I am reading the Psalms. A couple of years ago, I began reading through the Bible, cover to cover. I didn’t want to use one of those read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plans, though those are fine. I didn’t want to feel rushed. I didn’t want a schedule that would force me to read a certain number of chapters each day. I wanted to read at my own pace, lingering in some sections for a while, if they were speaking to my soul. And a few months back, I arrived at the Psalms.

And like other sections of the Bible that I had already read, some of the Psalms are wonderful, and some are a bit hard to get through. Some of them have language that is difficult. I’m sure that they spoke well in the ancient Hebrew of 2000 years ago, but I had a tough time making sense out of some of them. But then a few weeks ago, I came to Psalm 100. It contains only five verses, and they are easy to understand. The truths are simple and straightforward.

It is really a series of seven commands that ends with the reason for those commands: (1) make a joyful noise to the Lord, (2) serve the Lord, (3) come before him with singing, (4) know that the Lord is God, (5) come before him with thanks and praise, (6) thank him, and (7) bless him. These seven commands seem to all revolve around the idea of worship. And then at the end of the psalm, the writer gives the reason that we should do those seven things: the Lord is good, his love and faithfulness endure forever. His goodness toward us is felt in his constant, everlasting, never-ending love and faithfulness toward us. So really, you could summarize the message of Psalm 100 like this. Worship God because he is good.

Lots of psalms, as well as other passages in the Bible, tell us to worship God because he is worthy of our worship, and he is. And some tells us to worship him because of what he has done for us—created us and/or redeemed us. And that is true, too. But this psalm tells us to worship God simply because he is good, specifically good to us.

We don’t often associate worship with goodness. When I think of the concept of worship, I think of things like reverence and awe and standing before God in all of his majesty and might. I think of a throne room and angels flying above him or standing around him. But I don’t as quickly think of worshipping God because he is good to me. When I think of God being good to me, my response is not so much worship as it is thankfulness or loving and serving him in return. But Psalm 100 tells us that when we think of, and even experience, the goodness of God, the never-ending love and faithfulness of God, our response should be worship.

Now why is that? Well, anybody that is good to us, especially good in a significant way, has a certain power over us. What I mean by that is this. When someone is good to us, we feel we owe them something in return. We owe them our attention, our consideration, our respect. We owe them our service. We want to pay them back. When someone serves me at a restaurant and goes out of their way to do good to me, then I give them a larger tip. I owe them that. If someone does something kind to me, then I owe them a debt of gratitude, at least. Really, I owe them some kind of service. And when we owe someone, they have a certain power over us.

That is the way it is with God. He is good. He is eternally good, and eternally good to us. It says that his love and faithfulness endure forever. They never end. His goodness and love and faithfulness toward us never end. Think about that. God is always, always good to us. He is never not good to us. And because of that, we intrinsically know that we can never repay that never-ending, constant love. We always stand before him in his debt, and yet he never requires payment for that debt. It is a debt too big, too great, for us to pay—in fact, only the perfect Son of God could pay that debt for us. And so, our only response to this God, whose love and goodness toward us never ends, is worship—joyful singing, gladness, thanksgiving, adoration, worship.