Serve Jehovah with joy come before his presence with exultation.
Psalm 100 is the last of a run of psalms that trace the Lord taking His throne, and it opens with an invitation aimed at the whole earth. Who is speaking here? When will this song be sung in full? And what does glad service look like?
The joy here does not stand alone. One writer reads Psalms 95–100 as one sequence. The call to glad service comes only after the Lord has taken His seat.
In Psalm 95 we have the progress of the testimony — the Jews are called; in Psalm 96 the Gentiles. In Psalm 97 the Lord appears. In Psalm 98 God carries out judgment in favour of Zion. In Psalm 99 He is seated between the cherubim. In Psalm 100 all lands are called up with joy to worship before Him.
Serving God was nothing new for the godly remnant — the faithful few left in Israel. What changes here is the mood of the service and of the approach.
The call goes out to all the earth to serve Jehovah with joy, and to come before His presence with rejoicing. The godly remnant had indeed "served" in times of sorrow; now all can serve with joy. When enemies surrounded them, the godly came into His presence with fear; now all can come with rejoicing.
The word "gladness" carries real weight in the verse.
All lands are called to shout with joy to the Lord (v. 1), and to serve Him with gladness too (v. 2). How much higher this is than service that is all but forced out of a person, either by a command or by the pressure of conscience! And there is no longer the same uncertain fear in coming into the Lord's presence. Instead there is joyful singing.
Another writer traces that freedom back to the believer's place as a son:
The believer is a servant because he is a son. The Lord's service is perfect freedom — "His yoke is easy, and His burden is light." He serves God as a redeemed sinner and an adopted child, moved by the love of Christ. He works not for liberty, but as having liberty; not for life, but from life.
Verse 3 tells us who is speaking, and that shows how wide the invitation reaches.
"Serve Jehovah," will they say, "with gladness, come before His presence with singing" (100:1-2). Who is speaking? The third verse explains. God's earthly people, Israel, are the speakers... But when the Lord appears for them, will that call pass unheeded? Then all lands must come to His courts. Jerusalem will be recognised as the chief city of the whole earth, and the Temple will be rebuilt as the house of prayer for the whole world.
Because this is a real place and a real people, one writer cautions against turning the psalm's imagery into a picture of church buildings:
How often is this Psalm used in a spiritualized way, making the gates and the courts some church building. But we worship in spirit and in truth and not in an earthly house. The gates and courts have reference to that future temple, which will be a house of prayer for all nations.
Many sing Psalm 100 today. Yet some commentators hold that its full moment has not yet come.
People sometimes ask us to sing it, but I tell my friends we will have to wait a little before we can sing it to its own tune. This is hardly the moment yet to sing it in the Spirit... It will be a wonderful moment for the earth one day, when that psalm is sung as it should be, in full world-wide chorus.
Israel began serving God with a song. It did not last.
Then they began to serve by singing to Him who had saved them... But Jehovah soon had to say this about the nation He had set free from Egypt, His "son": "Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things" (Deut. 28:47). Their singing gave way to grumbling and turning back.
The same writer brings the verse home to us today:
Our miserable lost condition is behind us for ever, and it is not fitting to serve with sadness! The apostle Paul had plenty of trials, weaknesses, persecutions and imprisonments to sadden him. But he had in Christ what nothing could take from him. So he wrote, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice."
- Throne — the call to glad service comes after the Lord has taken His place. Psalm 99 seats Him; Psalm 100 calls all lands up with joy.
- Gladness — the change is in tone, not task. Service once carried on in sorrow becomes service in joy, and fearful approach becomes singing.
- Freedom — gladness rules out service forced by command or by the pressure of conscience. The servant works from liberty, not for it.
- Reach — Israel gives the call, but the invitation is to every land. All lands will come to His courts, and the Temple will be the house of prayer for the whole world.
- Warning — Israel once served without gladness, and their singing gave way to grumbling. Commentators differ on how far the psalm can be sung today, but none excuse sad service now.
Know that Jehovah is God it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; [we are] his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psalm 100 closes a run of psalms in which the LORD takes His throne and calls the whole earth to worship. Verse 3 gives the reason for all that singing, and it answers two questions at once: who God is, and whose we are.
One writer traces the sequence of psalms that leads up to it:
Psalm 93, the LORD reigns — the general idea… Psalm 95, the last summons to Israel; Psalm 96, the everlasting gospel to the nations; Psalm 97, He is actually coming; Psalm 98, He is come; Psalm 99, He is sitting between the cherubim; Psalm 100, all the Gentiles, the nations are summoned to come up and worship.
The call to know comes from people who learned it by experience.
Restored Israel, speaking from their experience of the LORD's loving-kindness, can bear witness to all the earth. They can say to the nations, "Know that the LORD is God." He "has made us"; all that we are we owe to Him, and not to ourselves.
Commentators differ here. Do these words call out to the nations, or do God's own people sing them to one another?
Verse 3 is not a declaration of His name to those who do not know it. It is rather the glad rehearsal of that name by His own people. Having tasted and enjoyed divine mercy, they will answer one another in songs of thanksgiving to the LORD's praise.
Older versions read the middle clause as a denial: not we ourselves. One writer first names who the LORD is, then asks why such an obvious thing needs saying:
"Know that the LORD" — that is, the Lord Jesus — "He is God" (v. 3). Is it necessary that we be told that "it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves"? Yes, such words are necessary to rebuke the pride of "self-made" men. That pride even dares to claim to be God, as the Beast and the antichrist will do. The Pharisee showed it too when he stood by himself and prayed, "God, I thank You that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11).
The ESV reads "and we are his." Older versions read "and not we ourselves." Both come from the Hebrew text, which carries two readings here:
There are more than a dozen places where the marginal reading puts לו (lo, the personal pronoun) in place of לא (lo, the negative particle). This greatly alters the sense. The Authorised Version follows a few of them, such as Job 13:15; Psalm 100:3; Isaiah 63:9. May we not be assured that even in this God has guarded His own Book?
Either way the point stands: what we are, we owe to Him.
Knowing God as Maker has two sides:
The next thing we learn is that God is our Maker. This is a great advance upon learning Him as our Justifier… We are the creatures of God, and He who made us knows all about us; but we are also His creatures as new-created in Christ.
And the making described here goes beyond bringing creatures into existence:
In conscious relationship they can say, "We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." It is not only that He has created us and that we are His creatures, but He has made us to be His people.
The last phrase names what grace has made us, and what that makes us need:
Through grace we have been made "the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand"; and, as such, it is a shepherd we especially need… As sheep, exposed to countless dangers as we travel through this dark wilderness, we truly need the friendly voice of our Shepherd. His rod and staff give safety and steadiness to our steps as we journey on to the heavenly fold.
This place is given, not earned, and it leads straight on to the call of verse 4:
How much better for us to be content that we are "His people and the sheep of His pasture!" This is an honour that we do not deserve, yet which God has given us. Since this is so, we are invited to "enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise" (v. 4).
- Know first. The whole psalm rests on one piece of knowledge: the LORD is God. Commentators place this song where the nations at last come up to worship.
- Made, not self-made. "He made us, and not we ourselves" rebukes the pride of the self-made man. At its worst that pride claims to be God.
- Made a people. He did not only create us as creatures; He made us to be His people, so the relationship is His work from start to finish.
- His, and fed by Him. Being "the sheep of His pasture" means we need a Shepherd — and the honour of belonging to Him is one we never earned.
- Therefore praise. Everything in the verse traces back to Him. So the next verse calls us into His gates with thanksgiving.