Psalms 100:1

The Bible says in Psalm 100:1-2, “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.[2] Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.” The three main words of these two verses are joyful, gladness, and singing. I think it means that the Lord likes it when we are happy if our happiness is caused by thoughts of Him and who He is and what He has done for us. One of the things that this means is that God does want us to be happy. Notice that it says “all ye lands.” It is God’s will that everyone should have this happiness. Of course, that goes along with God’s will of everyone being saved through faith in Christ. Once we are in heaven, we will finally have the eternal happiness.

The Bible says in Psalm 100:3, “Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Know that “the LORD he is God.” That means that the Lord has all power, and that He will use His power for our benefit. One of the things that He used His power for was to create each of us and to give us life. That means that we belong to Him. We are not our own. We were born to serve the Lord. “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” The Bible often compares people to sheep. Sheep need a Shepherd. There are wolves and many other dangers. There is the danger of going the wrong way and falling off a cliff. Thankfully, if you turn to the Lord Jesus, you can be saved from those dangers and from the greatest danger of all: sin. He can forgive your sins.

The Bible says in Psalm 100:4, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” The four key words of this verse are “thanksgiving,” “praise,” “thankful,” and “bless.” Of course, the emphasis is on being thankful to God. Life can be difficult. Life has its sorrows and disappointments for everyone. Do not allow such things to take away from you a thankful heart. We will need to look at what we do have instead of what we do not have. We need to look at what God has given to us and not at what has been taken away. We can even learn to be thankful for the bad things. After all, the powerful God allowed them for a reason. Everyone has a million reasons or more to be thankful. If you know Jesus as Savior, you can always be thankful that He loves you, that He died for you, and that you have a place reserved for you in heaven.

The Bible says in Psalm 100:5, “For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.” This verse gives three reasons to be thankful to God. The first reason is because He is “good.” Therefore, we know that everything that God does and everything that He allows, He does so for a reason, a good reason. That is why we have the promise of Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” People are not good. They are sinful. If you want to have a thankful heart, look at the Lord and avoid looking at people. Look at the world and all that is in it with this in mind: God is everywhere and thus there is goodness everywhere.

The second reason to be thankful to God according to verse five is because “his mercy is everlasting.” Since we are not good, we certainly need His mercy. We will need His mercy as long as we are on this earth. Thankfully, His mercy is everlasting. No matter where you go in life, and no matter what you do, God’s mercy will always be available for you. You can always say, “Please forgive my sins.” And Jesus will always say, “I forgive you. Go and sin no more.” If you fail a thousand times, each time the Lord will forgive you. If you fail a thousand times in a day, each time the Lord will forgive you. Because we are so very sinful, we can be thankful to God that “his mercy is everlasting.”

A third thing for which to be thankful to God according to Psalm 100:5 is the fact that “his truth endureth to all generations.” This is a very important teaching about the Bible itself. God has given His truth in written form, and God is faithful. Every word that God gave was true when He gave it, and it is still true because God is faithful. There are no errors in the Bible. The Bible has not been changed by man. God gave the scriptures and God preserved the scriptures because God is faithful. It certainly makes sense that He would do that. First of all, if we only have word of mouth to hear the truth, it would certainly be lost or corrupted over time. You would not know who to believe either. But with a written word, anyone can go to the written word and see for himself or herself what is true. But it would do no good for God to give a written word unless He also preserved it over the centuries. Until there was a printing press invented, scribes made copies of manuscripts manually. This means that God used the scribes just as much as He used the original writers like Moses and the Apostle Paul and the others. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Jesus also said in Matthew 5:18, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

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