Psalm 100:1-5; We've Been Made for Joy

Mark Gignilliat July 27, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, good morning to you all.
We're in Psalm 100 this morning.
Glad to be a part of thissummer series that you're having
on the Psalms, let me readPsalm 100 to us.
I believe it's in your bulletin.
I'm reading from the ESV that'swhat's in the bulletin right,

(00:20):
the CSV.
Okay, psalm 100.
Make a joyful noise to the Lordall the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness,come into his presence with
singing.
Know that the Lord, he is Godand it is he who made us and we

(00:43):
are his.
We are his people and the sheepof his pasture.
Enter his gates withthanksgiving and into his courts
with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless hisname, for the Lord is good and
his steadfast love enduresforever and his faithfulness to
all generations.
Now, lord, may the words of mymouth and the meditation of all
of our hearts be pleasing in thysight.

(01:04):
O Lord, our strength and ourRedeemer, amen.
I can remember the first Bibleverse I learned as a little
child.
It's one of the blessings ofgrowing up in the kind of
fundamentalist world that I grewup in.
We learned a lot of Bible.
Here's the Bible verse, I think, maybe three, four years old.

(01:26):
We love him because.
Can any of you finish this.
Oh yes, presbyterians and theirBibles.
I love it.
So the memories in this agingbrain of mine are faint, but
they're still there.
I can remember as a little boysaying this verse out loud in
front of my mom and my dad.
I think we should be gratefulto say this as an aside to the

(01:46):
teachers in a place like FaithPresbyterian, are you parents
out there that are loving yourkids and trying to give them
some of the Bible?
So much of this is parentingand teaching and faith.
You don't know what the futurehas or the ways in which these
things are shaping littlechildren, but, boy, they are
shaping them.
I still remember these verses.

(02:06):
I think I remember the firstPsalm.
I think the first Psalm that Iever memorized as a child was
Psalm 100.
It might've been the smallschool that I was in, might've
been in church, but I canremember the rhythms and the
cadences of saying Psalm 100 inthe King James Version God's
favorite version out loud, againand again.

(02:29):
So can't you hear the staccatorhythms of little children
quoting Psalm 100?
Oh, be joyful in the Lord, allye lands Serve the Lord with
gladness.
Remember this.
I don't remember giving muchthought to the content of the
psalm, wasn't doing any analysisof its words, but I can

(02:51):
remember the rhythms and thefeel of Psalm 100, even as a
child, because so much of Psalm100 is caught, as much as it is
taught.
This is a psalm of praise andthanksgiving.
This is a psalm that's aninvitation into a certain kind

(03:12):
of space and place the place ofjoy, the place of thanksgiving.
Again, I'm going to make a fewassertions to you this morning.
I'm not going to make argumentsand you can think about this
later.
My own opinion, modest as it is, is that Psalm 100 probably
rests somewhere at the apex,somewhere near the top of this

(03:36):
Himalayan range that we call thePsalms.
In fact, I'll stick with mymountain metaphor for a moment.
Psalm 100 might just be theMount Everest of the Psalter,
takes us out of the peaks andthe valleys that we're so used
to living and then brings us upinto a space that's unique and

(03:57):
it's the space for which we'vebeen created, if the Psalms are
the Himalayan range.
And my family and I we just gotback from the mountains of
Wyoming on Friday, so I've gotmountains on the brain so we
stayed three days in the BighornMountains on the eastern side
and hiked up there and I tellyou what.

(04:20):
You hike above 9,000 feet andit'll teach you a few things.
I think I met the Lord twicewhile I was up there Just
checking my Fitbit for my heartrate.
Come down, please Come down.
Anyway, sticking with themountain metaphor, if the Psalms
are a mountain range, thenPsalms 1 and 2 are a base camp.

(04:40):
They set out the lay of theland before you start out on the
mountain range.
If you remember reading thePsalms and I know some of you in
here are in the Psalms all thetime God bless you Psalm 3,
psalm 4, you'll find somethingvery similar.
Oh Lord, my prayer arises toyou.

(05:01):
Oh Lord, that's the language ofinvocation, that's the language
of prayer.
That's what you expect out ofthe Psalms.
Psalms 1 and 2 are notinvocation, prayer Psalms.
They're teaching Psalms,they're didactic Psalms.
They're setting out for you theinstruction manual for going on

(05:22):
to this hike that you're aboutto go on to.
So if you're going to startgetting around 9,000, 10,000,
13,000 feet, there's some thingsthat you need to know before
you set out, and Psalm 1 and 2are helping you sort those out.
And what are those things?
Well, what's Psalm 1?
How blessed is the person whodoesn't walk or stand or sit

(05:44):
with the ungodly.
So think of this.
Right out of the gate of thePsalms, the biggest question
that you and I have as humanbeings is addressed how can I
really be joyful?
Where is real happiness?
Where is real purpose andmeaning to be found?
That is the ultimate humanquestion.
People have been asking aboutthat question forever.

(06:07):
And what does Psalm 1 say?
The blessed person is the onewho loves God's Word.
They love it, they delight inGod's Word, they meditate on
God's Word day and night.
They recognize that theScriptures are God's gift to
them, god's speaking voice tothem, and there's a humility in
recognizing the value and theauthority of God's word, and

(06:30):
that is.
I know that the best resourcefor my existence is not to be
found by turning inward.
Well, our whole sort of Westernculture right now values
turning inward to discover thetrue self.
And what Psalm 1 is telling youis you want to find who your
true self is and your trueintent and purpose in this world
.
Then you get turned outside ofyourself and learn that from

(06:54):
God's word.
He will instruct you, he willshow you the way.
But what's one of the prophet'sfavorite lines here's the way,
walk ye in it.
That's Psalm 1.
And then Psalm 2 is a psalmthat says and if you want to
live and have a genuinespiritual life before the living
God, then you need to recognizeGod as the God of the universe

(07:18):
and his anointed king as theking and sovereign over your
life, so you love God's word andyou submit to the lordship of
Jesus Christ.
That's the base campinstruction manual coming out of
Psalms 1 and 2.
And if you notice how Psalm 2ends, how blessed are those who
take refuge in him.
So Psalm 1, verse 1, howblessed are those.

(07:40):
Psalm 2, last verse how blessedare those.
So Psalm 1 and Psalms 1 and 2are shaping for you what a
genuine spiritual existencebefore God is all about.
I've read recently a New YorkTimes columnist by the name of
Ross Douthat.

(08:00):
I imagine some of you readDouthat.
He's just come out with a newbook called Believe.
He's a Roman Catholic thinker,kind of a public intellectual.
I think he's an interesting man.
He wrote an op-ed piece maybe ayear or so ago.
I'm getting old, I'm losing mysense of time but he wrote an
op-ed piece rather recentlywarning his readers against the

(08:23):
use of psychedelic drugs,warning his readers against the
use of psychedelic drugs.
I guess this is a big sort ofuprise on these things of
interest in the use ofpsychedelic drugs, whether it's
mushrooms or these other things.
And there's a big warning.
And the reason why Duthat waswarning his readers is because
those who are doing these drugsand this goes back to Plato and
Aristotle, I mean, they've beendoing them forever.

(08:43):
They're describing commonexperiences and encounters in
the spiritual world.
And so what Duthat is saying isyou need to avoid using these
psychedelic drugs, not becausethe spirit world is not real,
but because there are realdragons out there.

(09:04):
And we're living in a moment Ithink I'm not good at really
assessing our moment, but we'reliving in a moment in the West
where repaganization is areality in the West, the search
for the spiritual, the searchfor something transcendent and
not in accord necessarily withGod's word and his law.
So what you have in the Psalmsis we are wired to desire God

(09:26):
and to desire the transcendent,and there are people in the West
seeking those kinds ofexperiences in all different
ways and manners.
But the Psalms lay out for usGod's intent and God's purposes
for us in terms of a genuinespiritual existence before God,
with the ways in which heintends.
Love his word, yearn to knowhis word, be a student of his

(09:51):
word from the moment that youwake up in the morning until the
day that you die.
Because we need God'sinstruction.
And number two we submit toChrist as our Lord.
He is Lord over everything.
So after you get Psalms 1 and 2kind of sorted out, then we're
off on a hike Boom.
We go up into the mountaintopsand we praise.
We go into the valleys and welament.

(10:11):
We go and we talk about wisdom,we talk about the need for
instruction and praise.
We've gone all over the placein the Psalms.
But then when we get to Psalm100, now I think we've arrived
at somewhere special in thePsalms the apex, the real
expression of where our humanityis to be discovered.

(10:34):
Alexander Schmemann, theologianI'm going to mention later, says
this this man is a hungry being, but he's hungry for God.
Behind all the hunger of ourlife is God.
The world is a fallen worldbecause it has fallen away from
the awareness that God is alland in all.

(10:55):
Here's why Psalm 100 is at thetop of the Psalter, where the
air becomes clear and clean andthe view becomes limitless.
Here, in this space and mood ofPsalm 100, we discover why
we've been made.
We discover the answer to thequestion why do we even exist?

(11:19):
Why are we here and where isour ultimate humanity to be
discovered?
And the answer that Psalm 100gives is we discover the answers
to all of those questions inthe presence of God and the
limitless joy that he offers.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all you lands.

(11:40):
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before His presence withsinging.
Know that the Lord, he is God.
It is he that has made us.
We are not our own, we are Hispeople.
We're the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates withthanksgiving and into His courts
with praise.
Give thanks to Him.
Bless His name, for the Lord isgood.

(12:01):
His steadfast love enduresforever and His faithfulness to
all generations.
In Presbyterian terms, what isman's chief end?
To glorify God and to enjoy himforever.
I forced my children on thislong drive back from Wyoming,

(12:22):
and my daughter was not thrilledabout this, my 11-year-old but
I forced her to listen to NormanMaclean's novel A River Runs
Through it.
Love that novel.
The two boys are fly fishermenin the mountains of Montana and
their dad is a Presbyterianminister.
And Maclean this isn't in themovie, but it's in the book.
Maclean says my father wouldtake us on a walk in the

(12:45):
mountains between services andhe would quiz us on the
Westminster Shorter Catechism.
And then McLean says but hewould never get past question
one.
He would ask us over and overagain what does man's chief end?
To glorify God, to enjoy himforever.
That's what Psalm 100 is aboutand I know it's familiar to many

(13:05):
of you, maybe overly familiar.
Some of you have been readingPsalm 100 since you were a child
, like me.
But let me just make a fewcomments about Psalm 100 and
then I'll sit down, which is mychildren's favorite part of all
of my preaching.
The psalm has a beautifulstructure to it.
The psalm has a beautifulstructure to it.

(13:26):
It's simple, it's terse, notcomplicated.
Major theme Runs its way allthe way through like a river.
Notice the invitations that aregiven to you in Psalm 100, all
in the form of imperatives Makea joyful noise, serve the Lord,

(13:48):
come before him with a song,know who the Lord is, enter his
gates with thanksgiving, enterhis courts with praise.
Praise the Lord, thank the Lord, bless the name of the Lord.
So, from these imperatives, Ijust want to look at three
things with you this morning.
Number one notice what thepsalm's major theme is.
It's not hard, it's right onthe surface, not complicated.

(14:10):
You don't even have to go toBeeson to figure it out Praise,
thanksgiving and joy.
As I've already mentioned to you, it's not hard to catch the
mood of this psalm.
Hard to catch the mood of thispsalm.

(14:31):
Psalm 100 is exuberant.
This psalm pulses with joy andthanksgiving.
It bounces with praise.
It pulls us with agravitational force to something
outside of ourselves.
The kind of joy on display hereisn't overly self-aware.
The kind of joy that's ondisplay in Psalm 100 is the
antidote to what we've beenconfessing this morning in terms

(14:51):
of our pride.
Our human pride is being overlyself-aware.
The kind of joy that you see ondisplay here is a joy that's
lost in wonder and praise ofanother.
The self becomes somethingalmost distant and in the
background here's the irony ofthe Bible I find my true self by

(15:12):
losing the self in the presenceand the majesty of God.
So this is a joy that danceswith the angels.
It's a joy that sings with thechoirs of heaven.
Well, number two, I want you tonotice the scope of the psalm.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord.
Can I go back to the King JamesVersion?
Are you okay with that?

(15:33):
All ye lands or all the earth?
This isn't quite as poetic, butwe might say it's something
like make a joyful noiseeveryone and everything and the
whole earth.
I've, as I've mentioned, Ithink I've known this song since
I was a child, but I've nevertook into account how

(15:55):
significant and reallyprovocative this opening line is
in psalm 100.
If you notice the language ofverse 3, we are his people, we
are the sheep of his pasture.
That language, right there, isIsrael language.
That's the covenant with Israellanguage I will be your God and

(16:19):
you will be my people.
A joke that if Moses soldT-shirts at Mount Sinai, that
would be the slogan I will beyour God and you will be my
people.
But here you have the psalmist,including the whole of the
earth within the scope of thiscovenantal language with Israel,
this Israel-specific language.

(16:40):
Those who worship the livingGod, those who are in the courts
of God praising him.
That's you this morning.
Faith Presbyterian.
We are His people, we're thesheep of His pasture, and that
includes the Chinese, thePortuguese, the Ghanans and the
Nigerians and the Egyptians, theMexicans, and we can go on and

(17:03):
on.
So when we get to this ultimatedestination, this Mount Everest
of a psalm, and it becomes thenormal mode of our existence and
being, when that happens we'regoing to find all kinds of
people there, lost in praise andworship and experiencing the
fullness of joy.
This is why Revelation tells usevery tribe and nation and

(17:26):
tongue praising the Lamb.
Psalm 100 anticipates thisfuture hope for the whole of the
earth.
Make a joyful noise unto theLord, all ye lands, and we are
and we will.
Thirdly and lastly, before areally long conclusion that
should make all the kids alittle nervous, I'm joking.

(17:49):
What's the cause of our joy?
The being and the character ofGod, for this has just to share
with you all this has sat on meover the past couple of years.
Over the past couple of years,the centrality and the
importance in the Bible ofknowing God.
My first real theology bookthat I read as a teenager was a

(18:14):
little book by JI Packerentitled Knowing God.
I still have it on my bookshelfat home.
I pull it off every once in awhile to look at these
incredibly insightful marginalnotes from my 18-year-old self
Little notes like wow and verygood.

(18:35):
I'm sure Mr Packer reallyappreciated the affirmation that
I was giving him in my notes.
Knowing God.
Psalm 100 makes clear why thewhole world can sing for joy.
Why can we be joyful people?
Because we find our meaning andpurpose in the presence of God.
We find our meaning and purposebecause of who God is.

(18:55):
There's a movement, a kind ofrhythm to Psalm 100.
Moves to verse 3 and then movesagain to verse 5.
And you can see the buildingeffect to verse 3, where it
calls us, right in the middle ofthe psalm, to know God.
It's a command and of courseyou all are Bible enough people

(19:21):
around here at FaithPresbyterian to know that the
call to knowledge is not merelya kind of intellectual
summarizing of basic facts.
There's some of that, there'scontent, but there's a reason
why the Bible can say thingslike Adam went in and knew Eve
and they had a child.
That's not an intellectualenterprise.
I don't think what you havehere is the depth of our being

(19:44):
in relationship to the livingGod, so that our whole person is
directed toward him.
That's knowing God.
Several years ago, two years agonow, I was teaching a lay
academy class at Beeson DivinitySchools Monday night.
Don't tell anybody.
I told you this.
I don't prepare for thoseclasses, I just kind of walk in
and we'll see what happens.

(20:05):
Could be good, could be bad.
Please don't repeat that.
But I was doing Isaiah.
I love the book of Isaiah, Ihad taught it before.
66 chapters, massive book.
Here's what verse 2 of Isaiah 1says.
I mean, we're not even out ofthe gate and Isaiah says my

(20:27):
children have rebelled againstme.
A donkey knows its master, evenan oxen knows where to get its
food, but my people do not know,and I don't know why.
But that evening lecturingMonday night and a lot of
preparation, shoulder shook mein that moment to see that

(20:52):
prophet Isaiah linked togetherthe rebellion against God with
the lack of knowing God.
Or, if I can put it in positiveterms, knowing God and being
rebellious against God cannotoperate in the same space.
They cannot coexist.

(21:13):
To pursue the knowledge of Godis to enter into the space of
our very reason for being.
Flip the page in Isaiah toIsaiah, chapter 2.
Guess what you find Kind of likea JRR Tolkien mythological
moment as Mount Zion, which is,you know, mount Zion's, not even

(21:35):
Chiha, you know, in terms ofheight in Israel, and now this
thing is bursting through tobecome the largest mountain in
the universe.
It's the highest mountain andall the nations are streaming to
Mount Zion.
Why are they streaming?
Because the nations want toknow God.
We've heard about the God ofIsrael.
Let's stream there so that wecan know his ways and understand

(21:58):
who he is.
That's what the psalmist istelling us.
Why we can have joy?
Because God has given himselfto be known.
That, by the way, is thegreatest mystery of the universe
.
The god of the living, whospoke the world into existence
by the agency of the word, hisson and the power of the Spirit,

(22:20):
has given himself to be knownin the servant form of Jesus of
Nazareth.
And words on a white page.
It is remarkable.
Philosophers don't like it and Isay to them too bad.
This is how God has spoken intothe world.
We're invited to know him.
Look at verse 5.
Know who your God is, see who'smade us.

(22:48):
All the translations say we arehis.
Another way of saying this iswe are not our own.
We are his people and the sheepof his pasture.
Joyful people are theologians,not abstract nerdy types
necessarily like me.
I get it, I know I told thefirst service.
I walk into all these coolcoffee shops in Homewood,

(23:12):
alabama, or downtown Birminghamand all the young people are
there and I walk in, the musicturns off immediately and then
when I walk out, the partystarts up again.
I get it.
I walk out, the party starts upagain, I get it.
But the theologian's task is notjust for your pastors or for
seminary nerds like me.
We're all called to pursue theknowledge of the living God

(23:33):
because he's given himself to beknown.
He's given himself to be namedand related to the whole earth's
task.
The whole task of your ownbeing can be summed up in this
question God, I want to know whoyou are so that I can worship
you more joyfully, so that I cantrust in you more completely

(23:59):
and proclaim your name morefaithfully.
And proclaim your name morefaithfully.
Psalm 100 wants every one of usto be theologians and it links
our joy think of this.
It links your joy to the questto know God.
Do you remember what Hosea, theprophet, lamented in chapter 6?
Oh, my people are dying forlack of knowledge.

(24:21):
They do not know who I am.
That's crest one.
Then crest five, the finalverse.
Why, joy in God's presence.
Why are we joyful?
Because God is good, becausehis loving kindness endures

(24:45):
forever and his faithfulnessabides from generation to
generation.
One of the joys of coming toFaith Presbyterian Church and
getting to sit on the front rowis watching families move into
these various corners of thechurch to commune together
around the Lord's Supper.
It's a beautiful thing toobserve.
I love that.
You do it every week, and whatI really like, too, is the
70-year-old, the 50-year-old andthe three-year-old.

(25:07):
Here they come, and that's whatPsalm 100 is telling us the
faithfulness that you knew whenyou were 20 and you're still
experiencing now that you're 70,that's for your children too.
It's for them, it's not justfor you.
From every generation, from oneto the next, we're destined for
joy because God is good, andthink of this.

(25:30):
There's a little theology 101here.
God doesn't just do good things.
We know he does.
God is the very essence of thegood, the good.
He can be nothing other thangood.
He's the fullness of himself.

(25:51):
God doesn't discover goodnesslike you and I do.
He doesn't choose to do goodthings.
God is good, and any goodnessthat you experience is a
derivative of the goodness thatis God himself, all good things
in this world that you know andhave enjoyed whisper of him.
All of them do.

(26:12):
I'm also joyful because God isloyal to His loyal love toward
his people will endure, thepsalmist tells us, forever.
It's limitless.
Think of this.
God's loyal love can never beexhausted.
By its very nature, god's loveis generative, it compounds on
itself, it builds on itself.

(26:32):
God doesn't have to generatemore love, he doesn't have to
dig deep to be loyal to hisfrail and faithless children.
His love endures forever andhis faithfulness is primed and
ready for one generation intothe next generation, on and on
into eternity.
We're not our own.
He made us.

(26:53):
We are his.
His goodness, his eternal love,his generational faithfulness
led his son to a cross, to thejaws of sin and death, and then
miraculously propelled him backinto life.
And this is why Psalm 100invites you into joy, real,
abiding joy.

(27:15):
Okay, a few concluding comments.
The atheistic philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche lamented
that Christians are often peoplewith no joy.
Let me say something I don'twant to take away from the
difficulties of life or theirsorrows In a room this size.
I imagine many of you in hereare carrying deep and real

(27:39):
sorrows and senses of loss.
It can be more acute in someseasons than others.
So I'm not in any waydiminishing that.
But have you ever met GoodFriday Christians who don't
really know how to do EasterSunday joy all that well?
Well, early in my marriage mywife and I were in a church who

(28:00):
don't really know how to doEaster Sunday joy all that well.
Early in my marriage my wifeand I were in a church that had
this tendency, at least in theseason where they could do some
Lent.
This was a Lent.
Church Songs often sounded likeLent.
We talked a lot aboutbrokenness and sorrow and the
existential weight of just being, and my wife and I were kind of

(28:21):
new to the liturgical world andthe church calendar.
So we entered into theheaviness of Lent and the music
that went along with it, kind ofsour and dour.
But when Easter Sunday came andI remember this because we were
in a small group, we weretalking about this we entered
into Lent.
It's Easter next Sunday, let'sgo Out with the dower and in
with the joy.

(28:42):
But Sunday, easter Sunday, fella little flat, and this is not
hyperbole.
I remember one of our friendsleaving church in tears that day
saying to us I can't go throughthe heaviness of Lent, with no
Easter to look forward to,because we've been made for
Easter, we've been made for joy.
There will still be Lent whilewe remain and earth remains in

(29:08):
its current state.
But can I be clear with youthis morning there will be no
Lent in heaven, none, justEaster Sunday forever.
Just Psalm 100.
There are two Christians fromthe previous century who I think
can be called theologians ofjoy Eastern Orthodox theologian

(29:30):
by the name of AlexanderShmaimon I've got a slight man
crush on him and the other onethat I think all of you probably
know CS Lewis.
I was talking to a friend onthe phone a couple weeks ago.
Both he and I have been readingthrough Shmaimon's journals
that he wrote from the mid-1970sto the early 1980s when he
passed away, and he reflects.
Shmaimon does a lot on theimportance and centrality of joy

(29:53):
for the Christians.
So I went hunting in hisjournals.
I wanted to read you a fewexcerpts.
By the way, I just want to saythat I don't like being read to
by other people, but you're hereand can't go anywhere, so I'm
going to do that.
Sorry.
This is what he says, I believe, in December, the 3rd, 1976.
I think God will forgiveeverything except lack of joy,

(30:15):
when we forget that God createdthe world and saved it.
Joy is not one component ofChristianity.
And here's the phrase that Ilove this is a t-shirt phrase
Joy is the tonality ofChristianity that penetrates
everything, all of our faith,all of our vision.

(30:36):
Where there is no joy,christianity becomes fear and
therefore torture.
He says this on a day veryclose to this one.
The world is having fun.
Nevertheless, it's joyful,because joy different from what

(30:56):
we call fun, can only be fromGod, only from one on high.
Not only joy of salvation, butsalvation itself as joy.
Every Sunday we have a banquetwith Christ.
We're about to experience thisas a congregation.
We're invited to his table andto his kingdom, but then we sink

(31:19):
back into our problems and intofear and suffering.
Shmaimon was a dean of aseminary in New York.
He had to deal with all theadministrative problems of an
academic institution.
One journal entry he said sucha bad faculty meeting today
could only go home, sit on thecouch and watch Carol Burnett,
like that's great.
That's great.
Could only go home, sit on thecouch and watch Carol Burnett

(31:40):
Like that's great, that's great.
He says God saved the worldthrough joy.
Without joy, christianity isincomprehensible.
Fear not, said the angels, forbehold, I bring you good tidings
of great joy.

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Cs Lewis, the other theologianof joy, is so good because he
helps us to define joy.
I think and I'm no Lewis expert, I'm really late to the Lewis
game, I get it but I do thinkLewis is a theologian of joy and
genuine pleasure.
Let me ask you this If someoneasked you to define joy, how

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would you define it?
Let's think about that.
I've struggled with that.
I even pulled out my Hebrewfancy lexicons for the Hebrew
word for joy, which is simcha.
Let me look up what the Hebrewhas to say about simcha and what
was the definition of simcha.
Let me look up what the Hebrewhas to say about simcha and what
was the definition of simcha.
Joy, jubilation.

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Well, that didn't help me much.
What is it?
How do we define it?
This is how Lewis defines it.
He links it really to thecontent and the substance of
Psalm 100.
Content and the substance ofPsalm 100.

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All joy, lewis says, reminds us.
It's never a possession, alwaysa desire for something longer
ago or further away, or stillabout to be In another place.
In Surprised by Joy, lewisdefines joy as an unsatisfied
desire which is itself moredesirable than any other

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satisfaction In mereChristianity.
He would later say if I find inmyself a desire which no
experience in this world cansatisfy, the most probable
explanation is that I was madefor another world.
I've been made for Psalm 100.
In other words, for Lewis, joyis the bliss of desire that

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necessarily looks to God and theworld to come for its ultimate
satisfaction.
It's not something that can beanalyzed.
Joy must be in the language ofPsalm 100, entered into, enter
his gates with thanksgiving.
The experiences of joy in thisworld tap into our deepest
longings for the next world andthe joy that we experience while

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we're still here in this world.
God gives us these moments.
Think about the bliss ofworship, sitting on the front
row listening to your singingkind of wash over the front.
What a joyful experience.
The tender moment that you havewith your spouse, the smile
that will come across your facewhen your child says something

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genuinely funny.
The Christmas Eve gathering wheneverything just pops and goes
right.
The Christmas Eve gatheringwhen everything just pops and
goes right.
The evening on the porch withyour best girlfriends or guy
friends, those places where youcan just exhale, and all of
those moments, those joyfulmoments that tap into our

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longings.
They anticipate home, for youand for me, where our true
selves will be found, to theland of the living, where death
is no more.
The world of Psalm 100, theworld of immeasurable and
inexhaustible joy, a world thatwe can taste and experience now,

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maybe even today, maybe realjoy today for you, but whose
fullness awaits another day.
O be joyful in the Lord all yelands.
Enter his gates withthanksgiving, enter his gates
with praise, amen.