The Psalms for Singers – Psalm Fifty…
Listen to this, all you people! God, the Lord, has spoken.
He has summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting place.
From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined forth.
Our God has appeared and he has not been silent;
a devouring fire blazed before him, and a mighty storm swirled around him.
He summoned the heavens above and the earth below, to sit in judgment on his people.
“Assemble before me, my saints, who have entered into my covenant by sacrifice.”
The heavens revealed his justice, for God is himself the judge.
“Listen, my people, for I am making a pronouncement: Israel, I, God, your God, am testifying against you.
I do not rebuke you because of your sacrifices;
indeed, your burnt offerings are continuously before me.
I will no longer accept a sacrificial bull from your household; nor goats from your pens.
Indeed, every animal of the forest is mine, even the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds in the mountains; indeed, everything that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is mine along with everything in it.
Why should I eat the flesh of oxen or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a thanksgiving praise; pay your vows to the Most High.
Call on me in the day of distress; I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.”
As for the wicked, God says, “How dare you recite my statutes or speak about my covenant with your lips!
You hate instruction and toss my words behind you.
When you see a thief, you befriend him, and you keep company with adulterers.
You give your mouth free reign for evil, and your tongue devises deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.
These things you did, and I kept silent, because you assumed that I was like you.
But now I am going to rebuke you, and I will set forth my case before your very own eyes.”
Consider this, you who have forgotten God – Otherwise, I will tear you in pieces and there will be no deliverer:
Whoever offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifies me, and I will reveal the salvation of God
to whomever continues in my way.”
Why do we study the Bible? God’s Word, yes. Written by men… yep it was. Well, if it was written by the hand of men, then how is it God’s Word? That my friends is a matter of faith. What if it had been written by the hand of God… would that make a difference in whether we believed it or not? There would still be those that would debate if it was really God or not. It really doesn’t matter who wrote it in the end, it’s inspired by God’s Spirit and it matters if we believe the words that are in it. This Psalm gets to the ‘meat’ of belief. Is your belief in God based on something physical that you can see, small, touch and hold in your hand – or is it something that you know in your heart?
Many believe that faith in God is based around rituals that are repetitive and traditional – something that you can continually return to which gives us a sense of consistency and comfort. Even with today’s young people searching for their belief system they tend to shy away from the ‘new’ worship styles and adopt Orthodoxy over evangelical styles. Why is that? I think somewhere along the road we have stopped teaching real faith values to our children – prayer, family, church, Bible teaching… these things are antiquated today and we go for show and feel rather than heart.
Psalm 50 gives us the image of a courtroom, not just any courtroom but God’s courtroom with thunder and lightning like Mt. Sinai and the Ten Commandments. In that powerful image God proclaims that “I am God… YOUR God.” The message of Psalm 50 is pretty strong and specific, and time and space doesn’t give me the opportunity to get into great detail, but God the Judge calls two defendants: His covenant people and those that say they are His covenant people but don’t really believe what they are. Who are the witnesses to be called? God calls all of heaven and earth to judge HIS people. Everyone will stand before God and be judged in front of all of creation… wow.
As God begins the process of judgment to his own people, he speaks of how they have kept the sacrifices but drifted away in spirit. They did all the ritual stuff they were supposed to, but their hearts weren’t right. When they got into trouble they didn’t go to God for help, they trusted in their own ideas.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army was asked what were the chief dangers ahead in the twentieth century. He replied “Religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” That is the most direct answer to religion without reality. When we stand before God for judgment, what is going to matter isn’t going to be the words we have read together or the rituals we have performed but that we have obeyed God with our hearts.
We study God’s Word to know about God. And we better spend a little time understanding that it’s not about ritual.