In psalm 50 we see a rebuke and a warning from God to the people who are called by His name. God never changes and His rebukes and warnings stand so that all of Christendom can read them and apply it to themselves. False professors of the Gospel take note. There is a warning in the psalm that is truly terrifying “Now consider this you who forget God lest I tear you to pieces and there be none to deliver.” (PSALM 50:22) Who are these people that God speaks to in such terms that when heard the very universe shakes? But to the wicked God says “what right have you to declare My statutes or take My covenant in your mouth seeing that you hate instruction and cast My words behind you.” These people are people who are going through the motions of serving God, they go to church every Sunday, they partake in programs and tithe and so on yet His Word is “cast behind them.”

They hate instructions and the Word of God is not before them, it is behind them. It is not a lamp unto their feet nor a light unto their path, they walk their own paths. Rather, since the Word is behind them it creates a shadow before them. There is a form of a man in the shadow but it has no substance. When thou saw a thief, then thou consented with him, and have been partaker with adulterers.(Psa 50:18) Those who have left the Word behind them yet continue to to proclaim the name of Jesus, they are robbers and thieves. By their actions they diminish the glory of God to a dying world. They seek the favor of that world as a man seeks the favor of a prostitute. They seek many lovers from the world because God is not the lover of their souls. Because of the this darkness they are given over to evil thoughts and their tongues speak deceiving words out of the abundance of their evil hearts.

They slander and accuse and misrepresent those who are called their brothers, They sit in the seat of the scornful and falsely accuse the saints. Down through the ages, saints from every generation have been accused and slandered by the religious authorities who declare His statues and take His name in their mouths. They accused them of pride and arrogance because they stood upon the truth of which they love so much that they loved not their own lives unto death. And death was the lot for many of them at the hands of wicked men. These wicked men hated the saints because their light, the word and the truth, went before them and contrasted with the wicked and with their shadow and darkness because they had put the truth behind them.

Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice(Psa 50:5) God has gathered for Himself His saints who know Him by sacrifice, the sacrifice of His most Holy Son Jesus. His wrath is not for them. Just like the saints in Ezekiel chapter nine whose heads are marked by the ink-horn of the angel, the destroying angels passes over them. They are marked by the ink-horn because they cry out to God day and night for the state of Jerusalem. God has given them a love of the truth and they see it trampled in the streets and in the public square. What can the righteous do if the foundations are destroyed? They cry out to God and mourn for the state of what calls itself after God. As the darkness comes in like a flood in our day, so to rises the hatred in the hearts of religious men who despise the saints. God raises up a standard in the saint that directly opposes and contradicts those who seek to please and compromise with the world.

The religious are ashamed and angered by the saint who follows hard after the Lord and His word that is ever before them. They find much more common ground with the world than they do with the saint and this is a reflection of their darkness. They are ashamed of words like “sin,” because they know the world mocks such words. They are ashamed of any stand for righteousness for what they dread most is to be rejected by a mocking world of which they are a part. In truth, they have the world before them and not God therefore the world is what directs their paths and not the Word. Something has to give and in order to hold onto their place in the world then the Word itself is rejected in favor of a watered down version of what they claim to believe as to make it more palatable to their lovers.

Saints, God is not mocked. What a man sows he shall reap. The men who reject God in favor of the world shall reap the world and the judgement to come. They will cry out “but Lord we declared your statutes and we voiced your covenants and we performed religious ceremonies in your name.” And the Lord will say “depart from me you workers of iniquity for I never knew you.” And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth and eternal darkness for those who sullied the name of the Lord in the eyes of the world. They feared the world more than they feared God and now they must face a fearful God. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. God Almighty, today we lift up your name by the blood and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let the eyes of the blind be opened and the scales fall from them before it is too late. Let the true state of Christendom be opened to all who would have eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.