When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you. But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you. (Psalm 50:21)

Psalm 50 is the first of the psalms of Asaph, which tend to circle much more around the covenant and its requirements. So it is here in psalm 50, which begins by setting up a scene of judgement.

God arrives as judge and calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses. The heavens and the earth were, after all, the witnesses God called when the covenant was first made in the wilderness. This is perhaps also a reason that we find the sky blackened and an earthquake shaking the rocks at Jesus’ crucifixion in the Gospel of Matthew: the heavens and the earth are testifying to a new covenant being made.

With the heavens and earth serving as witnesses, God then calls his people. He does not take fault in their sacrifices or offerings, but he does remind them he doesn’t actually need, eat, or drink the things they offer. God provides for them, not they for him. Everything already belongs to God, what could humankind possibly give him that isn’t already his? No, it is not out of our plenty that we give a bit to God: it is out of God’s plenty that we have received whatever it is that we have—and that has only been given to us to hold and distribute as a trust and for a time.

So we give our thanks offerings and fulfill our promises (like our baptismal and profession of faith promises) to God because it is right and proper that we do so, to remind us that nothing was ours to begin with, and to help us practice the posture of an open hand and a responsive life before the God to whom all things belong.

Worship is not just about dealing appropriately with the resources of God’s Creation though, it is also about salvation. We practice the habits of worship not only because we depend on God for our provision, but also for our salvation—for our help “in the day of trouble.” Nothing in Creation or Salvation is something we accomplished ourselves: it is all a work of God. We depend on him for everything.

Having set the record straight on what worship is for, God moves to the character and conduct of his people—naming disobedience, theft, adultery, slander, and false testimony. He says “when you did these things and I kept silent, you thought that I was exactly like you. But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you.”

I have long found this one of the most arresting statements in all of the psalms. It addresses the main issue that the whole psalm deals with, namely that we have a tendency to imagine God in our image. So our issue is not just turning other objects and pursuits into gods of our own making—idolatry—but also making God himself into a god of our own making. So even when we’re faithfully doing the right motions of worship and avoiding idolatry, we can still be off base when we shrink God down to our size, pin his wings to the cork board like a biology project, and lose all sense of his cosmic, mysterious, holy otherness.

That goes for our ethical relationship before God when we think things like “God won’t mind a white lie” or “he’ll see and understand why I’m doing this and that I’m basically a good person.” But it also goes for our understanding of God: we easily get the sense that we are the ones that hold God up or let God down rather than understanding the extent to which we depend on his every grace and provision for the very breath we breathe and life we live.

This whole psalm is a call to remember the holiness and otherness of God—to remember that he is the judge—and that we are never able to fully know his mind or his ways. This is an invitation to stand in a humble awe and fear of the Lord and to live and worship accordingly. It is he that we depend on for our very creation and for our continuing provision and salvation—which in Jesus, unlike in the psalms, we have received in full. And so it is Jesus that our lives are to be conformed to, not he to us.

As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you.
May he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm.
May he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you.
May he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.