June 29, 2025 • 33 mins
Jamie Peterson June 29, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Please turn your Bibles with me right now to
Psalm 14.
Psalm 14.
You may have it on anelectronic device.
We have it in a bulletin.
We also have printed copies ofGod's Word up in the windowsill.
If you would like to have acopy of God's Word, please feel
free to take one of those andit's yours.
(00:22):
But while you're turning there,when I was in junior high I had
one of my favorite teachers andcoaches that I had through any
level of school that I attended.
He wasn't just a good teacher,he wasn't just a good coach.
What I appreciate about him somuch and really to this day when
I'm able to have contact withhim he genuinely cared about us
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as human beings.
He really cared about who wewere as people, not just how we
could perform in the classroom,not just how we could perform on
the athletic field, but that wewere growing and that we were
growing into mature men andwomen.
He was also the junior highbasketball coach, and while I
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didn't play basketball, I hadhim from some other sports.
But one of the things that weall know about basketball is is
that you can only have so manypeople on a team, in other words
, that you have to have tryoutsand you have to have kids who
are being cut.
And one of the things Iappreciated about him as I'd
hear about him when he'd have tocut people from tryouts is that
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he wouldn't do it through someimpersonal list.
He wouldn't do it from someother impersonal way, but he'd
come up to each individual, tellthem all the great things about
themselves truthfully, all thethings that they had done, all
their effort and that, and thenhe would break into the news of
I've got bad news, you haven'tmade a team.
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But then he would follow it upas a hey, here's some things you
can work on, here's someopportunities.
If you need some help, I'm hereto help you.
In a similar fashion, we need toview this psalm that's going to
have some hard things to say tous in light of what Jason
preached about on Psalm 8 lastweek.
Psalm 8 was a building up of usIn that we saw where we, as
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human beings who are created inGod's image, are crowned with
His glory.
We are a little bit lower thanthe angels.
We have dominion over thisuniverse that he has created,
and all those things are gracesthat have been given to us.
We bring nothing to the tablewith regards to those things.
We don't earn the crown thatGod gives us.
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We don't earn our status to belower than the angels.
We don't earn the fact that wehave dominion over the universe.
So that builds us up and thatprepares us for the hard news
that we're going to see in Psalm14.
These are some harsh realitiesthat we all face within
ourselves, living in a brokenworld.
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But at the same time, we'realso going to see in the last
verse of Psalm 14, that there'ssome awfully good news that God
doesn't leave us where we are,but he has come to rescue us.
So before we read this passage,let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father in Heaven, we thank youfor your Word, we thank you for
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your truthfulness, we thank youfor the fact that you remind us
of who we are as your imagebearers, and we also thank you
for the harsh reality of thefact of what we bring to the
table and that is nothing morethan our sin.
And we also thank you for yourSon, jesus Christ, that you have
sent into this world.
To address that, lord, as weread and study this passage, may
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you give us eyes to see andears to hear Him, the author and
the perfecter of our faith.
We pray all this in His name,amen, psalm 14.
We'll be reading all the verses, verses 1 through 7.
Hear the word of the Lord To thechoir master of David.
The fool says in his heartthere is no God.
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They are corrupt.
They do abominable deeds.
There is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heavenon the children of man to see
if there are any who understand,who seek after God.
They have all turned asideTogether.
They have become corrupt.
There is none who does good,not even one.
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Have they no knowledge?
All the evildoers who eat up mypeople as they eat bread and do
not call upon the Lord, therethey are in great terror.
For God is with the generationof the righteous.
He would shame the plans of thepoor, but the Lord is his
refuge.
Oh, that salvation for Israelwould come out of Zion.
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When the Lord restores thefortunes of his people.
Let Jacob rejoice.
Let Israel be glad.
Here is a reading of God's WordAt one church where I served a
number of years ago.
I was serving as an associatepastor and I would preach from
time to time, and after I gotthrough preaching, I always had
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this one fellow who was amiddle-aged fellow attorney,
very gregarious, big personality, the kind of guy who when he
was in a room, you knew it.
But I would also say that whenhe was there I was also very
happy to see him.
As a matter of fact, tellingthis story brings a smile to my
face.
Well, when I would get throughpreaching he'd come up and put
his hand on my shoulder.
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He says man, that was awonderful sermon.
I appreciate your preparation,I appreciate this and that.
And he said and there sure werean awful lot of people here in
the congregation that needed tohear that and we laugh at that.
But I think, if we're honestwith ourselves, there are
certain passages that we come toin the Bible where we say
that's not really for me, that'sfor someone else.
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And I think Psalm 14, by my ownadmission, is one that we can
read on a surface level andthink that very thing, as it
says, the fool said as, in heart, there is no God.
And you would say to ourselveswell, that's not me, I know that
there's a God.
And we think that it's speakingto the ardent atheists like
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Christopher Hitchens or RichardDawkins, an atheist professor in
a large lecture hall full ofuniversity students, a
self-described Marxist,advocates of communism, and the
list goes on and on.
But what we have to realize isthis first verse takes us to a
place that goes much deeper thanwhat may be written in books or
said in a lecture hall.
It says this the fool says inhis heart there is no God.
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In other words, this isn't justwhat comes out in books or
what's said verbally, butthere's a process that goes on
where we can actually befunctional atheists.
It's not talking about thepeople that I just had just
listed.
This is a universal problemthat we all have, and I'll
explain it this way.
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Atheism, like I just describedand gave examples of, is a
relatively new thing in the spanof human history.
This type of atheism finds itsgenesis in the late 1600s to the
early 1800s and what we havereferred to as the age of
enlightenment, which is actually2,700 years before I mean 2,700
years after this psalm waswritten.
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So if it's not referring tothat, if there's really no frame
of reference to that type ofatheism when this passage was
written, what if it's notreferring to that, if there's
really no frame of reference tothat type of atheism when this
passage was written.
What is it referring to?
I would argue that the real ageof enlightenment didn't start
in the late 1600s and go to theearly 1800s, it's actually.
We find it's Genesis in Genesis, chapter 3.
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In Genesis 1 and 2, we see ourfirst parents, adam and Eve, in
a perfect relationship with God,with each other, with creation
and themselves.
God told them that they werefree to enjoy everything that he
had created, that he would havedominion over all of creation,
except for one thing not to eatof the tree of the knowledge of
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good and evil, because in thatday they would die.
And there wasn't anythingmagical about that tree.
It was simply there to remindthem that God was God and they
were not him.
But Genesis 3, satan, in theform of a certain serpent, comes
along and says did God reallysay?
He?
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Puts doubts in their hearts andtheir minds, convinces them that
God is suppressing them and, assuch, they cease to be thankful
for the good life that God hadgiven them, as Romans 1 says,
beginning with verse 21, for allof a new God.
They did not honor Him as Godor give thanks to Him, but they
became futile in their thinkingand their foolish hearts were
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darkened.
Claiming to be wise, theybecame fools and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God forimages resembling mortal men and
birds and animals and creepingthings.
As such.
What we have been has beentranspiring ever since is not a
total jettisoning of a God,because we see throughout human
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history that there has alwaysbeen a worship of a God or gods.
What this is jettisoning is thenotion that we have the God of
the Bible.
It's leaving him, the God ofthe Bible, the God of Abraham,
isaac and Jacob and, because ofour sin, the ones who are
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created in His image.
We have attempted to create Godin our own image and, as such,
we become functional atheists.
And every time we sin, we aredenying the God of the Bible.
Every time we sin, we aresaying in our hearts, as fools,
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that there is no God.
When we embrace created thingsmore readily than our Creator,
we are saying in our hearts thatthere is no God.
When we say that we can live aGod-honoring life apart from His
people, we are saying thatthere is no God.
When we say that we can live aGod-honoring life apart from His
people, we are saying thatthere is no God.
When we go about leading thechurch, loving our spouses,
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parenting our children on thebasis of our own wisdom and
power rather than God's, we arefunctionally saying that there
is no God.
Verses 2 and 3 gives usperspective on our lives and who
we are and what God sees.
And a couple weeks ago I wasreading a book by Chad Bird,
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upside Down Spirituality, whichis a great book if you have time
to read it.
And he actually quotes EugenePeterson's paraphrase from the
message on these two verses,which I found very providential
as I was going to be preparingfor this sermon a week later.
And this is how Eugene Petersonparaphrases verses 2 and 3.
God sticks his head out ofheaven.
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He looks around.
He's looking for someone, notstupid, one man, even
God-expected, just one God-readywoman.
He comes up empty a string ofzeros, useless, unshepherded
sheep taking turns pretending tobe the shepherd.
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The 99 follow their fellow.
That's a rough way of saying it,but it is indeed a way of
saying it, and not only is itvery strong language, but we
find it repeated throughoutscripture.
Whenever we hear god saysomething one time, it's worth,
uh, taking is taking very, veryseriously, as serious as
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anything when you hear godsaying something twice, it
really gets our attention.
And then when he says somethingthree times, it's repeated in
such a way it's like I don'treally have human words for this
to help you see the gravity ofthis.
And what we see here is that wesee Psalm 14, which there's an
awful lot of gravity to thatthis being God's word but then
it's repeated almost verbatim inPsalm 53.
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And then you see some of thesesame verses and some of these
same themes repeated again inRomans 1 and Romans 3.
So here it is we see thesethemes repeated three times,
almost verbatim, in God's Word.
This is so important to hearand it's important especially
for us as those in the church.
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Francis Schaeffer, the greatpastor, theologian and apologist
of the 20th century, wrote apiece in 1974 that was entitled
the Lord's Work and the Lord'sWay, and he said this the
central problem of our age isnot liberalism or modernism, nor
the old Roman Catholicism orthe new Roman Catholicism, nor
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the threat of communism, noreven the threat of rationalism
or monolithic consensus whichsurrounds us.
All these are dangerous, butnot the primary threat.
The real problem is this thechurch of the Lord Jesus Christ,
individually or corporately,tending to do the Lord's work in
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the power of the flesh ratherthan of the Spirit.
The central problem is alwaysin the midst of God's people,
not in the circumstancessurrounding them.
We all have problems withfunctional atheism In our hearts
.
We're continually saying atvery, very many turns, often at
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all turns on some level, thatthere is no God.
And to help us to see thesehard truths about ourselves, to
come face to face with thesefacts, and also to see the hope
that God gives us in JesusChrist, I want us to look at
three things First, thehostility of our foolish heart.
Second, the horror of ourfoolish heart.
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And then, third, the hope ofour foolish heart.
And then, third, the hope forour foolish heart.
From 1865 to 1909, there was aman who went by King Leopold II,
who was the king of theBelgians, obviously king of
Belgium, but he went by king ofBelgians and he had pretty much
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everything that he could everwant from a human standpoint.
He was born into royalty, hadlots at his disposal and from a
human standpoint,materialistically, he could have
lived a very peaceful life, butit wasn't enough.
As he got a little bit older,in the 1870s, 1880s, he started
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to look around and he realizedthat Belgium didn't have a
colony like some other Europeannations.
So after some exploration andlooking around and networking
with some other people, he beganto make some relationships with
people who could go andcolonize the Congo on behalf of
the nation of Belgium.
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So he actually never went there, but he would send people down
and what was supposed to happenis supposed to be this mutually
beneficial relationship betweenBelgium and the Congo.
Sadly, everything was one sided.
Sadly everything was one-sided.
The people who would go onbehalf of Belgium and King
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Leopold.
They would go and enslave theCongolese men, women and
children to harvest ivory andrubber and if quotas were not
made, they would face torture,amputation of limbs or even
death.
Eventually, the sources forthese goods became more and more
scarce, but the demands didn'tlet up, which led to a near
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annihilation of the Congolesepeople.
So much so that when censuseswere performed in the early
1900s, there were almost entiregenerations of people missing
from the censuses.
Leopold, functionally claimingto be God, became increasingly
narcissistic and all sorts ofdysfunction plagued him and his
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family.
This may be a little bit toosimplistic, but let's think
about this from an oppositestandpoint.
Let's say that King Leopoldwasn't a fool.
But let's say that he was wiseand he saw his place in life as
a gift from God, his time andplace in history, that he was
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thankful for it, that he saw itas a free gift from God, that he
saw an opportunity to be ableto go and work with another
country was an opportunity to beable to benefit them and so
that righteousness might be ableto flourish.
But that isn't the case.
Few of us have the reach of aKing Leopold, but when we cease
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to be thankful and follow ourcorrupt hearts, we are no less
dangerous to the people in theworld around us.
The last half of verse 1 tellsus that what happens when we
cease to be thankful and we sayin our hearts that there is no
God?
It says that we are corrupt, wedo abominable deeds and there
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is none who does good.
One scholar says thatcorruption, mentioned here, is
the effect of denying God, andthat is that it means to spoil
or ruin or to act ruinlessly.
When we deny God because of theGod-shaped void in our hearts,
we must fill it with somethingwe either make ourselves God,
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others, god, creation, god orsome combination of the three,
and it has a corrupting effecton everything and everyone
around us.
1 Corinthians 15.33 says thatbad company corrupts good
character, and we normally usethat proverb to teach our kids,
to teach our youth, that youneed to be careful who you hang
around, and that's certainly anelement of truth.
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That you need to be careful whoyou hang around, and that's
certainly an element of truth.
But when I put myself and othersin the place of God, bad things
happen.
When I put myself in the placeof God or other things in the
place of God, I can corrupt theworld around me.
I'm putting myself in the placeof God when I try to control my
spouse, my kids and myco-workers rather than serving
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them, and when I make those samepeople gods, I put expectations
on them that will crush them.
We also do abominable deeds,which is the fruit that comes
from this corruption.
Just as I discussed, Imentioned the age of the
Enlightenment just a littlewhile ago, and it's fascinating
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to do a study on how thosephilosophies that found their
beginning in the late 17thcentury to the early 19th
century actually evolved and ledto what we saw happening in
World War II.
There's a direct line betweenwhat happened with the age of
enlightenment and the atrocitiesof the 20th century with the
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Communist Revolution, world WarII, the Holocaust and things
like that.
But we also do abominable deedsthrough our functional atheism.
We kill rather than promotelife and flourishing.
We lust after others ratherthan embracing the call of
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singleness or marriage that Godhas called us to.
We steal rather than beinggenerous as God has been
generous to us.
We lie rather than speak thetruth in love.
We long for more stuff ratherthan giving thanks for what we
have.
And then the third thing that'smentioned in that last phrase of
verse 1 is there is none whodoes good.
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We see this being articulatedin Isaiah 64.6.
It says even our greatest deedsare nothing more than filthy
rags in the sight of God.
Everything we do is tainted bysin.
There is nothing purer about us.
In other words, one can say Iserve the church not out of a
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heart of gratitude, but so thatothers may think more highly of
me.
I do nice things for my spouseso that they will show me
attention or just simply leaveme alone.
I parent my children not fortheir good and God's glory
before others, so other peoplemay think more highly of me and
my parenting and so that my kidswon't cause me any grief.
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Lord, help us.
We are so corrupt.
None of us do good.
None of us do good.
Next we will see that, whileevery last man, woman and child
is in this state of hostility,we will also begin to see a
glimmer of hope for God's brokenpeople, but also a horror for
those who do not know Him.
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It's no secret that funerals arehard.
Death may be a part of liferight now, but it's not supposed
to be that way.
It's part of living in a fallenand sinful world.
However, most of us know fromour own experience that there's
a big difference, an distinctdifference, between attending
the funeral of someone who knowsJesus and someone who doesn't.
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For those who belong to Jesus,it's a sad time.
It can be very, very sad, butthink about the service.
We give thanks to God for thatperson's life.
We give thanks to God forsaving them.
We give thanks for the workthat God did in their life to
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use them for His glory, for thegood of other people.
We give thanks for the factthat they are now their life to
use them for His glory, for thegood of other people.
We give thanks for the factthat they are now in the
presence of the Lord and we givethanks for the fact that one
day we will get to see themagain.
Did we see that hope?
On the other end, and I hate tosay that many times, even in my
own family, I've either led orattended a funeral of someone
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who does not have that hope.
Family have either led orattended a funeral of someone
who does not have that hope,leading a service of someone who
does not know Jesus Christ, andyou share Scripture and you try
to point them to Jesus, but thepresence of the Spirit doesn't
seem to be there.
There's no spiritual buoyancy,and when that funeral ends, it's
one of those somber things anyof us can ever experience and
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it's very, very sad.
That is where we're all headed.
Face death at some time oranother, hard things in life.
But there's a differencebetween those who know Christ
and those that don't.
And the reality is that forthose who know Christ, those who
belong to God and whom theyseek refuge, things may not get
better, but things may actuallyget more and more difficult.
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When we look here in verse fourit says evildoers who eat up my
people as they eat bread, andwhat this is saying is is that
there may be people doing thingshorrible to you because you are
a believer.
There may be people doingthings horrible to you because
you are a believer, and what itmeans is, though, they eat bread
.
It's referring to the fact thatso often it's just part of the
whoop and wharf of life.
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There's almost no thought thatgoes into it.
You just automatically gettrampled on.
Compare and contrast this withthis is when you have a nice
dinner, you have to think aboutwhat will pair well with the
entree, you think about whatsides go well with it, you enjoy
it and you reflect upon it.
You don't do that with bread.
You just eat it.
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And this is what it's saying isthe thoughtlessness that goes
about from those who do not knowthe Lord against God's people,
and it may seem that here, inthe here and now, that those
that are outside, outside of god, outside of his refuge, or
getting the upper hand, but itwill not always be that way.
As I was thinking about this,we think about how the fool, and
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we all do this, but there is adifference between those who
belong to god, who put theirfaith in him, and those that
don't.
But one day those who do notbelong to God will continue on
saying there's no God, there'sno God, there's no God.
And then we see the horror andwe see the terror at one day
when they come face to face withdeath and they say no God.
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You see the difference.
That's where we're all headed.
Do you belong to Him or do younot?
I have a pastor friend whoserves with a ministry that
works with campuses, at medicalschools and comes alongside
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young people.
It's a parachurch ministryComes alongside young men and
women's.
A parachurch ministry Comesalongside young men and women
who are training as doctors.
He tells this one story about afellow that was involved with
his ministry.
He was doing an oncologyrotation and there where he was
working, there was a man who wasstage 4 cancer, put on
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palliative care, which basicallymeans we're just trying to make
him comfortable, we're tryingto ease his pain until he
inevitably dies sooner ratherthan later.
And what they found was this oneparticular fellow is that he
was not going to sleep.
They gave him all sorts ofdrugs, they gave him all sorts
of things to try to get him togo to sleep, to try to rest, and
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he was fighting it, he wouldnot go to sleep.
To get him to go to sleep, totry to rest, and he was fighting
it, he would not go to sleep.
And finally, one day my friendsor this fellow, this young
doctor, went into this patient'sroom and said what's going on?
Why can't you go to sleep?
And he more or less said I'mafraid that if I go to sleep I'm
not going to wake up and if Idon't wake up I don't know where
I'm going to go.
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He sat down with him and toldhim about Jesus.
He told him about Jesusentering into our suffering.
He told about Jesus and how hepaid the penalty for our sins
and the things that we have donewrong and how that brings peace
between us and God and how,even though we may not
experience full healing here onthis earth, we can experience
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full healing in the presence ofthe Lord.
One day, and shortly after hehad this conversation with his
patient, the patient went tosleep and he got all sorts of
grief from some of the attendingphysicians initially because
they're saying what drug did yougive him?
What did you inject him?
You're not authorized to beable to do that.
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What did you do?
He said I just simply had aconversation with him and a few
short days later, that fellowpassed away and went into
eternity with his Lord.
Where does this hope come from?
And we see this in the verylast verse, verse 7.
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What is our hope for a foolishheart?
Many of you have seen the movie.
It's almost 30 years old.
Well, it is 30 years old now,the movie Apollo 13 that starred
Tom Hanks.
He portrays an astronaut namedJim Lovell.
They're on a spaceship to go tothe moon, hopefully be able to
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make a landing, be able to walkaround and eventually be able to
safely return to Earth.
But the problem is, on the wayto the moon, they have a
catastrophic failure of thespace capsule and they have to
cancel their moon landing.
And not only that, there's somedoubt as to whether they're
going to be able to arrive backhome.
So that's where the famous lineHouston, we have a problem come
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from.
And they're talking to Houstonand Houston figures out.
They've got these things onboard, they're able to
reconstruct it, be able to getthe capsule in good enough shape
to be able to bring it back toearth, which makes for a happy
ending.
The bad news for us is thatthere are not enough good things
within us to get us to safety,to bring us back home, to fix
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our own hearts.
We need someone outside of us.
That's why Jeremiah 17.9 saysthe heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately sick.
Who can understand it?
We see our hope here in verse 7.
Oh, that salvation for Israelwould come out of Zion.
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As I was processing this andthinking about how to explain
this wonderful promise, I wantus to work backwards.
I want us to look at the lastword of that first sentence Zion
.
It sounds like a very churchyword.
It's not something that we usevery often.
It's something that's in a lotof songs.
We're going to sing one here atthe end of the service, where
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that is.
But Zion is a literalgeographical place in Jerusalem
upon which a temple was built,and the temple was the dwelling
place for God.
It was a place where peoplewould go and meet with God and
His people, where they wouldexperience His special presence,
his Shekinah glory.
But that wasn't the end of it.
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It was a foretaste of somethinggreater God's eternal dwelling
place in heaven, from whichsalvation came.
And this salvation the Hebrewword for salvation right here is
Yeshua, where we get the namefor Jesus.
In other words, this psalmistis literally crying out for
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Jesus to come out of heaven, andthe good news is we see in the
New Testament that Jesus didjust that.
He doesn't leave us in ourfoolish state.
You see, when we readily saythere is no God, there is a
response from God Himself, whohas heard this cry and has sent
Jesus, our salvation, inresponse to the foolishness of
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our hearts.
He has sent the personificationof wisdom to answer our
foolishness, whereas ourfoolishness we have torched all
our relationships with God,others, creation and ourselves.
Jesus has come salvation fromheaven to restore all these
things and to bring true healing.
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It doesn't mean that life isgoing to get easier on earth,
and a lot of times for God'speople it gets harder.
But is there anything sweeterthan being connected with our
Lord through Jesus Christ, thepersonification of wisdom?
As a child of the 80's andpreparing for this, it was hard
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to read this passage and do allthe studying to see heart and
fool in the same passage andread it over and over again and
not be reminded of Steve Perry'sFoolish Heart song, and I
wonder why.
It kept on rattling in my headand I nearly paid a whole lot of
attention to the words.
I just always thought it waskind of a sappy romantic song.
And just out of curiosity, Ijust always thought it was kind
of a sappy romantic song.
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I just had a curiosity that Idecided to look it up.
And while he's definitelytalking about a romantic
relationship and how they failhim, steve Perry is created in
God's image and I think heexpresses some things here that
we all feel that can only be metthrough Jesus.
I'm not going to sing the songI'm going to spare you that and
I'm not going to read the whole,all the words.
But I'm not going to sing thesong.
I'm going to spare you that.
And I'm not going to read allthe words, but I'm going to read
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you enough to get an idea.
He says I need a love that grows.
I don't want it unless I knowthat each passing hour, someone
somehow will be there ready toshare.
I need a love that's strong.
I'm so tired of being alone.
But will my lonely heart playthe fool, play the part of the
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fool again before I begin?
Foolish heart, hear me calling.
Stop before you start falling.
Foolish heart, heed my warning.
You've been wrong before, don'tbe wrong anymore.
Jesus has come so that we don'thave to be wrong anymore.
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We find him, we find hisrighteousness.
He has come to rescue us fromour destructive foolishness that
has wreaked havoc on ourselvesand the world around us.
Don't be wrong anymore.
Come to know and trust Jesus.
Through Him, true wisdom,healing and life abundantly.
Let us pray, father in Heaven.
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We thank you for your Son,jesus Christ, the
personification of wisdom, whocame running after us when we
were actively running after Him.
Lord, may our hearts find restin you, may we see in Him true
wisdom and true life, and thatthrough Him that we can
experience true restoration ofrelationship with you, with
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others, ourselves and this worldthat You've created to point us
towards you.
And we pray all this in Jesus'name.
Amen.
Please turn your Bibles with me right now to
Psalm 14.
Psalm 14.
You may have it on anelectronic device.
We have it in a bulletin.
We also have printed copies ofGod's Word up in the windowsill.
If you would like to have acopy of God's Word, please feel
free to take one of those andit's yours.
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But while you're turning there,when I was in junior high I had
one of my favorite teachers andcoaches that I had through any
level of school that I attended.
He wasn't just a good teacher,he wasn't just a good coach.
What I appreciate about him somuch and really to this day when
I'm able to have contact withhim he genuinely cared about us
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as human beings.
He really cared about who wewere as people, not just how we
could perform in the classroom,not just how we could perform on
the athletic field, but that wewere growing and that we were
growing into mature men andwomen.
He was also the junior highbasketball coach, and while I
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didn't play basketball, I hadhim from some other sports.
But one of the things that weall know about basketball is is
that you can only have so manypeople on a team, in other words
, that you have to have tryoutsand you have to have kids who
are being cut.
And one of the things Iappreciated about him as I'd
hear about him when he'd have tocut people from tryouts is that
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he wouldn't do it through someimpersonal list.
He wouldn't do it from someother impersonal way, but he'd
come up to each individual, tellthem all the great things about
themselves truthfully, all thethings that they had done, all
their effort and that, and thenhe would break into the news of
I've got bad news, you haven'tmade a team.
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But then he would follow it upas a hey, here's some things you
can work on, here's someopportunities.
If you need some help, I'm hereto help you.
In a similar fashion, we need toview this psalm that's going to
have some hard things to say tous in light of what Jason
preached about on Psalm 8 lastweek.
Psalm 8 was a building up of usIn that we saw where we, as
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human beings who are created inGod's image, are crowned with
His glory.
We are a little bit lower thanthe angels.
We have dominion over thisuniverse that he has created,
and all those things are gracesthat have been given to us.
We bring nothing to the tablewith regards to those things.
We don't earn the crown thatGod gives us.
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We don't earn our status to belower than the angels.
We don't earn the fact that wehave dominion over the universe.
So that builds us up and thatprepares us for the hard news
that we're going to see in Psalm14.
These are some harsh realitiesthat we all face within
ourselves, living in a brokenworld.
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But at the same time, we'realso going to see in the last
verse of Psalm 14, that there'ssome awfully good news that God
doesn't leave us where we are,but he has come to rescue us.
So before we read this passage,let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father in Heaven, we thank youfor your Word, we thank you for
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your truthfulness, we thank youfor the fact that you remind us
of who we are as your imagebearers, and we also thank you
for the harsh reality of thefact of what we bring to the
table and that is nothing morethan our sin.
And we also thank you for yourSon, jesus Christ, that you have
sent into this world.
To address that, lord, as weread and study this passage, may
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you give us eyes to see andears to hear Him, the author and
the perfecter of our faith.
We pray all this in His name,amen, psalm 14.
We'll be reading all the verses, verses 1 through 7.
Hear the word of the Lord To thechoir master of David.
The fool says in his heartthere is no God.
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They are corrupt.
They do abominable deeds.
There is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heavenon the children of man to see
if there are any who understand,who seek after God.
They have all turned asideTogether.
They have become corrupt.
There is none who does good,not even one.
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Have they no knowledge?
All the evildoers who eat up mypeople as they eat bread and do
not call upon the Lord, therethey are in great terror.
For God is with the generationof the righteous.
He would shame the plans of thepoor, but the Lord is his
refuge.
Oh, that salvation for Israelwould come out of Zion.
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When the Lord restores thefortunes of his people.
Let Jacob rejoice.
Let Israel be glad.
Here is a reading of God's WordAt one church where I served a
number of years ago.
I was serving as an associatepastor and I would preach from
time to time, and after I gotthrough preaching, I always had
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this one fellow who was amiddle-aged fellow attorney,
very gregarious, big personality, the kind of guy who when he
was in a room, you knew it.
But I would also say that whenhe was there I was also very
happy to see him.
As a matter of fact, tellingthis story brings a smile to my
face.
Well, when I would get throughpreaching he'd come up and put
his hand on my shoulder.
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He says man, that was awonderful sermon.
I appreciate your preparation,I appreciate this and that.
And he said and there sure werean awful lot of people here in
the congregation that needed tohear that and we laugh at that.
But I think, if we're honestwith ourselves, there are
certain passages that we come toin the Bible where we say
that's not really for me, that'sfor someone else.
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And I think Psalm 14, by my ownadmission, is one that we can
read on a surface level andthink that very thing, as it
says, the fool said as, in heart, there is no God.
And you would say to ourselveswell, that's not me, I know that
there's a God.
And we think that it's speakingto the ardent atheists like
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Christopher Hitchens or RichardDawkins, an atheist professor in
a large lecture hall full ofuniversity students, a
self-described Marxist,advocates of communism, and the
list goes on and on.
But what we have to realize isthis first verse takes us to a
place that goes much deeper thanwhat may be written in books or
said in a lecture hall.
It says this the fool says inhis heart there is no God.
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In other words, this isn't justwhat comes out in books or
what's said verbally, butthere's a process that goes on
where we can actually befunctional atheists.
It's not talking about thepeople that I just had just
listed.
This is a universal problemthat we all have, and I'll
explain it this way.
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Atheism, like I just describedand gave examples of, is a
relatively new thing in the spanof human history.
This type of atheism finds itsgenesis in the late 1600s to the
early 1800s and what we havereferred to as the age of
enlightenment, which is actually2,700 years before I mean 2,700
years after this psalm waswritten.
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So if it's not referring tothat, if there's really no frame
of reference to that type ofatheism when this passage was
written, what if it's notreferring to that, if there's
really no frame of reference tothat type of atheism when this
passage was written.
What is it referring to?
I would argue that the real ageof enlightenment didn't start
in the late 1600s and go to theearly 1800s, it's actually.
We find it's Genesis in Genesis, chapter 3.
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In Genesis 1 and 2, we see ourfirst parents, adam and Eve, in
a perfect relationship with God,with each other, with creation
and themselves.
God told them that they werefree to enjoy everything that he
had created, that he would havedominion over all of creation,
except for one thing not to eatof the tree of the knowledge of
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good and evil, because in thatday they would die.
And there wasn't anythingmagical about that tree.
It was simply there to remindthem that God was God and they
were not him.
But Genesis 3, satan, in theform of a certain serpent, comes
along and says did God reallysay?
He?
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Puts doubts in their hearts andtheir minds, convinces them that
God is suppressing them and, assuch, they cease to be thankful
for the good life that God hadgiven them, as Romans 1 says,
beginning with verse 21, for allof a new God.
They did not honor Him as Godor give thanks to Him, but they
became futile in their thinkingand their foolish hearts were
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darkened.
Claiming to be wise, theybecame fools and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God forimages resembling mortal men and
birds and animals and creepingthings.
As such.
What we have been has beentranspiring ever since is not a
total jettisoning of a God,because we see throughout human
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history that there has alwaysbeen a worship of a God or gods.
What this is jettisoning is thenotion that we have the God of
the Bible.
It's leaving him, the God ofthe Bible, the God of Abraham,
isaac and Jacob and, because ofour sin, the ones who are
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created in His image.
We have attempted to create Godin our own image and, as such,
we become functional atheists.
And every time we sin, we aredenying the God of the Bible.
Every time we sin, we aresaying in our hearts, as fools,
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that there is no God.
When we embrace created thingsmore readily than our Creator,
we are saying in our hearts thatthere is no God.
When we say that we can live aGod-honoring life apart from His
people, we are saying thatthere is no God.
When we say that we can live aGod-honoring life apart from His
people, we are saying thatthere is no God.
When we go about leading thechurch, loving our spouses,
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parenting our children on thebasis of our own wisdom and
power rather than God's, we arefunctionally saying that there
is no God.
Verses 2 and 3 gives usperspective on our lives and who
we are and what God sees.
And a couple weeks ago I wasreading a book by Chad Bird,
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upside Down Spirituality, whichis a great book if you have time
to read it.
And he actually quotes EugenePeterson's paraphrase from the
message on these two verses,which I found very providential
as I was going to be preparingfor this sermon a week later.
And this is how Eugene Petersonparaphrases verses 2 and 3.
God sticks his head out ofheaven.
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He looks around.
He's looking for someone, notstupid, one man, even
God-expected, just one God-readywoman.
He comes up empty a string ofzeros, useless, unshepherded
sheep taking turns pretending tobe the shepherd.
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The 99 follow their fellow.
That's a rough way of saying it,but it is indeed a way of
saying it, and not only is itvery strong language, but we
find it repeated throughoutscripture.
Whenever we hear god saysomething one time, it's worth,
uh, taking is taking very, veryseriously, as serious as
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anything when you hear godsaying something twice, it
really gets our attention.
And then when he says somethingthree times, it's repeated in
such a way it's like I don'treally have human words for this
to help you see the gravity ofthis.
And what we see here is that wesee Psalm 14, which there's an
awful lot of gravity to thatthis being God's word but then
it's repeated almost verbatim inPsalm 53.
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And then you see some of thesesame verses and some of these
same themes repeated again inRomans 1 and Romans 3.
So here it is we see thesethemes repeated three times,
almost verbatim, in God's Word.
This is so important to hearand it's important especially
for us as those in the church.
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Francis Schaeffer, the greatpastor, theologian and apologist
of the 20th century, wrote apiece in 1974 that was entitled
the Lord's Work and the Lord'sWay, and he said this the
central problem of our age isnot liberalism or modernism, nor
the old Roman Catholicism orthe new Roman Catholicism, nor
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the threat of communism, noreven the threat of rationalism
or monolithic consensus whichsurrounds us.
All these are dangerous, butnot the primary threat.
The real problem is this thechurch of the Lord Jesus Christ,
individually or corporately,tending to do the Lord's work in
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the power of the flesh ratherthan of the Spirit.
The central problem is alwaysin the midst of God's people,
not in the circumstancessurrounding them.
We all have problems withfunctional atheism In our hearts
.
We're continually saying atvery, very many turns, often at
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all turns on some level, thatthere is no God.
And to help us to see thesehard truths about ourselves, to
come face to face with thesefacts, and also to see the hope
that God gives us in JesusChrist, I want us to look at
three things First, thehostility of our foolish heart.
Second, the horror of ourfoolish heart.
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And then, third, the hope ofour foolish heart.
And then, third, the hope forour foolish heart.
From 1865 to 1909, there was aman who went by King Leopold II,
who was the king of theBelgians, obviously king of
Belgium, but he went by king ofBelgians and he had pretty much
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everything that he could everwant from a human standpoint.
He was born into royalty, hadlots at his disposal and from a
human standpoint,materialistically, he could have
lived a very peaceful life, butit wasn't enough.
As he got a little bit older,in the 1870s, 1880s, he started
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to look around and he realizedthat Belgium didn't have a
colony like some other Europeannations.
So after some exploration andlooking around and networking
with some other people, he beganto make some relationships with
people who could go andcolonize the Congo on behalf of
the nation of Belgium.
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So he actually never went there, but he would send people down
and what was supposed to happenis supposed to be this mutually
beneficial relationship betweenBelgium and the Congo.
Sadly, everything was one sided.
Sadly everything was one-sided.
The people who would go onbehalf of Belgium and King
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Leopold.
They would go and enslave theCongolese men, women and
children to harvest ivory andrubber and if quotas were not
made, they would face torture,amputation of limbs or even
death.
Eventually, the sources forthese goods became more and more
scarce, but the demands didn'tlet up, which led to a near
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annihilation of the Congolesepeople.
So much so that when censuseswere performed in the early
1900s, there were almost entiregenerations of people missing
from the censuses.
Leopold, functionally claimingto be God, became increasingly
narcissistic and all sorts ofdysfunction plagued him and his
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family.
This may be a little bit toosimplistic, but let's think
about this from an oppositestandpoint.
Let's say that King Leopoldwasn't a fool.
But let's say that he was wiseand he saw his place in life as
a gift from God, his time andplace in history, that he was
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thankful for it, that he saw itas a free gift from God, that he
saw an opportunity to be ableto go and work with another
country was an opportunity to beable to benefit them and so
that righteousness might be ableto flourish.
But that isn't the case.
Few of us have the reach of aKing Leopold, but when we cease
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to be thankful and follow ourcorrupt hearts, we are no less
dangerous to the people in theworld around us.
The last half of verse 1 tellsus that what happens when we
cease to be thankful and we sayin our hearts that there is no
God?
It says that we are corrupt, wedo abominable deeds and there
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is none who does good.
One scholar says thatcorruption, mentioned here, is
the effect of denying God, andthat is that it means to spoil
or ruin or to act ruinlessly.
When we deny God because of theGod-shaped void in our hearts,
we must fill it with somethingwe either make ourselves God,
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others, god, creation, god orsome combination of the three,
and it has a corrupting effecton everything and everyone
around us.
1 Corinthians 15.33 says thatbad company corrupts good
character, and we normally usethat proverb to teach our kids,
to teach our youth, that youneed to be careful who you hang
around, and that's certainly anelement of truth.
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That you need to be careful whoyou hang around, and that's
certainly an element of truth.
But when I put myself and othersin the place of God, bad things
happen.
When I put myself in the placeof God or other things in the
place of God, I can corrupt theworld around me.
I'm putting myself in the placeof God when I try to control my
spouse, my kids and myco-workers rather than serving
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them, and when I make those samepeople gods, I put expectations
on them that will crush them.
We also do abominable deeds,which is the fruit that comes
from this corruption.
Just as I discussed, Imentioned the age of the
Enlightenment just a littlewhile ago, and it's fascinating
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to do a study on how thosephilosophies that found their
beginning in the late 17thcentury to the early 19th
century actually evolved and ledto what we saw happening in
World War II.
There's a direct line betweenwhat happened with the age of
enlightenment and the atrocitiesof the 20th century with the
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Communist Revolution, world WarII, the Holocaust and things
like that.
But we also do abominable deedsthrough our functional atheism.
We kill rather than promotelife and flourishing.
We lust after others ratherthan embracing the call of
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singleness or marriage that Godhas called us to.
We steal rather than beinggenerous as God has been
generous to us.
We lie rather than speak thetruth in love.
We long for more stuff ratherthan giving thanks for what we
have.
And then the third thing that'smentioned in that last phrase of
verse 1 is there is none whodoes good.
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We see this being articulatedin Isaiah 64.6.
It says even our greatest deedsare nothing more than filthy
rags in the sight of God.
Everything we do is tainted bysin.
There is nothing purer about us.
In other words, one can say Iserve the church not out of a
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heart of gratitude, but so thatothers may think more highly of
me.
I do nice things for my spouseso that they will show me
attention or just simply leaveme alone.
I parent my children not fortheir good and God's glory
before others, so other peoplemay think more highly of me and
my parenting and so that my kidswon't cause me any grief.
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Lord, help us.
We are so corrupt.
None of us do good.
None of us do good.
Next we will see that, whileevery last man, woman and child
is in this state of hostility,we will also begin to see a
glimmer of hope for God's brokenpeople, but also a horror for
those who do not know Him.
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It's no secret that funerals arehard.
Death may be a part of liferight now, but it's not supposed
to be that way.
It's part of living in a fallenand sinful world.
However, most of us know fromour own experience that there's
a big difference, an distinctdifference, between attending
the funeral of someone who knowsJesus and someone who doesn't.
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For those who belong to Jesus,it's a sad time.
It can be very, very sad, butthink about the service.
We give thanks to God for thatperson's life.
We give thanks to God forsaving them.
We give thanks for the workthat God did in their life to
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use them for His glory, for thegood of other people.
We give thanks for the factthat they are now their life to
use them for His glory, for thegood of other people.
We give thanks for the factthat they are now in the
presence of the Lord and we givethanks for the fact that one
day we will get to see themagain.
Did we see that hope?
On the other end, and I hate tosay that many times, even in my
own family, I've either led orattended a funeral of someone
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who does not have that hope.
Family have either led orattended a funeral of someone
who does not have that hope,leading a service of someone who
does not know Jesus Christ, andyou share Scripture and you try
to point them to Jesus, but thepresence of the Spirit doesn't
seem to be there.
There's no spiritual buoyancy,and when that funeral ends, it's
one of those somber things anyof us can ever experience and
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it's very, very sad.
That is where we're all headed.
Face death at some time oranother, hard things in life.
But there's a differencebetween those who know Christ
and those that don't.
And the reality is that forthose who know Christ, those who
belong to God and whom theyseek refuge, things may not get
better, but things may actuallyget more and more difficult.
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When we look here in verse fourit says evildoers who eat up my
people as they eat bread, andwhat this is saying is is that
there may be people doing thingshorrible to you because you are
a believer.
There may be people doingthings horrible to you because
you are a believer, and what itmeans is, though, they eat bread
.
It's referring to the fact thatso often it's just part of the
whoop and wharf of life.
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There's almost no thought thatgoes into it.
You just automatically gettrampled on.
Compare and contrast this withthis is when you have a nice
dinner, you have to think aboutwhat will pair well with the
entree, you think about whatsides go well with it, you enjoy
it and you reflect upon it.
You don't do that with bread.
You just eat it.
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And this is what it's saying isthe thoughtlessness that goes
about from those who do not knowthe Lord against God's people,
and it may seem that here, inthe here and now, that those
that are outside, outside of god, outside of his refuge, or
getting the upper hand, but itwill not always be that way.
As I was thinking about this,we think about how the fool, and
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we all do this, but there is adifference between those who
belong to god, who put theirfaith in him, and those that
don't.
But one day those who do notbelong to God will continue on
saying there's no God, there'sno God, there's no God.
And then we see the horror andwe see the terror at one day
when they come face to face withdeath and they say no God.
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You see the difference.
That's where we're all headed.
Do you belong to Him or do younot?
I have a pastor friend whoserves with a ministry that
works with campuses, at medicalschools and comes alongside
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young people.
It's a parachurch ministryComes alongside young men and
women's.
A parachurch ministry Comesalongside young men and women
who are training as doctors.
He tells this one story about afellow that was involved with
his ministry.
He was doing an oncologyrotation and there where he was
working, there was a man who wasstage 4 cancer, put on
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palliative care, which basicallymeans we're just trying to make
him comfortable, we're tryingto ease his pain until he
inevitably dies sooner ratherthan later.
And what they found was this oneparticular fellow is that he
was not going to sleep.
They gave him all sorts ofdrugs, they gave him all sorts
of things to try to get him togo to sleep, to try to rest, and
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he was fighting it, he wouldnot go to sleep.
To get him to go to sleep, totry to rest, and he was fighting
it, he would not go to sleep.
And finally, one day my friendsor this fellow, this young
doctor, went into this patient'sroom and said what's going on?
Why can't you go to sleep?
And he more or less said I'mafraid that if I go to sleep I'm
not going to wake up and if Idon't wake up I don't know where
I'm going to go.
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He sat down with him and toldhim about Jesus.
He told him about Jesusentering into our suffering.
He told about Jesus and how hepaid the penalty for our sins
and the things that we have donewrong and how that brings peace
between us and God and how,even though we may not
experience full healing here onthis earth, we can experience
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full healing in the presence ofthe Lord.
One day, and shortly after hehad this conversation with his
patient, the patient went tosleep and he got all sorts of
grief from some of the attendingphysicians initially because
they're saying what drug did yougive him?
What did you inject him?
You're not authorized to beable to do that.
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What did you do?
He said I just simply had aconversation with him and a few
short days later, that fellowpassed away and went into
eternity with his Lord.
Where does this hope come from?
And we see this in the verylast verse, verse 7.
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What is our hope for a foolishheart?
Many of you have seen the movie.
It's almost 30 years old.
Well, it is 30 years old now,the movie Apollo 13 that starred
Tom Hanks.
He portrays an astronaut namedJim Lovell.
They're on a spaceship to go tothe moon, hopefully be able to
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make a landing, be able to walkaround and eventually be able to
safely return to Earth.
But the problem is, on the wayto the moon, they have a
catastrophic failure of thespace capsule and they have to
cancel their moon landing.
And not only that, there's somedoubt as to whether they're
going to be able to arrive backhome.
So that's where the famous lineHouston, we have a problem come
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from.
And they're talking to Houstonand Houston figures out.
They've got these things onboard, they're able to
reconstruct it, be able to getthe capsule in good enough shape
to be able to bring it back toearth, which makes for a happy
ending.
The bad news for us is thatthere are not enough good things
within us to get us to safety,to bring us back home, to fix
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our own hearts.
We need someone outside of us.
That's why Jeremiah 17.9 saysthe heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately sick.
Who can understand it?
We see our hope here in verse 7.
Oh, that salvation for Israelwould come out of Zion.
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As I was processing this andthinking about how to explain
this wonderful promise, I wantus to work backwards.
I want us to look at the lastword of that first sentence Zion
.
It sounds like a very churchyword.
It's not something that we usevery often.
It's something that's in a lotof songs.
We're going to sing one here atthe end of the service, where
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that is.
But Zion is a literalgeographical place in Jerusalem
upon which a temple was built,and the temple was the dwelling
place for God.
It was a place where peoplewould go and meet with God and
His people, where they wouldexperience His special presence,
his Shekinah glory.
But that wasn't the end of it.
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It was a foretaste of somethinggreater God's eternal dwelling
place in heaven, from whichsalvation came.
And this salvation the Hebrewword for salvation right here is
Yeshua, where we get the namefor Jesus.
In other words, this psalmistis literally crying out for
(29:08):
Jesus to come out of heaven, andthe good news is we see in the
New Testament that Jesus didjust that.
He doesn't leave us in ourfoolish state.
You see, when we readily saythere is no God, there is a
response from God Himself, whohas heard this cry and has sent
Jesus, our salvation, inresponse to the foolishness of
(29:32):
our hearts.
He has sent the personificationof wisdom to answer our
foolishness, whereas ourfoolishness we have torched all
our relationships with God,others, creation and ourselves.
Jesus has come salvation fromheaven to restore all these
things and to bring true healing.
(29:52):
It doesn't mean that life isgoing to get easier on earth,
and a lot of times for God'speople it gets harder.
But is there anything sweeterthan being connected with our
Lord through Jesus Christ, thepersonification of wisdom?
As a child of the 80's andpreparing for this, it was hard
(30:16):
to read this passage and do allthe studying to see heart and
fool in the same passage andread it over and over again and
not be reminded of Steve Perry'sFoolish Heart song, and I
wonder why.
It kept on rattling in my headand I nearly paid a whole lot of
attention to the words.
I just always thought it waskind of a sappy romantic song.
And just out of curiosity, Ijust always thought it was kind
of a sappy romantic song.
(30:36):
I just had a curiosity that Idecided to look it up.
And while he's definitelytalking about a romantic
relationship and how they failhim, steve Perry is created in
God's image and I think heexpresses some things here that
we all feel that can only be metthrough Jesus.
I'm not going to sing the songI'm going to spare you that and
I'm not going to read the whole,all the words.
But I'm not going to sing thesong.
I'm going to spare you that.
And I'm not going to read allthe words, but I'm going to read
(30:57):
you enough to get an idea.
He says I need a love that grows.
I don't want it unless I knowthat each passing hour, someone
somehow will be there ready toshare.
I need a love that's strong.
I'm so tired of being alone.
But will my lonely heart playthe fool, play the part of the
(31:21):
fool again before I begin?
Foolish heart, hear me calling.
Stop before you start falling.
Foolish heart, heed my warning.
You've been wrong before, don'tbe wrong anymore.
Jesus has come so that we don'thave to be wrong anymore.
(31:42):
We find him, we find hisrighteousness.
He has come to rescue us fromour destructive foolishness that
has wreaked havoc on ourselvesand the world around us.
Don't be wrong anymore.
Come to know and trust Jesus.
Through Him, true wisdom,healing and life abundantly.
Let us pray, father in Heaven.
(32:07):
We thank you for your Son,jesus Christ, the
personification of wisdom, whocame running after us when we
were actively running after Him.
Lord, may our hearts find restin you, may we see in Him true
wisdom and true life, and thatthrough Him that we can
experience true restoration ofrelationship with you, with
(32:30):
others, ourselves and this worldthat You've created to point us
towards you.
And we pray all this in Jesus'name.
Amen.
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