But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare My statutes?
The mere formalist and the spiritualist in religion
I. The mere formalists in religion.
1. They are religiously active--often very busy in preaching and praying. The less heart in religion, generally the more hand; the less vitality, the more voice.
2. They are morally wicked.
(1) No desire for knowledge.
(2) No reverence for God’s Word.
(3) No practical regard for the rights of society. Religious formality crucified the Son of God Himself. Religious form without the genuine spirit is law without justice--a tyranny; language without truth--a deception; an atmosphere without oxygen--a poison.
3. They are God-degrading. The God of the formalist is fashioned after his own character.
4. They are Divinely threatened.
(1) With a terrible conviction of their own guilt (Psalms 50:21). What calamity can be greater, than for a sinner to have all his sins, in all their awful enormity, brought before the eye of his conscience; brought into contact with all the tenderest and profoundest sensibilities of his moral being?
(2) With an irremediable destruction (Psalms 50:22). The language here is derived from a ravenous beast, tearing its victim limb from limb. “None to deliver.” “I called, and ye refused,” etc.
II. The true spiritualist in religion (Psalms 50:23, etc.).
1. He worships God acceptably. The sentiments of gratitude, reverence, adoration, that rise out of his regenerated heart are the praise that is well-pleasing to God.
2. He lives an upright life. He walks in all the commandments of the Lord, blameless.
3. He secures the true salvation--from all ignorance, error, selfishness, sin, and sorrow. (Homilist.)
The inconsistency, absurdity, and sin of professing religion without a corresponding conduct
By their talking of the statutes of Jehovah, and having His covenant in their mouths, the psalmist must have intended to denote their religious profession and hopes as Jews. They are men of an unteachable disposition and an untractable temper, rendered, by their vices, averse to religious and moral instruction. So far from attending to the Mosaic revelation, and consulting it as containing the proper rules for the regulation of their conduct, they, in fact, entirely neglected it; they treated it as persons do any worthless thing, which they throw from them with disdain.
I. The expectations and hopes of those, whose characters have been described, and who are here represented as wicked, must be vain and delusive. For the rewards annexed to any law are, certainly, intended to enforce its precepts, and to induce men, from the additional motive of interest, to practise their duty. To consider them in a different light is absurdly supposing the law to be constructed in such a manner as to counteract itself, and to destroy its own authority and influence. If it argued the highest presumption and folly to hope for the benefits and blessings of the Mosaic covenant, although the condition of “observing all the commandment of the law to do them” were not complied with, then, to retain these hopes, even while the prohibitions and threatenings of the law stood in full force against them, was certainly, of all others, the most unaccountable instance of infatuation.
II. How far the address in the text may, with equal propriety and justice, be applicable to any, who live in the present times, who acknowledge the truth of the Christian religion, and who profess to be the followers of Christ. If we entertain hopes of enjoying the blessings which the Gospel proposes to mankind, while, at the same time, our characters correspond with those described in the text, our profession, when compared with theirs, will be found equally insincere, inconsistent, and contradictory: our hopes, too, will prove to be equally presumptuous and vain. We, indeed, shall be more inexcusably foolish and absurd; because a subsequent revelation, wherever it agrees with the former, should certainly be considered as an additional confirmation of it. Every renewal of its prohibitions reminds us, in a stronger manner, of the offensive nature and dangerous consequences of the particular vices already forbidden. But, alas I how many are there who profess to receive the Gospel that are very impatient of religious and moral discipline I How many are there who sanguinely hope for the salvation which the Gospel offers, and yet knowingly live in direct opposition to its most sacred and important commands, with which alone this salvation stands connected! (A. R. Beard.)