Well, let's go to Psalms chapter 14. We read here to the chief musician, a Psalm of David. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand who seek God. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There is none who does good. No, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity, no knowledge who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call on the Lord. There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You shame the counsel of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord shall bring back the captivity of his people. Let Jacob rejoice. And Israel, the idea here would be still be glad if David were writing a thesis paper, he has his thesis stated right at the very beginning. Basically, what he says is the atheist is a fool or another way of saying it, atheists are fools. That's his thesis, and he's going to give us three reasons for that. The psalm is somewhat of a retrospective. David, as he is writing this, is musing over past events. He is likely doing it. He's prompted to do it because of current events. His eyes are on the growing tide of godlessness in his age, and it makes him think of and meditate upon past ages in which that godlessness rose to such an extent that it tipped the scales and tipped the universe or the earth into judgment. And so David, who was one who would regularly meditate upon God's word, and he tells us that in a number of occasions, read Psalm 119. Here it appears that he is reviewing the case of humanity before Events like the flood. Events like the Tower of Babel. Events like that before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And he's looking at the state of that society and of human nature in those moments. And he identifies with the lessons that are contained there. And he understands something. History repeats itself. What's happened then is going to happen again. And it seems it's so David is writing, saying it seems that it's happening all around me right now. When we look at our day and age and we might see the encroachment of things that seem to be an increasing godlessness, we identify these events and what's happening with things that we read at the back of our Bibles in the book of Revelation. We identify them with future events that are coming. We see the things that are happening in our day and age, and we say we're in the end times. We're in the last days. We are approaching those things that were foretold would take place in the future. And so when we see evil sweeping through our lands, we project our time towards the end time and the day of God's final judgment. And it's understandable. Peter spoke over those final days in second Peter, chapter two, verses two through three. This is what he says. Speaking of those last days and tell me if you don't identify with it. And many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Read it. Study your own newspaper. We're there. We're in the last days. We identify with it with the end times. But you know, you don't have to go to the end of the book to make an identification with these events. You can go to the beginning of your book and say, oh, This is just like it's been in the past. In fact, that's also Peter's point. This is just like it was before the flood. This is just like it was before the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Second, Peter, chapter two, again, verses four through 10. Let's read on. For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment, And if he did not spare the ancient world, but save Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing the flood on the world of the ungodly and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemn them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly. and delivered righteous lot who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked for that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds. Then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and who despise authority. Peter's observation here is David's observation in the psalm. David is retrospectively looking back to what's happening and that happened in the past. And he's saying it seems to be happening here in the present. And it's going to ultimately be fulfilled in a one climatic finality in the end. The question we have to ask is, how does the world get to that point? How does it get to the point of the distress of the day of the flood? How does it get to the point of the distress in the day and the judgment of the day of Sodom and Gomorrah? How does it get to the point in which judgment comes upon the land and David's day and the days preceding his day? And how does it get to our day and how will it get to the last days? And notice something, by the way, that we learn in all this in the observation is the observation is the end. In the end, the wicked will be destroyed and those who claimed or are claimed as righteous will be saved. Note also, the wicked will be many and the righteous will be few. Noah, eight. Lot, one. A couple of daughters that were thrown in as well as a blessing. Few. And the same will be all throughout human history. And one day, finally, human history will turn one last time and it will continue to repeat itself until one day this will happen again on a very, very, very large universal scale. How does it come about? How does it begin? What is the dastardly seed that is once planted produces this horrific fruit? God says by the Holy Spirit through the psalmist David the answer is the cause of this is atheism Atheism means no God Basically atheism is a tenant. It is an established mindset that denies God it is the denial of God and What David says here is the atheist is a fool. He's a fool for three reasons He's a fool because he doesn't discern where his atheism comes from. He doesn't discern what his atheism produces in his own life and character. And he has not discerned and learned from history what the end of atheism will bring and accomplish, what it will bring upon him. As a result, he is a fool. So let's look at his outline here. Let's consider it first. Why the atheist is a fool, by the way, the word fool in Hebrew, there is the word Nabal. And Nebo means a faded flower, a dead flower, or a dried up leaf. It's the picture of something that is drained of natural life and wisdom. It is drained of the sap of understanding. It's drained of the sap of understanding. Now it is a dead thing that's just blowing in the winds, an empty thing without any sense. It's a fool. David has not here not just one individual of mind. He says the fool is set in his heart, but then right after that, he says they are corrupt. He's speaking of something broader, something on a larger scale. He's looking at this encroachment, this thought, this attitude. Actually, what he has in mind is a sweeping attitude. He has in mind a developing character. He has in mind a devastating outcome. When he thinks of atheism, he thinks of the idea, the attitude. He thinks of the character it develops. He thinks of the outcome that it brings about. These are the three points at which, by the way, he identifies the foolishness of atheism. And he says now it is growing to such an extent that it seems that everyone is this way. It seems that everywhere you look and that God looks, this is all he sees is he sees the attitude of atheism and we're seeing the character of atheism and we're going to experience the outcome of atheism. In the days of Noah, in the days of the Tower of Babel, in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, in David's current day, it seems as though the world is full of atheists. It seems that it's become a universal attitude or idea that is tilting the world, has in the past tilted the world in the ruin. is one day going to tilt it and ruin again. That's what he's speaking about. So here's what it is. Atheism. The first reason atheists are fools is because they do not discern where their atheism rises from. David says the fool says in his heart there is no God. In his heart there is no God. Think about it for a second. Put in your mind your idea of an atheist. Usually if you were to identify and take a snapshot of an atheist, you would see him in the lab coat of a scientist. You would put in your mind the image of a professor in a tweed jacket lecturing in some philosophy hall in some great tower of learning on some school or campus of great study. You might have in your mind the image of some earthy Birkenstock wearing evolutionary biologist. There's your picture of the atheist or of some hand wringing student who is struggling at his university with the problem of evil. How can there be a God when there's so much evil and pain in the world? You say there it is. There's your picture. There's what I have in mind of the atheist. But that is not where atheism rises. That is not the point at which atheism introduces itself to the individual or the world. It's not in the mind that atheism comes about. It's not the outcome of thinking too much or learning too much or being too scientific and giving yourself the scientific considerations. It's not the result of contemplating mysteries and contradictions and riddles, as you consider the earth, like a young college student might do. No, that is not where atheism rises, where it's born. It rises, we're told, in the human heart, not in the human mind. Theoretical atheism and intellectual atheism, the idea that a person posits theoretically there is absolutely no absolute, there's absolutely no God, there's no meaning to the universe. It's all random. There's no God. This is not what happens first. First, the heart turns from God. God is always present speaking. God is always stirring within his creatures a sense of himself, a sense of his presence. First, the heart must turn from God. The heart turns to its own will. The heart turns to its own desires. The heart turns to seek its own way. And in order to comfortably do that, the heart must turn from God. maybe first by re-identifying him, re-defining him, re-establishing a concept of him, maybe creating an idol of him in her mind, but eventually the idol becomes unnecessary. This happens long before the mind ever turns. In fact, for most, the individual can go on saying throughout their lives, with their lips, that they believe in God. They can profess them with their minds. They might even have the mental argument for the existence of God, but in their heart, They're already a practical individual who denied God from the life itself and they deny God or they live without him. They seek to live without him. And the person who seeks to live without God. Is a practical atheist and that's where atheism begins. In fact. Intellectual atheism, you know, the person who has made the conclusion is now in the science lab or has his tweed jacket on. Atheism is a pragmatic outcome before it is an intellectual argument. It is a pragmatic outcome before it is an intellectual argument. In other words, people find that they have to be an atheist first and then they have to find a way to justify their atheism intellectually. They made choices in their life in which they will not live with God. They will not submit to his rule. They won't find his directions. They want to be independent of them, pursue their own desires and their own interests. They cannot do that comfortably and believe in God. And so now they have to find a reason. For the choices that they've made, it becomes just a pragmatic outcome of what they've done. They want to live their own life by their own dictates and their own desires. They don't want to have God's will, God's way, God's moral governance to strike down their choices, to strike in upon their conscience. In their hearts, they discernment in themselves. Then I have to say things like this. Well, God doesn't really care about these things. And then they say to themselves, well, really, that doesn't matter to God. Even if God sees, I think God accepts this and God will put up with this. And then ultimately say, well, this is no consequence to God. Even if there is a consequence for my action here, it certainly is anything God is doing. Well, there's not even a God at all. That's the pathway. Psalm chapter 10 actually tells us it shows us something of this pathway. Psalm chapter 10. You see this calculation, this pragmatic necessity to accommodate the choice to live without God that ultimately drives our minds and intellect from God. Psalm chapter 10, verse four. The psalmist writes of an individual, he says, all his thoughts are, there is no God. Now that sounds quite intellectual to me, his thoughts. But verse six tells us how he got there with his thoughts. He says in his heart, I shall not be moved. I shall not meet adversity. In other words, God's not going to hold me accountable for this thing. Verse 11, he says in his heart, God has forgotten. He'll never see. In other words, this doesn't matter to him. He's not paying attention. I can do what I want. You see, what actually is taking place is it's what's being calculated in the heart that ultimately turns his thoughts to say eventually there is no God. The conscience wants its own way. It wants its own will. And so it dismisses the presence of God from the light, dismisses the voice of God from the life. It dismisses the decrees of God from the life. And it said to itself, we say to ourselves, it really doesn't matter. God won't act. God won't see. God doesn't care. God doesn't exist, goes on that pathway. So my father used to say that it's impossible for an individual to make a determined choice to pursue their sins and at the same time entertain the presence of God. If you've been doing things in your life that you know are wrong, you know are wrong. You know the only way you can sustain it and do it is in those moments in that time. And then increasingly, if you give yourself to it, increasingly drive God out of that point in your life. You have to ignore him. You have to push him from your life. You have to deny God. That's atheism. That's atheism. It's amazing to me that atheists can come to church every single Sunday. They can put his name on their lips when they sing their songs and go home and drive them away from the very conduct that they engage themselves throughout the week. They're on the way to denying him altogether. But that's where all atheism rises from. It is, in essence, a need for a man to willfully pursue his own way. Eventually, what will happen is they'll develop an intellectual argument to frame and to satisfy their heart's desire. Dinesh D'Souza has a book called What's So Great About Christianity. In it, there's a chapter called The Opiate of the Morally Corrupt. Why unbelief is so appealing. Listen to the title, the opiate of the morally corrupt. Why unbelief is so appealing. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. What he said basically was that people become religious because they don't want to face the realities and the hard decisions of life. And so they cover themselves and they cover themselves in the hard reality of life with a belief in God in order to somehow dull their senses from real life. The argument here that's made is just the opposite. No, what takes place is morally corrupt people want to pursue their own way. They want to impose their own reality over the world. They want to impose their own will over other individuals. To do that, they have to say, nothing matters, there's no meaning except for what I want. In order to do that successfully, they have to dull their conscience from the sense of God's presence. And unbelief is the opiate. The dulling drug of the morally corrupt, those who don't want to live under God's laws. So when an individual tells you, the prominent atheist comes to you and tells you that they've rejected God because somehow God doesn't meet the requirements of sound reason, what this passage is telling us is that they're not being square with us. They're not being honest with us. That they're bringing us the last game, the last portion of their last move in their movement towards atheism. Well, let me give you rationale for why I'm an atheist. Well, let me tell you why you're really an atheist. In your hearts, you don't want to believe in God. In fact, the way you're living, you can't afford to believe in God. That's where they began. They're not so bright. Psalmist says they're actually fools and the reasons are not so intellectually after all their hearts their matters of the heart Actually philosopher Thomas Nagel has recently an atheist has recently confessed at least he's honest about this He writes this I want atheism to be true. It isn't that I don't believe in God I I don't want there to be a God. I don't want to live in a universe like that. What? That's what comes first. Listen now to the explanation for the atheism of one of the famous atheists of all Aldous Huxley. He's the one who wrote The Brave New World. Aldous Huxley was one of the great advocates of atheism. Eventually, he went into a kind of odd and bizarre spiritism and he gave himself and he died a drug addict. Huxley, though, quoted often in a hero of atheists in the modern day, writes this. I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. Listen, if you don't want to live in a world that doesn't have meaning, what you have to do is you have to kill the one who is the absolute, which is God. I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. Consequently, I assume that it had none and was able to find without any difficulty satisfying reasons for this assumption. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness, that's atheism, was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. There you go. There's the seed, there's the point at which the rising tide of the great mind of atheism finds its root. It's not in this part of their anatomy where they find the root of atheism, but it's something else they want unfettered altogether. It's the freedom to live for their own pleasures, to do whatever they want. And this is a heart matter, not an intellectual matter. Now, that's why they're fools. They won't even admit where it is that this belief and idea rises from. It is a desire to pursue their own self-satisfaction. The second reason why they're fools is they don't understand the character that such a consideration and such a way of life lives. If you consider in your mind there is no God or if you just keep it in your heart and live as if there's no God, it's going to produce effects in your life. And that's the second half of chapter 1 there. Verse 1b, they are corrupt. They have done abominable works the word there is they have done defiling works There is none who does good Very interesting by the way Aldous Huxley died on November 22nd 1963 Kennedy died on November 22nd 1963 as well C.s. Lewis died on November 22nd 1963 Aldous Huxley wrote a brave new world C.s. Lewis wrote books like surprised by joy We still read his books. We're tremendously encouraged by what we read in his life. When Aldous Huxley was dying, he had become a LSD addict. And as he was dying, he asked his wife to come and inject him with LSD, 10 cc's of LSD, not once but twice, just before he breathed his last. He needed something psychedelic to dull his mind. What an opiate. What an opiate of the morally corrupt. This is the character pathway, the progressive order of denying God from your heart and then denying him with your mind. It brings corruption. And the word for corrupt there basically means that their lives bring about ruin and destructive behaviors and outcomes. You know, if you have a corrupt file in your computer, ultimately, if you don't address it, it can bring the whole system down. And the idea here is that the individual who denies God with their heart and lives in that way, and denies God with their mind and lives in that way, introduces into his social setting, into the world, the seeds of chaos and ruin. They are a corrupting influence. Here's the second thing it does. Their actions are defiling. They're defiled and the defiling here, basically saying that they carry out their actions. And of course, this is obvious without reference to a holy God, without reference to the dignity of his laws and the dignity that he sets upon life, the meaning that he puts upon the world. And as a result, They smear the world with the defiling meaninglessness of their ideas and their attitudes. Third, and finally, it says they do not do what is good. They do not do what is good. There is none who does good. Here the idea is that they are selfish. self-consumers in their mindset. They are seeking their own advantage and not others. The idea of goodness in the Bible is the idea of something that acts towards and lives towards the benefits of others and basically are saying they are not acting with a supreme consideration for others no matter what they tell you. They're acting out of consideration for themselves. They don't seek what is best for others. Just the opposite. In fact, what happens is this character, as you go through the rest of the psalm, you see that it matures into a growing animosity towards those who believe in God and towards those who live for God. They begin to despise the believer. as someone who is impeding upon their own pursuit of freedom to do what they want, when they want, as much as they want, and they resent the person who brings God into the picture, who brings the notion of God's holiness, or God's accounting, or God's judgment, or God's hell, or God's punishment, or God's supreme absolute right and wrong, they resent that person. Not only that, is there this growing animosity towards the person who believes in God, but there is a callousness in the conscience of these individuals that grows upon them to the point where, at some point, they can take human life as thoughtlessly as they may eat a piece of bread. That's what he said. That's the pathway. This callousness towards those that tenderly remind us of something better in life. and ultimately a callousness towards even the destruction of life alone. So here's how it works again. Listen for a second. God must die first or at least disappear from our conscience on a daily basis. We have to replace him then with something. And so what we replace him with is just materialism. We believe only in those things that we can sense and feel and put our hands upon. Only those things that you can touch are the things that really matter. And this means basically what matters above everything in our life is those things that bring to us the greatest sensations. That's what materialism does. It brings you a sensation. And so sensualism becomes, to some extent, The governing principle and celebration of its life. Malcolm Muggeridge, who used to be a atheist himself and converted to Christianity, wrote and said that in effect eroticism is the spirituality of the materialist. Utterly giving themselves to sensuality. Look at our day and age and see what's happening around you. Look what's on the papers all around. Look what's in the entertainment. See how it's growing. You can see by the very things that are being celebrated. So interesting. At the same time in which men high-mindedly dismiss the presence of God, they behave in the most sensual ways and they give themselves to it. It's just the way it works. Sexual freedom, this abandonment to sensuality, results in something. You know what it results in? A lot of unwanted pregnancies, that's what it results in. Vanessa Sousa says the second great sacrament of atheism is abortion. If eroticism is its mysticism, abortion is its altar where it makes its sacrifices. What is abortion? It's a person who doesn't just kill a baby, but they kill their own unborn baby. God has to die. God has to be considered of no consequence in order to do something like that. Only in a country like America, where Christianity is still on the forefront of people's minds, do we in a society like ours even debate the moral rightness or wrongness of abortion. If this were a purely secular society, it wouldn't even be up for debate. You can protest and say, well, wait a second here, Joel, come on. I know these atheists really gives birth to a secular humanism. They're humanistic. Their big outcry, even against religion, is that there's a lack of compassion in religion. Their big problem with God is that he doesn't take care of hurting and painful people. That's their argument. They're all about compassion. You're wrong to say that they have this growing animosity and this callousness towards life. See what they're saying? Look at all the things they're giving their money to and they're protesting about publicly. D'Souza argues this, the paradox is resolved when you consider that when you see that it is precisely because they are so awful in their private lives that they need to pretend to be virtuous in their public lives. People who cheat and steal and are unfaithful and kill their own unborn must compensate to convince others and themselves that they're really not such bad people by taking up causes in order to claim the high moral ground. But eventually what happens in the atheistic society is the moral ground that they claim is moral ground at the lowest moral points. And so the high moral ground is a person's right to choose. The high moral ground is the freedom to love whoever you want, whenever you want, at any time you want without regard to consequences. Their high moral ground is to resist and speak against any person would have some kind of conviction or belief in God that would in any way make me feel bad. about the way I choose to live. Those people should be compared to, well, the worst men in all of history. Isaiah 520 talks about the high moral ground of the atheist when he says in Isaiah 520, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, who are wise in their own eyes, This is not something that just happens in our day and age. This is not the first time that an age has faced this practical atheism and its characteristic results. No, it's happened over and over again. And it starts in the heart of an individual just like you. We might go and identify all the evils of our world and tsk, tsk, tsk and be opposed to it. But the fact is, is if I'm living in my life like a practical atheist, I'm only greasing the skids. I'm only contributing. I'm only contributing by my own choices, my own lifestyle to a mentality ultimately that rejects God and throws the world deeper and deeper into this moral chaos and ruin. History has a way of repeating itself, doesn't it? And here's the last result, and this is why atheism and atheists are fools, the psalmist says, because they do not consider the conclusion or outcome. In verse five, the psalmist writes this. There they are in great fear for God is with the generation of the righteous. The word there there in the Hebrew actually can be just as easily translated then. And I think that's the better choice. Let's read it as then they are in great fear for God is with the generation of the righteous. What David is doing at this moment in time, he's contemplating the universal tide and flood of the atheistic spirit, and then he's seeing it as tipping the world into this character of corruption and defilement and the lack of anything good until the world is tipped into a point where God brings His judgment upon it. He's seeing the moment at which the earth breaks up and the floodwaters are coming up in the day of Noah. in which the skies open up and the rain is coming down, and he's saying, then they are in great fear. The outcome has come upon them. He's looking at the moment in Sodom and Gomorrah, the night after the men were beating down the door in order to get after the men who had visited Herod so that they might take them out in the public square and rape them. He's seeing that moment, and now the rain of fire is coming down upon the city. And he says, then they're in great judgment. We can cast our eyes to Revelation chapter 6, verse 15 and 16. And there we have the picture of the same kind of day. And it says, then in that moment in time, the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the commanders and the mighty men and every slave and every free man hid themselves in the caves and the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath has come, and who is able to stand? And then they are in great fear. He says the Lord stands with his righteous. The image is projecting our minds to Revelation chapter 19, in which we're told that the Lord Jesus will return one day. Riding upon a white horse with the name King of Kings and Lord of Lords emblazoned upon his side and Riding along with him will be all the armies of heaven dressed in white and that's us To watch him return to bring his judgment upon the earth and then Then they will be in great fear because God will be among his righteous. We will be with him Oh, we might be now bread for the consuming atheists But God stands with us. And then and that day. When the cumulative effects of their actions bring upon them God's judgment. Oh, the foolishness. The foolishness of all of this. To the practical atheist who lives as if there is no God or the intellectual atheist who says with his lips what he has held in his heart for such a long time, their end is just this. God will ultimately not be denied. Deny me all you want. I will not be denied. The Bible says one day every knee that has refused to bow to him will bow and every tongue that has refused to confess him will confess. History has proven it be true in the past. It will repeat itself until ultimately God will be all in all. Now, when you look at David's musings here, you might say that they're rather morbid, they're rather dark. Yes, he sees the universal wave of God deniers, but that's not all that David considers here. If you look at the passage, David also considers and sees a covenant keeping Lord who is over all. The name he uses four times for God is Yahweh, the promise keeping God. And what he says in verse 2 is the Lord sees. He looks down from heaven. God is aware of all these things. He says here is the Lord in verse 5 that the Lord stands with his people. God is with the people whom he has made righteous. Verse 6 tells us that the Lord shelters his people. the Lord Yahweh, the promise-keeping God is their refuge. Even in the darkest days, when the righteous are being consumed like bread, God has His hands upon them. Romans chapter 8 tells us the same thing. Paul tells us nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, not death, not any earthly power, not any dark spiritual power, not the present dark situations we face, not the coming destructions that are coming upon the earth. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, He is our refuge. He is our shelter from the stormy blast, even in the midst of the blast. He's watching over us. He's caring for us. And though we might seem to be going down into the waters of the destruction of the age, God knows us. He captures Himself. Brothers and sisters, He's put us in the ark. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, He's put us in the ark, and Jesus is the ark. You're going to ride through this flood. You're going to ride through the judgment. Verse 7 says, the Lord also saves. He sees, He stands, He shelters, He saves. He restores those captive in this dreadful age, brings to them not simply the removal of the guilt of sin and the power of sin, but brings them one day from the very presence of sin, made righteous by Him, rescued from all the festering wounds of their own selfish sins. and all the festering character and defilement of a God-denying world and age. Interesting, the question might be asked just at the end here, how is it that I might be one of the righteous that he stands with? How can I be one of those righteous? There's a chapter in the Bible that talks about how we can be one of those righteous. It's Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3 actually quotes Psalm chapter 14. When Dave was quoting Psalm chapter 14, he was identifying a small remnant of righteous people. He was saying everybody else is unrighteous. But in Romans chapter three, when it quotes it and he says there is none righteous, no, not one. And there's none that have no understanding. When Paul quotes it through the spirit of Christ now, he says that's the condition of everyone, all of us, not just those out there, but us right here. None of us are righteous. So speaking through Paul, God opens a way for us to discover how it is that we're made righteous. We're not made righteous by our activities. We're not made righteous by our good works. We're made righteous when we realize that there's no righteousness in ourselves whatsoever. We're made righteous when we realize that God has sent his son as the sinless, perfect, righteous one who has lived a perfect and sinless life and died on the cross for our sins and offers to give all the unrighteous his righteousness, if they'll receive him. So if you read Romans chapter three, verses 10 through 18, you'll see the depiction and you'll see he's not just describing some, but all and not just describing those over there, but us right here. And it says we're all unrighteous and all unworthy and all lost without him. And the conclusion is all of us are guilty before God. How can God stand with the righteous in the day of judgment when great fear comes upon the unrighteous? How can we be in that place where we stand with him? Now, having identified us as all unrighteous, Romans chapter three, verses 23 through 26, tells us how. Take your Bibles and turn there for a moment. Romans chapter three, verses 23 through 26. All right, I've lived like a practical atheist. I've said it. You know what? No matter what my intellectual arguments are, what you're saying still represents in the core of my being. I know, I know that if this is true, I am facing this judgment. How can I be righteous? Romans 3, 23 through 26 says this, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There's the unrighteousness of all and are justified freely by his grace. That's his free gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, through faith whom God has set forth as an atoning sacrifice by his blood. Jesus Christ has been set forth by God as the sacrifice for your sins, shedding his blood in your place and by faith through his grace. You can be made right and redeemed, justified in order to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, God passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness. that he might be just. And the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. That's the answer. Yes, faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is stepping into the ark and then God shuts us in and protects us and carries us to the seas. Faith in Christ that must embrace the presence of God and in his presence say, ah, this has been sin. There is an absolute, there is a meaning and I fall far short of it. Be merciful to me and save me and deliver me and bring me your life. Well, praise God, we don't have to live as atheists. With Jesus living in us, we not only have God as our reference point, we have God as the guiding principle of our lives. Let's ask him to continue to do that.