One with himself, I cannot die. My soul is purchased by his blood. My life is hid with Christ on high. With Christ, my Savior and my God. Martin Luther once said that the whole of Christianity is really found in the personal pronouns. That God is not just the God or a God, but he's my God. Christ is my Savior. Christ is my comfort. What a joy it is to be God's people. It's wonderful that God's also given us his word. So please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 100. Psalm 100, we'll be considering the whole of this Psalm this evening. This is a well-loved psalm, a well-known psalm, and one of the things that's a joy about getting to come and fill pulpit at places is you're not necessarily tied to where you're at in a current series, but you get to pick some of these great texts, some of the best texts of God's Word. I had a professor once say to me, he said, the temptation is you want to try to, you think you want to pick a tricky text or a hard one, and preach that, but he said, pick the best ones. Pick the easy ones and preach those. So we're looking at Psalm 100 tonight. Let's consider God's holy inspired word together. 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. 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 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. Amen. Let's ask God's help as we look to his word. Heavenly Father, your words are truth. Your words are verity and we want to consider them as they are, the words of God to us. We bow under your authority and ask your spirit to help us that your word would instruct us and teach us for Jesus' sake. Amen. Sometimes when you're considering a text of scripture, often you want to consider it through a particular lens, what we might call drawing out a particular theme. You see, every passage of scripture is so multifaceted. It's been said that every passage of scripture has at least 100 sermons you could preach from it, considering just the different aspects and nuances. And the Lord's just had a particular idea on my mind and heart lately, and it's a lens through which I wanna look at this passage, and it's the idea of attention. Where is our attention? What does it mean to pay attention to God? I want to consider this theme in Psalm 100. It's been said that we live in an attention economy. No longer is your time considered your most valuable asset, but it's your attention. ginormous billion-dollar corporations are seeking just for one second more of your attention. How they can tweak an algorithm just to get you looking a second longer. It was said in that documentary, The Social Dilemma, that if you're using a product and the product is free to you, then really you are the product. People want your attention so you can look at their advertisements and that's how they make money. Your attention is highly valued, coveted, and sought after. Everything in life is trying to tune in to how they can vie for your attention. But as Christians, God is the one with whom we have to do. God is the one that deserves our attention. And this psalm tonight is a call to give attention to God, the one true God. It caps the end of a series of what might be called kingship psalms, starting in Psalm 95, psalms declaring that God is the king, that he rules over his people. And these Psalms expand from a more local focus on Israel to Psalm 100, which has this broad, global, multicultural focus. It's a call to the nations to give praises to God, to acknowledge God, to pay attention to God. Because you see, the great problem with fallen humanity is that attention has become misplaced. Attention has been switched from attending to the Creator, and attention has now become mired solely on the creation. The problem with sinful man is a problem of misplaced attention. This is part of what we see in Romans 1, 21-23, where we read that although they knew God, they did not honor Him, or value, or attend to Him as God. or give him thanks, but became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. In verse 28, we see, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, They did not see fit to pay attention to God. God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. The result of a humanity that does not pay God his proper regard and attention is futility and foolishness, darkness and debasement. What a state when attention is misplaced. And the call here is to the nations to turn their attention from the creation to the creator. That's what they most need, an attention shift. But Psalm 100 is also a prophetic reminder for the people of God. In calling the nations, as we would sing this, calling the nations to pay attention to God, we're reminding ourselves that we also ought to pay attention to God. It's implicit. It's another layer as we look at this text. Parents, if you would ever turn throughout the service and encourage one of your kids to say, hey, pay attention to what's going on, you're reminding yourself, just wait, I need to be paying attention as well. We're reminded as we would call someone else to pay attention, hey, I need to be careful to not let my mind wander and distractions come and pull me away from attending to God and his word. Even as we pray tonight, we pray your kingdom come in this world, but we also pray God's kingdom come more and more in our hearts. And so we can consider Psalm 100 from both perspectives, the call to the nations to attend to God and the call for ourselves to pay continual attention to God. Take a look with me at verse one as we dive into this psalm. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. So the call here is for the nations to attend to God in two ways, in serving him and in singing to him. And the two qualities we're given to govern this singing and serving is that it would be with joy and with gladness. The call is for them to pay a glad attention to God, to give God a happy sort of attention, a delighted attention. And to whom ought they pay attention? Well, the Lord. If you see that word Lord in all caps in your Bible, it's meaning it's the personal name of God, Yehovah, the name God revealed to the people of Israel saying, this is my personal name by which you can know me and you can call me. It's a call for the nations to turn happy attention to Jehovah, the one true and living God. And in giving them this name, they're confessing that God is both the absolute God, but also a personal God. It's been said that one of the things that actually makes Christianity unique among world religions is that we believe in a God who is absolute personality. This comes from theologian John Frame. Those are always bifurcated in other religions. Either you have an absolute god, as in, say, Islam, but he's impersonal. He doesn't love you. He doesn't have relationship with you. He's merely a sovereign. Or in more polytheistic religions, like Hinduism, you have gods that are personal and can have relationship with you, but they're not almighty and they're not sovereign. The god we're calling the nations to worship is both an almighty sovereign god, but also a personal god. a God with whom we can have relationship through Christ, even calling Him our Father. This is the person to whom we are to sing happily. The nations are to sing happily to the God who is a person. To whom do most people sing happy songs? It's the ones they love. How many songs are written, the longing for someone who is loved or responding to the heartbreak when that love is lost? In glad singing, it's coming from a heart of love. And so it ought to be with God. We want the nations to pay attention to God with songs flowing out of loving hearts. And we too, we ought to be pursuing this sort of delighted gladness in God. The mark of our spirituality, the way you know you're a truly spiritual person, is not just how good you are at beating yourself up over your sin, but how delighted you are in God, how delighted you are at His grace, how much joy you find in His goodness and mercy to you. God is good and deserving of praise. Now there is a call to singing in here, and I think it's good just to consider this concept of singing. We do a lot of singing as Christians. It's a fairly unique thing to our religious practice. People don't sing a lot together in culture. Hebrews 13, 15 talks about singing. It says, through Christ, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name. There again, that word acknowledge, to pay attention, to acknowledge God's name with the fruit of our lips. And singing is important because in singing to God, that is where we give the most concentrated attention to God. Singing is a method of funneling and focusing our attention on the words. Singing is slower than average human speech, and it forces us into a more contemplative, meditative thought on the singing. Singing is also more emotive than regular human speech, and so singing calls our hearts to have also the right affections towards God. It's a highly focused form of paying attention to God. More than almost anything else, the way we sing to God witnesses to the world of the value we place on God, of the attention we want to give to Him. Pastor Votie Baucham has said that in singing we set our minds' attention and our hearts' affection on God, praising Him for who He is and what He's done. Both our minds' attention and our hearts' affection. That's what we want. And that's our call to the world. Our call for the nations is really, come sing with us. We want you to join us in singing, in paying attention together to the God who's called us to worship Him. We want to pay attention to God, to focus that in our singing to God. Now if we are to pay attention to God, we don't just pay attention to His reality generally, but to specific things about Him. We're calling the nations and reminding ourselves to pay attention to God's person, who He is, and His works, what He's done. If you could ever imagine a scenario, say you're maybe at a meeting of your whole company, and it's like a trade show, and someone walks in, and you don't know who they are, and someone beside you, they point out, they're like, hey, that person's like a head honcho, they run this department, they set in function this new initiative, and you know, you gotta watch out for them, because they aren't up for no funny business. They'll mention to you the key qualities of Here's what you need to pay attention when you're considering this person. Maybe when you interact with them, ask them how their family's doing, or avoid asking them how their family's doing. When calling the nations to attend God, we're saying, hey, consider these specific things. Look with me at verse three. Here's what we want them to pay attention to. We say, know that the Lord, that is the Lord Yehovah, he is God. It is He who made us, and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. A number of important, important truths packed into this verse. The call first is to know that Jehovah is the one true God. All the other gods of the nations are only God's so-called, not true gods. There is one true God, the Lord, who has been revealed to his people. And it says, know that it is he who made us. It's he who made us. The Lord is our maker. The Lord is our creator. And this is a fundamental confession that this world is not self-existent. This world is not itself eternal. As G.K. Chesterton once said, he asked, what's easier to believe, that an all-powerful sovereign God made everything out of nothing or that nothing got together and organized itself into everything? It's a call to acknowledge that there is a creator, the Lord. And this is important because it keeps man from glorying in self. Self-glorying is a destructive tendency of human societies. But to acknowledge the creator takes us out of that focus on self to acknowledge the one who made us and give him glory. Now, it makes sense in a way that man does like to glory in himself. Man is said to be, in scripture, a little lower than the angels. Humans are amazing creations of God. They do incredible sorts of things, and they bear, to different extents, the image of God. But like a beautiful painting, how silly would it be for the painting to come and glory in itself, say, look how great I am. No, it's the painter that gets the credit. It's the painter that they write books about whose skill crafted such beauty. And to be able to turn and give glory to our creator for all the good we experience in one another, it's a fulfilling thing for the human heart. Our call to this world, then, is to recognize that you are not fundamentally autonomous, but you are God's work, you are God's creation. The sheep of his pasture, probably a straying sheep, but still a creation of God, one living in his world. With the acknowledgment of the Maker, The person can then know where to go with their delight. How unfulfilling would it be when you're enjoying a great time with family, food, maybe feasting over Thanksgiving, to be able to just return thanks to the universe? The universe doesn't care. That's hard and cold, but to be able to return where... People sometimes talk about the problem of evil, but there's also a problem of good. Why is there good in this world? Why do we experience love and joys and delights? The goodness itself has a source and we find that source in God. And so when acknowledging our Creator, we're acknowledging the source of all good. There's a call to acknowledge God's ownership, but also a call for the believer to acknowledge God's ownership, because God owns us doubly. He owns us by virtue of creating us, but He also owns us by virtue of redeeming us, of buying us back from slavery to sin and the devil, and to belong again to Him. We are doubly God's. He owns us and we are His. And this is a reality we want to pay attention to, that there is a God and we belong to him. Psalm 46.10 says to be still and know, that is acknowledge, pay attention to the fact that I am God. Sometimes that's all we need. In the anxieties, in the chaos, in the troubles we endure, it's just still our hearts, still the outside voices and just know. There's a God. He is on the throne, and I am not. I am not ultimately the center of the world. My troubles are not ultimate. God is ultimate. He is King and Lord. We surrender, we raise up that white flag, and we've said, God, I don't belong to me. I belong to you. I have fundamentally given up the right to control my own life, as if we thought we really could anyways. But Lord, I've given up the rights to call the shots in my life. I surrender to you. You are the one to whom I pledge my allegiance. You are the one to whom I obey wholeheartedly. We belong to him. This truth, that we belong to God, reminds us of the reality behind that, that we only belong to God because God wanted us. We wouldn't belong to God if God didn't want us to belong to him. That's what we're told in scripture. He wanted before the foundation of the world to send his son to redeem a people to be his very own. We belong to him and as a good owner, as a good shepherd, that means belonging to God means God cares. God provides. God leads. God protects. God loves his children. He cares for and feeds his sheep. And this thought, the thought of God and his ownership of us, naturally again leads us to praise. Verse four, take a look. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Sing to him, give thanks to him, bless his name. There's a call here to enter God's gates and to come into his courts. This is using the language of Old Testament Israel. The gates here, to enter his gates with thanksgiving, is a picture of the nations coming from where they're at, entering in through the gates of Jerusalem, that they might come and be praising in the city of God, at the temple of God where God dwells. And this is an image used all throughout the Old Testament. Whenever there's a prophecy about the future nations coming to Christ, there's language used of them coming down roads and entering into the gates of the city of God. Which, Hebrews 12 reminds us, is now the heavenly Jerusalem. We're calling the nations to come to where God is, to where his people gather, whether here or halfway across the globe, to enter the gates to the house of God with praise, to enter his courts with praise. This would have been referring to the courts of the temple, the place where even the Gentiles were allowed to enter the outer courts and worship, to be in God's places of worship. That's the call. And so the call again is to join the church as a praising people. That's what we are, we're a worshiping community, a community of worshipers, a community of praisers, one who praise the true and living God. And again, what sort of God do we praise? It's the one who created us, yes, the one who redeemed us, but who is in and of himself altogether worthy of praise and adoration. Because you see, all God's works, His creation, His redemption, His sanctification of us, it goes just to show forth His worth. Who He is, is the source of what He does. And so this psalm concludes reminding us of the character of God that would make God be so kind and loving to us. Verse five, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. The final call to pay attention once again to God's goodness, his faithful love, his trustworthiness. We've wanted to pay attention to who God is, his self-existence, his creative power, his sovereignty. In a catechism speak, we call these God's incommunicable attributes. That is the things about God that we don't share. But this psalm ends calling us to praise God for what we call his communicable attributes. That is the ones we can reflect ourselves. Love, faithfulness, and goodness. And the beautiful thing is that these are attributes of God that we actively experience. Yes, God is good, but he shows his goodness to us. Yes, God is love, but he's also loving towards us. Yes, God is faithful, but he is faithful towards us. We praise God because all these things that make him great and beautiful are things we get to experience as his people. God communicates his best to us. And the better we are at noticing how good God is and how good he's been to us, the more wholeheartedly we respond with praise, the more resolvedly we consecrate ourselves to his service. And we speak this song to the nations because we know that the world has not yet known these attributes of God personally. They haven't experienced his goodness and love shown them through Christ. They haven't seen his faithfulness in their lives, caring for them as a shepherd with sheep. And as this song is sung, it's a call to the nations to know this sort of God, to know a loving God, a good God, We call like in Psalm 34, eight, oh, taste and see that God is good. That's the state of heart that we want, that I've tasted, I've seen, I want to taste more, and I want you to taste the goodness and grace of God. No wonder the psalm has really endured so well in church history. It encapsulates the heart of the believer so well, this call to praise. Now, I want to give a few thoughts by just way of application as we consider and I've been looking at this psalm and this theme of attention in it, is that to be a Christian is to be one that pays proper attention to God. To live Christianly is to be attentive to God in all things. That is, we want to be a people that are habitually attuned to God. who have a habit of paying attention to God in all aspects of life. And we want to pay attention to God in three ways. We want to pay attention to God's worth, just how valuable he is, who he is, and what he's done. And attention is a value-communicating idea. Have you ever stopped to think, when we say, pay attention, what are we actually saying? We're saying that your attention is a currency, like money, that you could pay to something. Whenever you give attention, you are paying something you have, a finite resource of attention, you are paying it to a particular thing. That is, you are communicating a value on that thing by which you pay attention. That's why if you're talking to someone and they're paying attention to something else, it's offensive to you because they're not showing you value. Their attention is being paid elsewhere when it ought to be being paid the one communicating with them. And so we want to pay God attention because that is showing him his worth. And primarily this is happening in worship, these times of focused attention on God. When we remember that he is our maker and redeemer, we meditate on who he is and what he's done. But we also in this want to pay attention to God's will. When we pay attention to God, we pay attention to what God has said, what he's said to us in his word, what he has commanded us to do. And we also pay focused attention to God in prayer. In prayer, we're seeking to align our wills with God's will. And we also thirdly pay attention to God's way. That is, as we go throughout the day, what is a way of life? by which we pay attention to God. We might call this spiritual-mindedness, or God-wardness, or in the language of scripture, the fear of God. The best definition I've ever heard of the fear of God was from Michael Barrett, who said that to fear God is to factor God into every thought and situation, to live in the reality of God. That is, every thought and situation, God's a factor. What God wants, what God thinks, that God exists. I factor God into every thought and situation. That it is to live in the reality of God. To live like God is present. To live knowing that He is. That He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. We want to pay attention to God, His worth, His will, His way. And so, to this end, I just wanna give a couple practical suggestions for ways we can help cultivate God-attentiveness. Because we want this to become habit. And habits come through intentional things in our life that change to inculcate the new habit. Habits are kind of like potholes. The more you keep running over the same one, the deeper it gets. And we want these potholes in our life that jar us back into the thought of God. These are not necessarily things you have to do, but these are practical guidelines or suggestions of things you might find helpful. The first is, it can be helpful to have a habit of paying the first of your attention to God. When you wake up in the morning, instead of the first thing being leaning over, grabbing your phone, and checking whatever it is you want to check, before you do anything, just think about God. Just a thought to God to, from the very start of the day, say, I'm acknowledging you, you are my Lord. And then first thing in the morning to give God focused attention by looking to his word, looking to him in prayer. Working to find the way that works best for you, whether it's listening to audio Bible and praying on your drive, or first getting a cup of coffee or tea and sitting down with a pen in hand. To know that we wanna orient our whole day with a focus on God right from the start. A second suggestion is to ensure we're doing well to pay that seventh of our attention to God. God's given us one day in seven, the Lord's day, as a whole day to be devoted to attending to God. There are indeed so many busynesses, so many distractions in the week, but God says you get to lay all that aside your common work, your common things you do, and you get this day. I'm gonna give you a whole day to just reorient, to remagnetize the compass of your heart, to once again point to the true God, to once again attend to Him. And so we can be more diligent in our use of the day to say, how can I better use this whole day to make sure I'm paying attention to God, preparing for a week ahead when I know my attention's gonna be getting pulled here, there, and everywhere. A third thing is to pay attention to God together. Often it's easier to pay attention to God when we are together. So making it a habit, of course, of being in public worship, morning and evening, where we can together pay attention to God. Paying attention to God as families, where you can take a time to say, hey, we're gonna pause all the other things vying for our attention, the driving here and there, the doing this and that, to as a family say, we're just gonna pay some attention to God. As couples, with your spouse, finding a time in the day to say, hey, we want our marriage to be about the Lord. Let's just pray together and just remind ourselves that we're His. We don't live for ourselves, but for God. And a fourth suggestion is to try to find in your life things that can be built-in reminders or built-in triggers just to jar you out to the thought of God. The old Puritan writers used to call this occasional meditation, where things in the natural realm would jog your memory to direct your thoughts to God. There's a story told once of there were some pastors meeting and they were discussing and asking, what does it mean in 1 Thessalonians 5 where it says to pray without ceasing? Like, is this possible? How do you do that? And they couldn't really decide. And there was a woman who was in there dusting the counters and they said, hey, you, come here. What do you think? And she said, well, I try to pray without ceasing because when I'm dusting, I'm thinking, Lord, you cleanse me from my sin. As I'm rearranging the furniture, I think, God, rearrange my priorities to be more like you. And this is the practice they had, and they even actually wrote whole directions in books of, hey, here's an idea. When you're getting dressed, think, I am robed in the righteousness of Christ. When you're washing, think, I am washed in Christ. My baptism signified Christ washing of me. When you lie down at night, think, one day I will die. And when you wake up in the morning, think, one day I will rise in the resurrection of the just. There's many different things I've known people that, I knew a woman who said every stoplight she was stopped at, that was a reminder for her to pray for her husband. Or my old youth pastor said, whenever he locked his door in the morning, he would pray for his sponsored children that were receiving help. Lately, I've been finding, as I watch the birds out our back door at the bird feeders, whenever I just look at those birds, I think God cares for the birds. And as Jesus said, are you not of more value than many sparrows? We can find so many things in our life that we can build a habit of just allowing to become things that help us and remind us to pay attention to God. We want this to become a habit. And ultimately in this, we're just following the example of Jesus. Because Jesus, he paid perfect attention to God. He said that his food was to do the will of the one who sent him. He was ever looking to his father's will, his father's hand, and that's the example he leaves for us. A life attentive to God in all things. And in this, Jesus succeeds where Israel failed. Do you not read so much over and over in the Old Testament? But they forgot. But they forgot, and they forgot. They leave God. They didn't remember God. They didn't pay attention to God. And that's why God needed to make a new covenant where he said, you forget my laws so quickly, so I'm going to write them on your hearts. You forget about me so fast, I'm going to write me on your minds. And that's why Jesus, he comes, he lives and dies, he ascends to heaven, sends us the Holy Spirit so that we can have new hearts that do pay attention to God. This is not an impossible task, but as we're told in Colossians 3, we can mind the things that are heavenly, the things that are spiritual, to set our minds on things above and not things below. That's what Jesus died to give us, to give us a spirit that enables us to do it. Are there distractions? Yes. Does it take effort and work? Yes, but we have a gracious Savior, we have a powerful Spirit, and so we can make progress in being people that have minds that seek God. One of my favorite verses is Romans 8, 6, which reminds us, the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. Would God grant us minds that attend to him and give him all that it is his due? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we once again give our attention to you. We say you are good, you are gracious, you've given us all that we need by your spirit for life and godliness. We ask your forgiveness for all our breaking of the first commandment and the great commandment where we haven't prized you as we ought, where we've spent the best of our attention on lesser things. Lord, call us back to our first love. Call us back to you. Help teach us healthy habits in life that redirect our attention to you in a world where there's a flesh and a devil, all these things vying to pull us away from you at every turn. But Lord, as we endeavor to do this, help us remember your loving care, that though, yes, we wander, you love your sheep, you care for them, you feed them in the rivers of your delights and your pleasures. And one day, there will be no more hungering nor thirsting or pain, but we will have undistracted, undivided, loving focus on the Savior that bled for us and redeemed us. O Lord, we long for the day where there will be no more distractions, but the sight of God. The sight of God, no longer by faith, but by sight. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Amen.