Sermon by Herman Kauffman
Timbercrest
March 17, 2004

Psalm 100

The Year is approximately 500 B.C.

The Place is Jerusalem.

The exile in Babylon is over. The people have begun to come home to Jerusalem after generations have lived in exile and captivity in the foreign land of Babylon.⁽¹⁾ It has taken nearly twenty years to rebuild the Temple. Work had stopped numerous times as the people simply struggled for mere existence. But the Jewish leaders were fully aware of the importance of rebuilding the Temple. The Jewish community returning from exile to Jerusalem desperately needed a focal point to rally the community's faith.⁽²⁾

Now the Temple has been restored. The city and its temple are like new and there is a new spirit within the community. There is that feeling, that starting-over feeling, when the nation feels young and fresh. Here we are in Jerusalem on a festival day, and it's time to worship God.⁽³⁾

The worshipers are parading through the streets of Jerusalem, led by the Temple Choir, approaching the Temple. And as they walk, they are singing with voices loud and triumphant. Can you feel the excitement and the joy in their song? Listen carefully to the ancient Hebrew words translated into English for you and I.

The Temple Choir sings, inviting the people to worship:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
Come into his presence with singing.

The Worshipers respond with a chorus of affirmation:

Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Now they have arrived at the Temple, in all of its beauty; built by King Solomon nearly 500 years early, destroyed with the city a century ago, and now restored in all its splendor as a place of worship. They come to the Temple gates, and there in the inner court of the Temple, another choir awaits them with this invitation:

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
And his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.

The Worshipers again respond with singing:

For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
And his faithfulness to all generations.

There is much to love and appreciate in the Old Hundredth Psalm.

First, in its original setting in post-exilic Jerusalem, it was an invitation to worship God with a spirit of joy and gladness, with singing and thanksgiving.

Secondly, for you and I the Psalm is an invitation to worship the same God in that same spirit.

Finally, there is within this Psalm an emphasis on six central beliefs of God's people thousands of years ago which continue to be among our core beliefs today.

The first three of these core beliefs are found in verse 3:

• Know that the Lord is God.

• It is God that made us.

• We are God's people.

The next three core beliefs are found in verse 5:

• The Lord is good.
  
• God's steadfast love endures forever.
  
• God's faithfulness endures to all generations.
  

Know that the Lord is God. It sounds simple enough doesn't it? But how often over the centuries have God's people forgotten this simple truth? In the Wilderness of Sin, on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, God's people built for themselves a Golden Calf - like the gods of their neighbors. But God told his people: "I am the Lord your God ... you shall have no other gods before me."

It is God that made us. There may be those who believe that you and I evolved from the creatures of the earth, but since the beginning of faith God's people have told and retold the stories of creation found in Genesis 1 and 2. Stories of faith that we are created by God and in the very image of God.

We are God's people. This affirmation of faith goes back to the earliest covenant between God and Abraham. I will be your God and you will be my people. It was a covenant made and renewed over the years. A covenant sealed in the blood of the paschal lamb that night when the people left Egypt, a covenant recalled as they journeyed through the wilderness into the Promised Land, and a covenant remembered during a century of exile. Now they are starting over again in Jerusalem, in the Temple, and still we are God's people.

The Lord is good. God is good. We still echo that affirmation in our simplest prayers - the ones we teach to our children: God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. O, to be sure there are moments when the tragedy of life fills us with doubts. There were those moments of captivity in Egypt, of wandering through a desert wilderness, of being captive exiles in a foreign land ... but through it all, our faith tells us that "the Lord is good."

God's steadfast love endures forever. God is always loving and kind. God's love is not something that comes and goes, it endures forever. This Psalm is an affirmation of God's steadfast love reflected some 500 years before Christ. You and I have even more evidence of God's steadfast, enduring love in Jesus the Christ. John 3:16 reminds us that "...God so loved that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

Not only God's love but ... God's faithfulness endures to all generations. There was the generation of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac (born of God's promise), of Jacob (later called Israel), of Joseph and the tribes of Israel. There were the generations in the wilderness, the promised land, the exile. God's faithfulness to all generations ... including our own generation. God's faithfulness was known by the 1^st generation of Brethren in Germany in the early 18^th century and to those who first came to America and settled in Pennsylvania and Virginia, to those who later would move west into Ohio and Indiana. God's faithfulness endured to your parents and grandparents, to your generation and mine, and God will be faithful to future generations as well.

The year is 2004

The place is Timbercrest

The years of labor in the workplace is over. The people have come home to Timbercrest to live out their retirement years together in worship and fellowship. Each morning begins with worship in their chapel - a time to be restored anew with a new spirit for a new day, a time to worship the God who has been with them for 70, 80, 90 years of faithful living.

They have gathered, as have generations before them, to:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
Come into his presence with singing.

They have gathered to reaffirm the beliefs they have learned:

Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Worship begins as they:

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
And his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.

And now the worship is ending, the Timbercrest Community prepares to leave, knowing that:

... the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
And his faithfulness to all generations.

Prayer:

Thank you, God, for who you are in relation to who we are.
We thank you, we praise you, we love you.
Go with us and guide us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

1. "Old Hundredth," James R. Shott, Best Sermons 1, p. 104, Harper & Row 1988

2. "A History of Israel," John Bright, pp. 364-372, The Westminster Press 1975

3. Shott, op. Cit.