Sacrifice Of Praise And Thanksgiving (Psalm 50) Series

(I don’t need your sacrifices and offerings, because everything in the world already belongs to me)

14 "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High; 15 And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me. "

(Vs. 16-22: God’s message to the wicked – Summary - shape up your you’ll be in trouble)

(Summary)

23 "He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me; And to him who orders his way aright I shall show the salvation of God."

The main theme of this Psalm,

is that God is not satisfied with religion as usual.

He says,

I’ve had it up to here with your sacrifices,

they don’t mean anything to me.

If he was talking to us today,

he’d say,

I’ve had it with your Sunday-only religion,

thinking that if I just show up at church once in a while,

and tell people that I’m a Christian,

the God will be satisfied.

He says,

that kind of surface religion

is not what I want.

Then he says,

Here’s what I do want,

I want you to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

What in the world is he talking about there.

What does it mean to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving?

This relates directly back to the sacrifices in the OT.

So to figure this out we have to start there.

In the OT law of Moses,

God gave instructions for a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

or it was usually called the thank offering.

Leviticus 3:1-5, 7:12-15

if a person wanted to offer God a thank offering, 3 things were required.

The person had to offer: (1) an sheep or goat that had no defect, injury or disease (unblemished)

(2) bread, wafers and cakes made without yeast and mixed with oil, and (3) bread made with yeast.

Each of these represented something different.

First,

The sheep or goat would be sacrificed and its blood poured out,

and the fat burned,

The blood represented the life of the animal,

and the fat was considered the best part,

given to God.

and that was a foreshadowing that represented the life and blood of Jesus Christ,

that was sacrificed for us.

It was pointing ahead to the time, when Jesus would come and offer His body and blood on the cross,

to open the door so we can have a loving relationship with God.

The 2nd part of the offering was cakes of bread and wafers made without yeast or leaven.

This unleavened bread and wafer represented holiness or a state of being absolutely pure, Because in the Bible, leaven or yeast always represents sin.

So this second part of the offering,

pointed ahead as a symbol of the holiness and purity of Jesus Christ who never sinned,

and lived a perfect life.

And these cakes of bread were to be mixed and spread with oil. and oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit.

So, all three persons of the trinity are represented in this offering:

(1) God the Father to whom the offering is given, (2) Jesus represented by the unleavened bread and (3) the Holy Spirit represented by the oil.

Now there was one more part of the thank offering,

I mentioned the sheep or goat,

the unleavened bread,

and then the third part of the offering was cakes of bread made with yeast or leaven.

This represented the person offering it, that is the sinner…