I invite you to turn to that beautiful psalm, Psalm 100, no doubt a psalm that many of us learned by memory as children. The heading that is included in many Bibles is that this is a psalm for giving thanks, and although many other psalms call for thanksgiving and praise to God, I believe this is the only one where that heading is specifically given, a psalm for giving thanks. Hear now the Word of God. 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. Beloved in Christ, what is your attitude toward worship? What's worship all about? do you see worship especially as we are gathered together in corporate worship the worship of god's people do you see the worship of god as something that you have to do boys and girls young people mom and dad make me come to church and oh well i'd better just put up with it and get through this hour or do you see it as something that is optional that you can take it or leave it no big deal doesn't make me any never mind? It doesn't matter? Or do you see worship as something that you get to do? Well, indeed, worship is commanded by God. There are seven commands here in Psalm 100. Shout, worship, come, know, enter, give thanks, praise His name. Indeed, worship is commanded by God, but in this command, you see, is the most blessed privilege believers could ever have. A number of the previous psalms, beginning with Psalm 93, and many of them between Psalm 93 and Psalm 100, make the declaration, the Lord reigns. We sang one of them at the beginning of the service. And the others, if they don't specifically use that phrase, they talk about the reign and rule of our God. He is the King over all the earth and over His people. And Psalm 100 is a call to serve this King, to come before Him, to gather in His very presence in particular worship. You see, God's people, the saints of old, were called to give thanks to this one and only King. And in this time of Thanksgiving, as the Thanksgiving holiday is only a couple of days away, Psalm 100 brings us to see that although God's people are commanded to give thanks to God, As true believers, true believers can't help but to give thanks to God. And indeed, every day of life is to be a day of thanksgiving for you and me. And as a congregation of God's people, every Lord's Day is a day of thanksgiving and corporate worship. And there's no better way to thank God for who He is and what He has done than to worship Him. Psalm 100 calls us to worship God by thanking Him for creating us. Redeeming us, preserving us, and ruling us. This psalm is a psalm of praise, calling you and me as God's people, along with all the earth, to worship God. Therefore, beloved, make a joyful noise to the Lord, because He is God, and because He is good. There are different ways to consider this psalm, different ways maybe even to divide it up, Really, there are two sections, verses 1, 2, and 3, and then verses 4 and 5. And in each of these two sections of the psalm, we are first given requirements for worship. We might say we are given the who, the what, and the how, and the where of worship. And then in the second part of each section, we are given the reason for worship, the why of worship. For the psalmist begins, Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs. And notice how specific the psalmist is. God's people are to shout. We are to worship. Also translated, serve. There's a connection between worship and service. And we are to come. But that's not all. The psalmist also tells us how we are to do these things. There's a certain attitude we might say. Shout for joy. Worship with gladness. Come with joyful songs. You see, this is action or activity that is to be done to and for the Lord. And the idea here is that of acclamation that is fit for a king whom the loyal subjects take delight in and are pleased with because of His faithful rule. But worship, you see, is activity, beloved. It is participation. It is giving of yourself in praise to God. It is active involvement in the life of God's people offering praise to the God from whom all blessings flow. And in informal corporate worship as we do this morning and tonight, it involves singing, praying, offering our gifts to God, and most of all, coming into the Lord's presence and hearing His Word proclaimed to us. And all of this is to be done with fear, with reverential fear and exuberance and excitement. Why? Because of who the Lord is. Because He is God. The text says in verse 3, Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. This is the reason why God's people and all the earth are called to shout for joy to the Lord. Because He is God, first of all. This is not just informal corporate worship, but it's all the time. The psalmist calls us as God's people to know, to know that the Lord is God. This is a confession, isn't it? It's a confession that we know that He is God and when we confess that He is God, we are saying that He is the sovereign Creator and Ruler over all things. We are saying that He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. With this confession, we are saying that there is none other beside Him. We are saying that He is the covenant God, the one and only covenant God of His people who says, I will be your God and you will be my people. And of course, this is royal language. He is our King. He rules us. We shout and cheer for our King. We worship and serve our King. And when God's covenant people in the Old Testament made this confession, they were making a claim about who was the true God. They lived in a world that boasted of many gods. All of the nations around the Israelites had their own gods. They were man-made or man-thought-up gods. Gods of gold, gods of silver, of stone, of wood. There were gods of the mountains, of the valleys, of the sky, of fertility or productivity. Gods of war. As Paul found out in the New Testament in Athens, there were literally gods for everything you could think of. And these gods, or those who worshipped these gods, claimed that they were the true gods. But the truth is, they were nothing more than pretenders to the throne of the true God. Know that the Lord is God. Know it in your head. Understand it and believe it in your heart. That is, shout aloud with Israel on the top of Mount Carmel, The Lord, He is God. That's the heart of the psalm, isn't it? To know that He is God. And that He reigns over all things. That alone brings forth joyful worship because only when we know that He is God and that He rules with justice and with might can we also then know the truth of ourselves and recognize our desperate need and our dependence upon Him. And beloved, we are called to worship to make all the earth know the same fact. To make all the earth know that He is God and that He reigns. This is our mission. The truth that He is God, you see, it's constantly before the eyes of the world, but the wicked suppress that truth and they exchange the truth of God for a lie. They worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. The world has accepted the most dangerous lie that says that He is not God. But we are called to shout for joy to the Lord. Why? Because He is God. And that's the truth. But then Psalm 100 also leads us to confess how we stand in relationship to God. Again, in verse 3, it is He who made us and we are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. We confess that He is the Creator. He made us. He made us physically. He made all of mankind. He made the whole universe. We didn't evolve from monkeys, plain and simple. We didn't come from there. And we didn't make ourselves. Sometimes we think we did in the sense of this life and our successes. If we are successful in this life, we sometimes often take the credit for it. Well, I worked hard to be successful. It's because of what I did. It's because of the work of my hands and the sweat of my brow. If we are faithful, we sometimes like to think that we made ourselves faithful by our own choice. If we are godly, we may think that we are responsible for our godliness. But you see, beloved, that leads to idolatry. A certain man was once described as a self-made man who worships his creator. The irony there, that he worships himself. But the fact is, beloved, God made us. We are his. God is the potter. We are the clay. He has the patent rights. He fashioned and made us. And because he made us, we belong to him. He owns us. But not only did God create us physically, He formed His church. He called His church out of darkness into His wonderful light. Those who believe in Jesus Christ by true faith are new creations of His through Jesus Christ. And when we confess that God made us and that we are His people, we're talking about the company of the elect, those who have been chosen by God through Jesus Christ from the foundation of the world. Those who are called to shout for joy to the Lord are those who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Those of whom Paul says in Ephesians 2, For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. And the Lord says in Isaiah 43, I have redeemed you, you are mine. And the psalmist also describes God's people as being the sheep of His pasture. That points to God's special people and His special care for them. We know that sheep need to be led. They need to be ruled and governed and protected and cared for because sheep are helpless without a shepherd. God the King is the great shepherd of His sheep, of His people. He rules and cares for and protects them. And He has given His life for them through Jesus Christ who was led like a lamb to the slaughter. You see, God's people of old could come with confidence to the temple. They could come into the presence of God as represented by the priests because God had provided a way for them through the sacrifices which pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ and His great sacrifice. And beloved, what a reason to rejoice, give thanks, and sing. Psalm 100 calls us to make a joyful noise to the Lord. Why? Very simply because He is God. He is our God. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. And then also, when we make a joyful noise to the Lord, we too make a claim of who God is. Because today we also live in a world of many self-made gods. We live in a world surrounded by the gods of materialism, the gods of secularism, and the gods of humanism. We live in a world where man is a self-proclaimed God. We live in a world that suppresses the truth of God. Oh, many may know of God with a head knowledge, but they don't know Him personally from the heart. They don't believe in God by true faith. They accept the lie that says that He isn't God, that He doesn't reign. They're not afraid to say it. Some of you, I know, read in the newspaper on Wednesday in the Faith and Life section, the opinion columns. One gentleman writes very boldly that Jesus was nothing more than an illiterate gay. And there were others in that section as well that turned my stomach how people of the world can have such gall, such nerve to blatantly blaspheme God. May we not fall into the practice of worshiping ourselves and our accomplishments and the things that we have done. And may we not be tempted, beloved, to take a portion of that worship that belongs only to God and to make a joyful noise on account of ourselves. We are to answer this call to come with joy and gladness to worship the Lord because He is our sovereign God, because He reigns, and He alone is worthy. In Revelation 4, verse 11, we read that the elders around the throne in heaven sing, You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. You see, He chose us and He redeemed us in Jesus Christ. There is no other King that deserves this praise that is fit only for the King. What a reason we have to praise Him because of who He is and what He has done for us. And as His sheep, we submit to His authority and rule. And very simply, beloved, we serve Him with gladness. We serve Him, we are called to serve Him with childlike trust and obedience, not slave-like obedience, being afraid of punishment. And we give our lives in service to our God because He owns us. Remember, we are not our own, but we belong body and soul in life and in death unto our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. And because we belong to Him, body and soul in life and in death, we confess that He is the Lord of all of life, every last bit of it. and therefore we don't allow we are not to allow man-made gods to govern certain parts of our lives you see when you confess that you belong to the true God at the very same time you make another confession and that is that you confess that you don't belong to false gods you don't belong to pretenders is this your confession? does God rule you? are you His possession? Or does Satan rule you? Are you Satan's possession? Very simply, who rules you? Beloved, shout with joy to the Lord. Confess Him because He is God, your God. But also, in the second place, because He is good. And from His attribute of goodness flows His attributes of grace, mercy, kindness, love, and patience. Again, in the second part of this text, the psalmist gives us more requirements for worship. Verse 4 says, enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name. In verse 2, the psalmist says, come before Him with joyful song. The invitation indeed command. But the invitation is given to come before God. And now here in verse 4, we are given a more specific invitation. Enter His gates. Enter His courts. Again, a command to enter. In other words, come into the presence of God. And how beautiful that ought to be for you and me, beloved, because we know that in and of ourselves, we do not deserve to be in His presence. But He says, come. For the sake of Jesus Christ. Come into the presence of the Almighty God who calls you for worship, who greets you with His most holy name. This is an invitation to meet God face to face. It's a call to worship like Psalm 95. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand. And from the moment of God's call to worship and greeting, His congregation is in His blessed presence. God's covenant people in the Old Testament again, They would come to meet with God in the temple. And we know, of course, that the priests would meet God on behalf of the people because the people were separated from God. The Holy of Holies was closed off to them by that curtain. Yet they were thrilled to be there. They were excited to be in the presence of their God as represented by the priest and the sacrifice. Because, again, they knew that they didn't deserve it. They knew of the awesomeness of God, how great He is, and of what He had done for them. They were thrilled to be there. And when we come to church today, when we gather together as God's covenant people, we come believing that we meet God face to face through the Holy Spirit, who speaks through the mouth of His minister as He preaches the Word of God. And ultimately, of course, we enter God's presence through Jesus Christ. It's because of Him that we know that the Lord is God. that we know that He is our God. When Jesus died on the cross paying the debt for our sins, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. Even the Holy of Holies is now open into the presence of the Father through that new and living way. And God's children now have direct access to the throne room of God through Christ Jesus. Hebrews 10 says, Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh. But then how are we to come to God? What is our attitude of worship to be? The text says, enter with thanksgiving and with praise and to give thanks to Him and to praise His name. To put it in a very practical language, we ought not come into the presence of God in worship with a frown on our face, with a frown in our hearts. Because we have every reason, beloved, to rejoice and to worship our God. In the same way that God's people are to shout for joy, to worship with gladness, to come before Him with joyful songs. In the very same way, thanksgiving and praise characterize even the heavy heart. But characterize how we are to enter into His presence. because when we truly know God and His saving grace, we will desire to offer thanks and praise to Him. And we are to come before God thanking Him for who He is and for what He has done. We thank Him because He is God, first of all. He is the one and only true God. We thank Him because He is the Creator and our Redeemer. We are His people because He formed us, He fashioned us, He made us. We thank Him because He rules us and He rules us perfectly according to His will supplying all of our needs for this life and for the next. We thank Him because we know, beloved, that His kingdom is forever. We thank God because of who He is and what He has done. And we praise Him because of who He is and what He has done and for what He has done with us. He made us. He claims us as His possession. He leads us tenderly as a shepherd leads His sheep. Because the Lord is God and Creator and Redeemer, He deserves all of our praise. He deserves our love and adoration and devotion and commitment. He deserves that every part of our lives to be in complete devotion and submission to Him. He deserves that we should call all the earth on His behalf to know that He is God, to call the earth to let go of the lie and to receive the truth. He deserves that we come to church to gather together to enjoy this foretaste of eternal worship. He deserves that we come to church excited, thrilled to be here, focusing all of our attention on Him. you see the focus of our worship is to be completely outward it's to be directed toward God and therefore again in a practical way if we come to church and sleep during the sermon then our focus isn't on God if we come to church seeking to draw attention to ourselves in any way then our focus isn't on Him if we come to church and criticize how the organist or the pianist played or how the congregation sang or the choir or the fact that the minister made a mistake or how so-and-so deals with a fidgety child, then our focus isn't on Him. If we come to church hoping that the so-and-so sitting across the room listens closely to the sermon because, you know, they really need it, then our focus isn't on Him. If we come thinking about the work of the week past, either that we accomplished or failed to accomplish, or the work of tomorrow that still is to come, then our focus isn't on Him. And none of these things is worship that is pleasing to God. And you know, beloved, this goes way beyond coming to church. It's way beyond corporate worship. Our whole life must reflect our worship to God, our service in Jesus' name, our works of Christian mercy. After all, Jesus said, and so whatever is done for the least of these brothers of mine, you have done unto me. our service in Jesus' name is thankful worship to God and we live every moment in His presence Paul says in Him we live and move and have our being and therefore how we perform our jobs must be done with our focus on Him we must know that He is God and that He is good and what that means for you and me how we raise our children must be done with our focus on Him we must know that He is God and that He is good how we entertain or engage with others socially must be done with our focus on Him how we sit in a restaurant or shop for groceries or take a test or behave in class or conduct ourselves on the basketball court or treat our teachers and friends must all be done with our focus on our great God all of life is to be lived in a way that shows thankfulness to God and gives Him all praise and honor and glory. Why is this? Verse 5 says, For the Lord is good, and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Our God is not a tyrant who rules unjustly. The Lord is good. That's another way of saying that God is faithful to His covenant commitment. He is faithful to His promises through Jesus Christ. This one and only King has the best interest and good of His people in His mind all the time. And the beauty of this is that our God is changeless. He is good always. His love lasts forever. His faithfulness never ends. And this is comforting. It is to be comforting to you and me no matter what. Because no matter what, we are His, and He is faithful. Troubles of life will come, but we are His, and He is faithful. Sickness may come, but we are His, and He is faithful. We may lose a job, but we are His, and He is faithful. Death might strike us in some way, but we are His, and He is faithful. His enemies and ours, the wicked of the world, might push in upon us and persecute us and even hurt us. And that's okay. Because we are His. And He is faithful. And most of all, we may become discouraged because our sin keeps us from obeying this call to worship. It keeps us day by day as our sin testifies against us. It keeps us from offering ourselves completely and totally to God as we ought to, our adoration, our love, our commitment, our focus. But our comfort, beloved, is that in Christ Jesus, He fulfilled all of this for us. His Holy Spirit through His sanctifying work makes our worship more faithful day by day until one day it will be perfect in the glory of heaven. But today, Christ's perfect worship is credited to our account and our God sees us as righteous and receives our worship as perfect in His sight. And all of this means, beloved, that our God is not only the Creator and the Redeemer, He is also the Preserver. He faithfully preserves His chosen flock from generation to generation. And because of this, we are to live our lives in thankful expectation of God's faithfulness to us day by day. Does that describe you? In the morning when you open your eyes to a new day, do you think about that? That you can expect God's faithfulness on that day and every day of life? We ought to expect it. Because He says He is faithful. God didn't just create us and then leave us to fend for ourselves. And He didn't just recreate us giving us new birth and leaving us to fend for ourselves. He doesn't leave us alone. His love endures forever. Psalm 103 says, This God of ours forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases, redeems your life from the pit, crowns you with love and compassion. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. And this ought to drive us to our knees in humility and in worship. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Do you know what that means, beloved? That means that we are never without a reason to praise God. Not even in the midst of tears rolling down our face. We are never without a reason to praise our God. And our praise is to be constant. The call of Psalm 100 is to be our first response to God. It is to be natural, not an afterthought. Oh, that's right, I should do that. It should be first, our first response. Even through hardship and difficulties which the Lord sends us, His love endures forever. And we experience His reign in our lives because His faithfulness continues to all generations. So why do we worship God? Why do we live our lives in thankfulness and praise to God? Do we need to say more than we've already said or than Psalm 100 says? We shout for joy to the Lord because He is God and because He is good. And by His grace we understand, we know that goodness. And our God reigns as King over all things. We worship Him because we are a people who are subject to His loving rule over us. We worship Him because we know that He is God and we want all the earth to know that He is God and that our God reigns. We worship Him with gladness because we have peace with God and are safe in His care only through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, we bow before You in humility, recognizing that we do not worship you as you deserve, as you have commanded. Yet, Father, we praise you that you receive our worship, you accept it for the sake of Jesus Christ, cleansed by your Holy Spirit. We pray, Father, that you would work in us daily, that our worship would be more faithful to you, that it would be more constant, that indeed you would prepare us for heaven, where we look forward to worshiping You forever and ever. Father, give us strength. Give us strength to worship You in the freedom that we are given, especially in this country. May we not be afraid to worship You before the eyes of a watching world. And we pray, O Lord, that You would be praised. Hear our prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen.