord and we receive it as a gift. Don't force it.
Consider the women who came to the tomb on Easter Sunday carrying grief and expecting to witness their master's dead body. They left with great joy because the story had changed—Christ was no longer in the grave. He is risen. Death had not had the final word.
What story shapes our worship? Is it the story on our phones or work schedules or our circumstances? Or is it the story that matters most: that Jesus is risen, the Lord is good, and we belong to him forever?
To worship, you need to know something about the person you're worshipping. Psalm 100 declares in verse three: "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."
Knowledge and understanding play an important part in our worship. We don't worship in a vacuum or unknown gods. The desire to worship grows as knowledge and understanding about our God grows in us.
Notice how often "his" is mentioned in this Psalm. In verse three: "we are his. We are his people. We are his pasture." In verse four: "his gates, his courts, his name." In verse five: "his love, his faithfulness." We worship the creator who made us and knows us better than we know ourselves.
The word "Lord" in capital letters is not a vague title for a disinterested God. It speaks of the Lord as the covenant name Yahweh—the God who revealed himself to Abraham and commits himself to his people forever, promising steadfast love and faithfulness from generation to generation. When Psalm 100 says, "Know that the Lord is God," it is calling us to know the God who keeps his covenant forever.
John Stott, in his short book on his favorite Psalms, writes on this verse: our God, the heavenly potter, our creator, never discards his work, but fashions it into something beautiful. Our God, the heavenly shepherd, never abandons his sheep, but leads them to rest. The vessel—us—is safe in the potter's hand. The sheep—us—are safe in the shepherd's arms.
This Psalm teaches us that worship is let go when we see ourselves from God's perspective: made by his hand, belonging to his love like sheep, dependent on his care. Even after witnessing a partial eclipse of the sun, which may give us large thoughts of God and small thoughts of ourselves for a moment, we can often live with small thoughts of God and large thoughts of ourselves. But Psalm 100 enlarges our praise by enlarging our dependence on God.
Verse 4 commands us: "Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name."
In the Old Testament, this language would have meant approaching the temple, coming into the place of God's presence, sometimes with a sacrifice. But through Jesus, our gateway into God's presence is opened through the victory of his sacrificial death on the cross without having to access a physical place. We do not have to wait for specific moments of the religious year to enter or stand outside hoping to be noticed. We come through the Son, we're welcomed by the Father, and we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—the Trinity.
Yet Thanksgiving and praise can grow cold, becoming a habit rather than a warm flow from the heart. C. S. Lewis once struggled with the biblical command to praise God. In his book Reflections on the Psalms, he found the repeated calls to praise unsettling, almost as if God were demanding compliments from his creature. But Lewis came to see that praise does not feed some lack in God. It completes the joy of the worshiper, even in days of suffering.
When we see beauty, hear good news, or celebrate a grandchild's birth, we instinctively want to tell someone. When God commands praise, God is inviting us to experience the completion of enjoying God and adoring him in good times and bad.
Therefore, we are to practice Thanksgiving and praise daily. Before checking your mobile in the morning or scrolling at night, enter with Thanksgiving. Thank Jesus for his forgiveness, the cross, patience, his provision, his strength, his service and grace. Gratitude helps our hearts to notice his grace and our dependence on God, which turns into joyful Thanksgiving and praise.
When I visited Uganda a few years back, I was taken around rural communities near Lake Bunyonyi. I was told by our hosts that in all their hardships, the locals' worship was driven by a desire to give thanks to God for having just survived—surviving another week. How central the saying of the Lord's Prayer was to their worship. Their worship was shaped by poverty, yet grounded in recognizing life as God's gift. That experience has continued to challenge me in my Thanksgiving.
As we meet, sing, rejoice, and give thanks, God is present and our focus shifts to him.
The Psalm ends in verse 5 with a promise and a blessing: "For the Lord is good; his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations."
We worship God's goodness even when life is tough because our worship is rooted in his enduring love. Jesus is the clearest proof of this truth. His love for humanity meant he bled for us on the cross. His faithfulness meant he bore our sin, conquered death, and will bring us home. If we ever wonder whether God is worthy of praise, we look again at Jesus: crucified, risen, reigning, interceding, and coming again.
Our New Testament reading from Colossians 3 gives us the same vision of worship shaping the whole of our lives. The Apostle Paul urges us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and be thankful, and to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, singing to God with gratitude in our hearts. Notice how it's based on Christ. It's the song of Psalm 100 carried into everyday discipleship with Jesus Christ.
When Christ's peace rules our hearts and his word dwells in us richly, thanksgiving rises and overflows. Paul concludes: "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Worship gives structure to our faith, shaping what we sing and how we live.
The prayer of general thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer captures this beautifully: "That with truly thankful hearts, we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives."
Verse 5 also calls us to have praise for our intergenerational worship here tonight, which gives us a living picture of the Psalm's final verse. The Lord's goodness spanning generations—we have heard from Carol, and we've got much younger people here tonight. Thanks to God's goodness, love, and steadfast faithfulness, we are assured of the future.
