WHAT THE PSALMIST DISCOVERED ABOUT PRAYER
Psa. 66:18-20
Morning Meditation 11/17/2012
"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me: But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me."
Dr. John Phillips says, “This Psalm is anonymous.” He adds, “Yet there are good reasons for thinking that it was written by godly king Hezekiah after the final overthrow of Sennacherib before the gates of Jerusalem.”
The person who prays needs to read the Psalms regularly. You will find yourself on a regular basis in the psalms. You will find yourself a sinner just like the Psalmist, you will find yourself seeking God’s help, you will find that you are not alone, and you will find that God was a God of grace in the Old Testament as well as in the New.
I suggest you read five Psalms a day. In order not to forget where I’m supposed to be, I read psalm 1 the 1st day of the month. Then the 31st, then 61st , then 91st, and then 121st. This way the day of the month tells me where I’m supposed to begin. When you get to be 81 yrs. of age, you need all the help you can get!
Now let’s briefly look at what the Psalmist discovered in our text:
HE DISCOVERED THAT GUILT HINDERS PRAYER
Psalms 66:18, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:" The personal pronoun “me” at the end of the sentence is in italics. The translators of the King James Version help us with the italics in that they are telling us that this word is not in the original text. It is a help. It helps make it personal and the psalm should be understood that way. Put yourself in the human author’s place as he writes.
The Psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart . . .” This is a great truth to know. If you are carrying the weight of conscious defiling sin in you heart, you are wasting your time praying. God will not answer your prayer when you are unwilling to search your own heart and confess your own sins. The word “regard” means “to give importance to, or, to give favorable importance to.” We must first deal with our own sins which God is willing and waiting to forgive. The words “The Lord will not hear me” mean that the Lord is speaking of the time just before we enter the holiest for ourselves and others.(Heb. 10:22). So the Psalmist discovers that he must be right before we can expect God to hear our prayers.
Sin is what God calls sin. He is the only one who can tell us what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes we commit a sin that God has identified as sin. But man comes along and calls it a mistake. So we do not think it is a sin, therefore, we do not confess it as a sin. We are regarding iniquity in our hearts when we do this. We are wasting our time in prayer. You say, “Preacher, I don’t believe that!” That is why we are not getting our prayers answered. You say, “But most of what I pray for gets answered.” Have you ever considered that others may be praying about the same thing and for the same person.
ANOTHER THING THE PSALMIST REALIZED IS THAT GOD HEARS PRAYER
Psalms 66:19, "But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer."
The words “But verily God hath heard me . . .” The conjunction” But” is a change in the road. This conjunction indicates a change. He is discovering that God is a prayer answering God and that He looks upon us with compassion when we call upon Him. However, God has some standards that He does not violate. God does not change. Sin is one of the things that He has no compromise with. Many times we get the assurance before we are able to say with absolute conviction, “God has heard me. This prayer has been answered.” The psalmist does not enter into the sin that He had hidden in His heart. The Psalmist is able to thank God for the answer to prayer, and he has assurance that God is able and has heard and answered favorably.”
FINALLY THE PSALMIST DISCOVERS GRACE HELPS PRAYER
Psalms 66:20, "Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. The Words “Blessed be God . . ..” “These are these words” of praise to God for not turning him away even though He would have been just in doing so. We are saved by grace. We learned at the point of salvation that we do not have to be perfect to have God show unmerited favor to us. He will love us and take us as His children even though He is the only one wholly meritorious in the transaction. Jesus was never charged with a non meritorious action. The reason is because there was never a non meritorious action in Him. When Jesus goes to God with a meritorious request and is willing to take the one’s sins upon Himself, and pay the penalty on the cross, God immediately forgives the sinner when Christ steps in between and pays the penalty for the sins.
The reason I put it this way is because grace is God saving me at His expense. Now let me back up and define grace again. Grace is the unmerited favor of God. That means I do not merit salvation. I do not have to live up to a standard of righteousness to get it. God saves me for Jesus sake.
Now lets look at it a little differently. I am saved by the merits of Christ. It is non meritorious so far as I am concerned. But the merit goes to Him. Jesus came and did all that God required man to do. He lived a perfectly righteous life in the constant sight of His Father. Not only did He live a perfect life, He was God incarnated in His birth. This is what is stated John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Now some of the modern translations do not translate “the only begotten Son.” I do not know what they intended to do. But I do know that they left these words out of the translation. These words ARE IN the received text. They are in the text from which our King James Bible was translated. If we believe in verbal inspiration, which means that the Holy Spirit superintended the very words that He wanted in the text, then why do these translators think they have the option of translating with the use of different words? Do you see the seriousness of the liberties that they took ???
James says it is one thing for a preacher or Bible teacher to get before people and in the process of explaining the meaning and the use of a word and make a mistake. These men do not claim to be infallible. But I do claim the Bible from which I preach (King James Bible) is an accurate and infallible translation of the Textus Receptus. I do not know how many new translations are on the market but I do suspect that money is the motive of most if not all the new translations. Now don’t think for a moment I am judging you. I’m not in the judging business. I am only trying to help. First, how many years has the King James Bible been on the market with the very few challenges? God has blessed the use of the KJV more than any single translation since the days of the early church. Now, I’m not saying the KJV goes back to the early church. It actually goes back to A. D. 1611. But there has been no period of church history where a translation has been used without challenge as has the KJV. There has been more revivals, and more missionaries sent out with a KJV under their arm, than any other version. This statement has to be impressive to a man who can think for himself.
One of the sayings that is constantly used to defend the need for a modern translation is, “We believe that we need a Bible that can be understood by the ordinary man.” Now if the ordinary man has a Bible that is the translation of a perverted text then what he understands is not the infallible truth. If we use a perverted text the reason is that a translation can be no more accurate than the text from which it is translated. I just took the NIV off my shelf of inaccurate translations. This is the translation of John 3:16 in that translation. It says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This denies the truth of the “only begotten Son.” The words “only begotten” translates “monogenes” and mean, “single of its kind, only,” and is, “used of only sons or daughters (viewed in relation to their parents), used of Christ, denotes the only begotten son of God.” One can move these words around and take us for a bunch of dummies. The first thing you know is that you don’t know anything. And you begin to wonder if we have the word of God today. When Satan does this to you, you begin to wonder if you can trust this verse. Is this verse really saying what it appears to say? At that point you have proven one thing very clear. You cannot trust another translation because you have just gotten confused when you have called to mind the meaning of this verse. That verse that is supposed to clarify the Bible hasn’t done what it’s advocates say it will. My advise is to find your King James Bible and go with it. If you can’t understand it with the Holy Spirit’s illumination, then call a Scripturally informed neighbor, or, Call your pastor, and if he is not available send me an e-mail with the question and all the information available. I will do my best to help you understand.
The iniquity that the Psalmist had in his heart were gone before Psalms 66:20, "Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. He presents this petition, and enters the throne room. In my opinion, this is the great thing about the Psalmist. God forgave him and he went away with assurance. God does not want us to sin. But He knows we will and when we do, if we will confess it to Him He will forgive.
So the Psalmist rediscovers his original discovery that no man can so sin as to step beyond the reach of grace. Don’t underestimate the power of grace to come to where we are, forgive us and restore us to fellowship with Himself.
THE PSALMIST DISCOVERS THAT SINS FORGIVEN ARE A REASON FOR PRAISE
Psalms 66:20 says, "Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me." There are three things that stand out in this passage:
1. The words “blessed be God” means to kneel before the Lord in worship. It is a victory song.
2. The words “which hath not tuned away my prayer.” This might suggest that we need to praise God for His great mercy and grace when He does not drop us when we do something that suggests that we are out of our mind.
3. The words “nor His mercy from me.” This means that the psalmist is acknowledging God’s mercy as a sustaining factor in His life right now. Mercy is an action exercised toward a guilty person you have every legal right to enforce the full penalty of the law.
What a great Psalm. It is grace that will see him through the present dilemma. May the Lord bless these words to our hearts. We have the same problems and we have the same God who forgives as this particular Psalmist did.
In Christ
Bro. White
