Divisions - The Lord is represented as summoning the whole earth to hear his declaration, Psalm 50:1; he then declares the nature of the worship which he accepts, Psalm 50:7, accuses the ungodly of breaches of the precepts of the second table, Psalm 50:16, and closes the court with a word of threatening, Psalm 50:22, and a direction of grace, Psalm 50:23.

Hints to Preachers

Psalm 50:1 - It unspeakably concerns all men to know what God has spoken - W. S. Plumer.

Psalm 50:1 -

I. Who has spoken? The mighty, not men or angels, but God himself.

II. To whom has he spoken? To all nations - all ranks - all characters. This calls for,

1. Reverence - it is the voice of God.

2. Hope - because he condescends to speak to rebels.

III. Where has he spoken?

1. In creation,

2. In providence.

3. In his word.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:1-6 -

I. The court called in the name of the King of kings.

II. The Judgment set, and the judge taking his seat; Psalm 50:2, Psalm 50:3.

III. The parties summoned; Psalm 50:8.

IV. The issue of this solemn trial foretold; Psalm 50:6.

- Matthew Henry.

Psalm 50:1-15 -

I. God's call to man.

II. Man's call to God.

Psalm 50:2 -

I. The internal beauty of Zion.

1. Positive beauty of wisdom - holiness-love.

2. Comparative with the beauty of Paradise and the heaven of angels.

3. Superlative - all the perfections of God combined.

II. Its external glory. Out of it God hath shined.

1. On this world.

2. On gracious souls.

3. On angels who desire to look, etc.

4. On the universe. "All the creatures heard I," etc.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:4 -

I. What God will do for his people. He will judge them.

1Deliver.

2Defend.

3Uphold.

II. The means at his disposal for this purpose. "He shall call," etc - heaven and earth are subservient to him for the good of his church.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:4 - The judgment of the visible church. It will be by God himself, public, searching - with fire and wind, exact, final.

Psalm 50:5 - The great family gathering.

I. Who are gathered.

II. How they are gathered.

III. To whom.

IV. When they are gathered.

Psalm 50:5 (last clause) -

I. The covenant.

II. The sacrifice which ratifies it.

III. How we may be said to make it.

Psalm 50:6 (last clause) - Then slander will not pervert the sentence, undue severity will not embitter it, partiality will not excuse, falsehood will not deceive, justice will surely be done.

Psalm 50:7 - Sins of God's people specially against God, and only known to God. A searching subject.

Psalm 50:13-15 - What sacrifices are not, and what are acceptable with God.

Psalm 50:15 -

I. The occasion - "trouble."

II. The command - "call upon me."

III. The promise - "I will deliver thee."

IV. The design - "thou shalt," etc.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:15 - "Thou shalt glorify me." This we do by praying, and by praising when prayer is heard; as also by confidence in his promises, submission to his chastisements, concern for his honour, attachment to his cause, affection to his people, and by continual obedience to his commands.

Psalm 50:15 -

I. A special invitation as to person and time.

II. Special promise to those accepting it.

III. Special duty involved when the promise is fulfilled.

Psalm 50:16, Psalm 50:17 -

I. The prohibition given.

1. The prohibited things - "declare my statutes." "Take my covenant," etc.

(1.) Preaching.

(2.) Teaching, as in Sunday-schools.

(3.) Praying.

(4.) Attending ordinances.

2. Prohibited persons. Wicked preachers, etc., while they continue in wickedness.

II. The reason assigned; Psalm 50:17.

1. No self-application of the truth.

2. Inward hatred of it.

3. Outward rejection.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:17 -

I. The fatal sign.

1. Hating to be taught.

2. Hating what is taught.

II. What it indicates.

1Pride.

2. Contempt of God.

3. Indifference to truth.

4. Atheism at heart.

5. Deadness of conscience.

II. What it leads to. See Psalm 50:22.

Psalm 50:17, Psalm 50:18 - Rejection of salutary instruction leads sooner or later to open transgression. Instances, reasons, inferential warnings.

Psalm 50:20, Psalm 50:21 -

I. Man speaking and God silent.

II. God speaking and man silent.

Psalm 50:21 -

I. God leaves men for a time to themselves.

II. They judge of God on this account by themselves.

III. He will in due time reveal their whole selves to themselves. "I will reprove," etc.

- G. R.

Psalm 50:21, Psalm 50:23 - Note the alternative; a life rightly ordered now, or sins set in order hereafter.

Psalm 50:22 -

I. The accusation - "Ye that forget God," his omniscience, his power, his justice, his goodness, his mercy, his word, his great salvation.

II. The admonition - "Consider this," rouse yourselves from your forgetfulness into serious reflection.

Psalm 50:1

"The mighty God, even the Lord" - El, Elohim, Jehovah, three glorious names for the God of Israel. To render the address the more impressive, these august titles are mentioned, just as in royal decrees the names and dignities of monarchs are placed in the forefront. Here the true God is described as Almighty, as the only and perfect object of adoration and as the self-existent One, "Hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof." The dominion of Jehovah extends over the whole earth, and therefore to all mankind is his decree directed. The east and the west are bidden to hear the God who makes his sun to rise on every quarter of the globe. Shall the summons of the great King be despised? Will we dare provoke him to anger by slighting his call?

Psalm 50:2

"Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined." The Lord is represented not only as speaking to the earth, but as coming forth to reveal the glory of his presence to an assembled universe. God of old dwelt in Zion among his chosen people, but here the beams of his splendour are described as shining forth upon all nations. The sun was spoken of in the first verse, but here is a far brighter sun. The majesty of God is most conspicuous among his own elect, but it is not confined to them; the church is not a dark lantern, but a candlestick. God shines not only in Zion, but out of her. She is made perfect in beauty by his indwelling and that beauty is seen by all observers when the Lord shines forth from her.

Observe how with trumpet voice and flaming ensign the infinite Jehovah summons the heavens and the earth to hearken to his word.

Psalm 50:3

"Our God shall come." The Psalmist speaks of himself and his brethren as standing in immediate anticipation of the appearing of the Lord upon the scene. "He comes," they say, "our covenant God is coming;" they can hear his voice from afar, and perceive the splendour of his attending train. Even thus should we wait the long-promised appearing of the Lord from heaven. "And shall not keep silence." He comes to speak, to plead with his people, to accuse and judge the ungodly. He has been silent long in patience, but soon he will speak with power. What a moment of awe when the Omnipotent is expected to reveal himself! What will be the reverent joy and solemn expectation when the poetic scene of this Psalm becomes in the last great day an actual reality! "A fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him." Flame and hurricane are frequently described as the attendants of the divine appearance. "Our God is a consuming fire." "At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire." Psalm 18:12. "He rode upon a cherub, and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind." "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God." 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 2 Thessalonians 1:8. Fire is the emblem of justice in action, and the tempest is a token of his overwhelming power. Who will not listen in solemn silence when such is the tribunal from which the judge pleads with heaven and earth?

Psalm 50:4

continued...

8 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me.

9 I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.

10 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

11 I know all the fowls of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

13 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

14 Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:

15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

The address which follows is directed to the professed people of God. It is clearly, in the first place, meant for Israel; but is equally applicable to the visible church of God in every age. It declares the futility of external worship when spiritual faith is absent and the mere outward ceremonial is rested in.

Psalm 50:7

"Hear, O my people, and I will speak." Because Jehovah speaks, and they are avowedly his own people, they are bound to give earnest heed. "Let me speak," saith the great I am. The heavens and earth are but listeners, the Lord is about both to testify and to judge. "O Israel, and I will testify against thee." Their covenant name is mentioned to give point to the address; it was a double evil that the chosen nation should become so carnal, so unspiritual, so false, so heartless to their God. God himself, whose eyes sleep not, who is not misled by rumour, but sees for himself, enters on the scene as witness against his favoured nation. Alas! for us when God, even our fathers' God, testifies to the hypocrisy of the visible church. "I am God, even thy God." He had taken them to be his peculiar people above all other nations, and they had in the most solemn manner avowed that he was their God. Hence the special reason for calling them to account. The law began with, "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," and now the session of their judgment opens with the same reminder of their singular position, privilege, and responsibility. It is not only that Jehovah is God, but thy God, O Israel; this it is that makes thee so amenable to his searching reproofs.

Psalm 50:8

"I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifice or thy burnt offerings, to have been ever before me." Though they had not failed in maintaining his outward worship, or even if they had, he was not about to call them to account for this: a more weighty matter was now under consideration. They thought the daily sacrifices and the abounding burnt offerings to be everything: he counted them nothing if the inner sacrifice of heart devotion had been neglected. What was greatest with them was least with God. It is even so today. Sacraments (so called) and sacred rites are the main concern with unconverted but religious men, but with the Most High the spiritual worship which they forget is the sole matter. Let the external be maintained by all means according to the divine command, but if the secret and spiritual be not in them, they are a vain oblation, a dead ritual, and even an abomination before the Lord.

continued...

17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.

18 When thou sawest a thief then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.

21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

Here the Lord turns to the manifestly wicked among his people; and such there were even in the highest places of his sanctuary. If moral formalists had been rebuked, how much more these immoral pretenders to fellowship with heaven? If the lack of heart spoiled the worship of the more decent and virtuous, how much more would violations of the law, committed with a high hand, corrupt the sacrifices of the wicked?

Psalm 50:16

"But unto the wicked God saith." To the breakers of the second table he now addresses himself; he had previously spoken to the neglecters of the first. "What hast thou to do to declare my statutes?" You violate openly my moral law, and yet are great sticklers for my ceremonial commands! What have you to do with them? What interest can you have in them? Do you dare to teach my law to others, and profane it yourselves? What impudence, what blasphemy is this! Even if you claim to be sons of Levi, what of that? Your wickedness disqualifies you, disinherits you, puts you out of the succession. It should silence you, and would if my people were as spiritual as I would have them, for they would refuse to hear you, and to pay you the portion of temporal things which is due to my true servants. You count up your holy days, you contend for rituals, you fight for externals, and yet the weightier matters of the law ye despise! Ye blind guides, ye strain out gnats and swallow camels; your hypocrisy is written on your foreheads and manifest to all. "Or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth." Ye talk of being in covenant with me, and yet trample my holiness beneath your feet as swine trample upon pearls; think ye that I can brook this? Your mouths are full of lying and slander, and yet ye mouth my words as if they were fit morsels for such as you! How horrible an evil it is, that to this day we see men explaining doctrines who despise precepts! They make grace a coverlet for sin, and even judge themselves to be sound in the faith, while they are rotten in life. We need the grace of the doctrines as much as the doctrines of grace, and without it an apostle is but a Judas, and a fair-spoken professor is an arrant enemy of the cross of Christ.

Psalm 50:17

"Seeing thou hatest instruction." Profane professors are often too wise to learn, too besotted with conceit to be taught of God. What a monstrosity that men should declare those statutes which with their hearts they do not know, and which in their lives they openly disavow! Woe unto the men who hate the instruction which they take upon themselves to give. "And castest my words behind thee." Despising them, throwing them away as worthless, putting them out of sight as obnoxious. Many boasters of the law did this practically; and in these last days there are pickers and choosers of God's words who cannot endure the practical part of Scripture; they are disgusted at duty, they abhor responsibility, they disembowel texts of their plain meanings, they wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. It is an ill sign when a man dares not look a Scripture in the face, and an evidence of brazen impudence when he tries to make it mean something less condemnatory of his sins, and endeavours to prove it to be less sweeping in its demands. How powerful is the argument that such men have no right to take the covenant of God into their mouths, seeing that its spirit does not regulate their lives!

Psalm 50:18

"When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him." Moral honesty cannot be absent where true grace is present. Those who excuse others in trickery are guilty themselves; those who use others to do unjust actions for them are doubly so. If a man be ever so religious, if his own actions do not rebuke dishonesty, he is an accomplice with thieves. If we can acquiesce in anything which is not upright, we are not upright ourselves, and our religion is a lie. "And hast been partaker with adulterers." One by one the moral precepts are thus broken by the sinners in Zion. Under the cloak of piety, unclean livers conceal themselves. We may do this by smiling at unchaste jests, listening to indelicate expressions, and conniving at licentious behaviour in our presence; and if we thus act, how dare we preach, or lead public prayer, or wear the Christian name? See how the Lord lays righteousness to the plummet! How plainly all this declares that without holiness no man shall see the Lord! No amount of ceremonial or theological accuracy can cover dishonesty and fornication; these filthy things must be either purged from us by the blood of Jesus, or they will kindle a fire in God's anger which will burn even to the lowest hell.

Psalm 50:19

continued...

"Now" or oh! it is a word of entreaty, for the Lord is loth even to let the most ungodly run on to destruction. "Consider this;" take these truths to heart, ye who trust in ceremonies and ye who live in vice, for both of you sin in that "ye forget God." Bethink you how unaccepted you are, and turn unto the Lord. See how you have mocked the eternal, and repent of your iniquities. "Lest I tear you in pieces," as a lion rends his prey, "and there be none to deliver," no Saviour, no refuge, no hope. Ye reject the Mediator: beware, for ye will sorely need one in the day of wrath, and none will be near to plead for you. How terrible, how complete, how painful, how humiliating, will be the destruction of the wicked! God uses no soft words, or velvet metaphors, nor may his servants do so when they speak of the wrath to come. O reader, consider this.

"Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me." Praise is the best sacrifice; true, hearty, gracious thanksgiving from a renewed mind. Not the lowing of bullocks bound to the altar, but the songs of redeemed men are the music which the ear of Jehovah delights in. Sacrifice your loving gratitude, and God is honoured thereby. "And to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God." Holy living is a choice evidence of salvation. He who submits his whole way to divine guidance, and is careful to honour God in his life, brings an offering which the Lord accepts through his dear Son; and such a one shall be more and more instructed, and made experimentally to know the Lord's salvation. He needs salvation, for the best ordering of the life cannot save us, but that salvation he shall have. Not to ceremonies, not to unpurified lips, is the blessing promised, but to grateful hearts and holy lives.

O Lord, give us to stand in the judgment with those who have worshipped thee aright and have seen thy salvation.