Psalms 50: 7-15….Do you think that you feed Me? Spoken to His people

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
O Israel, I will testify against you.
I am God, your God.
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
your burnt offerings are continually before me.
I will not accept a bull from your house
or goats from your folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

Comment: This section of the Psalm is addressed to ‘My people’. The next (see tomorrow) to ‘the wicked’. It is possible to divide people by colour, by genetic background, by training, in many different ways. But here God, in yesterday’s having announced Himself as the Judge, divides the world into only two categories – His people and the wicked. And we have enough in today’s passage, in the light of what scripture teaches so clearly, to recognize that ‘His people’ are the people who are called elsewhere the ‘Children of Abraham’. This is not a title deserved by their genetic or racial background but by their Faith. And to understand this we need to know who Abraham was to God as revealed by Scripture study. But in the end it means those who really trust in Jesus, the promised ‘seed’ of Abraham’s loins, through Whom God promised to bless (by making them ‘His People’) all who in repentance and faith turn to Him (Jesus) – that is to Jesus not in a vague way but in true faith. His sacrifice is the secret.

Prayer: Please help me to be continually growing in my relationship with You, God, my Father.