FAITH AND FASTING

An interesting way to spend a bit of the Christmas season…

The Lord led me to Psalm 50 last night and with each re-reading it blows my mind more. It is a prophetic Psalm, foretelling the coming Messiah, God on earth, Who would establish a covenant of blood removing the need for animal sacrifice, desiring only our sacrifice of wonder and obedience in following Him.

While the song is a beautiful prophecy, it is also a sober warning for those who think they own God’s covenant while living for their own selfish purposes and rejecting His way.

Please walk with me today through this powerful word and allow me to share some commentary in parentheses and italics. Feel free to share your own insights in comments as the Spirit reveals to you also.

Perfect Peace to every reader.

PSALM 50

A Psalm of Asaph

The mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken,
And summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting [from east to west]. (Symbolic that God foretold He would call out the earth “from east to West”… Christ followers having begun in Jerusalem, spreading worldwide and taking hold more densely in the “West” in recent centuries.)
² 
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God has shone forth. (God would show Himself in beauty and perfection. Note word: “out” and “forth”. It means the Perfect One, God Himself, came from but also OUT of Zion. He never intended to stay in one land with one people group forever.)
³ 
May our God come and not keep silent;
Fire devours before Him,
And around Him a mighty tempest rages. (Indeed, the life of Jesus telling the truth received joyfully by masses but unwelcome to crowds of religious leaders – was marked by controversy, persecution and eventually death as history reveals.)
⁴ 
He summons the heavens above,
And the earth, to judge His people: (This moment to come was foretold as a time for God to judge the hearts of His people. Would they be ready with soft hearts to obey and follow?)
⁵ 
“Gather My godly ones to Me,
Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” (Precious foretelling, the people of God whose hearts were actually His would accept Messiah’s blood sacrifice as the new, eternal Covenant.)
⁶ 
And the heavens declare His righteousness,
For God Himself is judge. Selah. (God alone is pure and holy, He has the right to do things as He desires. And because He is perfect, His way will be the best way.)

⁷ 
“Hear, O My people, and I will speak;
O Israel, I will testify against you:
I am God, your God. (Sobering heads up that Israel as it was known once may no longer be in favor with God…)
⁸ 
“I do not reprove you for your sacrifices;
Your burnt offerings are continually before Me. (He is saying, it isn’t the animal sacrifices where you will fail…)
⁹ 
“I will accept no young bull from your house
Nor male goat from your folds. (God is foretelling a time He will no longer accept animal sacrifices.)
¹⁰ 
“For every beast of the forest is Mine,
And the cattle on a thousand hills. (Here He is giving a clue why He will not need animal sacrifices, because the entire world, not just one land, belongs to Him. He was humbling Israel, but would they accept this transformation, let go of their pedestal and walk with Him humbly in a new way?)
¹¹ 
“I know every bird of the mountains,
And everything that moves in the field is ^[b]Mine.
¹² 
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
For the world and all it contains are Mine. (Once more, God is saying, “I will be God of the whole world and all it contains, and then there will be nothing you alone have that I need, Israel.” This is powerfully profound. Once God came and sacrificed Himself, He needed nothing further from the old land and people. Except that which He wants of all the world… keep reading.)
¹³ 
“Shall I eat the flesh of bulls
Or drink the blood of male goats?
¹⁴ 
“Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving
And pay your vows to the Most High; (He finally reveals He simply wants acknowledgment of what He has done, awe and praise for His astounding plan of Personal sacrifice setting us free.)
¹⁵ 
Call on Me in the day of trouble;
I will rescue you, and you shall honor and glorify Me.” (Doing things His way… revealed when we cry out to Him in awe and need, aka humility and obedience… leads to obtaining Salvation!)

¹⁶ 
But to the wicked God says:
“What right have you to recite My statutes
Or to take My covenant on your lips? (The sobering warning gets more direct to those who refuse to follow Him and His plan. “How dare you reject My Way while you pretend to own My words!”)
¹⁷ 
“For you hate instruction and discipline
And cast My words behind you [discarding them]. (To reject Jesus actually indicates to God that we hate instruction and authority! Also, those who reject Him, who know His Word, have to throw out all of the Hebrew prophets and Psalms, too, for they repeatedly proclaimed how to recognize Messiah!)
¹⁸ 
“When you see a thief, you are pleased with him and condone his behavior,
And you associate with adulterers.
¹⁹ 
“You give your mouth to evil
And your tongue frames deceit. (Again, He calls out the behavior of those who claim to own Him, confronting their lying and lasciviousness.)
²⁰ 
“You sit and speak against your brother;
You slander your own mother’s son. (At face value, this is already profound. Jesus prophesied in the Gospels that His presence and message would divide families, that brother would be against brother. But, a deeper symbol is God prophesying directly to the people of Israel, saying “you will be speaking against your own blood when you reject Jesus. I came to you first through your bloodline and yet you reject Me.” By the way, Isaiah the Hebrew prophet in Isaiah 53 foretold Redeemer would be rejected by His own people: “He was despised and rejected of men… yet He bore our grief and was wounded for our sin…”)
²¹ 
“These things you have done and I kept silent;
You thought that I was just like you. (This is a mistake of so many humans who think God must think like them, while failing to actually read and study His words, humble themselves and follow His way instead of their own.)
Now I will reprimand and denounce you and state the case in order before your eyes. (An even sterner warning to the Israelites – and can be broadly applied to all humans – that they would be DENOUNCED for their stubbornness and failure to repent and follow God’s plan. He proclaims truth to them, leaving them no excuse.)

²² 
“Now consider this, you who forget God,
Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be no one to rescue [you]. (Finally, the strongest warning possible, to those who go their own way and fail to follow the actual direction of God’s movement through Christ, they will face destruction.)
²³ 
“He who offers a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving honors Me;
And to him who orders his way rightly [who follows the way I show him],
I shall show the salvation of God.” (The SOLUTION! God wants our awe for what He did for us, that we carefully follow His plan… They – and we do still – have to be paying attention as He caused this pivotal change prophesied in advance. He said in Isaiah 43, “let go of the past because I’m going to do a new thing, will you recognize it?” By the way, the name, Jesus, Yehoshua, literally means Salvation.)

Precious Father, thank You. We do recognize Your plan and stand in complete awe and wonder of You and Your ways, demonstrated most clearly in Your Son, Jesus. Please transform us in Truth, seal and fill us with Your Holy Spirit. Use us to spread the glorious and saving truth of Your Son to all who have ears to ear, that they may walk in the freedom of Salvation which leads to life. In the name and for the glory of Jesus forever, Amen.