SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: So, as Katie said, we're uh we're continuing with Psalms today.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at Psalm 100.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Psalm 100 has like a title underneath it uh in my Bible, and it says a psalm for giving grateful praise.
SPEAKER_00: Or in some translations it says a thalm of thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and strangely, this is the only psalm that it actually says that after, which seems weird, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I would have thought there'd be more, but this is the only psalm it says it after.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've got your Bibles with you, Psalm 100, shout for joy to the Lord, bull the earth, worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs, know that the Lord is God, it's he who made us, and we are his.
SPEAKER_00: We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
SPEAKER_00: Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever, his faithfulness continues through all generations.
SPEAKER_00: Great psalm.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorites, if not my favorite.
SPEAKER_00: When we gather together as church, um, we're coming from different places.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've all had different weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us will have had really great weeks, there'll have been really exciting stuff happening, some of us will have had horrible weeks, there'll have been all sorts of things that haven't gone right or we've been struggling with, and then for others of us, it might just be it was just another week, you know, it was just an average normal week.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we come to pray and praise, church isn't the only place that we can praise, we can do that at home.
SPEAKER_00: But when we're coming from to praise God, we're coming from those different places, and different things have happened in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And as we come into God's presence, it's an opportunity for us just to sort of reset from what's gone on in the week, to just realign ourselves with with God and focus on Him to really understand what's important again in our lives and to reset ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's been a great week for you, it's a great opportunity to come and thank God for it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if it's been a horrible week, it's a great opportunity to come and just remember what God has done for us in the past, how faithful he has been, his goodness to us in the past.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's been just another week, just another normal week, it's a great opportunity to come and just recognize again how awesome God is, how incredible he is, that he holds the stars in space, and yet he cares about the detail and he cares about every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, over the years, if um, I know there's some of us here who've been involved in leading worship, over the years, this psalm has almost been a bit like an instruction manual on how to put a worship set together.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it starts with like, how do we how do we draw people that are coming from all those different places in their week?
SPEAKER_00: How do we draw people and try and focus them actually on Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, when we do focus on God, when we turn our eyes away from the stuff that's happened in our week, from the world, from the problems, from the things that actually have like dominated our thoughts, if you like, during the week.
SPEAKER_00: There's an old hymn which Edith will love and uh and Joe will love, and it says, When we focus on God, the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
SPEAKER_00: The things that have really weighed us down or have consumed our thoughts during the week become strangely dim when we focus on God.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: When we do that, as we begin to praise, as we begin to worship, something shifts within us.
SPEAKER_00: And and there's this amazing exchange that happens.
SPEAKER_00: As we worship God, as we focus on Him, and as we pour out our thanks and our praise to Him, He ministers back to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: He ministers back to us.
SPEAKER_00: And as if some of you saw uh the service this morning at 10 o'clock, Rachel was talking there about how when we actually praise and worship, when we give thanks, it actually does something to our brains.
SPEAKER_00: It actually repairs bad thought patterns, it changes the way we think about things, it increases our sense of well-being.
SPEAKER_00: When we come and we praise and we thank God for what he's done for us, and it's like that because we were created to worship.
SPEAKER_00: God created us in order to worship him, to be in communion with him.
SPEAKER_00: And when we're worshiping together like that, and as I said, it's not we it's not that we can't do that when we're on our own, but when we come together, there's something different.
SPEAKER_00: When we come together as a body of church, and we come together as his people and we worship him, uh, and we we experience a bit of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We actually experience a bit of what he always intended us to be, in that sense of relationship and communion with him.
SPEAKER_00: When we worship, that's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: We get a taste of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And this psalm starts with an exhortation to uh shout for joy to the Lord, and not just me, not just some of us, not just those who are gathered in church this afternoon, but the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: It says, shout to the Lord, all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: There's a much more recent song than the one I just quoted, um, which is called Praise.
SPEAKER_00: And uh that actually starts with a shout of praise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, because we're British and we're a bit reserved, we don't actually do that song like that because we feel it's a bit cringy.
SPEAKER_00: But it starts with Lend and everything, lend us breath, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, lend and everything, let them leth, praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've seen the video of the original guys doing that, I'd probably look a bit old.
SPEAKER_00: I probably don't have the moves that they've got.
SPEAKER_00: It might sound a bit cheesy, but it's clearly biblical because Psalm 100 says, shout for joy to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we need to stir up our souls, we need to actually take control of our of our emotions and say, I am gonna praise the Lord to shake off those things that might be weighing us down and speak to ourselves and say, Come on.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 103, um, in the new in the uh New King James Version, it says, Bless the Lord or praise the Lord, O my soul, all that's within me, bless his holy name.
SPEAKER_00: And these first verses are just encouraging us to do that, to come before God and worship him now for who he truly is.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, those verses are also a prophetic declaration of one day when everyone has to recognize who God is.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the scripture says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't need to wait for that day.
SPEAKER_00: We can do it now.
SPEAKER_00: The joyful shout that it talks about, the word that they use there, is the same word that would have been used when a king was returning to his court and his courtiers or or his subjects would be there shouting that the king has come back.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the king is in the room tonight, he's in the room, and so a shout of praise is is just worthy.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 says, Worship the Lord with gladness.
SPEAKER_00: And when we uh when we declare what God has done for us, when we thank him for what he's done for us, it isn't something to be miserable about.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he's done great things for us, and uh, in other translations it says, serve the Lord with gladness.
SPEAKER_00: Back in October, um, I had a title for a sermon which was about serving.
SPEAKER_00: And uh some of you may have been there, you may have heard it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I told you about this lady who works in the local post office, and who basically just sucked the joy out of me every time I went in there.
SPEAKER_00: You know, nothing was ever right.
SPEAKER_00: I'd never got the stamp in the right place, or she couldn't read my writing, or I was whistling, don't be too joyful, you mustn't whistle.
SPEAKER_00: And um and then strangely, on uh on Saturday, I had what what happened was I decided I wasn't going to go to that post office anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So I drove three miles past it to the one in Whitfield, where they're very smiley and happy, and uh and I come out still feeling joyful.
SPEAKER_00: But I had to go back to the previous one on Saturday because Fiona had ordered a pass on, it had been delivered there, and I went back in with very high expectations.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I had all the joy sucked at me again as soon as I walked through the door.
SPEAKER_00: But when we come to church, when we're serving, when we're worshiping, we shouldn't be doing it with a miserable face.
SPEAKER_00: Let the joy of the Lord be on our faces when we're worship.
SPEAKER_00: If you're happy and you're worshiping, tell your face.
SPEAKER_00: If you're happy and you're serving, tell your face.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there's nothing, if you are a worship leader, there's nothing that encourages you more than standing here and people joyfully praising God.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's such an encouragement to you as you're you're trying to lead worship.
SPEAKER_00: And as we come to verse 3, it says the beginning really of worship is recognizing that the Lord is God, he's the one that created us.
SPEAKER_00: And not only are we his people and the sheep of his pasture, he actually has ownership rights over us.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, because he made us, he created us.
SPEAKER_00: But if we've received Jesus into our lives, if we've accepted salvation, he's redeemed us back to himself as well.
SPEAKER_00: He's taken us from being strangers with God and in opposition to God to now being joint heirs with Christ, adopted into God's family.
SPEAKER_00: Joint heirs with Christ blows my mind that we are joint heirs with Christ because of what Jesus has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: And in essence, he owns us twice, first by creation, and then second by adoption, when we become a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: And because of all of that, we should enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Pilgrims who were coming to Jerusalem, they would they would come from all over and they'd arrive at the gates, and they'd be joyful that they'd arrived at the at the city because uh you know they didn't get on easy jet or whatever to get there then.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been a long walk, a long trek.
SPEAKER_00: But they get there and this they're thankful for the protection that God had for them on their journey.
SPEAKER_00: They're they're thanking God for his goodness and his provision for them.
SPEAKER_00: And then they would go through the streets and they'd enter into the temple courts, and the outer temple courts was where all nations could come and worship God, whether you were a Jew or not.
SPEAKER_00: And they'd come into that central court era with praise.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, only the ones that were Jews would be able to go into the next level of uh of the temple, where the temple itself was and where the holy of holies was.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that should be our journey of worship.
SPEAKER_00: We should come with thanksgiving, we should come closer to God in praise, and then ultimately that leads to worship in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And what an incredible privilege that is.
SPEAKER_00: You know, um in Isaiah we read that that uh he says that the angels cannot look on God the Father because he is so holy, holy, holy, so otherly, they cannot look at him, they have to cover their eyes with their wings.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Paul says to us, we can come boldly before the throne of God because of what Jesus has done.
SPEAKER_00: In Bible times, only the high priest was able to go into the Holy of Holies, and he was only able to do that once a year.
SPEAKER_00: He'd have to make atonement for himself first, and then he'd have to make atonement for the people, but once a year was all that was allowed.
SPEAKER_00: But by the grace of God, when Jesus laid down his life, the veil of the temple was torn into.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that separated the Holy of Holies was torn into.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting, it wasn't torn from the bottom up, it wasn't a man or two men that grabbed the bottom of the veil and tore it apart, it was torn from the top to the bottom.
SPEAKER_00: God did it because it was an indication that the Holy of Holies was now open because of what Jesus had done.
SPEAKER_00: And we have the privilege of coming into God's presence because Jesus has made atonement for us once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: And rather than one high priest on his own, Revelation 1, verse 6 says, He has made us a kingdom of priests, for God his Father.
SPEAKER_00: When we gather together for worship, we come as a royal priesthood.
SPEAKER_00: We're a holy nation, acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_00: Something tangibly different happens when we come together and we worship as one body, as I said earlier on, and we give God the glory and the honor that he's due.
SPEAKER_00: So we enter his gates with thanksgiving, we come into his courts with praise, because it's only right that we give him praise and thanks for what he's done.
SPEAKER_00: And as we reach the final verse of this psalm, it reminds us that the thanks and praise are the only right and proper thing in recognition of God's goodness towards us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not because just because of what he's done, it he deserves our worship by sovereign right, it belongs to him.
SPEAKER_00: All glory belongs to him, and he won't share his glory with anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: So if we come, if we're in the worship team and we come and we want to show how good we are at playing the guitar, for example, or the keyboard, or uh with our voices, we're on really dodgy ground.
SPEAKER_00: Because yes, we should endeavor to do our best, yes, we should practice, yes, we should do everything we possibly can to make a great sound and to help people into worship, but it isn't about us.
SPEAKER_00: All the glory is his, all the praise is his, all the honor is his, and it's his alone.
SPEAKER_00: Everything we do must point to him and not us.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's good, he's full of goodness, his his nature is good, he's good in all his plans, he's good in all his works, he's good in his grace, he's good in his forgiveness, he's good in his faithfulness, he's good in every aspect of his being.
SPEAKER_00: He is so, so good.
SPEAKER_00: Even his name is to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: How crazy is that?
SPEAKER_00: No one no one praises Jesse's name.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I do something good, they might praise me, but no one praises my name, but God's name is to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Jews had um had loads of names for him, loads of names to try and express the fullness of who he was.
SPEAKER_00: There's Jehovah or Yahweh, which meant the Lord or the I Am.
SPEAKER_00: There's Elohim, which means mighty creator God, there's Adonai, who which means Lord and Master.
SPEAKER_00: There's El Shaddai, the God, the all-sufficient one, El Elion, the Most High God, El Roy, the God who sees me, El Olam, the everlasting God.
SPEAKER_00: And then they add compound names for him as well.
SPEAKER_00: So you've got Jehovah Jirah, the Lord who provides.
SPEAKER_00: You've got Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals, Jehovah Shalom, the Lord is my peace, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord who is there, and Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: His name is to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's one of my own making, Jehovah Sneaky.
SPEAKER_00: Because whether we see it or not, whether we feel it or not, whether we understand it or not, he's always up to something.
SPEAKER_00: He's behind the scenes, always working for our good, always outworking his promises towards us.
SPEAKER_00: And so this afternoon, as we come and we're gonna praise and we're gonna worship, I want us to do it remembering some of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Ask ourselves, what is it that we're thankful for?
SPEAKER_00: How has God been good to you?
SPEAKER_00: How has God been faithful to you?
SPEAKER_00: What's God done for you that no one else could have done for you?
SPEAKER_00: How has he been faithful to you?
SPEAKER_00: What is he worthy of praise for?
SPEAKER_00: And even if we're feeling horrible, can we summon up enough to say, Oh my soul, praise the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Because it will change things, it changes the dynamic.
SPEAKER_00: If we can have the worship team back up, we're gonna we're gonna sing in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But let's think on those things, let's pour out our thanks to God.
SPEAKER_00: If you're brave enough, shout out your praise to God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_00: Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs.
SPEAKER_00: Know that the Lord is God, it's he who made us.
SPEAKER_00: We are the sheep of his pasture.
SPEAKER_00: Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.
SPEAKER_00: Give thanks to him and praise his name, for the Lord is good, and his love endures forever.
SPEAKER_00: His faithfulness continues through all generations.
SPEAKER_00: Let's praise the Lord.