“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; 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; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100 ESV).
Psalm 100, our theme for this issue, comes to the Lutheran church in hymnic form from William Kethe (d. 1594), an Anglican priest. It appears as “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” in the Lutheran Service Book (LSB 791). The tune, which many know from singing the doxology “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” is called “Old Hundredth” in praise of the 100th Psalm. The hymn was first published in the second edition of the Genevan Psalter in 1551. Psalm 100 is a liturgical hymn of both ancient Israel and the church today. No one knows for what occasions it was sung in Israel, but it is clearly a hymn to call the assembly to worship the God of Israel, whose steadfast love endures forever. He is God and there is no other. He is good and apart from Him there is nothing good. “Enter his gates with thanksgiving!” This “entrance hymn” is a perfect theme for our graduates as they are sent out into Christ’s pasture to feed God’s sheep and to serve the Lord with gladness.
The Lutheran church does not have a liturgical setting with the words of Psalm 100, but we do have a close parallel in the Venite of Matins, the first seven verses of Psalm 95. The Psalm came into common usage in the church for morning prayer around the fifth century. Venite is Latin for “Oh come.” We sing, “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” And Psalm 100 says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!” We sing with joy because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He laid down His life for the sheep. “We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture,” all who hear His voice and come when He calls.
The center of the church’s life is that sinners come to Jesus to receive forgiveness for their sins in His name and for His sake. To this church belong all those who are gathered into the King’s court to receive from Him. “Enter … his courts with praise!” The commands of the Psalm are clear: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord … Serve the Lord with gladness … Come into his presence with singing … Know that the Lord, he is God … Enter his gates with thanksgiving … Give thanks to him; bless his name.”
The command to sing and to make a joyful noise to the Lord can come as heavy Law at the beginning of the day or at the beginning of one’s service in the church. But Psalms 95 and 100 are not psalms of judgment. Rather, the commands are encouragement, the saints encouraging one another with God’s faithfulness. God does not say here, “Make a joyful noise” or “Come into his presence with singing,” as if the Lord were lacking something without our praise. No. In the Venite we sing “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” We speak to each other, encouraging each other in our congregations and in the whole church with the great confession that Christ is the “rock of our salvation.” “It is he who made us, and we are his.” “The Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” The members of Christ call to one another to shake off the sloth of sin that clings to us at the start of our labor each day and each season of our life. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism teaches us that we should wake up in our Baptism and “that the old Adam should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that the new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
Every day that we wake up, our old Adam tells us that there is nothing joyful to rise to this morning. Old Adam is a fool. Let us drown him by repentance and come, let us sing before the Lord in righteousness and purity forever, because He is the Rock of our salvation and we are the sheep of His pasture. Sin, death and the dreary ways of this world do not have any power over us. The sin that attacks us and makes us feel unworthy to live righteously before God is made powerless. Our sin is gone, forgiven, crucified in Christ’s body on the tree and washed away in God’s gift of Holy Baptism. We do not have to be slaves to sin and sorrow anymore.
Every morning we wake from sleep as baptized Christians. And every day we rise from our beds is a tiny picture of that Easter morning when Christ shook off death and rose joyfully from His bed of death for the life of the world. That is our joy. So, “come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” There are many others who belong to Christ’s little flock. Bring them too!