Enter His Gates

Psalm 100:4

When I was a fourteen-year-old boy I had the opportunity to go on to the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. 14-year old boy on the floor where millions of dollars worth of stocks are being traded back and forth with little hand signals and slight nods of the head.

I had absolutely no credentials whatsoever to be on that board. I was a pimple-faced year old boy. But my father’s friend he did have credentials and he simply put a smock on my 14 year old little shoulders and then with a simple word that he spoke to the gatekeeper and I went as if I belong there all the time I entered right in.

After God’s people have been covered in the smock of Christ’s, have been covered by his forgiveness and his life in that thing called the absolution, then they enter into his presence and they do so completely rightly. Boldly even. And they can do it confidently.

So the psalmist encourages this saying

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Psalm 100:4

We enter boldly into the presence of Christ covered in his righteous life and his death for our sins. And so we sing a hymn that says as much it’s called an introit hymn or an entry hymn and when we do that then we also sing another song it’s sometimes called the Gloria and that song simply says “I enter into God’s presence boldly and I do it giving glory where the glory belongs, to God, whose work through his son has placed me rightly here in his presence in right standing with him.”

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, amen.

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