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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)

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Psalm 50 is the first of the psalms of Asaph, which tend to circle much more around the covenant and its requirements.\xa0 So it is here in psalm 50, which begins by setting up a scene of judgement.\xa0

God arrives as judge and calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses.\xa0 The heavens and the earth were, after all, the witnesses God called when the covenant was first made in the wilderness.\xa0 This is perhaps also a reason that we find the sky blackened and an earthquake shaking the rocks at Jesus\u2019 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.\xa0 He does not take fault in their sacrifices or offerings, but he does remind them he doesn\u2019t actually need, eat, or drink the things they offer.\xa0 God provides for them, not they for him.\xa0 Everything already belongs to God, what could humankind possibly give him that isn\u2019t already his?\xa0 No, it is not out of our plenty that we give a bit to God: it is out of God\u2019s plenty that we have received whatever it is that we have\u2014and that has only been given to us to hold and distribute as a trust and for a time.\xa0

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.\xa0

Worship is not just about dealing appropriately with the resources of God\u2019s Creation though, it is also about salvation.\xa0 We practice the habits of worship not only because we depend on God for our provision, but also for our salvation\u2014for our help \u201cin the day of trouble.\u201d\xa0 Nothing in Creation or Salvation is something we accomplished ourselves: it is all a work of God.\xa0 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\u2014naming disobedience, theft, adultery, slander, and false testimony.\xa0 He says \u201cwhen you did these things and I kept silent, you thought that I was exactly like you.\xa0 But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you.\u201d\xa0

I have long found this one of the most arresting statements in all of the psalms.\xa0 It addresses the main issue that the whole psalm deals with, namely that we have a tendency to imagine God in our image.\xa0 So our issue is not just turning other objects and pursuits into gods of our own making\u2014idolatry\u2014but also making God himself into a god of our own making.\xa0 So even when we\u2019re 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 loose all sense of his cosmic, mysterious, holy otherness. \xa0\xa0

That goes for our ethical relationship before God when we think things like \u201cGod won\u2019t mind a white lie\u201d or \u201che\u2019ll see and understand why I\u2019m doing this and that I\u2019m basically a good person.\u201d\xa0 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 that we breathe and the very life that we live.\xa0

This whole psalm is a call to remember the holiness and otherness of God\u2014to remember that he is the judge\u2014and that we are never able to fully know his mind or his ways.\xa0 This is an invitation to stand in a humble awe and fear of the Lord and to live and worship accordingly.\xa0 It is he that we depend on for our very creation and for our continuing provision and salvation\u2014which in Jesus, unlike in the psalms, we have received in full.\xa0 And so it is Jesus that our lives are to be conformed to, not he to us.\xa0

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