The Noise of True Joy Text: Psalm 100
Introduction: The Rebellion of the Mute
We live in an age that has forgotten how to sing. It knows how to grumble, it knows how to complain, and it is certainly proficient in the art of the sneer. Our culture is saturated with the sour noise of discontent. But the joyful noise, the loud shout of a people who know they are loved and owned by a good God, is a foreign sound. This is because true joy is a theological statement. It is a confession of faith. And our secular, materialist world is constitutionally incapable of making it. It has nothing to shout about.
The central sin of fallen man, as Paul lays it out in Romans 1, is a refusal to honor God as God or to give Him thanks. Ungratefulness is the original sin and the foundational rebellion. It is the sour root from which all other idolatries and perversions grow. When a man refuses to give thanks, he is declaring his autonomy. He is saying, "I am my own, I made myself, and I owe no one." This is the lie that whispers in the heart of every sullen teenager, every bitter revolutionary, and every sophisticated atheist. They believe their grumbling is a sign of their intellectual superiority, when in fact it is the rattle of their chains.
Into this grumbling darkness, Psalm 100 erupts like a thunderclap of joy. This psalm is a summons, a command to worship. It is not a polite suggestion for the religiously inclined. It is a royal decree for all the earth. And the worship it commands is not quiet, demure, or respectable in the world's eyes. It is loud, glad, and public. It is a frontal assault on the quiet misery of unbelief. This psalm teaches us that Christian worship is not a retreat from the world; it is a declaration of war against the world's despair. It is the sound of a victorious army, celebrating the goodness of their King.
This psalm is a compact manual on the grammar of gratitude. It tells us who to worship (Yahweh), how to worship (with gladness), why to worship (because He made us and He is good), and where to worship (in His gates). It is a complete worldview in five verses. If we could get this one psalm into our bones, it would revolutionize our lives, our families, our churches, and our culture. It would replace our grumbling with gratitude, and our whisper with a shout.
The Text
A Psalm of Thanksgiving.
Make a loud shout to Yahweh, all the earth.
Serve Yahweh with gladness; Come before Him with joyful songs.
Know that Yahweh, He 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 Yahweh is good; His lovingkindness endures forever And His faithfulness, generation unto generation.
(Psalm 100 LSB)
A Global Summons to Shout (v. 1)
The psalm opens with a command that is both universal and disruptive.
"Make a loud shout to Yahweh, all the earth." (Psalm 100:1)
The first thing to notice is the scope of the command: "all the earth." This is not a private memo for the members of the Jerusalem country club. This is a global press release. The God of Israel is not a tribal deity, a local god minding his own business. He is the God, the Creator of all, and therefore He has a rightful claim on the worship of all. Every man, woman, and child in every nation, from the Amazon jungle to the boardrooms of Tokyo, is commanded to make a joyful noise to Yahweh. This is postmillennialism in a nutshell. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and this is what it will sound like.
The second thing to notice is the nature of the command: "Make a loud shout." The Hebrew word here is not for a polite murmur or a quiet hum. It is the sound of a trumpet blast, the roar of a triumphant army. This is not the worship of the stuffy and the starched. This is robust, full-throated, masculine joy. Our modern worship sensibilities are often shaped more by the fear of man than the fear of God. We are afraid of looking undignified, of being "cringe." But the Bible commands us to be loud. This is because the gospel is loud. The resurrection was not a quiet affair; it was an earthquake. Pentecost was not a silent retreat; it was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. Our worship should reflect the glorious reality of what God has done. A quiet Christian is a contradiction in terms.
The Demeanor of True Service (v. 2)
Verse two specifies the attitude and action of this global worship.
"Serve Yahweh with gladness; Come before Him with joyful songs." (Psalm 100:2 LSB)
We are to "serve Yahweh." Worship is not a passive spectator sport; it is active service. It is our chief work. And the required demeanor for this work is "gladness." This is utterly offensive to the modern therapeutic mindset, which believes that our feelings are sovereign. We are told to worship only when we "feel like it." But God commands the feeling. Serve with gladness. This is because Christian joy is not a matter of circumstance; it is a matter of obedience. It is a fruit of the Spirit, not a product of our environment. To serve God with a long face is to slander His name. It is to tell the world that our King is a tyrant and His service is a drudgery. But to serve Him with gladness is to testify that our God is good and His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
And we are to "come before Him with joyful songs." The approach to God is a musical one. We sing our way into His presence. This is not just about making a pleasant sound. Singing is theological. When we sing, we are catechizing ourselves and one another. We are embedding the truth of God's Word into our hearts and minds. A church that does not sing with gusto is a church that is forgetting its theology. The Reformation was a singing movement because it was a theological movement. Luther knew that the one who sings the hymns of the church teaches the church. Our songs are weapons in our spiritual warfare against despair and unbelief.
The Foundation of All Knowledge (v. 3)
Verse three provides the doctrinal foundation, the intellectual bedrock, for this joyful worship.
"Know that Yahweh, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture." (Psalm 100:3 LSB)
"Know that Yahweh, He is God." Worship must be intelligent. It is not a mindless emotionalism. It is grounded in the knowledge of who God is. The great error of our age is to think that we can have the fruits of Christianity (like joy) without the roots of Christian doctrine. But you cannot have gladness without knowing the God who is the source of all gladness. This verse is a direct assault on all forms of idolatry and humanism. There is one God, and His name is Yahweh.
The foundation of this knowledge is the Creator/creature distinction: "It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves." This is the most basic truth of reality. We are contingent. We are derived. We are not the source of our own being. The modern world is built on the satanic lie of self-creation. We are told to "be true to ourselves," to "define our own reality." This is the height of insanity. It is like a pot declaring its independence from the potter. To deny that God made us is to deny reality itself. And the result is not liberation, but disintegration. When you declare that you made yourself, you are left with the impossible task of holding yourself together.
Because He made us, He owns us. "We are His people and the sheep of His pasture." This is covenant language. We are not just His creatures; we are His treasured possession. We are not cosmic orphans; we belong to a Shepherd. And this is the source of our deepest security and joy. It is a glorious thing to be owned by a good Shepherd. He provides for us, He protects us, and He leads us. The autonomous man is a stray sheep, terrified and alone. The Christian is a sheep in the Shepherd's flock, safe in His pasture.
The Posture of Approach (v. 4)
Verse four describes how we are to enter the formal, gathered worship of God's people.
"Enter His gates with thanksgiving And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name." (Psalm 100:4 LSB)
We are to come into His presence with "thanksgiving" and "praise." Notice the repetition. The password to enter the courts of the King is gratitude. Grumbling gets you turned away at the gate. A sense of entitlement is forbidden in the house of God. We come not to make demands, but to give thanks. We come not to complain about our week, but to praise Him for His character.
This is why our corporate worship is so vital. It is a weekly recalibration of our souls. We spend the week in a world that is marinated in discontent. We are bombarded with advertisements designed to make us feel inadequate and needy. We come to church on Sunday to be reminded of the truth, to have our hearts retuned to the key of gratitude. The liturgy of the church, the call to worship, the confession of sin, the assurance of pardon, the singing of psalms, the preaching of the Word, and the fellowship of the Table, are all designed to cultivate a thankful heart.
We are to "give thanks to Him, bless His name." To bless God's name is to speak well of Him. It is to declare His worth, His character, and His deeds to the world. This is our primary evangelistic strategy. A genuinely thankful people are a powerful apologetic. In a world of grumblers, a community overflowing with gratitude is as strange and attractive as a spring of fresh water in a desert.
The Unchanging Reason Why (v. 5)
The psalm concludes with the ultimate, unchanging reason for all this joyful noise.
"For Yahweh is good; His lovingkindness endures forever And His faithfulness, generation unto generation." (Psalm 100:5 LSB)
Our worship is not based on our fluctuating feelings or our unstable circumstances. It is based on the immutable character of God. "For Yahweh is good." This is the bedrock of our faith. God is not moody. He is not capricious. He is, in His very essence, good. All that He does is good. Even when we cannot see the goodness, even in the midst of trial and sorrow, we can stand on this truth: God is good.
"His lovingkindness endures forever." The Hebrew word here is chesed. It is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It means covenant-keeping love, steadfast loyalty, unfailing mercy. God's love for His people is not a fickle emotion; it is a covenantal commitment. He has bound Himself to us in Christ, and He will never let us go. His love does not have an expiration date. It endures forever.
And "His faithfulness, generation unto generation." God keeps His promises. What He has said, He will do. He was faithful to Abraham, to Moses, to David, and He will be faithful to us. He will be faithful to our children and to our children's children. This is the foundation of our hope for the future. We are not optimists because we believe in the goodness of man. We are optimists because we believe in the faithfulness of God. He is building His church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. He is advancing His kingdom, and His purposes cannot be thwarted. History is His story, and it has a happy ending.
Therefore, we have every reason to shout. We have a God who made us, who owns us, who shepherds us, who is good, whose love is eternal, and whose faithfulness is unbreakable. To respond to this reality with anything less than a loud, glad, thankful noise is to be utterly out of touch with reality.