"Tracks 14, 15, & 53: No God, or Know God? (Psalm 14-15, 53)" | 6/30/24
I love being a parent, for MANY reasons, but one of them is all of the SPIRITUAL insight that parenting has given me into my own relationship with God. Just this past weekend, I was pondering how I might open this sermon, a good illustration to introduce our psalms for this morning, when Bo, my 19-month old came running into the living room, hanging onto the dog’s tail; if he’d had SOCKS on, he would’ve been legit SKIING down the hardwood, using poor Bentley’s tail as the ROPE. She was MISERABLE; Bo was having the time of his LIFE!
So of course I YELLED – “BO!” And he dropped her tail and LOOKED at me.
And I said, “NO pulling Bentley’s tail; come here to DADDY.”
And he STOOD there for a second, looking at me. He turned his head, and looked back at the DOG… then back at me.
And it was one of those PERFECT parenting moments, where I felt like I could see EXACTLY what was going on inside his little 19-month old brain in real time:
“But… But… pulling the dog’s tail is so much FUN…
But at the SAME time, I don’t want DAD to be mad at me…”
Psalms 14 & 15 confront us with this same CHOICE this morning. There are essentially TWO ways you can live your life. And let’s all just admit THIS up front too: that spiritually speaking, we are often a lot more like our 19-month old toddlers than we’d care to admit. How often do you SIN without even REALIZING it. Look - I don’t think my son is a PSYCHOPATH; I don’t think he thought to himself, “Hey, it would bring me great JOY to inflict PAIN on this animal”; he wasn’t thinking about HER at ALL. But how often do you find yourself just living life when God has to say, “HEY! STOP it!”
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Last Sunday in Psalm 12 I preached about how the WICKED use their words. I told you flattery is saying something to someone’s face that you’d never say behind their back, and GOSSIP is saying something behind their BACK that you wouldn’t say to their face. And I encouraged us to run our OWN words through that same litmus test. Well, Sunday EVENING we were at the soccer game, casually chatting, and I made a snide, disparaging remark about someone who wasn’t present. And it just didn’t SIT right with me. On the drive HOME, it was like the Holy Spirit was shouting at me, “WILL! STOP it!”
So now I’ve got a CHOICE to make: God is saying, “Don’t you go BACK over there and pull that dog’s tail AGAIN now; come HERE instead… come to ME.”
Friends: ALL of us have this decision to make, a THOUSAND times a day: we decide whether to live our lives as if there is NO God, or will we live in order to KNOW God. Do I WANT there to be NO God, or do I want to KNOW God?
You can’t have it both ways. God will make it ABUNDANTLY clear in Psalm 15 here in just a moment, that if you WANT to know Him - and I mean “KNOW” him; not know ABOUT Him; Jesus said LOTS of people are gonna show up at the pearly gates believing all the right stuff ABOUT him in their HEADS - they were doctrinally-sound - but they will have to hear Jesus say to them: “Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ ‘I never knew you” (Matt 7:23). And YOU never truly knew ME, or else you would’ve left the dog alone and come to ME instead.
Similarly, GOD will say in Psalm 15: “WHO can be in my holy presence? Come LIVE with me in heaven? “He who walks BLAMELESSLY.” It’s a binary choice: it’s ME or the dog; you can’t have it both ways. Do you want intimacy, closeness, relationship, fellowship, connection… Do you want ME? Or do you want your SIN?
And Psalm 14 paints for us a VIVID picture of the FOOL, the one who answers: “I want my SIN. I WANT there to be NO God.”
And then Psalm 15 offers us a portrait of the BLAMELESS, the one who wants more than ANYTHING else to know and be known by his loving heavenly Father.
And then AFTER we’ve examined BOTH of these characterizations extensively, I’m gonna warn you up front about the PERSONAL turn we’re gonna make at the end, the question we must ALL consider here (that way you can be asking it THROUGHOUT our study as we work our way through): “Which of these two people am I?” “Am I the blameless one, or the FOOL?” “Would I rather KNOW God, or there BE no God?”
One last note before we read it: you’ll notice I’ve included Psalm 53 as well. We’re not going to read all of it, because it’s almost IDENTICAL to Psalm 14, with two slight variations. Psalm 14 uses God’s personal, covenantal name, YHWH - your Bible translates it “the LORD” in all-caps, four times. But Psalm 53 employs the more generic title for God - “Elohim” - probably to avoid any confusion about the fool BEING in covenantal relationship with God; he’s NOT! And the second difference between Psalms 14 & 53 comes in v6, which is worded differently, and we’ll look at that closer when we get there.
I invite you to STAND with me… Psalms 14-15:
“Ch14 - To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?5 There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.7 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.Ch15 - A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart;
3 who does not slander with his tongue
and does no evil to his neighbor,
nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
but who honors those who fear the Lord;
who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 who does not put out his money at interest
and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.”[This is the word of the Lord… Seated…]
The first portrait David paints here, in ch14, is of the FOOL: Those who - #1 - want NO God (14:1-6; 53:1-5)
Now, I say they WANT there to be no God. Think back to that Thomas Nagel quote, the famous 20th c. American philosopher and atheist I mentioned a few Sundays ago now, who said, “I want atheism to be true… It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God… It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God.” THAT is the “fool” Psalm 14 is addressing. How do we KNOW? 3 reasons:
For STARTERS, I think there’s a biblical case to be made that there really IS no such thing as a TRUE, genuine atheist. They say, “There are no atheists in foxholes”; God’s WORD seems to indicate that you don’t even REALLY have to be in a CRISIS to come face to face with the undeniable FACT of GOD. That deep down, we ALL know he’s there; listen to how Romans 1 puts it; it says that “by their unrighteousness [some people try and] suppress the truth. [It doesn’t say they’re IGNORANT of the truth about God; No - they SUPPRESS it. They try to DENY and IGNORE and STIFLE it, but deep down, we all KNOW the truth: that there really IS a God. That’s why, looking back at Psalm 14 for a moment, v5 describes these evildoers as being “in GREAT TERROR”. They wouldn’t be so TERRIFIED if they TRULY believed there was no God to hold them morally accountable for their treachery.
But back in Romans 1 now, Paul continues…] 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes… have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. [No one can claim IGNORANCE of God; you can try and IGNORE and SUPPRESS the truth, cuz maybe you don’t LIKE it; maybe like Nagel: you don’t WANT there to be a God. But your not WANTING God to exist doesn’t make him any less real than the detained criminal who didn’t WANT there to be a COP there at the scene of his crime - believe whatever you want, but you’re living in a DELUSION if you look around this place for more than 3 seconds without deducing that there MUST be an extremely powerful, intelligent CREATOR behind all of this. We ALL know it! Paul concludes:] 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him… their foolish hearts were darkened.” (vv18-21)
And that brings us to the SECOND proof that fools don’t WANT there to be a God: WHERE is this fool’s alleged atheism located; look back at Psalm 14, v1: “The fool says in his… MIND?” No - he says “in his HEART, ‘There is no God.’”
I’ve got a friend, Grant, one of my favorite students from Culver, the boarding school I worked at, who believes - I think as much as anyone possibly CAN believe -in his MIND that there is no God, at least no PERSONAL God; to return to Romans 1- he admits: “The god of DEISM, I’ll grant you. An intelligent Creator makes more sense than a whole universe popping into existence out of NOTHING. But why believe He cares about us?”
Here’s the thing, though: Grant has ALSO admitted to me: “I WANT to believe in God. I SEE what you have, and I know it would bring me great peace and joy and HOPE to believe in a God who cares about me. But I just can’t get my HEAD around it.”
By the way: Grant is pretty BRILLIANT; probably one of the smarter people I KNOW; the REASON he “can’t get his head around” the idea of God ISN’T because of some intellectual deficiency; quite the opposite. Atheists generally score higher on IQ tests than believers. MOST of them are TOO smart for their own good.
But my point in mentioning GRANT is that there seem to be SOME people out there who have not so much REJECTED God in their HEART as they are still trying to make SENSE of him in their HEADS. And I DON’T think that’s who God is TALKING about here in Psalm 14. He’s talking about the Thomas Nagels. The ones who don’t WANT there to be a God.”
It’s interesting, there are actually THREE words in the OT - in Hebrew - for “FOOL”; Warren Wiersbe explains: “kesyl [refers to] the dull and stupid fool; eviyl (“ev-EEL”) [is] the unreasonable and perverted fool; and nabal [is] the brutish person who is like a stubborn animal. Nabal is the word used here in v1… The nabal fool has a moral problem in the heart, not a mental problem in the head. The evangelist Billy Sunday used to [use the same example I stole from him a moment ago; he’d] say that sinners can’t find God for the same reason criminals can’t find policemen - they aren’t looking!” (Wiersbe, 888).
I believe that Grant is looking for God. So I PRAY for him, I pray that God’s promise for his people Israel in Jeremiah 29:13 would be true for Grant, where God declares “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart”.
But the nabal fool doesn’t seek God at ALL; why? Because his HEART is in the wrong place. And where is his HEART?
Well, that’s a THIRD reason I claim “fools don’t WANT there to be a God”; consider the overarching CONTEXT of ch14: we all KNOW God is there, deep down; so why does the fool TELL himself, consistently preach to his own HEART, trying to CONVINCE himself that “there is no God”? Why?
So that he can LIVE that way! As a FUNCTIONAL atheist. Because if there IS no God, then he can BE “corrupt”; he can DO “abominable deeds”; he can seek his OWN glory instead of God’s; he can “eat up” others and “shame the poor” - he can do ALL of it… without any CONSEQUENCES.
That’s why fools don’t want there to be a God. And why they live their lives, practically speaking, as if there ISN’T one: it is to EXCUSE, to rationalize, to justify their SIN.
Let’s look even closer now at David’s description of the FOOL; 4 traits that typify the person who WANTS there to be “no God”; they are:
1a- WICKED (14:1; 53:1) - “they do abominable deeds; they are corrupt”. “The Hebrew word [there, corrupt] means ‘rotten, putrid, decayed.’ It’s used [elsewhere] to describe… milk that has become rancid.” (Wiersbe, 888)
That’s a POWERFUL image, isn’t it? 2 things I think we GLEAN from that description:
First, that God has the same kind of visceral reaction to our SIN that you and I have to rancid milk. We’ve all been there: you come home from vacation, and you forgot to throw out the milk. But you’re STARVING and you don’t have any OTHER groceries in the fridge. So you check the expiration date: “Ehhh… 10 days ago… But I barely OPENED it before I left; maybe it saved; let me just SMELL it…” So you screw off the cap… and as I’m painting this picture for you, you can SMELL it, even NOW, can’t you? That’s a smell that is BURNED in the nostrils of everyone who has ever made the mistake of performing that smell-test, on rancid milk.
That is God’s reaction to SIN. And not just SIN; but to be more precise, according to v1 here, it doesn’t say “the fool’s DEEDS are corrupt”; No- the FOOL is corrupt. Rotten. Putrid. Rancid.
Psalm 11 last week informed us that “[God’s] soul hates the wicked” (v5).
But the OTHER thing we learn from this description is WHY God is so disgusted by the wicked: God hates SPOILED milk so much because He LOVES GOOD milk so much! Think about it: next, you check the VEGGIE drawer, and you see that the squash and zucchinis have all turned to MUSH too. But you don’t pull them out of the ziplock and start rinsing them off to see if they can be salvaged, do you? You don’t think TWICE about throwing THEM out - Why?
Because squash & zucchinis are disgusting ANYWAY. Your wife keeps buying them aspirationally - she WANTS y’all to like them; so you’ll eat healthier; maybe you’ll try it for the 100th time THAT time you’ll decide you actually ENJOY the taste of semisolid BABY food. But you know inevitably you’re gonna end up throwing out the squash & zucchinis ANYWAY, cuz they’re GROSS.
But good milk is DELICIOUS. But that only makes it WORSE when milk goes BAD. You HATE having to throw IT away!
Friends: God’s word is absolutely CLEAR: He WILL throw OUT the wicked, those “foolish” REBELS who in their sin, REJECT God; who don’t just dis-BELIEVE in God, but who callously and defiantly dis-REGARD God; those who dis-DAIN God and would therefore dis-MISS, dis-PEL, and dis-POSE of God.
God says, “I will dispose of THEM.”
But God is EQUALLY clear that he won’t ENJOY having to DO it.
In Ezekiel 33:11, God says “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked would turn from his way and live; turn back! Turn back from your evil ways,” declares the Lord.
2 Peter 3:9 tells us that “[God] is patient toward [sinners], not wishing that any should perish, [be “thrown out”] but rather that all should reach repentance.”
See that’s the big difference between US and MILK, friends, or more precisely, between us and GOD: Once MILK goes bad, there’s no way that YOU AND I are bringing it BACK. But here’s the good news: GOD can take even the most corrupt, rotten, spoiled, decaying, putrid SINNER - even ME! even YOU! - and GOD has the power to REDEEM us - to CHANGE us, all the way down at the CELLULAR level, the SPIRITUAL level; our SOULS; the very CORE of us - I’m not talking about the behavior modification that RELIGION offers; I’m talking about the BEING transformation that only a RELATIONSHIP with the living GOD can offer - “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17). God WANTS that - that NEW IDENTITY, that new LIFE - for YOU, for EVERYONE, he says; “I don’t wanna throw ANY milk out; I take no PLEASURE in doing it,” he says. And I can and WILL redeem and RESTORE you, he says. But only IF - what were his conditions? In BOTH of the passages I just read?
“The wicked must TURN BACK from their evil ways!” “I don’t WANT you to “PERISH”, but the only way to AVOID it is to REACH REPENTANCE.” True, genuine REMORSE for your sin. You need to see your sin the way I see it, God says: like rancid milk in the refrigerator of your heart, and PURGE it!
With SOME of you, God is even MORE gracious; he makes your sin smell like rotting SQUASH. You’re like, “Why did I even buy that in the FIRST place?! I can’t believe I EVER thought I’d enjoy that…” For ME, I’ll be honest: sin is more like the rancid MILK. Like, “Yeah, I can SEE why I bought it. It USED to taste good. And every now and then I’ll even still TRY a sip, THINKING maybe it’ll still taste good again… UGH! Nope; near instant stomach ache. Retching; why’d I DRINK that?! Throw it OUT…”
But that’s the CHOICE, friends: throw out the SIN in your life - repent, turn BACK - or BE thrown out by GOD. Keep running after your SIN, pulling the dog’s TAIL, or stop and listen to your heavenly Father, inviting you - BECKONING you - to come running back into HIS loving arms instead.
Unfortunately, the FOOL has MADE his choice. He is wicked, and it’s because, secondly now, he is (1b) LOST (14:2-3; 53:2-3).
V2 says: “The Lord looks down to see if there are ANY who UNDERSTAND”, or “who act WISELY”; any who seek after GOD.
And what does He FIND? “They have all turned aside… ALL become rancid; there is none who does good, not even one.”
They’re LOST. As 2 Corinthians 4:4 puts it: “the “god” of this world [SATAN] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the GOSPEL of the glory of Christ”.
They are BLINDED, LOST. It’s not just that they haven’t FOUND God; as Billy Sunday said - as v2 points out - they’re not even LOOKING for God. Moreover, they’ve become so CORRUPT, they wouldn’t even know what to DO with God, if they DID find him. Because, as Jesus put it in John 3: “darkness HATES the light.” It really is possible to be so WICKED, according to 2 Corinthians 2, that even the IDEA of knowing God, the “fragrance of the KNOWLEDGE of God”, in the nostrils of the wicked, smells like “the aroma of DEATH”, Paul says.
All they smell… all they see… all they HEAR… in Christ’s call to come to him and KNOW him is DEATH. And it’s TRUE - Jesus’ call IS a call to DIE. He says, “If anyone would follow me, he must take up his CROSS, and DIE to himself DAILY… He must lose his LIFE for MY sake.” But THEN, Jesus promises: “...you’ll truly FIND life.” Life - REAL life, life to the FULLEST, ETERNAL life - is found only in CHRIST, only on the OTHER side of dying to YOURSELF.
But fools are BLINDED to the new and better life that Jesus offers us; they see a relationship with him only as DEATH.
Not REALIZING that the path they’re ON is the one that TRULY leads to DEATH. Romans 6 reminds us: “you were [once] slaves of sin… And the end of those things is death!” (v21). If you keep walking down that path, God warns, you’ll eventually walk right off the CLIFF! But fools can’t SEE it; Psalm 14, v4 laments: “Have they no KNOWLEDGE, all the evildoers”?! Can’t they SEE, where this path is ultimately LEADING them?
Sadly, no they CAN’T; cuz they’re BLIND. Lost.
And IN their blindness, the wicked are completely (1c) SELF-CENTERED (14:4; 53:4).
Do you remember the Greatest Commandments, according to Jesus? God’s top TWO, on which all the Law & Prophets hang?
1) Love GOD, and 2) Love OTHERS.
Look at how God describes these fools now in v4; they “eat up my people like bread”, and they “do not call upon the Lord?”
Love God and Love Others?
No! They IGNORE God and DEVOUR others!
Because it’s all about THEM; they are SELF-centered. We all KNOW people like this, don’t we? Who seem to suck all the OXYGEN out of the room; they’re like a black hole. It must be so SAD, and LONELY, living in their tiny little world of ONE. Where EVERYTHING revolves around them, and the rest of us are just kind of inconsequential EXTRAS in the backdrop - minor characters who won’t even make the CREDITS at the end; THAT’s how you get away with DEVOURING people: you DEHUMANIZE them. When you are the ONLY one who is important, then everyone else just becomes a means to your own END.
And there is most DEFINITELY no room for GOD in their lives! They “do not call upon the Lord” because HE would ruin the whole THING - God won’t ALLOW you to STAY self-centered. He says, “Let me SAVE you from YOURSELF, and show you the REAL center of it all. The One everything TRULY revolves around, and why that is so GOOD, and LIFE-giving for you, that I am God, and you are NOT.”
But these spoiled, straying, self-centered sinners REFUSE to heed God’s call, and so they are ULTIMATELY and FOURTHLY…
1d) DOOMED (15:5; 53:5). This is where the phrasing of chs 15 and 53 diverge a bit. But the PICTURE is really the SAME in both, of what lies in store for God-rejecting FOOLS:
“There they are in great terror” - why?
Because they KNOW, deep down, that there IS a God, and not only that, but they know he is WITH “the generation of the righteous”. That though the wicked USE and DEVOUR others for their own selfish gain, “shaming the plans of the poor”, they know deep DOWN that “the Lord is the refuge” of the poor.
God is FOR the poor and the righteous.
The wicked are OPPOSED to the poor and the righteous.
So - ipso facto - God is OPPOSED to the WICKED.
Ch53 makes the point even CLEARER; v5: “There they are, in great terror, where there is no terror!” The wicked are PARANOID. Because once AGAIN, they KNOW, deep DOWN, as we ALL do - God has written his moral law on EVERY human conscience - so they KNOW that one day, sooner or later, they WILL have to give an account; there WILL be a day of reckoning, when the wicked will RECEIVE their comeuppance.
“For God scatters the bones of him who encamps against” God; he “put[s] them to shame, for God has rejected them.”
Wiersbe writes (889): “The wicked have no future with the Lord because they preferred not to know the Lord or live for him… Those who reject Jesus Christ will spend eternity apart from the Lord and will HONESTLY be able to say [then] in Hell, “There is no God… HERE!”.
Tragically, the wicked will GET their wish. As C.S. Lewis famously put it: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it.” (The Great Divorce, 339)
But friends: that doesn’t HAVE to be your choice. There is ANOTHER choice; a BETTER way, than rottenness, lostness, selfishness, damnation.
And in ch15 now, David paints the COUNTER-portrait for us, a picture of true GODLINESS. And we’re gonna walk through IT now much quicker, since it really is just the OPPOSITE of everything ch14 just said about the WICKED.
If ch14 was all about the FOOL who wants NO GOD, Psalm 15 is all about the GODLY (2) who want TO KNOW God (15:1-5).
And who gets the JOY of knowing God? “O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? [in other words, enjoy God’s PRESENCE - remember, that’s what the tent of MEETING was all about, in the last half of the book of EXODUS - God’s TENT was where he would MEET with his people] – “Who shall dwell on your holy hill?”
David answers his own question, with another 4 character traits now that directly INVERT the 4 marks of the FOOL:
Whereas the fool was WICKED, the godly are (2a) RIGHTEOUS (15:2). V2 says, I’ll tell ya who can dwell in God’s presence, who gets to enjoy deep, personal relationship with God: “He who walks blamelessly and does what is right”.
Now, Wiersbe explains (890): “‘Blameless’ doesn’t mean ‘sinless’, for nobody on earth is sinless. Blameless has to do with soundness of character, integrity, complete loyalty to God. Noah was [called] “blameless”, in Genesis 6:9” as was Job, in Job 1:1.
In a word, it means being RIGHTEOUS; it is the opposite of being “wicked”, “corrupt”, “doing abominable deeds”. We learned last week in ch11 that “God LOVES the righteous… For the Lord IS righteous, [and] the upright shall behold his face.” (v7).
Jesus said “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt 5:8)
““Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (5:6) God will GIVE them the desire of their hearts, because their desire will be for HIM! It’s the same thing Psalm 37, v4 promises: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Because the desire of your heart will be HIM!
Relationship with GOD is reward ENOUGH for the RIGHTEOUS!
But what does it MEAN to be righteous, “blameless”?
Just like all the other SUB-points in ch14 were really just descriptions of what it means for the FOOL to be WICKED, so too here in ch15 with the RIGHTEOUS.For one thing, it means you are (2b) HONEST (15:2-3a). The one who lives to know God and to dwell in his presence “speaks truth in his heart - v2 - (and) does not slander with his tongue” - v3.
Whereas the fool was LOST - with no KNOWLEDGE of the truth - the righteous are HONEST; they are BEACONS of truth, in a world where it’s getting harder and harder to tell right from wrong, truth from fiction, every single DAY.
Third, whereas fools are self-centered, the godly are (2c) self-LESS; they are LOVING (15:3b).
V3 says the blameless person “does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend”.
V4: he “honors those who fear the Lord”.
He “swears to his own hurt”; in other words, when he takes an OATH, it is NOT with his OWN self-interest in mind; No, the godly are self-sacrificial, for the sake of the TRUTH, and for the good of OTHERS. And when he DOES make that promise, v4 says: he “does not change”, renege.
V5: he “does not put out his money at interest” - when he makes a LOAN, he doesn’t take advantage of those who are by definition POOR enough that they NEED the loan.
He “does not take a bribe against the innocent.” – these were all practices that, SADLY, had become COMMONPLACE in Israelite society within just a few generations of David’s life. Read the OT prophets and you quickly discover these are all the same sins that they are denouncing: bribery, usury, exploitation, greed, slander; God’s people had become lovers of WICKEDNESS!
But let’s go ahead and round out the list of traits that characterize the GODLY: they are, lastly, (2d) STEADFAST (15:4-5).
V5 declares: “He who does these things [who WALKS blamelessly and DOES what is right; he…] shall never be moved”.
It brings to mind Jesus’ parable of the 2 builders. Speaking of FOOLS, Jesus said, “everyone who hears these words of mine and does not DO them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” The storms of life come, and he COLLAPSES.
BUT, Jesus said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall;” the WISE who put their hope & trust, who lay their foundation in CHRIST, will be STEADFAST. (Matt 7:24-27)
“On Christ the solid rock we stand / All other ground is sinking sand.”
Now: I told you at the beginning where we’ve been HEADED all ALONG, the QUESTION that we ALL have to ASK ourselves as we study our way THROUGH these psalms with their diametrically opposed depictions of the WICKED vs. the GODLY, and that QUESTION is simply this: “Which one am I?”
When I look at ch14’s description of the FOOL - morally corrupt, not seeking after GOD, caring more about my SELF than others or God, FEARFUL of having to one day give an ACCOUNT for the way I’ve lived my life…
And then I look at ch15’s portrayal of the GODLY - blameless, honest, loving, self-sacrificing for others, honoring God, HATING evil - doing NO evil, and UNSHAKABLY so (steadfast and faithful in righteousness)...
When I consider BOTH those pictures, which one BETTER fits ME?
Do I live as if there is NO God, or do I live to KNOW God?
Now, I don’t know about YOU, friends, but when I put that question to my OWN heart, the HONEST answer goes something like this:
“I WANT to know God… I WANT to be in close RELATIONSHIP with Him, to dwell WITH God, in HOLINESS… I want to be BLAMELESS and righteous… HONEST and compassionate… LOVING and steadfast” - I want to be ALL these things; I really do.
BUT… I OFTEN act corruptly. Foolishly. Selfishly. In HOSTILITY toward GOD.
Because as David says of the FOOL, and as PAUL later quotes and explains in Romans 3 in reference to ALL of us: “There is NONE who does GOOD, no not ONE.”
We may WANT to be good, to know God, to live FOR God. But here’s how Paul described his OWN actions; see if you can relate: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing… So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in me.” (7:15-23)
Can Paul get an “AMEN”?! Can anyone else RELATE?! That’s like my “LIFE VERSE”!
“God: I WANT to be righteous, blameless, honest, loving, YOU-centered…
But every time I set MY mind to it, I find I don’t have the ABILITY to do good, because NOTHING good lives in ME; not apart from YOU, God. So OFTEN, I find myself doing the very things I HATE - wickedness, corruption, BLINDness, SELF-centeredness…
It’s like I’ve got these TWO natures at WAR within me: a GODLY, Holy SPIRIT-nature that causes me to WANT to do good, but then I’ve STILL got this fleshly, SIN-nature to drives me to actually DO EVIL instead. I feel like a spiritual schizophrenic!
So here’s how Paul CONCLUDES Romans 7: “Wretched man that I am! [None is RIGHTEOUS; LEAST of all ME!] Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Do you KNOW, friend? Who can DELIVER you, from your spiritual schizophrenia? PAUL does:
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ” (vv24-25)
David knew TOO. He didn’t know the Messiah by NAME yet, but look at how David ENDS chs 14 & 53 now: I think DAVID came to the same conclusion that me and PAUL did, with regard to his OWN righteousness, or lack thereof. You’ve gotta read between the LINES here a bit, but do you think David penned Psalm 15 and put down the quill and papyrus and concluded: “Yeah, that pretty much sums up MY life” - BLAMELESS, HONEST, doing “NO EVIL to my neighbor”; remember, this is the same David who kidnapped and raped his neighbor’s WIFE and then had her husband MURDERED to cover it UP. Do you really think David got to the end of Psalm 14, and concluded “there is NONE who does good, not even one… well, except for ME, DAVID, of course! I’m the lone RIGHTEOUS person down here.”
Not a CHANCE! That’s why David ENDS with THIS prayer in v7: “Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord will restore… his people”
Not just THEM, but ME TOO! I need restoring, I need saving, because I am corrupt, wayward, selfish, DOOMED otherwise.
And friends, in praying that prayer, David introduces here at the end a new, THIRD category of person: 3) Those who know they NEED God (14:7; 53:6).
What do you do if you WANT to know God… but the TRUTH is you often LIVE as if there IS no God… or worse, as if YOU are god?
You cry OUT to God for SALVATION: “God, I NEED you! To SAVE me, not just from THEM - the “wicked” - but from MYSELF! From my OWN sin! From this “body of DEATH”! I need you to RESTORE me, make me WHOLE, PURIFY me, CLEANSE me.”
Friends: when we pray that prayer, God’s PROMISE is that he will HEAR us, and he will HEAL us: “if my people… humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chr 7:14) And to PROVE it - to ACCOMPLISH it! - he sent his one and only Son JESUS into the world - the ONLY one who has EVER been TRULY “blameless” - to DIE on the cross that WE deserved by virtue of our SIN, in order to TRADE all of his righteousness for all of our UN-righteousness and to DECLARE us blameless and FORGIVEN, once and for all, by God.
Do you know how much you NEED Jesus this morning? And will you HUMBLE yourself, and SEEK his face, and TURN from your wicked ways, to trust in Christ for your healing and forgiveness?
Repent, Believe, and be SAVED.