Psalm 50

Good morning.

It is good to be with you again as we come and worship, as we come to hear from the Lord God together.

Now, I know for some of you there might be a distraction, and it is this the crinkly shirt.

I am sorry.

I just cannot be bothered to iron my shirt.

So I'm sorry if that's a distraction.

Maybe I could do that and that would help, but I'm not going to preach like that.

So just wanted to get that out of the way.

But let me pray as we come to Psalm 50.

Loving Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your love and your care for us as your people.

And I thank you for this, Psalm, as you speak to your people.

And I pray, as you call out, would you call out to us today?

That you would help us to see and know you more clearly, that you would help us to see areas in our lives where there is error, where we have forgotten you.

Would you remind us of your beauty, of your glory once again?

And would we live lives of thankfulness towards you, giving you the praise and honor you deserve?

In your name I pray.

Amen.

For some of you you may know, but uh I came to faith at a young age.

I came to know the Lord Jesus when I was only four years of age, and at that age it was very simple, it was very straightforward to me.

I remember a clear feeling of I need Jesus.

It was very simple for me.

Uh, it wasn't complicated.

Now, today, at this moment in my life, I have lived and walked with the Lord for 26 years, and that is the majority of my life.

And the truth is, as a Christian, as a person, we go through different seasons in life.

That is just a fact.

That we go through seasons even in our faith, in our experience of our relationship with God.

There are seasons of highs where we are just loving and enjoying and rejoicing in Him, where nothing else really compares.

We don't even have a sense of competition, we just need and want more of him.

But sadly, there is other seasons in our lives, and there's been other seasons in my life where I felt none.

I felt as though I've just gone through the motions.

My heart was dull towards him.

I go to church, sure I do, but it's more because that is what I should do.

I know that's what I should do.

I might pray sometimes because that's what I should do.

I might read my Bible sometimes because that is what I should do.

And I think, you know what?

I'm okay, I'm I'm good, I'm doing what I need to do.

There's other seasons in my life, and a particular season for me, and a part of my story, is when I was towards the end of primary school, around the age of 12, it was, um, where my life felt like there were two lives being lived out.

That I wasn't rejecting Jesus, I never rejected Jesus, I never walked away from the faith, I never left church or anything like that.

But when I was with at home, when I was at church, I knew what I needed to be, I knew what to say, I knew how to act, how to respond, what was expected of me, and I was happy to live that way.

Yet when I'd go to school or be with my non-Christian friends, I would curse, I'd use bad language like they would.

My attitude, my actions were just like them, it was very similar.

I don't think there was really a distinguishing between us.

And I wasn't going crazy, that's maybe to you something that's very low, very mild, very um as if it doesn't actually matter.

And yet I knew.

I knew that the Lord was not in charge of all of my life, that there was areas where I just was living for how I wanted.

I was loving me.

I was loving to be seen and recognized in a certain way.

I I love for people's approval.

At the age of 15, I was on a camp that I went on regularly, a Christian camp during the summer, and I distinctly remember being challenged on that camp.

I don't remember the talks in particular, what they were from or whatever, but it was very clear to me that the Lord, my heavenly father, was coming and saying, You have a choice, Duncan.

You need to choose.

Because the reality is, I'm not gonna accept the scraps you give me.

As if I should be happy with you saying, Look, I've given you this area of my life, but this, no, this is for me, this is for me to handle, this is for me to deal with and live how I want to live.

This challenge was before me, and if I'm honest, it wasn't even a competition.

I knew, I knew that he was greater, he was more beautiful, he was what I needed.

That there was no sort of weighing up, oh, maybe I do just want to walk away here.

No.

I loved him, I knew him, I knew that my life needed to be lived in complete submission to him.

It's not about me.

To this day, I'm so thankful for my heavenly father, for his gracious intervention, for him stepping in, for him calling to me, seeing his wayward son and saying, Come back.

You are not living how you are meant to live.

Don't be foolish.

Stop messing around, surrender to me.

So, as we look at Psalm 50, God Himself is just like He did for me, speaking to His people.

He is speaking to Israel, those who He had called to Himself, those who He had done so much for.

And there are two groups here.

There are those who who are just completely in love with self, that both groups are in love with self.

That is just being played out in different ways.

They are self-idolaters, they claim to have faith, but their lives are not being completely shaped by that faith.

They have become self-righteous and self-indulgent.

Those are the two groups.

One is self-righteous, one is self-indulgent, and both are loving self.

Yet instead of God just rejecting them, giving up on them.

No, God does what God does.

That He calls out, that He calls to them to come back.

He exposes their sin.

He comes to reveal that they have forgotten who He is.

He calls in verse 5 Gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

Do you see this grace, this care of the Lord, that He doesn't just stand by, He's not gonna just allow them to continue to run from Him.

He doesn't just allow that to happen.

He is addressing the issue.

As we look back in 2020 at the sin of Israel, self-love is all around us in our culture.

It is so easy for us to be lovers of self.

That is exactly what our culture desires for us.

That your life is about you.

This sound doesn't begin by just speaking about their sin, but rather pointing them back to the Lord God, the one who calls to his people, the one they made a covenant with, an everlasting promise.

Because it is clear they have forgotten who they are serving, they have forgotten the Lord God.

They know things about him, but they do not know him.

There is a huge difference.

Look down at verse 1 as the Lord reveals himself to them once again.

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 is a mighty tempest.

He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people.

Verse 6, the heavens declare his righteousness, for God Himself is judge.

Selah.

Here as we read this, it can be easy for us to think, surely they know these things.

Surely they know these truths about who God is.

This isn't the first point or the first time that God declares Himself to be the one who is in authority, the one to judge and rule over all things.

The problem is their view of him has grown dim.

They think all is good, they think they're fine.

You know what that's like.

When your view of the Lord grows dim.

You read a passage or a chapter in the Bible, you think, right, today I'm gonna read the Bible.

Wonderful.

You sit down and you're reading and reading, and then you get to them and you realize, I've no clue what that was about.

I've done it, I know what that's like.

You've not actually taken in what you've read.

You've read it, but you've not actually read it.

We may have read some things about him, but it's not impacted us, our life.

We glance over and think job done.

Do you realize that is not how we read the Bible?

Reading in that way is like your favorite meal being before you.

Whatever it is, for me, it would be steak.

I love steak, just a juicy, medium rare steak.

If you cook it any other way, you're wrong.

Anyway, and it's right there, and you may look at it, you may study it, but you don't actually get to enjoy it.

You don't eat it, you don't enjoy and be satisfied by it.

You completely miss out.

Because the reality is you do not hunger and thirst for the word.

You just are gonna struggle to grow in your faith.

You may know much about the Bible, you may know much about God, but do you know him?

Do you delight in him?

Have you experienced moments of just pure joy, just you and him, no one else is around.

You're praying to him, you're in the word, and you're just experiencing him by the Holy Spirit within you.

What happens is we forget who he is.

We forget the wonderful beauty of him.

That he is the mighty one.

That when he speaks, the earth sits up and and listens and pays attention to to hear what the Lord God would say.

I don't care how articulate you are or how loud you are, and yes, I am loud, I know, I get it, but from one loud person to another, if you just called out all day long, Earth, listen to me, earth, listen to what I have to say.

If you did that after this, okay, you go outside and do it.

What's gonna happen?

Nothing.

A bird might fly by thinking, what a weirdo.

That's probably not gonna happen.

But you know what I mean.

The fact is, nothing would happen, and yet, here when we read this, we can miss it, we can we can just think, oh yeah, of course.

But the creator God, the mighty one, when he speaks, the whole of creation sits up and pays attention.

The Lord is speaking.

What does he have to say?

And the truth is, Israel have forgotten, they have forgotten their desperate need to hear him, to listen to him, and yet the psalmist declares, our God comes and he does not keep silent.

How desperately we should long to hear from him, because every single human, every single human will ever either acknowledge him now in their life, by bowing their knee, knowing who he is, delighting in him, or one day be forced to bow and acknowledge him.

There is no other option.

There is no escaping the Lord God and His authority over you and your life.

He is the righteous judge who will have his say.

Throughout the Psalm there is a word that is throughout the Psalms themselves, there is a word that is used often.

Often we glance over it and don't really pick up on it, and it's sela, and it means pause.

It means reflect, consider, stop.

And here the Lord God begins, and he wants his people to consider, to reflect, to pause.

Do you know and remember his complete authority?

Do you know and see his perfect beauty?

Do you know and realize his righteous rule?

Do you grasp whatever you have and know and experience in your life has been given from him?

How easily we forget, how easily we take him for granted.

Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

Those words are so true of my experience so often, sadly.

That we love him and yet we wander away from him.

You cannot live a life of true faith without knowing the Lord God.

Not just knowing things about him, but knowing him personally.

Because we can think we contribute to God.

Often we can think we add to him or he adds to you, and we miss the call entirely.

This is exactly what has happened to Israel.

They have become self-righteous and self-indulgent.

Firstly, the self-righteous.

Well, the self-righteous people, and if you're a self-righteous person, you can look good.

You can look as if you're a faithful person, that you love God, that you are doing what He wants of your life.

You can see them serving, you can see them speaking about God and His Word, you can know that they pray, that they read their Bible.

All of these things are good things, and they can look good.

These people would have looked good to us, but the fact is they completely miss the point.

Look at verse 8.

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.

God sees and acknowledges their religious activity.

Your burnt offerings are continually before me.

He doesn't deny it.

He's saying, Look, I see that you are doing things that I require, that I ask, that I have I've said to you.

It can seem as though these are wonderfully faithful people.

They are doing, doing, doing for the Lord.

Yet the Lord God is here to testify against them.

And we can think, that's unfair.

Surely that is unfair.

Come on, surely they've done what you want.

But this is the Lord God, who does not look at the outward appearance but looks at the heart.

This is who he is.

There is no hiding.

Look down at verse 10.

For every beast of the forest is mine, and 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.

The Lord is declaring his ownership over everything.

He is reminding these people that the world and the fullness of it are mine.

But why?

Because they have forgotten.

The heart of a self-righteous person is believing the lie that you contribute to God.

You believe yourself to be better than those around you.

You are all about seeming and being good.

You hunger and strive to be seen as significant.

And we all know what that's like.

We know what it's like when there's someone in the group and they're the person that always needs to be right.

They long to be right.

And trust me, I know what that's like.

Sadly, I know that feeling all too well.

I long and love to be right.

And there are those in Israel who have given themselves over to this mindset, who think that they are doing God a favor in bringing sacrifices before Him.

They are contributing to their salvation.

Their righteousness is in what they are doing, not in what he has done for them.

Do you hear that, brother and sister in Christ?

Your goodness will be in what you do if this is you, in how much you've prayed, in how faithful you are in going to church, in how much you serve, in how much you read your Bible, in how much you give financially.

And those are good things.

And yet you enter into a cycle.

Work, work, work, striving to live rightly, striving to be recognized as good.

But then temptation comes.

Temptation and you fall into sin.

You feel such guilt and shame.

It is crushing.

You feel like a complete failure.

You feel as though your holiness has been pushed back completely.

As though you have to work up, you have to work back toward the Lord God.

That you can't just go to Him now.

You need to earn it again.

You need to work your own way back to feeling good enough.

When you consider Him, you know He just looks at you and you know He just sees you in that moment and thinks has utter shame in the sight of you.

And you feel like, yeah, maybe I know intellectually He loves me, he has to love me, but I know He doesn't like me.

Because the truth is, your salvation, your security has become about what you do.

Not about what Christ has done, not about who he is.

This is utterly consuming.

You spend so much time worrying about others around you, about their opinions.

It leads you down a road of worry and anxiety.

Fear of man is huge for you.

Because ultimately you believe it is about you.

Ultimately, you believe you're never going to be good enough.

And that drives you to strive in your own efforts to earn yourself.

Brother, sister in Christ, let me seek to be real with you.

As someone who knows this fight, fight, this battle within my own experience.

Do you realize that this gospel we believe tells you, tells me that you are not good enough.

You will never be good enough.

This is exactly what you need to learn and accept.

That you were never good enough.

You will never be good enough.

Let me say lovingly as I can.

You are even worse than you think you are.

I am worse than I think I am.

And in the to the depth of your being, Jesus sees and knows your failings and your brokenness.

Nothing is hidden from the mighty one, the Lord God Himself.

Yet the sweetness of the gospel is Jesus Himself.

Jesus came.

Ridiculed.

And he rose over death itself.

Not for some false view of who you are, not for some view of what you present to others, but for you.

That the Father in his love sent his son to die.

That his son in his love died for his people.

And that the Spirit is sent by the Son to be with us, to help us, to encourage us, to help us to see Him more clearly as we seek to live for Him, as we seek to enjoy Him.

That we might know that you have done nothing to earn it.

Please hear me, City Church.

There is no sin too deep.

There is no failure too terrible for Christ Jesus to deal with.

Look at the people throughout Scripture, people of faith.

They were broken.

And if you keep striving in your own efforts, your own work, you'll continually come up short.

Yet we look to Christ Jesus as he's hung on the cross and he cries out, it is finished.

He meant it.

He knew exactly what he was doing, dying for us.

His people, declaring victory over sin and death.

Do you believe that his death is enough for you?

Do you rest in that?

Knowing that God does not just require his people to work their way back, to earn their way back to him.

He knows that's impossible.

But rather, he invites them to enjoy them.

Enjoy him, sorry, for what he has done.

Look at verse 14.

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

A thanksgiving sacrifice was not required for Israel.

This was not a sacrifice that they had to do.

It was a sacrifice that was given for them to be able to thank God spontaneously, to express their thankfulness for who he is and all that he had done for them.

It was the way for them to just worship, to enjoy him, to be reminded of his love and their love for him.

And the Lord God is calling to his people, knowing their waywardness, and yet desiring them to come, to come and enjoy Him.

Not earn it because they can't earn it, but to rejoice in what He has done for them.

It is tragic when we don't grasp we have been saved to enjoy God Himself.

Loving the Father for the blessings he lavishes upon us.

Loving the Son for His selfless sacrifice for us.

Loving the Spirit for the work that He does within us.

Growing in our knowledge of who he is as Father, Son, and Spirit, as Jesus Christ Himself calls to us.

Come to me, all who labor are heavy and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

It is exhausting fighting to be seen in a certain way.

It is exhausting fighting to feel good enough.

Jesus calls out to you, to me, come, come to me.

I have done it, I have what you need.

Knowing that life, the life he offers, is the life we have been created for.

Realizing the strength for this life is given by him through the spirit.

Because though you are called from self-righteousness, that does not warrant you to live how you like.

Doesn't mean just do what you want now.

Once again, if you neglect him in that way, you live for you.

You are a lover of self.

That is exactly what is happening with the second group.

They were living self-indulgent lives.

Look at verse 16.

But to the wicked God says, What right have you to recite my statutes or to take my covenant on your lips?

For you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you.

These two groups are completely missing the Lord God.

Instead of being self-righteous believing they are adding to God, this group sees God and thinks that God is an add-on to them.

The faith they think they have is not impacting how they live.

Look at verse 18.

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.

You know what this is like.

You believe God is just something that you pick up when you feel like it.

Your faith is not impacting every area of your life.

There are areas of your life that you think you control, you rule.

Ultimately, your faith is about serving you and your needs.

Brother, sister, the Creator God will not be taken for granted.

The call has always been the same.

God's people are called to be distinct from those around us.

That they are to live as those who have been given life in Jesus Christ.

That you were dead, you were lifeless, and now you have life.

That should change everything.

So the challenge of the Lord God to these people and to you is is your life lived out of a complete desire to glorify Him or to glorify yourself?

Do you think about your decisions underneath His rule?

Or is it what you do, how you want to live, for what you think is best?

Are you playing a game with your faith that you go to church, you do Christian things, yet you just do what you want in other times?

One book outside of the Bible that has greatly impacted me and has been used by God in my life is Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.

One of my favorite quotes in this book says this.

That's what Peter said we should always be ready to give an answer for.

Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you.

Why don't people ask us about our hope?

The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do.

Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life.

Our reward is great in heaven.

You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

If we believe this more deeply, others might see the worth of God and find in him their gladness.

Brother, sister, when was the last time someone asked you for the hope that is in you?

Is your faith evident to those around you?

Is it seen and recognized?

I'm not talking about perfection.

I'm not saying you're perfect, you will muck up, I'll muck up, we'll all muck up.

I get that.

But I am saying if someone were to be with you for long enough, a week, a complete week, for example, would they know the priorities of your life?

Would they know that you are fully and completely devoted to the Lord, even though you're broken?

Would they know how you speak and act is seasoned with salt, that there's a distinction about you?

Would they see that?

The Lord God challenges his people in Psalm 50 that your faith is dead if you think you are just gonna live for what you want for this moment and not live for me.

Because the reality of my life, your life, is you do not fool God.

You might come to church, so what?

You might give financially, so what?

You might go to community group, so what?

Those are good, important things, yes.

But if that is the basis, if that's the centrality of your faith, and the rest of your life is lived out without any regard for Christ Jesus, you are in grave danger.

He knows your heart, he knew the hearts of Israel, and he does not matter in the slightest what I think of you, it really doesn't, or what others think of you.

Ultimately, though, you need to be absolutely sure and certain that it matters what the Lord God thinks of you, and no one fools him.

And the call by the righteous judge toward the self-indulgent is verse 22 mark this then, you who forget God lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver you.

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.

The Lord God knows that they are seeking the things of this world, believe in the lies around them, and he calls them to remember him, to rejoice, to give thanks to him, to come underneath his lordship, because the Lord God is not after mere actions but wholehearted devotion, to delight in him, to love him.

He has never been about just mere rule keeping, but about calling to himself sons and daughters.

When your life is utterly shaped by him, he will not be an auto add-on, sorry, to your life.

He himself will be your life.

Do you grasp that?

Do you know that you you do not need to go to anything else in this world to gain life?

He is your life.

And that should shape you because we are shaped by what we love.

Psalm 50 is pressing us to consider how we are self-lovers.

Whether that is revealed in self-righteousness or revealed in self-indulgence.

The Lord God is speaking to you, to me, crying out in Psalm 50.

He does not care for your false religion.

He does not care about what you have done.

It is about what He has done.

That a light that is captured by Him is a life that is thankful.

A light that knows you do not deserve anything.

What I so often fail to remember, what you so often fail to remember, and what I say to myself, what I say to others, is often, do you realize that you deserve death and eternal punishment?

Do you actually realize that?

Do you grasp that?

Because we like to think, oh, sure, I don't, I don't really.

We may know it, but do you actually realize that today you deserve death and eternal punishment?

You pretend that you're better than you are.

I pretend.

But the Lord God knows you have completely failed him.

And without question, you deserve his wrath.

But when you understand this, when you breathe that in, and you truly know in the depth of your being and comprehend the depth of your depravity, you can be free.

Free to be thankful, free to embrace all Jesus Christ has done for you, knowing it is a free gift given to you for you, free to begin to grasp the depth and the heights of his love for you.

Free to live out of gratitude rather than expectation of you deserve.

When you know the gift you have been given, and you know the giver of the gift, you will rejoice, you will be thankful, realizing he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.

How will he not with him graciously give us all things?

Brother, sister, my encouragement to you is to pay attention in your life.

To realize the very breath you breathe right now is a gift.

You did not earn it, you did nothing for that.

I did nothing for this.

The food you eat is a gift, the taste buds you have to enjoy that food is a gift.

The house you live in, the clothes you wear, the money you have, the job, you have the family, you have the church you belong to, the beauty of nature around you that you get to see and enjoy is a gift.

You did not deserve any of it.

You've done nothing for it.

I need to know that, you need to know that.

We've not earned it.

And all of this, all of that should lead you toward your Heavenly Father, who blesses us with every good gift.

All of that should help us to worship Him, to enjoy Him, to be thankful toward Him.

Realizing the most precious gift is Christ Himself, whom we get to enjoy now and into eternity.

To be able to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Let that be the orientation of your life.

Let your life be one of continual thankfulness to the Lord God who has given you everything in Christ Jesus.

Let me pray.

Loving Father, I thank you for your love, for your grace, for your mercy towards us, that we do not deserve anything and yet you give us all things in Christ Jesus.

I thank you that we get to enjoy and love and experience Him and you because of what you've done for us.

And I pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ, whether we tend towards self-righteousness or self-indulgence, would you bring correction?

I thank you, you are the God who calls, you are the God who corrects through your word by the power of your spirit.

So work among us.

Do what is needed, make us more into the image of your Son that we might give honor, praise, and glory due your name.

In your name I pray.

Amen.