Psalm 50 - Does God Need Sacrifices?

we are in Psalm 50 today.

And this is a great Psalm, even as we think about the fact that Jesus has promised that one day He's going to return, He's going to make all things new, that God will accomplish everything that He promised in the Old Testament, that our salvation is

secure, that our future is secure, that God's blessing of this earth that is currently tainted by sin, but will one day be made new when God restores all things. All of that is coming.

And so this Psalm looks at some of that, of the Lord coming back to earth and of restoring all things and of the heart that we're supposed to have as a result of His coming. Psalm 50 in verse 1 says this, The mighty one, God, Yahweh speaks.

He summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God appears in radiance. Our God is coming.

He will not be silent. Devouring fire precedes him and a storm rages around him. On high, he summons heaven and earth in order to judge his people.

Gather my faithful ones to me, those who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God is the judge. Salah.

Listen, my people, and I will speak. I will testify against you, Israel. I am God, your God.

I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or for your burnt offerings which are continually before me. I will not take a bull from your household or male goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know every bird of the mountains and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and pay your vows to the Most High. Call on me in a day of trouble, I will rescue you, and you will honor me.

But God says to the wicked, what right do you have to recite my statutes and to take my covenant on your lips? You hate instruction and fling my words behind you. When you see a thief, you make friends with him, and you associate with adulterers.

You unleash your mouth for evil and harness your tongue for deceit. You sit, maligning your brother, slandering your mother's son. You have done these things and I kept silent.

You thought I was just like you, but I will rebuke you and lay out the case before you. Understand this, you who forget God or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to rescue you. Whoever sacrifices a thank offering, honors me.

And whoever orders his conduct, I will show him the salvation of God. So here God is encountering with Israel. He talks about the day when he will return.

He talks about judgment and what really matters to God.

And I think this chapter, among several others, Psalm 51 will actually be another one of these that's very helpful as we look at what's the difference in the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. Is there a difference?

And we can see first from verses one through six what God is like. And the writer here gives some just beautiful pictures. We're going to walk through them beginning of verse one.

The mighty one, God, he always speaks. He summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the setting that God is the one that sets this universe in motion. He's the one that is in control of our solar system, that he set up gravity.

He set up where the planets are. He set up what the weight and the atmosphere and the years and seasons, all of it, God is the one who put all of it in motion. So we ought to worship him.

We ought to be thankful to him that he made our universe in the way that it is and that he is the one that because he's in charge, even as it says at the very end of the psalm, that we ought to listen to him and obey him.

Verse number two from Zion that is Jerusalem, the holy city, the perfection of beauty. It says God appears in radiance. He shines forth that there is his glory that pours out from his presence.

Even as we look at the Book of Revelation, we can see some of that, that as the Book of Jude says, that Jesus will be coming with ten thousands of his saints. Revelation would tell us he comes on the clouds. He's that cloud rider.

I don't have time to go into all of that stuff. Just know that's a divine title, especially for these people back in the ancient Near East. They would have recognized this is the sign of the ultimate deity and ruler.

And so that's how Jesus comes. Verse number three, our God is coming. He will not be silent.

That there's going to come a day, not just when God secretly takes all of his favorite people to heaven. There is coming a day when he comes in full authority and justice to save his people. He comes with all of those that have previously passed.

And he is going to be victorious in everything that he does. And in describing how great he is, what it's like for the Lord to come, the psalmist here in verse three says that devouring fire precedes him.

That you can think of dragons in the medieval thought.

If you watch the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, that when you have these dragons, that they're pouring out fire in this devastation, it shows ultimate authority in those stories, who the dragon is.

And here, God is the one that it says, you know, fire, it burns the grass so that you can't make crops anymore. It is devastating in its impact that God is not going to be assailed by anyone else. He is the one that's in charge.

He is the one that is ultimately powerful. It says, a storm rages around him.

You can think of the different deities like Zeus or Jupiter, that kind of their moniker was they were the storm god, they were the lightning god, and even Thor, the god of thunder.

That you have these things that it was a sign of strength, you know, a lightning storm might, you know, light fires on the ground, light a forest on fire. It would be something if you get hit by lightning, you know, you're you're in trouble.

And this is how God is described. He is powerful and amazing and awe inducing.

Verse number four, on high, he summons heaven and earth in order to judge his people, that God has authority over both the physical realm of earth as well as the spiritual realm, the heavens, the I forget if the words, the Shemayim, if I remember

correctly in Hebrew, that he summons everything and he judges his people. He says, gather my faithful ones to me, that God's initial action is to bless those who are his people, the ones that are faithful here, the ones that have made this covenant

with him by sacrifice, these people that have said, I actually choose God to be my God, that I believe what he said in his word, and so I'm going to follow what he has said. When God says, this is the way to me, this belief that results in action,

belief that results in repentance, these people have done that. And it says, the heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God is the judge that hear the angels, the cherubim, the seraphim here, that's what's meant by the heavens, the courts of the

skies. They're all saying, hey, God is righteous. He is the Holy One. He's the one that's going to do right by people in making the right determinations.

I think of verse five, the faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice, that through Jesus' sacrifice now, we are called his faithful ones, his holy ones, his saints, because we have entered into this new covenant, this new testament

because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Verse number seven and down through verse 15, God is basically saying like, hey, I don't need your blood offerings of goats and bulls and sheep. He says, I own everything. The entire world belongs to me.

If I like needed food like Baal or Marduk and their temples, they quote unquote needed food. He says, if I needed food, I just like kill a cow somewhere, kill a bird somewhere, because I know everything on the earth.

All of it belongs to me and I have power over all of it. So he says, I don't need your stuff. I need your heart.

That's verse number 14. Sacrifice a thank offering to God. He says, what's important is not necessarily like this particular animal.

And I need of all the materials in the world, like you could bring me gold, but what I really need is blood. And that's going to be what saves me. He says, no, no, no.

I want your heart. So he says, sacrifice a thank offering to God. Pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in a day of trouble. I will rescue you and you will honor me. He says, what's important is you calling out to God.

You recognizing that this Covenant that has been set up in your honoring of that, it's not the actions that are saving you. It's your belief in me. It's you calling on me.

And when you call on me and say, God, forgive me, I will forgive you. And when you call on me and say, God, I need you to rescue me, I will rescue you. That is the nature of our relationship.

And then he flips it around in verses 16 through 21 through 22. He talks to the people that they are doing the religious things but their hearts are not in it. He says, what right do you have to recite my statute and take my covenants on your lips?

He says, yeah, you're saying, you're reciting these Psalms and these Bible verses along with everyone else. He says, but you hate instruction and you fling my words behind you.

Like, you grab them, you're saying John 3, 16 while you're in church, and then you're completely ignoring everything that God says all the rest of the time of your life. He says, when you see a thief, you make friends with him.

You associate with adulterers. He says, you value people, you value relationships, close relationships and friendships with sinners, and you don't view that as a bad thing. You don't view those as people that you shouldn't be close associates with.

You make those people your friends. Can I encourage you today? Make your friends, make your closest friends, believers.

And I say that with no qualms. Like the people in your local church, believers in your local area that know and follow and love and obey God, those are the people that you need to be spending the majority of your like free time with.

We absolutely ought to reach the unsaved, reach the wicked, care for and love those that are currently sinners, but that God wants to save and make saints out of those sinners. Absolutely we should do that.

But make your closest friends, not thieves and adulterers and liars and slanderers and gossips. Instead, make your closest friends people that know and love God. He says, you unleash your mouth for evil and harness your tongue for deceit.

You sit maligning your brother, slandering your mother's son. He says, you have done these things and I kept silent.

You thought I was just like you, but I will rebuke you and lay out the case before you, that God doesn't judge us right away as we deserve, but there is coming a judgment day when God will rebuke, when God will lay out the case of sin.

So, let's turn to God while there is time. That's verse 22, understand this. You who forget God or I will tear you apart and there will be no one to rescue you.

God says, there is coming the judgment day and when that judgment comes, are you going to be those that are forgiven? Are you going to be those that chose a genuine relationship with God?

Not just religious actions, not just religious words, but actually lived it out. That's verse 23, whoever orders his conduct, I will show him the salvation of God.

This is, pardon me, I'm getting a phone call, so if you hear a little bit of ringing, that's all that that is. In this Psalm, God lets us know there is a coming judgment. God is absolutely a God of love.

God is the one that is merciful. God is the one that is forgiving. He is the one that when we turn to him, no matter how flawed we have been, it is not how God doesn't reject us because of our previous flaws.

In fact, anyone that comes to him, he does not reject. But we need to realize that God's patience, God's forbearance, does not mean that we should just live however we want.

If everything on this earth belongs to him, if the goats and the bulls and if you will today, the houses and the 401Ks and the everything, it all belongs to God. It is truly his. If all the stuff is God's, then let us be God's as well.

Let us belong to him. Let us lift him up. Even as he says, if I needed food, I wouldn't ask you.

But he does ask us something. And it is that we would believe in him. We would offer a thank offering that our hearts would genuinely be turned towards God and that we would live like we are his people.

There's a little quote here that I found from Charles Spurgeon, a pastor in the 1800s, from this Psalm, the verse that says, He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifies me. And he who orders his way, I shall show the salvation of God.

Here's what Spurgeon said. Whoever offers praise glorifies me. praise is the best sacrifice.

True, hearty, gracious thanksgiving from a renewed mind. Not the lowing of bullocks bound to the altar, but the songs of redeemed men are the music which the ear of Yahweh delights in. Sacrifice your loving gratitude and God is honored thereby.

To him that orders his conversation aright, I will show the salvation of God. Holy living is a choice evidence of salvation. Pardon me.

Holy living is a choice evidence of salvation. He who submits his whole way to divine guidance and is careful to honor God in his life, brings an offering which the Lord accepts through his dear Son.

And such one shall be more and more instructed and made experimentally to know the Lord's salvation. That is, you experience the salvation more and more as the days go on. That not just did he save you from hell, but he saved you from addiction.

He saved you from pride. He saved you from being a jerk to people. He saved you from laziness.

That you are knowing God's salvation more and more each and each day. He needs salvation. For the best ordering of the life cannot save us, but that salvation he shall have.

He doesn't say order your salvation and you will order your steps, order your way and you will earn salvation. He says, order your steps and I will show you my salvation. I'm going to give it to you.

It's not something that you earn, but that as we repent, as we say, God, I want to go your way. God gives us salvation. He says, not to ceremonies, not to unpurified lips is this blessing promised, but to grateful hearts and holy lives.

Oh, Lord, give us to stand in the judgment with those who have worshiped you aright and have seen your salvation. So let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips testifying about His name, because He's worthy of it.

Let us live our lives holily in light of the fact that Jesus is returning one day. Thanks for tuning in today. Tomorrow, Psalm 51, one of the dearest portions of scripture, and I know that it's going to be an encouragement to me.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to be blessed by it. So I'm looking forward to tuning in with you guys next time for Psalm 51. Thanks for tuning in.

Have a wonderful day.