Psalm 100--His Steadfast Love Endures Forever

Psalm 100
English Standard Version

His Steadfast Love Endures Forever
A Psalm for giving thanks.
100 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
2     Serve the LORD with gladness!
    Come into his presence with singing!

3 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.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

​5 For the LORD is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever,
    and his faithfulness to all generations.

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This psalm is probably quite familiar to you.  You may have heard it at Thanksgiving as its superscript says that it is a Psalm for thanksgiving.  Once again, the Psalmist calls on all the earth (all nations for sure, and probably all creatures as well) to make a joyful noise until the LORD.  We should not only worship Him with our words and our songs, but with our actions.  We are to serve the LORD with gladness!  That one is quite difficult for many people as they usually don't associate service and gladness.  We usually associate freedom and happiness, but the LORD says that we can serve Him with gladness and should.  We are to come into His presence with singing.  This goes back to a rule at that time that you were not supposed to enter the king's presence sad if you served before him--it could actually be cause for the king's servant to be put to death.  We see this happen though with Nehemiah and Esther and the kings knew something was wrong and they had compassion, even though these servants feared for their lives coming before the kings they served with their sadness and their problems.

Why can we rejoice?  Because the LORD, He is God!  We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.  That is, we can rejoice for all the things that Psalm 23 tells us about "The LORD is My Shephard."  He is the Good Shephard who lays down His life for His sheep too (but we see that in the Gospel of John).

Therefore, we are to enter His gate (the gates of the Tabernacle/Temple) with thanksgiving, and His courts (the courtyard of the Tabernacle/Temple) with praise.  We should come with glad hearts when we come to offer our sacrifices, but even more so, we should come with thankful hearts because Christ has put an end to all the blood sacrifices.  Now we bring our tithes and offerings and come to the sanctuary to worship for we are allowed access as priests where most of the Jews had no access.  In fact, we are allowed access to the Holy of Holies through the blood of Jesus and the Spirt of God any time we want.  Even the High Priest used to only be able to go in there once a year and only for a short period of time.  However, there is no longer any veil separating us from the presence of God (His throne room).  Therefore, we give thanks to the LORD and bless His holy name!

It is easy to jump over the next line, but we worship the LORD because He is good.  Did you know He is the only one that is truly good?  Everything else that we say is "good" we measure on a comparative scale of being more or less good than something else, but God is the only one who is 100% good.  He is the standard for what goodness is.  Things that are more like God are more "good" and things that are less like God are less good (more evil or bad).  Remember Jesus asked the rich, young ruler, "Why do you call me good?  Only God is good."  Oh, how important it is that we worship a good God who is always good in everything He is and everything He does, always, all the time!  We can trust in His goodness in the same way that we trust in His mercy and faithfulness.  It is His essence.  He cannot ever not be good.  Therefore, His steadfast love (there's that deep, rich word again) endures forever, because the character and nature of God will never change.  Because He is always good, He will always do good towards His covenant people.  That's us too in the New Testament that are under the New Covenant.  Therefore, we should sing and give thanks to the LORD, for His faithfulness endures through all generations.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever!