Does God hear the sinner's prayer?

Because iniquity doth abound;

The man stood silently before the crowd of angry eyes. They withstood him because of the miracle that Jesus had performed. It had put their condemnation of the contrary prophet in a different light. His helplessness was palpable. Finally, he answered the only way he new how, with a scriptural view.

“Because we know this; if any man be a sinner, God heareth not him.”

This loose translation was from a psalm; Ps 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”

There is a difference between the blindness of sin and the withholding of iniquity. Sin does not keep your prayers from God. They ascend to the heights of the heavenlies. They just don’t move God in your direction unless it is sprinkled with repentance and contrition. God will not look upon a sinner unless He imputes righteousness upon him first. But, regarding iniquity in the heart of man elevates the sin above God, and that voice will be forever silenced in heaven until the iniquitous heart is repentant.

Because iniquity doth abound; the love of many shall wax cold.

We are viewing the onslaught of iniquity. The once “on fire” Christians are being turned to bitter antagonists against righteousness. The visionary preachers are being relegated to sermonizers and flippant “pulpit orators” because the view has become distant and opaque.

Why? Because the regarding of iniquity has disconnected our clarity from God’s will. This same visual blindness has dumped us into the same pile of endless rhetoric that has “life supported” the secular pulpits for years.

When we become “make believe” in our messages, we are not the first to notice. Our children are the first to see and the first to imitate.

Lying becomes a relative judgment. Deception becomes a game of cat and mouse to see who gets the cheese. And the Word of God becomes just another resource for messages to preach. Have you wondered just how so many of our youth mock at Biblical righteousness? Have you ever considered why the boldness of the rebellious is not longer taken to those outside the church, but they withstand us in our faces now?

As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses;

The hour demands that we return to preaching righteousness. The Church of Laodicea was condemned because they left their first love. How did they leave it? Because they regarded iniquity, and let the withstander’s voice become the silencer of the pulpit.