Psalm 50, thoughts.
written by Michael McBane
My recent meditations brought me to Psalm 50. I will share some of the thoughts that percolated as I read. I will extract particular verses and make some applications. My applications may take liberties according to some but never the less I think they have merit.
Many understand that God is about to engage us towards a great transition in our time. Some of you like myself have had a deposit made within you of a particular vision to expand the culture of the Kingdom of God on this earth. I have carried some of my vision since my teens though I did not consider what stirred within me at that time to have a spiritual value. In the 1980’s my vision expanded and at times actually functioned within a sphere but with limitation. for which I am grateful. I confess that I am also thankful that I have been strained of me to very large measures. I have come to this place, I do not want to be the one who is, what ever that may be articulated as, I want Christ to be the center. I also confess that I may have always said that but until we have been strained over and over we really do not comprehend that and the magnitude of impact that will be offered when the horizon is truly Christ. Writing this reveals the heart of my words concerning Psalm 50. ( I will not consider every verse )
“The Mighty One, God, the Lord has spoken, and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth.”
This verse sets the tone, establishes the foundation, and reaffirms that God speaks life into existence. Just as God spoke the world into form and purpose that particular framework continues to echo within the time of God along the highway of eternity. The Alpha and the Omega, what God decreed shall not fail. It is suspended in the vision of the Triune God as They sit upon the Throne. Like a grand conductor They nod in unison and what was meant to be in the the chronological order manifests as the will of God. Some things are established and shall not be moved. The Lamb of God was established and the entirety of what the Lamb is and for ever will be establishes an emerging order. Based on the righteousness of God in us and nothing less. Let this then be seen in these words, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth.” When we live in the Lamb a beauty that is held in the unblemished fact of Christ’s obedience shatters all that will or could stand against the purposes of God. Forever.
“May our God come and not keep silence; fire devours before Him. And it is very tempestuous around Him. He summons the heavens above, and the earth to judge His people; Gather My Godly ones to Me, Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”
I will ask us to see that Christ is in us, but to see it as profoundly big. So big that it shakes us, it concerns us. It reveals that God must saturate us with great grace for us to exist with this glory within. And that His love is not weak as some think but ever lasting. It stills our flagrant misbehavior and expansive liberties that dilute the volumes that God wishes to reveal in us about Him to this world but even more so to others who are hidden in the Lamb. If we see that by not seeking to allow this fact to continually expand in us in all ways we are denying life not only to ourselves but to others that God desires you or I to give life to. But we can not until we reckon with this fact Christ is within us. So we do not walk aloof from Him. Its as if we, you and I are the garden of Eden. And there are days when we walk in the cool of the day with Him and then we discard Him and start poking through the trash of life as if He were not with us.
When we see that by God saying “Gather My Godly ones to Me, Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” He reveals something strategic to us. He also sets His heart of love before us. He offers us the keys to understanding life together. If we understand that it does require sacrifice to be Godly (but that is a decision) and it is the grace of God that is activated to us because Christ as the Lamb is within us. We here must be decisive and contend for the ground in our thoughts and mind. We are subject to each other in love only because we recognize the Christ in each other and the sacrifice given for His life to be in us and the corresponding sacrifice we live towards to reveal such. We must allow the mind of Christ to emerge and it can only do so when we see Him. When we see Him because we remove the lesser from our fellowship, the things that dilute our fullness of apprehending the wow of God. Our covenant with God can never be a singular thing. If we love the Lord we must also love what He loves and be willing to step forward towards loving as He does. This is not convenient, it does not establish us on this earth as our own island. It demands that we continually merge towards the life of Christ.
From this perspective we can integrate into the language used in these words. “May our God come and not keep silence; fire devours before Him. And it is very tempestuous around Him. He summons the heavens above, and the earth to judge His people.” Why can we integrate into these words? Because God is for us, He is our Father and does not abandon us. God does not keep silent, everything speaks of Him. Our life and our dying. We have no real understanding of the value we carry as we live daily or when we die. Again let me ask us to see Christ is within us. We are from this changing perspective seeing the revelation of holiness and purity. Our values change. We are being rewired. We see how life extends far and wide. All that we do, who we are is residual in effect. We are called forth towards a different responsibility that is outside of the great me.
I do not want my God to be silent, I expect to hear from Him. I long to hear from Him. I look for the ways He disguises His words so that I search them out. I know that a fire goes before Him and vanquishes what impedes me in relation to Him. He wants a highway of holiness that I can freely walk upon to come to Him. God compresses heaven and it will come to earth and its occupation will call the earth to groan until we say yes Lord.
“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you shall honor Me.”
As a people God is calling forth in us even out of times that have seemed dull or desperate a thunderous thankfulness. It is simply being ignited by the Holy Spirit and it is coming forth in our words and in our renewed attitudes. There is a plausible shift. And it is nothing we could have done. It again is grace and mercy being applied as a balm over our weary hearts. God is rescuing His people. But in this rescue we are changing and are being lifted away from the things that have restrained us. These may be practical or deep seeds of habitual patterns that we have accepted as life. Things that we have at times grown to adapt to. Even called them God. Ugly is it not.
“But to the wicked God says, ‘what right have you to tell of My statues, and to take My covenant in your mouth? For you have hated discipline, and you cast My words behind you.”
When I read the word I do not project it out to the world. I feel it is written for us as Christians. Therefore I consider these words before the Lord and examine my heart. We are entering a time of opportunity. God will not allow us to throw pearls before swine. But if we do not recognize that if we do not love as Christ and subject our selves daily to the will of the Lord we risk walking in our own way. We risk speaking words that are less then life. We increasingly cannot afford to do this. We live in grace but we must accept that we must live in the restraint of Godly discipline which is joyful. Because we see how the application results in fruitful life. We see as He does, say as He does, and do as He does. We live with Christ as our horizon. It is not hard to do. Because we live to love Him. There are those who will no longer carry weight with the words they speak. They have discarded what God has deemed holy. They throw the words of the Lord with habit not life. They have taken God has a profession, a living and lost focus that HE IS LIFE.
“When you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you associate with adulterers, you let your mouth loose in evil, and your tongue frames deceit, you sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I have kept silence; you thought I was just like you.”
Those are sobering words. They should strike the fear of God in us. “When you see a thief you are pleased with him.” My liberties in interpretation will expand now. I will speak firmly but in love to place some things on the table. Some refuse to speak into the life of others because that is not love. They feel we have not loved so until they see love has this huge force of something they remain neutral and the people around them live in mere Christianity.
Many refuse to understand, in fact they will not even begin to engage in this train of thought, that we are what we see or allow into our eye gate. Some may accept it intellectually but never make the application into their life. We have lost the art of communication one to one. We communicate through things some do so even when they are sitting next to each other. We are entrapped and it seems that it is acceptable. What we watch weaves our creativity and our dreams it can form our vision. When or if we partake of certain movies, or approve of the characterizations within we place a filter upon our spirit that integrates those things into the perspectives we have of life. We dilute our relationship with God. We live in the fear of man and allow that and our insecurities to rule us. This is the bookend of pride. We are not receiving our identity through our relationship with Christ but through the framework of marginal creativity that we somehow justify as having Christian implications in there somewhere. We make all sorts of excuses to justify our ways. And it is costing us. It is weakening who we are in Christ and it will give us opportunity to be taken out. I am very serious. I call on many to stop and be done with accepting the things that dilute you in movies, games and literature. There is a world so far beyond these diversions and it is only waiting in the heart of God for all of us. Again I repeat, we are not only denying life to ourselves but to each other. We my give a poisoned bread to another when they need a word of life. We in this dilution are not discerning the body because we are disregarding the holiness that is offered to us.
We must consider, no that is a compromising attempt to hedge my words, we must know that the lack of morality in the church is a direct deposit of what we are formed by. Don’t call me religious, get a life. Take what God is offering you seriously and stop making excuse for your bad behavior. Don’t justify your worldly interactions trying to be hip. Who are your heros? Your jokes are full of filth and you disregard your friends. If God is functioning through us when we wear such behavior it is because He loves those we are before. I write with a broken heart and an anger that burns deep. I have tasted the rich place that God has for us and I have hardly merged towards the deep waters. This is why I cry out for those who say they love God but wear the clothes of garments that do not give God the full opportunity He desires.
If we do not speak the corrective instruction to each other, if we do not have a will to hear correction we partner with a spirit that as the Psalm shares, “you let your mouth loose in evil, and your tongue frames deceit, you sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I have kept silence; you thought I was just like you.” Speaking nothing is not love it is agreeing with destruction. Not having a broken spirit that allows for a contrite heart equally speaks in destruction. The Lord is desiring His body to be joined correctly and we cannot be so if we refuse to lay our life down. It starts in our willingness to speak truth one to another in love.
There is a tension in how we relate to God, we are sons, we have been adopted and it is the season for this truth to blossom. The relationship of God as Father to Son and Holy Spirit is going to be a revolutionary force in the days ahead. This is a portion of the bread that God is serving us in this next season. Yet, we are not like God. We cannot be flippant in who we are, meaning do we hold onto the life that God is gracing us with? We are taking hold of this with a renewed fervency and our passion is not to be restrained. Let us be circumcised in our intent.
We must encourage one another to the high call before us. In the small and the big things. We must be a supply of life in the spiritual life and practical life.
I will end by repeating, many understand that God is about to engage us towards a great transition in our time. My motivation in sharing here is that I want us to be fully ready to receive the gravity of what we have been prepared for.
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