Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Faith That Follows | The Writings | Psalm 100

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

We're all sheep. Whether we like it or not, we were created to be followers. This begs the question: who or what are you following? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Psalm 100 reminds us that God is our Good Shepherd who we can trust to follow. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 100

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Imagine that you're walking through the countryside, surrounded by rolling hills, leading to a majestic cliff. You're soaking in the scenery, yet out of the corner of your eye, you see a sheep, walk toward a cliff, and then step right off of it. Now, you'd probably think that the sheep was confused, maybe a little bit crazy. But what if you didn't just see one sheep walking off of the cliff, but hundreds. That's exactly what happened in Turkey nearly 20 years ago when around 1,500 sheep followed one of their fluffy friends right

off of a cliff, one sheep after another, until 1,500 sheep followed one another over that ledge, ultimately in a tragic way, killing 450 of them. You see the big problem for those sheep, don't you? if you blindly follow someone or something without thinking about where they're taking you, well, it can destroy you. What if you're more like those sheep than you'd like to admit? What if you're following the crowd somewhere you don't really want to go, but you're too oblivious to notice it right now? And if it's true that we're following someone or something in our lives,

what would it look like to follow the God of the Bible? and why would following him be worth it compared to the other options on offer? For generations, Psalm 100 has been one of many parts of the Bible that give us a sense of what it looks like to follow God as our good shepherd, while also clarifying why we can trust him to lead us into true, abundant life. As we prepare to engage with God's word, let's slow down and pray, ask for his love to move through our time together. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath, and thank you for your word. Jesus, help us abide in you as we prepare to engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you

to move in and through this time in Psalm 100. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us and change us in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, Psalm 100 seems like a breeze when you look at it. It's just five verses. There are no difficult names or places to pronounce. It seems easy. But we'd be mistaken to gloss over these five verses carelessly. These verses are truth distilled. And they will stir our spirits to see and follow God differently.

If we encounter these verses carefully. We'll tackle this Psalm by breaking it apart into four sections. Let's start with verses 1 through 2. Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Now this Psalm will eventually lead us to the truth that God is like a good shepherd who's worth following with everything we have.

Yet notice how it doesn't begin with the topic of following God. It begins with a topic of worship. Shout for joy. Worship the Lord with gladness. Why does Psalm 100 start with worship? Because we tend to follow who or what we worship. Our desires, our thoughts, our words, our habits, they're dictated by whoever or whatever we deem worthy of our worship.

Stop for a moment and just consider that word, worship. Consider the first thing or the first person that you thought of when you woke up this morning. What was your earliest concern for the day? How does that shed light on what you might be worshipping? Think about your greatest desire or your greatest fear going into this moment of the day. Our object of worship oftentimes resides there at the intersection of our greatest desires and our greatest fears. What's that for you today?

How is the object of your worship driving your choices, your thought patterns, your relationship, relationships with other people, your habits. When Psalm 100 challenges us to consider who we're following, it begins with who or what we're worshipping. God is the one who's truly worthy of our worship. Why? Well, Psalm 100 gives us a reason here in 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. Now don't miss this. The Lord, is worthy of worship because he is the infinite personal creator God. He made us. We are his. There's no other person or thing that can make a claim like that. And his loving power as our creator, it's not just a past tense observation looking back to our origin story. It is a current

event. He made us. And we are his people now. When we compare following our Creator God. When we compare what it would look like to follow our Creator God versus anyone else, Psalm 100 is reminding us that God isn't just another sheep. He's the shepherd. We're His people. And by the way, just to complete the imagery here in Psalm 100, we are his sheep in his pasture. He owns all of it. Let's stop and consider the first word in this verse. No. Do you know God as the good shepherd who made you, who delights in you, who chose you to have abundant life in his pasture, or do you feel like you don't know this God of Psalm 100 yet? How might this picture of God as the good creator be a chance for you to know him for the first

time or know him in a deeper or truer way than you do right now? Knowing the good creator isn't just a cognitive exercise for us. It's an experience of his presence. That's what we see in verse 4 of Psalm 100. Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. With this invitation to enter God's gates and courts, we see the goodness and beauty of not just knowing about our good shepherd,

but being with him in an intimate relationship. The gates in the courts here reference the temple complex, where God's special presence resides with His covenant people, and entering His presence here is meant to lead to gratitude, praise for His glory. Let's pause and focus on the word enter here. Enter. Has your knowledge about God led to the goodness of entering His presence? Or does he exist only as an idea for you to ponder? but not a creator to know, to enter into his presence.

For you, does entering God's presence lead to praising him? Or have you made entering God's presence about praising yourself? Are you instrumentalizing religion for the sake of improving your image? What would it look like for you to enter into his presence in a way that leads to his praise, clarifying and amplifying his glory? Psalm 100 is telling us to follow our good shepherd by worshiping, by knowing, by entering. Yet it doesn't just leave us with how to do this. It also tells us why we can. We read this in verse 5. For the Lord is good and his steadfast love endures forever. His faithfulness continues

through all generations. The first word here, four, indicates that we're getting the reason in the cause behind a faith that follows God. Four, because the Lord is good and his steadfast love endures forever. This steadfast love, this is his never-ending love that is not bound by the limitations of space or time. His steadfast love is ultimately displayed in the death and resurrection and current reign of Jesus.

Psalm 100 says that we can follow the good, shepherd because his love is played out in real time, in real history as a verb, his steadfast love is the reason we can follow him. Let's stop and reflect on that powerful three-word preposition here in verse five, four. Four, what is your current reason for following the way of Jesus? What would you place after the word four here in verse five? For I know. to earn God's affection? For God is waiting for me to clean up my life before I start to follow him? For I'll never be worthy of his love. There are a lot of reasons we could give for thinking that we should be following God. But Psalm 100 gives us the final word on why we're able to follow

our Creator King. For, his steadfast love endures forever. That means his love endures for you. Now, in whatever suffering, stress, temptations, doubts, trials you're facing, his steadfast love indoors for you now in this very moment. Let's finish our time in Psalm 100 by considering why the truths here would be so important for the people of God in exile. Why is it here in the writings of the Old Testament that we see this emphasis on following God because of his steadfast love? What impact was that meant to have on God's people?

We can answer those questions by looking at the very end and the very beginning of Psalm 100. The first impact of this Psalm is generational. His faithfulness in individual lives goes on to touch all generations. The message to God's people in exile is this. As you follow your Creator King, the good shepherd, so too will the generations after you. Don't make the mistake of thinking that following him is just about you and him. it's also about him working in other people's lives. And while the first impact of Psalm 100 is generational,

we could say that the second is international. Let's go back to the words in verse one. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. These three words are proclaiming an objective fact that God deserves praise from all people on earth as the creator. But this phrase, all the earth, it's also a part of the job description for God's people. They are meant to live as a kingdom of priests, a holy nation,

to bring his kingdom and his praise into all the earth so that other people who don't currently follow him one day will, because his people followed him. Psalm 100 impacts us on so many different levels, the individual, the generational, the international, our worshiping and knowing and entering, they're all means of His kingdom extending through all creation. His steadfast love endures in your life, here and now.

And it also endures through your life. When we think about following God in every area of who we are, Psalm 100 reminds us that we're not like the oblivious sheep following him over a cliff. We're following him into a restored world. We're following him into a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells, forever. God, would your steadfast love stir us to follow you by worshiping, knowing, and entering? Work through us so your steadfast love can reach the nations and reach future generations. All for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.