The Promise of Joy - Psalm 100

Merry Christmas church. It is good to see you here this morning. Have you ever had a moment in life? I'm sure you have way. You got some news, and it was just, it was good news, and immediately you felt better. Maybe it was really good news and how good you felt about it, kind of expressed itself outwardly. Maybe you got that job you had been hoping you were going to get. And when you heard the news, that it was yours. Outwardly, you expressed that happiness and that joy. Maybe it was someone saying, hey, we're going to have a kid and you just learned about. I just heard from one of our church members out in the lobby that their grandkids are going to have a kid and they were excited about this and sharing that. And you just have this outward expression of happiness, of joy. Your circumstances have changed. But we also know our circumstances can change in ways that bring us sorrow on a lighthearted note. Most of you probably don't know this. I'm an Alabama Crimson Tide fan. You probably didn't know that, so we like watching those football games. And Dalton Leslie, who's planting our campus in March, is an Oklahoma sooners fan. And so they played on Friday night. And so we had texted each other before the game. Hey, you watch the game. I watching the game. Lets watch the game then. Now, Oklahoma beat us earlier in the year and Dalton had rubbed it in, kind of unchristian like, unfriendly like. He seemed to have a lot of joy, and I seem to not. And so we were texting each other. And Alabama gets down pretty bad, so I just texted, hey, enjoy playing in the playoffs. This was fun. And then we kind of come back and his joy turns to kind of sorrow and my sorrow and a joy. And we spent the rest of the game texting. And we, this morning, we said, let's look through our text chain and see what happened. We can relive all of our swings of circumstances, right, up and down. That's lighthearted. Sports are fun like that. You can go, man, I'm depressed because they're losing. I'm jubilant because they're winning. Kansas City's feeling that a little bit. But we know in life. like circumstances of life can go from joy and happiness to sorrow pretty quickly, just this week. I've had the joy of my brother coming into town and getting to see him. I sat at the bedside of one of our church members with her dad as he passed away. We had a love your neighbor Christmas party, where a lot of our members helped with adoptive parents and foster parents who came here, had a party, they got gifts for their kids, just a ton of joy. Yesterday we had a funeral here. It's just every day up and down. Circumstances can affect our joy can impact kind of our happiness. And you've probably heard it said before, especially in Christian circles, the difference. There is a difference between joy and happiness. Like happiness is circumstantial and joy is kind of rooted in God. And I think what we're trying to say is correct there, but what we miss is that God is, in fact, one of our circumstances. And one of the things we possess. So we said, like, I mean, if I had the things I wanted, if I was in the house I wanted to live in, I had this car that I wanted, if my car wasn't broken, then, I would have joy, I would have things, that would bring me happiness and joy. And yet we have God. As I was reading our Christmas devotional. Hopefully you've been reading through the Christmas devotional this year of our members' writing. I intentionally didn't read the devotionals until the day off. So we were like, Matt and I both went, don't read them. We'll just read them the day up. So we're like, I hope nobody said anything just horribly wrong. So far, we're clean, we're good. And I was reading this one this morning. I woke up this morning and I read the one this morning from Braden Mitchell. If you haven't read it, spoiler alert, I'm going to give you his last paragraph. Oh, man. And lo, there was a star that fell in the east. We're okay. I'm still gonna give away his last paragraph, not even a star filing. Somebody make a wish real quick. You'll be okay. Whatever you hope your best present is, you can have that. I was reading Braden Mitchell's devotional. We didn't plan this at all, but I was like, what he said is exactly what my message is tied into. I want to read his last part. He's dealing with the wise man as they travel to see Jesus and the joy that they had. And it says this. The reality is that the only true joy we can find in this life is through a relationship with Jesus Christ, as we enter into the Christmas season, we should take a lesson from the wise men. Let Christ be the decider of our joy, not the circumstances we are currently walking through. And Braden and his devotion was thinking of the circumstance we were walking through, just the things in our life. And we get that. There are things in your life right now for many of you that have brought you great joy. And you're like, this Christmas season is easy. And this week's going to be really exciting for you. And there are many in this room who your circumstances. This is what's going on in your life have brought a lot of pain and sorrow. this Christmas season. And what brain is saying is let Jesus decide that. I think when we look at Psalm 100. In all of the Bible, what we see is that God is part of our circumstance. He's part of our possession. The main idea I want you to get from these 5 verses we're going to look at today is this. Anchor your joy in God as your circumstance in your possession. And when we do that, then the joy that God wants us to have is anchored in him. Other things are going to come around and make us joyful, more joyful over those things, or sorrowful over those things. But when we anchor the ultimate joy in God as your circumstance and your possession, then we can do what Psalm 100 calls us to do. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Psalm 100. And let me begin by reading this 1st verse, where it says make a joyful noise to God. It says, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. The psalmist in 5 verse just starts with this idea. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth. And this idea isn't kind of subdued joy. It isn't kind of tame joy. Now, all of us have different personalities and different levels of excitement, but all of us, at some time or another, have received news that brought such joy that it manifested itself outwardly to some extent, whatever your level of kind of excitement is, it hit that level. Friday night, I went from deep sorrow watching the game, to great joy watching the game, and it manifests itself very much outwardly. We get this in sports. But you've all had those moments where the joy that you experienced was so overwhelming. It's like, I can't control. I can't keep it in. And this is what the psalmist is talking about, says, make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth. He doesn't say, make a joyful noise because your life's good. It doesn't say make a joyful noise to the earth as if the earth created us, as if we're just here by chance, as if we're simply the random happenings of a meaningless universe. We'll just make a joyful noise to that meaninglessness and maybe we can get through. He says, make a joyful noise to the Lord. It is very specific. It's not about what's going on in our life. It's not that those circumstances are unimportant. It's that they're conditioned by and understood in the light of God. The context of this psalm was as the Jewish people would come into the temple in Jerusalem and have this moment of celebration and of joy of being in God's presence, make this joyful noise. Because of who he is and what he's done. He says, all the earth. It's not just a select group. He's wanting the whole earth to make this joyful noise. Goes back to Genesis in the 1st chapter where God creates the heavens and the earth and he says it's very good, he says it's good, and then he creates Adam and Eve and he says it's very good. God created humanity. He created this earth to worship him, to praise him, to shout for joy to him. Now, Adam, and he sinned and brought darkness and suffering into the world. And this idea of make a joyful noise to the Lord can seem very difficult at times. If the sky is clear and blue and everything's wonderful in your life, we can find it easy to make that joyful noise, But we look around and we know that sorrow and suffering and pain in the world, and in our own lives, on the lives of those that we know, and we go, how can I make a joyful noise in the world that is so broken and yet that is what the psalmist calls us to do. He says, make a joyful noise. But he doesn't leave it there. It's kind of this bare command. We just says, just make a joyful noise, figure it out, work it out. He explains in the next 4 verses, like how that can happen. What can we do in light of this command to make a joyful noise to the Lord. The 1st thing we see in verse two, just the very beginning part of 2 is that joy comes from serving God. He says it serve the Lord with gladness. And not begrudgingly. Not because you just compelled to. If you ever watched the TV show The Office, you may know Stanley Hudson. He's the guy just, he comes to work every day, but he doesn't like it, a lot of eye rolling, a lot of sighing, a lot of, I'm here, but I don't want to be here. He doesn't respect Michael Scott, who's his boss. Maybe you found yourself in that situation before in life? where you go, I'm going to work. I don't like it. I'm going to do my job. I have no joy in this. I don't like my boss. The guy or the gal leading this thing is just horrible. I'm gonna show him and do my job, but there's no gladness in it. And I can't serve with gladness because of the person I'm serving. But in this case, it says serve the Lord with gladness. We're not dealing with a boss who is horrible, who misuses us, mistreats us, is mismanaging things. It says, serve the Lord. God himself with gladness. We see this in the life of Jesus himself. When God the Son became human, we see in 2 passages, I just picked 2 out. One is Mark 10,45, and the other one is John 4.34. It says this, Jesus said, for even the Son of Man, that was a nickname he gave himself from Daniel chapter 7. He says, even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And then in John chapter 4, Jesus had sent the disciples away into this village to get food, and they were coming back and he had talked with this Samaritan woman, and they came back and they were, you know, talking about what he's doing, and he says this line. He says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work because they were going, like, did you get foods from somewhere? You don't seem hungry, he said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me, which was the Father. He said, I am here to serve God. That's where I find fulfillment. That's how he serves the Lord with gladness. Then he says, serve the Lord with glass. Now we may think to ourselves, at least I want to go, well, Jesus was the son of God, who became human. So it's pretty easy to like make your food serving God. If you're God the Son. But we're just regular humans. We're not like Jesus in that way. And we go, can we serve him? Peter, who was one of Jesus' closest friends when he was on the earth, wrote a letter, and in this 1st letter that he wrote, he says this about how Jesus had been empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve God, and that we have the same Holy Spirit as his followers. It says this, as each has received a gift. This is the gift of what the Spirit gives to each of the followers of Jesus to serve others. He says this, as each has received a gift, use it, to serve one another. As good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong. glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. That if you're a follower of Christ here, you've been gifted by God to serve others. When Jesus was on the earth, they asked them, like, what's the greatest commandment? He says, love God. And the 2nd is like it, which is love others. The way we serve God with gladness is one by worshiping him, but also we do that through serving others. And we've been gifted in all sorts of ways to serve others. Just this week, I got to participate in the, love your neighbor Christmas party, where we had over like a 100 members who helped buy gifts, supply things, who came up here the night of the party, to work with parents who are in the adoptive and foster care system, who are struggling to have a Christmas for their kids that would be joyful. And they came up here and they got gifts, they got a meal, we had to hang out with these kids. Just a chance to use the gifts and all these ways to serve. We had a funeral yesterday, and we had members come up here to help prepare for the funeral and make sure that the family that was grieving was taken care of. Or right after that funeral, our free ministry, which helps those who are struggling with addiction, was meeting to take care of things all over this month of December. I've seen church members serving others in various ways. And in doing that, we're serving God. And it's like, serve the Lord with gladness. And it was just a blessing all month to see you all gathering up here and serving with gladness. Joy comes from serving with gladness because we begin to focus on him, as our circumstance, on him, as our possession, and how we can help others. It is love for God allows this gladness to be present as we serve. And this is based on what we see in the rest of Psalm 100, that joy comes from belonging to God. So the psalmist said, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. And then he says, we can serve the Lord with gladness. When we're focused on serving him. As we serve others, we can do that because we belong to God. Look at verses 2 to 5. The end of verse 2 says, come into his presence with singing. Now jump down to verse four. Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him. Bless his name. Again, the imagery of where this comes from is as the people were filing into the temple to worship God. to celebrate God, probably on one of their religious festivals. They're coming in and he says, enter his presence with singing. Come into his courts with thanksgiving and praise. That image of walking into this area. Maybe you've taken your kids to Disney World, to an amusement park. And when you go through the front gate, there's a sense of, oh, this joy as we come into this place and excitement as we come in. That's the imagery. We are to enter his presence with singing. That's a place where you're like, I want to be in this person's presence. Now we know, that sometimes we can have a picture of God in our head, and we may be nervous of coming into his presence. When I was in high school, my dad was the principal of our school, and I was, what's the word? mischievous, talkative. I didn't mean anything horrible, but I did get sent out of class quite often. and would sit outside my dad's office waiting to go in. Now there are some times when I would be in his presence and it was a good thing. Those weren't those times. I was like, ah, this is not fun. I am not about to walk into this office singing at all. Maybe you've had that experience. You messed up at work and you're waiting to meet the boss and you're like, I'm not getting into his presence for singing, that's for sure. This is a bad thing. Maybe you're here and you're going, I have rebelled against God. I have turned against God. I have not followed him faithfully. And the idea of coming into his presence with singing, he's like, I'm not doing that. I don't want to be anywhere near God, or maybe you have the false view that God just hates you. You're like, I don't want to come to his presence. He doesn't want me. The psalmist says, come into his presence with singing. The sense of joy of being in his presence, one of the movies, uh, my family likes to watch. We haven't watched it yet. We're waiting for our oldest to get home is elf. If you're an elf fan, you'll get this. Buddy the elf is looking for his dad and he makes it to the Empire State Building, and he gets into the office in his elf suit, and his dad's kind of gruff, and he's there and they think he's a singing telegram. And so his dad's like, go ahead and sing. And then Buddy starts singing. He just sings, I love you, I love you. I love you. And there's this sense of joy that he has. He's in the presence of his father. And that's the type of joy that the psalmist is writing about. Come into his presence with singing. Enter his gates with praise. He says we can do this, though. The reason we can enter his presence this way is in the next few verses. Look at verse 3 says, know that the Lord, he is God. Now, when you see capital L, capital, O, capital, R, capital D in your scripture. That's the name that God gave himself when he was talking with Moses back in the book of Exodus. We think it's pronounced Yahweh, but it's a personal name. We just kind of put the word Lord there. So it says, says this, know that Yahweh, he is God. What the psalmist is saying is that the God he's worshiping, the God whose presence he's entering is actually the real God, who made everything. He's not one of these false gods that other people were serving. There are a lot of claimants to the throne of God in the world. There are a lot of false gods, a lot of false beliefs that are out there. The psalmist says, we can come into his presence with singing, and we need to do that by knowing that our God is God. It is he who made us. And we are his. God's the one that made us. Why can I come into his presence with singing? Because he made me? He created me. He knows who I am. He knows what we as humans are made for, we're made for him, that he wants to be with us. And so we can come into his presence with singing because it is he who made us and we are his people. We are the sheep of his pasture. Now, this imagery of a sheep and his pasture can begin to resonate with us when we think of Jesus. who came to this earth. John 316 tells us that God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son. That whoever would believe in him would not perish would have everlasting life. Jesus, when he was on the earth, in John chapter 10, John's recounting this story, Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, who are the religious leaders who should have been pasturing God's sheep, his people, and they were abusing them. And Jesus said these words, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Then we need to know that God is God. that Jesus is God. He made us. He knows what's good for us. He's shepherding us. He wants us to be with him. And then in verse 5 it says, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. Joy comes from belonging to the God of scripture, the true God. He says, he is good. If you have a picture in your head today of God, being bad, being evil, being out to get you. That is not what scripture tells us. That is not who God is. The psalmist says, God is good. And then he tells us how he's good. Two ways, his steadfast love endures forever. He doesn't love you today and then quit loving you tomorrow. I'm like, well, I liked you yesterday, but today not so much. His steadfast love endures forever. God's love will never end, and his faithfulness will last to all generations. God's gonna keep his words. He's going to keep his promises because he loves us because he is good. Joy comes from belonging to God. And we see this played out in scripture at Christmas time. As we look at kind of Psalm 100 through the lens of scripture, Micah read earlier from Luke chapter 2. part of the Christmas story, and I want to read part of it again, just so you can hear the reality of God's love for us and his faithfulness enduring over 100s and 100s and 100s of years. that we can come into his presence with singing because he loves us and he's never going to abandon us. Luke writes the Christmas story in this way in Luke chapter 2. It says, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the 1st registration when Crinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary. His betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the end. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over the flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day, and the city of David, a savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Christmas is a reminder for us of God's faithfulness. It's a reminder of the main point of this message, which is anchor your joy in God as your circumstance and your possession. We will find other things in life that bring us joy that bring us happiness, and well we should. God has given us those good gifts. And we will find things in life that will bring us sorrow and pain. But when we anchor our joy in God, his love endures his faithfulness endures. And how can we do that? in our life. First, trust Jesus with your life. Trust Jesus with your life. God created you. God made you. He knows what's best for you, and our rebellion has returned from him, and our sin, as we disregard him, as we don't acknowledge him. He loves us and seeks us out. God is a seeking God. He's on a mission to find us. We're not on a mission to find him. He's on a mission to find us. And he sent his son so that we could be brought back to him. Trust Jesus with your life. God loves you. He calls you. He wants to shepherd you as the good shepherd. And it may be, though, that you think, I can't come into God's presence. I'm not good enough. I'm not clean enough. I am not holy enough. The writer of Hebrews speaks to this about how, when we come into God's presence, It's not because of who we are, but who Jesus is, that we just trust him. He says, I will take care of you. The writer Hebrew says it this way in chapter 4. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God. Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest, who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace. That's the psalmist way of saying, enter his presence with singing. We can approach God's throne of grace because of Jesus, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. God is faithful. He will keep his word. This is evident in his birth, in his life, in his death, and in his resurrection. that God will keep his word. You can trust him with your eternal life, and you can trust him with your present life. And that leads to the 2nd part when we trust God with our present life. Serve him with gladness. Serve God with gladness. Keep your eyes on Jesus, as his followers, and he will direct your paths. And these paths will sometimes lead into bright days of great joy, of news that is amazing, and it will lead sometimes into sorrowful times. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Serve him with gladness. Say, God, what have you called me to do this week to show your love to others, to care for others, to reach out to others, to offer the same love that he's offered us, to those around us, serve God with gladness. And then that leads to the 3rd point. The band's going to come up and lead us in a song in a bit. And the last point is simply to make a joyful noise. That was the psalmist's command to us. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. And we're called to do that. And again, this is not a kind of quiet noise. This would have been a noise of celebration, a noise of excitement, a noise of entering into God's very presence. It says make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. And you could be here today, and it may be that your making of a joyful noise comes easily. You're in this Christmas season of 2025 and you've had great news. Not just about Jesus, but just life. Your circumstances in life are really good right now. Maybe you got that job that you wanted. Maybe that family member has moved to town, is going to live here now. Maybe you have news of a grandchild that's on the way. Maybe you recently got engaged, maybe? How about that? Damn. Maybe it's easy. Maybe it's easy for you to celebrate. But I know in this room that for some of you, it's not. that this Christmas season, this year, has been hard. We know of sons that were lost, that are not here. We were fathers and husbands that were lost. Jobs taken. We know this, sara. And he says, make a joyful noise. Because we're anchored, not in this world circumstance. But in him. Anchor your joy in Christ. Will you stand with us and sing joy to the world?

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