As preached by Zach Thompson.
1) God will call all things into account (1-6).
2) So abandon small thoughts of God (7-13, 16-22).
-Thinking too little of God
-Thinking of God too little
3) Live in gratitude to Him (14-15, 23).
Psalm 50
Good afternoon Christ Fellowship!
Our text today is Psalm 50.
If you are able, please stand as we read the text together.
A Psalm of Asaph.
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!”
Let’s Pray
One afternoon at the Thompson household, we were getting ready to have some guests over to our home. We hit that moment before people come when everything finally needs to be prepared. We need to clean up the space to make sure that they feel comfortable in our home. We need to prep the food. And our children know that if they want to play with kids in an area of our home, then it is supposed to be clean before they welcome kids into that area. If your room isn’t clean, then you don’t get to play with friends in your room. If the den isn’t clean, then you won’t be allowed to play downstairs.
And that afternoon, the den was an absolute wreck. We knew that the kids would want to play downstairs, so we looked at Lana, Hope, and Ben, and we told them. If you want to play downstairs tonight, the den has to be clean. So they went downstairs and Courtney and I went on preparing our home for guests. Then after far too short a time, Lana and Hope came back upstairs. “Dad, we’re done!”
Courtney and I both had other tasks we were in the middle of, and we knew that there was no way that they had cleaned the room, so I decided to help my children see the room with my eyes. So I said, “Lana and Hope, you think the room is clean. But what if I said this? If I come look and I don’t think it’s clean, then you are going to be disciplined. Do you think it’s clean enough so that I won’t discipline you?”
It was surprisingly effective. Their eyes got wide as they took it in, and then they said “Probably not,” and they ran back downstairs to finish cleaning.
At that moment, their standard shifted. They had cleaned up to the Lana-Hope standard, but as they went back downstairs, they shifted to the mommy-daddy standard. And in our house, there is only one standard that matters.
Our text today functions in a similar way. It helps us shift perspectives–to see that we aren’t the ones who decide what is true or beautiful or good. We don’t get to adjust the standard according to what we like. We don’t get to change who God is. We don’t get to soften his commands.
In the household of God, there is only one standard that matters. It’s his.
The text starts by making this abundantly clear for us. And that brings us to our first point.
God will call all things to account (1-6)
God will call all things to account.
We see this in the first 6 verses.
In these first 6 verses, it’s not the final judgment that is envisioned here, but it’s something that’s meant to point us there.
We know that it isn’t a final judgment because later in the psalm, there are exhortations and warnings in light of their heart problems. This psalm is meant to be a warning with a call to repent.
It’s a reminder that there is a greater judgment to come. And at that judgment, God will call all things to account.
So who is under inspection in this divine audit? Look in verse 5. “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
It’s his people.
The psalmist paints this picture of God’s judgment, beginning with the household of God.
The image in these verses is one of a courtroom where the God of all the universe stands as the Accuser and the judge while his people stand guilty under his eyes.
You might think of several things when you hear the word audit. But in every case, it’s a fearful thing. Maybe you are getting audited at work. Your superior comes to supervise your every action. You are under a microscope, and your paycheck is on the line.
Or think of the IRS.
How would you feel if the IRS showed up at your door tomorrow morning and you found out that you were being audited on your taxes from 6 years ago.
No one who gets that notification responds with calm and joyous songs. Because every transaction is going to be examined. Every minutia is under examination.
What if I missed something? What if I misunderstood something and now I have fees to pay? Or even worse.
It’s a fearful thing.
How much more then, should we read this text with trembling?
The people of God stand before his eyes without any distinction. Poor, rich, beautiful, ugly, smart, stupid. Every label that we can muster. Every earthly category. All of us who would claim the name of Christ stand before his eyes at this moment. And who is he?
Look in verse 1. This is the Mighty One. God the LORD. That word “Lord” there is the unique name of God. It’s “Yahweh.”
This isn’t some regional Ancient Near East god that has taken on a different name. This is the one true God.
Look at the next line in verse 1. This is the God who speaks and the earth responds to his summons. The sun comes up and goes down at his bidding.
This is the God who has redeemed a people for himself and given them a place. Verse 2, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.”
His people stand before him without anything to say. All that they are is what he has made them.
And in verse 3, “Our God comes; he does not keep silence;” Do you think that God is going to ignore the state of your heart? Do you think that he is going to ignore your sin?
Then in verses 3-4, the psalmist expertly refers back to the giving of the law when God spoke to the people from the tempest and the smoke on Mount Sinai. God welcomes the heavens and earth into the courtroom as witnesses.
These are the same witnesses that God called to himself in Deuteronomy 30. After God gave his law to the people of Israel, he listed out blessings and curses for them if they followed the law or rebelled.
So what is happening in our psalm? The psalmist is pointing back to when God gave Israel the law of Moses. He is pointing back to the blessings and the curses that he promised to his people. Remember God’s standard. Remember the consequence.
Remember, this was a song that the Israelites would have sung. And at these lines, their hearts would have been struck with fear. Because every person knew in their heart of hearts that they had failed. They knew God’s standard. And they knew the consequence. And they knew that they failed.
And in the next verses, God makes his case.
This brings us to our next point.
So abandon small thoughts of God (7-13, 16-22)
Abandon small thoughts of God.
Or we could also say the reverse. Embrace biblical thinking about God.
For most of the rest of the psalm, God corrects bad beliefs in the Israelites.
In verses 7-13, he addresses proud religious people who think that God needs them, and in verses 16-22, he addresses the wicked people in their midst who praise God with their mouths but who embrace sin with their lives.
So in short, there are two heart issues that God addresses in these verses.
You think too little of God (Quality) and you think of God too little (quantity)
You think too little of God and you think of God too little.
These are the headings we will use as we meditate on each section here.
The first is in verses 7-13, and it is
Thinking too little of God (7-13)
In these verses, God isn’t upset about how non-religious people are. He is calling them out because their hearts are wrong as they worship.
In Verse 8, he makes it clear that the quantity of their sacrifices isn’t the problem. “Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.”
Their sacrifices weren’t the problem. Their belief about God was the problem. The reason for their sacrifice was the problem.
They thought that God needed them.
That’s what he addresses in verses 9-13.
He is addressing a common way of thinking that had infected these Israelites. Many ancient peoples believed that their gods needed sacrifices because their gods needed food, and this had crept into Israelite thinking.
But God is entirely self-sufficient. He exists within himself. He doesn’t need us to accomplish what he desires. The theological word here is that he is “ase.” It’s God’s aseity.
God doesn’t need you.
But we convince ourselves that he does. We convince ourselves that we have some kind of bargaining chip with God to earn something.
My mom loves to tell this story about me. It was when I was 5. We were in church, and they passed the offering plate around, and I pulled a dollar out of my pocket. My mom knew that this was a big sacrifice for me. I was 5, so I didn’t have many dollars, so she asked me. “Are you sure that you want to put that into the plate?” And with all of the confidence in the world, I said, “Yes.” The service went on. And at the end of that service, we did our monthly time of taking the Lord’s Supper together. They started to pass the plate around, and as it came to me, I reached out to take the bread, and my Mom took the plate from me, and she said, “Zach this is only for people who have trusted in Jesus.” And with indignation in my eyes, little Zach said, “But I paid for it!”
It’s so easy to think of faith as a mere transaction. I give God what he wants, and he gives me what I want.
Verse 12, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.”
Do you think that God needs you?
There is a type of irony here. We often quote this psalm to prove the point that God has everything we need. “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.” And that is true. It’s a good way to quote the psalm, but the actual point being made is a mirror reality to that.
The point being made here is not that God has everything you need. It’s that God doesn’t need you! He doesn’t want your obligatory gift.
When you share the gospel with a stranger on a plane.
When you write a letter of encouragement to a lonely saint.
When you give to the ministries of this church.
When you sign up to do nursery or to clean up after our service. Or when you help run sound. Or teach Sunday school. Or do street evangelism. Or show the excellence with which a Christian operates in the workplace. Or when you raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Your personal gifts and talents. Your wisdom. Your level-headedness.
Whatever it is.
God needs none of it. Every ability. Every moment. Every resource that you have.
He gave those resources and opportunities to you so that you would give it back. For your good and his glory. To the eternal satisfaction of God and his people, we get to spend and be spent in response to God’s good gifts.
God doesn’t need us in, but in his good pleasure, he wants us. He doesn’t want our stuff. He wants our hearts.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There is a second heart issue that God addresses in these verses.
The second heart issue that God addresses here is
Thinking of God too little (16-22)
Thinking of God too little.
In verses 16-22, the psalmist looks away from people who are checking off all of the religious boxes to look instead at the people who do the bare minimum and then live like the world.
Look at verses 16. “But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips?”
He is calling out the hypocrites. In verses 17-20, he gives a list of accusations. Specific sins. Fruits that come from a rotten root. We’ll look at those in a moment.
Then he gets to the heart of the issue in verse 22, “Mark this, then, you who forget God”
How does he characterize the wicked? As those who forget God.
There are two kinds of forgetting. There is careless forgetting and intentional forgetting.
At our house, we have a natural gas cooktop on our stove. If I came home today from church, and I saw that I had left our cooktop on, I would be appalled. I would rush over to the stove and turn it off. I was careless, and I forgot. The consequences still might have been horrible, but it was an honest forgetfulness.
On the other hand, if I’m sitting in my driveway, and as I pull out, I remembered that I left the stove on, then I went on about my day acting as if it didn’t happen, that is a different kind of forgetting. I’ve pushed the truth to the back of my mind with intentional ignorance.
It’s different, and that is the kind of forgetting that God is talking about.
So join me in a quick audit of your soul.
The psalmist gives us a list here. It’s not exhaustive, but consider what he says. Look in verse 17. “For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.”
Do you find yourself ignoring God? Do you feel the Holy Spirit’s conviction, but you just toss it behind you? The word of God is so clear on so many things. Are you so in love with your sin that you would choose condemnation over discipline that will shape you into the image of Christ?
Verse 18, “If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers.”
Notice something here. Neither of these things are actually doing the act. You are pleased with the thief but you aren’t the thief. You keep company with adulterers, but you aren’t the adulterer.
This isn’t about whether or not you get off on a technicality. It’s about the kind of person that you are.
What do you approve of?
When you hear about someone who steals from their big Fortune 500 company, do you find yourself rooting for the little guy? For the thief? That’s something in your heart that needs to be dealt with. It’s wickedness.
What are you looking at on the internet? What are you reading? Are your quiet thoughts filled with fantasies that you cultivate with every moment that you can get?
We recently got a new stove. It came with a little Allen wrench. I didn’t need it, so I gave it to Ben. While I was working on the stove, he was walking around the kitchen and poking it at things saying, “Dad, I’m working on this!” It was really cute. Then there was a loud POP sound. I looked up and saw that Ben had learned a very valuable lesson. We don’t stick metal things into electrical sockets. We also had a spirited talk about how dangerous that was.
There were a few of us in the kitchen when that happened. And we had no idea that he was doing that, but what if we had? What if we sat by and encouraged him to stick the Allen wrench into the socket?
Yes, Ben, that’s good. I think you should try that. If we were encouraging it, we would share in the blame when he was inevitably shocked.
And that’s not even considering the sin in our own hearts that would cause us to encourage it.
Verse 19, “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.”
What does the way you speak reveal about your heart? What kinds of jokes are you telling? Are your words honoring yourself or are they honoring God?
Verse 20, “You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.”
Gossip is so easy. And it’s so easy to act like it’s something else. I just need advice. I just need help caring for this person.
Brothers and sisters, when we embrace sin, we are forgetting God.
So how are you ordering your life? What are you remembering as you walk through each day?
Look at verse 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.”
Listen if you have been pushing thoughts of God to the back of your mind and embracing some sin, it might be that you can avoid consequences for a while.
But at some point, the question will be called. God is patient, but he will not let sin go unaddressed.
He’s not like us. He won’t forget and he won’t just ignore sin. He is holy and pure.
That’s why he doesn’t keep silent.
So right now, as we read this text, listen to God. Have you felt the Holy Spirit convict you in some way? Don’t throw it behind you.
If you have felt the rebuke of God, don’t ignore it. Remember the Lord.
Verse 22. “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver.”
In your heart, maybe you hear that, and you think, “That sounds harsh.” Of course, it does! That’s the point!
Every single sin against God is more serious than we could ever imagine, and God knows every single one.
God’s judgment isn’t something that you should shrug off. Sure, this is poetry, and he is certainly using figurative language here. But that doesn’t mean that it softens it. The reality of God’s judgment is worse than this image communicates. It’s worse than getting torn apart by a beast in the wilderness.
But listen, the words of this psalm aren’t a proclamation of condemnation. They are a warning.
Verse 21 says that he has been silent, but verse 3 reminds us that his silence won’t last.
If you are hearing these words, and you feel that heaviness in your heart that comes with conviction, don’t act like it isn’t there.
Jesus died for that sin. Jesus took the wrath of God on himself for that sin.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9).
Whether you think wrongly about God or whether you just entirely forget him, the response is the same. Repent!
Abandon your small thoughts of God.
Turn from your sin and embrace the one who died for that sin.
This is why we have the promise from Hebrews 10. “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more! Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering of sin.”
Jesus is the only sufficient sacrifice. You could never give enough. You could never live righteously enough. If it weren’t for Christ, it wouldn’t matter how well you ordered your life, you would stand condemned.
But God has done it.
And that’s why the response is the same whether you think too little of God or whether you think of God too little.
This is our final point.
Abandon your small thoughts of God
And live in gratitude to Him (14-15, 23)
Give thanks to him.
It’s all that’s left for us to do.
In our text today, we see this after each section of rebuke. It’s in verses 14-15, and then again in verse 23.”
Look up in verse 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.”
Then again down in verse 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!”
Thanksgiving is the antidote for hypocrisy. If your heart is truly thankful, you won’t embrace hypocrisy. They can’t coexist.
Pour water into a glass, and the air is displaced.
We don’t have time, but we could do a survey of the New Testament and see that Thanksgiving pervades the entire life of the Christian.
Thanksgiving and Christian living are linked.
That’s why verse 23 says. “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”
Thanksgiving should shape our entire life.
Imagine a sports car and a motorcycle in your driveway. They’ve both been covered with a custom cover for the season. You can’t see them. You can only see the cover. How on earth could you possibly tell which is which? They both have a cover.
It’s obvious. The cover will be shaped by what’s underneath. It’s obvious. Sports cars and motorcycles don’t look alike. You wouldn’t even hesitate.
So it is with the Christian life.
If you are truly living a life that gives thanks to God, then right thinking and right living have fallen in line. Otherwise, you are probably engaging in some flavor of hypocrisy.
The cover will be misshapen.
Do draw sharp lines all across your life, and say, “God, you get this much, but no more!”
Your life is showing a certain shape.
Do you realize that Thanksgiving is one of the only things that you can actually give to God?
Every other thing that you have is something that he gave you. You give money, time, resources… all of it was given to you from God’s hand.
But Thanksgiving is something unique. Don’t get me wrong, God deserves every bit of it that you can muster. But it’s something that you do in response to what he has given you.
God doesn’t need your stuff. He wants your heart.
It’s like at Christmas when my children want to buy us gifts. In general, they don’t have money to buy gifts. So what do they do? They ask us for money, and then they go to the dollar store and get us gifts. I could get things from the dollar store for myself. I’m perfectly able to go to the dollar store and buy something. In fact, I could have spent a bit more and gotten something that was a bit higher quality.
But you know what? My heart sings at receiving it. Because my child gave it to me with earnest love and a genuine heart of thanks.
If my child’s attitude is, “Dad expects me to do this, so I guess I have to!“ What parent is going to joyfully give them money to buy that gift?
True gratitude isn’t expressed out of obligation. It’s expressed from love.
In Christ, God has made a way for us to be righteous. He has shown mercy to those who had known no mercy. He has made a people from those who were not a people.
And this is why we can work through this divine audit with confidence.
If Christ died for every sin, then we can call sin what it is and turn away from it, and live a life filled with thanksgiving.
This psalm is just a foretaste of that day. That final Day when we stand before God is a fearful thing. It’s the day when God will call all things to account. When every wicked thought and every wicked deed will demand an answer.
For the wicked, that day is a day of dread. But for the righteous, that day is a day of hope. It’s the day when every evil will be addressed.
So if you have heard the warning of God this morning, don’t cast it behind. Instead. Abandon your bad belief. Abandon the wicked actions that flow from that bad belief And instead turn to Christ and receive the forgiveness that he so freely and starting again today, shape everything in your life around giving thanks to the God who has saved you for himself.
Let’s pray.
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