I believe that before we can really read the Bible and get the best out of it, it's important to understand a little bit about the Jewish background.  We've got to see the Word of God through the eyes of the Jew, through the eyes of God and by the prompting of the Holy Spirit.  Maybe when we go back into Scripture and see the quality of worship that was there, and the reasons why they did certain things, we'll find that our "way of doing things" really has just evolved over years of practice, rather than out of what God really desires us to do.

Let's read Psalm 100 together:  "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.  Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.  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.  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."

You'll notice on the screen, that I have underlined seven words - shout, worship, come, know, enter, give thanks, and praise.  These are seven specific commands to be found within the 100th Psalm.  The first one is "shout".  I think we mentioned this a few weeks ago, but shouting unto the Lord is something we don't really do today in our worship.  In fact if the person in the pulpit today were to shout, he'd be accused of being harsh or all sorts of things!  However it is not to the preacher that this instruction is aimed - it is to all God's people.  Shout!  Obviously there had to be a reason for that instruction.  There was something behind it.  It wasn't just the Psalmist writing down any word.  He meant us to do it.  He meant us to do it for a purpose - to declare where we stand.

The second word I've underlined is "worship" (as it's written in the NIV).  In the KJV it is transcribed "serve the Lord with gladness" and, on this occasion, this translation is closer to the meaning of the original Hebrew word which  is really more to do with serving rather than worshiping.  It means serving the Lord.  It is serving in the sense of a lifestyle choice.  It's as if you came along to someone and said "I'm giving up my job because my calling in life from now on is simply to serve you.  Wherever you're going, I'll go with you.  I'll carry your bags.  I'll open the door for you. I want to be a blessing to you.  I choose to serve you, irrespective of the cost to me.  It is my desire".

The third word is in verse 2 - it is "come" before the Lord.  You'll notice that all of these words are not asking "if you would like to".  They are specific, clear instructions that we are to obey.  And if we choose not to come, not to serve, not to shout, then we are actually in a state of rebellion before God because these are commands that God has given to His people.

The fouth word is "know" that the Lord is God.  Make sure that you are absolutely certain in your mind that Jehovah God is the Most High God.  His name is not Allah, His name is not Budda, or something else - He is Jehovah the Most High God.  Know who your God is and know that the Lord is God indeed.

The fifth word is "enter".  Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.  We are commanded to enter in.  Don't hold back.  Come forward.  Enter in.

The sixth phrase is "give thanks".   No matter what situation we may find ourselves in, we are to give thanks unto God.  This is a secret key in being able to overcome.  Giving thanks to God - not necessarily for the circumstances that we are going through, but giving thanks to Him for who He is and for His enduring faithfulness to those who love Him.

The final word is, of course, "praise" His name.

Seven specific instructions that God gives to you and me through Psalm 100.  Shout, worship, come, know, enter, give thanks, and praise.  Seven commands.  If we really delve into it and see what's there, Psalm 100 is actually a scriptural blueprint for worship.  If ever we needed a protocol or blueprint of how to do the job, how to get it done, Psalm 100 is that plan.  It teaches us and leads us into that place of true worship.  Psalm 100 is also an overview of the Psalms of Ascent.  What are the Psalms of Ascent you may ask?  They are Psalms 120 to 134 - the psalms that the Hebrew people sang whenever they journeyed up to Jerusalem for any of the feasts or festivals.  The people all started off from their own homes and towns and, as they met up on the roads leading from every direction to Jerusalem, they all sang these psalms.  When they joined together before they entered the Tabernacle, they were all singing from these particular psalms.

Verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 100 give us the correct protocol for coming before the King of Kings and if we miss verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 100, then we've missed the protocol.  You see the Hebrew people shouted to declare who God was.  There was nobody left standing at the side of the road whenever these folk were coming up to Jerusalem who didn't know who their God was.  They made it clear.  They shouted and they praised the Name of God.  As well as that, they were singing the Psalms of Ascent and singing prepared their hearts for worship when they arrived at the Tabernacle/Temple.  You'll notice, if you are reading from the King James, that it says "make a joyful noise unto the Lord".  And that is where we all need to begin.  Whenever we come into church, whenever we gather together to worship the Lord, we begin with a joyful noise - you and me singing makes a joyful noise!  Singing provides unity in the hearts of the people and leads eventually to the act of worship.  When we all come into church, from wherever we live, on a Sunday morning or evening, we need something to draw us together and help us to focus us on the King of Kings.  The thing that draws us together is when we sing, thankfully, praising the Lord.  It leads us into worship.

In every service of worship, God's plan is to bring the people into His presence.  If we, in our services, fail to bring the people who attend into the presence of the Lord then we have failed to do what we are there to do.  If we simply do what has evolved down through the years, we are just going through the motions.  The focus and end result of every single service is worship.  Bringing people into the presence of God to worship Him.

I want to give you a brief bird's eye view of the Psalms of Ascent.  They are all quite short psalms with only half a dozen verses or so in each.  You can read them at home together with your family.  Notice where they start.  The Psalmist begins in Psalm 120 saying "I call to the Lord in my distress". It's I and me and my.  He's in his own difficulty and thinking only of himself and his own situation.  As they go along the road and as others gather up along the way to Jerusalem, he begins to lift his eyes off himself a bit and he looks to the hills. "I lift up my eyes to the hills - where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth".  In Psalm 122 he begins to be happy and rejoice "I rejoiced with those who said to me: Let us go to the House of the Lord". He is beginning now to move away from himself, to move away from thinking only about himself and is starting to be interested in the people who are there with him.  Then he begins to have an idea of what he's doing - he's heading for Jerusalem.  He's going up to celebrate the festival.  He's going up to worship his Lord and so he begins to call on the Name of the Lord. "Have mercy on us O Lord".  And then he begins to remember what God has done for him and the people travelling with him.  "If the Lord had not been on our side" we'd have lost this battle and that battle.  He recalls that help comes only from God.  As the journey continues, the psalmist remembers what God has done in the past, He is still doing today because God is with His people. "The Lord surrounds His people both now and for evermore".  As he focusses on this, he remembers the wonderful things God has done in the past, like the parting of the Red Sea etc. "The Lord has done great things for us".  He also understands that unless God is in the centre of things, then they will not work.  "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain".  In Psalm 128 "Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in His ways".  He is becoming more and more focussed as he goes towards the Temple in Jerusalem.  He remembers how good God has been to his country and what God has done for the people of Israel.  As they sing out "let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy" the Psalmist is knowing the reality of God around him.  He calls on God and his heart and whole being is now even more focussed on the Lord Himself.   "My heart is not proud, O Lord ... I have stilled and quietened my soul".  Through praise he has rid himself of the worries and preoccupations that were in his mind at the start of the journey and has come to the closer presence of God.  He has discarded the worldly stuff that doesn't matter and is concentrating on God.  He begins to understand the purpose of why he's going to Jerusalem.  In Psalm 133 he says "how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity"  as he recognises, as all the people converge upon Jerusalem, the wonderful unity and power and strength of the praising people of God.  They have become one in heart and mind.  Finally he gets to the Temple and he says "lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord".

Do you see the progression through the Psalms of Ascent?  They begin with man's problems.  Thoughts then begin to turn to God, remembering what He has done for them.  They remember just who God is.  They focus upon God and give thanks and praise to Him.  They come to the place of unity and then they lift up their hands in complete worship.

Lift up your hands.  You know, some people get annoyed by my preaching about raising hands in worship.  'I can worship the Lord very well without holding up my hands', they say.  Fair enough.  If you can do that, then go ahead.  However folks, we need to recognise that God tells us to hold up our hands.  It's not some notion of mine - it is God's instruction.  "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord". Why not do it God's way?  It brings about greater results than when we do our own thing.

You may think I'm going off at a tangent but when we begin to understand more fully the things of the Tabernacle, then we can begin to appreciate more fully the lessons of the 100th Psalm.  The Tabernacle was made up of 3 separate areas.  The first one was called the Outer Court.  The second was known as the Inner Court or the Holy Place.  The third one was the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. (You'll find God's instructions to Moses on how to build it in Exodus 26).  At one end of the Tabernacle was the gate and that was the way in to the Outer Court.  Once you came in through the gate, sitting straight in front of you was the Bronze Altar and just ahead of it was the thing called the Laver.  Moving a little further along into the Holy Place, sitting of to the left was the Golden Lampstand, and on the right-hand side there was the Table of Shewbread.  At the top of the Holy Place sat the Table of Incense and beyond it was the Most High Place in which was the Ark of the Covenant.

I said at the beginning that Psalm 100 was a blueprint of worship.  Take note of this - God in his mighty and infinite wisdom, when he gave Moses the instructions for constructing the Tabernacle, laid it out in the form of the Cross.  In every service of worship our ultimate aim is to worship God in the Most Holy Place - to enter into the presence of God - and the only way that we can get from the gate to the Most Holy Place is through the Cross.  The Cross of Christ.
 

The Most High Place (Holy of Holies)     The Inner Court (Holy Place)       The Outer Court

Next Sunday evening we shall continue to look at this in more depth.  For example, the 3 areas of the Tabernacle are important.  The Outer Court represents the body; the Inner Court is the soul and the Holy of Holies is the spirit.  We'll also look at the seven items of furniture within the Tabernacle and see their relevance to the church today.  In our praise and worship every one of these things are significant.  God's pattern is not one of chance.

Remember that as the children of Israel sang the songs of Ascent, they had not yet entered the Tabernacle/Temple.  They were still outside its walls.  Sadly, so much of our worship today, so much of our singing, is actually outside the Tabernacle because, while we come into church and we sing hymns, we have not entered scripturally through the gate.  So often our activity is nothing more than ritual because our ideas of worship do not line up with God's definition of worship.  I hope and pray that as we study God's Word we will come into a new and deeper understanding of God's plan and definition of worship.