Psalm 14
Let’s read together from Psalm
14. This is God’s holy word. This is a Psalm of King David. It says, the fool says in his
heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable
deeds. There is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see
if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have
all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt.
There is none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge,
all the evildoers, who eat up my people as they eat bread?
And do not call upon the name of the Lord? There they are in
great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.
You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his
refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion.
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice
and let Israel be glad. Let’s pray together. Oh God,
we pray that this psalm, these ancient words would have a wonderful
modern and blessed meaning for us. And we pray that that would
be so by your spirit’s power. We do trust in your word. We
put our confidence in it. We believe it to be from you
for us and for our good. So make it work, make it effective
and make it a blessing to our lives. We do pray in Jesus name.
Amen. So here’s a big question for
you as you approach this Psalm. How can God be known? How can
God be known? That is a question we’ll ask
in several weeks when we get to Psalm 19. But the Bible teaches
that God can be known in two basic ways. The first way is
through creation. Creation sufficiently tells the
world, it tells the human eye, it tells the unaided eye that
there is a God. We read in Psalm 8, O Lord, O
Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. When I look
at the sun and the moon and the stars, when I look at the handiwork
of your creation, then he begins to say, what is man that you’re
mindful of him? When we make our way to Psalm
19, we’ll read that the heavens declare the glory of God. There
is no speech, there is no language where his voice is not heard.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 1, that men are without excuse,
that creation plainly speaks of a God. So how can God be known? Well, the first way is through
the naked eye, through creation. But there’s a more specific way
that God can be known. If you’re in the confession of
faith class, you know the answer to that. God can only be known
for purposes of salvation through the word. One cannot know God
in a saving way without the word of God proclaiming to them salvation. It’s one of the reasons we believe
that preaching is so important. What happens when the Word of
God is read and preached? Well, hopefully sinners are convinced
and converted, and then also saints are comforted and built
up. So how can God be known? Well,
through general revelation, seeing creation. And then through special
revelation, through the very word of God. So here’s the second
question. This passage then leads us, not
only how can God be known, but how do we deal with a person
who says there is no God? Now that’s a really relevant
question for us. That’s a really practical question
for us because about in every sphere we go in, we bump into
people who say, guess what? There is no God. We hear it.
sometimes from our children. We hear it in the schools where
we teach. We hear it in our workplaces. We hear it on the news. We read
it in the editorial section of our local paper. So how do we
deal with one who says there is no God? Well, we deal with
it the way God deals with it. And that’s exactly what this
passage is gonna help us understand tonight. How do we deal with
a person who says there is no God? And the first little section
for us is in verse one. And it’s from the perspective
of the fool. And it says simply, the fool
says in his heart, there is no God. And then there’s gonna be
a little description that will come in the latter part. But
the fool is convicted that there is no God. Okay, where does his
statement come from? Where does his declaration come
from that there is no God? It comes from his heart. You
know, a lot of times we think atheists just have no convictions
at all. Well, that’s not the case. Why are they so rabid?
Why do we pick fights with them and engage with them in such
a way where we leave sweating and sometimes maybe bloody or
sometimes hot under the collar because they fussed with us?
Well, it’s because they say in their heart, deep down, way down
in the recesses of what they think and what they feel, they
believe there is no God. Now they may be wrong, we know
the answer to that, but it’s deeply embedded in them. So why does the scripture say
the fool in his heart says there is no God? Why does he call him
a fool? Remember Psalm 1, what was Psalm 1? It was a wisdom
Psalm. Do you remember the comparison?
The wise man lives this way and he’s like a tree planted by streams
of water, but what about the fool? The fool lives another
way, and what is his end? His end is destruction. His end
is not everlasting life. His end is not blessing in this
world. Now, when you come to the scriptures,
you bump into all kinds of words for a foolish person. Think about in our human language,
what do we call, and maybe kids are a little better at this,
what do we call somebody who’s a fool? We call them a silly
head. We might call them stupid as we grow older. We might call
them an idiot. We might call them nincompoop, if we’re on
the British side of things. We might have all kinds of little
names for them. Well, in the Hebrew Bible, there are names
for fools like that that are different. But guess what the
strongest or one of the strongest words is? It’s a Hebrew word
that’s Nabal. Now, does that ring a bell to
any of you? You remember David’s wife, Abigail. What was her husband’s name?
His name was Nabal. Now, do you remember in 1 Samuel,
I think it’s 25, David was out with his men, they were hungry,
and they came to Nabal’s plantation, you might say, his farm. And
they were shearing sheep, it was sheep shearing season. And
David sent a delegation, go to Nabal and say, feed us, we’re
hungry. And so David’s men go and Nabal
treats them rather rudely. I mean, he’s pretty strong about
it. It angers David. David’s ready to fight him. David’s
ready to kill him. He’s ready to put him to the
sword. But what does wise Abigail do? She comes and says, my husband’s
an idiot. Okay. He’s aptly named. His name is Nabal. He’s a fool.
And don’t harm the rest of us for the sake of my idiot husband.
It’s basically what she says. Well, after all the feasting
and drinking and partying, what happens to Nabal? He falls on
his bed and it says his heart died within him. He lays there
10 days and he dies. Then what does David do? He marries
Abigail. But you see, God often shows
us the real meaning of a word through a story like that. It’s
interesting in the scriptures how God speaks of people in rather
strong ways. You know, we like to be nice
to people, don’t we? You know, oh, we would never call anybody
a fool. But there’s a reality, isn’t
there? If you say there is no God, and
you live as if there is no God, and you live apart from him,
we should speak biblically about people. I have a friend who, when he refers to the current
cultural situation, he refers to people as sodomizers. That’s
the way the Bible does. That’s pretty strong language,
right? But that’s the way the Bible does. Sometimes we ought
to use the Bible language because guess what? That’s the language
God will use. And if you speak the way God
speaks, guess what you are able to present? You’re able to present
to be able to present the gospel of grace. And so the word fool
is a very strong word. We shouldn’t sort of joke it
off as silly or simple or somebody who’s crazy, but it’s someone
who is aggressively perverse. They are wearing their foolishness. They’re
wearing their perverse heart. They are wearing their independence
from God and their disregard for his holy law. in front of
everybody to see. Now we see that all over the
world today, don’t we? We see it in the news. We see
it in the victories that have come politically in the last
12 months or so. We see people wearing their foolishness
publicly. And so Psalm 14 speaks of this. But do you know where else the
Bible speaks of this exact same thing? Speaks of it again in
Psalm 53. Don’t know what we’ll do when
we make our way to Psalm 53. It’s almost exactly the same.
Maybe we’ll have part two. But where else does God speak
of it? He speaks of it again in Romans chapters one and two
and three. And as one commentator has said
very well, when God says something once, no twice, no three times,
you better listen. And so when God presents to us,
what is the fool? What is the atheist? He does
so. Now notice the second part of
verse one. In their hearts, it says, the fool says there is
no God. And it goes on to say, they are
corrupt. That’s the first thing about them. Second, they do abominable
deeds. And third, there is none who
does good. This person is corrupt. They’re
destructive. Okay, you know somebody like
that, they’re just plain destructive. Okay, they’re so wicked, they’re
just flat destructive, whether it’s murder, or whether it’s
in relationships, whether it’s in their work history, whatever
it is, they are so corrupt, there’s just a path of destruction behind
them. They do abominable deeds, or
another word that we could use, another synonym is vile. Do you
know someone who’s vile? They’re so foul, you don’t want
to be around them. You don’t want to hear what they
have to say or know anything about their lifestyle. And then
there’s this pronouncement, there is none who does good. That’s
how bad it is. There’s none who does good. If
you wanna see someone who hates God, look at someone who’s immoral.
Look at someone who is literally wasting their life, following
the pursuits of the flesh, and you will find someone who hates
God. Now, we said that this is possibly a wisdom psalm. There’s
a contrast here of the wise and the fool, the wisdom, person
who lives by wisdom and the one who lives by foolishness. There’s
another little thing you ought to note. Look at verse one. It
says, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. And then what
is the, what is the way the language moves at the second part? It
says, they are corrupt. You see the thee and the they. It speaks of one person, a fool.
And then it now moves to speak of a whole generation. They are
corrupt. They are doing vile and abominable
things. And you know how appropriate
this is for our contemporary context, culture will fall apart. Culture has been falling apart,
and it’s not just in North Carolina with our crazy bathroom laws.
It’s not just these last 12 months with the high court’s decision
on marriage. Ethics have been thrown out the
door for centuries and Millennia, I guess you could say. There
has been tyranny. There has been abuse. There have been people
who exploit others for generations in the past. And so there is
nothing new under the sun, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says.
King Solomon said it well. There is nothing new. It’s just
a remix. It’s just part two, part three,
part 10, part 1,000. It comes to us and it overwhelms
us. And you hear people all the time
say this, what’s the world coming to? Well, I hope this next election
will get us somewhere. You hear that these days, right?
We need a president who can turn things around. Problem’s a little
worse than that, right? We need a God who can turn things
around, and we have one. But what do we say as Christians?
We say, like Elijah, we say, are there any godly people left?
And what does God say? Doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t look like it, but
God always has a remnant. So what’s the reality we face?
There are lots of fools around us, okay? That’s a good way to
watch the evening news. We don’t push the button and
turn it off anymore, I guess. That was back in the old days.
But we turn off the evening news and say, well, God said it would
be like this. So we don’t fall into despair,
but we also don’t put our trust in chariots and horses and kings
and princes. So that’s the first point we
wanna consider tonight. What is the fool? And that’s
in verse one. The second thing we wanna consider
though is the fool according to Yahweh. What does Yahweh,
what does God Almighty say about the fool? Well, we find that
in verses two and three. And verses two and three also
have a little bit of humor in them. Look how he begins verse
two, the Lord looks down from heaven. Now, where have we heard
God use that phrase before? Remember the Tower of Babel,
they were building up up, up. And what was their goal? We want
to make a name for ourselves. And you know, you ride by a large
structure and you know, we want to have our
name on a Trump Tower or the so and so, you know, the what’s
your what’s your middle name, Bennett? the Bennett Michael
Richardson Performing Arts Center. We wanna have a building. You
wouldn’t build a performing arts center, I’m sure. You’d do something
else. We want our name on something.
We wanna make our name great. The first associate reform Presbyterian
church. And here we are hidden behind
a row of hedges. You ever wanna ride by and just
cut those things down? It’s hiding our glory, isn’t it? No, we want
to build a name for ourselves. And so there’s a bit of humor
in verse two. The Lord looks down. He looks down from heaven. You think your tower is tall?
Well, Yahweh looks down to see it, and it’s rather puny. So
here is that same phraseology. The Lord looks down from heaven
on the children of man to see if there is any who understand.
That’s a word for wisdom. To see if there are any who understand
or who seek after God. Well, they have all turned aside.
Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good,
no, not. even one. God is on the lookout
for wise people. And what does the psalmist conclude?
He looks down and guess what? He sees none. He sees zero. He’s looking and looking and
sees none. Where is the one who loves him,
the one who honors him, the one who fears him, the one who obeys
him, the one who is in covenant with him and says, I delight
in your law and oh Lord, I will do it. All have turned aside,
it says. This reminds us of the beginning
of human history when God created. He put Adam and Eve in a garden.
He fellowshiped with them. He worshiped with them. He delighted
in them. They delighted in him. He gave
them his law. They obeyed it. They kept it. But then one day
they couldn’t. They had to become wise in their
own eyes and say, the forbidden fruit we will eat because we
want to be like God. We want to be God-like. We want
to be just like him. And so they ate and there was
the fall of mankind into sin. There was the plunge of all human
race into depravity. We became blind. We became corrupt. And so that is why God can say
this. He can look down on the children of man and say, there
is not one. And that’s not a generalization. That is a verdict. There is not
one righteous. And what does that do? That puts
each of us in a particular problem. Because how can a righteous person
have a standing before a holy God? We can’t without intervention. So we’ll come to the solution
to that problem in just a moment. But what does he say? He says,
all have turned aside. And it says together, together. It’s as if the whole city has
gone out together, Sodom and Gomorrah. Or the generation of
Noah, where all they did was only evil all the time. Have you read that in Genesis
9, 6? All they could do was only evil all the time. That’s a pretty
rough, tough statement. And he says, they have turned
aside, they have become corrupt, and together none does good. Now, if you look at verse three,
I believe it is, it says, they have all turned aside, together
they have become corrupt. That’s like saying the same thing
two different ways. They’ve turned aside, they’ve
become corrupt. What do we think of as the Christian life? It’s
a narrow path. So what happens when you turn to the right? or
to the left, you go off to the side. Now think about in Proverbs
specifically, in the early chapters of Proverbs, where does the fool
go? Does he go straight or does he turn to the side? And what’s
to the side in the book of Proverbs? Is it lady wisdom or is it the
foolish woman who’s the prostitute? And where does her way lead?
It leads to death, it leads to the grave. And so turning aside
is a huge, huge picture in the Bible. Think about Bunyan, you
read Pilgrim’s Progress? It’s a narrow path. Don’t get
off. And so we do not want to turn aside. Turning aside literally
means apostate. It means falling away. It means
going away from the faith. Becoming corrupt means being
soured. Any of you had sour milk in your
fridge lately? It’s not a pretty smell. It’s
not a good taste. But that’s what has happened.
Culture, people, have become sour. None does good. And the
Apostle Paul uses this passage in Romans 3 to say mankind is
under sin. That’s the blanket judgment God
gives them. Mankind is under sin. And so we’ve looked at the
fool. We’ve just looked at the fool according to Yahweh. The
third thing we want to consider is the fool according to the
word of God. And this will be particularly helpful to us for
how to look at living life with fools around us. And we find
it in verses four through six, where it says, they have no knowledge,
all the evil doers. They eat up my people as they
eat bread, and they do not call upon the Lord. There they are
in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.
You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his
refuge. You have to admit it’s difficult
to live with a bunch of fools. It’s difficult to live with the
news real every day, the same old people doing the same old
things, ruining our world as we might call it, right? Quit
ruining our culture, quit ruining the fine time we have. But realize
how the corruption of fools affects us. Think just through a handful
of examples. Think about the bakery owners
out in, where was it? Washington State can’t remember
they’re out of business Right their livelihood completely destroyed
because they chose not to conduct business in a certain way now
you can argue this that and the other about it, but what happens
when a the convictions of fools affects
you and it puts you out of business or it makes you unable to say
things in your workplace or it affects the way you can raise
your children or it affects your evangelical opportunities or
evangelism opportunities when you’re at work. It does affect
us. We can’t say that the actions
and beliefs and convictions of fools affect us. My wife was
just pointing out to me the other day that when there was a boycott
on Target recently for the whole crazy bathroom thing. You know
what Target said? Target said it’s only a few people
it will affect and so we don’t care about them. But you know
what’s funny about that is the reverse is true. They’re only
promoting the lifestyle of a few people as well. So it’s funny
what we have to put up with, what we have to deal with, what
we have to consider. But what does the word say about
about the fool. What does the word say about
how we should live in light of it? Well, it says that they will
never learn. It says that you will be eaten
up by them. It says that they will never call on Yahweh. You
see that in verse four. They have no knowledge, all these
evil doers. They eat up my people as they
eat bread and they don’t call on the name of the Lord. There’s
something about them that fundamentally won’t change unless they come
to Christ. And that was the same of you, right? What does Titus
say? Titus says when he’s speaking
of being judgmental, he says, remember that you two once were
what? Were foolish. You were pursuing
the same passions. And so we need to remember that
when we are judging or when we are evaluating culture that we
too, but for the grace of God would be right where they are. And so we remember that, and
we don’t lose our evangelical mindset, our goal of evangelism. But it says they will never learn.
It says they will devour, they will eat up God’s people, and
they will not call on Yahweh. You know, there’s the joke about
the atheist. He’s like the man who jumps out
of a 40-story building, and on his way down, he says, so far,
so good. Okay, that is a reality of an
atheist. Patrick and I recently read,
for what, the fourth time, because he liked it so much, Robinson
Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe, a young man in England. His dad sits
him down and says, don’t be a fool. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be an
idiot. Live here with mom and dad. Enjoy the blessings of home
and covenant life. and he would have none of it,
and so he took off on this ship, he took off on that ship, and
every time he finds himself in trouble, he prays to God and
says, I want to do what my parents said, they were wise, but guess
what? When he gets rescued, stupid actions come again. And that’s
the way it is with atheists, with fools. They never learn,
they continually devour, and they will not call on Yahweh.
And so, to switch gears a little bit, One of the things we have
to remember is that a fool will say there is no God until they
meet him. Because there will be a meeting
someday. There will be a reckoning. There will be a face-to-face
with Almighty God. And notice what verse five says,
there they are in great terror. For God is with the generation
of the righteous. You know, one of the greatest
things you can do before foolish people, before atheists, before
a watching world, is to live a righteous life. It doesn’t
matter how often they say, there is no God. They will see God’s
hand upon you and his blessings upon you. And deep, deep down
in them, they are in terror because you have God and they do not.
And they may never admit it. But it’s there. They are in great
terror, verse 5 says. They are in great terror, for
God is with the generation of the righteous. What does the
scripture teach us? What does Jesus say will happen
at the last day in judgment? What will the atheists do? What
will the fools do when God comes to judge? It says they’ll hide
in caves and they will beg that the earth will fall in upon them
and that the rocks will crush them because they are now realizing
that terror that is in them, that dread that is in them, it
has a God behind them and he comes. You know, some have said
that to live apart from God is to live in insanity. And I don’t
know what it’s like to be insane. My wife says I’m crazy sometimes
and maybe she’s half right, but to live with insanity To live
with this dread that there is a God but I don’t know him, there
is a God but I don’t acknowledge him, there is a God and he is
unknowable to me has got to be a position of great insanity. But when the power of God manifests
itself in new covenant, new creations like you, it has to show the
world that there is a great God and that their ignorance will
not pay dividends. Well, there’s a final thing for
us to consider. First, it was the fool. was the fool according
to Yahweh. The third was the fool according
to the scriptures. But there’s a little tack on
here, verse seven, and it gives us hope. It says, oh, that salvation
for Israel would come out of Zion. When the Lord restores
the fortunes of his people, let Jacob be glad and rejoice, and
let Israel be glad also. Many commentators and scholars
think this verse was tacked on at some point, it was added.
And that may be true, but I want you to look at the language of
verse seven. It says that, oh, that salvation, oh, that salvation
for Israel would come out of Zion, that the Lord would restore
the fortunes of his people. This is language of a people
being returned from exile to their homeland. This is language
that is used in other places, other Psalms even, that says,
God punished you. God removed you from his covenant
blessings, but he’s gonna give it back. This is language like
Job. Remember Job had it all, but
Job lost it all. But how does Job end? He got
back double what he had before. God restores the fortunes of
his people. Now you may be going through
hardship and difficulty in this life. You may have made it through
various markets of what, 01 and 08. And you know, they say another
one’s coming where your little savings portfolio was up here
and it went down here. And then you watched as time
came and God restored your fortunes. And you were able to retire.
You were able to breathe a little lighter. Well, God does that. He restores our fortunes. But
guess what? It may not come in this life.
You may lose everything in this life. You may lose every single
thing that you ought to hold dear and that even some biblical
passages may say to you, you deserve this blessing because
of your righteousness. You deserve this blessing because
of your holiness and your obedience to God. You may get to heaven
having lost everything except God. And that’s something that
we have to consider. We have to think of these things.
Where is our hope? Is our hope in Israel? Is our
hope in a promised land? Is our hope in Saddle Club Road?
Is our hope in, where do we live? In May Court, in Gibsonville,
Ossipee Road, in Kimberly? I know your street starts with
an H. They said, yeah, heaven. You
know, our hope is not in these places. They’re lovely. It’s
home. But heaven is where our hope
is. And so we put our hope in the future. But what an amazing
testimony it is that we see in the rest of the scriptures. Yes,
there is none righteous, according to God. But what does God do
in Christ? He makes righteous. And how does
he do that? He declares you a sinner. He
declares you a fool. He declares you a God-hater. He declares you to be a God-lover,
a Christ-follower, a righteous one, the God of the universe
who cannot overlook one little teeny tiny sin, looks at you
and says, because of the righteousness of His Son which is given to
you and received by faith, He says, you’re righteous. And that is quite an amazing
thing that He does for us. He restores your fortunes. You lost all that in the the
fall of Adam and Eve into sin, and he restores it in the second
Adam in Jesus Christ. And that righteousness is ours
by faith in Jesus Christ. And so, yes, we live in the present
evil age. Yes, we live around a rebellious
people. But we sing a song periodically.
I think we sang it at Easter. Sing choirs of New Jerusalem. And it speaks of the victory
has won. Christ has won the victory. Christ cries aloud from death’s
dark domain, the victory has won. And so that’s how we have
to think and live. That’s how we have to believe.
God has won the victory. There are blessings now. There
are many more blessings to come. But God says to us, he comes
to us in his word and by his spirit, he says, here I am, look
at me and believe in me. And when we come to faith in
him, he gives us all the benefits of the covenant, and they are
ours in Christ. And so, yes, we live with fools
around us, but we remember we serve a God who will not suffer
fools in the end. And so we put our faith and trust
and hope in him. Let’s pray together. Our God,
we do thank you that you love us and care for us, that you
do not leave us as we have become because of sin as fools, but
you make us wise and you do so by the foolishness of preaching.
We thank you, Father, that you have shown us by your word and
spirit who we are and who you are and how we can become reconciled
to you through the precious blood of Christ. Strengthen our faith,
help us not to lose heart when the fools of this world are all
around us, and help us also, help us Also to remember that
we too once were foolish, that we were alienated from you, and
we were shaking our fist in your face also. May we not forget
that, and may we always be amazed by your grace. We thank you for
it in Christ’s name, amen. ♪ The Lord sits in the moonlight
♪ ♪ When it’s dark at night ♪ ♪ But
the morning light will soon arrive ♪ ♪ And in the air there is not
one ♪ ♪ Come and we’ll search it by the door ♪ ♪ In all the
stars above ♪ If anyone were to see ♪ All the divine one ♪ As knowledge
from the wicked fled ♪ Then will I be holy as bread ♪ Then will
I hear words of shame ♪ Then will I