Psalm 50

The Mighty One, God the Lord,
Has spoken and called the earth
From the rising of the sun to its going down.
² Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God will shine forth.
³ Our God shall come, and shall not keep silent;
A fire shall devour before Him,
And it shall be very tempestuous all around Him.

⁴ He shall call to the heavens from above,
And to the earth, that He may judge His people:
⁵ “Gather My saints together to Me,
Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”
⁶ Let the heavens declare His righteousness,
For God Himself is Judge. Selah

⁷ “Hear, O My people, and I will speak,
O Israel, and I will testify against you;
I am God, your God!
⁸ I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices
Or your burnt offerings,
Which are continually before Me.
⁹ I will not take a bull from your house,
Nor goats out of your folds.
¹⁰ For every beast of the forest is Mine,
And the cattle on a thousand hills.
¹¹ I know all the birds of the mountains,
And the wild beasts of the field are Mine.

¹² “If I were hungry, I would not tell you;
For the world is Mine, and all its fullness.
¹³ Will I eat the flesh of bulls,
Or drink the blood of goats?
¹⁴ Offer to God thanksgiving,
And pay your vows to the Most High.
¹⁵ Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”

¹⁶ But to the wicked God says:
“What right have you to declare My statutes,
Or take My covenant in your mouth,
¹⁷ Seeing you hate instruction
And cast My words behind you?
¹⁸ When you saw a thief, you consented with him,
And have been a partaker with adulterers.
¹⁹ You give your mouth to evil,
And your tongue frames deceit.
²⁰ You sit and speak against your brother;
You slander your own mother’s son.
²¹ These things you have done, and I kept silent;
You thought that I was altogether like you;
But I will rebuke you,
And set them in order before your eyes.

²² “Now consider this, you who forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces,
And there be none to deliver:
²³ Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;
And to him who orders his conduct aright
I will show the salvation of God.”

Our God shall come, and shall not keep silent

It already sounds scary and…awesome. God can be rather quiet on a day to day basis, especially when you consider this situation. There’s fire and lightning (tempestuous is a fancy word for stormy) everywhere, and I imagine people are cowering in fear. And while He’s making this great display of His power, the first thing he does is set the record straight.

For the world is Mine, and all its fullness

He says that He’s not disapproving of their sacrifices, but he certainly doesn’t need them. Of course, since we don’t give burnt offerings anymore, maybe we might feel like this isn’t applicable. But, it is. When we do something, we often say that we’re doing it for God. And we are, don’t get me wrong, but He doesn’t actually need anyone to do anything. He doesn’t need you to tithe; He doesn’t need you to volunteer; He doesn’t need you to sacrifice anything for Him. If He needed something, He’d get it Himself. Everything in the world already belongs to Him and He’s got this ridiculous amount of power that He could use to get it. That said, He does want you to do a lot of things.

Offer to God thanksgiving

I like the way that the note in my Bible puts it: “We worship to meet our need, not God’s. We need to experience the joy of sharing and giving. God desires our sincere worship and thanksgiving. He wants us to depend on Him” (emphasis mine). The things that God asks of us are for our own good, not His. He really is looking out for our best interests all the time.

These things you have done, and I kept silent

When God calls upon the wicked, He tells them that they never cared about what He said. As a result, they do some pretty bad stuff. They don’t care what God wants, so they ultimately don’t care about what is best for themselves or their society. But God lets them make their mistakes. He let them do whatever they wanted rather than what they needed.

You thought that I was altogether like you

We often try to humanize God. It’s understandable, I suppose. Plenty of other gods are pretty much just extraordinarily powerful, magical, immortal human-like creatures. They have faults and weaknesses and need all kinds of things. But those are not our God, and we shouldn’t be casting humanness onto Him. The fact is, we cannot fully understand God. He is not altogether like us. He has no faults, no weaknesses. He doesn’t need anything, including us. But, He does want us…

Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; and to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God.

God has set before everyone a choice. He’s going to let us do whatever we want. We can ignore what He wants us to do and go around being wicked. Or, we can do what we need to do and live the way He wants us to.