Sermon Psalm 100 Jubilation

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

New Covenant Presbyterian Church

Sermon Psalm 100 Jubilation

June 18, 2017

Today is Father’s Day.   We remember our Heavenly Father who loves us and is steadfastly faithful.  We also remember our fathers who loved us and cared for us the best they could using our Heavenly Father as a role model.  Sadly, one of the greatest TV Dads, Bill Cosby, is on trial accused of sexual assault.  This is because the world we live in still stained by sin.   But as the Kingdom of God grows and Jesus’ spirit fills the hearts of more and more people our hope is that our world will get better.

This past week our nation experienced an act of political violence.  A man, disturbed by the results of last year’s election shot a congressional leader while we was practicing for a charity baseball game.  A congressman and members of the Capitol Police were wounded.  The gunman was killed.   Since this event occurred last Wednesday,  much effort has been spent trying to figure out why this violence happened and how we can stop it from happening again.   

As Christians we know why this occurred.  Sin often rears its ugly head.  There is nothing surprising about violence.  The world has seen just too much violence for us to be surprised.  And since we know that sin is the real culprit we know that only God can do something about it.   And God has a plan.   Jesus came into the world to release us from slavery to sin.   And we are to bring all the world into praise and worship of our creator.  We will get to this, but first let’s pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

When I was a kid, growing up in Presbyterian Sunday school classes, I had to memorize some things.  Of course I memorized the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed.  I memorized the 23rd Psalm which is my favorite.  And I memorized the 100th Psalm.

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.

This Psalm urges us to praise God.   And God wants not just us, but everyone to praise him.  Even those who don’t know who God is.  It is our job to bring to our God those who have yet to know him.  And when we do they too will sing God’s praise.   When people find out how much we are blessed by God they can’t help but shout praises at the top of their lungs.  As we spread the good news that God loves us in Jesus Christ, wickedness will subside and people will experience great joy.

Today the earth is filled with both the jubilance of the good and the discontentedness of the wicked.  Left unchecked a life filled discontentedness will lead to violence and death.   But when a person finds joy in God the probability of violence is reduced.   So, how can we help someone change from being discontented and angry into someone who praises God will a full voice?  According to the psalmist this change takes place in worship.   God commands us to worship him and promises us gladness as a result.

So one thing we could do, and this would really help people, is to invite them to worship God.  Invite people to leave behind their discontented lives for an hour or so on Sunday mornings and come to a place where they will worship God and experience great gladness.  And filled with gladness they too will begin singing, loudly, their praises to their creator God.

Ordinary people live lives of discontentment.  They may experience some temporary happiness from time to time.  They are glad the day they get married, or when a child is born, or when the boss gives them a promotion.  But this gladness quickly fades as they go back to their dreary lives.  But when one worships the living God they experience a joy that never fades.  So you would be doing people and our community and nation a great service, just by inviting people to experience worship right here at New Covenant Church.

Why does worship bring us such joy?  We become jubilant in worship because in worship we come into contact with the God who created us.  Think about times when you have been extremely happy.  Maybe it was with your wife as you gazed at a sunrise over the ocean.  Maybe it was when you hiked the Appalachian Trail.  Maybe it was when you visited family for the first time in a long time.  Why did all these things bring you such joy?  It was because God created them all.  Everything we admire and gives us pleasure comes from God.  We praise the God who created the world we live in, and this causes us to shout for joy.

We can never be jubilant if we are discontent.   And the source of our discontentment is a feeling that we are vulnerable.  We have fears of losing a job, or losing a spouse or losing our health.  When we are fearful it is hard to sing praises to God.   But as we worship we begin to believe that our God loves us and cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep.  With God caring for us, what could we possibly fear?   When we experience God’s love and faithfulness our fears melt away and joy fills our hearts.  

As we realize that God faithfully cares for us, we begin to experience gratitude growing inside of us.  And so we come to worship with thanksgiving in our hearts.   We respond to God’s faithfulness and love with worship and praise and giving and prayer and service in God’s kingdom.  Life couldn’t be any better than this.

Why does worship affect us so? Why does it make us joyful and cause us respond is so many beneficial ways?  The answer is simple.  We are jubilant when we worship God for the simple reason that God is good.  That’s it.  We love to praise our good God.  Our good God is worthy of praise.  The only answer to wickedness in the world is a good God who will defeat it.

And so the onlyway for us to deal with evil in our world is to bring more and more people to experience for themselves a good God.  You do this by inviting people to worship this God with shouts of praises.  Through this people come to know this good God who created them and loves them.   Experiencing this God in worship makes them glad and joy replaces discontentment in their hearts.

James Hodgkinson allegedly shot Representative Steve Scalise last Wednesday.  For months he had been been sharing his discontentment on social media and with letters to the editor.  As his anger grew he began living in a van in Northern Virginia.  In his rage he practiced shooting into some trees in Beltsville MD.  People who knew him said he was angry all the time.  He made numerous angry phone calls to his congressional representative.  Friends say that he was passionate in his beliefs, but always seemed to be in control.  But, he recently lost his business and had to sell a motorcycle to pay his bills.  And then he turned to violence.

What if someone, a Christian, had invited Hodgkinson to worship?   What if he sang praises to his creator God and found great joy in worship?  What if he had experienced great joy knowing that God loved him and cared for him?  What if the love of a good God replaced the discontentment in his heart?  If someone had invited him to church maybe his life could have been saved.

This is why evangelism is so important.  If we don’t talk to people about Jesus and invite them to church they will go on living lives of discontentment.  And in their misery they may act out violently.  But if we invite them to worship with us and experience the joy we have maybe, just maybe, their lives will turn around.

So I urge you to invite people to worship, to sing and shout for joy, to God who made us.  Turn discontentment to gladness through worship.  Rest secure that God loves you and cares for you.   Be thankful for all the blessing you have received.  Be jubilant because the God you worship is good.  His goodness will replace the discontentment in your heart.   And God will remain faithful to you forever and ever.

On this Father’s Day we remember our heavenly father.  This father loves us so much.  He wants us to experience joy in our lives.  And so he has blessed us with worship where we can shout our praises to God.  Through worship God removes our discontentment and fills our hearts with gladness.  And our God is so faithful he will keep gladness in our hearts forever.  We are so thankful for what God has done for us, that now we can’t wait to proclaim this good news to everyone we meet.  Let’s pray.

“God of all goodness and mercy, help us to leave behind all self-imposed restraints and to joyfully and exuberantly celebrate the worship of the Lord, who is our God!  Just as God continues to create our world with brilliant colours and joy-filled sounds— so may our acts of worship share all the extravagance of God’s love and creative powers! May our singing and praying be filled with conviction about who God is, and what God is for each of us – individually and collectively – and may our joy in the Lord strengthen us as we go out into God’s world to actively be God’s own people. Amen.”