Day 112

Psalm 50 part 3

‘Hear O My people and I will speak.” V7 – God had declared His right to judge and He had addressed those who profess the gospel but do not practice it. Hypocrisy is a dire mortal sin. Jesus’ most scathing sermon, in the last week of His life on earth (Matt 23), was regarding hypocrisy. Of course, hypocrisy is pretending to be something you are not (acting, is the original meaning of the word.) In the final section v16ff, we might think that now God has turned away from judging His people for their ritualism and has turned towards the nations, to judge them for their wickedness. This isn’t the case, as the following references to declaring God’s ‘statutes’ and taking His ‘covenant’ show. He speaks to the wicked among the people of God (vs 16-21). This is reminiscent of Paul’s charges in Romans 2 against the so-called covenant people of his day. Formalism is a sin against God. Hypocrisy is its outcome. The real problem with ritual is that its forms are all there, they give us feelings of being right with God when actually we may be guilty of the most terrible sins. V16-21 is a rebuke of hypocrisy and disobedience; commandments 7, 8 & 9 are referred to from the second table of the law. Asaph declares in v21 that they came to think of God as like themselves because He did not visit their sins with judgment. They (and we) misinterpret His silence, imagining His patience as apathy. The particular charges are representative of the whole Decalogue. Thinking God was ‘like them’ was there greatest sin because they had lost sight of the holiness of God. They had become too casual and easy in their relationship with God. They had misjudged God’s graciousness and forgotten His holiness. In His love, God would not allow that to continue among His people. He would ‘set them in order before your eyes.’

So comes the conclusion v22-23: the urgency of getting right with God, forsaking ritualism and coming to God not in empty ceremonies, but in surrendered hearts that offer pure sacrifices. C.F. Romans 12