Psalms 50

Section 2. (Psalms 50:1-23; Psalms 51:1-19.) The testimony of God and the confession of man. After the full external deliverance thus accomplished; we have the complete internal salvation. Sin is searched out, challenged and confessed, so that there is moral clearance. The two psalms which are brought together in this section are easily seen to be; as in other cases of such pairs, largely a contrast. In the first; God proclaims His righteousness; in the second; man confesses his sin. There is perfect moral harmony; while it is a harmony of opposite things. It is plainly needed; this complete clearance of the moral question, in order that the salvation itself may be complete; and the two sections are similarly in contrast as these psalms are; and with the same fundamental unity. Thus the first subdivision of the book is filled and rounded to a perfect close.

Psalms 50:1-23

A righteous God requiring righteousness. A psalm of Asaph.
In the fiftieth psalm there are two things emphasized: the righteousness of the Judge; and the righteousness required by Him. God Himself, in a world fallen away from Him; has come into question; and no heart amongst mere men; but has more or less admitted the question. In fact the perfect settlement of this on man;s part would be his own perfect restoration to God and complete ability to walk with Him. It would mean absolute faith in God; and faith is that which accomplishes the whole work in man; working by love and purifying the heart. Faith enthrones God on an absolute throne; and yields up to Him all the faculties and powers of the whole being. The fall began with a question of God; and Satan, who first uttered it, knew well its fatal import.

Man, entertaining it, lost, with his confidence in Him; his place of dependence, and became necessarily a seeker of his own things, an assentor of his own will, the slave only of his captor who beguiles him by the lusts awakened within him. The disorder produced by the sin which has come in adds to his questions about the government of One who is “far above out of his sight;” and so the mind works with the heart to increase his alienation. We need not wonder, then, that in the working of God to bring back the soul to Him; a first point should be to make the soul realize the just judgment of its sin; -the righteousness of God who judges it. Only here it must be noticed that already; for those called to do so at this time, deliverance has come in; God’s heart has been already told out in a wonderful salvation which has filled their hearts with joy and their tongues with praise. It is “out of Zion, the perfection of beauty;” God’s glory shines. Yet they still need the full searching out which here they find. They need apparently also as yet the knowledge of atonement; but this we do not find in the present psalm; and we shall examine it in its evident place in connection with the next one. It would seem also certain by this psalm that there will be a sessional judgment in Israel, after the appearing of Christ, answering to that among the Gentiles which the Lord pictures in Matthew 25:1-46. Here; too; among the people just delivered, there will be “goats” -the wicked -to put upon His left side; and separate from those really His. This the fourth section of the psalm surely intimates; though it be true that there is difficulty in constructing prophetical details out of psalms which are yet clearly prophetical. This psalm is not one of the Korahite series: that is ended. The singer now is Asaph, “the gatherer,” from a word used for the gathering of fruit and also of men (as ver. 5). Twelve psalms are ascribed to Asaph, whether this be the singer of David’s time, or (as most think) his family be included under it. The character of these psalms is plain in a general way by the place occupied by the other eleven, at the commencement of the third or sanctuary-book. They are saturated indeed with the thought of God’s holiness; and the character and position of the present psalms are perfectly similar. Holiness indeed is an absolute necessity for the gathering of God’s people; if it is to be with Him; and that is a principle which this psalm declares.

1. We have in the first section of it the summons of God, who appears in. full majesty. The Mighty One (El), God (Elohim), Jehovah; the Unchangeable, -and this we know to be His covenant-name with Israel, -summons the whole earth to hear His voice. He shines out of Zion; which He has chosen as the place of His rest; and which accordingly is blooming out for Him in bridal attire, “the perfection of beauty.” Thus they can claim Him as their own God, who comes out of the sanctuary, and not to maintain silence. The fire of His holiness consumes before Him, and a tempest gathers around Him, -signs that show His holiness can not yet be exhibited in the serenity of complacent love. Nay, it is judgment for which He comes, and heaven and earth are summoned as His witnesses.

Let His saints -those that are positionally that, at least, -be gathered unto Him: those who have covenanted by sacrifice to be His own. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness: for God Himself it is who is the Judge. This gathering of covenanted saints is not, as some have suggested, the saints of the present time. This neither suits the character of the Psalms, nor the connection in this case. The “sacrifice” by which they have made a covenant with Him can hardly be the work of Christ upon the cross; while those spoken of a little later are plainly only the legal ones. Nor is it according to Scripture, and in conformity with the gospel, to speak of our making a covenant with God by the work of Christ. God has covenanted with us by it, if you please to use the expression, at least, the blessings of the new covenant are ours through the “blood of the covenant”; but that is not a covenant which has two parties to it, as its terms prove conclusively (Hebrews 8:10-12), but one alone. Those gathered here are plainly those He calls His people in the seventh verse, and are Israel; gathered for judgment: that is, not for the execution of wrath upon them, but that He may plead with them as to their sin.

And the “covenant by sacrifice” clearly refers to Exodus 24:1-18, when they had as a nation taken upon them to keep all the Lord’s words, and the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled upon them. If the heavenly saints come into this psalm, it may be in the next verse, in a much more obscure, but more beautiful way. For “the heavens shall indeed declare His righteousness,” when sinners like ourselves shall be seen through the manifestation of this in the cross, in their place in glory, “made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). How the utter failure of man, and the righteousness of God, will be thus declared. together; in grace more marvelous, and yet in principle the same as that shown in the deliverance and blessing of Israel in the day here contemplated! 2. But God’s controversy with them must now be declared: the legal controversy, not yet as to the rejection of Christ, which we find however from another side in the psalm following. First, negatively, He declares what it is not about. It is not about their ritual services -peace-offerings or burnt-offerings. He desires no bullock or goat, no flocks or herds of theirs; -He to whom all that exist belong, and who is well acquainted with all His possessions. Were He, as this implied; limited as they, and hungry, why should the Owner of the world bring His wants to them to be satisfied?

But did they really think Him an eater of bulls, flesh; or that He drank the blood. of goats? What were they; in fact, who needed such arguments? But they are not conceptions too gross for men; as abundant testimony declares. 3. He goes on to the positive side: what He really sought was thanksgiving, the sign of conscious dependence, and of their realization of the bounties of His bounteous hand. A vow was of a higher character than an offering of thanksgiving (see Leviticus 7:11, sq. notes); as the expression of more positive faith in. God under the pressure of circumstances. Here the distinct assertion which has been made of the non-requirement of sacrifice shows that it is the New Testament “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” upon which He insists; with which also must be joined that faith which must underlie this if it be real, which in the day of distress draws nearer to Him instead of wandering off in paths devised by one’s own wisdom; or yielding to the pressure. The most encouraging assurance is connected with this: “call upon Me in the day of strait: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” The legal sacrifices had not, of course, passed away in the psalmist’s day; nor will those thus addressed in the future time to which this transports us, know how (as for us) the type has yielded to the antitype. This is really also, and necessarily, a looking back over the past time when Israel was fully under the legal covenant, and does not speak of change just initiated. What is insisted on is what always had been really the question, -what had always been in the heart of God for them: what in the sin-offering psalm comes out as to be the fruit of the cross, the Holy One inhabiting the praises of Israel. Could less than this possibly yield Him satisfaction? -the whole heart His, and the whole being filled with the joy of what it has found in Him. 4. The practical life will be as the heart is, and the second table of the law share the fortunes of the first. To this the Lord goes on therefore now. A barren profession may consist, alas, with hatred of correction and contemptuous rejection of the words of God; the heart finding its secret delight in that in which there may be no open indulgence, for there are fences put about men which may hinder this. The tongue will constantly be freer than the steps here, and show whereon the heart is set. Yet with a mouth let loose in evil, the tongue will cover this license with deceit.

Nothing appears more like righteousness often, than what is really the voice of slander, -never far off from the ready proclamation of another’s evil, while this is really thus rejoiced in. The slipping of the righteous is used as against righteousness, often to lower the standard of it practically, and favor that which is not this.*
All this going on under the eye of God, and with no interference upon His part; the patience of divine government comes to be misread as if it were indifference -misread; alas; not only on the side of the wicked; but the cause of gravest exercise on the part of the righteous also, sufferers under it. But the wicked readily believe it to be indifference; for it is as natural for wickedness to believe in wickedness; as it is for goodness to believe in goodness. The accusations made against the righteous are not thus always mere malice. The hypocrite comes easily to believe in the hypocrisy of others; the deceiver may make transparent honesty a mirror in which he only sees deceit. The world knew not Christ, and has never known God, -cannot with all its searching find Him out; and yet “He is not far from every one of us.” So here: “These things thou diddest, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest Me just like thyself.” But the limit of patience has been reached: “I will reprove thee, and set them in array before thine eyes.” 5. The way and the end are clearly put before all in the closing verse. The simple leaving God out of account is fatal to the one who does this. Nothing beside this is necessary to secure the condemnation; which, if it be slow to come, is no less certain to arrive. On the other hand, the best life cannot avail without salvation. We are not to expect in the book of Psalms the full declaration of the gospel, as we know it; nor would this be just the place in which to find it. But the need of salvation by all, is emphasized, and it is made plain by the contrast with what has just preceded it, that this is no mere temporal deliverance. The close here is a finger pointing to the psalm that follows.