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,
Have you ever noticed that there are those sins that we seem to come back to? There are those things that we adjust our lives to. We accommodate for them.
In his book “The Grace of Gratitude” Paul Mallard share the story of a man who went to visit a farm. He writes…
The farmer ploughed his field with a perfectly straight furrow, until he came to the centre of the field where there was an old stump. At this point he simply worked around the stump. The visitor remarked on this afterwards, to which the farmer replied, ‘There used to be a tree there in my grandfather’s time. It was struck by lightning. The stump has been there ever since. It was there in my father’s time; I guess it will be there in my son’s time.’
‘I see,’ replied his friend. ‘But have you never thought of pulling the stump up?’ It had never occurred to the farmer!
Mallard comments on this:
“Sometimes we just get used to our cherished sins: ‘It’s always been there; it’s just the way I am; I tried to deal with it once, but failed – what am I supposed to do?’ Then we wonder why our fellowship with God is stilted and our spiritual growth is stunted. The love of sin leads to indifference and coldness towards God.”
The Psalmist states in his testimony that
Psalm 66:18–19 ESV
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.
It’s as though whatever besetting sins might have entangled him in the past, he did not cherish them - he basically repented of them.
Are there sins in our own lives that are hindering our fellowship with God? Are their habits, addictions, tendencies that seem to be the focus of our minds and hold affection in our hearts more than God?
Oh that we would be all in for the Lord. Oh that we would grind up the stumps of sin that distorts the integrity of our lives. This grinding happens with true repentance, a true turning away.
There are times when we will need help with that - when we will need assistance from a brother or sister in Christ. As we learned in our study of James,
James 5:16 ESV
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
When we cherish our sin more than God it’s as though we are praying to him stating, “God, I’m in a fix. I need your help to get out, but when I’m out, I’m going to keep dabbling in the things that delight me now. I’ll worship you most Sundays, I’ll read my Bible most days, but I’ll keep doing the things that I like to do, even if they don’t please you. I’ll be mostly yours, please help me.”
CS Lewis wrote in his book The Weight of Glory,
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Oh beloved, may we come and pray with penitent hearts - seeking to be the men and women that Jesus saved us to be. When we delight in Him more than in our sin, we get to respond with integrity, giving us grounds to be able to genuinely proclaim with praise.
Proclaim with praise (16, 20)
In verse 16, the Psalmist writes: Psalm 66:16 “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.”
He wants to communicate to fellow believers. He invites people who revere God to join in his personal praise. He wants to bring us into his testimony as he praises and thanks God for His steadfast love!
In God’s steadfast love, he hears our penitent prayers. In God’s steadfast love, he responds in ways that bring him glory. In his steadfast love, he makes a way for us to be made right.
1 John 4:9–10 ESV
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God does not wait for us to get our lives in order before he saves us, he saves us because we can’t get our lives in order. When we repent of our sins and come to him, we innately acknowledge that we delight in him more than in our fallen sinful condition.
Friend, if you’ve not yet come to faith in Christ, then respond to His call. Understand the depth of God’s love for you and me. Jesus offers you life in His name. Admit you’re a sinner, believing in the saving work of Jesus on the cross for your sin and then commit to live for him.
Beloved, we get to testify to God’s goodness. We get to share with others about His work in our lives. That is our testimony. It’s not about how great we are but truly about how great and gracious God is!
John Stott has said:
Testimony is not a synonym for autobiography! When we are truly witnessing, we are not talking about ourselves but about Christ.
John Robert Walmsley Stott (English Preacher)
May be delight in him more than in our sin and proclaim our praise/thanks to Him so that believers might rejoice with us and skeptics might know that He alone is God!
Let’s pray.
Benediction:
Psalm 66:20 ESV
Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!
Questions for reflection and discussion:
What are the primary themes present in Psalm 66?
How did King Hezekiah's actions demonstrate humility before God in the context of his threats?
What does the passage teach us about the relationship between our prayers and our heart condition?
What specific steps can we take to confront and deal with our own 'besetting' sins as suggested?
In what ways can we invite others to share in our personal testimonies of God's work in our lives?
With whom do we need to share our testimony?
Have you responded to God’s steadfast love through Jesus Christ?
Sources:
Augustine of Hippo. “Expositions on the Book of Psalms.” In Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms, edited by Philip Schaff, translated by A. Cleveland Coxe. Vol. 8. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888.
Easton, M. G. Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893.
Lewis, CS. The Weight of Glory. New York: Harper Collins, 1980.
Mallard, Paul. The Grace of Gratitude. Great Britain: 10 of Those, 2021.
Platt, David, Matt Mason, and Jim Shaddix. Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100. Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2020.
Ross, Allen P. “Psalms.” In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, edited by J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck. Wheaton, IL: Victor
Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Worshipful. 1st ed. “Be” Commentary Series. Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications Ministries, 2004. Books, 1985.
Wilcock, Michael. The Message of Psalms 1-72. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001.
