KNOW THAT THE LORD IS GOD
Psalm 100:1-5
Key Verse 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.”
INTRODUCTION
Happy Thanksgiving once again!! I believe we have many different reasons to be thankful. In this season of thanksgiving, while we enjoy so much food and spend beautiful moments with family, I want us to emphasize one common reason to be thankful. The common reason we may emphasize is God Almighty.
Today we will learn from Psalm 100, a psalm for giving grateful praise and thanks to God. In five short verses, the Psalmist encouraged us to be joyful, sing and shout with gladness, and in our rejoicing, we should know that; The Lord is God, He is our Creator and our Shepherd, He is good, loving and faithful to us through all generations. May God give us a spirit of thanks and praise to God through our reflection on this psalm. Amen.
PART 1: THE LORD IS GOD (1-3)
[Read – vs 1-2] “Shout for joy to The Lord, all the earth. Worship The Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.”
We have been in the spirit of thanksgiving since last Sunday when we studied Luke 17:11-19 – “Your faith has made you well.” In that message by God’s Servant – Mssn Peter Kim, we learned about 10 lepers, both Jews and Samaritan(s), who called out to Jesus in a loud voice; ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ And Jesus does not ignore our humble call for His help, so He healed the ten lepers. Then we learned that only one of them came back to give thanks to God. Lk. 17:15 – One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice! Thinking about the previous message, I imagined that people are eager to request, but reluctant to give thanks. It is possible that out of 100% who pray to God, maybe with a loud voice, or with a silent cry in the heart, only about 10% really come back to shout thanks and praises to God. May God help us to be among the grateful ones who acknowledge God’s blessings, salvation, healing and protection, and praise Him with a heart full of thanksgiving. Amen.
Now, let us read Psalm 100:1-2 joyfully and as loud as you can, as a shout of thanksgiving and praise to God.. (Read Ps. 100:1-2) “Shout for joy to The Lord, all the earth. Worship The Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.”
Have you ever been filled with so much joy that you want to shout, sing and dance to God? If you have not had this joyful expression before, try to practice this week, find a free location where you can shout, then think about positive things that has happened to you this year and/or in previous years, then shout some thanks to God. It feels good, like therapy. Our passage today, Psalm 100, immediately brightens our mood as we hear the words; ‘Shout for joy.. all the earth!!..’ Do you know the person with the loudest voice in this place? (guess who?..) For me, I think it is between Mssn Joel Park and Mssn Peter Lim. Praise God!
The Psalmist in this book may have experienced some great blessings from God, and so he makes this joyful shout to God. It could also be that he was encouraging some people who have come to the temple to worship, but were not expressing gladness and gratitude to God. So he says; ‘Worship the Lord with gladness! Come before Him with joyful songs!’
Both for worship and for regular lifestyle, it is important that God’s people be joyful and thankful. 1Thess. 5:16-18 says; “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Also, Philippians 4:4 says; “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” The world is full of reasons to complain and be grumpy, but that is not the will of God for us. With such Bible verses as these, God is inviting us into His great and boundless joy even in the midst of chaos and hard times. Our God really wants to remove human misery and make all mankind happy. Our expression of joy in all situations including during chaos, is an expression of our faith in God. But on what basis can we really do all these?
[Read vs. 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.”
Our joy comes because we know God. We know He is our God. We know He is our Creator. We also know that He is our Shepherd. Someone may ask; ‘How do you know God? Have you seen Him before? How do you say He is our Creator and Shepherd?’ But chill.. It is by simple faith in The Word of God that we acknowledge that The Lord is God, our Creator and our Shepherd. This faith is the work of God’s Holy Spirit Who helps us come into a personal relationship with God our Creator. Faith comes when we hear The Word of God and sincerely open our hearts in obedience, then The Holy Spirit helps us believe. And faith in God’s Word is the starting point for experiencing God’s joy and Mighty Presence in your life and family. Amen. This season of thanksgiving and beyond, let us learn to give thanks first for Who God is, and then we can thank Him for what He does for us. Most times we totally focus on the blessings and ignore the God behind the blessings.
So, our biggest thanksgiving is because The Lord is God. The Lord whom we serve as our master is God who is eternal and Almighty. The Lord is God who is able to save us from our sin and death. The Lord who possesses our lives is not like the Roman empires or world rulers who ruled with cruel military power, but God who rules over us with righteousness, love and mercy. We give thanks because we know God and we believe He made us. To know that The Lord is God means that we know God is greater than us and deserves our humble obedience. He made us, and we are His means that we don’t own ourselves and we need to function in ways that glorify God our Maker. The next statement says ‘..we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.’ This reminds us of the popular Psalm 23 – ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.’ Jesus is our Good Shepherd that loves us and gave His life to save us. We are like sheep that have gone astray in sin, but Jesus is the Good Shepherd that is always seeking the lost sheep to save them from satan’s destruction. Remember, to God, we are treasured possession, as Exo. 19:5-6 says; ‘Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”’ God is the Lord. He made us and He planned to have an everlasting relationship with us because He loves us, but sin separated us from God. Then God provided a way for us to restore our relationship with Him once again, that way is Jesus Christ – Who died to pay for our sins and by His Blood we are redeemed and restored to God. We become saved when we believe this gospel that Jesus died for our sins. We can show our gratitude to God by our sincere relationship with Him through Jesus Christ our Savior.
PART 2: THE LORD IS GOOD (4-5)
[vs. 4-5] “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For The Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”
From part one we learned to give thanks for Who God is – The Lord is God, our Maker and our Shepherd. Now we move onto the next phase, which is thanking God for His good nature towards us. Because of His goodness to us, God provides all things for us to enjoy. Each year, America celebrates thanksgiving by the fourth Thursday of November. The reason for this celebration was best traced to the surviving Pilgrims who traveled from England aboard a Mayflower ship and landed at Plymouth in Massachusetts, circa 1621. About 102 Pilgrims started this journey to the New World or what we know as America today, and only about 53 were alive by the time they landed. They experienced a harsh winter, diseases and starvation. With help from natives of the land, they planted some crops and after some months they were able to get a harvest of food, so they thanked God for providing and sustaining their lives. They experienced God’s goodness of providing food when they had no hope. And by God’s provision, they were able to settle and increase as American people.
As we celebrate thanksgiving, let us celebrate in the presence of God. Enter His gates with your thanksgiving, enter His courts with praise. This is God’s way for us to celebrate. Thanksgiving should not be celebrated in sinful ways that displease God. ‘His gates’ in this verse is the gates of the temple of God where the Israelites worship God. For us today, entering His gates with thanksgiving is what we do every time we fellowship together as a Church. We come with one mind to glorify God with thanksgiving, prayers, singing praises and hymns, sharing messages and testimonies. We also do our thanksgiving before God by giving to support the work of God. As God blesses us with reward for our labor, we can show practical gratitude to God by giving offerings to support God’s mission and sincere (full-time) servants of God.
Thank God for many Brothers and Sisters who shared their thanksgiving testimony during the week. In the testimonies, we could see the goodness of God to each one and us all, we could see the love of God and His faithfulness to us. The biggest evidence of God’s goodness and love is that He saved us from sin by giving us His only Son Jesus. John 3:16 says – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Whatever we go through, we know that God is good, He loves us and is faithful in keeping His promises to us. God cares for us in many ways that we know and in many more ways we don’t know, but if you don’t accept that God is good, loving and faithful, you may fall into the sin of complaining and depression. The Bible teaches that; ‘in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.’ (Rom. 8:28) God’s love endures forever, it is not like human love that is conditional and short-lived. And as we experience the great love of God, it makes us joyful and we sing with gladness that The Lord is Good!!
For my thanksgiving, first I am thankful to God because He saved me from a life of sin and selfishness. In my early years I lived with partial acknowledgement that The Lord is my God and that’s because I was born in a Christian home. I said it was a partial acknowledgement because I was not obeying God from my heart, I only did what would please my parents and the people around me. My personal relationship with God was nothing. But even then, God’s love and faithfulness remained available to me because I was able to receive that early push by my parents and at some point, around age 17, I was assigned a responsibility to serve in the children sunday school department of my home Church. During this period I had to read the Bible and prepare sunday school teachings for my peers. Taking responsibility was hard work, but thank God I remained diligent. One day while studying Isaiah chapter 53, The Holy Spirit opened my heart to accept the Word of God about Jesus Christ my Savior, the Lamb of God that suffered and died for my sins. He had no sin, but I was full of sin and He took the punishment for my sins. Isaiah 53:6-7 – We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
God helped me remain a student of the Bible by leading me to UBF Bible Teachers who served me with Bible study and sacrificial giving. Studying the Bible helped me overcome the bondage of sin, and the giving/sharing spirit in UBF delivered me from selfishness. I could understand from the example of my Shepherds that we live to worship God and serve others. With this right mentality, I became invested in serving campus students as a Bible Teacher. I spent 10 years in UBF Lagos, Nigeria, and joined NJUBF last year (August 2022).
Another thanksgiving I have is about Mssn Paul and Sarah Chung, whose vision for establishing 12 godly marriages/housechurches resulted in my wedding on November 12, 2022 as the 12th housechurch they prayed for. God bless Mssn Paul as he rests from his hard work for God’s mission. I thank God for my wife Shps. Angela – God is using her as a true help mate, she sees my weaknesses, she supports/encourages me, and outside our door I become like a superstar. Together we are grateful to all members of NJUBF who worked together and prayed earnestly for the success of my journey to America and our wedding. I could experience the everlasting love of God through this love of the Church family. I thank God again that I am receiving a lot of responsibilities here in NJUBF by participating as a messenger, singing with the praise team, and participating in young leaders group activities. My mindset is always; Philippians 4:13 – ‘I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength..’ Message preparation is always challenging to me, but I know it is a good responsibility that will shape my life much more into the image of Christ, it is also an opportunity for me to practically sacrifice my time and effort to serve Brothers and Sisters. I am not the only one facing this – I am thankful to all the messengers, mothers of prayer and the secret servants of God that work hard for God’s mission of saving campus students through Bible study. Thank God that we are able to work together to serve God’s mission in America. I thank God for the opportunity to study the Bible with Mssn Peter and Mssn Joel, it has been an extra opportunity to grow and encourage each other. I thank God for my Bible student Nathan and all others that I pray for. Finally, thank God for His Divine provision in many ways for my school study. I shout for joy to The Lord my God! HALLELUJAH!! I praise God for His faithfulness to me (to us) continues through generations.
…Brothers and Sisters, let us have this understanding that The Lord is our God Who made us, loves us and cares for us as a Good Shepherd. He wants to have a relationship with us as His treasured possession, only then will our thanksgiving be loud enough and pleasant to His ears.
Key Verse: Psalm 100:3 – “Know that The LORD is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.” PRAYER (Dear God our Maker and Shepherd, we thank You. We learned that Your will is for us to be joyful. Help us rejoice knowing You are our God Who saved us from sin and provides for us, and may we come to you with hearts of thanksgiving always, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.)