About this sermon
In Psalm 50 God summons heaven and earth to witness a covenant lawsuit against his own people. He needs none of their sacrifices, because the cattle on a thousand hills already belong to him, and he wants thanksgiving and faithful obedience. Israel had absorbed pagan ideas of gods who depend on their worshipers, and God corrects those ideas. He warns the wicked who recite his covenant while hating his discipline, and he shows his salvation to all who turn to him in repentance and faith.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. As we continue our study through the Psalter, the Book of Psalms, and various select psalms tonight, we are going to consider Psalm 50. Psalm 50. This psalm is entitled A Psalm of Asaph. The mighty one, God the Lord, has spoken and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shown forth. May our God come and not keep silence. Fire devours before him, and it is very tempestuous around him. He summons the heavens above and the earth to judge his people. Gather my godly ones to me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is Judge, Stele. Hear, O my people, and I will speak.
O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, and your burnt offerings are continually before me. I shall take no young bull out of your house, nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all it contains. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of male goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I shall rescue you, and you will honor me. But to the wicked God says, what right have you to tell of my statutes, and to take my covenant in your mouth?
For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you associate with adulterers. You let your mouth loose in evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I kept silence. You thought that I was just like you. I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you in pieces and there will be none to deliver. He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me, and to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God.” Thus far the reading of God’s holy word, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Please join me in your hearts in prayer. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we do pray that by your spirit you would once again cause your word to find a lodging place in our souls. We do pray that you would bless the proclamation of your word this evening. We ask, Lord, that this would be food to our souls and that you would edify us and build us up from what we consider this evening from this portion of your inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. Congregation, you may be seated. The title of my sermon tonight is God Himself is Judge, and you’ll notice on your sermon outline, again, a number of words that you can be listening for in my sermon this evening. Well, dear ones, the Holy Scriptures teach us that God created humanity in His own image and likeness.
But in our fallenness and sinful rebellion against our Creator, we too often return the favor by seeking to remake God after our own image, and by imagining that God must be very much like us in terms of our creaturely needs. In our sinful folly, it is very easy for us to fall into thinking unworthy thoughts, indeed blasphemously unworthy thoughts, and entertaining unworthy conceptions. of God our Creator. For example, it’s very tempting for us as limited, finite, dependent creatures to imagine that God himself must also, at least in some sense, be limited, finite, and dependent in his being. And just to kind of offer a concrete example of this, I recall one time, this was many years ago, I think it was in the early 2000s, I was pastoring a church at that time in New Jersey, and I remember one evening driving in my car, and I decided, as I often did, to turn on the radio and tune into a local Christian radio station.
I had tuned into the middle of a sermon, and I recall, as I recall the contents of this particular sermon, I think the preacher was basically trying to make the point that because God is a personal, relational God, because God is interested in entering into and and being involved in a personal relationship with us, that therefore God must have created us because He was lonely. I want you to think about that for a second. If the Almighty Creator God of the universe created us because He needed companionship, He was lonely, then that would mean that God depends upon something or someone outside of Himself for His own happiness. In other words, that would make God a dependent being. So much for the Bible’s teaching that God is the ever-blessed God, the God who is eternally sufficient in and of himself, and whose three co-equal, co-eternal persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—enjoy perfect inter-Trinitarian fellowship and communion, one with another, in the one divine being.
No, dear ones, God did not create us because he was lonely, or because he needed us, or because he was in any way dependent upon us, or anything outside of himself. On the contrary, God’s word reveals that God is absolutely self-sufficient and independent, dependent upon no one, dependent upon nothing outside of himself. Well, our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening powerfully drives home this point. For it seems that in this psalm, which is a prophetic psalm, a psalm of prophecy, God confronts a gross misinterpretation of the sacrificial system that had become very common among his people, Israel. Namely, the idea that God depended upon the Israelites’ sacrifices in the temple in order to satisfy his hunger. And therefore, they thought that by their sacrifices, they could place God in their debt, essentially bribing him into fulfilling their wishes.
For after all, We feed our God, so he’s got to do what we say. Now, what type of psalm is Psalm 50? It is a psalm that is filled, if you noticed, if you were paying attention carefully to the reading of this psalm, you may notice that this is a psalm which is filled with legal courtroom terminology. The legal courtroom language of this psalm would seem to reflect the elements of what Bible scholars call a covenant lawsuit. This is where God summons the earth to witness his case that he brings against his wayward people. This psalm has been described as an oracular hymn, meaning that it is a hymn which contains an oracle. It’s a hymn that contains oracle language, prophetic language, a word of the Lord from the Lord to his people, which addresses them and corrects them in order to confront them with their sin and their error.
But the ultimate purpose of this covenant lawsuit, Psalm, is not to condemn, but to correct. It is not to cast out and reject his people, erring though they are, but to bring them to repentance and restoration, that they might be shown, as verse 53 says, the salvation of God, as it says in in verse 23. He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me, and to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God. That is the ultimate goal of this psalm. And so let’s dive in and consider this psalm. Let’s first of all consider the first six verses, the opening section of this psalm. And we note in this portion of Psalm 50 that Yahweh is here, Yahweh the Lord, is here presented as the Almighty God who speaks and who judges.
This is the first point in your sermon outline. Yahweh is the Almighty God who speaks and who judges. Now, this psalm is entitled A Psalm of Asaph. Who was Asaph? Well, Asaph was one of King David’s three choir leaders who was appointed to the temple choir. Now, It is entitled of Asaph, but that could mean for Asaph or for his descendants who were to serve in his place, for their use in the liturgy of the temple choir. The NIV Study Bible Study Note introduces this psalm by saying, this psalm may have been separated from the other psalms of Asaph, which include psalms 73 through 83, because of its thematic links with psalms 46 through 49. It goes on to say, the Lord calls his covenant people to account as they meet before him in worship at the temple.
The psalm appears to have been composed for a temple liturgy in which Israel reaffirms her commitment to God’s covenant. A leader of the Levitical choir addresses Israel on behalf of the Lord. And what does the Lord by his spirit through the psalmist say to the people of God? Well, notice first one, the mighty one, God, the Lord has spoken and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. This is powerful. This is a powerful opening to this psalm because three names of God are used in this very first verse. The names El, the Hebrew word for God, El, and then Elohim, and then Yahweh, which is translated by the word Lord in all capital letters. So, the Mighty One, that’s El. God, that’s Elohim. The Lord. What is the significance that we are to attach to the psalmist opening this psalm, referring to God with these three divine names?
Well, according to one commentator, the threefold name represents God as the Almighty One, God in the fullness of His deity, and God as the Eternal and Gracious One who has made a covenant with His people. God is the mighty one. Think about that. He is the almighty, omnipotent one, the all powerful creator and providential ruler over all. But he’s not a distant God who is unrelated to his creation. He is a God who speaks. The mighty one God, the Lord has done what? He has spoken. My friends, many folks who say they believe in God, or a God, believe in a God who maybe got the universe started, created things, but then is not really involved much, if at all, in his creation. He kind of put the universe in place, and he’s kind of set all of the natural laws in order, and just letting it run on its own.
And he’s kind of withdrawn, just kind of observes us from a distance, if at all. But no, not so the true and living God, not so the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible, the true and living God, Yahweh, is a God who speaks. He is a God who communicates, and He communicates to us His will. He is a God not only of creation, but also a God of revelation. And here in this passage, He summons the earth, God, the mighty one, God, the Lord has spoken and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting, which is a poetic way of talking about, of speaking of God summoning the entire earth, all of humanity. What we have here is a divine summons for all of the earth to come to the divine court in order to hear God’s case against his wayward people.
And then it goes on to say in verse two, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shown forth. Zion represents God’s temple in Jerusalem, God’s dwelling place in Jerusalem. And notice how Zion is described. It is described as the perfection of beauty. What made Zion, the temple mount, so beautiful? Well, what made it beautiful is that God had chosen it as his special dwelling place. And it is from God’s royal dwelling place, his royal palace amongst his people, that God is said to shine forth. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth. This language of God shining forth is the language of theophany, a language indicating a visible, supernatural self-revelation of God, similar to The revelation that God had presented of himself on Mount Sinai with the cloud and the thunder and the lightning and the earthquake and the trumpet blast and the words of God, the audible words of God addressing his people.
And so it goes on to say in verse three, may our God come and not keep silence. Again, he is not a God who keeps silence. He is a God who speaks, who communicates, who reveals. And notice the imagery here. Fire devours before him, and it is very tempestuous around him. This language, my friends, that the psalmist uses here in verse two and three, especially verse three, recalls the glorious and fearful scene of Mount Sinai, where God manifested his supernatural presence in a fearful, supernatural theophany. And what is this communicating to us as God’s people? It is communicating that the God of Zion is the God of Sinai. Let Israel know. The psalmist is saying, let God’s people know that the God of Mount Zion is the God of Mount Sinai. We are reminded, brothers and sisters, by passages like this.
We are reminded of that truth that is spoken of in passages like Hebrews 12, 29. which reminds us that God in his holiness is a consuming fire. He is a God of white hot holiness. And then verse four, he summons the heavens above and the earth to judge his people. God calls on creation to witness his prosecuting charge against his people. As one commentator puts it, God issues a subpoena for all creation to appear as witnesses when he judges his people. And this calling out of God to the heavens above and the earth to witness to him, this recalls the language that we find, for example, in the covenant renewal in Deuteronomy 31. In Deuteronomy 31, verse 28, we read these words. Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers that I may speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them.
And what does God want the creation to witness? Well, look at verse five. Gather my godly ones to me. And who are these godly ones? Or as other versions put it, faithful ones. Gather my godly ones to me. those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice, and the heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is Judge Selah. Gather my godly ones to me, God says, and these ones who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” Now, what is a covenant? Children, what is a covenant? Well, a covenant, we could spend a lot of time talking about biblical covenants. The concept of covenant is very rich and deep. But in summary, a covenant is basically a solemn, binding agreement that establishes a relationship between two parties. While ultimately God is the one who has initiated his covenant of grace with his people, God’s people are here in this passage spoken of as making the covenant with God by means of sacrifice.
Why sacrifice? Well, friends, sacrifice was necessary in order for sinners to approach the Holy God. And of course, we recognize that this sacrificial system under the Old Covenant is ultimately fulfilled in Christ and his ultimate final sacrifice on the cross of Calvary, where he fully satisfied for all of our sins. And then verse six, the heavens declare his righteousness. Now, when it says the heavens declare his righteousness, the heavens here could be referring to the angelic hosts, the angelic hosts in the heavenly realm. declare and proclaim God’s righteousness as they praise him day and night in his throne room presence. But this could also be pointing to the fact that God’s creation itself, namely the heavens above even, declare that God the creator is a righteous God who can be trusted to be righteous in all of his judgments.
And when it says God himself is judged, certainly God is judged in the sense that he in the courtroom legal sense, in the sense that he judges and discerns between the righteous and the wicked and so forth. But sometimes in the Bible that term judge can also indicate God ruling. Judge can mean to rule as well. It doesn’t always necessarily mean to condemn. Indeed, in the context of this passage, God is judging his people in the sense of graciously confronting and correcting them for some of their misconceptions about his nature and some of their misconceptions about the purpose of the Old Testament sacrificial system. Again, the purpose of this covenant lawsuit is not to crush or condemn, but to confront and correct and bring his people to renewed repentance and salvation. So friends, yes, God does judge his believing people.
But the good news is that in Jesus Christ, in union with Christ, our judgment is not a judgment of condemnation, but it is one of vindication. For Christ took our condemnation upon himself on the cross of Calvary. And he did so that we might be justified, declared righteous in his sight because of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, received by faith alone. And thus, that we might be vindicated in the end. Are you looking to God as your judge, your ruler, who in Christ has judged your sin and justified you by grace through faith alone? And so we see that our God is a God who speaks and judges. Now, as we get into the central section of this psalm, we notice next, as we focus on verses 7 through 15, that God summons his people to correct belief and to pure worship.
This is my second main point in your outline. God summons us, his people, to correct belief and to pure worship. Verse seven begins with a very significant word, the word hear. Now, when in our culture today, when someone says, hey, listen up, hear me. What does that mean? That means perk up your ears. It means listen with your ears. But in Hebrew thoughts, to hear God meant much, much more than just hearing with your ears. To hear God implies to take his word to heart, not only to hear it with your ear, but to take it to heart and to respond to it with faith and obedience. So God is calling his people to take to heart what he’s about to say and to act upon it. Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, you.
And he reminds them of who he is. He says, I am God, your God. I am God. In other words, I’m not dependent. I don’t get hungry. I don’t get lonely or anything like that. I am God, your God. And that reference to God being your God That reminds us of the essence of the covenant of grace, where God promises that he will be our God and we will be his people. And in Jesus Christ, that promise has come to its ultimate fulfillment. And then God, through the psalmist here, brings his covenant lawsuit against them, his charge against them. He says, I do not reprove you for your sacrifices and your burnt offerings are continually before me. In other words, they had been faithful to the ritual requirements of the sacrificial laws of the Old Testament.
But he says, I’m not going to reprove you for that. You obviously are meticulous in offering sacrifices. But then he goes on to say, I shall take no young bull out of your house, nor male goat out of your folds, for every beast of the forest is mine. The cattle on a thousand hill. I know every bird of the mountains and everything that moves in the field is mine. And then verse 12, he kind of gets to the to the the rub of his issue with Israel here, he says. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all it contains. When God says, if I were hungry, it’s not that God could ever be hungry. But he’s simply, he’s using this to make a point with them. He’s using this language to make a point of them.
And he asks in verse 13, shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of male goats? That’s why you’re sacrificing to me to feed me? In other words, and then he corrects them. He confronts them with what they’re doing wrong, their wrong conceptions and ideas. And then he says, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High. Call upon Me in the day of trouble. I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” This is the purpose of these sacrifices, to express heart thanksgiving to God, not just superstitious ideas of feeding God with His God-sized hunger. No, that’s not what it’s getting at. Again, in these verses, it seems that God is judging in the sense of confronting and correcting some gross misconceptions that his godly ones, his faithful ones, had had about the nature of God and the purpose of the sacrificial system.
You might think, well, why did the people of Israel fall into these superstitious ideas that their God needed food? Well, probably because of the influence of their pagan neighbors. The so-called gods of Israel’s pagan Gentile neighbors were viewed as being dependent upon their worshipers for food and sustenance. The gods of the heathen, the gods of the pagan neighbors of Israel, were certainly believed to be powerful beings, but they also depended upon the sacrifices of their worshipers for food. And if their worshipers didn’t give them the appropriate sacrifices or feed them well enough, they might get pretty ticked off, and they might show their displeasure against their worshipers. But this was not the case with Yahweh, the God of Israel, the true and living God. For this God, the true and living God, the God of Israel, owns the cattle on a thousand hills, as verse 10 tells us.
Rather, the sacrifices that the Lord had ordained were for the purpose of ratifying God’s covenant relationship with his people, as we see in verse 5. and also for expressing the worshipper’s heartfelt thanksgiving to God for his gracious covenant mercies. And the theme of thanksgiving is a very prominent and central theme in this psalm. For example, if you look at verse 14, it says, offer to God a sacrifice of what? A sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High. This is probably referring to free will offerings and perhaps offerings to where the worshippers would would partake of some of the of the sacrificial meat as well. And then also verse 23, again, he who offers a sacrifice of what? Of thanksgiving honors me. See, the Israelites were focused on the ritual and they had wrong ideas and they were thinking unworthy thoughts of the true and living God.
They weren’t sacrificing to God from a heart of thanksgiving and praise to the Lord for his covenant mercies toward them. And so God summons them back to the true purpose of worship. The sacrifices that Israel offered to God were not for the purpose of feeding a hungry, dependent deity, but for the purpose of expressing Israel’s utter dependence upon God and gratitude to God for his grace toward them. And this reminds us again of Christ. Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross ratified God’s covenant of grace with us, his people. It was the once and for all final sacrifice that fulfilled the symbolism of all the Old Testament sacrifices. The only sacrifice that we believers have to offer to God today are sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving for his gift of salvation given to us in Christ.
These sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving also including good works done in his name. So, for example, we read in Hebrews 12 verses 28 and 29, let’s Look at a few passages in Hebrews very quickly. Hebrews 12, 28 and 29. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe for our God as a consuming fire. And then skip down also to chapter 13, verses 15 and 16, where the author of Hebrews writes through him, through Christ then, Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” So yes, we still have sacrifices to offer to God today, but not atoning sacrifices.
We can’t offer such sacrifices. Christ offered that final sacrifice as atonement for sin once and for all. but we do offer sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving out of gratitude for his gift of salvation. Again, dear listener, have you received and rested upon Christ alone as your Savior, as the one whose sacrifice satisfies God’s justice against your sin? So again, we see that God has confronted his covenant people. He calls them to repentance and to a restored restoration. But finally, We see here in the final section of this psalm in verses 16-23 that God the Judge rebukes the wicked and calls them to repentance and salvation. This is the final point in your sermon outline. God the Judge rebukes the wicked and calls them to repentance and salvation. Look at verse 16. But to the wicked God says, what right have you to tell of my statutes and to take my covenant in your mouth.
This language here would seem to indicate that God is addressing members of the visible covenant community who were, in fact, in heart and by their lifestyle, wicked. What right have you to tell of my statutes and to take my covenant in your mouth? And then he confronts them with their sin, their wickedness. He says, for you hate discipline. And you cast my words behind you Think about that. Casting the word of God behind you. What arrogance, what blasphemy to cast God’s word behind your back. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him. The psalmist gives some examples of their wickedness. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him and you associate with adulterers. You let your mouth loose in evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother.
You slander your own mother’s son. By the way, a lot of these sins that are mentioned are sins of speech, slander, deceit and so forth. Verse 21, these things you’ve done and I kept silence. See, the wicked misinterpret God’s silence as if God were approving of it or as if God did not care about sin. But we know in scripture that God is silent because he’s patient. and he is giving opportunity for repentance. The psalmist says, you thought that I was just like you. I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. God is ready to state his case against the wicked. And the prospect of that ought to be a fearful prospect for anyone who is apart from saving relationship with the Lord God through Jesus Christ. Again, verses 16 through 21 represent a stinging rebuke against the wicked and hypocritical, in other words, against the unconverted among God’s visible professed covenant people.
These were Israelites who could recite God’s commandments and covenants and who participated in the ritual life of the temple, but who were in fact wicked, hypocritical and unrepentant in their hearts and ungodly in their lives. Today, such would be churchgoers who have a formal external connection to the church but who don’t truly know or love or trust the Lord in their hearts, and who live wantonly, arrogantly ungodly lives outside of the life of the church. And so what does God have to say to those in that category? This brings us to the last two verses of this powerful psalm. Now consider this, you who forget God. This is a solemn warning that God issues to those who are wicked, those who cast God’s words behind their back. Consider this, you who forget God. or I will tear you in pieces and there will be none to deliver.” What a violent image that is.
God says, I’m going to tear you to pieces if you don’t take heed. He says, He who offers the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me. And to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God. This psalm closes again with a solemn warning to those who forget God, summoning them to order their way aright. This is not a call to seek salvation by works righteousness. Rather, to order your way aright, this is a language that is pointing to repentance and faith. Those who turn to the Lord in repentance and faith and seek his mercy, bearing the fruits of that repentance and faith, they are the ones who experience the salvation of God. To them, To those who order their way are right. In other words, those who repent and believe shall see the salvation of God.
Dear listener, have you experienced the salvation of the Lord? Turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and repentance. And though you be wicked, though you be one who has forgotten God and has cast God’s word behind your back, God is willing to receive repentant sinners. Jesus’ arms are open and welcomes all who turn to him and receive and rest upon him. May you receive and rest upon him alone for your salvation from sin this evening. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord God and Father in heaven, we thank you that you are a God of mercy and grace, covenant faithfulness. And we thank you, O God, that you depend on no one or nothing. But we recognize that we are the dependent ones, O God. We need you, O God. Oh, how we need you.
Give us grace, O Lord, to recognize daily our utter dependence upon you and upon your mercy alone. And may we live our lives walking in the light of that dependence and trusting in you for all that we need. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.
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