TURN UP THE VOLUME

 

OCTOBER 6, 2023

PSALM 100

1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2     Worship 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.

Psalm 100 tells us to shout it out.

Many of us were brought up being told to do just the opposite: “Keep your voices down.” “Keep it under control.” “Don’t raise a ruckus.” Maybe you’ve told your kids — or the kids in a Sunday School class—the same thing.

But when it comes to worshiping God, Psalm 100 claims that it’s very appropriate to “turn up the volume.” That likely makes a few of us uncomfortable. Turning up the volume in worship is not what we are looking for.

Yet, these five verses boom with praise, using a set of verbs: shout (verse 1), worship (verse 2), enter (verses 2, 4), praise (verse 4), bless (verse 4). Taken together, these commands encourage the faith community to participate in a march, that starts in everyday life, on the streets, people pouring out of homes, and maybe gathering from the fields, into God’s temple.

Called into this procession toward God’s holy temple, the psalm presents another important phrase, “know that the Lord is God” (verse 3). Now, we typically understand “knowing” to be this mental process directed toward gaining knowledge, not as a certain action that we take.

The Hebrew word “to know” (yd‘) actually suggests something more. This term is used in several places in the Bible (Genesis 4:1 and 1 Kings 1:4) to describe the connection that results from sexual intercourse. Wait now, hear me out. Clearly this sexual knowledge is not being referred to in Psalm 100. However, the broader use of the verb “to know” in the Hebrew Bible suggests that the people’s knowledge of who God is not simply by some intellectual agreement. “To Know” is a deep and intimate awareness of God’s identity. The marching community responds to this intimacy, through shouting, praising, and entering God’s holy places together. They “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and his Courts with praise.”

The psalm ends with a call to praise: God is good (verse 5). God’s goodness is known by his character, experienced in his faithfulness and steadfast love. Simply put what makes God good is that he has been reliable for a long time.

The tremendous outcome of this “turned up the volume worship” for you and me is that we can continue to rely on the Creator God that we worship, in the present, and into the future. Holding firmly to the truth that “It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” So, “give thanks to him and praise his name.”