Redundant for a Reason
Psalm 50:16-23
But to the wicked, God says: "What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips?”
- Psalm 50:16
“Don’t be a Pharisee.” Yep, it’s this topic again. I know the horse is already dead. But we HAVE to keep beating it because this dead horse is probably one of the biggest problems we have in our modern-day church communities. We love our outward shows of religion while having hearts of wickedness.
Whoa! Hearts of wickedness? Aren’t you being a bit harsh with your wording, you might ask. Well, “wickedness” might seem like harsh wording, but I’m taking that right out of Psalm 50:16 that I quoted above. And if you continue reading, you’ll see that it IS talking about us. After verse 16 it goes on to describe “the wicked,” and I have to say, I was expecting it to mention those who murder, rape, enslave, and abuse others as the ones who hypocritically recite His laws and take His covenant. But the worst it mentions are those who steal or commit adultery. It mainly focuses on the use of the tongue to deceive, lie, and speak against others. That’s us! We may not have murdered anyone, but we are all guilty of the sins it lists in this passage. And if these sins are us, then yes, it labels us as “the wicked.”
In this passage, we also notice that hypocrisy isn’t just a modern-church phenomenon, or even just something that started in the New Testament. It was already happening in Israel in the time of the Kings. And it happened before the Kings, and before the Judges. The bible is full of examples of God telling the people what he tells them in verse 9 & 10: "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." Your religious practices are useless if they don’t come from a grateful heart. God doesn’t need our religious practices. He wants our heart.
So I think we beat this topic of “Don’t be like the Pharisees” to death because it is a common theme in the Bible. And if it’s a common theme in the bible, we can safely assume that it is a message God knows we need to hear. Often. Over and over. Don’t bother to be religious if your heart is wicked, because the consequences of being religious while having hearts of wickedness are pretty harsh. Look at verse 22: "Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue.”
Thankfully, verse 22 isn’t the end, though. What should the wicked consider? Read verse 23: “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God." Religious practices, if done with a heart of gratitude, DO honor God, and God uses them to help us learn about his salvation. I like that this chapter ends by reassuring us that our “sacrifices,” the religious things we do, are not bad. The end verse reinforces what he said in verse 8, “I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me.” The rebuke is not of the religious practices themselves: it is of the hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another.
But whether religious practices are good or not, if participating in them without having a heart for God is something that we are likely to struggle with often, then we should be grateful for the regular reminder to look at this log in our own eye instead of dismissing it because “we’ve heard it before.” Sometimes a message is redundant on purpose because it’s something we need to be reminded of on a regular basis.