Forgetful Followers of A Holy God

Introduction

R. C. Sproul, founder of Ligonier Ministries, used to tell a story about the second year of his teaching career, when he taught a class of 250 seminary freshman an introductory course on the Old Testament. The syllabus called for a short term paper to be turned in at the end of each month of the semester, and he made it clear to them that any student that failed to turn their paper in on time would receive an “F” for the assignment.

So he tells the story that at the end of September, 225 students turned their paper in on time, and twenty-five came in trembling and begging, “Oh, Professor Sproul, we tried so hard, but we didn’t budget our time properly—we’re still trying to transition out of high school! We’re so sorry! Please don’t flunk us!” So he told them they could have one chance to turn in their papers late.

Then at the end of the next month, what happened? Two hundred students came in with their term papers, and fifty students were late. And they said, “Oh, you know how it is, Prof! We’re having midterms, it’s homecoming week, we’re just running a little behind!” So once again, R.C. said he would give them a chance to turn in their paper after the deadline.

Well, what do you suppose happened at the end of November? A hundred turned their paper in on time, and a hundred-fifty didn’t! They all walked in, as cool and casual as could be, not even pretending to be concerned about the deadline. So R.C. said, “Johnson! Where’s your paper?” And the student says, “Don’t worry about it, Prof! I’ll have it for you next week!” And he takes the grade book and writes, “Johnson—F! Nicholson—where’s your paper?” “I don’t have it.” “F!” Jenkins? Where’s your paper? “I didn’t get it--” “F!”

And all of a sudden, someone in the crowd says, “That’s not fair!” And R.C. says, “Fitzgerald, was that you? Didn’t you turn in your paper late last month? “Yeah...” OK, if you want justice, here’s your justice!” And he changed his grade from October to an “F”. And the whole room gasped. And Sproul looked around the room and said, “Anyone else want justice?” He didn’t get any takers!

He goes on to say that:

“those students had grown accustomed to my grace. The first time they were late with their papers, they were amazed by grace. The second time, they were no longer surprised; they basically assumed it. By the third time, they demanded it. They had come to believe that grace was an inalienable right, an entitlement they all deserved.” Sproul, R. C. (2010). Chapter 10: “A Consuming Fire”: Holiness, Wrath, and Justice. In Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God (pp. 144–145). Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing.

A lot of people today have that same attitude towards God—that He doesn’t really care about their behavior, that He will “look the other way” when they break His Law. Sometimes, as we saw earlier from our reading in Romans 2, people think that God doesn’t care about their sinful behavior because they’ve never seen Him do anything about it!

2 Peter 3:4 ESV

4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”

The temptation is to believe that God doesn’t care about our behavior any more than we do.

And if we’re honest, we know that Christians are just as prone to forget God’s holiness, to think that He has the same attitudes towards our behavior that we do. That’s what Asaph (who wrote this psalm) says in verse 21:

Psalm 50:21 ESV

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.

There is a little play on words in Hebrew here that we miss in our English translation. In Hebrew, this verse can read: “These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that “the I AM” was just like “you are”.... When Moses asked God how he could trust Him to bring His people out of Egypt in Exodus 3, God responded by giving him His Name, “YHWH”, or “I AM”—it is the Name by which God says that He is the all-sufficient, all-powerful, utterly transcendant God, Creator and Sustainer of the whole universe, completely independent from and authoritative over all things. Psalm 50 reminds God’s forgetful followers that He is not like us: He is a holy God.

We must never forget that the “I AM” is not like we are.

And Asaph himself knew a thing or two about what happens when God’s followers forget His holiness. Back In 2 Samuel 6 we read the story of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant—the symbol of the presence of God—into Jerusalem. God had commanded that the Ark be carried by priests between two poles, but they figured that God wouldn’t mind if they just rolled it in on an oxcart. And when the oxen stumbled a man named Uzzah reached out and put his hand on the Ark to keep it from falling off the cart—and God struck him dead on the spot! He died because the people had begun to think that He was like them—after all, Uzzah was trying to save the Ark! Surely God would make an exception in that case?!? But there are no exceptions to obeying God’s commands, are there?

And so the next time David brought in the Levites to carry the Ark, he called the Levites to carry it between two poles, as God had commanded. And it says in 1 Chronicles 15:16 that David appointed singers to walk before the Ark and “raise sounds of joy” as they came into the city. And look who one of the singers in the choir was:

1 Chronicles 15:17 ESV

17 So the Levites appointed Heman the son of Joel; and of his brothers Asaph the son of Berechiah; and of the sons of Merari, their brothers, Ethan the son of Kushaiah;

Asaph sang before the Ark as it came into Jerusalem because of the deadly disobedience of their prior attempt. So he knew a thing or two about the consequences of God’s followers forgetting His holiness! And you can hear that sense of urgency throughout this psalm.

In fact, there are three different ways that Asaph reminds us that “the I AM is not like you are” in this psalm. First, he reminds us that

I. God is Unbearably Glorious (vv. 1-6)

Listen to the way he describes God’s appearing in verses 1-6:

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

In verse 21, God says He has been silent while His people forgot His holiness, but here in verse 3 we see that He is not “keeping silence” anymore! He comes in “devouring fire, around Him a mighty tempest”. Think of the pictures you see on TV of a Category 5 hurricane blowing though a city, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Now picture what Asaph describes here in Psalm 50, of a hurricane of fire surrounding God as He comes to judge His people’s actions!

God’s glory is overwhelming in its power.

And in verses 4-5 we see that God commands the heavens and the earth to “gather His faithful ones”—He is the God that can command the very sky above your head and the ground beneath your feet to propel you into His presence! You cannot hide from Him by running away, because he summons you “from the rising of the sun to its setting”! You cannot get into an airplane and fly away, you can’t get into a rocket ship and blast off for the Moon to get away from His call—or even Mars or Pluto or another galaxy entirely! The “I AM” is not limited to time or space like we are—

There is no way to escape God’s summons to judgment.

The psalmist goes to great pains to remind us that when that day comes for judgment, we will—every last one of us— we will stand before Him!

The “I AM” is not like we are—He is unbearably glorious, and in verses 7-15 we see that

II. God is Utterly Self-Sufficient (vv. 7-15)

Psalm 50:7–13 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?

God has called His people to appear before Him in judgment. And the first charge that He lays against them is about their sacrifices to Him. The problem wasn’t with the content of their sacrifices—they were offering all the bulls and goats and pigeons and lambs in obedience to the Law of Moses (“your burnt offerings are continually before Me”). The problem was their attitude towards their sacrifices. They had begun to think that God was just like them—that He needed their sacrifices to sustain Himself!

This was actually the attitude of many of the other nations around Israel at this time—in the Babylonian story the Epic of Gilgamesh the goddess Ishtar bemoans the lack of sacrifices that resulted in her “god-sized hunger” (Sproul, R. C. (Ed.). (2015). The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition) (p. 888). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust.)

But God makes it clear—He does not need the sacrifices of His people to keep Him alive! The “I AM” is not like we are—He does not get hungry or thirsty or tired. And even if He did, we would have no way to supply His needs!

God rebukes His people for believing that He is dependent on them.

Now, before you go off looking down on those poor confused Israelites, think about your own attitude towards serving God. Think about those times when you’ve made some sacrifice in order to serve God: You taught Sunday School even though you had a sleepless Saturday night with one of your own kids, you gave up your own lunch hour to go visit someone in the hospital, you spent your own money to fill backpacks for the giveaway on Saturday even though your budget is tight, you went out and knocked on doors in the neighborhood even though it was hard for you.

It’s easy to think of those things as “sacrifice” for God, and even to begin thinking that God was “lucky to have you”, isn’t it? “Wow, look at me! I’m making such a great sacrifice for the sake of God’s glory!” “I’m a pretty good person, aren’t I? Look at how I do these things for God!”

Do you see what you’re doing? Just like the Israelites that God is rebuking here in Psalm 50, you are letting yourself forget that God is not dependent on you to accomplish His purposes! Do you really think He needs your cash to accomplish His purposes? That if you hadn’t graced Him with your presence on Sunday morning to teach Sunday School that His global purposes for His Kingdom would just grind to a halt?!?

Look at verses 14-15:

Psalm 50:14–15 ESV

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.”

Asaph makes it clear here:

God does not depend on you; you depend on God!

When you minister, as Peter writes, you do it in the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11)! Where did that money come from that you spent on school supplies for the backpacks? Was it not from Him to begin with?? You see, you glorify God not by screwing up your own determination and grit and “coming through for God”—you glorify Him by coming to Him in your weakness and saying, “God, the only way I am going to be able to serve you today is if You come through for me! That glorifies God because it shows Him to be your only source of strength or ability or competency in serving Him!

We must never forget that God is not like we are—He is unbearably glorious, He is utterly self-sufficient, and in verses 16-20 we read that

III. God is Unbendably Righteous (vv. 16-22)

Psalm 50:16–20 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.

From the people who were offering their sacrifices with the attitude that God was “lucky to have them”, God now turns to the people who believe that God was as careless towards their sin as they were! Verse 16 tells us that they were Israelites who “talked a good game”—they had memorized the Ten Commandments, they took the covenant Name of YHWH for themselves and claimed to be faithful to Him, but it was all a sham! God says, in effect, “You say that you are obedient to Me and live according to My Law, but then you take My commands and wad them up into a ball and throw them over your shoulder!” (v. 17). In verse 16 they are “taking the covenant on their lips”—talking up their membership in God’s covenant people—but then in verses 19-20 they “give those same lips free rein for evil”—lying with their tongues, slandering their own family members (“speak against your brother”). And so

God rebukes them for believing that He is as careless as they are about their sin.

They are like the seminary students from R.C. Sproul’s Old Testament class—they haven’t seen any consequences yet, so they figure that the “I AM” is just like they are—that He will look the other way as they break His commands, that He doesn’t really care if they live in His righteousness. They believe that God is just like them--that their loud proclamations of their faithfulness have fooled everyone else, and so God is fooled too.

And it is a heartbreaking thing to say, and I don’t say it lightly this morning, but I am afraid that there are many Christians today that do this very same thing. They love to claim that they are Christians, but their lives show not a single trace of the holiness God calls them to. Because they will loudly and repeatedly proclaim, “We are not under Law, we are under…grace!” And what that means to them is that their Christian lives can be completely free from God’s call to holiness: God calls His children to

Ephesians 5:18 ESV

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

but they can go out drinking with their buddies on Friday night because “We are not under Law, we are under Grace!”

God tells His children

Ephesians 5:4 ESV

4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

But they can out-cuss their co-workers because “we are not under Law, but under Grace!”

There is no command of God they can’t explain away, no call to personal holiness they can’t ignore: They can smoke pot if they want, watch whatever they want online, shack up with their girlfriend if they want, all because they are taking the New Covenant on their lips while wadding up God’s call to holiness and sanctification and throwing it over their shoulder where they don’t have to look at it anymore!

But

God warns us that there are consequences for forgetting His holiness

Psalm 50:22 ESV

22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!

It’s a gruesome picture—the word for “tear apart” is used to describe how a wild animal rips its prey limb from limb as it devours it. We cannot simply toss God’s righteousness behind our backs, thumbing our noses at His holiness and treating Him as if He were dependent on us for everything. Asaph warns us in this psalm that when we begin to live as though the “I AM” is just like we are, we are headed for disaster.

Beloved, you can see, can’t you, all the times when you have reduced God to being just someone like yourself—patting yourself on the back for the “sacrifices” you’ve made for God as if He’d somehow be grateful that you worked so hard for Him, telling yourself that “God understands” that you weren’t really tearing your brother apart with your words, that it wasn’t really a lie you told your boss, that since you’ve been indulging in that habitual sin for years now and nothing bad has ever happened that God must not really mind if you play around with it once in a while…

But Asaph warns us here—remember, he’s the one who saw Uzzah struck dead for thinking “God won’t mind if I touch the Ark just this once—I’m trying to keep it from falling in the mud, after all!” You must never forget that the “I AM” is not just like you are! He is unbearably holy, He is utterly self-sufficient, He is unbendingly righteous.

And if that were all we knew about God, that wouldn’t be Good News at all, would it? But there is one more thing to be said about God’s holiness in Psalm 50:

IV. God is Unbelievably Gracious (v. 23)

Psalm 50:23 ESV

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!”

You and I have failed—over and over again—to offer the right sacrifice to God, to “order our way rightly” to be holy enough for Him. But there is One who has—the writer of Hebrews says:

Hebrews 10:4–7 ESV

4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ”

Hebrews 10:10 ESV

10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Jesus Christ offered the only sacrifice that is completely acceptable to God.

Your only hope to stand before the fiery hurricane of God’s judgment is not in how much you “served God”—you can win hundreds of souls to Christ, donate a million dollars to the church, send your sons and daughters to the mission field—sacrifice anything you want, but if you do it because you think God needs it from you, or that you’re doing Him a favor, you’ve sacrificed nothing God wants!

But when you serve in the strength that God supplies—when you look at that daunting task before you and think to yourself, “How in the world will God’s Kingdom advance here on earth by the likes of me??” And you turn to Jesus and say, “I need your strength to do this! Dear Jesus, you are the One who gave your life as a perfect, final sacrifice on my behalf, and so I am leaning on you to do through me what I can’t do for myself!”—THAT glorifies God! THAT is what it means to “offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving”, to do what you have promised Him, to call upon Him in the day of your weakness and trouble, and when He delivers you, you glorify Him!

And beloved, if you can “talk a good game” and make people believe you are a Christian, do not think that God is just like them—that He can be swayed by your loud affirmations about being a believer. Stop throwing God’s call to holiness over your shoulder because “you’re not under Law, you’re under grace!” You know what? If you want to quote that verse all the time, at least quote the whole verse!

Romans 6:15 ESV

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

The grace of God is not an excuse for you to go out and live however you want. God doesn’t listen to you stabbing your brother in the back with your words or cussing out your kids and say, “Well, it’s a good thing she’s under grace!” No—the grace of God is not meant to be a trampoline that you can bounce your worldliness off of! The grace of God is meant to be the net that catches you when your daily battle with sin knocks you to the ground!

The grace of God to you is what enables you to get back up when you fall! To say, “Father, I want to ‘order my way rightly’, I want to honor you with my life, to love like Jesus, to have His compassion and His purity and His righteousness—and I thank you that you have given me His righteousness. But I got beat today by my sin; I lost it again with my kids, I lied to my boss again, I surfed around the wrong neighborhood on the Internet again… And the only hope I have is that your grace has forgiven me in Jesus!” And only then can you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and wade back into that daily battle with sin again!

And friend, if you are here this morning and you’ve come to realize that your whole life you’ve just assumed that God is just like you—that He doesn’t really care about your behavior, that as long as you’re pretty good that you’re good enough, that He is somehow grateful or impressed with you because you didn’t sleep in this morning and came to church instead—what do you think will happen when you stand before that fiery hurricane of His glorious righteousness? Because His judgment is inescapable—it is not a matter of if you will stand before Him, but when.

And there will be no “talking your way out” on that Day. You may spend your whole life using all the right Christian jargon to convince everyone around you that you are a believer, but when you try that with Him on that day, His response will be “what right have you to recite My statutes or take My covenant on your lips? You have spent your whole life tossing My commands aside, and now it is time to answer for it!”

Friend, there is only one way to escape that inescapable judgment, and that is to go to the only One who has ever given an acceptable sacrifice to God, the one who was torn apart on the Cross for your sins! He never uttered one slanderous word—but He was slandered by His own people. He never spoke anything but Truth (for He is the Truth), yet He suffered the lies and hatred of others—and in doing so, He paid the price for your lies! He was accused His whole life of “keeping company with adulterers”—not because He was immoral, but because He came as a doctor to heal those who were sick with their immorality! He was pleased to take the place of a common thief, Barabbas, on the Cross, and when one of the thieves crucified with Him called on Him to save Him, He was pleased to say “this day you shall be with Me in Paradise!”

And when you call on Him, he will be pleased to do the same for you!

As it is written:

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

So make this the day when you escape the fiery hurricane of God’s holy wrath against your sin—believe that He died for your sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and raised the third day according to the Scriptures, and you will have eternal life in Him—freed from the penalty of your sin, and raised to a new life of holiness in Him, free forever from sin’s power over you! Won’t you come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ?

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.

Questions for Reflection:

When was the last time you stepped into a challenging or difficult situation in order to glorify God? How does this psalm help you understand the relationship between your “work for God” and His work through you? Take some time to pray, asking God to use this psalm to remind you of your dependence on Him for all of your work for Him

Where are you tempted to think that God is “just like you”, in that He overlooks sins in your life that you think are “too small” to worry about? How does this psalm help you understand the seriousness of all of our sin, and the grace of God we have in Jesus? How can you express your thankfulness this week for His grace in saving you?