Psalm 100

“Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.” Psalm 100:1-5 (NKJV)

Again, the psalmist exhorts the nations (“all you lands”) to serve the Lord.  He does not take a punitive tone, as if to say the Gentiles will get what they deserve when the Lord judges them for their pagan idolatry. Instead, he extends the grace of God to the nations on the condition that they will repent and serve the Lord.  Notice that the “lands” are not called to serve the Lord begrudgingly.  They are to serve Him with gladness.  They are not commanded to shrink back in fear but called to draw near to His presence with singing.  This kind of grace, extended to the Gentiles in Scripture, was lost on the Jewish culture for many generations.  Who knows if they ever embraced it?  It was even a mystery to zealous religious Jews like a young rabbi named Saul, whom we know as the apostle Paul.

“For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of (Messiah)  Christ Jesus for you Gentiles - if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of (Messiah) Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in (Messiah) Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.” Ephesians 3:1-7 (NKJV)

A great benefit of being a follower of Jesus is that He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is unavailable to non-believers.  That is why rabbi Saul (Paul) could be well versed in the Biblical text before he was converted, yet unaware of the context to the extent that he believed he was doing God’s will by persecuting Christians!  But once Paul was saved and filled with the Spirit, he finally understood the Word from God’s perspective.  Thus, he reversed his zeal from persecuting Christians to preaching the gospel, even to GENTILES! When we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of God’s Word, He reveals the deep mysteries of God.

“Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever, because, ‘All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.’ Now this is the Word which by the gospel was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:22-25 (NKJV)