Psalm chapter 50, please give your attention as the Word of God is read. A Psalm of Asaph. The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes, he does not keep silence. Before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people. Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge, Selah. Hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 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 all its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 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. But to the wicked, God says, What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. You give your mouth free reign for 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 have been silent. You thought that I was one like yourself, but now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver. The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me. To the one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God. Well, have you ever felt like you were in a situation where your heart just wasn't in it? But because you don't want to be perceived as a quitter, you do what the old saying goes, you fake it till you make it, right? In other words, you go with the flow, or you go through the motions and hope that somehow your heart and your feelings will catch up to your actions later. And that can happen in the church, right? That can happen in church life as well. I mean, sometimes you come to Lord's Day worship and you are just full of the Holy Spirit and you're so joyous to be with God's people and you wanna sing praises to God and everything is going wonderfully. And sometimes, other times you come to the Lord's Day worship, you're just not feeling it, it's just not there. You sing the songs, you listen to the sermon, you are listening to the sermon, right? You listen to the sermon, but your heart and your mind are elsewhere. And sometimes you just have to sort of fake it till you make it. Now worship should be a joy, right? And fellowship with the saints should be something we look forward to. But I understand, I understand this feeling given the human condition. We're not always gonna feel that way. We're not always gonna feel the right way when we come to worship. And this morning, as we look at Psalm 50, we're going to be completing our little mini-series through the Psalms by looking at this wonderful psalm. Now, unlike the other psalms we've looked at so far, Psalms 42 through 49, which were written by the sons of Korah, this psalm was written by someone named Asaph. And Asaph also wrote, if you want to take this down, wrote Psalms 73 through 83. Now we're not completely sure, just like we're not sure who the sons of Korah are, we're not completely sure which Asaph this is. Now there was a man named Asaph who served as the chief of the Levites during King David's reign. But it could also be another person named Asaph, it's probably not an uncommon name for Jewish people, another person who served in the worship of the Lord. Either way, though, the point is not who wrote the psalm, because ultimately it comes from God, right? God is the author of scripture. But what is Psalm 50 saying? And Psalm 50 is written as a rebuke from God to his people regarding their attitude in worship. And as we walk our way through Psalm 50, we will see three things. First in verses one through six, we're gonna see God summons the entire earth. He calls forth the whole creation to bear witness and testify against his people. And then God speaks to his people directly in verses seven through 15. And then God also turns to the wicked in verses 16 through 22 and has a word for them as well. And through it all, the big idea for this morning that unifies all of this is that we need to worship God with true thanksgiving, not with empty ritual. We need to worship God with true thanksgiving and not with empty ritual. So as we begin our study through Psalm 50, what do we see in the first six verses? Well first, we take note of how the glory of the Lord is described in these first six verses. Look at some of the descriptions we see of God here. He is described as the mighty one. He is described as God the Lord. He is described as the God of Zion. He is described as a devouring fire. and as the judge. And all of these titles, all of these descriptions of God show us the awesomeness of God. They also show forth the fact that God is a holy and a righteous judge. Now I mentioned that, that God is a holy and a righteous judge, and believer and unbeliever alike resist this notion of God as judge. Now, for the unbeliever, this is obvious, right? I mean, the unbeliever rejects God, rejects God's authority in their life, and thinks that they are somehow autonomous, that they are a law to themselves. So, of course, they would reject the idea of God as a judge. Who is God to tell me what to do? I am the master of my own destiny. I am the captain of my own fate. But in a way, the believer also resists this notion of God as judge. I mean, we like the God of the New Testament, right? You know, you often hear unbelievers talk about how the God of the Old Testament is this mean, angry God who rains fire and brimstone on everybody, and the God of the New Testament is the God of love and the God of Jesus and everything. So we like the love and we like the grace. We may acknowledge the truth of God as a judge, but sometimes we act as if God somehow won't judge us, right? I mean, we come to church. I read my Bible every day. God's not gonna judge me. and we take God's love and grace for granted and forget that God is described not only here in this psalm but also in the New Testament as a devouring fire. Author of Hebrews says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Now why does the psalmist here in Psalm 50 begin with describing God in this way? Well, it is clear that God speaks and summons the earth, and the purpose of the summons is to examine and judge his people. Now, this might raise a question. Does God judge his people? Yes, yes, God judges his own people. Deuteronomy 32, verse one, God calls forth the heavens and the earth. He says, give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Isaiah 1 verse 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. Or if you remember all the way back, my first sermon here, Micah chapter six, verses one and two. Hear what the Lord says. Arise, plead your case before the mountains and let the hills hear your voice. Hear you mountains, the indictment of the Lord and you enduring foundations of the earth. For the Lord has an indictment against his people and he will contend with Israel. Each of these passages, and others I could have quoted, show God calling the heavens and the earth to come and bear witness as he pleads against his own people, his own covenant people. God demands obedience. God demands worship from his people. And God promised blessings and reward for faithful obedience from his people. But on the flip side, he also promises punishment. for their unfaithful disobedience. So like these other passages here in Psalm 50, God gathers his people to hear his voice. The people hear his voice. Now, how are we sure that God is summoning his covenant people? How do we know that the summons is for his faithful ones? Well, first is the use of God's covenant name, Yahweh. We see this where he says, God the Lord. If you have capital L-O-R-D, that's God's covenant name. But second, we see God comes out of Zion. That's the place where he dwells. That's the place where the temple is. God is coming out of his city and calling heavens and earth to bear witness. In fact, in verse four, the psalmist explicitly says, God calls that he may judge his people. And then God himself says, gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. All in all, our covenant God is summoning his people and calling them now to give an account. He's bringing them forth and says, now you must give an account to how you have worshiped me, how you have obeyed my commands. So while the whole earth is summoned, it is summoned from Zion and is being called to witness as God now will deal with his covenant people. And while judgment will come to the whole world, as Peter says in his first epistle, it first begins at the household of God. Now, it may sound odd, this side of the cross, to think of God judging his people. I mean, weren't we already judged on the cross? Weren't our sins already paid for on the cross? Doesn't this feel like double jeopardy? Yes, it is indeed true that we should glory the truth that our sins were dealt with on the cross and give praise and glory to God for it daily. But there are various places in the New Testament that speak of believers still being called before God. Romans 14 verses 10 and verse 12. where Paul is talking in the context of Christian liberty and weaker and stronger brother, he says, why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. Paul is saying to believers, we're all gonna stand before the judgment seat of God, so that each of us will give an account of himself to God. And then in similar language in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10, Paul again says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So while our sins, past, present, and future are paid in full at Calvary, Amen for that, right? Great spot for an amen. While our sins are paid in full, past, present, and future at Calvary, our future reward in eternity will still be based on what we do in the here and now. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 3, verses 14 and 15, Paul speaks of the works we do in this life, and if they survive or they pass the test, then they will be rewarded in the next life. And that's why the Christian faith emphasizes obedience. It's not just obedience for the sake of obedience. It's obedience that leads to something. Now we understand, right, that obedience is never, never, never, never, never a means to earn or merit our salvation. But it is a demonstration of our gratitude. It is a demonstration of our love to the Lord for all he's done for us. And it will be rewarded. in the life to come. So we will still appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account. Now moving on to verses seven through 15, here in these verses, we see something that is novel in the Psalms. Because typically, you don't see God literally speaking in his voice to us in the Psalms. You see it a lot in the prophets. But here in the Psalms, God now speaks And this is what gives Psalm 50 its oracular flavor. In other words, scholars call this an oracle psalm, because it sounds a lot like what you would read out of the actual Old Testament prophets. But in verse seven, God addresses his people, and he testifies against them, where he says, here, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. So God is the judge, but he's also now testifying against his people. They are being summoned to answer in his courtroom. Now, what is the charge? To what are the people expected to answer? Well, quite frankly, it is this, and simply put, the people have forgotten what it means to worship God. They have lost their focus on their worship of God. And this too, sadly, is not uncommon in the pages of Scripture. We see it all the time in the pages of the Old Testament. Just think of it as a microcosm. Think of the book of Judges and the cycles you see in the book of Judges. So the people commit to following the Lord, then the people become complacent in their worship, begin to sin, then God chastises them, and then they repent and renew their focus. and then lather, rinse, repeat the cycle right throughout the entire book of Judges, and really throughout the pages of the scripture. Now does this sound familiar, maybe in your own life? You know, you're focused on God, you become complacent, God has to chastise you, then you renew your focus. In case you're wondering, we also lose sight of the heart of worship. We can get zealous in our worship and our devotion, but then we can sometimes also lose focus. So then our worship becomes rote, it becomes routine, and we lose that fire in our heart for God. So God here, through the psalmist, is calling his people to come back, to come back to the basics of a true covenant relationship with him. and a relationship that is built on this most basic fact. The covenant relationship is built on this single fact that God is our God and we are his people. That is the covenant formula. God says to them, I will be a God to you and you will be my people. I will be your God and you will be my treasured possession. I will be your father and you will be my children. Now note here in verse 8 that God doesn't rebuke them for their religious observance. So even though they lost their focus, they were still being religiously observant. The people are faithful to observe all of the Old Testament religious rituals. In fact, God himself says, your burnt offerings are continually before me. Now sometimes we see in the Old Testament that God's anger is kindled because Israel failed to keep the law, or they didn't keep it rightly. Think of Aaron's two sons. They go up to offer their first sacrifices, and then they offer what is called a strange fire to the Lord, and God strikes them down dead right in the spot. Oftentimes you see this. They commit gross idolatries, they put up high places, they worship idols, and then God judges them. But here, that's not the problem. That's not the problem here in Psalm 50. Your burnt offerings are continually before me, and not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. So then what's the problem? They're worshiping supposedly in the right way. Well, the people have perverted the purpose of the sacrifices. We see this during the life of Jesus, right? He confronted the Pharisees often. and he often confronted them for their loveless observance to legalistic ritual. And in one particular confrontation, Jesus, in fact, cites the prophet Isaiah and says to them in Matthew 15, eight, he says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And that's what's happening here in Psalm 50. The people were honoring God with their lips, They were going through all the motions, but their heart was far from them. Lip worship minus heart worship is not worship that is pleasing to God. Lip worship minus heart worship is not worship that is pleasing to God. Now, from the context here, verses 10 through 13, it would appear that the people offered their sacrifices as though they were somehow doing God a favor. God tells them, it's like, look, I don't need your beasts because I own every beast. The cattle of a thousand hills are mine. I know all the birds. I know everything that moves in the field. All of it is mine. In fact, God goes on to say, if I was hungry, I'm not gonna tell you. Now, God is not hungry, he doesn't hunger like a human does, but if he were, he's not gonna tell them. All in all, the people had somehow got into their brains that their sacrifice was somehow fulfilling some kind of need that the Lord had. That's the way the pagans sacrificed. They gave food sacrifices to their gods because they thought somehow they were feeding God. Like their gods would be hungry and starve if they didn't offer them all these animals. God, Yahweh, says, look, I don't need your bulls and your goats and your sheeps and your turtledoves and your whatever. I'm not hungry. You're not feeding me. It's all mine anyway. You're giving me things that are mine. God reminds him that he doesn't need their sacrifices because he owns everything. Now, do we ourselves sometimes get this way in our worship? Now, perhaps we're all too theologically astute to fall into the trap of thinking that our worship or that our giving is somehow fulfilling a need in God, but think of it this way. How about thinking that we can fulfill our duty to God by coming to church? Or by putting money in the collection plate? Or by reading our Bibles? Or by doing our good deed for the day? And you could think, I've done all these things, I've got my little checklist, okay, I came to church, check, read my Bible, check, walked an old lady across the street, check, did all these wonderful things, put money in the plate, check, I've done my duty to God, I can sit back and relax, and now I can take care of myself. God cannot and God will not be placated or mollified by our ritualistic worship. Now, in saying that, I recognize that no one, including myself, always worships God rightly. But that's not the point. Because I know that in my own life, my own worship can become perfunctory. The point is when we see this happen, when we start falling into these routines, these traps, and this idea that our worship is dry and dull and whatever, that's when we need to repent, and that's when we need to renew our covenant relationship with God. Now you might ask, how do we do that? That's a great question. And it's good news that God doesn't only diagnose our problem, but he also gives us the solution. We've seen this in Revelation, right? When Jesus writes the letters, he says, this is what I have against you. Now, this is what you need to do. And what does God tell us here in Psalm 50, in verses 14 and 15? He says, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. If you wanna jumpstart your relationship with God, the best way to do that is with a mindset of gratitude. I remember the church that Linda and I and our family went to for a number of years, and the pastor himself kind of fell into disrepute, but he said a lot of good things, a lot of them that stuck in my head, and one thing that he said here, he would say this, is that gratitude is the attitude that sets the altitude for living. Nice little cute way of saying it, but think about that. Gratitude, thankfulness is the attitude of your heart that sets the altitude or the height, the level, the bar for your living. And we all need a refresher course on Thanksgiving, right? Our worship, in fact, everything we do needs to be out of a heart of thanksgiving. Well, maybe you're like, well, pastor, sometimes I forget this, and that's all right. That's why we come to church each Lord's Day, to be reminded, to be grateful for everything that God has done for us. Here's just a short list of things that God has done for us that we ought to be thankful for. He created us. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for God. Well, what about my parents? Well, they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for God. He gave us life. breathed into our lungs, into our nostrils, the breath of life. He holds us and sustains our life in his very hand. He provides for our every need. He preserves us from harm. Most importantly, he took care of our most pressing existential problem of all, which is sin. And we receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And I could go on. If recalling all of the wonderful deeds God has done for us in Christ doesn't take our worship to the next level, I don't know what will. And notice in verse 15, he says, when our minds are right regarding worship, God promises to deliver us when we call upon him in the day of trouble. And he promises that we will glorify him. That is the chief end of man, right? To worship God and enjoy him forever. To glorify God and enjoy him forever. We're now turning to verses 16 through 22. God has a word for the wicked. He speaks not only to his people, but he speaks also to the wicked in verses 16 and following. Now, the first thing to note is that these wicked are not foreign enemies that you so often see in the Psalms. They often talk about the wickeds, the enemies of God. These are foreigners that come and oppress the people. But here in Psalm 50, these wicked are also covenant people. In fact, notice how they're described. These are people that recite his statutes. These are people that take his covenant upon their lips, and these are people that speak against their brothers, other people in the covenant. And this highlights a simple and important truth that I've said many times, and I'm sure you all know, and probably are sick of hearing me say it, but that the covenant people of God contains a mixture of good and evil, wheat and tares. And there will always be those who are in the church who are there for faulty or false reasons. Family or peer pressure. I'm dragged to church, so I have to go, and I'm here in the church, and I take part in everything, but I'm just kind of brought here, or I'm pressured to come here. Or perhaps they're in the church because of some kind of social or political cred. You're like, well, wait, a Christian's being persecuted and maligned and ridiculed across the country? Yes, but think about how many politicians love being seen with a Bible in church. They want that cred. They want to appeal to the religious vote. Perhaps you're in the church because you have a cover your backside mentality. I figured maybe I could say another word, but cover your backside mentality. You're in church because you feel if I'm not here, God's going to judge me. So I'll just go to church. You know, maybe you made one of those deals like, you know, you know, God, if you get me out of this situation, I'll go to church and I'll be a good Christian, whatever, you know. The point is that within any physical gathering of God's people, there will always be a faithful remnant. There will always be people who are there for other than good reasons. Now, whereas the first group of people are those who have their worship priorities sort of out of whack, the second group of people are guilty of several serious sins. First and foremost, they are hypocrites. They are hypocrites. They recite God's statutes. They take his covenant upon their lips. In other words, on the outside, they act like they're nice, obedient, devout Jews, but their behavior doesn't match their practice. Their walk doesn't match their talk. Now, every sin, of course, is an offense to a holy God, but there are some sins that are especially egregious to God, and hypocrisy is one of them. Again, look no further than to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. If you recall, at the end of his earthly ministry, as he is getting ready to go to the cross, he has this speech that he says in Matthew 23, where he recites this oracle against them, seven woes, seven words of cursing, seven words of rebuke against the religious leaders of his day, the Pharisees and the scribes. And he describes the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites five times. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you do this, and you do that, and you do the other thing. And he calls them hypocrites primarily because they certainly look the part of religious leaders, but their teaching and their way of life is contrary and leads to death. And if you think about it, of all the sinners that Jesus encountered, and he encountered many sinners in his ministry, he reserves his most harshest words for the hypocrites, the Pharisees, those who speak a good game, but their walk doesn't match their talk. Now, the hypocrisy of these wicked people here in Psalm 50 is as follows. They hate discipline, and they cast God's words behind them. So, they recite the law, they take the covenant upon their lips, and then once they say it, they just take the words and just kind of throw it behind them. This is like as you're throwing away refuse or something. Now, God's discipline of his people is always corrective and restorative. When God is correcting his covenant people, it is always for the purpose of improving them, for correcting them, for bringing them back into a proper relationship with God. It is never punitive and it's never vindictive. And God's discipline of his people is always done out of a heart of love, never of vengeance. Yet these people, these hypocrites, reject God's fatherly discipline. It goes on, they keep company with thieves and adulterers. They give their mouths free reign for evil. They lie, they slander. This is the worst kind of hypocrite, right? The one who smiles at you to your face, and then when you're away from them, when they turn their back on you, you stab them in the back with your words. Now, if that's not enough, their hypocrisy, their second and, in my opinion, worst offense is found in verse 21, where it says, they impugn God's character. Because God is silent, they say they took his silence as approval. In fact, they assumed that God must be like they were because God was okay with what they were doing, because God didn't speak to them. How many people have heard the saying, it's like, it's better to ask forgiveness than it is to ask for permission? Right? You know, it's like, just because a parent or someone in the authority doesn't always say something to you, doesn't mean that they're giving you approval for what you're doing. They assume that God must be like them because God didn't speak to them. So they just assumed that it was a tacit approval. Well, God's not saying anything bad, so it must be good. No news is good news, right? Now, one of the marks of God's grace is that he doesn't always punish each of our sins the moment we commit them, right? Amen to that. God doesn't always punish our sins the very exact moment that we commit them. But, that in no way means that God excuses them or approves of them. If you remember Romans 2, we looked at verses four and five that tell us how the kindness of God is meant to lead us to repentance. God is kind, God is forbearing in the sense that he doesn't judge our sins immediately, and that kindness then is not an approval, it is his graciousness, it is his mercy, withholding his judgment, leading you, hoping that you come to repentance. The flip side to that is that God sometimes then gives the wicked the very rope that they will use to hang themselves. But interestingly enough here in Psalm 50 verse 21, God remains silent no more. They took God's silence as a tacit approval, but here in this Psalm, God is anything but silent, right? He's talking all over the place. He rebukes them and lays the charge before them. And then finally in verse 22, we see God's warning to these hypocrites. Those who will forget God will face his judgment with none to deliver. Now, I'm confident that none of us in this building here are false covenant people. But we must always be on guard against hypocrisy. We must always be on guard against the sin in our hearts. That's why the Proverbs tell us, guard your hearts, for out of it flow the springs of life. And we must always be on guard against thinking God approves of us just because we don't hear his words of rebuke. And that's why we need to be people of the book, right? God doesn't necessarily speak audibly to us, but he does speak to us in this book. And we need to be people of the book. The word of God is described in Hebrews as living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. And whenever we open its pages, God is speaking to us through these pages. So if we see that our lives are out of step with what the Bible says, then we need to repent and we need to realign ourselves back with God's standards for our lives. Well, Paul, or sorry, the psalm concludes with these words in verse 23, where the psalmist 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. Worship that glorifies God, and that should be the goal of all worship. Worship that glorifies God is given by the one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice. And that's why the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12, one, after he's given us 11 chapters of the glorious riches of the gospel of Jesus Christ and all the benefits that pertain to it, he says at the end of that in chapter 12, verse one, then, I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Because of everything God has done for us in Christ, it is reasonable and it is appropriate for us to respond with thanksgiving. In fact, the very idea of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice is that our whole lives then are to be lived in thankful obedience to God. Another way to look at this is what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman in John 4, which we will see in some weeks following when we go back to John. In John 4.23, he tells the woman at the well, after they get into a little debate about worship, whether it should be here in Jerusalem or it should be on top of Mount Gerizim, he says to the woman, he says, but the hour is coming. In fact, that hour is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. Worship is never about what we can do for God, or what we can give to God. That is not the heart of worship. And if you think it is, you need to repent of that. But worship is about loving God with our heart, with our soul, with our mind, with our strength, and acknowledging him for who he truly is. And the one who worships in this way, the one who orders his way rightly, God says that he will show the salvation of God. Now, when we think and hear that word salvation, we think of forgiveness of sins, and we wouldn't be wrong, but being shown the salvation of God is so much more than just the forgiveness of sins. because it is the goal or purpose for which God created us, and that is eternal, unbroken communion with him in the kingdom. And this is what the one who has their minds set on heavenly things longs for. So while a worship can become stale from time to time, or while we might not always be in the right frame of mind when we worship, we must never fall into the fake it till you make it trap. God is not honored or glorified with fake worship. He's not honored or glorified when you're just gonna go through the motions. God is honored when we worship him in thanksgiving and praise for everything that he has given to us in Christ. We must never ever forget that last part in Christ. Because it is our union with Christ that gives us all of the benefits of salvation. And for that we must be thankful. Let's pray.