Of the True Service of God
A psalm of Asaph, one of the directors of the Temple-chorus at the time of David, distinguished for musical and poetical ability, 1 Chron. 26. The hymn shows how the grandeur and solemnity of the divine judgment should instruct men in the true worship and encourage them in true piety.
V. 1. The mighty God, even the Lord (in the Hebrew: El Elohim Yahweh), the God of gods, Yahweh, the supreme God of earth and heaven, hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, as far as the earth extends, all its inhabitants are included in this mighty summons.
V. 2. Out of Zion, where His Tabernacle and later His Temple stood, where He lived in the midst of His people, the perfection of beauty, the Church and congregation of God being the most beautiful object on earth, Ps. 48, 2. 3, God hath shined, sending out the brilliance of His majesty, more awe-inspiring than the rays of the sun. The psalmist is speaking of the majesty and glory of God's Word, especially the word of the Gospel, whose power and beauty goes forth to enlighten the earth.
V. 3. Our God shall come, in this revelation of His divine essence, and shall not keep silence, bound to make known His glory before men everywhere; a fire shall devour before Him, especially in the words of the Law, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him, fire and tempest being the heralds of God as the Judge of mankind. The fire threatens to devour the sinners, and the tempest of His wrath will scatter them like chaff before the wind.
V. 4. He shall call to the heavens from above, the heavenly hosts being summoned as His servants, and to the earth, as witness, that He may judge His people. Cp. Deut. 4, 26; 30, 19; Is. 1, 2.
V. 5. Gather My saints together unto Me, those who, by virtue of the righteousness imputed to them, are holy in His sight; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice, the reference being to the division of the sacrificial animal, the two parties making the covenant passing between the divided portions, Gen. 15, 10, 18.
V. 6. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness, the hosts of the heavens witnessing to the justice of all His sentences; for God is Judge Himself. Selah. Everything is now ready for the great scene of judgment: the court is about to open.
V. 7. Hear, O My people, for He addresses those whom He wanted as His own, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee, namely, for their failure to give Him the proper worship. I am God, even thy God, He bore the rightful title to act as judge over Israel,
V. 8, I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices, He had no complaint to make that they had not been offered, or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before Me, rather, “and thy burnt offerings are over against Me always,” they had omitted none of the sacrifices enjoined by the Law.
V, 9. I will take no bullock out of thy house nor he-goats out of thy folds, God felt no interest in the sacrifices as brought by Israel; all outward ceremony of divine worship is futile without the true faith of the heart.
V. 10. For every beast of the forest is Mine, all creatures being His, men could not offer Him anything which He did not already possess, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
V. 11. I know all the fowls of the mountains, all the birds that prefer to nest there; and the wild beasts of the field are Mine, all the animals that played in the valleys and lowlands.