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Psalm 50

The Acceptable Sacrifice

A Psalm of Asaph.

The mighty one, God the L ord,

speaks and summons the earth

from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,

God shines forth.

Our God comes and does not keep silence,

before him is a devouring fire,

and a mighty tempest all around him.

He calls to the heavens above

and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

“Gather to me my faithful ones,

who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

The heavens declare his righteousness,

for God himself is judge. Selah

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak,

O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God, your God.

Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;

your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will not accept a bull from your house,

or goats from your folds.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the air,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

and pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

But to the wicked God says:

“What right have you to recite my statutes,

or take my covenant on your lips?

For you hate discipline,

and you cast my words behind you.

You make friends with a thief when you see one,

and you keep company with adulterers.

“You give your mouth free rein for evil,

and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your kin;

you slander your own mother’s child.

These things you have done and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one just like yourself.

But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

“Mark this, then, you who forget God,

or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.

Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;

to those who go the right way

I will show the salvation of God.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

23 Whoso offereth praise will glorify me This is the third time that the Psalmist has inculcated the truth, that the most acceptable sacrifice in God’s sight is praise, by which we express to him the gratitude of our hearts for his blessings. The repetition is not a needless one, and that on two accounts. In the first place, there is nothing with which we are more frequently chargeable than forgetfulness of the benefits of the Lord. Scarcely one out of a thousand attracts our notice; and if it does, it is only slightly, and, as it were, in passing. And, secondly, we do not assign that importance to the duty of praise which it deserves. We are apt to neglect it as something trivial, and altogether commonplace; whereas it constitutes the chief exercise of godliness, in which God would have us to be engaged during the whole of our life. In the words before us, the sacrifice of praise is asserted to form the true and proper worship of God. The words, will glorify me, imply that God is then truly and properly worshipped, and the glory which he requires yielded to him, when his goodness is celebrated with a sincere and grateful heart; but that all the other sacrifices to which hypocrites attach such importance are worthless in his estimation, and no part whatsoever of his worship. Under the word praise, however, is comprehended, as I have already noticed, both faith and prayer. There must be an experience of the goodness of the Lord before our mouths can be opened to praise him for it, and this goodness can only be experienced by faith. Hence it follows, that the whole of spiritual worship is comprehended under what is either presupposed in the exercise of praise, or flows from it. Accordingly, in the words which immediately follow, the Psalmist calls upon those who desired that their services should be approved of God, to order their way aright By the expression here used of ordering one’s way, some understand repentance or confession of sin to be meant; others, the taking out of the way such things as may prove grounds of offense, or obstacles in the way of others. It seems more probable that the Psalmist enjoins them to walk in the right way as opposed to that in which hypocrites are found, and intimates that God is only to be approached by those who seek him with a sincere heart and in an upright manner. By the salvation of God, I do not, with some, understand a great or signal salvation. God speaks of himself in the third person, the more clearly to satisfy them of the fact, that he would eventually prove to all his genuine worshippers how truly he sustained the character of their Savior.