A Study in Psalms - Psalm 100

Tonight we're going to look at psalm 100 very famous psalm Spurgeon called it the old 100th And it's only five verses And tonight's the title is the seven imperatives of worship if you remember last week When we finished psalm 84, I didn't give you a lot of application because I said the application for psalm 84 Will be tonight because the whole message tonight is application in psalms 100 so uh Our our message tonight or our psalm is short.

So I know this is the 10th psalm We've had and I probably should have done this earlier But I want to talk a little bit about structure of psalms tonight. I haven't talked about that as much before I mentioned that psalms We all know there's 150 psalms And I mentioned time and time again, there's five hymn books. Okay, five hymn books that compile the 150 psalms So if you would turn to psalm 41 psalm 41 Each book ends with a doxology. So I thought we'd look at the doxologies tonight and i'll explain why in a minute but psalm 41 verse 13 Psalm 41 verse 13 says blessed be the lord the god of israel from everlasting to everlasting Amen and amen and then you probably notice it says book two above psalm 42 So book so book one is 41 psalms David wrote 37 of them Book two is 31 psalms.

So go to psalm 72 psalm 72 And this doxology at the end of book two is two verses psalm 72 Verse 19 and 20 says Blessed be his glorious name forever. May the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen. And amen The prayers of david the son of jesse are ended and then it says book three Book three is only 17 psalms And uh, let's go to psalms 89 the last one psalms 89 verse 52 Psalms 89 verse 52 and the doxology there is blessed be the lord forever. Amen And amen, and then you see at the top it says book four and that begins psalm 90 Book four is also only 17 psalms And the doxology for that book four is in psalms 106 if you turn to psalms 106 Psalms 106 Verse 48 Psalms 106 verse 48 says blessed be the lord The god of israel from everlasting to everlasting And let all the people say amen praise the lord and then you see book five begins and book five has 44 psalms which goes all the way to the end to psalm 150 if you turn to me to psalm 150 Short psalm but only six verses psalm 150 verse 6 says Let everything that has breath praise the lord praise the lord So each of the five books ends with a doxology And the reason I thought i'd bring that up tonight is because psalm 100 that we're going to look at tonight Is basically a whole doxology of five verses And I think I mentioned before that, uh, what's what's so great about these five books in psalms Well, if you talk to a rabbi the hebrew midrash commentaries, they would say That the five books in psalms Correspond to the five books of the law one rabbi said as moses gave the five books of law to israel So david gave the five books of psalms to israel So if you will continue to read one psalm a day and you start to get more familiar with them You'll see there's some truth to that.

So book one is 41 psalms And that would allude to the book of genesis and we looked at psalm 8 right psalm 8 is all about creation and genesis So I think there's some truth in that so book one would worship god as a creator like genesis then in book two would Refer to exodus And in book two of psalms psalms 42 to 72 It would worship god as a deliverer and a good book for that would be psalm 66, which is all about the deliverance Then book three would correspond to leviticus About worshiping god in his sanctuary and a good book was psalm 84 that we studied about going to the sanctuary and worshiping god Then book four would refer to numbers Worshiping god in the wanderings of life and there's quite a few psalms in book four Psalms 90 by moses is a good book about the wanderings in life And then of course book five could correspond to deuteronomy About worshiping god and obeying his law.

We just read the last verse of psalms 150 So next time you're looking through those psalms see if you can see some Some reference to the five books of the law in the five books of the psalms. So that's by way of introduction So tonight before we read it psalms 100 The first word says shout maybe your translation says make a joyful noise, right?

Well, nobody came in here shouting tonight Nobody came in here yelling or he might call the police or he might have you arrested or taken out But I was thinking Think back through your life When did you just shout out loud like crazy? when was the time in your life where perhaps you know you got married and you shouted or you had a baby or When did you shout at the top of your lungs? For a minute two minutes five minutes because i'm thinking of one time when I did it Is there any time in your life anybody have a haven't done Which one Well, that's mine.

Do you have a specific event? Where you screamed? Okay, so a men's retreat you're shouting out loud. Okay. Anybody else? Magic mountain you screamed. Okay, that's a good one. Okay Anybody any woman here any woman that watch outside and scream out loud out of happiness? Anybody Yes You're still in soccer game you shout it out loud. Okay Yes Oh, that's a great one. Okay, that's a good one Okay for me the date was october 15th 1988 anybody know what happened that day? The dodgers limp into the world series They're not even supposed to be there other than oral hershey's or getting them in there and you remember what happened, right?

Kurt you got to watch the I watched the replay on youtube of vince scully the call a thousand times Kurt gibson walks out limping, right? He can hardly walk And he's facing the best relief pitcher Eckersley of the oakland athletics and you know what happened walk off home run. I was in my apartment in long beach And I screamed for 10 minutes till I was hoarse That is the greatest shout i've ever had in my life that walk off home runs are a dime a dozen these days but that one was special and you know, the dodgers went on to win the world series, so So our psalm tonight psalm 100 if you could turn there we memorize this psalm I don't know if i've ever really studied it as in depth as I have this week Uh, because I memorized it a long time ago.

We we sing songs about it Hymns choruses, it's a very famous psalm. So at first I wasn't gonna do this But the more I looked at it, I said we gotta we gotta tackle this one So it's short five verses, but there's a lot there and I mentioned that Spurgeon called it the old hundredth and spurgeon said nothing can be more sublime this side of heaven Than the singing of this noble psalm by a vast congregation.

So let's read it begins with a psalm for the giving thanks 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 has 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. Let's pray Father in heaven, we love you and thank you for each and every person who came out tonight to study god's word May you teach us tonight how to worship you properly?

Sometimes we don't do it right and we want to learn from your word We want to correctly come into your gates with thanksgiving and your courts with praise in jesus name. Amen We have a superscription. Remember there are 114 superscriptions only 36 psalms Uh do not have a superscription and one of them we'll look at next week So our superscription says a psalm for giving thanks.

This is the only psalm that has such a title the only psalm specifically dedicated for giving thanks And you know, it's the only psalm and how do you how do you thank god? How can you thank god? Can you buy god a gift? Can you give god something? You know, I if you have a friend or a family friend, you can buy them a gift, right? So, how do you thank god? Well, I think we thank him in worship is what our psalm teaches us tonight I'm told that from ancient times this psalm is read every day in the synagogue this psalm 100 in the synagogue But to understand psalm 100 you got to understand psalm 93 To psalm 99 they go together psalm 93 To psalm 99 are called theocratic psalms or enthronement psalms We will look at some of the verses in a little it'll wow Enthronement psalms celebrate when a king in israel was enthroned And they would celebrate that some commentators think that also refers to the lord.

Jesus christ himself And there's truth to that. I think this psalm 100 Psalm 100 deals with the temple in israel I think it deals with us today and will deal with the millennial kingdom when we worship god so You have these enthronement psalms 93 to 100 And then psalm 100 is basically the doxology of those enthronement psalms That's why we looked at the doxologies in psalms before So it has no author. We do not know who wrote this and so we know 100 authors of the 150 psalms So this is one of the 50 psalms.

We do not know who wrote it. God didn't choose to let us know There are only two points tonight the request for praise Verses one to two and the reasons for praise verse three to five One commentator describes psalm the enthronement psalms this way if you could turn to psalm 93 before we get to 100 Turn to psalm 93 So now psalm 93 to psalm 99 are called enthronement psalms and they celebrate god's sovereign kingship over all the earth The eternal universal kingdom of the lord is unmistakable Central focus this worship song is the first in a short series of theocratic psalms Extending through to psalm 100 And the phrase the lord reigns we sang the song on sunday, right?

We sang the hymn our god reigns right and it ended remember the men would sing the lord god reigns We sang it on sunday. So psalm 93 one says what the lord reigns he is robed in majesty The lord is robed he has put on strength at his belt. Yes. The world is established. It shall never be moved Then go to psalms 96 psalms 96 verse 10 It says psalms 96 verse 10 say among the nation the lord reigns Go to psalms 97 verse 1 the lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice Let the many coastlands be glad and in psalms 99 verse 1 The lord reigns let the peoples tremble he sits enthroned upon the cherubim let the earth quake So god reigns over every realm of heaven and earth the universe nature nations history salvation And the eternal destinies of all men here.

He's declared the undisputed unrivaled sovereign god over all heaven and earth So we have three points three sub points in point one And we have shout serve and sing and I mentioned last week we looked at psalm 84 The application is here. We have seven imperatives tonight in the short five verses. What is an imperative? Basically imperative is a command It's a command that we christians are to obey or in the old testament the israelites to obey. It's an entreaty. It's an exhortation So we have seven of them here that teach us how to do proper worship and number one is shout Esv says make a joyful noise to the lord all the earth niv nasv says shout joyfully to the lord all the earth Literally means a glad shout like when the the loyal subjects would see the king or the queen coming out They would shout with joy seeing their king The psalmist calls upon the whole earth here not just israel to worship god But the whole earth to come and worship the great king All the nations of the earth here are invited to sing hymns and worship It's required that the nations recognize who god is now today The nations are in rebellion, right?

But someday in the millennial kingdom all nations will come and worship jesus the king in israel Psalm 66 verse 1 says shout for joy to god all the earth Psalms 98 4 another enthronement psalm make a joyful noise to the lord all the earth break forth in joyous songs and sing praises Sing praises to the lord with the lyre with the lyre and the sound of melody with trumpets and the sound of the horn Make a joyful noise before the lord before the king the lord What are we to shout about then when we go into the temple when we go into church when we go in the middle kingdom?

Well, there should be joy in our hearts, shouldn't there? Uh, we come into his presence to worship him and it's supposed to be a joyful experience Uh an expression of gratitude, how do we do it? Well, first off we pray, right?

Now when we pray usually the preacher prays right lance will pray and we kneel but once in a while lance will have us do What silent prayer? Okay, I don't know if anybody here has ever had mass spoken prayer. Has anybody ever had a mass spoken prayer? Okay, I went to india and the first time I saw it, but they did it in india They do it in thailand.

They do it in myanmar. So if you travel to different countries Uh, there's nothing Greater than being at a pastor's conference when there's a hundred pastors and we have mass spoken prayer and they will all start praying And they'll all end up like shouting over each other and you might And I think maybe the reason we don't do it in our evangelical churches is because we think it's tongues, right? And we don't want to be a pentecostal church or whatever But it's actually very beautiful at times 100 200 300 even thousands of people praying out loud in a church so prayer We come and we pray loud.

Okay Uh, we sing loud, at least I hope you sing loud I'm going to talk more about that in a little bit We read the word of god out loud, don't we? And of course the preacher preaches the word of god out loud Sometimes we have praises or baby dedications. We have testimonies and of course communion we have we have that Now lance mentioned, uh when we study the book of revelation the word loud 22 chapters in revelation the word loud is in revelation 22 times so you better get used to shout you better get used to making loud noises Because that's what we're going to do in heaven.

It's going to be loud. Okay So I know we don't do it here. And so I would put at the end of this point one here No introverts at church. So says the introvert. Okay, no introverts at church come in With joy come in making loud full noise. We should do the same as the Israelites did here in psalm 100 Okay imperative number two says serve serve Some king james translations say worship, but most of the modern translations say serve It was aw tozer who said god wants worshipers before workers Indeed, the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the art of worship If you know how to properly worship god you're gonna serve god in myanmar I would attend the english service at our church called upper room church And they would have like a bunch of missionaries going there like me So they would take 10 pastors or 10 missionaries and they would take a book of the bible like philippians And they would assign one pastor these verses another not the best way be better to have the gifted man Preach through the books of the bible, but that's how they did it At least they went through a book of the bible So one time I was assigned philippians 2 19 to 30.

I don't know if you've ever read that philippians is a great book, right? Lots of great doctrine lots of great things, but I was assigned philippians 2 19 to 30. I won't read it tonight But you look at it sometimes I got it and I read it and I read it and I go what is going on here.

There's no doctrine here There's what is what is the holy spirit saying here? What is paul saying here? Well philippians 19 to 30 is 12 verses and basically Six of them are about a guy named timothy And six of them are about a guy named epaphroditus Okay, so I studied it more and more and I noticed that timothy was a popular name But apaphroditus is a hard to pronounce name, right? Timothy is paul's disciple Epaphroditus is hardly mentioned in the bible and we don't know any history about him But we know a lot of history about timothy his mom dad things like that Timothy was a pastor of the ephesus church the corinthian church.

He's a big shot Epaphroditus is a layman a messenger a delivery boy Timothy's a preacher aphroditus is a messenger. Timothy is famous Epaphroditus nothing significant in his life Timothy is mentioned 24 times in the new testament Epaphroditus is only mentioned twice Timothy has two books of the bible that were written to him and epaphroditus is barely mentioned But in this text of scripture, I found that they're both models of serving servanthood And those messages that those verses tucked into philippians teach us a lot about serving Because actually in that section, there's three three people serving the apostle paul timothy and epaphroditus But nobody can measure up to paul, right?

He's too great. He's too grand. He's the greatest preacher greatest missionary So I think that text tells us that there's two types of people in our church. There's timothy's And there's epaphroditus And they're models of servanthood and we should be able to relate to them when I think of timothy I think of something like a marcus baloka baloka. Did I say it right? Okay, he's always teaching right? He's teaching kids on sunday, wednesday, he's teaching the men on saturday He's going to the prison with prison ministry and sharing evangelism and preaching there and now he's going to the master's seminary And going to learn to get his master's divinity and be a preacher.

So he's like the timothy at christ community church And then when I think of who's the epaphroditus at our church, I think of stacy berry here you hear tonight stacy I hope you're feeling better stacy can teach But he teaches release time he's taught sunny school here, but he's also in the prayer ministry He's in the strawberry giving ministry. I don't know if you've gotten strawberries from him. I have He will drive widows to church. He will do whatever anybody needs. So he reminds me of epaphroditus And I hope you're feeling better tonight But what that text of philippian tells us is that god wants everybody serving The body of christ does not function properly If people are not using their gifts, it was sinclair ferguson who said to be a christian then to belong to the church means to be willing and eager to serve And then actually to serve if you're not planning to serve in the life of a church You should not plan to join it Don't wait to heaven And hear god say hypothetically.

I gave you a gift A gift from the holy spirit Why did you not unwrap it and use it? So the psalmist says we're to worship the lord with gladness And I think the the happiest people in church are the servants the ones that are serving When you come to worship god god wants you to be happy. J. Vernon mcgee said there are to be no long faces at church So if you're not serving now Join serve and I think you'll be happy Let's move on to imperative number three imperative number three simply says come Come is the imperative, but it means to come in with singing You know only those who truly know god can come into his presence Singing is joyful.

But at the same time it's also a devout exercise And it's a it's a form of approaching god. We approach god through our prayers So let's look at some theocratic psalms go back to psalm 95 psalm 95 verse 1 and 2 Psalm 95 verse 1 and 2 says oh come let us sing to the lord Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise Turn to the next theocratic psalm psalm 96 Oh sing to the lord a new song sing to the lord all the earth Sing to the lord bless his name tell of his salvation Day to day look at psalms 98 verse 1.

Oh sing to the lord a new song For he has done marvelous things his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him And then psalm 98 again verses 4 to 6 Psalms 98 is all about singing but verse 4 says Says make a joyful noise to the lord all the earth break forth in joyous songs and sing praises verse 5 Sing praises to the lord with the lyre with the lyre and the sound of melody with trumpets and the sound of the horn Make a joyful noise before the king the lord and in psalms 99 verse 3 Says let them praise your great and awesome name.

So there's praises in songs It was uh, august, uh 26 2001 That I was dedicated to go to india And i'll never forget the message because lance had it engraved on a plaque which I have in my office But i'll never forget the song. We sang the worship leader at that time chose to sing a song called immortal Invisible god only wise anybody know that hymn That is a great hymn and I don't know if you've ever looked at that hymn, but it just has attribute After attribute after attribute about god. It is a great and glorious hymn So I remember that One week later i'm in india sitting in a church.

We're actually standing in a church And we're singing a song called i'm marching unto zion and literally we're marching They sang that song for six years and that's pretty much the song I'm marching unto zion. John mccarthur would call that a 7-11 song seven same words sung 11 times No spiritual content meaningless. Just uh dancing in the aisle That's the type of songs that a lot of churches overseas are singing I mentioned in a message a couple years ago Uh, I I literally was going crazy in myanmar because I went to two to three different churches Where they were singing that hallelujah song, you know that hallelujah song by leonard cohen It's not a christian song, but they thought it was so I would be in church and all of a sudden they start singing hallelujah because it mentions david and arp and And I was like they don't even know the lyrics of the song There's actually some bad lyrics in it and they're singing it in churches Not one church not two but three churches But so there are churches that don't even know proper worship and sadly elevation music hillsong bethel Have a big influence upon worship songs around the world and a lot of it's not biblical Just think back if you were here in church on sunday, you're in church on sunday Remember the songs we sang a thousand reasons blessed be the name of the lord We sang come behold the wondrous mystery And the one that keeps going in my mind behold our god I've been singing that one all week and then oh the love of the redeemer I don't know if you looked at the lyrics of some of those songs that the worship leader chose But they actually present the gospel They talk about our sins.

They talk about the washing of sins. They talk about the cross They talk about our redeemer so the gospel can be is portrayed in worship songs So the israelites here would come into the courts singing how much more should we in the new testament hebrews 13 15 says Through him. Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to god That is the fruit of our lips that acknowledge his name You don't go to the temple and bring sacrifices anymore, but you come to church on sunday with sacrifices of worship Okay And it says the fruit of our lips so if you're not going to sing on sunday or whatever night You don't have any fruit.

You're like a barren fruit tree. So we can't have any barren fruit trees when we enter the church Okay Let's move on to point point number Uh two the reasons for praise and we have four more imperatives here four more imperatives here And number four here is the word no It says know That the lord And there are three things you need to know and you can see them in the verse Know our god. It says he is god. We need to know our god We need to know our creator number two.

It says it is he who has made us we are his and number three We need to know our shepherd. It says we are his people the sheep of his pasture The psalmist is saying that the god of israel. Yahweh is the god of the earth the god of the universe Yahweh is mentioned four times In the five short verses of the psalm tonight we have It's a statement of that. The god of israel is the god of the world. He's a monotheistic. There's only one god All the other gods are gods of idols and are false. Okay, there is no god But yahweh who is lord and he alone reigns over all the earth Now we learn about this god through the study of the word of god and theology is the study of god Every time you read your bible You ask the question what does this section of scripture I just read teach me about god Jesus or the holy spirit, maybe it doesn't mention the holy spirit But does it teach us something about god every time the new testament tells us that we're to do our best to present ourself to god Workmen who do not need to be ashamed but who correctly handle the word of truth And so we're to know our god and he is we're to know that he is our god He is the one true god and we know that through the study of scripture Number sub point two there is knowing our creator It says he who has made us and we are his did a whole psalm psalm number eight about the creator, right?

And the second reason we worship god is because he made us to worship him He's the creator. We're the creature and we're called to worship him The whole earth is called to worship him, but the most of the earth is in sin And when we studied psalms 8 remember god is serious about creation And him being the creator and in that psalm. I mentioned five verses just in psalms Altogether there. There are about 21 verses in the bible that talk about the maker of heaven and earth psalms 115 15 15 says may you be blessed of yahweh who made the heaven and the earth psalm 121 to my help comes from yahweh who made the heaven and earth Psalms 124 8 our help is in the name of yahweh who made the heaven and earth Psalms 134 3 may yahweh bless you from zion who made the heaven and earth Psalms 146 6 who made the heaven and earth to see and all that's in him god is serious about creation Okay, so number three know our shepherd It says we are his people and the sheep of his pastor.

The third reason we worship knowing god as he's our shepherd The most famous verse in the bible From the most famous psalm of the bible is psalm 23 verse 1.

I think right the lord is my shepherd. I shall not want Five words about god and four words follow. I shall not want lance recently in a message mentioned that Jesus is the good shepherd right john 10 11. Jesus says I am the good shepherd But jesus is also the great shepherd hebrews 13 20 It says the great shepherd of sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant But he's also the chief shepherd first peter 5 4 When the chief shepherd appears you'll receive the unfading crown of glory So jesus is the good shepherd the great shepherd and the chief shepherd and were his sheep And what did the shepherd do for the sheep?

The greatest thing he did was die on the cross for our sins and redeemed us So john calvin in his institutes of christian religion said the natural result of knowing god Is to know ourselves And that the only way we really know ourselves is by knowing god. So knowing god And knowing ourselves go together. We'll talk about this on sunday So do church people do people who come to church really know god? What do you think? If I ask you what did tom mason preach on sunday? What was his outline? What was his message?

What did you get out of it? You know, I learned that I have to give my wife the bigger bowl of ice cream. Did you learn that? Now that was a great illustration. But what was the point the point with ephesians 5 four times? Love your wife. Love your wife. You got to put your love for yourself Below your love for your wife. That was one of his points But if you just listen if you just hear the word of god on sunday A lot of people get maybe 10 On our tuesday night prayer meeting gill our leader reviews the message So we try to remember more so that 10 can go up to 20 30 If you take notes, maybe you get more than 10, but a lot of people they're just listening And they're thinking about lunch, you know, where are they going to go for lunch and they're only getting 10 of the message So the second is reading you got to read and so when you read your bible, maybe you're getting 30 Maybe you're getting 40 depends how slow A lot of people have a quiet time, but they rush it because they got to go to work So reading is you got to not just hear the word on sunday.

You got to read it But of course the third discipline is studying the word of god So you hear it you read it and when you read it you study many of you have macarthur study bibles And you study what what are the notes?

Or you follow up the message and you know, we give you the verses and you can look up the verses later and if you study Maybe you'll get 50 maybe you'll get 60 or 70 depending how much time you spend in the study bible or the commentary But the next one the fourth discipline is memorization You memorize the bible verses And i'm afraid that we don't do this as much as we used to do when I grew up We had bible memory association and we were always memorizing bible verses But if you're going to memorize a bible verse that's a hundred percent retention Okay, so you got hearing reading Studying memorizing so now I don't want to talk about number five though meditation Meditation because there is a lost art of meditation.

I don't want to embarrass anybody, but i'd guess very few people here Meditate and i'm still learning it. I'm still growing in it But the bible tells us in the very first psalm psalm 1 1 how to avoid sin, right?

That's the first verse in the first psalm, but verse 2 says But his delight is in the law of the lord And on his law, he meditates day and night So there is an art of meditation that the church today does not do I think Psalms 119 97 says oh how I love your law.

It is my meditation All day, we fill our brains with the news with sports with social media and we go to bed Our brains are scrambled and we take a sleeping pill to sleep We don't meditate but let me tell it talk a little bit about meditation because I think it goes hand in hand with our psalms If you love the word of god You need to start to learn how to meditate upon it By meditation, I do not mean the the the hindu or the buddhist meditation that transcendental meditation Uh that type of meditation they will sing a chant and they empty the mind, right?

They want their mind clear christian meditation Fills the mind with biblical theology with bible verses with thoughts about god jesus the holy spirit The meditation advocated in the psalms is one that you engage your mind with the truth of god's word We come to the bible with an open mind. We read it and perhaps There's a verse that just jumps off the page. I'll give you an example in a minute Uh, perhaps you're struggling with temptation or sexual morality or anger or there's something you're struggling with And you read a verse and boy that verse talks to me.

You need to write that verse down Uh sticky notes. Okay So the one i'll talk about in a minute is here and I keep this one on my dashboard and usually it falls down I got to get tape but uh I write I write the verse down so write it on a sticky note Or write it on an index card, okay, maybe it's a Problem you're dealing with like anger or talking back to your wife or submission at work You need to submit to boss who's not good Uh, and the verse just jumps off the page. That's the holy spirit speaking to you Write it down on an index card write it down on a sticky note and hopefully you do it in the morning And then you repeat it again and again You take it to work with you at lunchtime pull it out of your wallet.

This one sits on my car At night you repeat it again, so you'll memorize it. Okay. So what is my my verse? Mine is psalms 1911 I read I read it. I read it. Uh, i'm sorry proverbs 1911. Forgive me proverbs 1911 so last month i'm reading proverbs 19th on July 19th and verse 11 jumped off the page and convicted me proverbs 1911 says good sense makes one slow to anger And it eschews glory to overlook an offense. Why did that verse speak to me? Well ever since I got back from myanmar, you know, I thought they drove crazy in myanmar Well, I came back and they're driving crazy here in my in myanmar.

There's two lanes, right? So two lanes going south two lanes going north on the main highway. There's only about three highways in old city But what they'll do is they'll go through the inner they have a green light And they go through the green light you can't turn left so just past the green light they will do a u-turn But they have to stop and then they block traffic and it just drives you crazy So there's all these things they do in myanmar that just drive you crazy. They don't know how to drive So you come back to america and you people don't know how to drive.

No, not you but all those people out there So, you know you're going down arrow highway. There's three lanes and if you're in the third lane Somebody is going to roll through the red light on the turn right and you've got to lock the brakes up If you're on the freeway and you're trying to be safe and you lose three four car lengths They're going to cut in right it's going to happen is my point, right?

Okay, there are crazy drivers out there. There are clueless drivers out there. They are drivers on cell phones It's hard to drive safe today, isn't it? So lots of bad things can happen when you're driving. So what are you going to do kristen? Honk your horn to get their attention Give them a death stare and god forbid you would give them a hand gesture like that woman did and her child got shot You know, she's gonna have to live with that for the rest of her life It's dangerous out there. But as christians, what do we do?

So i'm seeing a lot of things and it's affecting me. So this first spoke to me through the holy spirit So I started to meditate upon it.

It says good sense Makes one slow to anger good sense. It says don't lose your temper. Don't get mad. Don't honk Don't get even okay um And then you start to meditate and then you think are there other verses that back up this verse, uh, James 1 19 was just quoted in church last week or the week before It says let every person be quick to hear slow to speak and slow to become angry if you google bible verses On anger there was one one page that had 131 verses about anger in the bible God does not want christians to be anger.

Okay Uh tom quoted, uh, ephesians 4 26 on sunday be angry and do not sin. You don't let the sun go down on your anger, right? Colossians 3 8 but now you must put them all away. And what's the first thing he tells us to put away?

anger Wrath malice slander, so i'm not saying it's easy. I'm still learning. So that's why I have this on my my side dash or my dash But i'll evaluate myself tonight when I get home. How did I do today? You know did I lose my temper i'll confess my sins But i'm trying to do better because the second part of that verse says and it's to his glory to overlook an offense So when I get in the car and i'm going to go to target or go to church Somebody's going to do something stupid.

It's bound to happen So you could do one of two things you can be a christian control yourself And be slow to anger and overlook the offense or you can act like a non-christian Don't put a fish sticker on your car put it put a fish sticker on your heart okay so Uh, that's just one example. We could give you many more about meditation like psalms 23 1 the lord is my shepherd You can meditate on that verse, right? Five words about the lord being a shepherd. What is a shepherd? One pastor listed seven things a shepherd does he feeds he waters he guides he disciplines he guards he shelters And ultimately the good shepherd dies for the sheep, right?

So the lord is my shepherd you can meditate upon that and what's the next four words? I shall not want you start to think about that. Matthew 6 promises is what clothing shelter and food, right? So you meditation you think about the verse? To work on a problem area in your life or just a verse that jumps out of your page So I hope that you will not just hear the word of god Read the word of god study the word of god memorize the word of god that you'll start to meditate On one verse, you know, I don't do one every day But I try to do different ones in different areas, especially when it jumps off the page.

Let's move on to the fifth imperative The fifth imperative is enter enter Literally enter it says enter his gates with thanksgiving his courts with praise So enter is a verb it mentions two nouns gates and courts. It's talking about the temple There would be a gate where they would go through the gate in the temple and then there would be the courts And that's where they would worship Okay, it's through these gates that the worshiper would walk through his courts And it emphasizes the gathering of god's people to worship You know to enter the gates.

You gotta physically be present, right? You can't zoom you can't worship at home Now there are shut-ins there are sick people there are prisoners there are people on the radio who can't make it here But the majority can You know, there are some disturbing church trends out there since covet You can you can look at articles now out there about Internet churches or online churches that people are saying you don't need to go to church just jump on the internet There are big churches now where there's a big church in pomona And they will have satellite churches In chino or ontario so you go to the satellite church in ontario And the pastor will be in pomona on the screen that is getting really popular now.

I I just don't I got something wrong with that and then you got Saturday night churches anybody go to that. I had a roommate that went to saturday night church. You know why he went to saturday night church So he could go jet skiing on sunday That's not why saturday night churches were designed. They were designed for people who worked on sunday, but they have that now So there's just people now with kobe that says I can stay home and worship church attendance is down nationwide People are saying I can stay home I was in the montclair plaza last year Or the year before maybe with kovid and a guy came up and actually started to share christ with me I was sitting on a bench while ping was shopping and he started sharing with me But the more I talked what church you go to and he was real evasive eventually I because you know I always ask him who is jesus and how is one saved to make sure what their theology is and And he was going to a house church and he said I don't believe in church buildings The bible doesn't have church buildings and it's true that the early christians did not assemble into churches till about 8300 But but the more I talked to him, it was just too weird that that he did not want to come to a church But there's a lot of bad trends going out there When I went to a christian college on sunday morning, this is 30 40 years ago, whatever Uh, there were 24 guys in our dorm and on sunday morning Maybe three of us would get them go to church.

So we used to call those people the bedside baptist, right? Okay, god does not want bedside baptist He says enter your courts and lance has mentioned this in hebrews 10 24 and 25 It says let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds You can't stir somebody up. You can't have fellowship. You can't love somebody if you're sitting at home You've got to come to church because verse 25 says do not neglect meeting together As the habit of some are doing and we're seeing more and more of that, you know, I was thinking of uh, Sarah jordan, you know, she's gone home to the lord, you know take took her longer to walk from her car to church But she all then it takes me to drive to church, but she always had a smile on her face I think of ruth jones, you know, she's suffering going through the chemo and yet she just comes full of joy perfect examples.

So Enter his gates with thanksgiving no bedside baptist. Okay, let's move on to number six Number six says give thanks So you have two words here give thanks to him The hebrew word for thanks is hoda It it's not it carries a bigger meaning than our word, you know, we say thank you to everybody, right? Thank you when they give us our food even when you pay for it, thank you for a service rendered Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We say it all day But this word means that you're acknowledging the person you're confessing to him.

You're uh, proclaiming him. Okay So a christian is required to give thanks. I think you know that First thessalonians 5 18 says give thanks in all circumstances For this is the will of god.

One of the seven wills of god is that christians give thanks why? Because non-christians do not give thanks non-christians romans 1 21 for although they knew god They did not honor him as god Or give thanks to him And then second timothy 3 2 says one of the characteristics in the last times people will be lovers of self lovers of money proud arrogant abusive disobedient to parents Ungrateful aren't you seeing that of this new millennial generation that's being raised up now?

Ungratefulness is one of the characteristics. So when we come into worship on sunday, we give thanks through prayer Don't we we thank jesus christ. We thank god for his son. We thank the holy spirit for his power So in prayer we give thanks When we give our tithes or offerings we give thanks, right? We thank him and we give him what is already his money and we give him a portion back We thank him with our singing what's the the hymn says give thanks with a grateful heart Give thanks to the holy one give thanks because he's given jesus christ his son We give thanks when we sing we give thanks when we partake of communion thanking jesus christ for dying on the cross Remembering it Remembering it every time we take it we give thanks when we fellowship and have donuts right here with each other We catch up with prayer requests last night.

We we had answers to prayer requests at the prayer meeting We praise god for that when you serve the children when you serve the church, you're giving thanks And when you study god's word, I learned from tom on sunday I thank him I thank because I learned from the word of god I come to church on sunday because I want to know more about god more about the word of god And so I thank god because i'm going to grow in bible knowledge So it's notice the words in this psalm 5 we have words like joyful words like gladness words like thanksgiving and thanks the temple then The church now and the millennial kingdom in the future is to be a place of joy It's to be because our great god and what his son jesus christ has done for us So there should be no ungrateful people when we come to worship on sunday Let's move on to the seventh and last imperative.

Maybe your bible says bless Maybe your bible says praise. They're literally the same. Okay That's the the last part of verse 4 says bless his name or your translation may say praise his name Thomas watson that great puritan said praising god is one of the highest and purest acts in of religion In prayer we act like men In praise we act like angels Because that's what we're going to do when we go to heaven. We will praise him night and day 24 hours a day The word praise here or bless means to show gratitude and respect for god I was reading j bernard mcgee's commentary on psalm 100 and he said that If he had to go back and do his ministry again, everybody know j bernard mcgee.

He's still preaching from the grave But he said if I were to criticize my ministry the one thing I would do different I I did not have enough praise in my worship service I think we're going to have a wednesday night tim on praise in a couple weeks, right? Uh, sometimes at the prayer we used to come and just okay today no prayer requests just praise requests So we need to praise more go. So when you bless the name of god, you're praising him and notice then There are three reasons to praise him and they're all in verse five We praise him for his goodness It says for the lord is good.

That's why we praise him number two. We praise him for his grace It says his steadfast love endures forever And thirdly we praise him for his guarantee.

It says his faithfulness to all generations So let's go For the lord is good. It's one of the attributes of god It it's not talking about the holiness of god. It's talking about god being kind Being full full of goodwill being uh tender-hearted toward man God is inclined to bestow goodness or bless people God takes pleasure in his people why because he's good. There's no evil in him There are four psalms that begin with the very first verse psalms 106 verse 1 psalms 107 verse 1 psalms 118 verse 1 and psalms 136 verse 1 that say Give thanks to the lord For he is good.

Give thanks to the lord for he is good. Give thanks the lord for he is good And you know the new testament says in james 1 17 Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights in whom there's no variation or shadow We literally need to sometimes just stop and count our blessings. Don't we? We just you know, you're having a bad day You're going through a bad day when things aren't working out Maybe you just need to sit down and count your blessings and then maybe you'll cheer up I won't our time is gone.

But if I could tell you what's going on in myanmar right now Like the kovet thank god. The kovet wave is kind of going down, but they're going to the pharmacy They can't there's no aspirin at the pharmacy. There's no paracetamol at the aspirin. Can you imagine doing that? It's just it's just crazy, but we have so much to be thankful for here Number two praise him for his grace.

I know it says his steadfast love, but it's because of his love God gives us grace right? What is grace? It's god giving us something we don't deserve, right? We don't deserve it. We deserve the penalty of death because we sin and we broke his holy laws But his steadfast love was past present future. It says endures forever It's always there romans 5 8 but god demonstrates his love to us in this while we were sinners Christ died for us. Ephesians 1 7 says in him. We have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace And ephesians 2 8 says for by grace you have been saved through faith This is not of your own doing it's the gift of god.

God gave us the gift of grace So we need to continually thank him for his love in giving us his only son jesus to die for us and redeem us And then lastly the last sentence in psalm 100 says That his faithfulness to all generations. That's a guarantee. That's a promise of god. Every promise of god comes true Last wednesday, we sang some psalms didn't we and one of the songs we sang was forever and it says forever God is faithful. Okay, and that's from a psalm His faithfulness will never cease. It never ceased in the past.

It won't cease in the present It's not going to cease in the future. It's a guarantee Lamentations 3 23 says they are renewed every morning Great is your faithfulness? sometime read psalms 89 eight times In psalms 89 it talks about god's faithfulness. It's a long psalm But it's a great psalm one verse says the very first verse of psalm 89 one says I will sing of the steadfast love of the lord forever With my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations So we need to praise god for his goodness for his grace And for his faithfulness, so there are seven imperatives when we come to worship We come to make a joyful noise.

We come to serve we come to presence with singing We come to know or study more about god. We come and physically enter his gates and be here We give thanks to him and we praise his name These were imperatives for the worship of the temple 3 000 years ago I think they're imperatives for us today. We learn from them And we will certainly be doing them to perfection in the millennial kingdom So I thought i'd just finish tonight by rereading psalm 100 It says 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 has made us and we are his we are his people the sheep of his pastor 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