Psalms: Almighty God the LORD

Introduction

Open this evening to Psalm 50

Being bi-vocational means you never get the time with the text you want and tonight is no exception. The text of Psalm 50 is so rich. But before we get there last time we talked about the refuge of God’s people.

When God promises vengeance on his enemies is the one king that will execute it

When God promises refuge for his people, again the same king is there strong tower.

He is the king that is present when he people are in trouble

Even if the ground itself disappears, the mountains fall, the earth melts away, we will not fear.

Jesus promised living waters tot he woman at well and he is the fountain head of those waters, he is the source of the waters that make the city of God glad.

We had to ask what is that city, its not an earthly place, it is the kingdom of God.

The psalm concluded with the statement in verse 10, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Ps 46:10, ESV)

How is God exalted, one could concluded that God needed something, that as many false teachers and modern musics often suggest that God saved us because he needed to be exalted by us.

This is not the case as the Psalmist makes clear in Psalm 50/

Let’s Read

Psalm 50:1–23 ESV

1 The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. 2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. 3 Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. 4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” 6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! Selah 7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. 8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. 9 I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” 16 But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? 17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. 18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. 19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. 21 These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. 22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! 23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

May God bless the reading of His Holy and Infallible Word

Lets Pray

Transition

There are 2 groups of people God addresses in this Psalm,

To one, his people, he exports them to glorify him and look to him and not to think that he gains anything from them.

To the other people, the wicked, God say even your worship to me is wicked.

These to groups exist at every level within the people of God, there are those that are God’s, the ones the Father has given to the son and the one that are pretending, they may not even know they are pretending.

Lets look into verses 1-6 and see what the Lord is saying.

Body

The Mighty God

Psalm 50:1–6 ESV

1 The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. 2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. 3 Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. 4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” 6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! Selah

El Elohim Yhwh The Mighty God Yhwh speaks

Out of Zion, the City of God, we talked about what that city is last time

“calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people”

The people would have grasped this language quickly.

“Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears and call heaven and earth to witness against them.” (Dt 31:28, ESV)

The language is also used in Isaiah 1:2

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.”(Isa 1:2, ESV)

“Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

Declares his righteousness by gathering his people to him through a covenant sacrifice.

Jesus said, “this is the cup of the New covenant in my Blood”

Hebrews tells us

“22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (Heb 12:22–24, ESV)

The people of God come to God through the one prefect sacrifice and come to the one city of God, to the one assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.

Transition

Lets the people should think they enjoy this covenant by sacrifice because of something they provide the Lord goes on in verse 7-15.

God’s People Give Nothing to God

Psalm 50:7–15 ESV

7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. 8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. 9 I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

Hear o my people

The Lord is speaking to his here, he will adress other later.

“God now proceeds to state the charge which he adduced against them. He declares, that he attached no value whatsoever to sacrifices in themselves considered. Not that he asserts this rite of the Jews to have been vain and useless, for in that case it never would have been instituted by God; but there is this difference betwixt religious exercises and others, that they can only meet the approbation of God when performed V 2, p 267 in their true spirit and meaning”[1]

Think about what David says in the next psalm

“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Ps 51:16–17, ESV)

9 I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Am I needing anything from you, and if I did need something would I ask you for it?

You see was common in the Canaanite religion and many pagan religions since to believe that a God grew in power the more worship they got.

“14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

What offerings do I want the Lord says.

The people where asking why does God want these sacrifices.

The same question happens today, why did God send Jesus?

Because he found us to be so valuable

Because he was lonely in heaven

Wrong Soli Deo Gloria

Transition

The wicked are a different mater, to the people of God said, I am not judging you for your sacrifices, I command those and you are to do them, the judgement was for the aditiute. To the wicked God says, even your sacrifices are blaphumus to me. Look at verse 16-21

The Wicked Blaspheme by Reading the Scripture

Psalm 50:16–21 ESV

16 But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? 17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. 18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. 19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. 21 These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

“What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips?”

He is not talking about the Canaanites here.

The wicked and the righteous were both of the physical Isreal.

“He now proceeds to direct his censures more openly against those whose whole religion lies in an observance of ceremonies, with which they attempt to blind the eyes of God. An exposure is made of the vanity of seeking to shelter impurity of heart and life under a veil of outward services, a lesson which ought to have been received by all with true consent, but which was peculiarly ungrateful to Jewish ears. It has been universally confessed, that the worship of God is pure and acceptable only when it proceeds from a sincere heart.[2]

You see the Jews that Jesus addresses over and over in the gospels had this scriptures

They had been warned again cleaning the out side of the cup and white washing the tomb.

But for the grace of God, there go we.

What determines which camp you are in?

What determines if your sacrifices are acceptable to God or if they are abomination to him?

Regeneration, we are dead in our sin until God makes us alive is Jesus.

The dead flesh cannot please and and if they try they only heap abomination on top of their abomination.

God chooses his people and he make them alive in Christ, Christ perfects there worship, all for the glory of God, the God who glories in himself.

Transition

What then do we conclude, what they do we do, verse 22-23

The People of God do Respond

Psalm 50:22–23 ESV

22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! 23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

“to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

The evidence of this in graphting in to Christ

The evidence that one od a Member of “the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb 12:23, ESV)

The evidence of salvation is that “orders his way rightly”

This requires submission and emulation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the example

he is the archetype

He is the model that we follow.

Conclusion

The people of God don’t get it right, they didn’t here. But they were not judge for trying. God corrected them.

The wicked, those dead in the sin are judges even for trying, because they trying is not sincere.

Friends, look to Christ, without him you are dead in sin and with now hope. In him you have an example, a King, a shepherd, and priest, and a prophet who teaches us all that we must do to please the heavenly father.

Benediction

Hebrews 13:20–21 ESV

20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

References

[1]John Calvin and James Anderson, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 266–267.

[1]John Calvin and James Anderson, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 274.

Bibliography

Calvin, John, and James Anderson. Commentary on the Book of Psalms. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.