Along with Joel, I love this time of year, and John, wherever John is. But, man, it is a busy time of year. And there's distractions abounding in this time of year that can cause us to, not to sound cheesy, but miss the reason for the season, if you will. I changed my text this week, open up to the old 100, Psalm 100. We'll look at these five verses this morning. I've been gone through a week where we've celebrated the holiday, Thanksgiving. I wanna have a thankful heart. I wanna have it for the right reasons and I really wanna have it in the midst of the seasons when it should be exceedingly grateful as Christ is spoken of more freely, celebrated more openly. This is, if you're a Christian, this is your season. This is your time. Share the gospel. Speak of Christ. It's everywhere. The doors are opened. But I wanted to maybe slow down just a little bit this morning and look at this psalm for Thanksgiving together. It's interesting, I've heard some people say that they really enjoy Thanksgiving as a holiday because it's neutral or it's not necessarily a religious holiday. That it's even something of a worldly holiday. And for many that's how it's practiced. time of being thankful for things, for stuff, for the creation, not so much as the creator. And in fact, we can have a hard time being thankful if we don't have the right things or stuff just doesn't seem to be going our way. Or even in prosperity circles, it's being thankful for what you don't have is a show of faith, so then God will grant you those things, sort of a name it and claim it idea. But what about those in poverty, those in prison, those in the midst of persecution, do they have anything to be thankful for? Do they celebrate Thanksgiving as it were? Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, pray without ceasing and everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. I'm good with that except for that word everything. And everything give thanks, that can be hard. But that tells us there's gotta be something more than just good weather and good health and a pile of money that our thankfulness is resting on, that our gladness comes from. And this psalm, it tells us. It's the knowledge of God, who he is and what he does that actually is the foundation for a thankful heart. So true thankfulness in the biblical sense of the word, it isn't circumstantial. It begins with God, the knowledge of Him, and it peaks in the will of God towards us, and it's unchanging. He is unchanging. Therefore, there's a sense in which our thankfulness also should be unchanging. Let's read this text. We've sang it recently. We've been singing it in our home. It's called the old 100th often. Fun fact, contemporary of John Knox, William Keith set this to the meter that it's at. that we often associate with the doxology, but that was in the 1500s, and this has been known really since then as an anthem for the Puritans, which is funny because they get this kind of whole hum, serious, not happy reputation, and they were a joyful, joyful people, and this, at least some historians say, was their anthem. So let's read this together. And this is the word of the true and living God, inspired and infallible. Verse one, shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. 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 loving kindness is everlasting and his faithfulness to all generations. Let's pray and ask the Lord's blessing on his word. Father, we bow once more before you in this service of worship. asking Lord our hearts be inclined to yours, that you might remove the distractions, even the idols of our mind far from us, that we can hear your word preached and received. We pray in the power of your spirit that our lives would be changed, would be affected, that we would leave differently than we came, having been in your presence, having seen your glory, having been ministered to by your word and spirit. God, give us thankful hearts this morning and thankful for the right reasons. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Well, the psalm begins with a call to worship. In those first two verses, we read, shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful singing. And this is a psalm that has a canonized, we could say, subtitle, A Psalm for Thanksgiving, to which Calvin says, the summary of this, or the title of this psalm may serve as its contents, and its brevity renders a lengthened discourse unnecessary, which might make some of your hearts rise with thanksgiving even then. But there's a lot to, a lot to this psalm, beginning with this call to worship or this call to praise going out to all the earth. This is what's caused many to look at this psalm and see this as a already not yet or as a psalm that it's messianic and it will be fulfilled fully in Christ in his coming. when he draws all the nations to himself. But right now, as it stands, and even when this psalm was written, all the earth is called to praise God and to do that with a glad heart. It's just interesting to think about that. I would say many, many Christians and even unbelievers would assume worship to be something for just the church to offer. Gladness and praise towards God to be expected from the earth almost sounds foreign but worship in itself is just a response to who God is and he is the God of all the earth. The idea of the psalmist is that because the Lord of the Bible, the God of Israel is God of all the earth, then all of heaven and earth have a rightful duty or response of gladness towards him. There's a a reciprocation taking place, if you will. God has poured forth his goodness over all of the earth, and that results in a gladness of heart, and that gladness of heart is to be directed towards God. He is to be praised for that. And I heard someone say, and I can't remember who, but I think it's right, I think it's true, that the height of moral uprightness is for creatures to worship their creator. And I think that's right. If we think of just the morality that is designed in us as God's creatures, it is only fitting and the most fitting response to be creatures who are thankful towards their creator. It is God, the Bible tells us, who makes the sun rise and set and the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. He is good to all the earth. And verse two says, then we come before the Lord with gladness, serving the Lord with joyful singing. This is when we start stepping on toes a little bit. But if you ever wondered, maybe you already know, or maybe you just don't wonder like I do, but why we call what we do here a worship service. I think this helps us understand that we come here in this building or wherever the church assembles and gathers as a service to the Lord to serve him. It's a service to God. Paul kind of expands on this in New Testament worship. In Romans 12, after giving all of this great doctrine on the gospel, he says, now then present your bodies as living sacrifices, as an act of spiritual worship to God, or having received the Spirit of God by faith in Jesus Christ, then the church becomes the temple and then we become in our bodies and in our lives acts of living worship to God. But some have kind of ran too far with that and disbanded or just kind of excused themselves from the corporate worship. Worship within the local church and within God's people. I think the idea is, well, my whole life is an act of worship, so I don't have to join with X number of people or at a certain address, sing certain songs, read certain scriptures. I'm doing my work to the glory of God. I'm raising these children, I'm raising these animals, which is sometimes kind of the same thing, or I'm raising these crops to the glory of God. And so the gathering of the church The people of God coming before God sort of gets minimized, but I think the two are dovetailed together. A life of individual worship as we go about our vocations and we do all things to the glory of God, it is sort of capped, if you will, week to week on the Lord's day, on Resurrection Sunday, coming together with the people of God, worshiping corporately, singing joyfully, making a glad noise to the Lord. And that word joyful can be hard sometimes if we're honest about that. We don't necessarily sing joyfully or maybe even drive here joyfully. So when it's time to actually lift our voices and sing, we're other places with our mind. and we mumble to the Lord. We don't really know this robust singing always as we should. I do think our church does sing and sings better than most. One of the great compliments I've heard in my time here was when our friend Terry Coker was with us from the Spurgeon Association. When he sat beside me, we started singing, he leaned over and says, man, your people sing. I said, yeah, we do, we take that seriously. But it's hard sometimes to do that joyfully. And we need to understand one I think is important as the other. that we can kind of mouth words and we can go through motions and we can still not truly be worshiping God with the gladness and thankfulness that he calls us to. I think we can be here. And many of us, I think, do this in terms of just broadly speaking in churches across the globe. You show up to church and then you fail miserably to worship. There's no real serving of the Lord with gladness of heart. It's just another chore. I come and I go to fourth pew and I slide down a little bit and I sit there and this is my spot and I stand when I'm told and I kind of go along a little bit with the words of the song, not loud enough for anybody to hear me, but I kind of say the words I know, and then leave patting myself on the back that I have worshiped God, that I've joined the worship service today. And yeah, we go to church, but do we worship? Are we really obeying? this call to worship, a joyful shouting, the raising of a noise, serving the Lord with gladness, coming before him with joyful singing. I think kids can be a really good illustration of how we can kind of miss the forest where the trees this time of year. I can remember this being me and I know it's even my kids now but you go to Thanksgiving or you go to a Christmas party and you've got family members there that you haven't seen in forever, the ones that you don't see often. Some of them are like 150. And you don't even know how they're alive. And as a kid, it's terrifying to see somebody that old. It's just strange. And your mom, dad, or whoever says, oh, great Aunt Wilma's here. Go give her a hug and tell her you love her. And as a child, you're like, no. I can't touch her. She can't touch me, it'll be weird. I don't know Great Aunt Wilma. Well, she knows you, Jerry's, whoever, and you know, we're kin through the... And so the kid goes to Great Aunt Wilma, and there she is in all of her glory, ready for a hug, and the kid's just like... You know, kind of leans in and then runs back to Mom and Dad like, I did it. Great Aunt Wilma knows I love her. It's funny, but I think sometimes we come here like that. And we just, I don't want to, I'm gonna go. I'm not gonna enjoy it. I'm not gonna embrace. I don't wanna be touched. I don't want to have the Lord bothering me. And then I don't know, do we leave thinking, man, I bet the Lord delighted in my joyful silence. I bet he was pleased with my weekly countdown of minutes. I was perfectly on pace with the clock without even looking. You know, how sad would it be especially for those who are raised in a church, you come to the house of the Lord and you're in the midst of his people and you hear his word and you hear the prayers and you hear the songs and sometimes maybe you engage, sometimes you don't, but for five, 10, 50 years, you show up to church and you fail to worship the God who calls you there. In the midst of the worship of the Lord, but missing the forest for the trees, and then therefore, not only missing the offering, not bringing that offering of thanksgiving, but missing the blessing that God bestows through worship. The psalmist says in verse three and following, Essentially, here's your problem. Here's what you're missing. Here's the cause that makes you respond to God with gladness and joyful singing. Here's the cause for worship. Verse three, know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people in the sheep of his pasture. The Lord that calls you bids you to come before him, he himself is God. To be called by God seems like it would maybe be enough to make us happy, to be known by God, for God to approach, to condescend, to bring us into his presence seems like it should be enough to get us there, not just physically, but even just on a spiritual and on an emotional level. But a couple things. First he says, know that the Lord himself is God and some knowledge is at the root of thankful worship. We think it's feelings. We think it's emotions, it's not. It's knowledge, it is knowing the Lord God. That's the foundations of worship. And if we don't get that, we often leave the worship of God saying, well, that was good, I suppose, but I didn't get anything out of that. I didn't get the warm fuzzy because we didn't sing the song where everybody raises their hands at that one part, it's my favorite part and we do that. Not that there's anything wrong with that but it's just inverted. We come because we know who God is. We come to worship God because he's revealed himself to us and when we're here it's not just to have our itches scratched. We're here, the Bible says, to serve the Lord and to do that with gladness, to make offerings to him. It's not about who I want to come and see or what I want to hear or what I want done. First and foremost, it is, we're here for God. We're here to serve him, to worship him, to love him, seeing what is true and right about him. But think how this applies, especially this time of year. We're working, and when we have been, usually for about a month in this time, working extra hard to get things in order before winter comes, before the holiday season hits. We're trying to pick up extra hours and trying to make extra money, so there's presents. If you're farming, you've come off harvest, and there's just so much going on, and then it's right into hosting family meals and things going on with our church family. There's just a lot to do. And so we can see this call to worship, to take time out of our schedule to come to church as a disruption. I would like to be there, but I don't have time. I've got a pile of work to get done. I've just got too much to do. And you kind of like asking, I wanna ask like, well, the Lord, he knows this. The Lord who calls you to worship is himself God. He knows your schedule. He knows your worries. He knows your problems. He knows your bills. He knows your children. He knows it all. And this isn't an intrusion to bring a hindrance to those things, this is, it's the opposite of that. He's coming or calling you to come before him to rest in him to be able to do all those other things, to give you peace in the chaos of those things, to bring joy into the discontentment of your life because all of the things. But God is behind all of this. He knows it all. The problem is we think of worship as unnecessary. We think of worship as something that we are just spectating like a ballgame. We'll just go and we'll watch and if I'm just going and I'm just watching, why does it matter if I'm there or not? But if you're participating, if you're really worshiping God, if you're engaging Him on this level of knowing who He is, offering mind, soul, spirit to Him, There's a difference in that because there is the offering but then the beauty of God's design is this reciprocation and we are fulfilled in the worship of God. But we can let our schedule be God. We can let our checkbook be God. We can let our kids be God and their schedules determine what the family does on Sunday or whatever, but if we grasp this, God is the one calling us. The God of your life, the God of your job, the God of your finances, the God of your family, he calls us. You could think of it as if you're maybe in your office and you're trying to get your audits done or your reports that have to be turned in by the end of the month and he shows up on the last day of the month and he says, hey, come with me. I need to show you something. And you just get all mad. Don't you know what I have to do? I have to get this done. I have to give this to your secretary. And if she doesn't have it, she gets mad. And he's like, I'm the boss. I can take care of that. I'm just asking you to come with me. Don't worry about the rest of it. I am asking you to come with me. Don't you think I can take care of the things that you're worrying about? I am God. Worship isn't to extract from you something that you don't have time for. It is to give you something in a sense. We come for God. and we offer ourselves to him because he is God and he is the one who calls us so we can trust him, he's designed us, he's made us and so we're obedient and we come and we bring gladness of heart and we bring joyful singing. And because he is our creator and he designed us as worshipful beings and are pouring out of our hearts to God and witnessing his glory, then we do find the fulfillment that we wish we were getting from those other things. I think Pascal was right when he said there's a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts of which each man cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ. We get so busy chasing all these other things, and when we have God, we just looked at this last week, Paul says, well, we have all things. You don't just have gifts, you have the gift giver. who delights to give the desires of their hearts to his people who seek him. You can step away. You can leave the desk, you can leave the field, and you can come to worship God, and you can trust that your God, your creator who designed you, is not calling you into something that's going to make your life somehow worse. It's going to make your life better. It's going to reorient everything else around you that seems to just be causing chaos. You can trust God. It says that we are the sheep of his He's our shepherd. He keeps us in safe boundaries. He makes us lie down in green pastures, right? He leads us beside still waters. He keeps things from coming to us that are hurtful or going out to things that are also hurtful. He is our ultimate provider and caretaker. If we seek him first in his kingdom and his righteousness, the other things that we get so tangled up in will be added to us as they're needed. So much of what we fight and scrap for, tooth and nail, we don't even need, we just think we do. Because that's what everybody else says we need. When God says, you need me. When you have me, everything else will be in order. The height of seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is the worship of God. seeking him through praise and singing and gladness. And this is the greatest taste of the kingdom of heaven that we have on earth. And I get really confused when I hear people who aren't ever excited or eager to be with the Lord's people to worship speak about being eager to get to heaven. Like what do you think you're gonna do there? You're going to worship Christ. You're going to hear the angels singing around Him constantly, holy, holy, holy is He. And you will be holy at His throne, pure and white and righteous, bowed down before Him. If that doesn't excite you now, It's not going to excite you then. It's like the lie that you tell yourself when you're going to get married. Well, I know things are kind of meh now, but when we get married, it'll all be different. No, it won't. It won't be. You're going to be that same idiot when you put the ring on. She'll still be perfect, but with the ring on. But we can't play a game with ourselves that I don't really enjoy this church thing. I just kind of go along with the motions. I like the not going to hell thing. That's cool. Want that. But the rest of it I'm just assuming it's, you know, maybe when I get there it's going to be cool. You're not going to get there. Because your heart is not for Christ, it's for you and what you want. You're seeking the creation and not the creator. The gifts and not the gift giver. Worship is about the gift giver. It's not about self. And this is a taste of that. The Lord week after week in a fallen world that just constantly depletes us, stealing from us virtue, drawing us into lesser loves and lesser glories and lesser projects. Week after week, God removes us from the distractions and says, now come back. Get with my people. Come before me and sing and worship and be renewed and be restored. Have your spirit refreshed. Remember whose you are. Remember who your God is. Remember what you are doing here and where you are going. So we come to obey the Lord. We respond to His goodness and His Godness and we worship Him for who He is and for His goodness towards us. And then in turn, God being good, designing us to need Him, to want Him, to worship Him, we have the satisfaction that our hearts long for. We don't have to labor and toil and worry about trying to meet all of the demands that we think will make us happy. But our need to meet with our Creator in gladness and to have our lives reoriented is at the core of our being, at the core of our design. We are His, we have not made ourselves. We're His creation. You would think we would listen more to the one who created us about how we should orient our lives, the things that we should allow in, the things that we should put out. He knows, He's God. He's God. And God calls to the earth, to the ends of the earth, to come before him in gladness, to sing joyfully, to serve him, to serve him. But there's more in mind, and we'll kind of finish here, to being made into the people of God. I don't think it's just that he's speaking of the psalmist, I don't think he's just speaking of it's he who made us. but also he who made us again, not just him who caused us to be born into the earth, but him who caused us to be born into the kingdom of God. And here we start to get into the cornerstone of our worship. We're subjects of the king by birth. We live in his world, but we enter his gates and were welcomed into his courts, not just as mere subjects, but as sons and daughters. This should make us start to ask some questions. Look at verses four and five. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, enter his courts with praise. You're seeing this sort of royal language, language that would normally have to do with boundaries and keeping people out and who was allowed, especially in temple worship, who was allowed into the courts, who was allowed into the actual temple And here he's calling all the earth to come and to come into these gates with thanksgiving, come into his courts with praise and to bless his name. For the Lord is good, his loving kindness is everlasting and his faithfulness to all generations. So in the call to worship, you learn who it is that calls us. Okay, it is God who calls me to worship. And then you learn the cause for that. We worship God because of who he is and because of what he has done, his good will. And then in this cornerstone, we kind of answer the question, how? How can we be welcomed into the gates of the kingdom of God? The answer being because of the goodness of God. His loving kindness and covenant faithfulness has come to us. in the person of Christ and will continue coming to us through the gospel for generation and generation and generation. And we are at that time of year where we are reminded of these prophetic promises all through the scriptures of the one who would come, the one who would fulfill all of the prophecies. of the Messiah. And we do, as Joel said, we get to live on the other side of the cross and we know who that is. The Old Testament prophets, they long, it says, to search the scriptures and times to figure out who it would be and how he would come and when he would come. And they had faith in the one who was coming. And we now, we know when he came and we know who it was that came and we know where he came and we know what he did and now we look back faithfully at the one who has come. and we're reminded of the faithfulness of God to keep his promises to all generations, his covenant faithfulness. Turn with me to Psalm 24. We'll stop here. Jesus Christ as we've been singing, took on flesh, entered the womb of a virgin, was born under the law, fulfilled that law perfectly, living the life that we could not live, dying the death that we deserve so we could have the righteousness of Him that we do not deserve. And by faith in His sacrifice, by the blood of His covenant, we're welcomed into the kingdom of God. The gates, as it were, have swung open And the covenant faithfulness of God is now extended to all the earth, to all the nations. And although the generations change, times change, seasons change, God does not. And what is true in Psalm 24 is true today. But this is what's celebrated here, this king who would come and would gain entry for the people of God into his kingdom. It says, the earth is the Lord's and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. And here's the grand question of life then, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who can stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. It's not talking about me. who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, who has not sworn deceitfully, he shall receive a blessing from the Lord. This one will receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, even Jacob, say La. And so we have like this promise of the one who would come, who would be blessed of God, who would receive the righteousness from God, the righteousness of salvation. And it's as if, cut scene, and it cues to him, to the one who ascends the holy hill, and we hear in verse seven, lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord. The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? It's the Lord of hosts, the God of the heavens and the earth, the God of all, of the hosts of heaven. He is the King of glory. So the king of glory is welcomed in, but what about me? How do I get into the court? How do I get into the gate? The king of glory came and he died for you. He took your sin and He took it to the cross and He nailed it to the tree and the perfect righteousness that He earned through His perfect, absolute, perfect obedience to God, now He has the right to give to you and He gives it to all those who seek His faith. So then when you come to the gates, you have the invitation of the King. They can't be closed to you. So those old gates that have set closed and cold and hard and those doors that were barred shut, he comes and he flings them open and he floods the gates with his people. And so we come as it were worshiping, spilling into those gates, spilling into the courts with thankfulness in our voices, gladness in our hearts because the King of glory has come to us. lowly, sinful, dirty, filthy people clothed now in righteousness by faith, justified in the sight of God, welcomed into the gates, welcomed into the court of the king to gather around his throne. not just as subjects, not just as creations, but as children, the first fruits, or brothers and sisters of the first fruit, who is Christ, the King of glory who created all things, sustains all things. He welcomes you in. And it is he who is the cornerstone of our worship and the object of our worship. So week by week, when we come here, As it were, we're coming in the name of the King, we're coming to worship the God of heaven and earth, and we're doing that joyfully and gladly because we've been invited in, because we're saved, because we're His now. And so we come with a song in our hearts on Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. And we gather and we stand and we bless the name of the Lord our God and we do that with gladness and joyful singing. For he alone is God, he alone is good, and he alone is unchanging and faithful and his mercies endure to all generations. That's why we worship. That's why we can be thankful. We have a good God watching over us, caring for us, bidding us come into his courts, providing the entryway to make it through the gates, nothing hindering you. As we looked at maybe a week or two ago, the enmity between God and the world has been removed by Christ so that reconciliation can take place. Now I can have that in my heart anywhere. in sickness and in good health, in rich and in poor, in bad times and in good, I can be thankful for a good God who loves me and sent his son to die for me. Let's keep that close in this holiday season when our schedules try to override us, when appointments try to just take all of our energy and our time and we begin to feel down because we maybe can't get the things we'd like for family or whatever the case may be, remember what this life is about, what we really find our joy in, what really matters. Keep our focus there, let's pray. Father, we are thankful, truly thankful that you, God, have called us out of the darkness into your glorious light. And that call extends to all the earths. Christ has come and opened up the way to all the nations. The nations that are becoming even now his inheritance, his heritage, flooding as it were into the temple, the church, worshiping him and Zion. Lord, might we serve you with gladness all the days of our lives. Might we be a people who sing joyfully and might we be an evangelistic people who with your word call all of the earth to come and taste and see that you are good. It's in Christ's name we pray and ask these things, amen. Let's stand as we sing, angels we have heard