Know Any Pastors With The Guts To Preach This ‘Spicy’ Psalm For Thanksgiving?
Don't let those familiar verses fool ya, they're probably ripped out of context
Folks LOVE to quote one line of this psalm when they’re talking about ‘prosperity’, but do they DARE to read the larger context?
It’s a funny thing how, depending on what you are thinking about or attuned to, you pick up on details you might otherwise miss. Like when you buy a new car and suddenly notice all the other drivers in the very same make and model that were always there before, but you’ve never really noticed.
With ‘Thanksgiving’ very much in the air this time of year, one line in a psalm ‘popped’ as I was reading it. Reading the whole psalm again, I couldn’t help but notice the relevace of its overall message for times exactly like our own.
The verse that ‘popped’ was ‘Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High’.
You can see why it stood out. It’s from the same psalm of Asaph in which we are reminded that ‘the cattle on 1000 hills’ belong to God, but many preachers miss the actual meaning of that part. For those following along, and checking my work (which even the Apostle Paul encouraged), you can find the full psalm here: Psalm 50.
Only 23 verses long but it packs a punch. This format doesn’t permit a deep dive, but we’ll summarize the Big Ideas to the extent that a blog post allows.
The first two verses present God in His Imperial Majesty (in the positive sense), a king ruling from his throne, issuing a summons to His subjects to appear before him, and Heaven and Earth as witness to the conversation He is about to have.
Verse six not only reminds us of his position as Righteous Judge, but it leads us to the next section where he calls his own covenant people; people who have sworn fealty to his Kingship and accepted his terms as his subjects.
They, who claim to be his faithful subjects, are called to account for their alleged faithfulness. Verse seven, in which God declares He will testify against them while reminding them that He is ‘God, your God’, is ominous, but not for the obvious reasons.
8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
your burnt offerings are continually before me.
9 I will not accept a bull from your house
or goats from your folds.
10 For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
11 I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
In other words: Oh sure, your mechanical obedience is on point. You show up. You go through the motions. You say the right prayers and offer the prescribed sacrifices. But so what?
Look carefully at what the LORD is saying when he claims the cattle as his. Should I be impressed if you went to my barn, took a calf, killed it, and served it to me as a ‘gift’? It was mine in the first place! What, did you seriously think these sacrifices were about filling God’s empty stomach? What kind of a little-g ‘god’ did you think I was in the first place?
Here. Take your gold star. It’s awarded for being #1 at missing the point!
You can almost hear an exasperated sigh as he takes out a metaphorical crayon to explain it to his people in the simplest possible terms:
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most High,
15 and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
I don’t want your rituals. I want your heart… a relationship. I want to be the one to give to YOU, you big knuckleheads. Come to me with gratitude and I’ll come to you as the deliverer you really need. Your gratitude will grow and your confidence to come to me in faith will grow with it. Before you know it, we’ll have an actual deep relationship that means something. As for the rest of you…
Eyes flashing with restrained rage, He turns his attention to those who aren’t interested in what God just offered here. Those who find their meaning in ritual and dictate to God on what terms THEY will accept his lordship, the reversal of roles in dictating who gets to claim moral absolutes.
He’s about to unload on pretenders who want the form of faith — the religious, political, cultural and authority that comes with religious positions — while deliberately distancing themselves from the Founder of the Feast Himself.
His next words are addressed to those mutinous souls:
16 But to the wicked God says:
“What right have you to recite my statutes
or take my covenant on your lips?
17 For you hate discipline,
and you cast my words behind you.
18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
and you keep company with adulterers.
19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil,
and your tongue frames deceit.
20 You sit and speak against your brother;
you slander your own mother’s son.
21 These things you have done, and I have been silent;
you thought that I was one like yourself.
But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.
‘What right have you to recite my statutes?’ He’s coming in hot here. And in case they forgot: unlike them, He has the moral authority to do so.
You needn’t look past current headlines to see example after example of bad people doing bad things that are excused by those in authority who ought to be defending the interests of the innocent against the unjust.
An entire administration turned a blind eye to violent criminal cartels trafficking in women and children because they saw political and/or financial beneift to letting those people flow in unopposed. We see those whose job it is to ‘speak truth to power’ in media helping to slander those who uphold the law while offering plausible moral justification for the cold-blooded murder of people like Sarah Beckstrom.
And God reminds us that there comes a point at which he has had enough of it. Some don’t see that hammer drop until the next life. But some live to see it fall on their heads in the here-and-now.
But the good news at the heart of the Good News is this: God delights in mercy more than judgment. Even as that condemnation still echoes in the readers’ ears, God offers an invitation to celebrate Thanksgiving properly… on HIS terms. An invitation and a choice.
22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God,
lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!
23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!”
It’s not about the calf on the altar or the money in the plate. It’s about the heart that brings it.
We’ll close with the words of CS Lewis with a citation from The Great Divorce:
“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.”