We so often, and so very easily, entertain wrong views of God and our relationship with him. This isn't deliberate on our part but it is debilitating. Psalm 50 is a great help in addressing and correcting those tendencies.
It begins by highlighting the nature of the LORD - that he is the Mighty God, perfect in beauty, shining forth in glory. He speaks, summoning both heaven and earth, to address the people united to him by a covenant of sacrifice. And his assessment is this (verses 7-13):
They have not been slow in keeping the commandments regarding sacrifices. They have been made and are ever before the Lord. However, those sacrifices have been viewed in overly transactional terms. Through them they would, somehow, sustain the LORD. They would feed him, support him, enable him to be who he claimed to be. His life would, in a strange turn of events, be in their hands.
Their obligations to the covenant had been met, its instructions followed, but from a false and falsifying perspective. The LORD has no needs that his people must meet, as verses 9-13 make so very clear:
I have no need of a bull from your stall
or of goats from your pens,
for every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains,
and the insects in the fields are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
The same point needed to be made by Paul in idol-ridden Athens, that the living God "is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else." (Acts 17:25)
To get this wrong, as they had done, is the road into anxious bondage, into a punishing performance-driven relating that has no proper foundation in the love of God. It diminishes the Lord of glory and reduces life with him to a mechanistic, computational chore.
That is not what we are called to by the gospel. The living God has no need of us and we are not saved in order to sustain him. We are not called and chosen because he has limited resources and needs to expand what is available to him. The coming of the Kingdom of God in its majestic fullness will not be an achievement of the church.
The true centre is given in verses 14, and 15. Here is the renewing essence that relies not on human effort and success. Its emphasis is on true, heart-felt worship ("Sacrifice thank-offerings to God"), recognising and receiving the glorious grace of God. It is on a faith that demonstrates it is living through a glad obedience ("fulfil your vows to the Most High"). And it is on a complete dependence upon the Lord to rescue and save ("call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you").
Here are the central realities of the Christian life. Gospel outcomes. Called to worship, to a living faith, to a full reliance on the Lord to save. Our service does not in any sense prop-up the living God or make up for some inherent lack in him. Nor is it the missing link in the achieving of his plans to save from every tribe and language and nation.
Getting our perspective true and clear is vital to healthy Christian living, to joy-filled worship and faith-filled obedience. By these "you will honour me" says the Mighty One, God, the LORD.
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O for a heart to praise my God,
A heart from sin set free;
A heart that always feels Thy blood
So freely shed for me;
A heart resigned, submissive, meek,
My great Redeemer's throne,
Where only Christ is heard to speak,
Where Jesus reigns alone;
A humble, lowly, contrite heart,
Believing, true, and clean,
Which neither life nor death can part
From him that dwells within;
A heart in every thought renewed,
And full of love divine;
Perfect and right and pure and good:
A copy, Lord, of Thine.
Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart;
Come quickly from above;
Write Thy new name upon my heart,
Thy new best Name of Love.
(Charles Wesley, 1707-88)
