Psalm 78:36-37 Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant.
Praise or Flattery?
Only a starving man would accept flattery for praise, yet it happens all the time. There are people that are so starved for praise that they don’t know the difference between being praised and being flattered. All of us have seen someone who has tried to finesse, move, or control someone else by flattering them. There is nothing noble about that. In fact, there is something naïve about accepting that.
People do the same thing to God. They think they can manipulate God by flattering Him. What is the difference between praising God and flattering God? Psalm 78:36-37 says, “Nevertheless, they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant.” Here were people who said great things about God, but their lives were a contradiction to what they were saying about God. Praise without heart is little more than flattery.
What distinguishes praise from flattery? A couple things stand out in Psalm 78. First of all, it depends on what we remember. In Psalm 78:4 the Bible talks about passing God’s truth from generation to generation. It says, “We will not hide them [God’s truths] from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.” Part of praising God is remembering Who He is and what He has done. There is no praise of God where there is no memory of Who He is.
Secondly, praise is when we credit God alone with what He has done. Throughout Psalm 78 we find the psalmist equating God’s great works to the greatness of God Himself. In contrast, the Bible says that Israel tempted God by asking for meat. Verse 19 says, “Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” They didn’t attribute their provision to their God. We praise God when we attribute what He has done to Him.
Thirdly, we praise God by what we recount of Him to the generations to come. The Bible tells us in verse 5, “For he established a testimony in Jacob.” That testimony, the retelling of what God had done, is to be passed on from one generation to the next. It is easy to pay God lip service when really we are praising ourselves. We will say things like, “Praise God, we….” Then we talk about ourselves.
God doesn’t want our flattery. He wants our heartfelt praise every day about what we remember, what we attribute, and what we retell.