Psalm 50: worship God with your heart
This psalm is an sharp indictment of human deception. It has a mix of eschatological elements and good Old Testament teaching. If you’ve been following along with my posts on the Psalms, you’ll recognize the prophetic passage right away. It goes from verse 1 to verse 6. I’m going to focus on verses 7 through 15 today. These verses bring out the clear purpose of the sacrifices the Israelites were to make to God. More than this, they condemn us, the modern believers, just the same. Here’s why.
The temple sacrifices were never intended as a replacement of the act of true inner repentance. They were to be examples of the price one has to pay for sin - that price is death. God clearly didn’t want and doesn’t want the “flesh of bulls” and the “blood of goats”. He has no use for them. Besides, everything is His anyway. I like how the author of the psalm puts it: “If I am hungry I shall not tell you…” In the past, it was believed that pagan gods needed the sacrifices of flesh (human or animal) in order to live - apparently, that was their sustenance. Obviously, God wants nothing to do with that nonsense.
There is another Bible passage that comes to mind, whose location I cannot remember at the moment: “The sacrifice pleasing to God is a humble spirit and a contrite heart.” That’s what God is saying in this psalm. He wants us to offer real sacrifices, the kind that show we truly love and respect Him, such as those of “thanksgiving”. It is when we “fulfill the vows [we] make to [Him] in time of trouble” that He is happy. It is then He “will rescue [us]”.
So many of us make empty promises to Him, particularly when we are desperate for help. We say we’ll do this and that, if only He’ll get us out of the mess we’re in. Once things are better, we discard those promises as if they were dirty clothes, and move on with our lives. Oh sure, we keep up the outward appearance of sacrifice, but that doesn’t really mean anything. In the past, they kept “those burnt offerings constantly” before God. The modern equivalent consists of the mask we wear at church, and of the words we use when we pray in public. How many of us can say that we’re WYSIWYG here? God knows, and our true natures don’t make Him happy. Fortunately, we can fix the problem. It’s very easy to start. All we need do is to graciously give God the thanks for all we are and all we have.
