While Psalm 49 taught us that no amount of money can rescue you from the grave or redeem your life before God, Psalm 50 teaches that no amount of religious practice can save you from the wrath of God against evil. As in both psalms, only trusting in God for your salvation is what matters.
This is the first psalm written by Asaph, David’s worship leader and ancestor for a group of temple worshippers. Asaph wrote twelve psalms, the rest are Psalms 73-83. This psalm concerns lukewarm worship of God. Having a form of godliness is not enough—your heart must be in submission to Him for it to mean anything.
1 – 6
Asaph calls the people to court to hear God speak. Verse 3 reminds me of Hebrews 12:29 “Our God is a consuming fire.” I’m sure Asaph was remembering Exodus 24:17 where God appears as a “consuming fire” on the mountaintop. God is speaking to everyone who approaches Him by sacrifice—those that want some sort of relationship with Him.
7 – 15
His first judgment is to “My people.” God is not chiding them for offering sacrifices but for making the mistake that God needed them—that He would go hungry were it not for the bulls and rams they offered. God says that all the earth is His and He has no need of their sacrifices. The purpose of sacrifice is not for God to owe us. But the purpose is to thank God (vs 14) and be dependent on God (vs 15) not the other way around.
Some people today think that by obeying God or saying the magic words that they can get God to owe them. God will only do what is in the best interests of His kingdom. We need Him. He does not need us!
16 – 21
God here rebukes those that come to Him in name only. They perform public worship but their hearts are not in it. This reminds me of the words of Isaiah:
Isaiah 29:13 “The Lord said: Because these people approach Me with their mouths to honor Me with lip-service—yet their hearts are far from Me, and their worship consists of man-made rules
learned by rote—“
God uses several examples of their hypocrisy—God’s name is on their lips but His character is not going down into their hearts. The examples are thievery, adultery, deceit, slander and worst of all—thinking that God was just like them.
People make that same mistake today. They think God is just a more powerful them—a super hero. They discount the incredible purity of God. It makes us feel better and less evil, but it isn’t true.
22 – 23
God is calling for the people to think about it and get the difference between a surface show and a heart relationship and dependence on God, and giving thanks for His provision and salvation. God desires two things: dependence and obedience (“orders his conduct”). Today, that obedience means doing the will of God which is to believe in God’s Son and trust in Him (John 6:39).
Jesus told the woman at the well in Samaria that God desires those that worship Him in spirit and truth, not just in tradition (John 4).
Psalm 51
Psalm 51 is a very significant psalm David wrote it after Nathan the prophet called him on the carpet for sleeping with Bathsheba. The story is found in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. David, king of Israel, had not been doing his job, going out to fight against Israel’s enemies. And as is often the case when we aren’t doing God’s work we end up doing the work of the flesh or the enemy—David was tempted. He saw this beautiful lady taking a bath on the roof (what was she doing there anyway). David saw her, lusted after her, and had intimate relations with her. She got pregnant—but was already married to Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s mighty men (1 Chronicles 11:41). David made a bad decision worse—instead of owning his sin, he tried to cover it up by sending Uriah into battle and purposefully leaving him uncovered so he would be killed. Then he married Bathsheba but the child she bore died.
It took David nearly a year to admit to this sin. Nathan came and told him a story of a rich man who took a poor man’s lamb for his dinner guests. David was incensed and said that that man should die for his crime. Then Nathan said those famous words: “Thou are the man.” It was at this point that David broke—confessed his sin before God and sought God’s forgiveness. This psalm is that response.
1 – 5
David pleads with God not for what he deserves, but was he needs—God’s grace and forgiveness. He recognizes that sin is rebellion, as is all sin—rebellion against the character and authority of God in our lives. He also realizes that the real sin is against God, not just against Bathsheba and Uriah. In the end, all sin is an affront to God, an offense.
Part of the process of repentance is recognizing that what you have done is outside the character of God, realizing it is a sin against God and that you deserve punishment (vs 4). Indeed, David realizes that it isn’t that he sinned, but that he is a sinner that did what comes naturally.
This is one place where we understand that humans are sinful by nature—part of the DNA passed down from our fathers from the Garden of Eden.
6 – 9
A second major part of repentance and forgiveness is the realization that perfection is the standard. There is no grading on the curve with God. Matthew 5:48 says “Be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” David realized there was something that needed to be fixed, not on the surface of his behavior, but way deep in this motivations and thought patterns that led him to commit this sin. It is good for us to realize our actions come from within us and to seek God to cleanse them and change our thinking and feeling patterns.
So how do we get that perfection? It is not by our efforts as David admits in verse 7. He asks for God to purify him with hyssop. A hyssop (like a sponge) was used to sprinkle the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Exodus 12:22).
I love verse 8: God does crush us—we have to die in order to live.
Romans 6:5-11 For if we have been joined with Him in the likeness of His death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of His resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, 7 since a person who has died is freed from sin’s claims. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him, 9 because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, no longer dies. Death no longer rules over Him. 10 For in that He died, He died to sin once for all; but in that He lives, He lives to God. 11 So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
After that we too can rejoice and be glad for we have been set free!
10 – 13
David not only has confessed his sin, and called on God for His mercy and forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb (prefiguring the Lamb of God), but the next step is a desire to be like God in his character.
The idea of not being banished from His presence and God’s Holy Spirit not being taken away isn’t that David feared losing his salvation but that he feared that God’s power and presence would no longer work in his life—he wants the “joy” of his salvation returned. Sin and true joy are mutually exclusive—the two cannot exist simultaneously.
The final piece of this then is that David wants to use his predicament and God’s grace as a lesson for others so that they might take warning and not fall in the first place.
14 – 17
These verses are vitally important and really go along well with Psalm 50. David declares that this experience will cause him to speak openly of God’s character and God’s grace. An important aspect of it is that God does not want our sacrifices to be cut open, he wants our hearts to be cut open before Him.
I wonder if David had not heard the words that Samuel spoke to King Saul: 1 Sam 15:22
Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?
Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.
18 – 19
Only when we are restored through God’s grace can we offer the sacrifices of praise that will be acceptable to God!
One of the wonderful things about this whole situation is that even though David sinned, God is greater than our sin and the next child Bathsheba bore—Solomon—was in the Messianic line. Don’t think you have made such a huge mistake that God cannot fix it—if we do as David did and admit our guilt and submit ourselves to God’s mercy.
Psalm 52
Psalm 52 is another Davidic psalm based on a place of difficulty in David’s life. The events took place in 1 Samuel 21 & 22. David was running from Saul, whom God had rejected as Israel’s king. David had been anointed the next king and Saul was out to kill him. At one point David went to the Ahimelech the priest at Nob with his men. David told the priest that he was on a mission from Saul and that his men were in need of food. Ahimelech gave him the left-over showbread that had been removed from the altar and Goliath’s armor that was stored there.
Another person there was Doeg, an Edomite, and Saul’s chief shepherd. Later, Doeg ratted David out and the help given to him. He was then responsible for the killing of 85 priests—one of the most despicable acts in the entire Old Testament.
1 – 4
Usually people brag about their riches or position, but here Doeg brags about his evil when he should be bragging about God’s faithful love. The man’s love was for evil instead of good. It reminds me of what Jesus said about the religious leaders:
John 8:42-45 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, because I came from God and I am here. For I didn’t come on My own, but He sent Me. 43 Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of liars. 45
5 – 7
Though Doeg seemed so arrogant and secure—there is no security when you take “refuge” in anything that is contrary to the character of God.
But David knows that even though he too is a sinner—finding grace and subjugating his life to God is the answer to life both now and forever.
8 – 9
David, like an olive tree, is productive, prolific, and prosperous. God has made him that way—God has transformed David through repentance and forgiveness into someone that is truly “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14).
We, like David, should “put my hope in Your name, for it is good.” No matter what evil we see around us, it should never take us away from trusting in God and His ultimate plan. He will deal with evil when it is time. Our focus should be on rejoicing in the name and deeds of our God forever!
