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In the first part of this Psalm God has solemnly expostulated with his people as to the utter worthlessness of sacrifice and ceremony apart from living faith in him, and holy life as its fruit; and he sums it all up in the searching question of the 13th verse, “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Have ye such a groveling opinion of me, your God, as to conceive that I am satisfied with these things?” See what contempt the Lord pours upon sacrifices — even those that were of his own ordaining — when men rested in them and made them their confidence and their end.
Psa_50:14. Offer unto God thanksgiving:
This is what he wants — heart-work.
Psa_50:14. And pay thy vows unto the most High:
This is what he demands — obedience.
Psa_50:15. And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
Thus you see God has spoken to his professing people — to those who were moral, decent, and observant of outward ritual. He now turns to some others — some others, perhaps, quite as outwardly religious, but their lives were immoral; their conduct was a breach of his law. At first he speaks of their neglect of the first table, which says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and shows that it is not bullocks and rams which can make amends for forgetfulness of God. Now he turns to the second table and shows that no amount of sacrifice can make up for breaches of the law of God as it touches our fellow men.
Psa_50:16. But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?
Your unholiness, even though you were of the tribe of Levi, would disqualify you from declaring my statutes. Your mouth full of slander, how should you dare to use it to speak of my covenant with it?
Psa_50:17. Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.
As if they were worthless things to be thrown away — as if they were obnoxious things to be thrown behind thy back where thou couldest not see them. “Dost thou talk about worshipping me, whilst thou art neglecting my words?” Now it is a very solemn thing when a man boasts about the covenant, or about the doctrines of grace, or about outward ceremonies, and yet there are parts of God’s Word that he neglects — there are portions of God’s will that he dares not look in the face. If ever I meet a text that I am afraid of, I begin to be afraid off myself; and if I feel any tendency to take away from a text any of its swooping charges or its strong demands, I feel that surely I must have quarreled, with this text, because it has quarreled with me. How can we think we are offering to God acceptable sacrifice when any of his words are cast behind our backs?
Psa_50:18. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
“When thou sawest a thief thou consentedst with him,” and some professors do this. If they do not themselves rob, there are some who will employ their clerks to tell lies in writing. They consent in the bad trade of others. They become accomplices, helping to make excuses for others.
“And hast been partaker with adulterers.” Can a man profess to be religious, and yet do this? Well, I have known such, and such will creep into the Church of God still — unclean, unchaste men, who nevertheless will come and sit as God’s people sit, and sing as God’s people sing. And, indeed, any one who listens to lascivious talk, or who smiles at an unchaste jest, is himself a partaker with adulterers more or less.
Psa_50:19. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
How many do this, and yet think they are the children of God? They ruin other characters most remorselessly; they will spread false reports, if not actually invent them, and yet think themselves the people of God.
Psa_50:20. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.
When a tongue has once learned the habit of calumny, it will spare none. The nearest relative and the dearest will become victims to the habit —first of gossip and afterwards of actual detraction and lying. Oh! the misery, the pain, that is caused in the world by this habit which is so rife! And can we imagine ourselves to be the people of God when we delight in repeating false stories about others? Have we forgotten the truth of that word, “All liars shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone”? As surely as God is true and loves truth, if we love lies, where God is we can never come. It matters not how much we may pretend to have reverence for God, and to have an experience of his truth; we are not of the truth, neither are we of God.
Psa_50:21. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence;
God, in his long-suffering, bears with these sinners. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.” These men came at last to say, “Pooh! the prophets make too much fuss about holiness. You can serve God, and yet, after all, live as we do. So long as we give God a tithe, it matters not how we get our property. If we offer him the bulls, he will be quite content.” Ah! to what do men degrade their God! Some made him of old to be like unto a bullock that hath horns and hoofs; but many men now-a-days think God to be like themselves, and that is worse.
Psa_50:21. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
“I will lay thy sins out before thee — parcel them out, ‘Item this’ — Item that.’ I will classify them: I will set them like a dreadful army in array before thee. I will let thee see that, though I had patience with thee, I was neither blind nor deaf, but heard and saw all that thou hast done, and noted it all.” Oh! what a vista this opens up for unholy professors — for ungodly members of Christian churches!
Psa_50:22. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
What solemn words! What dreadful words? God never plays at threatening; and his ministers, when they speak of wrath to come, are not to speak with velvet mouths and soft words, for “Oh! the wrath to come,” as George Whitefield used to say with uplifted hands and streaming eyes, “The wrath to come! The wrath to come — how dreadful will it be:” God himself proves it. “Beware ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver.”
And then the Psalm finishes up with this kind word of gracious address which drops like raindrops out of the bosom of the tempest that went before:
Psa_50:23. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me:
More than he that offers bullocks.
Psa_50:23. And to him that ordereth his conversation aright.
The man that strives in the sight of God to walk a holy life: this is the man to whom:
Psa_50:23. Will I show the salvation of God.
If he wants saving, let him order his conversation as he may, he will owe all to sovereign grace. He will have no merit of his own; “but where I by grace,” saith the Lord, “lead a man to order his conversation aright there will I show more and more fully, and at last perfectly in him, the salvation of God.”
This exposition consisted of readings from Psa_50:14-23; Eze_36:21-38.