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Covenant Keepers

Ed Rangel
12/22/19 - Sun AM

 

Introduction:

  1. Why do we have the Psalms:
    1. Story of the two men who were shipwrecked and decided to pray.  (B-1, I-52, N-12…) (Bible Hub, “1. The Significance of the Psalms | Bible.Org”)
    2. Many of us feel as if we know more and understand better the worship of the Bible.  However, we often refer to the preaching hour as the worship hour (all of life is worship).  A major mistake that we commit is that we have a start and stop time for worship, get up and leave and think that what we do the rest of the week is not worshipping.  (ibid)
    3. The central focus of our lives should not be us or even others, it should be God.  (John 4:20-24; Ephesians. 1:6, 12, 14; 3:2) (ibid)
    4. The glory of heaven is not that will be happy in heaven (which we will for there are no tears in heaven), but that we will see God in His fulness and fall down and worship Him (24 elders Revelation 4:9-11) (ibid)
    5. “…while the rest of the Scripture speaks to us, the Psalms speak for us. The Psalms provide us with a rich vocabulary for speaking to God about our souls.” (Hedges)
      1. “When we long to worship, we have psalms of thanksgiving and praise. When we are sad and discouraged, can pray the psalms of lament. The psalms give voice to our anxieties and fears, and show us how to cast our cares on the Lord and renew our trust in him. Even feelings of anger and bitterness find expression in the infamous imprecatory psalms, which function something like poetic screams of pain, lyrical outbursts of anger and rage.”  (ibid)
      2. The Psalms fall intro three cycles: (ibid)
        1. Orientation: Psalms of orientation point us to the kind of relationship with God we were created for, a relationship marked by confidence and trust; delight and obedience; worship, joy, and satisfaction.
        2. Disorientation: The psalms of disorientation show us human beings in their sin. Anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, depression, anger, doubt, despair – the whole kaleidoscope of toxic human emotions find a place in the Psalms.
        3. Reorientation: But the psalms of reorientation portray reconciliation and redemption in prayers of repentance (the famous penitential psalms), songs of thanksgiving, and hymns of praise that exalt God for his saving deeds, sometimes pointing forward to Jesus, the Messianic Lord and Davidic King who will fulfill God’s promises, establish God’s kingdom, and make all things new.
  2. Asaph was the choir master, director of music for the temple worship (1 Chronicles 6:31, 39; 16:4; 25:1).  He wrote 12 Psalms, one of them being Psalm 50.
  3. Psalm 50 is a courtroom scene where God has summoned His children to be judged, heaven and earth to serve as jurors.  The crime was not a lack of sacrifices, but a lack of paying their vow.
  1. 1-6 Courtroom
    1. vs. 1 E ELOHIM YHWH - the Omnipotent and Omniscient God has spoken and everyone listens.  He has called all HIs children to present themselves for an accusation and judgement.
    2. vss. 2-3 God is light and He will expose the sins of His people.
    3. vs. 4 Every being in heaven and on earth will serve as jurors
    4. vs. 5 Blood covenant- God made a covenant with Abraham, conditioned upon faithfulness an sealed with blood.  The Israelites made the same covenant at Mt. Sinai and it too was sealed with blood (Exodus 24), we have made the same covenant at our obedience to the the Gospel and it was also sealed with blood, the Blood of Jesus. (Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-26)
    5. Hebrews 12:23 makes reference to all the saved of all time (past, present and future)
  2. 7-15 Problem: Worship began and ended at the temple, instead of it carrying on in the way they lived.
    1. vs. 7 God establishes that He is worthy of all worship and that He will bring the accusation against His children.
    2. vs. 8 The issue is not what they bring as a sacrifice to temple.
    3. vs. 9-15 God will no longer accept the offerings, He does not need to be worshiped, He does not need our sacrifices, He does not need us, we NEED Him. (vs. 12, cf. 1 Corinthians 10:26)
      1. Vs. 14 (Hebrews 13:15) Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows
      2. Vows refers to the promise we made to God (those at the foot of Sinai and those at the foot of the Cross).
      3. Vs 15 God is faithful to us when we call on Him, He hears and acts upon on our prayers  He is faithful to the covenant and so should we.
  3. 16-21 Sins
    1. vs. 16 You have no right to speak of God and His works, you have no right to preach the Gospel to the lost because you are in sin…
    2. vs. 17 you do not respect God or His discipline, you ignore Gods Word.
    3. vs. 18 you say amen to the thief, you are pleased when the thief “gets away with it…”  You are in adultery, associating with adulterers means doing what they do.
    4. vs. 19 You speak evil
    5. vs. 20 You slander anyone, even your own relatives
    6. vs. 21 You have done all of these things WHILE SITTING IN THE TEMPLE AND OFFERING ME YOUR SACRIFICES.    This is why God does not accept our worship.  All the sacrifices in the world cannot make anything right until we change our attitudes and how we live.  Our bodies should be living and holy sacrifice. (Romans 12)
  4. 22-23 Discipline/Salvation
    1. If we continue faking our Christianity, thinking that worship begins and ends at the building, God will tear us down, condemn us in the day of judgement.
    2. We need to remember our covenant and pay our vows of thanksgiving every moment of our lives.
    3. Doing this God will forgive and save us.

 

Conclusion:

  1. In the audience that day, the Psalm hit someone right in the heart-David.
  2. Psalm 51 - Create in me a clean and contrite heart
  3. Repent and change our attitude in how we live every day.
  4. Plan of Salvation

 

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