Proclamation, Prayer, Penitence, And Praise Series

Open your Bibles or the Pew Bible to Psalm 66. As we have over the last couple of weeks, I’d love for you to be able to look at that while we are walking through these last several verses.

Throughout this Psalm we have seen an example of worship and witness acting as a sort of call and response. This happens on a corporate or congregational level, but as we’ll see today, it actually has very personal implications. We saw last week how the Psalm is structured in a chiasm, pointing us to the central and longest stanza as the main focus - where we get to praise God together for all that he has done and praise him personally as we live out a life of faith with integrity.

But there is another way that we could outline or analyze this Psalm - that is by looking at the corporate or congregational elements and the personal elements. Verses 1-12 seem to be one person (likely King Hezekiah) inviting the entire congregation to join in praise. Verses 13-20 becomes the personal testimony of the psalmist. As we saw last week, he promised to fulfill the vows that he made to the the Lord as an act of worship. In verses 16-20, we are invited to witness the personal work that God has done in his life and then worship God with him.

As we’ve done the last couple of weeks, let’s read these final words together out loud.

Psalm 66:16–20 ESV

Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.

I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue.

If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!

We can learn from the psalmist here that…

When we pray with penitent hearts, we can proclaim of God’s faithful love and praise Him.

The Psalmist invites us to share in His very personal experience with God. But as we’ve discussed over the last few weeks, this passage likely comes from the incident where King Hezekiah and Judah were threatened by King Sennacherib and the Assyrian army. King Hezekiah had seen what the Assyrians had done to the people of Israel just a few years earlier. Incidentally, last week I mentioned that the fall of Israel was in 712BC. I was incorrect in that date, it should have been 722BC.

Hezekiah’s invitation to “come and hear” what God has done for him, really begins with a penitent heart.

Following his example we should…

Pray with penitence (17-19)

Hezekiah knew that his army was weaker and smaller. He knew that the Assyrians were powerful. Hezekiah had done what he could to lead the nation back to a right relationship with God - removing the false places of worship and smashing idols. Essentially, he had removed the sin from their camp. And so, in humility, he prayed to YHWH.

Isaiah 37:16–20 LSB

“O Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. “Incline Your ear, O Yahweh, and hear; open Your eyes, O Yahweh, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to reproach the living God. “Truly, O Yahweh, the kings of Assyria have laid waste to all the countries and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. “But now, O Yahweh our God, save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are Yahweh, You alone.”

Hezekiah acknowledged Yahweh as the one true God. He acknowledged the strength of the Assyrians over the false/non-deities of other nations. So in his prayer, he sought the help of the one true God, so that God’s name might be known among the nations.

Idolatry seemed to be something that Israel and Judah kept coming back to. What started at Mt. Sinai in Ex. 32, returned in the time of the judges. It was rooted out for a time, but then a few generations after King David, idolatry returned both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms - it was like the sin that simply would not move away.

The writer of Hebrews calls these types of sins “besetting” or “entangling” sins - Heb. 12:1.

Hebrews 12:1 ESV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,