Our scripture reading this morning comes from Psalm 50, so if you would please turn with me in the Word of God in your Bibles to Psalm 50. We will read that psalm together. Psalm 50, let us hear God's own Word. The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes and will not be silent. A fire devours before him and around him a tempest rages. He summons the heavens above and the earth that he may judge his people. Gather to me, my consecrated ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice thank-offerings to God. Fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me. But to the wicked, God says, What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with him. You throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother's son. These things you have done, and I kept silent. You thought I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face. Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces with none to rescue. He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God. So far the reading of God's word. This is a very serious and solemn psalm in which God comes to speak to his people and to admonish them and to rebuke them. But at the center of this solemn psalm is a wonderful promise. Did you hear that promise of verse 15? Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you will honor me. Call upon me in the day of trouble. And I will deliver you and you will honor me. That's a great promise, isn't it? Have you ever had a day of trouble? If you think you haven't, you need to think a little more carefully. You all have had days of trouble, and you all will have days of trouble. And this is a wonderful promise to a people in trouble. That when we are in trouble, we are invited, urged, to call upon the Lord. and are promised that he will deliver us and we will honor him. Now what exactly does that promise mean? Is it a general promise? I think in many ways it is. But as we look together more carefully and specifically at this psalm and its context and how the promise fits into the psalm, What I hope we'll see is also how this promise can function very specifically for us as the people of God. So that we can appreciate this promise in all of its richness and all of its depth. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you will honor me. Who makes this promise? First point I think we ought to reflect on in this sermon is who is the promiser? We all know that a promise is only as good as the one who makes the promise. We can watch television advertisements and see all sorts of promises, and usually we go away with a thoroughly and appropriately skeptical attitude, saying, yeah, right. Especially those ads for wrinkle creams and other sorts of assurances that we'll stay forever young. Yeah, right. The promise is only as good as the promiser, And that's why this psalm makes such a point of stressing the character of the one who has made this promise. This psalm begins in a particularly powerful way. The mighty one, God, the Lord, is the one who makes the promise. In Hebrew, that's just three words. El, Elohim, Yahweh. piling up the names that we use for God, the words that we use for God, to make the point that the true and living God, the real God, is the one who makes these promises. His promise is reliable. His promise will be fulfilled because He is powerful. That power is painted for us. For example, in verse 3 of our text, Our God comes and will not be silent. A fire devours before Him and around Him, A tempest rages. When we think of fire and storm, we should think of power. Those of us who saw the newscasts about the fire in Julian were struck again by the power of fire to destroy. The speed at which a fire can move. How weak often our efforts are to resist a fire. God comes as a fire to his people in power. He comes as a storm with winds blowing and lightning flashing, thunder sounding. Our God is powerful. That's the character of our God. And so when he makes a promise, we are told by this text, he has the power to fulfill it. He is not lacking in any way in power, but is filled with power. Such is the glorious character of our God. and he's not only a God of power with enough power to fulfill his promise but he's a God of holiness and righteousness so that when he makes a promise we know that he will bring it to pass there are many people who are liars when they make promises our God is not a liar but filled with truth he shines forth from Zion perfect in beauty we're told in verse 2 Psalm 48 had celebrated the beauty of Zion And the beauty and the perfection of Zion represents before the world the beauty and the perfection of God. And so he is the righteous one, as verse 6 tells us. When he comes, he will come in all of his holy righteousness, and we can rely utterly and completely upon what he says. And he is also, we are told, our covenant God. In verse 7, God says to his people, Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. It's wonderful to know that there is a God of power and holiness, but this psalm wants to remind us he's not just powerful and holy in an abstract sort of way, but he's powerful and holy for us, his covenant people. He is our God, and we are His people. I am God, your God, declares the Lord. So when I make you a promise, I will keep it. When I make a promise, you can be certain of it. I am God, your God. And you see, this promiser has made us a promise in the face of peril, in the face of the day of trouble. Now, if you go to seminary and study Hebrew for several years, you'll learn that this word trouble means trouble. It's a lot of tuition to learn that. Trouble means trouble. It means distress. It means difficulty. It's a very general sort of word in the day of trouble. And in some real sense that it applies to us in every circumstance of life. Whatever the trouble, we can be sure that the Lord is there with us. But in the context of this psalm, the trouble highlighted seems to be trouble caused by sin. If you look down at verses 18 and 20, when God addresses the wicked amongst his people, that is, those who in particular have appeared to love the law but never keep it, who really in their hearts despise the law, the people of whom God says, you hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. He then says, when you see a thief, you join with him. You throw in your lot with adulterers. You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother's son. These are people you see who have brought trouble on themselves because they've loved robbery, they've loved adultery, they've loved slander, They've turned their back against God and against his covenant, against his law. Their day of trouble is very much related to their sin. But even for them, there's hope. If they call on the Lord in the day of trouble, he will deliver them. But when we look then a little more carefully at this psalm, the great trouble that this psalm seems to be talking about is trouble related to worship. This is a psalm very much focused on worship and on attitudes in worship. The problem that God is confronting when he confronts his people in this psalm is not the problem of idolatry. Many places in the Old Testament we're warned against idolatry. We're warned against worshipping false gods and we're warned against worshipping God in false ways. That's what the first and second commandment are about. We mustn't worship false gods, and we mustn't worship in false ways. The Lord is very serious about his worship. But that's not the problem that Psalm 50 focuses on. Psalm 50 is talking to people who worship the true God and worship him according to the right forms. He has no complaint about their external actions. His complaint is entirely about what's going on in their hearts and in their attitudes. The problem, the great sin that Psalm 50 is confronting is the sin of formalism. That is the sin of going through the right forms without right attitudes. Paul summed it up in 2 Timothy 3.5 when he said, you have the form of godliness, but deny the power of it. And that's what was wrong with these people. They had the form of right worship, but they weren't rightly engaging with their hearts and their minds in that worship. And that's what God wanted to address. And he's really addressing two groups of people within Israel. One he calls the wicked. These are people who are still formally conforming. They're still going to the temple. They're still offering sacrifices as God required them. But at the very moments and in the very actions of them offering their sacrifices to God, they are despising God and His ways in their heart. Verse 16, What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenants on your lips? You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. This is a very serious charge. It's a charge made to people who go to church. And so the question comes to each one of us, is there anything of this attitude in our hearts? That, yeah, we'll come and we'll recite the prayers and we'll sing the songs and we'll listen with some attention to the sermon, but none of it matters. none of it hits home. The specific sin of the wicked, pointed out in this text, is very dramatically summarized in verse 21, where God says to the wicked, These things you have done, and I kept silent. You thought I was altogether like you. What's that mean? It means that the wicked had begun to think that God was just like them in their saying one thing and doing another. We say we don't believe in stealing or in adultery or in bearing false witness, but we steal and we commit adultery and we bear false witness. That's what we the wicked do, this psalm says. And we have thought in our souls, God's just like us. He says he punishes sin, but he doesn't actually do it. He says he will judge the wicked, but he doesn't actually do it. He says he cares about holiness, but he never acts to demonstrate that care. It's easy to fall into that kind of thinking. Where's the promise of his coming? Why has Jesus delayed so long? Will there ever be a final judgment? No, God doesn't really care. He says one thing, but he does another. That's the wicked formalism that can creep into the hearts of even some of God's people. And this psalm warns us that that's the worst kind of trouble you can fall into. There is no worse day of trouble than the day of trouble of coming into the presence of God unprepared. There is no worse day of trouble than the day God will summons us for judgment if we are not ready to stand in the judgment. that's the day of trouble that these wicked must prepare for and must repent of their actions and of their attitudes, saying, God is just like us, saying one thing and doing another. But it's not just the wicked, the wantonly wicked, we could say, that are addressed in this psalm. It is also people who are true and in many ways faithful members of God's covenant people, but who have become careless in their worship. They are not wicked in their worship necessarily, as these other wicked folk are, but they have become careless. They are just going through the motions. And this is a word that needs to, I think, cause all of us to do a little bit of reflecting. It is so easy to come to church and just go through the motions. It is so easy to sing the songs without thinking about the words. What words have we taken on our lips and raised up to God? Are they words that flow out of our hearts and reflect who we really are? Are they words that reflect the passion of our soul? It's so easy to fold our hands and close our eyes and let our minds wander while the minister talks to God. It's even possible for ministers to do that while they're talking to God. We have to ask, are we engaged in these acts of worship? It's possible to sit through a whole sermon even with one's eyes opened and not hear anything. I remember the first internship I did when studying for the ministry was in a church where the minister was a very good preacher and he was very provoked with one member of the congregation. He'd been there several years and he said, that man has not heard one of my sermons. He's slept through every one. It's like when I say amen after reading the Bible text, it just puts him right to sleep. And while I was there, That man had a child to present for baptism, and they sat in the front row, and the minister went off the pulpit, preached the whole sermon, standing by the front row, looking that man in the eye. He said, he's going to hear one of my sermons. Well, that's maybe more exaggerated than most of us are, but are we passionate to be engaged in the worship of God, or are we content just to be sitting here? You see, if we look carefully at what the Lord is saying to these careless people in Israel, in regard to their worship. He's saying, you have allowed yourself subtly to begin to think that I am in need and you are providing for my need. I'm hungry and so you bring me bulls and goats to sacrifice to me. And you begin very subtly to think that your worship is somehow something that I am in need of as your God and that you are really quite wonderful to have supplied that need. and the Lord says, let's get one thing clear. I do not need you and your actions. He said, let's get real. This is the modern paraphrase of the psalm. Let's get real. If I were hungry, would I ask you? If I needed the flesh of bulls and the blood of goats, would I have to ask you for those things to supply my need? I am sufficient in myself, says the Lord. These sacrifices are not for my need, they're for your need. You're getting things all turned around. You see our peril here. That we begin rather subtly to think that somehow God needs us and we're really pretty good to have supplied those needs. He needs people in church on Sunday morning. Think how lonely he'd be if none of us showed up. He needs people to give money to support his causes. How will he get his work done otherwise? He needs people to keep his Sabbath day holy. We may not keep it quite as holy as we think we ought to, but nonetheless, he should be pretty happy with us because we do better than most of our neighbors. He needs us to build Christian schools. How will they get built otherwise? You see, we're really pretty splendid folk. Now, as I said at 8.30, you people coming at 10.15 are not as splendid as the 8.30 people. They're obviously a much more serious group. They didn't sleep in. Now, we could maybe suggest that coming at 8.30, they're just trying to get it over with. that you got up early to read and to meditate and prepare to come to worship? No, you see, it's so easy to slip into really dangerous ways of thinking about our relationship with God and either to think God doesn't really do what he says he's going to do in his word or to think, you know, I'm really pretty good. I'm even thinking about going to church Sunday night because God needs a few people there Sunday night too. No, He doesn't need us. The day of trouble comes when we misunderstand that we need His deliverance, not that He needs us. The day of trouble, you see, is when God brings His lawsuit against His people and says, you are not ready to stand in the judgment. This picture is the picture of a law court. God summons his people to appear before his judgment seat. And there is no worse trouble than standing before the judgment of God without a deliverer. That's the point he's making here. There is a promiser of great power, but there is also a peril that besets our souls. But the promise is that on the day of trouble, when we call to him, he will deliver us. That's the promise. That's the provision of God, that there is deliverance. You know, the irony of this psalm is that it is a psalm filled with descriptions of sacrifice. Five times the word sacrifice appears in this psalm. And in the verses 9 through 13, God is in many ways discussing the subject of sacrifice with his people. And the tragedy is that they have completely missed the point of the sacrifice. The whole point of sacrifices for Israel was not that they were giving something to God, but that God was giving something to them. The sacrifice that God provided, the sacrifice that God established was a substitute for the sin of the people. One to bear as a substitute the judgment of God on sin. Sacrifice was not something that God needed as if he ate the flesh of bulls and drank the blood of goats. The sacrifice was always a sign and a pointer, a teaching device that God had established to teach His people to look away from themselves and their own righteousness, to put their hope in a substitute who would die in their place. And so from the beginning, the function of sacrifices was to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to know what He was doing. If there had never been a temple and if there had never been an altar and there had never been sacrifices, how would we have understood what the death of Christ really meant? But God had prepared the way. God had given us a teaching device to know that when Jesus Christ came and died on the cross, He was dying on an altar. That when Jesus Christ died there, He was a sacrifice and substitute for sin. That what was accomplished there was that the whole wrath of God against the sin of His people was poured out on his own son as the provision for our deliverance in the day of trouble. And so what a glorious thing the Lord did for us in providing a sacrifice. And what a perversion for us to think we're actually doing something for him. One of the great tragedies of church history was the tendency of churches to turn the Lord's Supper away from being God's grace to us and to make of the Lord's Supper a sacrifice that we offer to God. Do you know that's the official teaching of many churches? That a priest stands at an altar and offers a sacrifice of propitiation to God there? It's a tragedy because it turns all of redemption on its head. It turns it upside down. It again is talking about what we are giving to God instead of what God is giving to us. God delivers us in the day of trouble through his own son, our sacrifice and substitute. Psalm 48 verse 9 says, Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. Why in the temple? Because there in the temple we see the altar of sacrifice where God has provided out of his unfailing love a provision of deliverance that we don't deserve, that we could never earn, that we could never offer. But God delivers us. Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you from the trouble of your sin. I will deliver you from the trouble of your formalism. I will deliver you from the troubles of your life in Jesus Christ, my son. Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you and you will honor me or you will glorify me. When God has delivered us, there will be fruit in our life. There will be response in our hearts. There will be joy in our being. That's why it's so sad to come to church and just go through the motions. It misses the whole reality. It misses the whole point. It misses the blessing. we are here to meet with our God and to thank Him and to praise Him for all that He's done for us in saving us. What a privilege is ours. And if our hearts are cold and our minds are wandering, what does that say about our sense of what the provision and deliverance of God has cost Him in the death of His Son? What does it say about how our hearts have been affected by Him? That's why the path we're called to walk here in honoring God is really twofold. One, we're to be filled with thanksgiving. If we really understand Jesus Christ, how can we not be filled with thanksgiving? How can our hearts not overflow with thanksgiving? God has not said, you'll only get my deliverance if you honor me. He's saying, when I deliver you, how can you not honor me? How can there not be that fruit in your life? There will be. You will be filled with thanksgiving. You'll all offer those sacrifices of thanksgiving. And you'll pray. John Calvin said, prayer is the chief exercise of faith. If we really believe, we'll pray. Because if we really believe, we'll turn to the one who can help us. God, the object of our prayers. Call on me, says the Lord. The word there is interesting. It's the same word that's translated in verse 1 of the psalm as God summons the earth. And that's important to bear in mind, not because we can summons God, but because there's an urgency built into that word. There's a fervency there. We mustn't offer prayers just kind of off the top of our head. We mustn't offer prayers that are just words out of our mouth, but there must be from the heart a calling upon God in faith. That's what honors the Lord. The forms of worship must be true and faithful. But those forms by themselves are not enough. They must be joined with a heart of faith in worship. And that's what our God calls us to today. Calls us to honor him with our worship and calls us to honor him with our lives. And then, you see, we begin to see how much more wonderful that promise was even than we could have imagined. Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will honor me. That's the promise to everyone who has looked to Jesus Christ in faith. May that be the promise that each of us cherishes in our hearts. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, we are thankful and amazed for the richness of the promise that you have made to us. That in the day of trouble, whether it be the general distress and difficulty that comes in this life, or more particularly in the day of trouble of facing our sin and standing before you, that you have promised that as we call upon you in faith, you will deliver us. That you have provided deliverance for us in Jesus Christ. And may our response to him and to his saving work be a response of faith that abounds in thanksgiving and in prayer. Hear us and seal this promise to the hearts of everyone here, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.