SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
2/27/2012 8:27:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus: True
Worship
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm
50:7-23
Message
of the verses: In yesterday’s SD we
learned that Psalm 50 is like a court scene where “God summons the court (vv.
1-6) and confronts two offenders: the
formalist, to whom worship is a ritual to follow (vv. 7-15), and the hypocrite,
to whom worship is a disguise to cover sin (vv. 16-21). The psalm closes with a call to all
worshipers to be faithful to God (vv. 22-23).”
“The
Heartless Worshipers” (vv. 7-15): “7
"Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against
you; I am God, your God. 8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your
burnt offerings are continually before Me. 9 “I shall take no young bull out of
your house Nor male goats out of your folds. 10 “For every beast of the forest
is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. 11 “I know every bird of the
mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. 12 “If I were hungry
I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, and all it contains. 13 “Shall I
eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats? 14 “Offer to God a sacrifice of
thanksgiving And pay your vows to the Most High; 15 Call upon Me in the
day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.’”
This section of Psalm 50 reminds
me of Mica 6:6-8, “6 With what shall I come to the LORD And bow myself before
the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With yearling
calves? 7 Does the LORD take delight in thousands of rams, In ten thousand
rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, The fruit
of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD
require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with
your God?”
The children of Israel got into the
habit of offering their sacrifices to the Lord without actually living for the
Lord, for their sacrifices just became a ritual to them. Jesus told the church in Ephesus in
Revelations 2:4 “you have left your first love.” That church was doing all kinds of good
things, but they were missing something very important that the Lord pointed
out to them and that is to love the Lord.
When Jesus was on the earth He was asked a question about what was the
greatest of the commandments and He said that we are to love the Lord our God
with all of our hearts, souls and minds, and then the second command was that
we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
I have a couple of observations about these two commandments and the
first is that we cannot possibility love our neighbors if we don’t love God,
and we can’t possibility love God unless He first loves us. Out of these two commandments flow the Ten
Commandments, and out of the Ten Commandments flow all the other commandments
in the OT. We also see a picture of the
cross in these two commandments in that as we look at the cross the vertical
part is our loving the Lord and then the horizontal part is our loving our
neighbors to which Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan to show us who
our neighbors are.
We see in this section of Scripture
that the Lord tells these “worshipers” that he owned all of the things that
were on the earth, the cattle on a thousand hills belonged to the Lord, for God
created all things and therefore He owns all things and we as believers are His
stewards while we are here on earth. I
have a little saying on our refrigerator that says that we are not human beings
going through a temporary spiritual experience, but we are spiritual beings
going through a temporary human experience.
If we keep this in mind then it will affect our love and worship of the
Lord.
“The
Hypocritical Sinner” (vv. 16-21): “16 But to the wicked God says, "What
right have you to tell of My statutes And to take My covenant in your mouth? 17
“For you hate discipline, And you cast My words behind you. 18 “When you see a
thief, you are pleased with him, And you associate with adulterers. 19 “You let
your mouth loose in 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 kept silence; You thought that I was just like you; I will
reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.”
I suppose that when you read
about the “religious” people of Jesus’ day you could put many of them into the
category that the psalmist is writing about in this section. Dr. Wiersbe writes the following about the
word “hate” that is found in verse 17, “To ‘hate instruction’ (KJV) means to
reject an ordered way of life patterned after God’s Word, to reject a
responsible life. The Lord specifically
named stealing (the 8th commandment, Ex. 20:14) and deceitful speech
and slander (the 9th commandment Ex. 20:16). These are not ‘old covenant sins,’ for
believers today who live under the new covenant can be just as guilty of
committing them.”
God’s longsuffering is seen in verse
21 where we see that He keeps silence.
The problem is that the people did not understand that God’s silence was
His longsuffering, but they though because He did not speak that He approved
their worship. The phrase “You thought that I was just like you” is speaking of
the fact that these people had created a god in their image and so whatever
they did was okay. They were wrong!
“The
Honest Worshiper” (vv. 22-23): “22 “Now
consider this, you who forget God, Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will
be none to deliver. 23 “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me;
And to him who orders his way aright I shall show the salvation of God.’”
Let us take a look at John
4:23-24, “23 "But an hour is
coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is
spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” This section in John’s Gospel is about the
Lord speaking to the woman at the well, telling her what true worship is all
about and the psalmist also does this in verses 22-23. Worship is a matter of having our hearts
right with God and the only way to begin this is to do as Jesus told Nicodemus,
that is “you must be born again” or born from above. Paul writes about this in 1Cor. 15:1-4, “1 Now
I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which
also you stand, 2 by
which also you are saved,
if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I
delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the
third day according to the Scriptures” This is the good news of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ and in order to worship the Lord in Spirit and truth one must
believe this.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: One of
the things that I do not want to become like is the Pharisees of Jesus’
day. The things that I do in my worship
of the Lord I truly want to be genuine and not something made up to show how
spiritual that I am. The passage in
Micah says that we have to walk humbly before our God. I know that whatever that I have has been
given to me from the Lord including the most important thing and that is the
salvation He gave to me. So what do I
have to be proud about? Nothing! Only Thankful for the gift of salvation!
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. To walk humbly before my God.
2. To continue to trust the Lord to
teach me contentment.
3. Rom. 12:1-2.
4. Proverbs 3:5-6.
2/27/2012
9:30:04 AM
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