Joel M Bradshaw

16Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
17I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
18If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.–Psalm 66

We don’t know who recorded this psalm. But these verses have an ‘old man at a campfire’ feeling to them. He’s calling the ‘youngins to ‘gather round’. It plays out like a testimony. Here’s what God did for me. Come and listen! Hurry up now. And bring me some coffee.

The ‘old man’ psalmist gives us a picture of his outside and his inside regarding his approach to God. He then closes with a reminder about God.

1. OUTSIDE. He cried out to God using his voice. It wasn’t just a private, inside-his-thoughts kind of prayer. It was vocal and spoken. Others might have heard this prayer. It was both cries and praise. I like that. He was genuine with what he was going through with the perspective of gratitude and praise.
2. INSIDE. Verse 18 presents a shocking, sobering reality. It presents God actually executing the 1st of the 10 Commandments. No other gods before Yahweh. If you have any other person or thing as champion of your heart, then why would God put up with that? And the psalmist brings not just some other person that was worshiped, but a sin. The sins we hold onto and cherish become like idols we worship. And God wasn’t going to listen to his prayers if he was worshiping someone or something else.

And God listened to his prayer and cared for him. Evidently, the ‘old man’ wasn’t cherishing sin in his heart. Again, this is at the heart level. Nobody else can tell what’s going on in your heart, but God can. Never forget that. You can fool me all day, but not God.

The only thing the Bible allows us to consistently hate is our own sins. And it’s pretty hard to hate them if you are cherishing them. And if you are cherishing a sin, you are making it like an idol. And if you are coming before God while also worshiping an idol, why would God listen to your prayers? This psalm presents a sobering boundary for our hearts. Acknowledge those sins and repent.–JMB