Dr. Rodney Plunket

I decided to preach from Psalm (Ps) 100 on this particular morning for the most obvious of reasons.  Psalm 100 is a thanksgiving psalm, and today is the first Sunday after Thanksgiving.  But what I have learned as I have studied this psalm has moved me from the obvious to something deep and powerful and previously unseen.  My faith has been enriched by things I did not know before, things that were certainly not obvious when I began.

I want to begin by pointing out that individual psalms are notoriously difficult to date, and we do not know when Ps 100 was written.  But although the psalm keeps hidden its time of writing, it gives many clues as to its original purpose.  One clue is provided by the the psalm’s heading.  That heading is translated into English as “A psalm:  For giving thanks.” (NIV) or “A Psalm of thanksgiving” (NRSV).  The word translated as “giving thanks” or “thanksgiving” is t◊o®d≈a® and can also be rendered as “thank offering,” so the heading could be brought into English as “A thank offering psalm.”  Marvin E. Tate in his commentary on this psalm writes concerning the t◊o®d≈a® that it “probably originally was a sacrifice offered in a thanksgiving ceremony and then became a ‘song of praise’ to accompany the sacrifice.”[1]  His comment should not be taken to mean that the second meaning supplanted the first.  The word continued to be used to refer to both the thanksgiving sacrifice and the song (see Psa 56:12).  The likelihood that this psalm was used at such a temple service grows when the psalm is read and we hear the words “come into his presence with singing” and we realize that coming into the presence of God was a way of referring to coming to the Temple to worship God.  The psalm’s connection to worship at the Temple is heightened further when we hear verse (v) 4’s words, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.”  These clues lead me to believe that this psalm was originally written as a song to be sung as worshippers came to the Temple to offering a thank offering to God.

What is so powerful about that awareness for me is the placement of this psalm.  In the past I paid no attention to this psalm’s placement, but the scholars that I read in my study forced me to pay attention to that this time.  To help you see the importance of placement, I must take you back to Ps 89.  That psalm ends with a lament.  The lament is due to the fact that God appears to have turned away from a central promise made to the people of Judah.  Very near the end of that psalm, in v 46, we read, “How long, O Lord?  Will you hide yourself forever?  How long will your wrath burn like fire?”  We can say fairly confidently that this psalm was written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC.  That destruction removed from the people of Judah “their three most fundamental and cherished religious institutions:  the Temple, the land, and the monarchy.”[2]

The very next psalm is Ps 90.  If you look at that psalm in your Bible, you will find that it is the first psalm in “Book IV” of the overall collection of psalms in the Bible.  What scholars are realizing is that the 17 psalms that make up Book IV have been selected because of their appropriateness to be used in response to Jerusalem’s destruction.  We will not go through each of these 17 psalms to demonstrate how appropriate they are, but let me give some idea of what I mean.  These psalms speak to the people’s loss of the land by pointing out that their true home is God.  These psalms speak to their loss of the monarchy by pointing out that God is their true monarch/their true king anyway.

But what messages do these psalms contain to address the loss of the Temple?  I think we hear in Ps 100 a response to that loss.  The references to coming “into [God’s] presence with singing,” entering “his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise” after the Temple was gone would call the people to draw near to God through a hearfelt devotion and praise which does not require a special house of worship.  Let me put it this way:  I think it is as if God is saying to the people through this psalm, ‘You can draw near to Me in thanksgiving and praise without a temple because I am the God of all the earth and because you are My people wherever you’re living and in whatever place you are worshiping.’

What I have come to see is that this psalm and the other psalms in Book IV are here to keep faith alive and to feed the faith of a people who have been traumatized by the loss of all they held dear.  Psalm 100 was written for one purpose, to be sung as part of a thank offering service at the Jerusalem Temple.  But later that same psalm served another purpose; it served to keep worship, thanksgiving, and faith alive in the direst of circumstances.

Now let’s walk through this psalm together.  It served more than one purpose in the ancient world; I am fairly confident that it can serve us as well.

Please look again at v 1:  “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.”  Notice this joy; it’s a loud joy.  It is “a joyful noise” or the Hebrew words can just as accurately be rendered as “shout to the Lord.”  I wonder how soon it was after the destruction of Jerusalem that someone realized that there was still much to shout with joy about?  I wonder how many were able to join in at first?  I wonder if this was such a radical joy that some felt it to be wholly out of place, like laughing out loud in the middle of a funeral or singing a song of celebration after your house has burned down?  If the Jews could sing this song of thanksgiving when every material and governmental reality that gave them their identity was gone, how much easier it should be for us to sing it today.

And notice that this first verse of the psalm calls upon “all the earth” to join in.  Even in the worst of times, God’s people should know that God is still God over all the earth.  No tragedy alters that fact.

Now please look with me at the first line of v 2:  “Worship the Lord with gladness; . . .”  J. Clinton McAnn Jr. writes as follows regarding the word translated as “worship” here:

While the Hebrew root can mean “Worship,” this translation probably does not convey satisfactorily the comprehensiveness of the term.  The word means to orient one’s whole life and existence to a sovereign master, to be the servant or slave of a monarch.[3]

“To orient one’s whole life and existence to a sovereign master”––that is a power­ful concept.  Do you feel this psalm calling out to you today?  I believe it is calling out with the message that God wants more than for us to show up at worship services.  God wants us to find our identities in God as our sovereign master and lord.  But hear the rest.  God wants us to “orient” the whole of our lives and the whole of our existence on the basis of the fact that God is our sovereign master and king, and God wants us to do that with gladness.  This verse calls for a radical kind of worship and service to God and has no problem calling for that to be done with an attitude of gladness.  The Hebrew word used here can just as accurately be translated as joy or mirth.  I believe that these words can point us to a great truth, the truth that the more radical our connection to God the more joy we experience in life.  I would even argue that until our connection with God results in joy then we are not connected as we should be.  Such a joy-filled connection to God allows us to pass through the most difficult of times with a deep joy that sustains and feeds us.

Now look at the second line of v 2:  “come into his presence with singing.”  The overall tenor of this psalm causes me to hear in this line a spontaneous impulse to sing/rejoice when we draw near to God.  In other words, I do not think that these words are just exhorting us to join in when Adam begins a song; I think this line is calling upon us to feel the joy of coming into God’s presence to such an extent that songs naturally flow from us.  Such an understanding is fed by the fact that the term rendered here as “joyful songs” can also be translated as “jubilation.”  The coming into God’s presence is to create joy/singing/jubilation.  We are drawing near to the God of all the earth.  What a wonder!  What a thrill!!

Now look with me at v 3:

Know that the Lord is God.

It is he that made us, and we are his;

we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

This verse is emphatically focused on God, and that is clearer in the Hebrew text that it is in some English translations.  The Hebrew does not require the pronoun “he” in this verse anywhere.  It is implied in the first line, “Know that the Lord is God,” and that line makes perfect sense without it.  But in the Hebrew the word “he” is there anyway.  Neither is it required in the clause, “It is he that made us” because the pronoun is built into the verb anyway.  But again the pronoun “he” is there.  What the biblical text is doing here is comparable to what we do when we put a word in bold type, underline, or italicize it.  This text is putting the spotlight on the Lord.  I like to read the text this way: Know that the Lord, He is God.  It is He that made us, . . .”

And v 3 calls upon us to “know” the Lord.  Tate writes concerning the word “know” here, “the context seems to favor the idea of ‘acknowledge/recognize/confess’ . . .”  I especially feel drawn to viewing this verse as a call to confess that the Lord is God, the God who made us and to whom we belong.  And we belong to the Lord as the Lord’s people and like a flock of sheep belong to a shepherd.

McCann draws attention to the pronoun flow in this verse.  Listen to it:  “‘he . . . he . . . us . . . we . . . his . . . his.’”  After drawing attention to that he writes, “This arrangement dramatically suggests that the question of human identity must begin and end with God.  That is what the psalm intends for us to ‘know.’”[4]

Now look with me at v 4.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him, bless his name.

We come with thanks.  We come to God to orient our whole lives around God.  We come to sing and praise God with joy, with jubilation.  We come knowing and confessing that the Lord, He is God, He has made us, we are His people and the flock that He shepherds.  All of that results in us drawing near to Him with thanksgiving and praise.  All of that causes us to extol the wonder of who God is, which is how I would suggest we understand the concept of blessing God’s Name.  Thankful, joyful worship flows out of knowing who God is and who we are before that God.  God is sovereign.  The Lord is God.

Now look with me at v 5:

For the Lord is good;

his steadfast love endures forever,

and his faithfulness to all generations.

And now a final reason for praising and thanking God.  It is because of His goodness, His steadfast love, and His faithfulness.  And the goodness, steadfast love, and faithfulness of God are all active attributes.  These are not passive aspects of the divine personality.  These are active and energetic realities within the living God.  These aspects reach out and bless our lives.

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