Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
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Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Psalm 100:1-5; We've Been Made for Joy
Mark Gignilliat July 27, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin
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Well, good morning to you all. We're in Psalm 100 this morning. Glad to be a part of this summer series that you're having on the Psalms, let me read Psalm 100 to us. I believe it's in your bulletin. I'm reading from the ESV that's what's in the bulletin right, the CSV. Okay, psalm 100.
Speaker 1:Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God and it is he who made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name, for the Lord is good and his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. Now, lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in thy sight. O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, amen.
Speaker 1:I can remember the first Bible verse I learned as a little child. It's one of the blessings of growing up in the kind of fundamentalist world that I grew up in. We learned a lot of Bible. Here's the Bible verse, I think, maybe three, four years old. We love him because. Can any of you finish this. Oh yes, presbyterians and their Bibles. I love it. So the memories in this aging brain of mine are faint, but they're still there. I can remember as a little boy saying this verse out loud in front of my mom and my dad. I think we should be grateful to say this as an aside to the teachers in a place like Faith Presbyterian, are you parents out there that are loving your kids and trying to give them some of the Bible? So much of this is parenting and teaching and faith. You don't know what the future has or the ways in which these things are shaping little children, but, boy, they are shaping them. I still remember these verses.
Speaker 1:I think I remember the first Psalm. I think the first Psalm that I ever memorized as a child was Psalm 100. It might've been the small school that I was in, might've been in church, but I can remember the rhythms and the cadences of saying Psalm 100 in the King James Version God's favorite version out loud, again and again. So can't you hear the staccato rhythms of little children quoting Psalm 100? Oh, be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands Serve the Lord with gladness. Remember this. I don't remember giving much thought to the content of the psalm, wasn't doing any analysis of its words, but I can remember the rhythms and the feel of Psalm 100, even as a child, because so much of Psalm 100 is caught, as much as it is taught. This is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. This is a psalm that's an invitation into a certain kind of space and place the place of joy, the place of thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm going to make a few assertions to you this morning. I'm not going to make arguments and you can think about this later. My own opinion, modest as it is, is that Psalm 100 probably rests somewhere at the apex, somewhere near the top of this Himalayan range that we call the Psalms. In fact, I'll stick with my mountain metaphor for a moment. Psalm 100 might just be the Mount Everest of the Psalter, takes us out of the peaks and the valleys that we're so used to living and then brings us up into a space that's unique and it's the space for which we've been created, if the Psalms are the Himalayan range. And my family and I we just got back from the mountains of Wyoming on Friday, so I've got mountains on the brain so we stayed three days in the Bighorn Mountains on the eastern side and hiked up there and I tell you what. You hike above 9,000 feet and it'll teach you a few things. I think I met the Lord twice while I was up there Just checking my Fitbit for my heart rate. Come down, please Come down.
Speaker 1:Anyway, sticking with the mountain metaphor, if the Psalms are a mountain range, then Psalms 1 and 2 are a base camp. They set out the lay of the land before you start out on the mountain range. If you remember reading the Psalms and I know some of you in here are in the Psalms all the time God bless you Psalm 3, psalm 4, you'll find something very similar. Oh Lord, my prayer arises to you. Oh Lord, that's the language of invocation, that's the language of prayer. That's what you expect out of the Psalms. Psalms 1 and 2 are not invocation, prayer Psalms. They're teaching Psalms, they're didactic Psalms. They're setting out for you the instruction manual for going on to this hike that you're about to go on to. So if you're going to start getting around 9,000, 10,000, 13,000 feet, there's some things that you need to know before you set out, and Psalm 1 and 2 are helping you sort those out. And what are those things?
Speaker 1:Well, what's Psalm 1? How blessed is the person who doesn't walk or stand or sit with the ungodly. So think of this. Right out of the gate of the Psalms, the biggest question that you and I have as human beings is addressed how can I really be joyful? Where is real happiness? Where is real purpose and meaning to be found? That is the ultimate human question. People have been asking about that question forever.
Speaker 1:And what does Psalm 1 say? The blessed person is the one who loves God's Word. They love it, they delight in God's Word, they meditate on God's Word day and night. They recognize that the Scriptures are God's gift to them, god's speaking voice to them, and there's a humility in recognizing the value and the authority of God's word, and that is. I know that the best resource for my existence is not to be found by turning inward. Well, our whole sort of Western culture right now values turning inward to discover the true self. And what Psalm 1 is telling you is you want to find who your true self is and your true intent and purpose in this world. Then you get turned outside of yourself and learn that from God's word. He will instruct you, he will show you the way. But what's one of the prophet's favorite lines here's the way, walk ye in it. That's Psalm 1. And then Psalm 2 is a psalm that says and if you want to live and have a genuine spiritual life before the living God, then you need to recognize God as the God of the universe and his anointed king as the king and sovereign over your life, so you love God's word and you submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. That's the base camp instruction manual coming out of Psalms 1 and 2. And if you notice how Psalm 2 ends, how blessed are those who take refuge in him. So Psalm 1, verse 1, how blessed are those. Psalm 2, last verse how blessed are those. So Psalm 1 and Psalms 1 and 2 are shaping for you what a genuine spiritual existence before God is all about.
Speaker 1:I've read recently a New York Times columnist by the name of Ross Douthat. I imagine some of you read Douthat. He's just come out with a new book called Believe. He's a Roman Catholic thinker, kind of a public intellectual. I think he's an interesting man. He wrote an op-ed piece maybe a year or so ago.
Speaker 1:I'm getting old, I'm losing my sense of time but he wrote an op-ed piece rather recently warning his readers against the use of psychedelic drugs, warning his readers against the use of psychedelic drugs. I guess this is a big sort of uprise on these things of interest in the use of psychedelic drugs, whether it's mushrooms or these other things. And there's a big warning. And the reason why Duthat was warning his readers is because those who are doing these drugs and this goes back to Plato and Aristotle, I mean, they've been doing them forever. They're describing common experiences and encounters in the spiritual world. And so what Duthat is saying is you need to avoid using these psychedelic drugs, not because the spirit world is not real, but because there are real dragons out there.
Speaker 1:And we're living in a moment I think I'm not good at really assessing our moment, but we're living in a moment in the West where repaganization is a reality in the West, the search for the spiritual, the search for something transcendent and not in accord necessarily with God's word and his law. So what you have in the Psalms is we are wired to desire God and to desire the transcendent, and there are people in the West seeking those kinds of experiences in all different ways and manners. But the Psalms lay out for us God's intent and God's purposes for us in terms of a genuine spiritual existence before God, with the ways in which he intends. Love his word, yearn to know his word, be a student of his word from the moment that you wake up in the morning until the day that you die. Because we need God's instruction. And number two we submit to Christ as our Lord. He is Lord over everything.
Speaker 1:So after you get Psalms 1 and 2 kind of sorted out, then we're off on a hike Boom. We go up into the mountaintops and we praise. We go into the valleys and we lament. We go and we talk about wisdom, we talk about the need for instruction and praise. We've gone all over the place in the Psalms. But then when we get to Psalm 100, now I think we've arrived at somewhere special in the Psalms the apex, the real expression of where our humanity is to be discovered.
Speaker 1:Alexander Schmemann, theologian I'm going to mention later, says this this man is a hungry being, but he's hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all and in all. Here's why Psalm 100 is at the top of the Psalter, where the air becomes clear and clean and the view becomes limitless. Here, in this space and mood of Psalm 100, we discover why we've been made. We discover the answer to the question why do we even exist? Why are we here and where is our ultimate humanity to be discovered? And the answer that Psalm 100 gives is we discover the answers to all of those questions in the presence of God and the limitless joy that he offers. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he that has made us. We are not our own, we are His people. We're the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations.
Speaker 1:In Presbyterian terms, what is man's chief end? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. I forced my children on this long drive back from Wyoming, and my daughter was not thrilled about this, my 11-year-old but I forced her to listen to Norman Maclean's novel A River Runs Through it. Love that novel. The two boys are fly fishermen in the mountains of Montana and their dad is a Presbyterian minister. And Maclean this isn't in the movie, but it's in the book. Maclean says my father would take us on a walk in the mountains between services and he would quiz us on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. And then McLean says but he would never get past question one. He would ask us over and over again what does man's chief end? To glorify God, to enjoy him forever. That's what Psalm 100 is about and I know it's familiar to many of you, maybe overly familiar. Some of you have been reading Psalm 100 since you were a child, like me. But let me just make a few comments about Psalm 100 and then I'll sit down, which is my children's favorite part of all of my preaching.
Speaker 1:The psalm has a beautiful structure to it. The psalm has a beautiful structure to it. It's simple, it's terse, not complicated. Major theme Runs its way all the way through like a river. Notice the invitations that are given to you in Psalm 100, all in the form of imperatives Make a joyful noise, serve the Lord, come before him with a song, know who the Lord is, enter his gates with thanksgiving, enter his courts with praise. Praise the Lord, thank the Lord, bless the name of the Lord. So, from these imperatives, I just want to look at three things with you this morning. Number one notice what the psalm's major theme is. It's not hard, it's right on the surface, not complicated. You don't even have to go to Beeson to figure it out Praise, thanksgiving and joy.
Speaker 1:As I've already mentioned to you, it's not hard to catch the mood of this psalm. Hard to catch the mood of this psalm. Psalm 100 is exuberant. This psalm pulses with joy and thanksgiving. It bounces with praise. It pulls us with a gravitational force to something outside of ourselves. The kind of joy on display here isn't overly self-aware. The kind of joy that's on display in Psalm 100 is the antidote to what we've been confessing this morning in terms of our pride. Our human pride is being overly self-aware. The kind of joy that you see on display here is a joy that's lost in wonder and praise of another. The self becomes something almost distant and in the background here's the irony of the Bible I find my true self by losing the self in the presence and the majesty of God. So this is a joy that dances with the angels. It's a joy that sings with the choirs of heaven.
Speaker 1:Well, number two, I want you to notice the scope of the psalm. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Can I go back to the King James Version? Are you okay with that? All ye lands or all the earth? This isn't quite as poetic, but we might say it's something like make a joyful noise everyone and everything and the whole earth. I've, as I've mentioned, I think I've known this song since I was a child, but I've never took into account how significant and really provocative this opening line is in psalm 100.
Speaker 1:If you notice the language of verse 3, we are his people, we are the sheep of his pasture. That language, right there, is Israel language. That's the covenant with Israel language I will be your God and you will be my people. A joke that if Moses sold T-shirts at Mount Sinai, that would be the slogan I will be your God and you will be my people. But here you have the psalmist, including the whole of the earth within the scope of this covenantal language with Israel, this Israel-specific language. Those who worship the living God, those who are in the courts of God praising him. That's you this morning. Faith Presbyterian. We are His people, we're the sheep of His pasture, and that includes the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Ghanans and the Nigerians and the Egyptians, the Mexicans, and we can go on and on.
Speaker 1:So when we get to this ultimate destination, this Mount Everest of a psalm, and it becomes the normal mode of our existence and being, when that happens we're going to find all kinds of people there, lost in praise and worship and experiencing the fullness of joy. This is why Revelation tells us every tribe and nation and tongue praising the Lamb. Psalm 100 anticipates this future hope for the whole of the earth. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands, and we are and we will. Thirdly and lastly, before a really long conclusion that should make all the kids a little nervous, I'm joking.
Speaker 1:What's the cause of our joy? The being and the character of God, for this has just to share with you all this has sat on me over the past couple of years. Over the past couple of years, the centrality and the importance in the Bible of knowing God. My first real theology book that I read as a teenager was a little book by JI Packer entitled Knowing God. I still have it on my bookshelf at home. I pull it off every once in a while to look at these incredibly insightful marginal notes from my 18-year-old self Little notes like wow and very good. I'm sure Mr Packer really appreciated the affirmation that I was giving him in my notes.
Speaker 1:Knowing God. Psalm 100 makes clear why the whole world can sing for joy. Why can we be joyful people? Because we find our meaning and purpose in the presence of God. We find our meaning and purpose because of who God is. There's a movement, a kind of rhythm to Psalm 100. Moves to verse 3 and then moves again to verse 5. And you can see the building effect to verse 3, where it calls us, right in the middle of the psalm, to know God. It's a command and of course you all are Bible enough people around here at Faith Presbyterian to know that the call to knowledge is not merely a kind of intellectual summarizing of basic facts. There's some of that, there's content, but there's a reason why the Bible can say things like Adam went in and knew Eve and they had a child. That's not an intellectual enterprise. I don't think what you have here is the depth of our being in relationship to the living God, so that our whole person is directed toward him. That's knowing God.
Speaker 1:Several years ago, two years ago now, I was teaching a lay academy class at Beeson Divinity Schools Monday night. Don't tell anybody. I told you this. I don't prepare for those classes, I just kind of walk in and we'll see what happens. Could be good, could be bad. Please don't repeat that. But I was doing Isaiah. I love the book of Isaiah, I had taught it before.
Speaker 1:66 chapters, massive book. Here's what verse 2 of Isaiah 1 says. I mean, we're not even out of the gate and Isaiah says my children have rebelled against me. A donkey knows its master, even an oxen knows where to get its food, but my people do not know, and I don't know why. But that evening lecturing Monday night and a lot of preparation, shoulder shook me in that moment to see that prophet Isaiah linked together the rebellion against God with the lack of knowing God. Or, if I can put it in positive terms, knowing God and being rebellious against God cannot operate in the same space. They cannot coexist. To pursue the knowledge of God is to enter into the space of our very reason for being. Flip the page in Isaiah to Isaiah, chapter 2.
Speaker 1:Guess what you find Kind of like a JRR Tolkien mythological moment as Mount Zion, which is, you know, mount Zion's, not even Chiha, you know, in terms of height in Israel, and now this thing is bursting through to become the largest mountain in the universe. It's the highest mountain and all the nations are streaming to Mount Zion. Why are they streaming? Because the nations want to know God. We've heard about the God of Israel. Let's stream there so that we can know his ways and understand who he is. That's what the psalmist is telling us. Why we can have joy? Because God has given himself to be known. That, by the way, is the greatest mystery of the universe. The god of the living, who spoke the world into existence by the agency of the word, his son and the power of the Spirit, has given himself to be known in the servant form of Jesus of Nazareth. And words on a white page. It is remarkable.
Speaker 1:Philosophers don't like it and I say to them too bad. This is how God has spoken into the world. We're invited to know him. Look at verse 5. Know who your God is, see who's made us. All the translations say we are his. Another way of saying this is we are not our own. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Joyful people are theologians, not abstract nerdy types necessarily like me. I get it, I know I told the first service. I walk into all these cool coffee shops in Homewood, alabama, or downtown Birmingham and all the young people are there and I walk in, the music turns off immediately and then when I walk out, the party starts up again. I get it. I walk out, the party starts up again, I get it.
Speaker 1:But the theologian's task is not just for your pastors or for seminary nerds like me. We're all called to pursue the knowledge of the living God because he's given himself to be known. He's given himself to be named and related to the whole earth's task. The whole task of your own being can be summed up in this question God, I want to know who you are so that I can worship you more joyfully, so that I can trust in you more completely and proclaim your name more faithfully. And proclaim your name more faithfully.
Speaker 1:Psalm 100 wants every one of us to be theologians and it links our joy think of this. It links your joy to the quest to know God. Do you remember what Hosea, the prophet, lamented in chapter 6? Oh, my people are dying for lack of knowledge. They do not know who I am. That's crest one. Then crest five, the final verse. Why, joy in God's presence. Why are we joyful? Because God is good, because his loving kindness endures forever and his faithfulness abides from generation to generation.
Speaker 1:One of the joys of coming to Faith Presbyterian Church and getting to sit on the front row is watching families move into these various corners of the church to commune together around the Lord's Supper. It's a beautiful thing to observe. I love that. You do it every week, and what I really like, too, is the 70-year-old, the 50-year-old and the three-year-old. Here they come, and that's what Psalm 100 is telling us the faithfulness that you knew when you were 20 and you're still experiencing now that you're 70, that's for your children too. It's for them, it's not just for you. From every generation, from one to the next, we're destined for joy because God is good, and think of this.
Speaker 1:There's a little theology 101 here. God doesn't just do good things. We know he does. God is the very essence of the good, the good. He can be nothing other than good. He's the fullness of himself. God doesn't discover goodness like you and I do. He doesn't choose to do good things. God is good, and any goodness that you experience is a derivative of the goodness that is God himself, all good things in this world that you know and have enjoyed whisper of him. All of them do.
Speaker 1:I'm also joyful because God is loyal to His loyal love toward his people will endure, the psalmist tells us, forever. It's limitless. Think of this. God's loyal love can never be exhausted. By its very nature, god's love is generative, it compounds on itself, it builds on itself. God doesn't have to generate more love, he doesn't have to dig deep to be loyal to his frail and faithless children. His love endures forever and his faithfulness is primed and ready for one generation into the next generation, on and on into eternity. We're not our own. He made us. We are his. His goodness, his eternal love, his generational faithfulness led his son to a cross, to the jaws of sin and death, and then miraculously propelled him back into life. And this is why Psalm 100 invites you into joy, real, abiding joy.
Speaker 1:Okay, a few concluding comments. The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche lamented that Christians are often people with no joy. Let me say something I don't want to take away from the difficulties of life or their sorrows In a room this size. I imagine many of you in here are carrying deep and real sorrows and senses of loss. It can be more acute in some seasons than others. So I'm not in any way diminishing that.
Speaker 1:But have you ever met Good Friday Christians who don't really know how to do Easter Sunday joy all that well? Well, early in my marriage my wife and I were in a church who don't really know how to do Easter Sunday joy all that well. Early in my marriage my wife and I were in a church that had this tendency, at least in the season where they could do some Lent. This was a Lent. Church Songs often sounded like Lent. We talked a lot about brokenness and sorrow and the existential weight of just being, and my wife and I were kind of new to the liturgical world and the church calendar. So we entered into the heaviness of Lent and the music that went along with it, kind of sour and dour. But when Easter Sunday came and I remember this because we were in a small group, we were talking about this we entered into Lent. It's Easter next Sunday, let's go Out with the dower and in with the joy. But Sunday, easter Sunday, fell a little flat, and this is not hyperbole. I remember one of our friends leaving church in tears that day saying to us I can't go through the heaviness of Lent, with no Easter to look forward to, because we've been made for Easter, we've been made for joy. There will still be Lent while we remain and earth remains in its current state. But can I be clear with you this morning there will be no Lent in heaven, none, just Easter Sunday forever. Just Psalm 100.
Speaker 1:There are two Christians from the previous century who I think can be called theologians of joy Eastern Orthodox theologian by the name of Alexander Shmaimon I've got a slight man crush on him and the other one that I think all of you probably know CS Lewis. I was talking to a friend on the phone a couple weeks ago. Both he and I have been reading through Shmaimon's journals that he wrote from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s when he passed away, and he reflects. Shmaimon does a lot on the importance and centrality of joy for the Christians. So I went hunting in his journals. I wanted to read you a few excerpts. By the way, I just want to say that I don't like being read to by other people, but you're here and can't go anywhere, so I'm going to do that. Sorry. This is what he says, I believe, in December, the 3rd, 1976.
Speaker 1:I think God will forgive everything except lack of joy, when we forget that God created the world and saved it. Joy is not one component of Christianity. And here's the phrase that I love this is a t-shirt phrase Joy is the tonality of Christianity that penetrates everything, all of our faith, all of our vision. Where there is no joy, christianity becomes fear and therefore torture. He says this on a day very close to this one. The world is having fun. Nevertheless, it's joyful, because joy different from what we call fun, can only be from God, only from one on high. Not only joy of salvation, but salvation itself as joy. Every Sunday we have a banquet with Christ. We're about to experience this as a congregation. We're invited to his table and to his kingdom, but then we sink back into our problems and into fear and suffering.
Speaker 1:Shmaimon was a dean of a seminary in New York. He had to deal with all the administrative problems of an academic institution. One journal entry he said such a bad faculty meeting today could only go home, sit on the couch and watch Carol Burnett, like that's great. That's great. Could only go home, sit on the couch and watch Carol Burnett Like that's great, that's great. He says God saved the world through joy. Without joy, christianity is incomprehensible. Fear not, said the angels, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis, the other theologian of joy, is so good because he helps us to define joy. I think and I'm no Lewis expert, I'm really late to the Lewis game, I get it but I do think Lewis is a theologian of joy and genuine pleasure. Let me ask you this If someone asked you to define joy, how would you define it? Let's think about that. I've struggled with that. I even pulled out my Hebrew fancy lexicons for the Hebrew word for joy, which is simcha. Let me look up what the Hebrew has to say about simcha and what was the definition of simcha. Let me look up what the Hebrew has to say about simcha and what was the definition of simcha.
Speaker 1:Joy, jubilation. Well, that didn't help me much. What is it? How do we define it? This is how Lewis defines it. He links it really to the content and the substance of Psalm 100. Content and the substance of Psalm 100.
Speaker 1:All joy, lewis says, reminds us. It's never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away, or still about to be In another place. In Surprised by Joy, lewis defines joy as an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction In mere Christianity. He would later say if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. I've been made for Psalm 100. In other words, for Lewis, joy is the bliss of desire that necessarily looks to God and the world to come for its ultimate satisfaction. It's not something that can be analyzed. Joy must be in the language of Psalm 100, entered into, enter his gates with thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:The experiences of joy in this world tap into our deepest longings for the next world and the joy that we experience while we're still here in this world. God gives us these moments. Think about the bliss of worship, sitting on the front row listening to your singing kind of wash over the front. What a joyful experience. The tender moment that you have with your spouse, the smile that will come across your face when your child says something genuinely funny.
Speaker 1:The Christmas Eve gathering when everything just pops and goes right. The Christmas Eve gathering when everything just pops and goes right. The evening on the porch with your best girlfriends or guy friends, those places where you can just exhale, and all of those moments, those joyful moments that tap into our longings. They anticipate home, for you and for me, where our true selves will be found, to the land of the living, where death is no more. The world of Psalm 100, the world of immeasurable and inexhaustible joy, a world that we can taste and experience now, maybe even today, maybe real joy today for you, but whose fullness awaits another day. O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, enter his gates with praise, amen.