Scripture: Psalm 50:1-23
Date: February 27, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
This is our eighth Lord’s day of worship together and my message today will be the last in this series on the subject of worship.
I have tried to explain some of my reasons for starting with this subject along the way. There are benefits for the Body and for us as individual members of the Body.
Our very first Sunday we considered the heavenly throne room in Revelation 5. For whatever else we got, I wanted us to see that we are made stable amid changes and hopeful amid challenges when we keep our eyes on the worthy One. The following Lord’s day we considered in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that we take on the identify of the God we worship. We become like what, or Who, we worship, and the culture of our congregation grows out of the soul of our corporate worship. This process, what God is doing in and through Jews and Gentiles, in and through the church, is part of God’s eternal purpose to make a cosmic point about His profound wisdom according to Ephesians 3:10.
The following two Lord’s days we considered the eternal love story between the Father and Son. We, the ones being transformed and united together, are a group gift to the Son. Our lives are not straggling pieces of confetti; we are part of an amazing drama. As we respond to this vision of God’s sovereignty over the whole process, Romans 11:33-12:2 demonstrates that we cannot help but sing in theological doxology and sacrifice in doxological godliness. All of this prepared us for last week when we considered that our corporate worship of our great God should be great, it should be purposeful, it should say something in addition to the words we say or sing; our liturgy should reflect what we say we believe. In particular, our times together should be godward, engaging, memorable, and with the awareness that there’s much we miss on any given occasion.
My burden in all of this has been to lead us away from the FOG—the fellowship of the grievance. My burden has been to put trivial annoyances in a transcendent context and keep them from becoming tragic offenses. My burden has been to ignite abounding love for God and for each other and for time together with those we love worshipping the God we love. My burden has been to expand our worship horizons and challenge us to develop and diversify our praise arsenal.
And yet, we’re not there, not at that place of pure worship bliss. We won’t be until heaven anyway. In the meantime, there are still piffling criticisms pulling at our pant legs and interpersonal bickerings and internal anxiousness. We are being transformed, but transformation takes time. The story He’s writing includes more trouble, more distractions, more heart breaks.
That puts us in a particular kind of danger. Those of us who know so much, who have been given so many biblical vistas of God’s glory will naturally struggle to match our hearts with His majesty; our feet are too small for the worship shoes. There is a very real danger to give up, not entirely, but in certain religious ways. Rather than fight against sin and fight for fuller affections, we settle for worship motions. We do our church thing, and we slip into thinking that God must be happy because here we are again, rather than coming here again because we want our happiness to be in God.
That’s tough, but we’re not the first or only people to ever be in that dangerous spot. Psalm 50 helps us, though it wasn’t written to us. It was for Israel, written by Asaph for Israel to sing. The choir were “God’s people,” “His people” (vv. 5, 7). They were his “faithful ones” (v.5), or “godly ones” (NAS), “saints” (NKJV), “consecrated ones” (NIV). The Hebrew word is hesedi, a derivative of hesed which we repeatedly heard last week: “for his hesed endures forever.” This psalm is addressed to recipients of His hesed, His-mercy-have-gotten ones.
But Psalm 50 is not a song of consolation. It is song a judgment because God is angry. “The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth” (v.1). “God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest” (v.3). God is upset and a theophany represents His wrath.
He comes to “speak” (v.7), to “testify against” (v.7) and to “rebuke” (v.8), with “rebuke” mentioned again in verse 21 as He “lays [the] charge” before them. God the LORD, the mighty, devouring, righteous judge has come into the universal courtroom to testify against His people. Why?
The indictment can be found in verses 8-21. There are two basic charges. Before I try to summarize these charges, note what the charges were not: God did not charge them with failure to offer sacrifices nor did He charge them with ignorance of His statutes. “Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burn offerings are continually before me” (v.8). His question in verse 16, “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips?” assumed that they were singing or speaking His law. They knew who He was. They knew what He revealed. They knew what He required in worship. They knew what He had given them. Yet two things made their liturgy loathsome to God:
Wrong-hearted liturgy is worse than worth-less, it is worth His wrath.
They were busy sacrificers. As I said, God didn’t rebuke them for offering strange fire or following unorthodox liturgy. They offered sacrifices, burnt offerings faithfully and according to His law, in that God Himself commanded that worship. He required worship in certain ways, at certain times, to be lead by certain people. He prescribed liturgy for them and, though I don’t believe we have the exact sort of detailed liturgy to follow today in the church, we can fall into the same heart problems that made their liturgy loathsome.
God says, “I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds” (v.9). Then He explains the reason why:
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
Their first failure was not in the liturgy itself, it was in motivations behind the motions. Their ritual had become ritualism, empty and external.
There is incongruity in that they kept making sacrifices as part of the covenant, they are the hesedy ones, “who made a covenant with me by sacrifice” (v.5). The covenant stated the terms: God would provide and they would be the provided for. They were in covenant relationship with the Provider, they were in a hesed agreement, so acting like God needed their worship ignored the covenant in two ways: first by failing to give Him thanks for past hesed and second, by failing to trust Him for future hesed. They basically rewrote the covenant, drawing double arrows to reverse the roles.
He doesn’t require worship because He needs it. He has no needs. But this gets us to the heart of the problem. Our worship won’t be right unless we realize He provides all our needs.
Our God has no needs. “Every beast of the forest is [His], the cattle on a thousand hills. [He] knows all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is [His]” (vv.10-11). “The world and all its fulness are [His]” (v.12).
Our God has no needs. He is absolutely self-sufficient. And there is no room for self-sufficient worshippers. If we suppose that our worship is doing something for Him, we presume too much credit for ourselves and we undermine our worship while claiming to be worshipping. “I’m going to act like He is worthy when He needs me to give Him something?”
Men are made in God’s image, made by Him to be like Him. But only God is independent. There is no such thing as a self-reliant reflection. Worship without dependence is detestable because it is false worship. It attributes to us and or God things that aren’t true. A self-reliant mindset insults the LORD and is death to us.
Consider Deuteronomy 30:19-20
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days…
Dependent worship is war against death. Self-reliance is ruinous.
Unless we depend on Him for all our needs we are not worshipping Him rightly. Our dependence on Him can be seen in three ways (verses 14-15): thanksgiving, commitment, and entreaty.
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most high,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
In gratitude we acknowledge that He has provided for our needs. In commitment and entreaty we acknowledge and trust that He will provide all our needs.
So if God doesn’t need our worship, why is He so persistent that we worship? It’s because He meets us in worship. It’s because when we worship rightly, in dependence, He is truly glorified. The liturgy is intended to keep our need for dependence on the front burner.
God wants us to “call upon [Him] in the day of trouble; [He] will deliver [us] and [we] shall glorify [Him]” (v.15). This is the covenant we’re in. He gives His hesed. We give Him thanks for giving us hesed and we ask for more. It’s a good deal for us and it glorifies Him. What He “needs” from us is to depend on Him for all our needs. Otherwise, our liturgy is loathsome.
Another group, the “wicked,” is addressed beginning in verse 16, but I don’t believe it is an entirely different group, as if verses 8-15 addressed Israelite surface-worshippers and this group doesn’t even bother going through the motions. The “but” is misleading as a translation (it could be “but,” but it is a simple vav conjunction). I think this group is a subset, Israelites who were busy with the burnt offerings who were also busy saying the right things, saying Scripture, quoting verses and joining in: “for His steadfast love endures forever.” This is lip ministry, lip service.
But this group said things that they were not interested in practicing. They were hypocrites. They liked their own way, which apparently included knowing the commandment not to steal but encouraging thieves anyway, knowing the commandment about adultery but acting like it was no reason to break fellowship. They blessed God and cursed their brothers out of the same mouth, things that ought not be so.
Those speech patterns ought not be so, but they also ought not be surprising. If something is wrong in someone’s heart (verses 8-15), that will eventually come out. It may not be visible in public worship, at least not right away, but it may be more visible in how they treat other people. The two are connected. If God needs us, if God should be thankful for what we give to Him, then certainly other people should treat us with respect. If they don’t, they’re fair game to speak against. That’s why I’ve said they will know our shallow beliefs by our petty behavior.
It’s also not surprising because the more we have to live up to the more tempting it is to pretend. As we get more excited about growing in our worship, some will appear to be excited but it’s too hard to actually be grateful and count on Him. That doesn’t mean we need to close up shop, but it does mean that we always want to remember that God is looking at our hearts.
He is always looking, even when it seems like He isn’t doing anything. He doesn’t separate the wheat and the tares right away. His patience is usually misunderstood by hypocrites as His approval. Patience does not necessarily equate to approval. It never does with God. We’re more like that (v.21), but He rebukes us for such an error.
Our God is great, and greatly to be praised. But He is not praised unless we thank Him and seek, by depending on Him, to obey Him. Worship is not dumping our little bucket into His bigger bucket so that His bucket will be filled. Worship is coming with our little buckets to be filled by Him as the fountain of living water.
He rebukes, He will “tear…apart” those “who forget God” in such a way that they will be beyond deliverance. But,
The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!
Worship renews the covenant, not because we’re in danger of losing His hesed, but because we are always in danger of thinking we don’t need it. We are constantly tempted to depend on ourselves and/or to decide for ourselves what is right. He detests pretense and hypocrisy. He delights in those who fear Him and rely absolutely on Him.
Finally, who are the instructions for? Who does God command to present a sacrifice of thanksgiving? To whom does God offer to deliver in the day of trouble? The GUILTY!
The church is not a worship union (or labor union); He doesn’t need us to sing songs or offer prayers, run machines or teach classes. He owns the equipment and He offers the opportunity for life. We don’t gather to worship so that we have bargaining chips with God; now He’s pleased, now He must help us, now He owes us more. The church is a need union. We gather to worship as a union who used to be without hope in the world. Christ owes us nothing and needs nothing, but He is a Master pleased to help. Our happy servant’s position is to ask for help. Our happy servant’s work is to ask Him to work for us. Go in dependence, thanking and trusting.
Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:15-16, ESV)