The Heart of God
Psalm
50:7-15
“Listen, my people, and I will
speak; I will testify against you, Israel: I am God, your God. I
bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices or concerning your
burnt offerings, which are ever before me. I have no need of a bull from your
stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the
forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I
know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine. If
I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is
in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to
the Most High, and call on me in the day of trouble; I
will deliver you, and you will honor me.”
The Psalms are divided up into five
books. As I read through each “book”, I
will select one psalm to write on. In
this second book we find a psalm attributed to an author for the first
time. Asaph was the superintendent of
the Levites that David had assigned to minister praises before the Ark of the
Covenant. While he may be the person who
penned the psalm, it is by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that God Himself
speaks through this psalm. And while it
was written directly to His covenant people Israel, it carries obvious
relevance for covenant people of today as well.
In this psalm the Lord summons the
heavens and the earth to witness the righteous judgments that He is about to
make upon His covenant people. The psalm
then breaks into two separate judgments of different types of covenant people. There are the “wicked” represented in verses
16-22 who claim covenant status by the words of their mouths but who have no
real covenant relationship through either their hearts or their actions. They believe that if they say they belong to
God it is so even though there is no evidence of it in their lives. In fact all evidence would suggest just the
opposite—that they are NOT covenant people.
They are hearers of the word but not doers (see James 1:22). They take part in all forms of evil even
though they know the laws against such action.
They further suppose because they have not experienced immediate repercussions
for their sin that they had gotten away with them. They mistook God’s temporary silence in this
as it not being offensive to Him but He makes it clear that this is not the
case in verse 22 when He says, “I will
tear you to pieces with none to rescue”.
There are many “nominal” Christians in
our world today. They may believe that
they live in a “Christian country” or that because they go to church that they
are a Christian. Our Lord quoting the
Prophet Isaiah spoke of these types of people saying that their lips honor Him but their hearts are far from Him (see Matthew
15:8). Again, the long silence concerning
their true condition gives them a false assurance that all is well with their
soul. They have no real relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ but instead love the world and declare that they are
ok because God loves them and He knows their hearts. Oh that they would realize just how true that
statement is and that it should terrify them rather than give them comfort.
The first group of people that the
Lord addressed in this psalm however in verses 7-15 were “godly Israelites”. They actually practiced their covenantal
religion with the temple worship and sacrifices. The issue that they were rebuked for was not
that they failed to bring their sacrifices but that the ritual of their
religion and sacrifices had superseded true spiritual worship. While their sacrifices were “ever before God”,
He told them that He had no need for any of them. David was right when he wrote, “The earth is
the Lord’s and everything in
it, the world, and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1)”. In sovereign expression God declares that
every animal, every bird, every creature and all of creation belongs to
Him. He has no need for anything from
any person, He is self-sustaining and even if He did require something, He
would not need to get it from man for He own everything already. He tells them
that their sacrifices are not to “feed” Him as some of the pagan peoples
believed sacrifices were for their idol gods.
The truth was, though not expressly stated, the sacrificial acts of worship
were for them, not for God. So what was the instruction they were to receive
in this? “Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill
your vows to the Most High, and call on me in the day of
trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” Let your
worship be true not simply a spiritual exercise. Rejoice in covenant relationship and fulfill
the “vows” that life as one should in a marriage covenant.
The
last part of verse 15 is an incredible revelation of the heart of God when it
comes to covenant relationship. “call on me in the day of trouble; I
will deliver you, and you will honor me.” In the whole section from verse 7-15 we see
that God is not in need of anything from us and that there is a danger of
religion becoming formality and habit.
As with the Israelites of the old covenant, we in the new covenant have
nothing that we can offer God. Our
material goods, our money, our church attendance, all our good works…they all
amount to nothing. The apostle Paul
called all that he could offer “rubbish” which is a nice translation…it is more accurately dung. The prophet Isaiah
expresses a similar idea calling all man’s righteous acts as “filthy rags”, again
the truer translation is much more graphic—in the Hebrew the word is really of a used and dirty menstrual rag. Our works count for nothing. But here is the beauty of our God, “call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you,
and you will honor me.” It HONORS
God for us to need Him! He wants us to call on Him in our need, in
our day of trouble, when we do that it shows our faith that he is God and we
can’t save ourselves. As long as we try
to figure out and solve our problems
ourselves, God cannot step in to deliver miraculously because we are in the
way. We are not trusting God but looking
instead for some other answer. When we
simply call out to Him, He will deliver us and in that we honor Him. This is faith that pleases God—all trust in
Him and none in our own ability. This is
so with our salvation as well…our greatest
need and day of trouble. No works, no
cleaning yourself up to be good enough to come to Him, no getting right first…simply
call out to Him, He will deliver you and you will honor Him and bring glory to
His name.
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Pastor Tony
Freedom Church, USA
Thank you for posting these blogs, they are interesting and well thought out, of course. I enjoy reading them. Vickie
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