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When Beverly and I traveled across Alligator Alley recently in south Florida, we were unable to use our cell phones because we went into a dead zone losing our signal; we felt kind of vulnerable. We were in a state of incommunicado. It’s very irritating, particularly when telecommunication carriers go on about their expansive coverage. Everybody knows dead zones mean a loss of communication. We have no control over dead zones. In the spiritual realm there are dead zones of our own making where communication with God is severed because we “regard iniquity.”
The Psalmist is relating firsthand experience to the congregation by using the personal pronoun “If I.” This isn’t an “oops” moment but an eyes opened wide, willfully entering into a known area of disobedience where there is no coverage or “nothingness.” I know “nothingness” is an odd way to say it, but I’ll explain shortly. And you can only imagine how “irritating” and “hurtful” it is for the Lord when we enter into dead zones or areas of nothingness where there is no signal by Divine providence for He desires for us to be in constant communication with Him (cf. 1 Thess 5:17-18) which demands personal holiness at all times (1 Pet 1:15-16), and personal sin makes for dead zones.
Note that all of this takes place within the “heart.” The heart is the seat or center of our cognition, emotion, and volition. It has been expressed in other ways such as the source of our intellect, feelings, and will or head, heart, and hand or thinker, feeler, and chooser. We often run into issues when we don’t strike a balance in our decision making that involves the intellect, emotions, and will working together in unison in obedience to the Scriptures rather than one dominating the other. Cold, calculating, and detached or “I just speak my mind” often derails good judgment for examples.
To make matters worse, the LORD through the prophet Jeremiah declared that the heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it” (17:9)? I take from that we can’t trust or even understand our own heart, but only God knows exactly what is going through our minds (Jer 17:10).
Following our heart is unwise; we are never instructed to follow our heart in the Bible only God’s Word. A sinful heart will only lead us into the dead zone, broken fellowship, not loss of salvation, into nothingness.
What is this nothingness? It comes from the word “iniquity,” an absence of moral or spiritual values, immorality, or sin, missing the mark of God’s standard of righteousness as determined by the Scriptures. The primary meaning is emptiness or vanity (The Complete Word Study Dictionary, Zodhiates). Anything that is outside the will of God could be characterized as nothingness, emptiness, vanity, trouble, evil, sorrow, or mischief.
By nothingness I do not mean that it is not “something” or harmless. Anything that moves us from God’s will for our lives presents a real threat and danger to our spiritual health. Living life on the horizontal plane is nothingness; it amounts to nothing in eternity, possessing absolute zero eternal significance. It is vanity of vanities. All is vanity outside the will of God and vexation of spirit. This is how Solomon viewed it in Ecclesiastes.
How do we get to nothingness? By regarding iniquity, “If I regard iniquity, the Lord will not hear [me].” The Hebrew word (raah) is translated “cherished” (ESV, NIV), “harbored” (The NET Bible), and “cozy with evil” (The Message). Regarding or embracing iniquity is the opposite of “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil (Prov 3:7). The Psalmist commands, “Depart from evil, and do good…” (Psa 37:27). “The highway of the upright is to depart from evil [not regard it, added]; he who keeps his way preserves his soul” (Prov 16:17). To “regard iniquity” is to travel down the highway of nothingness.
The primary meaning of this verb "regard" [raah] is "to see," literally or figuratively. It appears over 1300 times in the Old Testament. In the majority of occurrences it does not have reference to something evil as in Psalm 66. The mind’s eye is on iniquity in our passage for today. Consider Gen 13:10-11, Lot “saw” [raah]; Jos 7:20-21, Achan “saw” [raah].
To” regard iniquity” can remain virtual from a human standpoint (cf. Mt 5:28) or go physical as in the case of Lot and Achan in the above passages. Regard will always precede the behavior whether virtually or physically. Whether it is evil or not depends on the object of the regarding, whether it runs contrary to the principles of Scripture or contrary to God's will. Entering into the dead zone will cause everything to go haywire.
I don’t want to go too deep into the machinations of the heart for only God knows the precise functions of the source of our thinking, feeling, and choosing. We just need to give them equal footing on every decision we make. When the Holy Spirit entered our heart at regeneration, the heart was and is sinful and not to be trusted (cf. Paul’s struggle in Rom 7), but we were given a capacity to love God with all of our heart, intellectually, emotionally, and willingly in a way that was never possible before until the Holy Spirit was given at regeneration to help us express a non-human love called agape love towards God and man (Rom 5:5).
The consequences of being in the dead zone is – “the Lord will not hear me.” Now keep in mind that God is omniscient or all-knowing. So really He knows every time we pray, but this doesn’t contradict Psalm 66:18. He may say yes, no, or ignore it altogether due to the petitioner being in the dead zone for regarding iniquity. When God hears from Heaven it takes on the idea of granting our prayers. Look at the following verse (19), “But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.”
The Psalmist knows from personal experience that when he is in the dead zone or the area of nothingness; the Lord will not listen or respond to him (cf. “turned away [rejected, NIV] my prayer; see Psa 66:20; Prov 28:9; Isa 59:2). The only thing we take out of nothingness is nothing of eternal value, only the consequences of being in nothingness. There is nothing inconsequential in the dead zone. Forgiveness and restoration can be as quick as a genuine 1 Jn 1:9 experience, but consequences may be lifelong in duration though forgiven and restored to fellowship.
There is a difference between an answer of “no” and unresponsiveness. Telling the difference is if there is unconfessed sin God is being unresponsive to our prayers. If we are not convicted by the Holy Spirit about something, then the answer is probably no or the time is not right for a yes. And I might add that when God is silent doesn’t mean He no longer loves us (it only seems that way from a human point of view, cf. Psalm 66:20). God’s love is eternal, infinite, and immutable. Nor does it mean His sovereign hand is shortened while we are dwelling in or on nothingness that He has abandoned us for the Devil to have his way with us. All that we have come to enjoy by being in the will of God does not exist in the area of nothingness. Worldliness produces nothingness. Only what is done for Christ will outlast this world.
Every time Beverly and I travel to south Florida she worries that an alligator is going to get her! Traveling down Alligator Alley didn’t help her phobia. “Is there alligators in that water there?” She might ask. “Oh, yeah,” is my answer!”Well, I’m not getting out of the car,” she replies. In addition we heard on the news of a ninety year old woman that had been dragged off by an alligator in her yard, and her neighbor saved her life by beating it off her with a stick, but not before she lost a leg in the process; this didn’t help Beverly’s fear of gators to subside. I gave her my Sovereignty lecture, but she still remains on high alert around fresh water whenever we are in Florida! When we get back to Tennessee the nemesis will be a rogue bear. The dead zone gets more volunteers than gators or bears get victims!
Are you in to somethingness or nothingness, eternal or temporal? We all know when we are right with God and when we are not. In the dead zone everything that happens amounts to zero in eternity (and that contributes to a substantial loss of blessings that could have been gained by obedience). Only what is done for Christ will last forever. In the will of God is where the feel of everlasting is; in the dead zone or nothingness is where the vexation of spirit lives. The Psalmist had been there that is why he could say with great jubilation in verse 20,
“Blessed be God, Who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me!” That only happens out of the dead zone…. <><
