A Psalm For Every Season

Psalm 100 as a Thanksgiving Psalm

I've chosen Psalm 100 to minister today to your hearts and souls. It is a quintessential Thanksgiving psalm. In fact, it is the only psalm that explicitly identifies itself as a, if you notice under the heading, a song of praise for the Lord's faithfulness to His people, it says your Bible should say, a psalm of thanksgiving, a psalm of thanksgiving.

It was actually this psalm that our forefathers, the pilgrims, chose to praise God with as they went through many tribulations and afflictions to make it to this land. And as they set foot on this land, they chose Psalm 100 to praise God and give thanks to the Lord.

So it is a psalm of thanksgiving, rightfully so. And that it's for, it explains, number one, how to give thanks. Second, it tells us why to give thanks. And third, last, it provides the best known invitation to give thanks.

Incredible amounts of worship are poured forth to give thanks to God. Incredible. Amazing. Amazing grace. Flowing from this psalm, 100, for 3 ,000 years and more, we're diving in today to hear what God has to say about thanksgiving.

So please turn with me in your Bible to Psalm 100. There are only five verses, but they are power-packed, they are full, pregnant with truth. And I pray that the Lord will help us be engaged to hear what He has to say to us in these.

Five verses.

Actually, Brother Keith mentioned this in the opening last Lord's Day. It's a great opening as well, but there is so much that can be said. And believe me, it's like Psalm 23. It's short, but it's so comprehensive.

It's so packed, there is absolutely no way, even within this hour, that I will exhaust all the truth that's poured forth in these five verses. It's incredible. And that shows that it's not man's word, it's God's word.

This is the old 100th. The old 100th, as they said. And it's a song of praise for the Lord's faithfulness to His people, as I've already said. A psalm of thanksgiving. So hear the word of the living God, beginning with verse 1.

And I'm reading from the New King James Version this morning. 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 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. And His mercy is everlasting. And His truth endures to all generations. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful word that God has for us from Psalm 100. The Westminster Catechism, as you well are familiar with, gives the very first question that comes to my mind here.

What is the chief end to man? A simple but profound question, and it has a simple and profound answer. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. This psalm pours forth this. This is a psalm for every season, just not for one season.

But it is a thanksgiving psalm. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Our very reason for being, our very reason that we exist, as you can see in Revelation, that God says we exist, is to praise Him.

Our reason for being, our purpose of our being, is to glorify God, to worship God, is no doubt the single most important thing in our life as a child of God. In his classic sermon, A .W. Tozer preached a sermon in which he preached the whole counsel of God, but I really believe personally as I've read Tozer down through the years, he really had a heart to worship God.

Ravenhill said that as he knew him personally as a good friend, he said many times he would dismiss his secretary from any church business and he would lock his door and just go into his study and just fall on his belly and worship God for hours.

What an example. And you wonder why God used that man in his generation. The sermon he preached on was called Worship, The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church, and Tozer says this about worship. He begins with a question in this particular section, and he says, Why did Christ come?

Why was He conceived? Why was He born? Why was He crucified? Why did He rise again? Why is He now at the right hand of the Father? And the answer to these questions is, as Tozer says, in order that He might make worshipers out of rebels, in order that He might restore us again to the place of worship that we knew when we first were created.

And that is so true. This is what God has done in Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, in redemption. As Brother Keith read Psalm 107, that's the story of redemption. This is what God does in our fallenness, in our depravity, in being ruined from sin.

And He restores us back in even a greater way than Adam and Eve were in the garden. After Jesus made His glorious triumphant entry into Jerusalem in Luke 9, chapter 19, verse 37 -40, as you well are familiar with, the Gospel record says this, then as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen,.

Saying,.

Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And in verse 39 has such a profound statement, and a question with an answer that Jesus gives in a loving rebuke.

And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd and said, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. And He answered and said to them, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.

I love that. That's what's so profound. God will be praised. And the Bible says in Psalm, I believe it's Psalm 50, chapter 50, that it's almost like the entire Psalm is a rebuke, but there's one section at the end of it that says, but God that is glorified will be praised.

He inhabits the praise of His people. God will be praised. God will be glorified. After all, He created angels and angelic beings and creatures in heaven to glorify and to praise Him for all eternity.

Now, He makes man in His own image. Man falls, and yet through Jesus Christ, man is restored to worship and glorify God. All of creation is created to worship God and glorify God. You even have some of the Psalms that says, even the trees of the fields will glorify God and clap their hands.

And Jesus, as we just read, said, if these do not praise God, the stones immediately would cry out. Psalm 100 is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving to God. It is a well-known psalm that emphasizes the universal nature of God's kingship.

The psalm is a benediction to the series of psalms which are occupied with the Lord's kingdom rule, which are Psalm 93, Psalm 95. These all are packed together as clusters. And through the psalms to 100 is a psalm of thanksgiving and praise to God.

You see, this is known as a cluster of royal psalms. A cluster of royal psalms to God and thanksgiving and praise to God. The King, the King of glory, comes from the chord of David's harp, the sweet singer of Israel, a man after God's own heart, inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself, which praises God.

His praise and worship to the King of glory is full of delightful thanksgiving to the one who is worthy to receive glory and honor and praise and thanksgiving, for He created all things by His will and by His desire.

They exist, as the Scripture says, and were created in revelation. Beloved, that's going to be our occupied position throughout all eternity as we praise the only one that is worthy to be praised. Most of the psalm of 100 is a call to praise and worship here and thanksgiving.

So let's look into this wonderful psalm. While verse 3 and verse 5 give to us the very reasons for that worship, Psalm 100 is a descriptive manual, I like to say, a manual on worship. This is why God saves us again.

To make us worshipers. To love Him, to adore Him. For the Father seeks true worshipers. True worshipers to worship Him in spirit and truth. And if we are not worshiping Him in spirit and truth, we are not worshiping God acceptable.

It must be in spirit and truth. And that's why we need the help of the Holy Spirit, that our worship would be acceptable to a most holy God, through Jesus Christ, through the blood covenant. Psalm 30 verse 4 exhorts God's people to sing unto the Lord, O you saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.

His holiness is the attribute of attributes. Beloved, how many times throughout the entire Bible mentions that God is holy. Just not holy in that He's the most, most holy God. He is holy, holy, holy. As R .C. Sproul said many, many times as he was here on this earth and teaching in his most wonderful way, exuberant, passionate.

He said it is the only attribute of God that is raised to the third degree. That should tell us something about God. He is holy, holy, holy. His holiness is an attribute of attributes. Psalm 27 verse 4 says this,.

It speaks of the beauty of the Lord, which is none other than the beauty of holiness. That is God's beauty. Psalm 110 verse 3 says,. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power and in the beauties of holiness.

From the womb of the morning you have due of your youth. The Puritan Stephen Cronach put it this way, Power is God's hand or arm. Omniscience, His eye. Mercy, His bowels. Eternity, His duration. But His holiness is His beauty.

Think of that. The beauty of the Lord is His holiness. And Scripture exhorts us to worship Him in the beauty of His holiness. That's why worship is so serious, isn't it? When we worship God, it's a very serious thing.

It's not a time for clowns. And all this nonsense that the so-called church of the tares is bringing about today. Making jokes of it. God is not the subject of joking. All you have to do is ask Ananias and Sapphira about that.

According to 2 Chronicles chapter 20 verse 21, God appointed singers of Israel that should praise Him in the beauty of His holiness. So why did God appoint singers for this? Verse 21 gives us the answer.

And when they had consulted with the people, He appointed those who should sing to the Lord and who should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army and were singing. And what did they say?

Praise the Lord for His mercy endures forever. How many times is that repeated in Scripture? And we heard this today from Psalm 107. Beloved, it's the battle song of the redeemed. This is our battle song.

What is that? Praise the Lord for His mercy endures forever. Praise Him. Praise Him. Let everything that has breath praise Him. We have a song of praise of thanksgiving. Why? Because God is merciful. God is full of love and kindness towards us.

He is everlasting. And only those who are redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb, washed in His blood, dressed in the clothes of the holy attire, symbolic of sacred setting apart, which is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, can worship God acceptably.

And only God's people truly knows what it means to worship Him acceptably. So God accepts only worship that is dressed in the righteous attire of Jesus Christ. Dressed in His righteousness by faith alone to the praise and honor of His holiness.

That's the only really way we can come before a holy God and worship Him acceptably is being dressed in the righteousness of Christ. Because our righteousness is filthy as filthy rags. Well, we look at Psalm 100 today and we had the manual of how to worship and praise God, beloved, acceptably.

Psalm 100 literally shouts God's praise in these five wonderful verses. And there has been thousands of books, beloved, written by good godly men, and I even would say the Puritans, and they would agree with this statement.

But that would encourage you and bless you and teach us how to worship God. But let me say this in all due respect, none of them can even come close to this one chapter, Psalm 100, with five verses that teaches us and instructs us of how and who to worship God.

Why? Because God is the speaker here. God is the speaker and this is God's manual on worship. The most holy God, the almighty God, the triune God, the eternal God. Notice in verse 1, worship is directed.

It's directed. Directed unto who? The Lord. The Lord. Notice what it says. Make a joyful shout to the Lord.

All you lands.

Explanation point. Worship is always active. Verse 2, serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Worship is knowledgeable. Verse 3, know that the Lord, He is God. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Worship is thankful. Verse 4, enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His holy name. His name.

Worship is justified. Verse 5, the Lord is good and His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures to all generations. So, the psalm can be divided up into two sections. The first section is a call to praise to worship the Lord.

So first we, as God's people, are to praise the Lord joyfully. And second, we are to serve the Lord with gladness. Third, we are to come before His presence with singing. And also we are to know, that's important, that the Lord is God for His mighty power and His deeds.

Then the second section is a call to thank the Lord. So it's first of all a call to praise the Lord, but it's also a call to thank the Lord. And if verse 1 through 3 calls us into His presence to praise Him joyfully with singing, then verse 4 and 5, God calls us to thank Him for everlasting goodness and mercy.

Those wonderful two attributes that stands out. And notice David repeats that in Psalm 23, 6. Surely goodness and mercy shall, what? Follow me. It follows me. It follows you. All the days of my life. Not some of the days, but all the days.

Isn't it wonderful? That goodness and mercy. Many preachers have preached many messages on this. They call it the hounds of heaven. Goodness and mercy follows you, goes after you. And then he says, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And it's not talking about the dwelling place here on earth. He's talking about the heavenly dwelling place, where he will soar with God and fly away and worship God forever and ever, just like you and I will one day, as our time here on this earth is just a dressing room for eternity.

Then we will soar into the eternal dwelling place to worship our God forever and ever. So verse 1 through 3 gives us the invitation to worship, to call, to come to worship and praise Him. Then verse 4 and 5 tells us and instructs us why we worship Him.

Why we worship Him. Verse 1 and 2 tells us what to do. What is it? What are we to do? Well, number 1, we're to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Number 2, serve the Lord with gladness. 3, come. There's an invitation.

Before His presence was singing. Verse 4 tells us where to go. Where do we go? We go into His presence. Isn't that a wonderful place to go? He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

We go into the hiding place of God, under the wings of God as pictured so beautifully as like a mother hen brooding and loving her little chicks. The girls was over yesterday and one of them said, I think one of our hens is starting to brood.

And they said, oh boy, we can't wait to have little chickens. And I'm telling you what, these hens are very protective over their chicks. And that's the way God is. He's protective over us, His very own.

Under His wings, we can trust. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Verse 4 tells us where to go. Into His presence with thanksgiving and praise. Verse 3 and 5 tells us what to know.

What to know. What are we to know? Now listen to this carefully. This is such a wonderful truth. 1. Know that the Lord is God. 2. Know that it is He who made us. 3. Know that we are His people. 4. Know that we are the sheep of His pasture.

5. Know that the Lord is good. 6. Know that His mercy is everlasting. 7. And know that His truth endures to all generations. That's the number of completion. Know, know, know who He is.

Who we worship.

Notice the simplicity of this call to worship. The depth and the wonder of it. For the courts of His are His. The gates are His. Notice within this psalm that the focus is on God and God alone. Because He alone deserves and receives worship and praise and glory and honor.

And we see this in the doxologies in Revelation. There are different doxologies and you can look at them in Revelation. But there's like a four-fold doxology. And then it eventually builds up to a seven-fold doxology.

That is a number of completion. Notice within this awesome psalm that the focus again is on God. How do we know this? Because within this psalm, eight times, I count it, eight times. You can check it out.

Check me out, please. But I count it eight. The word His appears speaking of God. Verse 2, come before His presence. Verse 3, we are His people. Verse 3, and the sheep of His pasture. Verse 4, His, enter into His gates.

Verse 4, into His courts. Verse 4, bless His name. Verse 5, His mercy is everlasting. Verse 5, His truth endures to all generations. It's about Him, His. It's His. So first, in the divine order commanded by God, God's people have a call to worship and praise Him.

Verse 1, make a joyful shout, a noise to the Lord. We are to shout joyfully unto Him. God's people are to praise the Lord joyfully. This verse sets the tone for the psalm. It calls God's people to shout for joy unto Yahweh.

The Hebrew verb for make a joyful shout is a highly charged command for public praise. The command is addressed not just to Israel, but to all the earth. Notice that?

All the earth.

Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praise. Psalm 98, verse 4. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praise. The original word here in Hebrew signifies a glad shout.

Shout gladly unto the Lord.

This is worship.

Such a loyal subjects give when their king appears among them. Shout joyfully. It's a shout to the Lord of loyalty and faithfulness. Psalm 66, verse 1 says, Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth, calling for all the earth to praise the living God.

Psalm 95, verse 1. Psalm 95 is one of my most favorite psalms as well. O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. He is our rock. And as Paul says, Christ is that rock.

An invitation to come. Come. As Jesus gave that invitation in Matthew 11. Come unto me, all you labor and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Rest for souls. Rest for your soul. Worship God with tremendous energy.

And all within you, bless His holy name. As David said in Psalm 103. One example that we have, 1 Samuel 10, 24. Scripture says this, After Israel wanted a king to be like other nations, Saul was chosen to be Israel's king.

God permitted it. As we heard today in the Sunday school lesson about providence, God permitted it. Gave the people their desires, so God permits it. And the prophet Samuel said to all the people, Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen?

That there is no one like him among all the people. So the people shouted and said, Long live the king. Long live the king. Or the original Hebrew says it like this, May the king live. Sage Spurgeon says this about joyful worship.

Our happy God should be worshiped by a happy people. A cheerful spirit is in keeping with His nature. His acts and gratitude which we should cherish for His mercies. In every land Jehovah's goodness is seen.

Therefore in every land should be praised. Here will the world be in the proper condition till with one unanimous shout it adores the only God. O ye nations, how long will you blindly reject Him? Your golden age will never arrive till ye with all your hearts reverence Him.

End quote.

Well said. Let's go to verse 2. Serve the Lord. Not only are we to come before Him and shout before Him joyfully, but we also to serve the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. That's the motive. With gladness.

Not sadness.

Come before His presence with singing. He is our Lord therefore He is to be served with joy. Scripture speaks much about joy. With the same kind of joy as though we are bidding to a marriage feast of a celebration.

Not a funeral service. We are to come before His presence with thanksgiving. Do you come before God in your quiet time with Him before Him and sing in His presence? Do you sing His praises? That's a good way to enter into His presence is sing praises to Him.

Sing songs to Him. God sings over you. Scripture says that. He sings over you.

Isn't that amazing?

The almighty God of the universe sings over us little worms.

Wow.

It's mind boggling isn't it? He's our Creator. How much more should we as the creature come into His presence to sing before Him in which we are made in His image. To love Him and adore Him and to worship Him.

That's why He made us. To worship Him and to enjoy Him forever. May we never get over this. Next let's go to verse 3. Tells us what to know. Know what? The text tells us. Know that the Lord He is God.

It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. And here are the reasons we are to be glad in the Lord. First of all, the first reason I see here and I observe is that unlike the gods of the surrounding nations, Yahweh is the Lord.

He is God. He is the one true living God as Jesus says. He's not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. The second reason is, it is He who has made us. He has made us. Do you ever stop and think about that when you comb your hair and in the mirror and brush your teeth.

And the purpose in which God has made you. Your existence, your very existence. How your very being. In Him we live and move and have our being in Him. That we are to love Him, to adore Him, to extol Him, to worship Him.

That's why He created us. That we worship the one true living God. Intelligent, reasonable worship. Not worship and ignorance. And that's what separates God's creation, man, different than the animal kingdom.

They do not have the reason and the capacity to worship God as man does. And you know, I believe, Brother Keith and I had this conversation a while back ago. You look at the birds. You look at the animal kingdom.

They pretty much do more. Now man has fallen in the fallen state. And they do more in commanding and what God commands them to do than what men do. How God must grieve God to see that His own created being, made in His image, on the sixth day, the crown of His creation, has gone so low in sin, and thrown the, so to speak, the analogy here, the gift of worship, the harp, so to speak, into the mud, and cares not about the living God in whom He came from.

And yet the animal kingdom, the birds, the fowls of the air, they obey God's command more than we do in loving God. But God gives us the reasonable capacity to worship. We ought to know that who we worship and why we worship.

Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke this wonderful truth at the well of Jacob. In John chapter 4, verse 21 -24, Jesus said unto the woman there at the well, Believe me, the hour is coming when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem worship the Father.

You worship you know not what. We know what we worship, Jesus said. For salvation is of the Jews. Then He says, But the hour will come, and now is, when the true worshipper shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. Well, the third reason to know is that we are His. We are His. What a wonderful reason.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Listen to Psalm 95, verse 6 and 7. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.

Today, if you will, hear His voice. And then He goes on to say, Harden not your heart. Don't harden your heart. It becomes a warning. Beloved, this is celebrating our covenant keeping God. Psalm 33, 18 -22 says this, Behold, Yahweh, the Lord's eye is on those who fear Him.

Fear Him. Do you fear God this morning? On those who hope in His loving kindness. Do you hope in His loving kindness to deliver their soul from death, to keep them alive in famine? Our soul has waited for Yahweh.

He is our help and our shield. For our heart rejoices in Him because we have trusted in His holy name. Let your loving kindness be on us, Yahweh, since we have hoped in You. Wonderful. Well, let's go to the next section.

The second section of this wonderful psalm. The scripture in this 100th psalm is a call to give thanks to the Lord. To give thanks to the Lord. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.

Be thankful to Him and bless His name. That's the word of the Lord.

It's a command.

Commands are reiterated. And for God, He is good. We are to come before the Lord and worship to praise Him for the beauty of His holiness, as I said earlier. Now God tells us how to come before Him.

Isn't that amazing?

Nothing is left undone. God brings out every detail. He tells us how to come before Him. Let us remember how the prophet Isaiah gave the solemn warning and exhortation to the very religious people in Israel in his day.

In Isaiah chapter 1 verse 12, God speaks, When you come to appear before Me, who has required this at your hand to tread My courts? It's a question from God. God desired sacrifices, but not from people.

Notice what he says. These here whom were very religious externally, they had a form of godliness, but denied the power thereof. They disobeyed God. They disobeyed His commandments. They rebelled against the commandments of the Lord and mistreating others and regarded iniquity in their hearts.

To obey is better than sacrifice, the scripture says. God judges not only our external pious acts, beloved, but more importantly, God judges the attitudes and motives of our hearts. He's the searcher of our hearts, the discerner of our hearts.

So what God is saying is, don't come before Me with your iniquity in your hearts. Don't just come before Me with lip service. And don't come before Me spreading your hands, unless they're holy, and say, you're worshiping Me with your heart, and your heart, as Jesus said, is far from Me.

Just lip service. And scripture says, lip service is hypocrisy. Such warnings that God gives.

Isn't it amazing?

God, again, does not leave out any detail how to come before Him. Well, we should be washed and cleansed. Even though God hates such sacrifices like this, God has a remedy. Isn't that wonderful? He has a remedy.

Verse 16 -20, God says this, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings. Put it away. That's repentance. From before My eyes. Cease to do evil. Verse 17, learn to do good.

Seek justice. Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow. Did not James say in James 1 -27 that this is pure religion and undefiled before God? And then here in verse 18, he says, come now.

When?

Now.

Not tomorrow.

Now.

As Scripture says, Paul said, today, now is the day of salvation. Today is the day of salvation.

Come now. Come now.

Let us reason together.

Notice what God says,.

Reason together. Says the Lord, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. What a promise. Though they shall be white as, red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Verse 19, if you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.

But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Wow.

I don't know about you, but that really sobers me up to say,.

Lord,.

When I come before your presence, help me to come with reverence and humility and brokenness before you, to know that who you are, you are the great king of the universe, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, and we are not to come in there before your presence and with flippantly and frivolously, we must come before the courts of the Lord, clean and washed in the blood of the lamb, enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise.

Notice his gates, his courts. Oh, this is a sermon in itself, beloved. Speaks of the temple of God, the very holy sacred place of God himself.

Verse 5,.

Sums it up, for the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations. Well, I'm going to try to land this plane. We're heading toward our conclusion here. Great song of praise, worship, declares God's goodness and mercy to all people that he alone is faithful, he is true.

That's what he says, right? Jesus said that of himself. He says, I'm true and faithful. Isn't that wonderful? We have the mercy of God. He alone is faithful and true. And his common grace, isn't it amazing that God extends common grace to the nations?

Even now, it extends special grace to his own people, the church, forever and ever. Although this is a psalm, it begins with an explosion of praise, great celebration and might, majesty, dominion, power, and sovereign power of the eternal creator.

The final verse here points us to God's goodness and grace. Mercy is everlasting, mercy that endures forever through time and eternity. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, as Jesus said. Know the way to God, right?

Jesus said that. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one, no man comes unto the Father but by me, but through me. The Lord is, without question, good. And his mercy and his grace most certainly endures through all generations because he's purposed before the foundation of the world to have a redeemed people for himself, to worship him, and to love him.

That's what it says in Ephesians. Ephesians 1. You see the burst of praise that the apostle Paul gives in Ephesians 1. You can turn with me there if you like. I want to read it. Just a few verses. Notice how Paul talks about the redemption in Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father, in verse 3, of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ just as he chose us in him when before the foundation of the world we had nothing to do with that, that we should be holy, set apart, and without blame before him in love, having predestined us, that means marked us out, to the adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.