The Fool Has Said in His Heart, There Is No God! - Psalm 14

 

A Psalm of David

Psalm 14:1 “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good.”

Dennis Edwards: Here we see the characteristics of a fool. First, he says there is no God. Right out of the gate his thinking is wrong and he has no justification for any of his conclusions. If there is no God, no Creator, then man is the result of blind random evolutionary forces. If such is the case, C.S. Lewis concluded, we have no reason to believe our thinking or reasoning is correct. Evolutionary processes do not give us sound reasons for our ability to think, to reason, to why we have consciousness. A Divine Mind, a Creator-God, does give us a reason to believe that our reasoning is sound.

The Biblical history says that the Divine Mind created us in His image and placed within us the ability to think, to reason, to decide good from evil, right from wrong. If we are created by a Divine Being who is good and loving, which is what He claims in the Scared writings, then that would justify why we have the faculty of reason and consciousness, of judging and analyzing. However, in the naturalistic worldview where all is matter and energy, we find no good justification for why we have the ability to reason, nor where consciousness comes from, nor why we ought to do anything. Therefore, by rejecting God, the author of reason, consciousness, and morality, our reasoning, consciousness, and morality have become corrupted.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction,” Proverbs 1:7. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and knowledge of the holy is understanding,” Proverbs 9:11. Belief in God is the starting point for correct thinking. That is why Saint Augustine wrote, “Seek not to understand that you might believe, but rather, seek to believe that you might understand.” Belief in God the Creator of the universe is the key to a proper understanding of life, it’s origins and purpose. Belief in God gives us humility. We know that we did not creator ourselves. We give obeisance to the Divine Power and acknowledge our dependence on Him for our existence and substance. The world says, “I think, therefore, I am.” God says, “I am, therefore, you think.”

If there is no God, wrote Dostoevsky, then everything is permissible. We would follow the infamous NIKE slogan, “Just Do It!” In other words, don’t worry about that God figure you were taught about. He’s not real anyway. Have sex with whom you want. Do what you want. “Just Do It!” God, however, says, “Don’t do it,” unless it is loving and true, and in accordance to God’s character and mandates. We have failed in that point. That’s why we are as guilty as Adam and Eve were. We knew we should do good, but we wilfully did evil because we wanted to fulfil our own appetites. The Bible calls it, “the pleasure of sin for a season,” or “the lusts of the flesh.”

That’s where that Redeemer guy comes in. Out of love for us and our sad predicament, He comes into the world that He created, as a normal human being like you or I. He disguises His Divinity and walks among us as one of us. Though His birth and the events of His life have been predicted hundreds of years previously and recorded in the Sacred writings, we reject Him when He manifests Himself to us. Rather than fall at His feet and worship Him, we desire that a murderer and robber be freed and allow the Innocent and the Just to die the cruel death of a criminal. However, three days later, as He foretold, He rises from the dead, confirming all that He had said and done as true. He told us, “Every one that hears these sayings of mine, and does them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it,” Matthew 7:26-27.

The rains are descending. The floods are coming. The winds are blowing. Unless our house, our belief system, how we live our lives, is founded on the rock of God’s word, on the truth that there is a God who created us, and we have not created ourselves or come from some naturalistic evolutionary process, unless the God of the Bible is true and we follow Him diligently; our lives, our houses, our society will come crashing down by the winds, rains, and floods created by our own disbelief in Him. If not God, then chaos. If we won’t wilfully be governed by God, we will be governed by tyrants. “If the foundations be destroyed, what will the righteous do?” Psalms 11:3.

Months and months before the French Revolution anti-god propaganda was distributed to the masses by the form of radicle pamphlets. These articles were distributed and propagated through the masonic lodges throughout France. The Frenchmen was soundly radicalized by the underground literature which exposed the hypocrisy and corruption of the ruling class and the Church. When the bells finally tolled for action, the Frenchman rose up against his rulers and some 17,000 heads rolled on the guillotines in 11 months. Men and women went to their deaths at the tune of 54 a day for 11 months. Even if you were just associated with the ruling class or the church your life was in jeopardy.

Similar events happened in Russia in October Revolution of 1917. If there is no God, then everything is permissible. If we have no fear of God and an ultimate judgment for our actions, if we believe we created ourselves and can therefore, do as we want, we are doomed to destruction. Solomon concluded, “Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man,” Ecclesiastes 12:13b. “But the natural man, (the man who believes there is no God and that we come from blind evolutionary natural forces), receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” 1 Corinthians 2:14.

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful: but became vain in their imaginations (or thinking process), and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” Romans 1:21-22. That is the state of the world today. Confessing ourselves to be wise, we have become fools. Our heats have been darkened by the theory of evolution which caused us to doubt God’s existence. We have abandoned the fear of the Lord and followed NIKE’s slogan, “Just Do It!” Because we did not like to entertain God in our knowledge, God has given us over to a reprobate mind, to do things that are not convenient,” Romans 1:28. As a result, God has pronounced judgment upon us. Apostle Paul explains clearly our predicament in the rest of Romans 1:29-32.

“Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Psalm 14:2 “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.”

God is calling us daily to seek Him. He says, “Seek ye the Lord while he can be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,” Isaiah 55:6-7. Don’t lose the opportunity to seek God. God’s mercy is abundant. We need to be willing to put down false ideas, false worldviews, and forsake bad habits. The Lord goes on to say, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways….For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts,” Isaiah 55:7-8. If we think we can figure out life without God in the equation we are wrong.

God promises that if we seek Him, we shall find Him, if we search for Him with all our hearts. Jeremiah 29:13. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 we read, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Do we want our land to be healed? Then we must humble ourselves, and admit that we can’t solve the problem in our own understanding. Next, we need to pray and call upon God for His help. We need to seek His face and turn from our wicked ways. The problem is that we won’t follow God’s guidelines, and that’s what we find in the next verse in the psalm.

Psalm 14:3 “They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that does good, no, not one.”

That’s the sorry state of the world today. More and more we are becoming filthy in our brazen disobedience to God, His ways, and His commandments, like we read earlier form Paul’s epistle. What will it take us to get desperate and seek God’s face? Must calamity fall before we repent and seek after God? Must a new revolution take place and millions die in holocaust before we cry out to God for mercy?

Psalm 14:4 “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up My people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord?”

Evil men and seducers are waxing worse and worse deceiving and being deceived, as Apostle Paul predicted. 2 Timothy 3:13. These are the great men of the earth who by their sorceries are deceiving all the nations, Revelation 18:23. Jesus even warned that the deception would be so great that even His elect would risk being taken in, Matthew 24:24.

Psalm 14:5 “There were they in great fear; for God is in the generation of the righteous.”

Some of God’s people are awake to what is happening. They are shouting the alarm. They are calling out wickedness. They are standing for truth. They are walking in the fear of the Lord, and therefore, they are wise and have their eyes opened.

Psalm 14:6 “Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.”

Over and over God warns men that we are responsible for the poor in our midst. In Scripture after Scripture, God admonishes us to consider and care for the poor. God will judge us for our lack of caring for and helping the poor in our communities. We should be advocates for the poor and his needs.

Psalm 14:7 “Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When the Lord brings back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.”

The psalmist ends on a positive note. Salvation has in deed come out of Zion through Jesus Christ. We can rejoice and be glad in Him our Saviour. He is our Redeemer and our hope. In Him do we trust. In Him do we look for redemption and salvation, as Isaiah foresaw, “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse (Jesse was the father of David of whom the Messiah would be a descendant), which shall stand for an ensign (or signal) of the people; to it (or to Him) shall the Gentiles (you and me) seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” Isaiah 11:11. Victory is coming. Light will come after the darkness of these days. Jesus shall return and stop the wars and bring in a thousand years of peace on earth. He is our peace and has broken down the walls that divide us so we can live in harmony one with another.