A psalm. For giving grateful praise.
1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Serve the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
We are all of us, in the Church of Scotland, familiar with the metric version of this psalm – “All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice …”
Even though we know the psalm well and its message is straightforward, I thought it worth going into it a little more deeply.
This is a call to praise God and to praise Him with gladness and joy. I sometimes feel that the Old 100th tune that this is set to isn’t joyful enough – it’s too solemn for the message in the psalm (but then it tends to be sung rather slowly!). Praise is important – for myself, it’s praise which kept me going to church in my youth – giving me the foundation on which my own faith has grown over the years.
It is important to note that the psalm is addressed to the whole world – Jews and Gentiles alike.
The psalm contains 7 things that we should do –
- Verse 1 – Everyone – shout to the Lord – sing out loud in praise. Sadly, this is not possible in church at the moment, but we can still shout out our praise in our hearts.
- Verses 2 & 3 – Serve God – God has given us life and the means to enjoy it – so we ought to serve Him, and gladly. Verse 3 also reminds us that God is our maker – we belong to him and so we owe him our praise.
- Verse 2 again – Come before God. God is everywhere, so we can come to him anywhere or at any time in praise or in prayer – as we are doing tonight.
- We need to know God and to know who He is (verse 3). He made us. We are His people. We are His – not our own.
- Verse 4 – “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” In modern times, this means going to church and attending meetings. Although we cannot do that physically just now – we can meet like we are tonight and do on Sundays and listen to or watch broadcast services
- Verse 4 again – Always thank the Lord. We have nothing which is truly our own – all we have is gifted to us by God.
- Still in verse 4 – Finally – Praise God’s name. When we praise Him or his name – it is what God means us to do.
Verse 5 gives us the reasons for all this – “the lord is good and His Love endures for ever; His faithfulness continues through all generations”.
All this in 5 short verses – Praise the Lord – Amen