John Calvin Commentary Psalms 100:1

"Make a joyful noise unto Jehovah, all ye lands." — Psalms 100:1 (ASV)

Make a joyful noise. The Psalmist refers only to that part of the service of God which consists in recounting his benefits and giving thanks. And since he invites all the inhabitants of the earth indiscriminately to praise Jehovah, he seems, in the spirit of prophecy, to refer to the period when the Church would be gathered out of different nations.

Hence he commands (verse 2) that God should be served with gladness, intimating that his kindness towards his own people is so great as to furnish them with abundant ground for rejoicing. This is better expressed in the third verse, in which he first rebukes the presumption of those men who had wickedly revolted from the true God, both in fashioning for themselves gods many, and in devising various forms of worshipping them.

And as a multitude of gods destroys and suppresses the true knowledge of the one God only, and tarnishes his glory, the prophet, very appropriately, calls upon all men to reconsider, and to cease from robbing God of the honor due to his name. At the same time, he denounces their folly in that, not content with the one God, they had become vain in their imaginations.

For, however much they are constrained to confess with their mouth that there is a God, the maker of heaven and earth, yet they are repeatedly and gradually despoiling him of his glory. In this manner, the Godhead is, to the utmost extent of their power, reduced to a nonentity.

Since it is then a most difficult thing to retain men in the practice of the pure worship of God, the prophet, with good reason, recalls the world from its accustomed vanity and commands them to recognize God as God. For we must pay attention to this short definition of the knowledge of him: namely, that his glory be preserved unimpaired, and that no deity be opposed to him that might obscure the glory of his name.

True, indeed, in the Papacy, God still retains his name, but as his glory is not comprehended in the mere letters of his name, it is certain that there he is not recognized as God. Know, therefore, that the true worship of God cannot be preserved in all its integrity until the base profanation of his glory, which is the inseparable attendant of superstition, is completely reformed.

The prophet next makes mention of the great benefits received from God and, especially, desires the faithful to meditate upon them. To say God made us is a very generally acknowledged truth. But, not to mention the ingratitude so common among men, that scarcely one in a hundred seriously acknowledges that he owes his existence to God—although, when hard-pressed, they do not deny that they were created out of nothing—yet every man makes a god of himself and virtually worships himself when he ascribes to his own power what God declares belongs to him alone.

Moreover, it must be remembered that the prophet is not here speaking of creation in general (as I have said before) but of that spiritual regeneration by which he creates anew his image in his elect. Believers are the persons whom the prophet here declares to be God’s workmanship, not in the sense that they were made men in their mother’s womb, but in the sense in which Paul, in Ephesians 2:10, calls them Τὸ ποίημα, the workmanship of God, because they are created unto good works which God hath before ordained that they should walk in them. And in reality, this agrees best with the following context.

For when he says, We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture, he evidently refers to that distinguishing grace which led God to set apart his children for his heritage, so that he may, as it were, nourish them under his wings—a privilege much greater than that of merely being born men.

Should any person be disposed to boast that he has by himself become a new man, who is there that would not hold in abhorrence such a base attempt to rob God of that which belongs to him? Nor must we attribute this spiritual birth to our earthly parents, as if by their own power they begot us; for what could a corrupt seed produce?

Still, the majority of men do not hesitate to claim for themselves all the praise of the spiritual life. Otherwise, what do the preachers of free will mean, unless it is to tell us that by our own endeavors we have, from being sons of Adam, become the sons of God? In opposition to this, the prophet, in calling us the people of God, informs us that it is by his own good will that we are spiritually regenerated.

And by calling us the sheep of his pasture, he lets us know that through the same grace which has once been imparted to us, we continue safe and unimpaired until the end. It might be rendered differently, he made us his people, etc. But as the meaning is not altered, I have retained what was the more generally received reading.