Psalms 19:14:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14 is one that I have heard often and seen as part of songs. Like many of the Psalms it is very simple at first glance. When I read it I hear "God please let my words and thoughts not be bad" and perhaps it can be that simple. But, I want to stop for a minute and really examine the significance of what it says, and let the weight of it sit on my heart for a moment. When we do that I think we will have a greater appreciation for this simple little verse, and have a desire to commit it to memory.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight
The bible makes a direct connection between our words and our heart. Matthew 12:34, 15:18&19, Mark 7:21, Luke 6:45 all record Jesus teaching about the connection of our words and our heart. From these verses it is easy to see that what we allow our heart to dwell on will eventually become words that we speak. Jesus says in Matthew 12:36 that we will be judged by every careless word. I find it very frightening that we are held accountable for the careless words. This means that Jesus believed, and therefore so should we, that it is the things we say in the heat of the moment that truly reveal what is in our heart. The carefully planned words of a public prayer do not truly reveal my heart, but rather the words I use in the moment of anger or hurt.
Now for a moment imagine that you have prepared for Jesus a great offering or gift that you are going to present to Him. The psalm here says that the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart are the offering. They are laid out before Jesus where He can clearly see them. Are they an acceptable gift to Jesus?
I remember getting my first BB Gun as a kid. It was the coolest Christmas gift ever. It unleashed a level of boy in me that I had never experienced before. I remember the first time I killed a bird in the yard with it. I proudly brought the spoils of my hunt in to show my parents. I will never forget the almost horrified look on their face, and the faces of the guests they had over for Sunday lunch. It was not an acceptable offering.
Now imagine the face of God the Father and God the Son as you proudly bring into their presence your words and thoughts to place before them. Are they pleased? Horrified? Do they smile or turn their nose up in disgust?
This is half of the question that we should ask ourselves when we read Psalm 19:14. The other half of the question is: How do we get to the place where the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart are acceptable in God's sight? The answer is simply that we cannot, and it leads us to the the second part of this Psalm.
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
The word for rock is strength in the King James, and can also be translated as refuge. We need to get the mental picture of the Lord as our rock, our strength, our refuge, our safe shelter, our sturdy foundation and our solid ground. If we have any of those things, we have found them only in what God has revealed to us about Himself.
But, we can only have God as a solid foundation if He is first our redeemer. We must recognize that the only hope the we have of our words and thoughts being acceptable in the sight of God is through the justifying work of Jesus's death and resurrection and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. David acknowledges God as his foundation and as the one who will redeem him from his sin. This is no small thing, as it came many generations before Jesus would come to take away the sins of the world.
We must rely on the cross and not our own will to make our words and thoughts acceptable to God. It is not an issue of the planned words and thoughts being acceptable, but rather the sneaky lustful thoughts or hateful words that pop in and slip out before we even know what happened. They reveal a wicked heart that must first be changed. Jesus is my only hope, so on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand!
