Psalm 50: Don’t Forget Who God Is

I think there are a lot of people who believe they can win God’s approval simply by performing religious actions. It must be something we humans are prone to think, because most man-made religions teach that very idea.

One of the things that makes Christianity unique is that it’s the only religion that tells us that God loved the world so much that He took on human form in order to fulfill the very requirements He demands. Scripture tells us that Jesus gave Himself for sinners. No other religion tells of a God who died on behalf of humans. All other religions say that in order to meet the demands of the god or gods, humans must do certain things to win approval. And some religions, like Islam for example, even teach that even if a human does all the things their god says they must do, it still may not be enough in the end if their god doesn’t choose them.

Psalm 50 confronts that idea head-on. We see that the one and only living One, God the LORD, is not actually impressed with religious actions. He doesn’t need our offerings.

So, what does God actually want from us?

We’re going to find out, but Psalm 50 doesn’t answer that question with an opinion or religious tradition. God answers it Himself, as the Lord calls all creation to witness His judgment of His own people. This Psalm isn’t a friendly suggestion—it’s a sober wake-up call for anyone who is trying to win God’s approval through empty religious actions.  

Let’s read through this Psalm and then examine it section by section.

Psalm 50:1-23 (BSB), A Psalm of Asaph, says:

1 The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from where the sun rises to where it sets.

2 From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.

3 Our God approaches and will not be silent! Consuming fire precedes Him, and a tempest rages around Him.

4 He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that He may judge His people:

5 “Gather to Me My saints, who made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”

6 And the heavens proclaim His righteousness, for God Himself is Judge. Selah

7 “Hear, O My people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you: I am God, your God.

8 I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices, and your burnt offerings are ever before Me.

9 I have no need for a bull from your stall or goats from your pens,

10 for every beast of the forest is Mine—the cattle on a thousand hills.

11 I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are Mine.

12 If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof.

13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

14 Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and fulfill your vows to the Most High.

15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.”

16 To the wicked, however, God says, “What right have you to recite My statutes and to bear My covenant on your lips?

17 For you hate My instruction and cast My words behind you.

18 When you see a thief, you befriend him, and throw in your lot with adulterers.

19 You unleash your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit.

20 You sit and malign your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.

21 You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you. But now I rebuke you and accuse you to your face.

22 Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you:

23 He who sacrifices a thank offering honors Me, and to him who rightly orders his way, I will show the salvation of God.”

In Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, it says, “This psalm is one of the most instructive portions of the Old Testament, as setting forth the necessity of spiritual religion, and the fact that a mere observance of forms can never constitute that righteousness which will make people acceptable to God.”

In other words, this psalm tells us something we really need to understand. It explains that simply performing religious actions or repeating religious phrases does not make us righteous before God.

That tells me that when this psalm was written, people were relying on animal sacrifices to make themselves right with God, yet they were continuing to live in disobedience, breaking His laws. They went to the temple, offered what was required, and assumed that secured God’s approval. But their actions were not acceptable to God because they were not truly worshiping Him. It says they didn’t praise Him, give thanks to Him or seek to walk in His ways. They offered animals for sacrifice for their sins, yet they continued living in moral corruption.

This psalm shows us the danger of thinking that religious actions can buy us favor with God. Thankfully, it also shows us how we can be truly acceptable to God.  

Now, let’s go back through this Psalm again and really examine it. Verses 1-6 say, “The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from where the sun rises to where it sets. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. Our God approaches and will not be silent! Consuming fire precedes Him, and a tempest rages around Him. He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that He may judge His people: ‘Gather to Me My saints, who made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.’ And the heavens proclaim His righteousness, for God Himself is Judge. Selah”

One day, Jesus is going to return. In this psalm, Asaph is prophesying what that will look like. This is an accurate representation of what will occur. Scripture has been consistent that there will be a universal judgment, when all of humanity will be made to assemble before Jesus for judgment.

It won’t be a peaceful time. There will be a consuming fire that precedes Him, and a tempest that will rage around Him, as verse 3 says.

Did you notice that it also says, “Our God approaches and will not be silent!” I think we can read that and be afraid because it rightfully sounds frightening, but I also think we can read that and be comforted. God is not going to be silent. He’s going to arrive on the earth and do something. He’s not going to remain silent in the face of all the bad things that have been going on. I find comfort in that.

Sometimes, doesn’t it seem like so many of the people who arrogantly disobey and slander God never suffer any consequences? Sometimes it even seems like they have a “better” life in that they seem to be the people who are the most successful or the most popular. They seem to be able to harm people, lie, cheat and steal and get away with it. Whereas those who follow Jesus seem to be the most persecuted of all people throughout history.

Well, this Psalm tells us that God is not going to stay silent about our suffering. The people who are seeming to benefit from their life of sin will not continue to prosper. God is going to summon them to Him and He’s not going to stay silent! That’s because as verse 6 said, He is a God of justice.

2 Thessalonians 1:6-8 tells us that at the end of this world, we will see God’s righteous judgment on all the people who disregarded God’s laws. God will make things right—He will bring justice. It says, “After all, it is only right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are oppressed and to us as well. This will take place when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in blazing fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”

I like how Barnes explains this. He says, “[God] ‘seems’ now to be silent. No voice is heard. No sentence is pronounced. But this will not always be the case. The time is coming when he will manifest himself, and will no longer be silent as to the conduct and character of people, but will pronounce a sentence, fixing their destiny according to their character.”

Not just those who have rebelled against God will be summoned, though. He will call the entire universe to gather together, and as this psalm says, the first people He will speak to are His “saints.” Verse 5 says, “Gather to Me My saints, who made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”

The word ‘saint’ is seldom used these days. Most people think saints are special Christians who have performed miracles or had the Lord visibly appear to them. But the Bible defines saints as anyone who is a believer in Jesus. Or better, as this verse states, a saint is anyone who has made a covenant with God by sacrifice.

We are saints if we have received salvation by grace through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice when He died on the cross for our sins. His sacrifice brought a new covenant because His blood purchased our salvation and has cleansed us of our sins.

In this psalm, the covenant was made with Israel. God called them His chosen people. He had made a covenant with Abraham that through his descendants, a savior would be born. His covenant said that if the people followed God’s laws, then they would be blessed.

He also said that whenever they broke one of God’s laws, they could be forgiven of that sin by making an offering. That is what the next section, verses 7-13, is talking about. It says: “Hear, O My people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you: I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices, and your burnt offerings are ever before Me. I have no need for a bull from your stall or goats from your pens, for every beast of the forest is Mine—the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”

So God is saying that He doesn’t rebuke them because of their animal sacrifices and offerings—He’s the one who set up that system of forgiveness for sins. However, He doesn’t need those things. He doesn’t eat the animals they sacrificed. He doesn’t actually need anything from them. He said, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,” because why would He? Everything already belongs to Him.

But more than simply belonging to Him, in verse 11, when He says He knows all the animals, the Hebrew word ‘yada’ means know, but it means more than just being aware. God is more than just aware of His creation. He knows every bird individually.

This reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 10:29: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”

God is intimately aware of every bird’s existence and is in charge of the length of their lives. Nothing is outside His intimate knowledge or care.  

So, when God’s people made sacrifices at the altar for forgiveness of sins, they weren’t doing that for God’s benefit. He didn’t need those animals. They already belong to Him, and He knows them. He had the people sacrifice animals for the people's benefit. The only way the people's sins could be forgiven was through the shedding of innocent blood on their behalf. God, being holy and just, required a sacrifice.

But this system of sacrifice wasn’t created because their sin didn’t matter. It was a system that was supposed to teach them obedience. God didn’t delight in their burnt sacrifices; He delighted in their obedience to His Word.

1 Samuel 15:22 says, “But Samuel declared: ‘Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to His voice? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams.’”

That’s why in verse 13, God rhetorically asks, “Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” He doesn’t want those things for His benefit.

Which is why it’s so important we pay attention to what verses 14-15 say. The Lord tells us what He does want. He says, “Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and fulfill your vows to the Most High. Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.”

God wants us to do three things. He wants us to have a thankful heart, fulfill our vows by living a life of obedience to His Word, and trust in Him. If we trust Him, we will call on Him in times of trouble, and He will deliver us. He wants us to do this. He wants us to trust and depend on Him because He loves us.

But if we are merely placing our trust in religious actions, then we don’t do those things. We won’t be thankful; we will be resentful. We won’t wholeheartedly obey Him; we will try to skirt God’s laws. We won’t trust in Him and call out to Him; we will try to handle our problems by ourselves. But if we remember who God is and how much He loves us, then out of thanksgiving, we will obey Him and honor Him in all we do. We will live out our faith.

This psalm isn’t saying that obedience is unnecessary; it’s saying that obedience without faith is not acceptable to God.

Now, in reading the second half of this psalm, we might think God is speaking to those who don’t claim to follow Him. But I think He’s still speaking to the Israelites. What He says is pretty frightening, though. Verses 16-21 say: “To the wicked, however, God says, ‘What right have you to recite My statutes and to bear My covenant on your lips? For you hate My instruction and cast My words behind you. When you see a thief, you befriend him, and throw in your lot with adulterers. You unleash your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. You sit and malign your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you. But now I rebuke you and accuse you to your face.”

God is speaking to the people who were taking part in the temple rituals, reciting God’s law, and claiming to be a part of His people, and yet they were actively breaking many of God’s commandments. He mentions the seventh, eighth and ninth specifically.

But we shouldn’t think this applies just to them. Alexander MacLaren said, “The psalm has as keen an edge for modern as for ancient sins. Superstitious reliance on externals of worship survives, though sacrifices have ceased; and hypocrites, with their mouths full of the Gospel, still cast God’s words behind them, as did those ancient hollow-hearted proclaimers and breakers of the Law.”

MacLaren, as usual, is spot-on. I appreciate the visual he has created. Their mouths are full of the Gospel, but they cast God’s words behind them. These are people who know what God’s word says, yet they leave it behind and break God’s laws anyway.

You know, our actions speak louder than our words, for our actions disclose what we really believe.

What are your actions saying about you? Do your actions line up with your words?

I’m afraid that sometimes we might mistake God’s momentary silence for agreement. We think that God must not care about whatever sin we’ve committed because He’s being “silent” about it.

Think about this for a moment: when we sin, isn’t it because we’ve forgotten Who God is? If we say we follow God, yet we go ahead and do something we know we aren’t supposed to do, isn’t it because we’ve forgotten who He is? Because if we remembered in that moment that He is the Mighty One, God the LORD, and that He sees and knows everything, and one day we will stand before Him and all that we have done or didn’t do will be made public—if we remembered that—would we go ahead and do the thing we know He doesn’t want us to do?

But as this Psalm says, we forget. We think that He’s just like us. We think His silence or our lack of conviction means that our sin is okay. And so, we disobey Him. And in doing that, we don’t give Him the honor and obedience that are His due.

And worse, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will sometimes excuse away our sin because we know that God is gracious and kind and will forgive us, and so we go ahead and sin anyway.

But that is what this Psalm is telling us not to do. It’s telling us that God is not deceived by our games. We aren’t fooling Him. If God knows even every single bird, why would we ever think we can pull a fast one on Him?

The people of God were warned: Do not put your faith in your religious actions and think your other actions don’t matter.

But as this Psalm was obviously written before this day of judgment has arrived, in the final verses we see that God still reaches out His hand and urges the wicked to repent. He says in verses 22-23: “Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you: He who sacrifices a thank offering honors Me, and to him who rightly orders his way, I will show the salvation of God.”

This is God’s graciousness. He offers us another opportunity.

Don’t forget God’s holiness. Don’t forget what He has done. If you remember who He is and what He has done for us, how can you not be thankful?

But even if we don’t do the two things this Psalm warns us against: if we don’t put our faith in ritualistic religious actions nor be hypocrites, it still wouldn’t save us. To be saved, we need to be in a covenant relationship with the Lord. Jesus did for us what we could never do. That is why verse 23 says, “He who sacrifices a thank offering honors Me, and to him who rightly orders his way, I will show the salvation of God.”

It’s as Romans 10:8-10 says, “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: that if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.”

What God really wants is a relationship with us. He wants our hearts.

Psalm 50 reminds us that we cannot earn God’s approval through religious actions. God is not impressed with rituals, and He is not deceived by hypocrisy. Instead, He desires that we trust Him with our whole heart, give thanks to Him, and respond to His grace with obedience. We are not saved through our obedience—but if we are truly saved, our faith and thankfulness will be evident in our obedience to His Word.  

So let’s remember who God is. Let’s rejoice in all that He has done for us. Let us trust Him with our whole hearts, not just confessing our faith with our words, but echoing that confession with our actions. Let us live lives of obedience because we are thankful for His marvelous grace given to us through faith in Jesus.

Pray: Heavenly Father, thank You for all that You have done for us, especially for sending us Your Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, bringing us a new covenant of His blood. Thank You for making a way for us to be cleansed from our sins so we can be declared righteous before You. Please help us to respond to Your love with grateful, thankful hearts, as we strive each day to obey Your Word. We want our actions each day to reflect that we are Your people, purchased by Your sacrifice. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.