DUNCAN/All people that on Earth do dwell

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 100. Did you know that God cares how we worship? There are a lot of Christians who think that it’s important that we worship, but it doesn’t matter how we worship. But God cares about how we worship, and we know that because He spends so much time in the Bible telling us how He wants us to worship Him. This Psalm is not so much an exhortation to worship God as it is an exhortation as to how we ought to worship God. How we worship God matters. I want to draw your attention to three things that God teaches us about how we ought to worship Him.

I. God Wants Joyful Worship

The first thing I want you to see, and you’ll see it in the first two verses of the Psalm, is simply this: God wants us to worship Him joyfully, gladly, and willingly. God doesn’t want us to come to worship grudgingly. He wants us to worship with joy and gladness and willingness, and that’s what we learn here in Psalm 100. 

Now let me tell you why Christians are gladly singing when they come into the presence of the Lord. It’s because the Lord has shown them grace. If you realize that you’re a sinner, and you realize that you deserve condemnation and eternal separation from God, and suddenly you understand that God has forgiven you and is transforming you into the image of His Son, you cannot help but be glad about that! And you cannot help expressing that gladness to God. And so when the people of God gather on the Lord’s Day, there’s no place in the world that you’d rather be! And the Lord says, “I don’t want people here who think it’s drudgery to come into the presence of their Father and commune with Him and to receive His blessing, and to hear His word, and to be built up in His grace. I want people who come into My presence with joy.”

And, if that’s not where you are, if there’s no delight for you in worship, if there’s no desire in you to be with God’s people and to meet with Him in worship, then I want to tell you that you need to do some heart exploration and ask why. Because the Lord is very particular about how He wants us to worship, and one of the things that He wants us to do is He wants us to come with joy and gladness and willingness. That’s the first thing that we learn in this Psalm about our worship.

II. God Wants God-Centered Worship 

But there’s a second thing. You’ll see this in verses 1, 3, and 5, and it’s simply this: Our worship is focused on God’s person and deeds, and especially on His gospel. The focus of our worship is on God and what He has done. This is huge. Worship is first and foremost about God and what he has done to redeem us from our sin.

See how it works out in the Psalm? “Make a joyful noise to the Lord.” It’s a homage shout to God. The people of God are spontaneously applauding God, who is Lord, who has redeemed us by the blood of His own dear Son. So, though they’re shouting joyfully, they’re shouting joyfully about God and about something He has done. He’s the focus of their worship. And then more explicitly, look at verse 3: “Know that the Lord, He is God! He made us, we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.” So God’s our pastor; God has made us to be His people! We wouldn’t be alive apart from Him, and He is God, and we are not. And this is the substance of our worship. We’re compelled to acknowledge and confess these things. And then again in verse 5, “The Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever; and His faithfulness lasts throughout all generations.” So He’s good, He’s loving, He’s faithful. Our worship centers on the celebration of God and His deeds. 

Now that’s so important for us to remember, because in this Psalm there are six imperatives spoken to us. There are six things that we’re told to do. We’re to make a joyful noise, we’re to serve the Lord with gladness, we’re to come into His presence with singing, we’re to know that He is God, we’re to enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and we’re to give thanks to Him. So there are six things that we’re supposed to do. But understand this: those imperatives are set in the context of what God has already done for us! And that changes the way we look at all the commands in Scripture. They are not burdens being laid on our backs to resent, but they are God kindly speaking to us what the way of life is. And if we remember this, then every exhortation that is brought to us will not be a word condemning and burdening us, but it will be a word of life because of the gospel of our Lord and Savior. And so our worship ought to center on the celebration of His person and deeds, and especially on His gospel.

III. God Wants Seven Days of Worship 

One last thing. You see this throughout the Psalm, but especially in verse 2, in the phrase, “serve the Lord.” There are lots of ways that this Psalm tells us to worship God. But in this phrase, “serve the Lord,” we’re reminded that worshiping the Lord not only happens when we are gathered to praise Him on Sunday, but it happens in all of life. We can show our worship of the Lord by the way we love one another, by the way we serve one another, and by the way we love and serve our neighbor. You can worship the Lord in feeding the hungry, or in welcoming strangers, or in clothing the naked, or caring for the sick, or visiting those in prison, or being a witness to Christ at work.

We worship God by serving Him not only when we gather with His people, but in all of life. And God cares that we do that. In fact, one of the great charges that Isaiah brought against the people of Israel in his own day is that they made much ado about coming to worship God on the Sabbath Day, but the other six days of the week they worshiped themselves. And consequently, God said this about their worship services on the Sabbath Day: “I hate your worship.” Oh, my friends! God cares how we worship. And our heavenly Father wants us to worship in all of life as well as together on the Lord’s Day. May God bless that truth to our hearts.