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14 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.
The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the LORD?
There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is his refuge.
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
(ESV)
When the psalmist refers to the unbeliever as a fool, he isn’t insulting his intelligence. It’s a moral charge.
Sye Ten Bruggengate, a Christian apologist, relates this thought to a personal story.
“My father owned an electronics firm. He had some Russians come to visit him and these were people from backwoods Russia. They were having a break, and this Russian fellow wanted a cup of tea. So, my father got him some boiling water and a tea bag.
The Russian man took the tea bag and ripped it and was going to pour it into the water and my father stopped him. He said, ‘You don’t rip it, you throw the whole bag in.’ So, then this guy wanted some sugar for his tea as well. My father went and got him a sugar bag. He took the bag and threw the whole thing into the water. My father said, ‘No, you don’t throw it in, you rip it and pour it in.’ The guy looked at my father as if he was crazy!
Now, would that guy be considered a fool? No. He didn’t know any better. A fool is someone who knows better. Who did Jesus call the fool? The builder who built his house on the sand. You think that guy knew better? He probably owned beachfront property and didn’t care what would happen to his house. That’s the person who the Scriptures call a fool.”
Sye Ten Bruggengate
The reality of this psalm is that all of us know better. We all have been foolish.
“They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.”
Psalm 14:3 NASB
It’s not that every individual is as evil as they possibly can be. It’s that all of us have sin in our life and know that it’s wrong. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We can be brilliant thinkers. We can display amazing talents and abilities. We can often achieve much more in this life than we ever thought possible. But, we can do all those good things while still suppressing our sinful disobedience toward a holy God.
But God has delivered us from this prison of disobedience! This is the hope we have in Jesus. The call, as Hank has written, is toward walking the talk. None of us have reached the pinnacle of holiness. We are all climbing a ladder one rung at a time toward the holiness of Jesus Christ. None of us will reach Him before we die, but all of us have a responsibility to walk in the light. God has given us the Holy Spirit, His Word, and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to propel us forward in victory.
Is your walk being fueled by the joy of Jesus Christ? Are you talking like a Christian but behaving like a fool? What has the Holy Spirit revealed to you that now requires your cooperation?