God Does Not Eat Goats: Text: Psalm 50:7-15
Introduction: The Sin of Externalism
There is a kind of religious man who believes God can be managed. He treats the Almighty as a cosmic bureaucrat, or perhaps a pagan deity with certain appetites. If you fill out the forms correctly, if you provide the required goat or bull, then God is obligated to stamp your paperwork and provide the requested blessing. This is religion as a transaction. It is an attempt to put God in our debt. It is tidy, predictable, and utterly dead. And it is the kind of religion that God Almighty despises.
Our text today is a divine courtroom scene. God, who has summoned the heavens and the earth as witnesses, now turns to address His own people. And the charge He levels is not, as they might expect, a failure to keep up with their religious duties. No, the charge is far more subtle and far more damning. They were going through all the right motions, but their hearts were a thousand miles away. They were treating the Lord of the universe as though He were a local idol who needed to be fed. They had forgotten the Creator/creature distinction. They had forgotten who He is, and consequently, they had forgotten what true worship is.
This is a perennial temptation for the people of God. We love our liturgies, our routines, our traditions. And these things are good. Order in worship is biblical and necessary. But the moment we begin to trust in the performance of the ritual rather than the Person to whom the ritual points, we have slid into the grossest form of idolatry. We have begun to worship our worship. God's rebuke to Israel in this psalm is therefore a severe mercy for us. It is a bucket of ice water thrown on the face of all sleepy, self-satisfied, formalistic religion. It calls us to examine not just what we do in worship, but why we do it, and what it reveals about the God we think we are worshiping.
The Text
"Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me. I shall take no young bull out of your house Nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, as well as its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving And pay your vows to the Most High; Call upon Me in the day of distress; I shall rescue you, and you will glorify Me."
(Psalm 50:7-15 LSB)
The Covenant Lawsuit (v. 7-8)
The scene opens with God calling His own people to the witness stand.
"Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me." (Psalm 50:7-8 LSB)
Notice the intimate, covenantal language: "My people," "O Israel." This is not a message to the pagan nations; this is an internal affair. This is a rebuke from a father to his children. And the basis of His authority is stated plainly: "I am God, your God." This echoes the preamble to the Ten Commandments. He is not just a generic deity; He is the God who has bound Himself to them in a covenant relationship. Because He is their God, He has the right to define the terms of that relationship.
And then comes the surprising turn. The problem is not what they are failing to do. The sacrifices are being offered. The burnt offerings are "continually before Me." From a purely external point of view, they were model worshippers. The temple courts were busy, the smoke was rising, the priests were occupied. If you had a checklist for religious observance, they were ticking all the boxes. And this is precisely the danger. Their diligence in the externals was masking a profound internal rot. God is saying, "Your performance is not the issue. Your assumptions are the issue. Your heart is the issue."
The Owner of the Cattle (v. 9-13)
God now demolishes the faulty theology that undergirded their empty ritualism.
"I shall take no young bull out of your house Nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills... If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, as well as its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats?" (Psalm 50:9-13 LSB)
This is a thunderous declaration of God's absolute sovereignty and self-sufficiency. The Israelites were acting as if they were bringing God something He needed, as if their bull was a genuine contribution to the divine economy. God's response is to remind them that He owns the whole ranch. "That bull you are so proud of? It was Mine before you ever put a fence around it. The cattle on a thousand hills are Mine." You cannot give God anything that He does not already own by right of creation.
To press the point home, God employs a bit of divine sarcasm. "If I were hungry I would not tell you." The very idea is absurd. The pagan gods of the nations were needy. They had appetites. They had to be placated and fed by their worshippers. But the God of Israel, the Creator of heaven and earth, is not a cosmic welfare case. The question, "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats?" is designed to expose the pagan absurdity of their thinking. They had shrunk God down to their own size. They were treating the transcendent Lord as if He were Baal or Marduk.
This is the fundamental error of all transactional religion. It assumes God is lacking something which we, in our generosity, can supply. But God lacks nothing. He is eternally complete and satisfied within the fellowship of the Trinity. He does not need our worship. The astounding thing is that He desires it.
The True Sacrifice (v. 14)
Having torn down their false worship, God now builds up the true.
"Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving And pay your vows to the Most High;" (Psalm 50:14 LSB)
What is the sacrifice God truly desires? It is not the body of an animal, but the posture of a heart. "A sacrifice of thanksgiving." The Hebrew word is todah. This is not about giving God something He needs, but about gratefully acknowledging all that He has given us. It is a joyful confession of our total dependence upon Him. Thanksgiving is the opposite of transactional religion. A transaction says, "Here is my goat, now you owe me." Thanksgiving says, "You have given me everything, and here is my grateful heart in response."
This is coupled with the command to "pay your vows to the Most High." This is a call to covenant faithfulness. A vow is a promise made, a commitment to walk in obedience. True worship is not something confined to the temple courts for an hour on Sunday. It is a life of integrity, a life that keeps its promises to God, a life lived in conscious submission to His Lordship. God is not interested in the lip service of men who sing His praises on the Sabbath and then cheat their neighbors on Monday. He wants the sacrifice of thanksgiving backed up by the faithfulness of obedience.
The Rhythm of Grace (v. 15)
Finally, God lays out the beautiful, simple rhythm of a true relationship with Him.
"Call upon Me in the day of distress; I shall rescue you, and you will glorify Me." (Psalm 50:15 LSB)
Look at this divine pattern. It is the very heart of the gospel. It is not, "Bring me a bull and I will help you." It is, "When you are in trouble, when you are at the end of your rope, when you have nothing to offer, call upon Me." Our part is to bring our need, our desperation, our emptiness. That is the only prerequisite.
And what is God's part? "I shall rescue you." He doesn't say "I might" or "I'll think about it." It is a divine promise. He delights to save. He is a God who runs toward the distressed. He gets glory by being a rescuer.
And what is the result of this rescue? "And you will glorify Me." How do we glorify Him? By telling the truth about Him. We glorify Him by saying, "I was in the pit, and I called upon the Lord, and He drew me out. He is a great and mighty Savior!" Our glorifying of God is simply the overflow of a heart that has been rescued. It is the todah sacrifice, the offering of thanksgiving. God sets up the entire relationship so that He does all the heavy lifting, we get all the benefits, and He gets all the glory. This is not a transaction; it is grace from beginning to end.
Conclusion: The Eucharistic Life
This psalm is a radical call to reorient our entire understanding of worship. God is not impressed with the sheer volume of our religious activity. He is not interested in being bribed with our bulls and goats, or with our full offering plates and busy church calendars. He is after our hearts.
The Old Testament sacrifices were never intended to be a transactional system. They were bloody pointers, arrows all aimed at the one, final, perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the bull, the goat, the lamb who was slain. Because of His finished work, we no longer approach God with the blood of animals. But the principle of Psalm 50 remains entirely in force.
We are still tempted to approach God on the basis of our performance. We are tempted to think that our quiet times, our church attendance, or our moral efforts somehow put God in our debt. But God's response is the same: "The world is Mine." You have nothing to offer Me that I have not first given you.
So what do we bring? We bring the sacrifice that Christ has made possible: "the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name" (Heb. 13:15). We offer up a life of thanksgiving. We live a eucharistic life, from the Greek word eucharisteo, to give thanks. We come to this table every week not to feed a hungry God, but to be fed by a gracious God. We come empty-handed, in our "day of distress," confessing our sin. We call upon Him for rescue. He meets us here, He rescues us through the body and blood of His Son, and we respond by glorifying Him. This is the rhythm of grace. This is true worship.