Hello everybody and welcome in to episode #279 of the Bible 2021 podcast. We are reading Psalm 100 today and our focus is on How Should We Worship God? Our Approach and Attitude to Worship.   We are a daily 10 minute podcast, where we will dig in to the truth of the Word of God by reading one Bible chapter a day and discussing it. Welcome to new listeners in    Our goal is to encourage DAILY Bible reading, so you can jump in at any time and join with us. We want to invite as many people as possible to join us in daily Bible reading, so help spread the word and share the podcast! Don’t forget about our web-page, Bible2021.com – contact page, show notes, transcript and more– Click here for our Bible 2021 reading plan\

Even though it is probably the shortest chapter we will read solo this year, Psalm 100 is going to teach us an awful lot about worship, and how we should approach worship. One caveat first: Even though we will learn much about worship from this passage, I will note that we can also worship God in desperation, in depression, in pain, and in turmoil, and we see examples of this kind of worship all throughout the Psalms. We are told to approach God with thanksgiving and joy here – and that is right – but we also see other examples of approaching God in different attitudes in other Psalms.

Let’s go through our Psalm line by line, and then read it as a whole.

Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to the Lord! vs. 1- God, the creator of literally everything, is worthy of our praise and attention and worship – and not just tepid, formal and lukewarm praise, but exuberant shouts of praise from every corner of the earth! I’m reminding of what Jesus said on Palm Sunday:

³⁶ As he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road. ³⁷ Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen:

³⁹ Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”

⁴⁰ He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.” Luke 19

God is worthy of praise, and He WILL be praised by all of His creation!

Serve the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs. vs. 2 Our attitudes are important, and God is worthy of our wholehearted singing and serving. As the Word reminds us in 2nd Corinthians 9:6-7 – God loves a cheerful giver. As much as we are able – we should approach worship with an attitude of joy and thanksgiving, letting the reminder of His eternally enduring love urge us to a place of joy. 

Acknowledge that the Lord is God.
He made us, and we are his—
his people, the sheep of his pasture. vs. 3   A part of worship is the understanding and acknowledgement of God’s deity, His authority, and His creation of us, and the fact that we are completely His.This should bring us to a place of surrender, submission and bowing down to God’s Lordship, and submission and surrender are most certainly appropriate postures of worship. This should also remind us that we – as the sheep of God – are under the care of Jesus, the Good Shepherd: 

⁷ Jesus said again, “Truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.⁸ All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.⁹ I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.¹⁰ A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.¹² The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them.¹³ This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep. ¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, John 10:11-14

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him and bless his name. vs. 4  What is the most appropriate attitude and posture to have when approaching God? I believe Psalm 100:4 tells us: Gratitude and Thanksgiving. I love how Martin Luther calls us to an attitude of thanksgiving in his own slightly sarcastic and pointed, by very accurate way here: 

“We are such weaklings and suffering “martyrs” when even one leg hurts or a small sore swells that we can fill heaven and earth with cries and howls, grumbling and cursing. We do not see what a tiny evil such a small thing is, compared to the countless blessings that God provides. Snorers that we are, God lets us experience these minor troubles so that we may be awakened from our deep sleep and be driven by knowledge and realization to consider what would happen if the great and countless blessings present to us disappeared because God’s favor turned away from us.”  (Martin Luther, Commentary on Psalm 118)

For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever;
his faithfulness, through all generations. vs. 5.  Why? Why worship God? Why enter into His presence with thanksgiving? Where does our joy come from and our glad service? The answer to all those questions and more is summed up in vs. 5 – Yahweh the Lord is GOOD. His faithful love is not fleeting, but permanent, eternal, never-ceasing, and never-diminishing. He will be faithful through all generations of people, and thus for these reasons and a million more, He is more than worthy of every ounce of our worship. Let’s read our Psalm in its entirety. 

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Bible Memory passage for the month of October: ⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  1 John 4:7-8 

The Bible 2021 Podcast Is a ministry of Valley Baptist Church A Church in Salinas, California.

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