Don't Waste Your Sacrifice

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

But the reason that we have gathered this morning is to praise our Lord and to be filled with his goodness We’ve assembled together To look to him and to remember that our help is in the name of the Lord Our scriptural call to worship comes from Psalm 107 Oh Give thanks to the Lord for he is good for his steadfast love endures forever forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so whom he has redeemed from trouble, and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way, till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things. Let’s pray. Father, we gather as

one people before you today to lift up your praises and worship you in spirit and truth. You have redeemed us from trouble and we can say with confidence that your steadfast love endures forever. We hasten to stand before you and keep this festal day to celebrate your name with praise and prayer. Here we are before you on this Lord’s Day to refresh our souls in the rest that you have brought us into, to come and drink of your word, to eat at your table, to thank you for your steadfast love, for your wondrous works to the children of man. Bless our worship here today, made be acceptable in your sight and potent in our community.

May our congregation serve towards making others jealous for you as we proclaim your Your majesty, your holiness, and your love, use us to magnify your name. It’s good to thank the Lord. We praise your name most high. Amen. Sometimes we act like, sometimes with how we act, you would think that there is a verse somewhere in the Bible that commands us to grumble and complain. Maybe you are a professional grumbler and you can keep it inside. Perhaps you seek a listening ear to gain empathy with your grumbling and complaints, always telling others who don’t crawl down in the hole with you that they don’t understand.

Paul commands believers in 1 Thessalonians 5.18 to give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. One thing I want to mention that keeps us from giving thanks is trauma. why I don’t like how the world has adopted the world trauma. It seems to have impacted some Christians who use it as an excuse to remain in their whole and disobedience. I understand that there is trauma in this life and that it could be a big deal in your world. It needs to be dealt with biblically and remember that your identity is found in Christ, not in your trauma. Your circumstances do not own you, God does.

If Paul said, grumble and complain in all circumstances, this exhortation would not be needed. The truth is that grumbling and complaining, it clogs our hearts from singing a song of thanksgiving. Think of your heart like a teabag. Whatever the circumstances are in your world, your heart will be exposed. Maybe you can hide your grumbling from others, but God knows the actual state of your heart. I know the struggle to give thanks in all circumstances is difficult and hard. I remember telling my wife and some of you I didn’t see my medical vacation as a gift. I couldn’t give thanks and I ran from anything that reminded me to give thanks.

Even a song called Bring the Rain became a skip song. I didn’t want to be thankful, but this is God’s will for my life and Jesus Christ. Grace won. It doesn’t matter what circumstances are going on in your life, you can choose to find something to give thanks for. Start with repentance and then strive to clean out all grumblings from your heart. Proverbs 4.23 tells us, keep your heart with all villages, for from it flow the springs of life. Beloved, leave your heart. Do not let yourself off the hook. You have to keep moving forward. The weapon that God gave us to fight grumbling is giving thanks. He has also granted to us his precious and very great promises.

We have no excuses for grumbling and complaining. The enemy of your soul smiles when you become a victim of your circumstances. Romans 828 teaches us that because God is sovereign and good, we can trust him in what he is doing and allowing in our worlds. Be caution because a symptom of unbelief is grumbling. It is a sin that each of us must repent of as needed. Consider what grumbling and complaining in your life is keeping you from giving God thanks. Maybe it is something with your marriage. Perhaps it is work required for an answered prayer. Are you content with God’s sovereignty in your life? What obedience are you running from instead of leaning into?

A thankful heart will have a mouth that sings a song of thanksgiving regardless of the circumstances. If this brings to mind any areas that you need to confess so that you can be forgiven and keeping step with the spirit, now is the time to do that. As usual, if you desire, are unable to kneel in confession, you are invited to do so and we will pray corporately in just a minute or so after you have time to pray to the Lord yourself. Father, we confess that we are guilty of the sin of grumbling and complaining. While the world seems to want to make these virtues, we know you have called us to give thanks in all circumstances.

Please forgive us of our grumbling and increase our faith as we trust and and obey you wherever you have us, knowing that you are with us and have promised to conform us to the image of your son, Jesus Christ. Give us grace to see your goodness working in and through our lives, even when unfavorable conditions are before us. And may that strengthen our hearts to sing of your steadfast love and faithfulness, which endures forever. You know where hope is, we know where hope is found, which should produce real thankfulness that works out of our lives to the praise and glory of your name. We pray all this in the name of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

You are invited to stand. Our passage for the promise of forgiveness comes from Colossians 1, 9 through 14. And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in which we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Beloved, God the Father has delivered us from the domain of darkness. We belong to Jesus Christ and we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins in him. And not only that, but you are salt and light in a world full of darkness. Be light and do all things without grumbling and complaining and bring an offering of thanksgiving in all circumstances. Let us continue to sing with hearts full of thankfulness. Our scripture reading this morning comes from Psalm 50.

We’ll be reading the first 15 verses. Psalm 50, verses one through 15, and I’ll be reading from the English Standard Version. 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, a mighty tempest. He calls the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge, Selah. Here, O my people, and I will speak.

O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. 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, for every beast of the forest is mine. 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. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High. and call upon me in the day of trouble.

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. Father, indeed, what a Savior. And how we look forward to the day when that Savior shall again appear in glory, in power, in might. And so put every enemy under his footstool to make everything right. How you yourself will wipe away every tear and turn every sorrow into joy, and that we will be able to be in your presence forever and ever. In the meantime, may we continue to be faithful in what you’ve put before us, to be quick to give you honor and glory and all that we say and do, to as Ryan exhorted us, to give you thanks always for all things. And Father, we just wanna tell you how much we love you and adore you, and thank you for having called us by name to be a part of your family.

And as we look in your word now, may we find our souls again challenged and refreshed and exhorted and encouraged by what you have for us. We ask this all in our name, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. I first preached this message eight years ago on November 15, 2015, during our Brown Paper Passages series on a Sunday night. if those of you are around for that. But since many of you have not heard it before and we’re getting close to our nation’s annual day of Thanksgiving, I decided to say worth revisiting the topic of Thanksgiving this morning. Hard to believe but we’re only about four or four and a half weeks away from Thanksgiving again.

All of Psalm 50 serves as the text for the message this morning. It was around the time I first preached this message that I happened to be in Psalm 50 as a part of my annual read through the Bible schedule. I came across something in verse 14 that struck me as peculiar. I’m sure I had read that verse many times before but for some reason it really stood out to me this time. The part that caught my eye was where the Psalmist says to offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. During that season of my life I had already been pondering the command in Ephesians 5.20 to give thanks always and for all things and everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hadn’t ever thought of thanksgiving as a sacrifice to God before. I saw it simply as a command to be obeyed and I wondered what it meant to view it as a sacrifice.

Now inherent to the idea of sacrifice is the fact that it costs you something, right? What was the sacrifice I was to make when offering God thanksgiving? In Psalm 50 we’re going to see that God does not fault Israel for a failure to bring him burnt offerings. says their offerings are continually before him, but he then says I’m not going to accept them. Somehow they were missing the point of what sacrifice was for and God wasn’t very happy about it. As I pondered Psalm 50 I realized that I was tainting my thanksgiving to God with a grumbling spirit within me. One moment I could be praising God for something and the next I could be fussing, usually in my head, about something I didn’t like. I was sinning in a similar way as the Israelites, making the right sacrifice at the right time, but not with the right heart. I like to think of myself as a realist, and I’m pretty good at spotting things that are not right. But I had to come to terms with the fact that whatever other label I I put on my quote gift of discernment, I wasn’t being thankful always and for all things.

Hence my interest in Psalm 50 and why I chose it eight years ago for a message and why I’m looking at it again this morning with you. Sacrifice as an act of worship has been around since Adam and Eve. The Old Testament is filled with commands given to Israel concerning when, where, what to sacrifice. Sacrifice isn’t just an Old Testament thing that no longer applies to us today. It’s the crux and the call of Christianity. It’s the crux of Christianity because without Christ’s sacrifice on the cross there would be no gospel and no reason for giving thanksgiving. We would still be dead in our trespasses and sin. It’s also the call of Christianity because sacrifice is at the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Mark 834. We don’t perform animal or grain offerings anymore like they did in the Old Testament times, but in truth the New Testament raises the sacrifice stakes to a whole new level. Romans 12 1 tells us to present your bodies as a a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship.

Jesus teaches a foundational truth about Christianity in John 1224 where he tells us that a kernel of wheat must be buried and die before it can produce much fruit. It’s the principle of dying so as to bring forth life. Compared to New Testament teachings on the sacrifice, Old Testament rules and regulations actually don’t sound all that difficult. The nature and kind of sacrifice described in the Old and New Testaments may have changed, but one thing that has remained constant is what it takes to make a sacrifice acceptable or unacceptable to God. I said a moment ago that sacrifice as acceptable worship goes back to the days of Adam and Eve. And so do acts of unacceptable worship. Sin is always at work, often staining what we say and do. And our worship then is no longer in our worship is no exception how sin enters in. Psalm 50 is all about wasted sacrifice and how offensive it is to God. And I want you as I go through Psalm 50, I want you to kind of really visualize what’s going on.

There’s a lot of imagery happening in here. It’s a pretty amazing psalm. The psalm begins by describing a heavenly court being convened. It’s not your typical American courtroom where you have a defendant, a plaintiff, and lawyers for both sides, a jury, some witnesses, and a judge. In this courtroom, all we have is God, who is the supreme judge. And then we have some witnesses and Israel as the defendant. There aren’t any lawyers present because there isn’t any defense to be made. When God calls court, He Himself establishes the facts of the case. At issue were Israel’s sacrifices. The problem was that they weren’t offering them.

That was not the problem. They were. The problem was that Israel was missing the point of sacrifice and thus they were offering sacrifices that were unacceptable to God. This problem of course isn’t limited to Israel. We are often guilty of the very same thing today and it’s just as offensive to God.

Besides offering our bodies as living sacrifices we’re told to offer our praise, our time, our talent, and our treasure just to name a few things. It is quite common for us to take the exact same to make the exact same mistake Israel made and thus render our sacrifices unacceptable to God. It behooves us to take a look and see what it was that provoked God to call Israel into court so that we don’t become guilty of the same thing. If we were to read heaven’s court docket on the day this trial took place it might read something like this God versus the nation of Israel and the matter of unacceptable sacrifices. The psalm can be divided into three main sections. We have the first section where the court is called in verses 1 through 7. Then we have the case is made in verses 8 through 21. And then we finally have the convicted are warned in verses 22 through 23. So first let’s take a look at verses 1 through 7. The court is called into session. When a typical American court is called into session and officer of the court usually says something like,

all arise. This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Judy is presiding.

We see something in verse one. The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. I mean that verse alone should give you some chills up and down your spine. The phrase mighty one, God the Lord, invokes three distinct names of God, El, Elohim, and Jehovah. This pattern is used only one other place in the Bible in Joshua 22-22 where it’s repeated twice and you can dive pretty deep into the commentaries as to what significance that may hold. If any this triple use of God’s what you might you can explore deeply what that might mean this triple repeat an interesting note in the discussion is the fact that Elohim itself is a plural noun which some believe alludes to the Trinity being there the argument against that referring to the Trinity of course is that the noun Elohim usually appears in the Bible with the singular form of whatever verb it’s paired with so normal grammar the subject and the verb must agree and number be in plural or singular. So the theologians, the eggheads, they debate

back and forth what the significance is. But anyhow, it’s only one hundred place in the Scriptures where we see God, three names for God. You can have fun mulling over that thought later. But what I do find interesting in this triple reference to God is the sense that he is both supremely transcendent and personally, personally knowable. We see a progression from less specific and less personal to more specific and more personal in these titles for God. The first term L conveys the idea of mighty powerful, the powerful God, the mighty God. It was also used a word used in pagan cultures to refer to their God. So it wouldn’t necessarily get anybody’s attention, yeah, because hey you got your L, I got my L, but it was referring to this impersonal mighty God. Some might say you have your L and I have my L. Just using L by itself didn’t really pin down exactly which God we’re talking about.

But lest anyone be confused about which L we’re talking about, the Psalmist adds Elohim which carries the idea of the God who is the Creator. It’s the word used for God in Genesis 1.1. In the beginning Elohim. That’s now that’s just narrow down which God the Psalmist has in mind. We’re referring to the mighty God, the God who is the creator. This gets us closer to which God we mean, but false worshipers also claim that their God creates too. So just to be sure there isn’t any remaining confusion, the writer includes Jehovah or Yahweh, which is God’s personal name. So then as the court is called into session we hear all rise, God almighty, creator of all things and below, your God whose name is Jehovah is presiding. It really gets the attention and it begins to give you the goosebumps as this court scene begins to unfold. Verses two through three go on to tell us where this court is being held and describe the scene as the judge makes his entrance.

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, a mighty tempest. So again, just try to visualize this grand entrance. Zion refers to Jerusalem, which is where the temple is located and serves as the locust for Israel’s corporate worship. To Israel, Jerusalem is everything. It is the holy city because this is where the temple of God is located. Israel’s identity as a people was wrapped up in Jerusalem. Psalm 137 captures just how passionately the Jews felt about Jerusalem. That Psalm refers to when the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed and the people were in exile.

And their captors, the Babylonians, are taunting them and saying, hey, seen this in Psalms about Zion. Tell us how great Zion is.” And their response is recorded by the Psalmists. They say, how shall we seen the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it. They forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. We find those words in Psalm 137, 4 through 6. Jerusalem is described as the very perfection of beauty. It is the epitome of what is good and beautiful, and it makes sense that this is the spot where the Supreme Being is going to hold court.

God’s entrance is likened to the coming of a mighty tempest and a consuming fire. These metaphors are a picture of God coming with power and authority to judge His people. There is something not right and we are about to find out what and why. The imagery the Psalmist gives is powerful and it’s meant to impress upon us how serious the matter is. And then moving on to verses 4 through 5 tells us who the defendant and the witnesses are. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people. Gathered to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. calls for the heavens above and all the earth below to serve as the witnesses.

This is in some small town country court where a few curious citizens with nothing to better do sit in. This is a very public court proceeding where all of creation is called to serve as the witness. The defendant is identified as my faithful ones who make a covenant with me by sacrifice. The only group that fits this description would be Israel. Nobody else has a covenant relationship with God. It’s interesting that Israel is called faithful ones since they are about to be judged for being anything but faithful. Perhaps the Psalmness is using a bit of sarcasm here to highlight Israel’s sin. All of heaven and earth are the witnesses. Israel is the defendant and God is the prosecutor and the judge. Now sometimes in a human court a motion might be made to have the judge recuse himself. This could be for a variety of reasons including an inability to be impartial. Verses 6 through 7 however speak to God’s unassailable character as judge. Nobody can question his authority to preside over this court. There’s no need for him to recuse himself. All of heaven

bears testimony of his righteousness. We see continuing on verse 6, the heavens declare his righteousness for God himself is judge and then we take a pause the Selah there. Hear oh my people and I will speak Oh Israel I will testify against you I am God your God. Again can you just kind of hear him booming down that voice and we’ve seen the tempest and all creation has gathered and everybody is shutting up because there’s no defense to be made. All it is to sit back and wait for him to pronounce judgment. It’s an incredible scene. Notice the Psalmist’s use of Selah here which signifies a pause.

That’s a very pregnant pause. The judge is about to speak and everyone is holding their breath. Apparently Israel’s sin has been going on for some time. In verse 21 God says, I have been silent but now in verse 6 he says, listen, I am going to speak. It underscores the uh-oh moment Israel is about to have. Imagine the effect when God says listen and he’s going to speak. It’s like that old commercial for the financial service company EF Hutton. You remember that commercial? In the commercial lots of people busy talking and gabbing and numerous conversations when someone leans over to friend they say in some quiet voice they say my financial broker is EF Hutton and he says and then all of a sudden everybody stops and they lean in they want to hear what EF Hutton had to say. It’s that kind of a moment here God says I’m about to speak and all of creation closes its mouth and everybody’s leaning in what’s about to happen. Immediately the whole room and in this case the Hall the creation stops to hear what’s going on. When God speaks creation closes its

mouth and listens. We get the sense again of God’s absolute and inviolable right to act as judge over his people. So now we come then to the case is made starting in verse 8, 8 through 21, the case is made. As we move into the next few verses God begins stating his case against Israel. He begins by telling him that he’s not charged, begins by telling him what he’s not charging them with. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. They had been commanded to bring burnt offerings and they were doing it. He says I’m not I’m not here to fault you for that. You’re doing it. The law of Moses detailed all the offerings of the people were supposed to bring and when. Apparently they were fulfilling their duty because God says he doesn’t rebuke them for failure to do so. But then, even though they were doing what they were supposed to do, God says in verse 9, I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your fields. I don’t fault you for doing what I told you to do, but I’m not

going to accept it. What’s up with that? First, he says he doesn’t rebuke them for bringing bird offerings, but then he says he won’t accept them. You couldn’t blame Israel at this point for maybe being a little bit confused. If Israel is technically doing what God commanded them but he’s refusing to accept it then obviously there’s something about their offering that is unacceptable to him. In verses 10 through 12 he begins showing them what the problem is by telling them what sacrifices are not for. He says, for every beast of the forest is mined the cattle the 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 all of its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?”

It’s almost embarrassing that God has to point this out to Israel. You can almost see them shifting on the hot seat and staring down at the floor. Clearly God does not require sacrifice because he needs something from them. It’s not like he’s got a party coming. He needs a bunch of animal sacrifice. It was never about what God needs. He does not eat food like us. He already owns everything that man can sacrifice. So he doesn’t need men to bring those sacrifices. There is nothing man can sacrifice to God which God does not already hold title to. Offering sacrifices to God is simply giving back what he’s already given us in the first place.

Israel apparently did not understand this and somehow thought they were doing God a favor by giving him some of their possessions. So what does what did God require so that their sacrifice wasn’t just a meaningless barbecue? What would cause him to accept their sacrifices and be pleased with it? Verse 14 through 15 I believe identify three ingredients that make sacrifice to God a pleasing aroma rather than an offensive stench. It says, Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High and call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. Three things are necessary for any sacrifice to God to be acceptable and they’re all related to one another.

All three must be present. It isn’t enough to have two out of the three and no work is even really possible. You have to have all three or nothing. The first thing that’s necessary for our sacrifice to be pleased with God is true thanksgiving. I mentioned earlier, verse 14 is what caught my eye a year or so ago. The command to offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving struck me as peculiar. Not the idea of giving thanks to God, but the idea of thanksgiving as a sacrifice. We don’t typically put Thanksgiving and sacrifice in the same sentence. We can express thankfulness for someone’s sacrifice, but what does it mean to offer Thanksgiving as a sacrifice?

When a small child receives a gift from Grandma and Grandpa, his parents aren’t going to say, Johnny, I want you to give Nana and Papa a hug and offer them a sacrifice of Thanksgiving. What is it about Thanksgiving that makes it a sacrifice? The dictionary defines sacrifice as giving up something you value. In what way is offering God a sacrifice of thanksgiving giving up something? I think there’s at least two ways. First, giving thanks requires letting go of pride. Pride tends to strangle a thankful heart. Pride makes us think we are something special because of our possessions or our accomplishments. Pride makes us believe we deserve something.

So why be thankful for what we deserve? Pride makes us blind to the reality that everything comes from Christ, money, fame, friends, family, good looks, brains, talents, everything. If I see myself as self-sufficient or as a deserving recipient, then I will be stingy with my thanksgiving. The second thing we give up when we offer a sacrifice of Thanksgiving is discontentment, which is the flip side of the pride coin. Being discontent will also kill a thankful heart. If we’re not happy with what we have and always want something more, then thankfulness will be at best half-hearted. Being discontent is just another form of pride because it says I ought to have the things I don’t. I deserve better than I have. If we really believe that God is a sovereign over everything, then complaining about our circumstances is the same thing as telling God he’s not good and or just.

Being content is something that we can apparently learn to do. Paul says in Philippians 4 12 that he had learned the secret of being content in all things. Learning to be content in all things really rubs against my desire to be a realist. But God don’t you see what’s going on? He says yeah I see what’s going on, give thanks in all things, everything, all times. Both thinking that we deserve the gifts we have, both thinking that we deserve the gifts we have or that we should have received the gifts we have not will keep us from offering up a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Perhaps the secret that Paul refers to is that he came to realize that everything from God is gift when viewed properly. That’s an idea worth its own sermon sometime and we’ve talked about that a lot here, recognizing as everything is gift. The second ingredient necessary to make a sacrifice pleasing to God is obedience to his commands.

Getting back to the courtroom in Psalm 50 we see that Israel’s disobedience was a main reason God was refusing to accept their offering. You can hear God’s disdain for their hypocrisy starting in verse 16. But to the wicked God says, what right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief you are pleased with him and you keep company with adulterers. You keep your mouth free, you give your mouth free reign for evil and your tongue from deceit. You sit and speak against your brother, you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done and I have kept silent. You thought that I was one like yourself but now I rebuke you and play the charge before you.” Israel was guilty of several things including disobeying God’s commands, stealing, lying, speaking evil, hating with bad company, and slandering others. But on the positive side of the ledger they were fulfilling their spiritual duty to offer bulls and goats to God. The hypocrisy is as laughable as it is

pathetic. Sacrifice without obedience is an affront to God because it fails to recognize His holiness or our obligation to submit to His will. They were offering to God just a bunch of bulls, and they knew it. Living and ongoing disobedience means we are acting autonomously and not in subjection to its authority even if we are going through the religious motions of making sacrifices. And then there’s a third ingredient in making sacrifice pleasing to God and that is in recognizing our dependence on Him. As He says in verse 15, call upon me in the day of trouble. Clearly our dependence on Him is not limited to just when we’re in trouble. True dependence recognizes that we are but a vapor and that there is nothing we possess that was given to us by God, that was not given to us by God. If we feel magnanimous rather than thankful and needy when we make sacrifice to God, we show a complete misunderstanding of the creature-creator relationship. Oh God, I’m gonna be so good to you today, I’m

going to offer you an extra bowl, an extra goat. We’re going to be magnanimous towards God. We fail to understand what’s going on in that relationship. Sacrifice to God is an act of worship on our part, not an act of benevolence. God doesn’t need or want our tips. And that brings us then to the convicted warned, verses 8 through 21. At this point in the trial, God could have sentenced Israel for their evil ways, but instead, decides to give them a warning and a promise in the final two verses starting at verse 22. Mark this then you who forget God lest I tear you apart and there is none to deliver the one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me to him who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God. Why does God accuse them of forgetting him? They were offering animal sacrifices prescribed in the law, God considers failure to be thankful, obedient, and reliant the same as forgetting Him, even if we’re going through all the religious motions. It’s really the same old problem of

separating the sacred and the secular, and of course we know that no such divide exists. I’m not sure exactly what God means by tear you apart, but it really doesn’t sound very pleasant and it communicates just how offended God is by polluted sacrifice. After strongly rebuking and mourning Israel, God then does something that shows that he is not the El of other nations. He is not a God who throws his power and wrath around when we mess up and then retreats to some heavenly loft until the next time we need a smacking. He is Jehovah, a personal God who desires relationship with his people. Even though Israel had really messed up, God extends a promise to them. He promises to show them his salvation. I don’t think we can take salvation here to refer to our ultimate salvation when we die and then we’re in heaven in our glorified bodies. If that’s what the Psalmist was referring to, then it would suggest that we can somehow earn our salvation because his promise here is conditional on Israel offering sacrifices of thanksgiving. So we can’t conclude

that he’s referring to salvation as ultimate salvation. It makes more sense in the context that to show the salvation of God refers to his relationship with them on earth. If they would repent of the rebelliousness, then they would expect to receive God’s blessing and experience his quote, salvation here on earth. The same principle is true for believers today. Our time on earth can be measured by increasing joy or soul draining misery. The difference is if we are receiving God’s grace or experiencing his opposition. He gives grace to the humble but resists the proud. Lip service was not a problem unique to Israel.

If we’re honest, there are times when we are going through the motions but our heart isn’t in it. It’s incumbent on all of us to examine our lives before the Lord and let his spirit reveal when we are being half-hearted or worse, duplicitous. When we do this and get our hearts right before the Lord, he restores the joy of our salvation. It’s a salvation that taps into the fount of every spiritual blessing. It’s a salvation that invites us into an intimate, never-ending, and forever-expanding relationship with the Triune God. It’s a salvation full of joy and grace. How do you keep from wasting your offering to God?

him genuine sacrifices of thanksgiving that are evidence to buy humility, obedience, and complete reliance upon him. Offering him anything less is just sacrificing a bunch of bulls and goats, and he won’t accept it. Let’s pray. Well, Father, as we’ve gone through this psalm, it’s not an easy one to read because it does, I think, confront all of us. We all have been guilty of not offering a proper sacrifice of Thanksgiving. And so may we take heed the warning that you offer us in this passage, that we would examine our hearts to find out if we make sacrifices on Sundays and then the rest of the week if we’re just out living our own lives in prideful ways, in disobedient ways, independent ways.

May we just truly learn, Father, at all the moments of our days to walk before you in a way that is proper and good in your sight, that when we offer our thanksgiving, it will be a true and acceptable sacrifice in your sight. And thank you again, even as this psalm ended up, that you’re not the L, just the L who smacks us and goes away, but you’re the Jehovah who longs for relationship. And even though you’ll rebuke us severely, you still want that relationship with us. And so may we be quick to seek forgiveness and to repent and seek forgiveness and to then enter again into your salvation. Pray this in your sign in Jesus’ name, amen.

Well, after that sermon, it’s time for us to give Thanksgiving, I would say. And there is no other part of our service, I think, that is more powerful than this part where we all come down and partake together of communion to what it God has done for us and how thankful we should be.

As Jim said in the Psalm as he was preaching through it, and I wanna read this again because I think it’s really powerful, Psalm 50 verse 22 through 23, Mark this then, you who forget God, Lest I tear you apart and there will be none to deliver. 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.”

Well, however we want to interpret that, we live in an age where we have been shown the salvation of God and his perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ and that’s what brings us together in this communion. We also see this communion as not a closed communion and those of us who you are visiting you’ll notice we pray for other churches in our community not just our church. We are looking for the gospel to be presented correctly all over the place in whatever gathering there may be because the Lord is doing all kinds of things all over the world that we don’t even know about and which makes him a great God knowing all those things is also was demonstrated in this psalm we’ve now reached the point where I am to charge you to go out into our our wonderful world that does have some troubles, but I’m to give you the charge to go out and work in it. I chose a section of scripture in Colossians that ends in this phrase, abounding in thanksgiving, because Jim told us what he was going to preach on and wanted it to

to kind of coordinate. So note as I give you this charge that the last three words in it are abounding in thanksgiving. I’ve chosen a passage that Paul wrote in Colossians 2, 1 through 7. And I’m gonna read the whole thing. It’s a little long for the charge, but the last part of it is really good, I think. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you. and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all riches of full assurance of the understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.

In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in the body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good service and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving. Amen.