For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: 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 for ever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations.

A. Find Out:    

1. Who is called to do what? v.1
2. What are we to do, how, and with what? v.2
3. Why? v.3
4. What are we to bring as we come to Him? v.4
5. Why? v.5

B. Think:

1. How many expressions of activity towards God are there here?
2. What two causes for these are given?

C. Comment:

This is a short, compact psalm, packed with calls on how to come to God. The first call is simply to shout for joy to the Lord (v.10). We probably take this for granted as we read it but how few of us do it, yet it is the call to all the earth, so we are exhorted to worship (bow down before) the Lord with gladness and joyful songs. If you didn’t see it before, surely we must see it now – coming to God should be a joyful thing. How often do we come like this?

Then comes the content, the reason for this call. It is because the Lord – the I AM who has revealed Himself to mankind through Israel – is God. He is a known God. He brought Israel into being; He made them His people (v.3), He cared for them as a shepherd.

  So, says the psalmist, when you come to God (v.4) come with thanks and praise. Thanks is to be for what He has done for us. Praise is giving glory to Him for who He is. We should always hold these two in balance, remembering what He has done AND the nature and character of who He actually is.

It is the nature-character part that the psalmist concludes with, for the former part was covered in v.3. He describes the Lord as good and speaks of His love which goes on for ever. Goodness and love go together in God. That love is continual and unwavering and remains faithful whatever happens.

D. Application:

1. These descriptions of worship are far from the sombre ‘services’ we sometimes see on TV or hear on radio.
2. May we worship scripturally!