Verse 1:
"An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes."
An oracle is within my heart."
Proverbs 4:23:
"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life"
(NIV).
Jeremiah 17:9:
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"
(NIV)
The Lord's response to this statement is in Jeremiah 17:10:
"I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve"
(NIV).
Romans 3:18:
"there is no fear of God before their eyes"
(NASB).
F. B. Meyer said: "When there is 'no fear of God before the eyes,' a man is free to 'flatter himself in his own eyes.' It is a terrible thing when a man becomes headstrong in wickedness, and abhors not evil."
Don Wyrtzen says: "Apart from God, man is powerless to help himself. He doesn't even know he needs help. Wallowing in his own corruption, he desperately needs God's love and righteousness, but he doesn't know it."
I have a hunch that David wrote this Psalm before he became king. It was while he was wandering in the wilderness for those years, trying to flee from Saul and his troops. You will remember in I Samuel 25 David had this encounter:
"A certain man in Maon, who had property there at Carmel, was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats and his wife's name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband, a Calebite, was surly and mean in his dealings. While David was in the desert, he heard that Nabal was shearing sheep. So he sent ten young men and said to them,'Go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name. Say to him: "Long life to you! Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours!"'"
(25:2 - 6 NIV).
David then instructs the servant to give them some bread and water to help sustain them because they had been protecting the shepherds and sheep during all of this time preceding.
Nabal turns down this request of David and his men and thus forms a perfect picture of what we are seeing in verse 1.
Verse
2:
"For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin."
The reason for the previous statement "There is no fear of God before his eyes" is now given here in verse 2: "For in his own eyes he flatters." He is a person who is focused on himself. He is focused on himself, he is living in denial, he minimizes the consequences of sin, and the Psalmist says: "For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin."
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says: "Having no dread of the Lord, a wicked person commits evil continually. He soothes his own conscience (flatters himself) to hide his iniquity, because If he saw it from God's viewpoint he would hate it." (821)
Hebrews 10:31:
"It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God"
(NASB)
Satan has so blinded the mind of the unbeliever that he is living in a world of delusion. Delusion is a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. It's a false or mistaken belief or idea about something.
Stanley Baldwin said: "He spent his whole life in plastering together the true and the false and there from extracting the plausible."
Billy Graham says: "Arrogance has its own built-in misery. The arrogant person may offend others, but he hurts himself more."
The answer for the plight of the wicked is seen in the 4 R's: (1) the wicked must accept reality; (2) the wicked must accept redemption purchased for him on the cross of Calvary; (3) the wicked must come in repentance, brokenness, and surrender, realizing his only home is in Jesus Christ; and (4) he must then receive Christ as his own personal savior from sin.
