Psalm 100 | The Power of Praise
Levi Stuckey
Summer in the Psalms: Breezing Through Life's Emotions • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:07
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What’s the goal of this life? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot over the last 6 weeks and honestly over the last year and a half.
You’ve seen we’re investing a lot in this facility through our SHIFT Campaign. And I couldn’t be more excited about that and the vision God is calling us to as a Church to help the Lost get found and the found live free, but as we’ve made the investment into our facility, your elders and myself have been spending a lot of time prayerfully considering what the goal of this life, and more specifically what the goal of this local Church should be so that we can be sure that when we finish sprucing up this facility, we make sure to put it to good use for King Jesus.
So we’ve been think a lot about what the goal of life and Crossroads should be.
It’s a big question. And while there are lots of appropriate ways to answer it. I think we must say above all, the goal of this life and this Church must be to glorify God.
And while that’s not a bad answer, it is kind of vague. Isn’t it? It doesn’t give us much by way of specifics.
We need to ask a follow up question: how?
How do we glorify God? How do we help others glorify God?
Our vision as a Church declares that we do this by helping people get found and learn to live free in Jesus. And while I love this and will continue use to this, at it’s simplest form what we’re saying in our vision statement is that we exist to help people grow up in Jesus!
Getting found and learning to walk in the freedom is essentially about becoming mature in Jesus.
So when we boil it down, this the goal of life and the goal of this Church. To help people grow up and become mature in Jesus.
Now I’m not teaching on this section of Scripture today but I’ll never forget the first time I saw this principle outlined in Hebrews 5:12-14
12 You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. 13 For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. 14 Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.
Hmmm, I love this passage. I remember teaching through Hebrews studying this to preach it and just getting so excited! This is a word of grace and truth. The Author of Hebrews inspired by the Holy Spirit of God essentially says here, it glorifies God when we act our age!
If you’re a baby, God is not upset or disappointed if you act like a baby! Babies cry. Babies can’t eat solid food. They need milk. They need someone to care for them and teach them and train them. This is good and glorifying to God. The problem arises when we fail to act our age. God takes issue with us when we act like babies as teenagers or adults!
You see, here in Hebrews 5 we discover God’s definition for maturity. As Nik Harrang states in an article on Deeper Walk International’s website:
Human maturity can be thought of as “achieving my God-given potential at my age and stage of life.” - Nik Harrang, https://deeperwalkinternational.org/streaming/the-5-stages-of-maturity/
“Maturity in Christ is achieving my God-given potential at my age and stage of life.” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3; Hebrews 5:11-14; Ephesians 4:11-15) Maturity in Christ is learning to act like my self in Christ no matter the circumstance or happenings in my life. Maturity in Christ is acting your age in Jesus!
So we could say, the goal of life and the goal of this Church is to help you reach your god-given potential at your spiritual age and stage of life!
And you might be thinking well what are those different stages of life or the stages of maturity?
There are 5. And again from Nik Harrang at Deeper Walk. He says:
The 5 Stages of Maturity are: infant, child, adult, parent, and elder. These stages have been confirmed cross-culturally, biblically, and even scientifically through modern brain science.
Again the 5 stages are:
Infant: The Infant Stage is where we learning to receive. Babies can’t do anything for themselves and they need to learn how first to receive from others so that their needs are met.
Child: The Child Stage then is where we learn to take care of ourselves. We transition from the infant stage when we learn what we need and how to communicate it to others. The child stage of maturity means I’m beginning to be able to care for for myself.
Adult: The Adult Stage then is where we learn to care for you and me. In the Adult stage of maturity, I have learned to receive what I need and can now think beyond myself and think about others as well.
Parent: The Parent Stage is where we learn to care for three or more. You know that you are at the parent stage, when you can sacrificially care for your children (or your spiritual children) without resenting the sacrifice or expecting to receive anything for your efforts.
Elder: The Elder Stage is where we learn to care for the community. True elders can act like themselves in the midst of difficulty and they are willing and able to parent and help mature the community as a whole.
Now, this is tough to overstate: the success of any country, community, school or church body will have a direct correlation to the presence of true elders who are guiding and advising that group.
Now back to our boy Nik and his article at Deeper walk:
He continues, While most people reach physical maturity without difficulty, it seems that many do not reach their full potential of social and emotional maturity. Rather, like a brick of swiss cheese, almost all of us have some “holes” in our maturity (some of which go all the way down!).
(Show of hands anybody in here know someone who struggles to act their age. Alright keep your hand up, anybody in here struggle to act their own age in Jesus).
The good news is that when we understand the 5 Stages of Maturity, we can partner with God and others to see these “holes” in our maturity filled.
While our value in Christ is unchanging and complete as a beloved child of God, our maturity can grow and increase over time. Raising maturity levels increases the health and satisfaction of marriages, parenting, leadership and other relationships. Blocked or stunted maturity limits our ability to receive and give life and to live fully from the heart Jesus gave us.
I know it’s taking me a bit to get to the Psalm but hang with me, I’m setting us up.
Again, the goal of life is to bring glory to God and we do that by growing up, by becoming mature which means learning to live out my god-given potential at my age and stage of life.
Now do you know what the foundation is that all of this growth is built upon. Do you know what fuels our growth in Jesus? Joy.
Joy is the fuel that our brains run on. If we have high joy in our life and community, transformation and growth will happy fairly unimpeded, but if we live in low joy communities and function with low joy personally, we will fail to grow up and and become mature.
Joy is the foundation we need to begin our growth journey of maturity in Jesus Christ!
And this is where Psalm 100 comes in.
Psalm 100 is an invitation to build joy by remembering that God is happy to see and be with us!
At it’s simplest, this is what the feeling of joy is, it’s a knowledge and a feeling that someone else you love is happy to see you, is glad to be with you. Joy is therefore relational! And because it is relational it can be shared!
We share with God as He shares it with us and we share it with others as they share it with us!
Also, because joy is relational it rises above circumstances and hard times.
The reality is life is hard sometimes, as we’ll look at next week from Psalm 107, but if we know that God and others are happy to be with us in these hard times, we can still experience Joy.
This Church is why James can say, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Why? Because we can know and experience in those hard times that God is with us and that He is glad to be with us and if we stay relationally connected to Him, He will use all things to bring about our good!
And so we need joy! We need to build joy into our lives. We need to build the capacity to be relationally connected with God and with others who are by grace, always happy to be with us! That’s the idea behind building joy: we want to grow our capacity to live with gratitude even when times are hard.
And Psalm 100 gives us a model to follow to begin to build this joy, this capacity for relational happiness and contentedness regardless of the happenings in our lives.
So let’s read it and then discuss it briefly:
A psalm. For giving grateful praise. 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.
I’ve shared this before but held within this Psalm is a key to unlocking a greater experience of God’s presence. We’re told in v. 4 that we enter into God’s presence through thanksgiving and praise.
Look at what it says:
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
Gratitude, joy, praise, appreciation, thanksgiving, these are the keys that unlock the door into God’s presence!
And then held within this Psalm are several things that we are invited to give thanks to God for:
We can remember and find joy and gratitude that the Lord is God!
We can thank him and remember that He is the creator! He made us and we are His. We belong to Him as sheep belong to a Shepherd.
We’re told of God’s goodness and His love that is said to endure forever. We invited to taste and see of this goodness. To ruminate on the realities of His faithfulness which is said to continue throughout all generations.
Now if you’re not tracking with what I’ve said. If you’re not careful, you’re going to fall into a trap and fail to experience joy, the feeling that God is happy to be with you. If you fail to comprehend and embrace the reality that joy is relational, you’re going to start making a list of things you ought to be grateful for and you’re going to start going through that list of thanks like Eeyore.
Oh, thanks God for being faithful. Check. Thanks God for being good. Check.
But Church, Psalm 100 is not inviting us into a ho-hum, rote, list of thanksgiving like a bunch of Eeyores. No. It says, enter in to God’s presence! Come into His courtroom. Leave your world for a minute. Come into the throne room of heaven where everything is as it should be! Come and spend some time with the Lord! Don’t just go through a list. Invite the Spirit of the Living God Himself to awaken your senses to His presence and to remind you Himself of what is good. Come and taste. Come and savor with your senses the presence of the good and living God!
And here’s what I mean by this. Here’s an example of what it looks like to practice praise and make a practice out of appreciation and gratitude using Psalm 100.
If I were going to practice some praise and appreciation using Psalm 100 here’s what I would do.
I’d get alone, by myself, probably at a picnic table down by the river with a good cup of coffee. Because I feel closest to God when I’m in nature and I really like coffee!
So I’d get out in nature alone with God and some coffee and then I’d sit there in the quiet, sipping my coffee. Savoring it. Feeling how it feels in my hands to hold a warm cup. Seeing the chocolately richness. Tasting the flavors on my tongue. I’d look out of the water and notice the mist floating up off of the river. I’d notice the beauty of the scene of God’s creation. The curves in the river. The slowness with which is winds through the earth. I’d listen, and take note of the birds calling back and forth to one another. The bugs and frogs chirping and croaking. The ripples of water lapping on the edges of the banks. A fish that jumps.
And after 2 min. Maybe 5 minutes of quieting my soul through noticing my surroundings and silencing my inner monologue of racing thoughts . I’d open to Psalm 100 and in my head I’d invite the Lord to show me what He wants me to see. And then I’d read, engaging my imagination as the Psalmist invites to.
Psalm 100 (NIV)
A psalm. For giving grateful praise. 1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
I’d pause and contemplate that, and I might journal what I hear the Lord speak to me through this verse and the thoughts it spurs up:
Levi what you heard here this morning, that was my earth shouting for joy before me! The birds, the water, the fish, even the cars on the road behind you. The creativity, my creativity on display. It brings glory to my name. It is a shout of joy, all the earth is shouting for my joy! Isn’t it beautiful, I hear the Lord ask in my thoughts.
Yes, I think it really is.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
And then I’d pause again and either think or journal:
Lord I’m here. I’m glad to be with you. Honestly, getting here this morning did not make me glad. I have a million things to do. You know them all! My house was crazy this morning, my kids, and my wife were upset with me for being lazy, for sleeping in too long and then for being impatient with them as I rushed around and out the door. I haven’t been glad to be with people or with you this morning, but I am glad to be here with you now!
Are you glad to be with me?
Church do you ever get alone with God and ask him a question like that? I’d invite you to, and then listen to the thoughts that run through your head. Not all thoughts will be God’s. But some might be. Some might be your own. Some might be from the Enemy. This is why were called to test and discern.
But make a practice of this. Get alone with God, ask a question and write down what you think or hear. Then check it with Scripture and other wiser more mature believers.
The Psalmist invites us to ask this question, God are you glad to be with me.
And then in my heart as I would keep reading I would hear from the Lord.
Son, know that I am the Lord who is God!
I am the Lord! Levi you know me by that name, Yahweh. The Lord of heavens armies. I am not a nameless God! I am the Lord who is God! You’ve seen who I am in my word! My character. My goodness. My patience. I am the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD who’s ways you cannot always comprehend because they are above you but the LORD who also did not stay far off. I came to you in Jesus! Levi I made my home within you by the presence of my Spirit.
You ask me am I glad to be with you. You know that I am. I AM. I AM the Lord who is God!
It is I who made you son. You are mine.
Think with me about sheep for a moment. Think with me about a shepherd. You’ve heard from my Son Jesus, I Am the good Shepherd. You know from Psalm 23 that I AM also Your Shepherd. I will invite you to lie down by green pastures for a rest and by my rod I may force you to lie down in those pastures if you fail to rest because all the lists you make for yourself. My burden, child, is light and easy. Take it up! Like a sheep. Listen for my voice. Follow my lead. I’ll lead you into peaceful places of provision and rest. I’ll protect you, you can trust me.
For I am good. My love and goodness endures forever.
In Christ you’ve seen and tasted of my goodness. And as He declared nothing in all creation can separate you from my love!
I know these times are crazy. The politics. The economics, but Levi when have I failed you? When has my word failed? It will not. I won’t ever leave you! My faithfulness has continued through your grandparents generation and your parents it will continue through yours and throughout your children’s after you as well!
You ask me, dear child am I glad to be with you, Yes. Yes I AM. Always and forever because of my Son Jesus I am glad to be with you! See my face shine upon you. May it bring your heart peace.
Here’s the deal Church, you can build joy into your life by practicing appreciation and praise just as I’ve showed you now.
This practice is not a rote resuscitation of a thankful list. It requires time, at least 5 minutes of times, where you don’t just think about something that makes you smile and then move on but that you think about something that makes you smile and then let yourself dwell in that feeling.
We can do it with Scripture as I have just modeled for you but it doesn’t just have to be scripture. We can think about anything we’re thankful to God for, whether it be a cup of warm coffee or a sunrise. We can think about something we’re looking forward to and dwell on the feelings of anticipation. We can think back on a memory where we felt joy, where we felt that someone else or God Himself was happy to be with us and we can dwell on that memory, reliving it in our imagination for at least 5 minutes.
This practice, of enter God’s courts with praise, appreciation and gratitude, If we will spend 5 minutes 2 to 3 times a day practicing praise, you will see that you live with more joy and feel more deeply connected to God. How do I know this, because Psalm 100:4 still says
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
To this end, I want to invite you to join me on the a joyful journey over the next 30 days.
I’ve put together a resource I’ve entitled a Joyful Journey by compiling 2 resources together one from Marcus Warners’ book called Understanding the wounded heart and another called the Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks.
I have electronic copies and hard copies for those who are tech averse.
I have become convinced that building joy into our lives by practicing appreciation and praise to God is the the number 1 thing that has the power to transform our lives through the gospel of Christ. Why? Because joy is all about connecting with the God of the Bible! If all you ever do is learn about God but don’t actually know Him the gospel will be powerless in your life. It is only when we begin to relate with him and know and experience that He is truly glad to be with us, only when we know that joy, will we begin to transform and grow up! Only then will we be able to live out our god-given potential at our age and stage of life!
And so, what do you say? Let us enter into the courts of Heaven with praise! Amen? Amen!
Pray