Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm 50:14,15

 

! Introduction

            When I was in grade 6, we moved and I had to attend a new school.

The question in my mind was, who will my friends be?

Will I make some good friends?

What will I be able to expect in these relationships?

Will they want to play with me?

Will I be able to trust them?

Can I call them up after school and will they want to meet me?

I made several friends who stayed friends when we went on to junior high school the next year.

These questions don’t stop in school.

As we grow older, the process of developing relationships continues and isn’t always easy.

We don’t always know what we can expect in the relationship.

Romances begin in much the same way.

Who has not considered picking a daisy and pulling off the petals… “she loves me, she loves me not…”  This awkwardness continues until a couple begins to talk about formalizing the relationship.

At that point, they make a covenant with each other and they tell each other exactly what they can expect of each other.

The bride says, I will love you for the rest of my life and the groom declares the same promise, thus making a marriage covenant.

Of course, not every covenant is kept.

Even in stable marriages, it is a good thing to review and renew what we can expect from each other in a relationship.

Last February when we were together with all our children, since it was our 30th anniversary year, we renewed our vows to each other in their presence.

Today we are celebrating a baptism.

Like the formalizing of the covenant of marriage, baptism is the formalizing of a covenant with God.

At some point, Janae and Andrew have decided to establish a relationship with God by becoming Christians.

Today, they are formalizing that relationship by being baptized.

At a time like this, it is good to ask, What is expected of the relationship?

What are they expecting of God as they declare to all that they want to live their lives in relationship to Him? What is God expecting of them?

What promise are they making to God about how they will live their life before Him?

            Psalm 50 speaks about such questions.

I invite you to open your Bibles and turn to Psalm 50.

As we read the first verse, we notice that God is speaking.

“The Mighty One, God, the LORD, speaks…” In this opening verse, three names of God are used.

Most often, in the Psalms, it is the Psalmist speaking to God.

It is unusual that God is speaking, so we need to listen.

We notice that God is speaking to the people of the world.

We read in verse 1, “and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets.”

But as we read on, we notice that his particular interest is in those who have made a covenant with Him.

Please take note of verse 5 which says, “Gather to me my consecrated ones,

who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”

Then also in verse 7 we read, “Hear, O my people, and I will speak…I am God, your God.”

So in this Psalm, we notice God speaking to the people with whom he has a relationship and with whom he has formalized the relationship into a covenant.

The particular covenant he had in mind was that made at Mt. Sinai, in Exodus 20, when God gave them the law and told them that He would be their God.

Why does he speak to them now?

As we read on in verses 7-13, we notice that they had failed to keep their part of the relationship.

We read in verse 7, “I will testify against you,” in vs. 8, “I… rebuke you…” But God is gracious and so in verses 14, 15 he tells them what he wants of them.

He reminds them what it means to be people who are in a covenant relationship with God.

He tells them three expectations that he has of them.

He wants them to give thanks to Him, to fulfill the vows they have made and to call upon him.

Today as you formalize the relationship you have with God by being baptized, I want to encourage you to look at these three things because they are still a good way of looking at the relationship which God wants with those who are His followers.

As we listen to these instructions, it is also a good time for all of us who have made covenant with God in the past to be reminded of how that relationship should be lived.

!

I. Thank Him

!! A. Sacrifices

            When God established a relationship with Israel, he gave them a list of the sacrifices he required of them.

There are numerous passages in Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus which describe those sacrifices.

We read about the burnt offerings, sin offerings, thank offerings and so on.

They were a central part of the religious environment of Israel.

In Psalm 50, we read that God does not rebuke them for bringing these sacrifices.

They had been quite faithful in doing so, and yet, there is a rebuke here.

The problem was that their sacrifices had become a ritual.

They brought them out of duty and for reasons that God never intended.

They brought the sacrifices as if they were doing God a favour.

They thought that if they brought them, God would be pleased because they saw God like we see each other.

They thought that he would be happy to have more.

But God points out how foolish this perspective is.

God has never needed the sacrifices they brought.

God doesn’t need an animal from them, He owns the “cattle on a thousand hills” so what could they give him that he did not already have?

Furthermore, God wasn’t dependent on created things for his food.

A rhetorical question in verse 13 implies that God does not eat the meat of bulls or drink the blood of goats.

Craigie says, “God is not a hungry God who depends on what we bring Him.”

They had forgotten that the covenant was about a relationship to God and not about a ritual by which they could make God happy.

Although we do not bring animal sacrifices to God, we are prey to the same kind of thinking.

We think that if we give God our time or our money, that we will somehow be able to please God and move him to favour us.

Does God need our money?

Does God need our time?

One writer asks, “Do men fancy that the Lord needs banners, and music, and incense, and fine linen?”

All things that live are his.

Sometimes we want to buy a gift for someone who has everything and we don’t know what to get them.

How much more is this true of God?

If we are trying to please God and move him to favour by our gifts and sacrifices, we have missed the point of the relationship we have with him.

We have failed to grasp what the covenant with God is all about.

!! B. The Sacrifice God Wants

            The word “sacrifice” which is found in verse 8 where it refers to animal sacrifices, is the same word as that found in verse 14, where we are told that the sacrifice God wants is a sacrifice of praise or thanksgiving.

This is not the only place in the Bible where we are called to a sacrifice of praise or thanksgiving.

In the New Testament, in I Thessalonians 5:18, we are called to “give thanks in all circumstances.”

This is what God wants of us.

Why does God want us to bring a sacrifice of praise?

One writer says, “God did not need thanksgiving to bolster his own self-esteem, as if (in the words of C.S. Lewis) he were ‘like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who had never met or heard of him.’

God wanted thanksgiving, for that in turn emerged from human lives full of joy…”

Why do we need to give thanks to God?

It is because as we do, we recognize that everything we have comes from God. Have you ever sat down and made a list of everything that God has given you?

Let’s start with life.

What about a roof over your head and the meals you will eat today.

What about friendships, meaningful work, a Saviour, eternal life and we could go on and on.

Not only does thanksgiving recognize the gifts we have, it acknowledges them.

God is, as the Bible says in another place, the giver of every good and perfect gift.

When we offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, we acknowledge the source.

No matter what our situation, we can think about what God has given and thank Him.

            Furthermore, in Psalm 50:23, we realize that when we rejoice at God’s gifts to us and thank Him, we honor God.

There it says, “He who sacrifices thank offerings honours me…” There is nothing in the world more important than honouring God.

So simply put, God wants us to recognize all the good we have in him and let him know that we understand it is from Him, we appreciate it and thank Him for it.

Such a sacrifice moves us away from ritual and a consumer attitude towards God and moves us to love, respect and appreciate our God.