Prayer and the PsalmsSample

Psalm 100 – Enter His Gates with Thanksgiving

This Psalm is quite short, so it is included in today’s devotion. 

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 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.

This is a party Psalm in that it is demonstrative and wholehearted – it invites us into a full, noisy and joyful celebration of God, for he is good.  No place for the nervous.  

It also gives us a clue as to how we are to enter his presence.  Coming into God’s presence in the era of the Old Testament wasn’t something casually done; there was a prescribed way in.  We don’t need to go by the way of animal sacrifices and priests, but the precepts are much the same.  We enter by the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, we offer up prayers and requests as priests, we enter his presence by the blood of Christ, and the holy place is made open through the curtain (flesh) of Jesus.  

We are asked in this Psalm to recognise who God is and who we are.  Both perspectives matter immensely when it comes to a sober view of ourselves and a glorious view of God.  To get this wrong is to fail to see who God is and therefore who we are.  As is often the case scripture reminds us that God is the Creator.

God is also the shepherd of his people, and while this sounds very cute it is a little more serious by implication as sheep were considered virtually helpless without a shepherd – prone to infection, wandering, getting lost, and hopelessly vulnerable.  This is a humbling view for so-called self-made people.

This Psalm resolves itself declaring to us why God is to be approached with thanksgiving and praise.  It is because he is God, and he is good, and “his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”