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Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
Psalm 100:4
Reflect
I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Moses and Pharaoh and the children of Israel. God saved his people from slavery in Egypt, and they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years as they sought His promised land. But what gets lost in the telling of the story is that those 40 years were essentially basic training for what kind of people the Lord wanted his people to be once they reached their destination. He was calling them apart from all other people, and He wanted them to look and act different from everyone else.
It wasn’t just about rules and regulations. Yes, the laws, including the Ten Commandments are vital. But God was calling His people to a different way of worshiping Him. And He gave them a pattern that He needed them to follow. The tabernacle. There were specific measurements for everything and a layout for different places.
- The Gate where His people would enter the tabernacle.
- The Outer Courtyard, where His people would offer their sacrifices to the Lord and cleanse themselves of their sin. Any man could enter the gate and go into the outer court.
- The Holy Place, which was inside the sanctuary. In here, God’s priests would perform certain rituals that honored Him. Only his chosen priests could enter the sanctuary.
- The Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant and the presence of the Lord. Here, the high priest offered a blood sacrifice and burned incense to atone for the sins of the people. Only the high priest could enter the holy of holies, and only once a year on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur.
When the people reached the promised land, they continued to worship Him in this way. More than 400 years later, Solomon had the temple built and the same pattern of worship was followed. On the day Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies was torn in two. This meant that the people were no longer separated from God and that we could individually go to Him.
However, what about the pattern that gets us into His presence. Can we just go from sitting at a desk or from in from of our TV and jump into God’s presence and expect Him to be there waiting for us?
In establishing His tabernacle, God was showing us how to prepare ourselves to approach Him. In Psalm 100, the writer (who we believe to be Moses) said to “enter his gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise!” This mindset prepared the heart of His people to truly worship Him, and the priests had to enter this way, too, before they entered the sanctuary. At that point, their sense of reverence only intensified. The closer they got to the Holy of Holies, the more their hearts drew close to Him. And the High Priest, who was the only one who entered the Holy of Holies, had to ensure that there was no sin in his heart before he entered.
Our worship today should follow the same pattern. As we begin our time of worship, our hearts should be filled with thanksgiving for what the Lord has done. As we continue, we should continue to praise the Lord for who and what He is. And as our worship deepens, we should become more humble and reverent, realizing our place with respect to the Lord. The fist-pumping songs are wonderful, but God spoke this into my heart about worship years ago: “Get your fist out of the air, and get your face on the floor.” True worship should result in us being face-down (at least in our hearts) before the Lord.
Today, I think that really relates to the praise and worship we engage in musically. Wonderfully, Psalm 100 is also about that. Moses wrote, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” God loves music, and He wants us to use it in our worship. But if we want our worship to take us into His presence, we need to make sure we start and end in the right place.
Starting today, I will be publishing a second post every day that offers “Daily Worship.” It will contain a link to a Spotify playlist that has a worship set that is designed to take you from the Gates to the Holy of Holies in about 30 minutes. (That’s just about the average of a daily commute to work for most people.) I pray that these times of worship will be a blessing to you, and that they will help you start your day with your heart, mind and soul connected to the Father.
Reflection copyright © 2024 Doug DeBolt
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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