psalm 50: offering sacrifices with a wrong mindset - 33rd week Thursday 2017

Our psalm today psalm 50 depicts a court with God as the judge and the prosecutor.  The defendant are the people.  They, the people, are accused by God for offering sacrifices with a wrong mindset.  The people thought that God needs these sacrifices of bulls and bullocks and lambs and rams.  The people thought that God will go hungry without these sacrifices – God needs to eat the flesh of these animals and drink their blood.  The people thought that they are giving God something, they are giving God what they own, their bulls and their bullocks, their sheep and their lambs, their flocks and crops.  The indictment is, they are insulting God not by their sacrifices but by the mindset that accompanies their sacrifices.

No, God does not need the peoples' sacrifices.  No, the people are not giving God what they have and possess, for God possesses everything, for he made them all.  Thus, the psalm proposes 2 remedies to correct this wrong mindset that accompanies our sacrifices.

First remedy: offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Whatever we have comes from God, they are his gifts to us, merely entrusted to us. It is not ours.  Your gift for music or your gift for sports or your intellect, all your talents, must be given back to God in thanksgiving . Give back to God his gifts to you.  That giving back is what we call a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Second, fulfill your vows to the Lord.  What are vows?  Psalm 66 says that vows are the promises we made when we were in trouble.  Kon madakpan gani ang seminarista damo dayon sila promisa para indi lang mapaguwa.  Psalm 50 says, a fitting sacrifice to God is to fulfill your promises to Him, promises you made when you were in trouble.