Well, good morning. If you're new, let me just remind you, my name is Joel Busby and I'm the newest addition to the pastoral team here, and I'm honored to be here. This morning, we're gonna continue our sermon series in the Psalms. We've been looking at the Psalms this summer, and kind of the conviction that we're they're operating with this summer is that the Psalms really speak to all parts of the human experience. As my good friend Jeff Hynas said recently, all the Psalms teach us that the entirety of our lives have to do with God.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what we're getting after, different parts of the human experience. I want to just let you guys know that anytime before I preach, I tend to have bad dreams the night before. So I wake up every hour on the hour with some kind of bad dream. And my bad dream most recently was that I stood up here to ask you to turn to Psalm 100, and I looked down and it wasn't there. And I'm sitting up here trying to find it and I'm trying to convince you, I promise it was there.
Speaker 1:Psalm 100 is there. So would you guys turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 100? Psalm 100. And here's what the text reads. Psalm 100.
Speaker 1:Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us, and we are his.
Speaker 1:We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the lord is good.
Speaker 1:His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. Would you pray with me? Lord, we do pray that now in this moment, we ask of you what we so often do, and that's that you would, by the power of your spirit, or take these words here in this passage. Would you enliven them? Lord, would you shed light upon them?
Speaker 1:Lord, would you be our teacher? Lord, would you take the words that I've prepared? Would you use them to be your shaping words in our hearts and in our lives this morning, we pray? We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our lord. Amen.
Speaker 1:So to begin, this morning's sermon, I wanna share with you something that I'm firmly convinced of. It's actually a very deep conviction of mine. Here it is. All the great longings of the human heart, all the great questions regarding the meaning of life, almost everything that we know and need to know as it pertains to the wonder intensity of the human experience, all of those things are addressed, yes, in the Psalms, but also in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. I'm only partially kidding.
Speaker 1:I really love these films and you don't even have to be a sports guy to love them. And I remember watching one of the most profound ESPN 30 for thirties, it aired December of 2011, immediately after the Heisman Trophy was handed to Robert Griffin the third of Baylor, and this this trailer for a documentary begins to come on. And the name of the documentary is The Marinovich Project. K. It was a film that told the story of the rise and fall of Todd Marinovich.
Speaker 1:Let me explain. Todd Marinovich was a standout high school quarterback prospect in the late eighties in Southern California. He was highly recruited, highly touted. He he faced the pressure of of all that recruitment kind of before his time, before it became so commonplace. Now, he would go on to play at USC at the University of South Southern California, and he would be the 1st freshman quarterback to start at USC for the mighty Trojans in over 50 years.
Speaker 1:He was that good. Later, however, briefly, he would go on to play in NFL in the early nineties. But see, none of that's that interesting. Here's the interesting part. As the title suggests, the interesting part was the Todd Marinovich project.
Speaker 1:See, Todd's dad Marv, from the time he was born, had placed this inescapable identity upon him. He was going to be a quarterback. He was gonna be the perfect quarterback, an all time great, maybe even the greatest quarterback. And his dad made him a project. I mean, literally, it was his dad's obsession to create the perfect environment for the cultivation of this thing called a perfect quarterback.
Speaker 1:No joke. His dad began training him with exercises when he was just weeks old. He would go into his crib as as the little baby slept, and he'd pull his hamstrings to stretch them, to elongate them, to hopefully make him faster and stronger later. He trained his child on purpose to try to make him be ambidextrous, to be able to throw from either arm accurately in case the defensive end grabbed him here, he could throw or here, here. That's what he did.
Speaker 1:He made him crawl when he learned to crawl over 300 yards at a time on a football field. He would invent weight lifting and training exercises for him as a toddler, and this is all organic foods before it was cool. For teething toys, his dad would give him, tossed into his crib, a frozen beef liver or beef kidney. They called him the robo quarterback, the perfect test tube quarterback. Todd's identity, in other words, was determined by his father from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:And as you might expect, this didn't go well. As one journalist in the documentary commented, if you create a jailhouse of achievement around your son, you are asking for problems. Todd turns to drugs and alcohol to escape this pressure, to create what he would call a buffer. He would say to his friends, but but I don't wanna be Todd Marinovich. Once he he he this is maybe the most particularly poignant part of the film.
Speaker 1:He finally makes into the NFL. He finally is able to start. He has a wonderful game. And in the tunnel after the game, for the first time in his life, his dad grabbed him and told him, I'm proud of you. And at that moment, Todd said he knew he was done with football.
Speaker 1:He had accomplished everything football was ever about for him. He'd achieved his father's dreams, and he realized that he had made his father proud. Now later, drugs and alcohol again become his escape, but he basically disappears off the scene from there. And as I watched this film, I couldn't help but think about my work as a pastor because it's a film about identity. It's a film about what sorts of things do we build our lives upon.
Speaker 1:Now I've been a pastor in some shape or form for for 11 years. And this is, I'm telling you, one of the most pressing pastoral issues that I've seen. This constant pressure to build who we are, our sense of worth on something else. Now, you and I may not have been bred to be the ideal NFL quarterback. K?
Speaker 1:I gave up my dream to play in the NBA last year. But in many ways, we all live under this pressure of questions about our identity, don't we? Who am I? What gives me worth? What gives me value?
Speaker 1:What gives my life meaning? These are some of the greatest, most profound questions of the human heart. Almost every book you've ever read, almost every movie that's ever touched you are dealing with those kinds of questions. Now, you and I live in a culture where supposedly the sky's the limit and we can be anything we want to be. And we're told that we're supposed to define ourselves and make ourselves and determine ourselves.
Speaker 1:And we answer these who am I questions in a 1,000 different ways, don't we? Career, money, connections, achievement, appearances, our parenting, our persona, you know, that projection of ourselves we put out there. You can fill in the blank in your own life. We're all on this quest. None of us are immune, especially not your preacher here.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm a pastor, but let me just be vulnerable here and here and tell you how tricky this can be. So here's how it works as a pastor. Pastors are caught in a trap of needing you guys to understand that your identity is firmly rooted in Christ so that I could feel good about myself. We're all in this project together. Now what would this have to do with the Psalms in Psalm 100?
Speaker 1:I'm glad you asked. As Jeff and I, laid out the themes that we wanted to address, just this pastoral burden for these questions of identity were central. And what I wanna tell you this morning is that Psalm 100, which is one of my favorite Psalms, by the way, it speaks into this swirl of questions and longings and struggles. Now Psalm 100, you heard me read it, is a Psalm about worship. But in the Bible, worship and identity are intimately connected to one another.
Speaker 1:When God's people remembered who they were, remembered the things that God had done for them, when they remembered whose they were, this paved the way to right worship. And when they forgot all of these identity markers, things completely fell apart. And so what Psalm 100 teaches us that if we know Him, these questions, who am I, what gives my life meaning and worth, that these questions, according to Psalm 100, are settled. Our identities are secure. You and me, we can rest.
Speaker 1:So let's take a look at this text here. Look look at Psalm 100 with me. Psalm 100 classically understood is a Thanksgiving hymn. The inscription in your Bible actually says, a Psalm for giving thanks. It's a song that celebrates and gives thanks, actually, for the kingship of the Lord.
Speaker 1:Now, in Psalms 93 to 100 is an entire section of the Psalms that fixate on this idea of God's kingship. It's a theme throughout Psalm 93 to 100. In a season of great political turmoil, I think it's really good to know that the world has a true and rightful king. The Lord's not a president. This is important.
Speaker 1:He's a king. And this psalm serves as a call to worship for God's people. Scholars tell us that it was probably used at national festivals, as a song or maybe a chant as God's people entered into the temple precincts for worship. And this is where we get the imagery of coming into his presence, of entering his gates in his courts. It's a Psalm that's tailor made for a worship gathering like this one.
Speaker 1:I mean, to put it in our sort of circles, the psalm is basically saying when you pull in the parking lot, pull in the parking lot with thanksgiving in your heart, with gladness, come in here ready to sing. In other words, this call to worship is actually very concrete for God's people. It's very specific. The Lord here causes people to action. Did you hear the words here?
Speaker 1:It's packed with imperatives. It's an active vision of worship. It's not abstract in any way. I'm listening to the imperatives here. Make a joyful noise, come into his presence, serve him with gladness, enter his gates, give thanks to him, bless him.
Speaker 1:It's 7 imperatives. So it's it's a complete picture of total engagement in worship. In other words, it's it's it's it's in no way just sort of in the clouds. Just just worship god. No.
Speaker 1:It's it's worship god in a very particular way. Look at verse
Connor Coskery:1. Make a joyful noise. To make
Speaker 1:a joyful noise refers to the shout or chant or cheer that the nation would give Israel's king. And all the earth, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. All the earth is called into this worship. Now this is a primary theme throughout the Psalms, that the entirety of the world belongs to God. One scholar wrote that this Psalm claims the world for Yahweh.
Speaker 1:Make a joyful noise, all peoples everywhere. Now at the moment, not all peoples everywhere recognize the Lord is king. But the scriptures tell us that one day they will, that worshipers one day will be gathered from every tongue and tribe and nation. By the way, this is why church like Redeemer would pursue the work of global mission, to participate in this process of all peoples everywhere, worshiping God as king. This is why we would send someone like the Martins, someone that quite frankly we can't afford to lose.
Speaker 1:We would send our best people to participate in this work of mission. And the reason is is because all the world belongs to our Lord and our King. And look at verse 2, Serve the lord with gladness. The Bible's logic when it comes to serving the lord is not one of reluctance. Hey, guys.
Speaker 1:I think we have to serve the lord. No. The Bible's logic when it comes to service is this is the Lord. Worship Him and serve Him from a place of joy. Be glad about it, not because you have to, but because you get to.
Speaker 1:So this gladness, it leads to singing, come into his presence with singing. It leads to God's people coming into a place like this, bursting with joy, ready to sing. Y'all, I'm new around here and I'll just say we do a good job of this as a church. I heard a pastor say one time that show me a congregation that loves the gospel and loves each other, and I will show you a congregation that loves to sing. Look at verse 4.
Speaker 1:The action continues. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Enter his gates with thanksgiving. You and I walk around every single day in the gifts of God. Grace and God's grace is everywhere.
Speaker 1:Now, it can be hard to see, but we do. We walk around in the gifts of God. Gratitude is the most basic Christian posture to the world. And it's repeated again later in verse 4, give thanks to him. So the call here is obvious.
Speaker 1:And like we saw a few weeks ago in Psalm 150, it's obvious, it's action oriented, it's a lively, specific, passionate call to worship. Worship, praise, sing, thank, bless, come, enter. That's the call. But it all hinges on what said in verse 3. Now this is so often the case in the Psalms.
Speaker 1:A Psalm, like a song or a poem, will sometimes build to a climactic moment. It comes to a height, a peak, and then it maybe descends from there. And that's what's happening in this psalm in Psalm 100. Verse 3 is is the guts of the Psalm, it's the passion of the passage. I mean, it's the bleeding heart of the Psalm.
Speaker 1:And we and we saw a similar idea a few weeks ago in Psalm 150, but with further nuance here. And and it begs some questions, why? Why should we do all this worshiping and praise him? Praising of him? Why should we come before him?
Speaker 1:Why should we bless his name? And verse 3 is intended to answer all those kinds of questions. Look at verse 3. Know that the lord, he is God. The Lord.
Speaker 1:The God we worship is not a generic deity. He is the Lord. K. This is his name, his personal covenantal attached to his people covenant name. The Lord.
Speaker 1:The Lord, he is God. Okay. Okay. So so what has this Lord done for you, Israel? And what follows in these phrases, I think, has everything to do with those questions of our identity, everything to do with how we understand ourselves.
Speaker 1:These next phrases that follow, I think, present 4 identity markers for us to hold on to. Here's the first one from verse 3. Look at this phrase. It is he who made us. Israel, what's so special about this, Lord?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, he made you. The Psalms in the entire Old Testament, quite frankly, will point back to creation, to creation theology, to the fact that the lord made everything, that he spoke it into existence by the words of his mouth, that he got his hands dirty in the dust of the ground, and handcrafted and hand fashioned human beings. The Bible's gonna constantly point to the fact that God did this as exhibit a for why the Lord is who he says he is and can do absolutely everything he's ever promised to do because he made everything. See, the people of Israel were proud of their Lord for this. And the bible's gonna celebrate the creator God at every turn.
Speaker 1:The tone and tenor of the old testament is that God's people are looking around to the other nations and they're saying, but you've got these kind of, like, weaksauce little g God deities, but our God, the Lord, made the things that you worship. Is there a way of saying, our God's better than your God, and he's God alone? Now this is absolutely what makes idolatry in the old testament so unspeakably tragic and so breathtakingly misguided and maddening because God's people began to exchange him, the God who made all things and started worshiping the gifts that God gave, the things that God made. In the bible, the prophets especially are gonna say, what are you doing? Don't make that trade.
Speaker 1:1st identity marker, we are made. We're made things. Ours is a creaturely existence. We're made. And here's a second identity marker, and it's kind of follows in this next phrase.
Speaker 1:It is he who made us, and we are his. He owns you. If you're a Christian today, he owns you in the best possible way. See, the Bible say that God did not just make all of us individually, but then he began to fashion us into a people. Old Testament will say, once you were not a people, but now you are a people.
Speaker 1:God said, I rescued you. And I didn't just make you a people as if that were not enough. When I rescued you, I made you my people. You, I made you my people. I bought you.
Speaker 1:So therefore, I own you. You are mine. That's what's being gotten at here, it is He who made us and we are His. Another way that this can be rendered, it is He who made us and we didn't make ourselves. See, in their better moments, the people of Israel knew that their entire existence was wholly dependent upon the Lord, that they were altogether a contingent people depending upon the Lord for everything.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, the idea that God made us and that he owns us, of course, these truths are completely and utterly counter cultural. Aren't they? We are constantly from all sides being baited into this lie that we can make ourselves, that we are these supposed unbound, unfettered things that own ourselves. Independence, self sufficiency, personal autonomy are the things that our culture prizes almost above everything else. This isn't going well, by the way, in our world today.
Speaker 1:Psalm 100 and the Psalms more broadly, the Old Testament, and more generally, the Bible as a whole finds that kind of thinking that we own ourselves, that we can make ourselves, that we are self sufficient. It finds that kind of thinking funny, and foolish and heartbreaking. See, thinking that way was the lie that was the undoing of God's people both then and now. It was the original lie of the garden, that we could do our own thing and somehow arrive at the good life. It's not true.
Speaker 1:We're made. We're owned. Here's a third identity marker. We're known. We are known.
Speaker 1:It is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. You're made, you're owned, and then this is a precious truth, you're you're known. You're made, you're owned, and you're known. Now this is tender language.
Speaker 1:We are his. We belong to him. In a kind and gracious way, he knows us. In the Psalm, shepherding language and sheep language is an image of God's tender and intimate knowledge of all our needs. His knowledge of our needs that we don't even know that we have, that we might not even be able to know.
Speaker 1:He knows even those needs. Sheep are not known to be particularly self aware creatures, but that's okay. Because in our case, we are known intimately by the God of all things. And this sheep and shepherding language implies God's tender care for us, his willingness to be present with us, to guide us, to lead us, to watch us, to protect us in careful and tender ways. The pressure's off, in other words.
Speaker 1:We are known and guided and cared for and shepherded by the God of all things. John Calvin was famous for saying that if we just had a creator God, a grand, mighty, big, powerful God, that would be a no comfort to us whatsoever. But the fact that the big, grand, mighty, powerful creator God decides to love and know you. See, that's at the heart of the gospel. So we're made, we're owned, we're known.
Speaker 1:And here's a 4th identity mark identity marker. And it's the sum total of all these things. Psalm 100 teaches us that God loves his people. We're made, we're owned, we're known, and we're loved. Look at verse 5.
Speaker 1:For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. It may have been a long time since someone looked you in the eyes and told you that the God of all things, the lord God who lit the stars, that lord loves you. But look me in the eyes. God loves you.
Speaker 1:And this idea of his steadfast love see, it's a different kind of love. The idea in the old testament of God's steadfast love, your bibles will sometimes translate it as his loving kindness. Okay. His steadfast love, it's his covenantal faithful love. The picture of God's faithful love in the scriptures is his promise to love his people and to keep loving his people, and to keep loving his people because he's promised he'll love his people, and to continue to love them, and to continue to love them, and to continue to love them, faithful over and over and over and over and over again because he's promised to love them in that sort of way.
Speaker 1:Now isn't that a different definition of love than the one we operate with? And see, it's it's in the bible, it's never because it's never because God's people were particularly worthy of this kind of love, because they were the biggest, the most powerful, the smart smartest, or the most faithful. It didn't have any kind of contingency on what they could do for him. Their ability to achieve or to find their way or to be particularly this and that and the other, that is not what it's based upon. He loves them just because they're his.
Speaker 1:He loves you just because we're his. See, it's this known and this loved combination together that's so powerful. Think about that for a second. Almost everyone in our lives who love us, we fear that if they really knew us, then they wouldn't actually love us. Or we think to ourselves, well, they just love us.
Speaker 1:Or they or they they they know us, so therefore, they're not actually going to love us. It's this known and loved at the same time combination that's so powerful. A friend of mine who's a pastor said that if you accidentally lock your dog or your wife in the trunk of your car, only one of them is gonna be happy to see you. Known and loved at the same time. My little boy, Henry, is 4 years old.
Speaker 1:We've started to do a catechism with him at night, and the catechism goes like this. Henry, who made you? Catechism has a question answer format for those of you guys who don't know. The question is, Henry, who made you? The answer, God.
Speaker 1:What else did God make? All things. Henry, why did God make you in all things? For his own glory. Well, how do you live for his glory?
Speaker 1:By loving him and doing what he commands. Well, Henry, why should you love Him and do what He commands? And the answer is so Psalm 100. Because he made me and takes care of me. Yes.
Speaker 1:Make a joyful noise. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Enter into his courts. Give him thanks.
Speaker 1:Bless His name, yes, do all those things. But you can only do all these things, you can only live this life of worship, You can only rightly sustain all of this week after week after week if you understand who you are, if you understand whose you are. And you are made by God. You are owned by God. You are known by God.
Speaker 1:You are loved by God. You don't get your sense of worth and value and meaning from some sort of lesser pursuit or thing. Now apply all this just for a second to your notions of success and failure. Let's just say hypothetically, hypothetically speaking, let's say you go out and and let's say your life, just doesn't pan out the way that you've wanted. You fail in some things, you don't meet success and achievement and all the things, at the end of the day, you'll be a person made by God, known by God, owned by God, loved by God.
Speaker 1:You won't be diminishing that in any way. Let's say, hypothetically, you go out from here and you knock it out of the park. You crush it in your parenting and in your whatever it is you do. You meet achievement status or or whatever. At the end of the day, you will be a person made by God, owned by God, known by God, loved by God.
Speaker 1:You're not improving upon it in any way. So take a deep breath this morning. These identity questions are settled, and they are secure. They are the most certain thing in all the world. Truths that you could actually build your entire life upon.
Speaker 1:And just like the the worship words aren't abstract, aren't hypothetical, these these words of God knowing us and owning us and loving us, these things aren't abstract either. See, when you read the Psalms, something that stands out when you read the Psalms, and especially when you read the way in which the Psalms have been read throughout our Christian tradition. By the way, as you get to know me, how the Bible has been interpreted through the centuries is a particular hobby horse of mine. And when you read the Psalms, and particularly the way the Psalms have been read in Christian worship throughout the centuries, it's so clear how they saw connections between the promises and the imagery of any particular Psalm and the person and work of Jesus. They just naturally and effortlessly would see how these texts would point the way to Christ.
Speaker 1:And these truths of being made by him and known by him and owned by him and loved by him, These truths are made complete in Jesus. See, in Jesus, we're told we we have access to God, our father. And because we know Jesus, we are known by this father. In Jesus, the work of God's spirit, because of the work of Jesus, we're united to Christ. In Christ, we can know God, be known by him.
Speaker 1:In Jesus, we have this good shepherd we read about earlier who calls our names, who knows us, who loves us, and guides us. In Jesus, all these promises of God's steadfast covenantal love, his never failing, unrelenting love, all those promises are transformed in what Jesus calls a new covenant, by His atoning work for us on the cross. In other words, Psalm 100 is to us, It's for us. It's our Psalm this morning because of the work of Jesus on our behalf. You're made.
Speaker 1:You're known. You're owned. You're loved. It's all our hope. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Speaker 1:Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He's God. It is He who made us, and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Speaker 1:Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. Lord, I do thank you that in you, we have this sure and certain steadfast anchor. Lord, that all the worth and all the value and all the significance and all the meaning and all the love and all the acceptance, lord, that we whatever long for, we already have in you. And, god, that's obviously easier to talk about from a pulpit than to live in the daily grind of our life. Lord, so we do pray that you'd allow these truths to shape us so deeply that it actually changes us.
Speaker 1:Thank you that we are yours. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our lord. Amen.