Psalm 50: Part 2, Don’t Cast God’s Word Behind You

Last week, we looked at Psalm 50 and found a stark warning to not put our faith in religious actions. We were reminded that the one and only living God, the LORD, is not actually impressed with religious actions, and He is not deceived by hypocrisy. Simply performing religious actions or repeating religious phrases does not make us righteous before God.

But we shouldn’t think that this doesn’t apply to us today. The people of the Old Testament had a covenant of sacrifice with the Lord, and Jesus became an even better sacrifice and gave us an even better covenant, but the work Jesus did by dying on the cross does not mean that we no longer have to obey God.

Pastor and theologian James Boice once warned, “The real problem with ritual is that, if forms are all there is to our religion, they give us feelings of being right with God when actually we may be guilty of the most terrible sins.”

We can’t fool God, like the wicked attempt to do.

Well, today, I want us to look closer at the second half of that psalm; the part that is addressed to “the wicked.” As I pointed out last week, the wicked in this psalm are Israelites who were taking part in worship at the temple and knew God’s law, yet they were being hypocrites. They knew God’s Word, yet they valued it so little that they cast it behind them. I think it’s well worth our time to reexamine this section.

Psalm 50:16-23 (BSB) says:

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.”

The people whom God refers to as “wicked” aren’t just occasionally showing up at the temple. God says that they quote His laws and confess that they are partakers in a covenant with Him. They wanted all the benefits of being members of God’s family of believers, and yet they did not live according to God’s law. Even though they could recite His statutes, and even though they said yes to God’s covenant agreement, they were breaking the very laws they claimed to follow.

God says to them: What right have you to do that because, as verse 17 says, “You hate My instruction and cast My words behind you.” God is saying to them: Why do you bother to speak the way you do when you actually hate My instruction and refuse to follow it? They were being hypocrites, and so that’s why God calls them “wicked.”

Nothing has really changed, has it? Hypocrisy is still a rampant problem within Christianity. There are still people today who know God’s Word and call themselves Christians, and yet they don’t actually follow God’s instructions: they leave God’s Word behind and ignore it in practice. They actually hate it when God tells them what to do, so they cast God’s Word behind them.

For example, I learned just recently that a popular Christian teacher has confessed to gross immorality. He had been having an affair for the last 8 years. How does that happen?

In his public confession he wrote that, “My conduct defied everything that I believe about marriage.” He didn’t detail what he believes about marriage, but I assume he’s referring to things he’s written about in his books. But look again at how he worded that part of his confession, because I think it’s a clue to what happened to him. He cast off everything he believes about marriage. He pushed it all aside, and that led to his ruin.

He was doing exactly what verse 16 describes when God asks the wicked, “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.” He was reciting God’s statutes, teaching millions of people about God, and yet, at the exact same time, he was acting like he hated God’s instruction, because he cast it off.

People who claim to follow Christ, know God’s Word and even teach others—why do they bother to carry on the façade? They have learned God’s Word, they know right from wrong, and yet they decide to leave it all behind as verse 17 is saying. How does someone who has studied and knows God’s Word so well end up so far gone?

I’m glad that author has confessed and wants to be made right with the Lord, but I want us to learn something from this, so we never find ourselves in a similar situation. It’s easy to look at someone else’s failure, but Psalm 50 was not written so we could point fingers—it was written so we would examine our own hearts. Because how do we keep ourselves from doing the same thing? How do we keep ourselves from casting God’s Word behind us? Are there ways we’re casting God’s Word behind us without realizing it?

Last week, we were reminded that we cannot earn God’s approval through religious actions because 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 saw, too, that even though obedience does not save us, if we truly have faith in Jesus, then our faith and thankfulness will be evident in our obedience to His Word. We will strive not to disobey His Word. We will strive to obey Him.

The thing about disobedience, though, is that it usually starts off small. We decide to cast behind us the parts of God’s Word that we think don’t apply to us or don’t matter anymore. But when we do that, our hearts begin to grow hard. Then it gets a little bit harder to hear the Holy Spirit speak to us. Disobedience begins with tiny steps and excuses, and then incrementally, our steps away from God’s path get larger and our hearts grow increasingly harder.

Sin is like that. Sin continues to grow larger over time. I don’t think a Christian just wakes up one morning and decides to cheat on their spouse. They would have had to have been thinking about it and plotting to do that for a long time.

To go back to the example of that author and answer my question of how that happened to him, I think the answer is that he must have been slowly rotting inside. That is what sin does to us.

Think of a pumpkin out in a field. It looks great on the outside. Yet so many times, if you look closely, you can see a crack. That means that even though it looks fine on the outside, the inside will be rotten. If you cut it open, it will be full of mold.

Sin creeps in through the smallest of cracks, and if it’s not dealt with, it will grow and grow until it takes over.

Psalm 50 tells us some of the ways that sin creeps in. Verse 18 says, “When you see a thief, you befriend him, and throw in your lot with adulterers.” Why is this so bad? It’s bad because that’s one way sin can creep in.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that we become like the friends we keep. 1 Corinthians 15:33 warns us, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” 

Psalm 50 is warning us about the same thing. If we know someone is a thief or an adulterer, why would we want to befriend them? Aren’t we just asking for trouble? Ephesians 5:11 tells us to “have no fellowship” with deeds of darkness. All of chapter 5 is well worth reading on a weekly basis, but for today, just look at what Ephesians 5:5-12 says: “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure, or greedy person (that is, an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Test and prove what pleases the Lord. Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”

Yet, for some reason, whether it’s back in the Old Testament times, New Testament times, or today, people continue to approve of what God condemns. Romans 1:32 says, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.”

Now, this is not the same thing as befriending someone in sin in order to lead them to Jesus. No, this is talking about giving approval and support to people we know are not following God’s way.

It’s a warning to not become friends and take part in their moral failings. We become what we tolerate, because our friendships mold our thinking. It’s especially important that we don’t buddy up to people who say they are Christians but are living as hypocrites. If we are warned that it’s shameful to even mention what disobedient people are doing, then for sure we should not embrace Christians who are living in disobedience. If we do, their bad character will influence us, causing cracks where sin can creep in.

1 Corinthians 5:11 tells us, “But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a brother do not even eat.” That word for brother is gender inclusive and it means a fellow believer.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we abandon struggling believers, but that we must lovingly confront them. We are to do what Hebrews 3:13 tells us to do: “But exhort one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” But if they refuse to repent, then we are to cut them off in the hopes that they will come to their senses and repent, because otherwise by continuing our friendship with them, we are enabling their disobedience. 

But if we are comfortable being friends with people who claim to follow Christ and yet blatantly disobey His Word, what does that say about us? Aren’t we casting off His Word, choosing to toss it behind us as we ignore it?

Then, Psalm 50 tells us more ways sin creeps in. Verses 19-20 say, “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.” I had mentioned that this is referring to some of the commandments, and it is, but it’s also more than just breaking the laws which tell us not to steal, commit adultery or bear false witness.

It’s actually very similar to what Romans 1:29-32 describes. It says that those who are not following God, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.”

If we are unleashing our mouths for evil, harnessing our tongues to deceive people, harming and slandering people, or for that matter, willfully doing any other things that go against God’s instructions to us, then we should not be surprised when God says to us as verse 21 states: “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.”

Isn’t this basically the same thing Jesus says in Luke 6:46, when He asks, “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?”

Remember what 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.”

But what if we are confessing that we believe in Jesus, but then we unleash our mouths for evil and harness our tongues to deceit? How can we do both at the same time? Jesus says in Luke 6:45 that “The good man brings good things out of the good treasure of his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil treasure of his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” If we truly believe in our heart, then good things will flow out of our mouth, not things that bring harm to other people.

Psalm 50 wants us to examine ourselves. It urges us to ask: Are we putting our faith in religious actions instead of in God? Are we abusing God’s forgiveness and grace, thinking we can fool Him, instead of truly repenting and obeying Him? Are we reading God’s Word but not bothering to follow what it says? Are we casting God’s Word behind us instead of applying it to our lives? Really, at the end of it all, isn’t this Psalm telling us to ask: Is my faith real?

The thing is, if we truly have faith and believe in our hearts, then we will be changed. When we are covered by the blood of Jesus, then our sins are not only forgiven, but we are also washed clean and declared righteous. We are made into a new creation. We are given the Holy Spirit, who no longer dwells in a temple, but in our hearts. We, more than any others in all of history, have no excuse when we willfully disobey God’s Word.

Let us follow God’s Word. As James 1:22 says, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.”

God’s amazing grace given to us through the work that Jesus did on the cross is freely given to us. But grace that does not change us is not grace.

In Matthew 7:21, Jesus strongly warns us: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” God’s grace empowers us to be obedient. We no longer are enslaved to sin. God’s grace sets us free from the power of sin and death.

Now if you’ve gotten this far in the sermon, you might be feeling a bit worried. Maybe you have realized that you’ve left some of God’s Word behind. I want to encourage you. That feeling is actually good. Grace doesn’t mean that true Christians never struggle with sin. It means that we don’t make peace with sin. It means that we don’t excuse sin away or refuse to repent. Grace means that we respond to the convictions of the Holy Spirit and we confess our sins and receive His forgiveness. It means we allow the Holy Spirit to change us and strengthen us so we can leave that sin behind and obey.

God’s grace is why Psalm 50 does not end in despair and rejection. God issues an invitation to us. 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.”

God warns us because He loves us. He wants to expose hypocrisy, not because He wants to destroy us, but because He wants to help us. He wants to call us away from the hypocrisy and back to Him. The cure for hypocrisy is not pretending harder or trying to look better, though. It is remembering who God is, repenting and correcting course where we have drifted, and offering Him hearts that are thankful and lives that are obedient to His Word.

So, the question before us is not, ‘Do I know God’s Word?’ but ‘Am I casting God’s Word behind me or am I obeying the words of the God I claim to know?’

Let us not cast God’s Word off, but let us hold fast to it, applying it to our lives, following its instructions, so we can be sure to rightly order our way, just as Psalm 50 tells us to do.

Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your great grace and mercy that forgives us when we fail to obey Your Word. Please help us to hold fast to Your Word and not to cast it behind us. Please help us by Your Holy Spirit to rightly order our way according to Your leading. Thank You for sending us Jesus to be our salvation. In His name we pray. Amen.