HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR HEART?
Psalm 50:1
The Mighty One, God the Lord,
speaks and summons the earth
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
In this psalm, the author presents God as the
righteous judge, the one Who has the right to call every creature on earth to
judgment. No one escapes the right of the Lord to judge.
Psalm
50:3
Our
God comes; he does not keep silence;
before
him is a devouring fire,
around
him a mighty tempest.
God’s
judgment is clear and consuming. Nothing is hidden from His sight.
Psalm
50:4
He
calls to the heavens above
and
to the earth, that he may judge his people:
The
heavens are His witnesses of His judgment against His people. His judgment is
not against the sacrifices they make, but against the attitude behind their
acts of worship.
Psalm
50:7-9
7
“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
O
Israel, I will testify against you.
I
am God, your God.
8 Not
for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
your
burnt offerings are continually before me.
9 I
will not accept a bull from your house
or
goats from your folds.
God
is looking for His people to have an attitude of thanksgiving.
Psalm
50:14-15
14
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform
your vows to the Most High,
15 and call
upon me in the day of trouble;
I
will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
God’s
words are clear: gratefulness and humility are what God is expecting, and then He
will deliver them in the times of trouble.
As
we rehearse our own lives, do we recognize the same unacceptable traits that
the children of Israel displayed so often?
Do
we recognize God as the One Who has the right to judge all? Do we remember that
He is interested in our hearts, and not our empty acts of worship?
It’s
easy to live a life of ingratitude and still show up for church, as if all is
well. At times we have allowed sin to find root in our hearts, although we sing
heartily on Sunday. We know that we have unresolved issues with others, yet come
to worship, assuming that God is satisfied with our verbal assent.
Nothing
is hidden from God. He is not interested in our hypocritical worship. Jesus
said it clearly:
Matthew
5:23-24
So if you are offering your
gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against
you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to
your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
The
Apostle spoke very clearly of the sin of participating in the Lord’s Supper
without being purified:
1
Corinthians 11:17-18, 27-29
But in the following instructions I
do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but
for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a
church, I hear that there are divisions among you… Whoever, therefore,
eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be
guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person
examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For
anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment
on himself.
We
tend to repeat the same sins Israel did, don’t we. We approach God with
carelessness, forgetting that the Lord sees our heart and is therefore not
pleased at all by our external rituals.
Lest
you think that the solution is to just avoid worship, so you will not incur the
judgment of God, I want to remind you that the only wise and Godly solution is
to repent and make sure that your heart matches your actions.
God
desires our sincere gratitude. The Lord loves our worship when it is the
expression of a submissive heart. He loves to succor us in our times of
trouble.
Why
don’t you stop and check your heart? Make sure that it is right before God, and
then worship Him in a way that truly honors him.
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