Psalm 53. I titled this message, The Folly or the Foolishness of Denying the Existence of God. What a fool a person is who denies the existence of God with so much evidence. So much evidence. You know, I was thinking, when we usually think of a fool, we think of somebody stupid. You know, you think, boy, he's stupid. He's a fool. A person can be very intellectual, very intelligent, and yet be a fool. I was reading a book I've got on evolution a little while ago. skimming through it and reading it. And the guy that wrote the book, you know, he's he stands for creation, the creation of God. God created all things. And then he was citing all these different professors. And some of these prestigious colleges who hold who hold the evolution theory. And I and it just when I was reading that, I thought just because Someone is intellectual doesn't mean they're smart, if you know what I mean. They're a fool. I mean, now you go up to a professor of Yale or Stanford or Harvard and call that man a fool. If he's holding to evolution, you call him a fool from the scriptures. According to the Scriptures, why, you'd be run out of town. Say, that man's not a fool, he's very intellectual. Well, he may be, but he's a fool. He's a fool. And that's what he's saying here. When he talks about the fool, and I have learned this, and I'm getting ahead of myself, but I've learned that the more educated one becomes, the further away from God they seem to go. It seems like that the secular education takes you further away from God. It doesn't bring you closer. Now this psalm here in Psalm 53 is identical, almost identical word for word, to Psalm 14. I mean, just a few little changes. In Psalm 14, The name of the Lord is used, Jehovah, the Lord, Jehovah. And here is God, Elohim, the Mighty One, the Supreme One. It's used in this portion of Scripture, that David, he just makes a little tweak here and there, but it's a saying, it's written almost verbatim. And I thought about this when I was reading this, that if something is worth saying once, it's worth saying again, isn't it? You know, I stand here and preach the gospel week after week after week. Same message. I may go to a different portion of Scripture, but it's the same message. It doesn't change. God does not change. I am the Lord. I change not. Human nature doesn't change. It's still just as wicked as it ever was. It doesn't change. And the message of redemption doesn't change. The way God saved the first sinner is the way God will save the last one. Through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now verse 1 tells us what goes on in the heart of the fool. And what goes on in his heart Listen, this will guide the rest of his life. Someone said, I heard, it said, belief determines behavior. He says in his heart, there is no God. Now, well, you can go anywhere from there. The fool can, and he will. He will. But I tell you this, it really does not matter what one thinks about anything. if his thoughts of God are wrong. Am I right? It doesn't matter what I think. My opinion about anything and your opinion about anything doesn't matter if your thoughts of God are completely wrong. What matters is what think you of Christ. Isn't that what he asked? What think you of Christ? That's what really matters. Now, you get that right, And then the rest of your thinking will become right. The rest of the way you judge things will be right. But you don't get that right, everything else, you're just going to go down the wrong path sooner or later. What matters is my thoughts of God. Now he says here, the fool has said in his heart, this is the conversation that goes on in his heart. You see, I've told you this before, when we go through the Psalms, when we go through the Scriptures, God opens up the heart. God said, now this is what a man is. We see the outside, and we can be fooled by the outside. We can be fooled by appearance. Remember when Samuel was going to go and anoint a king? He went down to the house of Jesse, and there was a tall, dark, and handsome one. He said, oh, this is the king. This has to be the king. Look at him. He's impressive. When he walks in the room, he just takes it over. Oh, that wasn't the king, was it? Then he went to the next one, and that wasn't the king. He went through all the sons of Jesse. He said, don't you have any more sons? He said, yeah, I got one out there. He's keeping the sheep. That's the one. That's the one. And listen, that's the one, that's the man that was after God's own heart. That shepherd boy became the man after God's own heart. God opens the heart and lets us see the heart. He opens it up and lets us see the heart of a man. And here he says, the fool has said in his heart, there's no God. No God. Here's the fool's thought process. It starts with this, no God. No God. There is no more dangerous man than the man who denies the existence of God. Because now he is God. Now he becomes God. When there is no God, he can be his own God. And David, when he looks at this man and he says, this man says there's no God, he's an absolute fool in the light of all that exists. And to say there's no God, you've got to be an absolute fool to say that. Really. When you think that the evolutionist says that all this came from a one-cell organism and then it developed into another bigger, better organism, then it just kept on going until here we are. Yeah, here we are. Bunch of idiots. That's where it developed. A bunch of God-hating idiots. No, that's not how it happened. That's not how it happened. The idea, listen here, the idea behind this Hebrew, I got this, read this today, I want to give it to you. The idea behind this ancient Hebrew word translated FU has more to do with moral standing than intelligence. It's not, we're not talking about the intelligence of a person. More than we're talking about the moral standing of a person. Now what, what does know God imply? I asked myself some questions as I looked at this psalm. And I thought, this is my first question. I asked myself, what does no God imply? Well, first of all, it implies that evolution must be true. Something had to happen for all this to exist. Was it a big bang? No. I'll tell you something else it implies. That the Bible is a lie. If there is no God, then the Bible is a book of lies. There's no greater lies written than the Bible if there is no God. Because God has revealed Himself in the pages of this book. This is the Word of God. And the older I get, the more I realize, as I read it, it is God speaking to me. You know, I can speak to you like I am right now. I'm speaking to you audibly, you hear me. But what if I write a letter when I'm gone, and I write a letter to you, and someone stands up here and reads it to you? I'm speaking to you. This is God speaking to us. But if there's no God, then this book is a lie. Then if there's no God, then there's no salvation. There's no salvation. There's no salvation from sin. There's no salvation from death. There's no resurrection. There's no hope. Paul said this, if Christ be not risen, we're of all men most miserable. Let me put it another way. If God does not exist, we're of all men most miserable because there's no hope. We are sitting here in hope. We hope to see the glory of God. We hope to be raised from the dead. We hope to be conformed to the image of Christ. If there's no God, we are the fools. We are the fools if there's no God. And then, if there's no God, it implies this, there's no moral obligation. There's no such thing as morally right and wrong. It's just what we determine. There's no standard. You see, God is the standard. Now, if you take God out of the picture, where is the standard? God's the standard. He's the standard. There's no accountability if there's no God. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, if there's no God. And I'll tell you this, if there's no God, we are no different than the animals. We're no different. We die like the beast and perish. But if we also look at the statement like this, no God for me. No God for me. Well, that implies rank rebellion. That's just rebellion. No God for me. I'll be my own God. I will be the master of my own life. I will be the sovereign. To say that there's no God or no God for me, is a denial of the government of God over the whole world, over the whole universe. It's a denial of the government of God, to say no God. What a fool. What a fool. What power do you and I have? Listen, I'll tell you what, let's make it rain tomorrow. Or if I want to go play golf, let's make it not rain tomorrow. You can't even make a headache go away. You can't will a headache to go away. You can't say, you know, go away. You gotta take some kind of medication for it. We are so weak. If it were not for God, think how things would be. Think how it would be if there were no God. Well, if there were, there'd be no us. That's for sure, there'd be no us. You know what I was thinking of this today? I can't write down all my thoughts, I never get done. But I was thinking of this today, I thought, the atheist says there's no God. He can't believe in the existence of God, who came from nowhere, who has no beginning of the days or end of life, but he can believe of a one-cell organism, Where did it come from? I thought the day I thought, now where did it come from? How is it he can believe that in one cell organism coming from nowhere? And he can't believe God. I'll tell you why. It's that natural enmity against God. He doesn't want God to exist. Because that makes him responsible. That makes him morally responsible to God. And that's why he wants to know God. Here's the result of such a belief. Corrupt are they. That's what it leads to. That's why the human race is as it is. It's either this, they either believe there's no God, or they don't believe the God that is. They've come up with another one. Which is just as atheistic as not believing there is a God, or there is no God. If you believe the wrong one, because the wrong one is no God. Corrupt are they, and he says here they've done abominable, abominably, abominable iniquity is what they've done. That is, and that abominable iniquity is moral decay, is perversion, perverseness, that's what it is, that's what it means. Corrupt are they, and they have gone into moral decay. That is the result of no God. That is the result of believing no God, or even saying, no God for me. And that's the result of a fallen, dead, spiritually dead heart, where there's no life. And to believe that there's no God opens the door for natural corruption to abound, for the lust of the flesh to abound. Oh, no God. There's no responsibility. And they're just given to the lust of the flesh. Someone said this, And so he said, there is a marked difference in moral behavior between those who believe God and those who believe not God. There's a marked difference in their moral behavior. Here's the final conclusion. We see the results. It's corrupt, are they? And they've done an abominable iniquity. But here's the final conclusion to that. There's none good, no not. There is none that doeth good. There is none, it says, that doeth a good thing. That's what it means. They don't do a good thing. The whole human race is under sin, atheist or not. It doesn't matter. Atheist or not. You see, he starts out with a fool who says, no God, and he will eventually here start now including the whole human race. There's none that doeth a good thing. Seeing that good only comes from God, and man's gone away from God, then there's none good. And there's none that doeth good. He doesn't know where good is. He doesn't know what good is. He don't know where it is. He don't know how to perform good. Not without sin. Not without sin. And I know there are people who do things we call good, you know, charities and things like that, but there's no one who does anything without sin, except God. Except God. And the world can't understand that standard of good. It can't understand it. Because it's blind. Now, lest anyone think this is David's opinion, He calls God in as a witness. This is not David's opinion. It's not like he's had a bad run-in with somebody and he just wrote this down. No. He says in verse 2, God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, not just the atheists. All the religious people throw rocks at the atheists. Well, you might want to hold those rocks. God looked down from heaven on the children of men, all of us, all, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God, any of their own. He says here, understand, he means to consider, to weigh, to think of, And to seek is to search for, to search for God. Job said in Job 23.3, "'Oh, that I knew where I might find him, I'd come even to his seat.'" To seek to know God. Listen, God is not out to prove that He is. And we don't stand here preaching trying to prove that He is. God is, whether a person believes it or not. That doesn't change anything. Saying that there's no God does not make God non-existent. Saying, I'm six feet tall will never make me six feet tall. What we think and what we say and what we believe changes nothing. God is and He's in heaven above all. He is in heaven on His throne observing all. Now, we can't comprehend, nobody can comprehend that. But there's 7 billion people, over 7 billion people on this earth. You know God sees every one of them right down to the thought of their heart? That's how great God is. God is not detached from His creation. Was it Hagar that said, Thou God seest me? Thou God seest me. It's like whenever they were building the Tower of Babel and it says that God came down came down and observed and saw what they were doing, to look and see what they were doing. Listen, that's written so that you and I can understand. Just like here, God looked down from heaven on the children of men to see. Well, that was not for information. That's information for me and you. This information is for us. But God looked down, then in Genesis, He looked down on the wickedness of the human race at that time. He said, every imagination He didn't say just they're doing some bad things. He said every thought they have has an evil intent to it. It has a sinful intent to it. Every imagination. And I tell you this, the way God sees it is the way it is. That's the way it is. God knows the heart of every human being right down to their thoughts. Now what, when he looks down from heaven here, what does he, what does it say that he looked for? To see. if there were any that did understand or consider. You know, when you consider something, you weigh it out. You sit down, you think about it, you ponder it, you weigh it out. It's like someone sitting down and you're looking at creation, you're looking at the stars and the heavens and all things, and you consider the creator of this. Who must he be? What must he be like? Nobody, he said, was doing that. It's like somebody lollygagging down the road, not paying a bit of attention, what's going on? He looked down and to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. You would think that people, the human race, would be interested I mean, highly interested in knowing its Creator. They're interested, you know, science is interested in knowing everything. I mean, it's just all time doing scientific studies on this and that, but God is not in the picture of any of it. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing. And here's what's even more amazing. He's made Himself known to us. He made himself known to me. There out there spending herself broke and here I am. I know the truth. I know the truth. I know the God of creation. I know the reason for everything. Jesus Christ. Right there is a reason for everything that exists. Jesus Christ. And that just makes me happy. I'm well satisfied with that. But the world, they want to know all about this, what makes this work, that work. I'll tell you what makes it work, God. Almighty God. You know, it's one thing if science would take and learn. I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with learning. If they would learn and then give the glory to God. That's education. That's education. If you could take and look at a tree and see how it grows and how it takes nourishment out of the ground and give the glory to God for that. To see if any have an interest in knowing Him. You have an interest tonight? Seriously, you have an interest in knowing God more than knowing anything else. You would think that we would be just And I know that the Lord has given some of us here an interest to know Him. And I know that. But I want to know Him more. Paul said, Oh, that I might know Him. Paul, don't you know Him? That is one knowledge you cannot exist. Knowing God, you cannot exist that. Or I mean, exhaust. You cannot exhaust the knowledge of God. You can't do it. To see, listen here, to see if there are men who understand who He is, His purpose. You know, I don't understand all the purpose of God. Nobody does. The secret things of the Lord belong unto the Lord. But I do know that the purpose of God is to save a people. He's going to populate heaven with a people just like His Son on that new earth. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to present a people before God that is holy and blameless and without spot? That's the purpose of God. I know that. I know the purpose of God and redemption. But here He says, He looked down and no one considered, no one was seeking after Him, no one sought Him for righteousness. They didn't seek Him for anything. And that includes us. There was a time we fit right there in that group. Right there. And what he comes up with here is that the whole lot is bad. He says in verse 3, every one of them has gone back. And that word of gone back means apostatized. Backslid. They've gone back. They're gone. Humanity is not going toward God, it's going away from God. We're not getting better. Is the human race getting better? Really. It's not getting better. Just getting a little more, just getting a little more crafty on how they do things. Putting a little, you know, so you don't look so bad. They're getting craftier at what they do. They're not getting better. And it's, as I said earlier, it's sad, but the more educated we become, the further away from God we go. by nature, naturally. Naturally we do. Natural education leads away from God. Human logic stands in opposition to God. That's sad, but it's so. They are all together as a unit, that's what it means, as a unit. The whole human race is just like, we're all going this way. That's called the broad road. God takes one here and one there off the broad road and puts it on a straight road. But as a unit, the whole human race has become filthy or morally corrupt. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Vicki and I was watching television the other, well, last night. And we said, man, there's just not a program you can watch anymore that just not, it's just the language. And I said, you can't watch anything anymore. And we watched Winnie the Pooh. Well, didn't we? We watched a true story on how Winnie the Pooh came about. I said, you just can't watch anything anymore. It's because it's morally corrupt. Hollywood knows how to entertain the flesh. And that's why I told her, I said, you've got to realize this. Hollywood is not entertaining believers. It's entertaining the flesh. Henry said it one time in a message, he said, Satan owns Hollywood. He said, Satan owns Hollywood. And he knows how to entertain the flesh. And they're part of us, and we still have that flesh in us. We still have that flesh in us. Now he says here, they're all together become filthy, there's none that doeth good, no not one. So if all are bad, It is what it is. David goes from the atheist to all are bad, all are. But then he asks a good question here. Have the workers of iniquity, not just the atheist now, have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? He didn't say have they no intelligence. They have intelligence. They've been educated. But have they no knowledge of all that exists, of all that there is? Have they no knowledge of God? Have they no knowledge of the existence of God? Have they no knowledge of something of the power of God? We read that over in Romans chapter 1, that which may be known of God is revealed in them. It's written on the heart. The law is written on the heart, the conscience. He said, have they no knowledge? Who eat up my people as they eat bread, no remorse for what they do against my people? You know, what I was saying a little while ago, and I've thought about this today, when you read the Scriptures, you know, you read through the Old Testament, especially in the Old Testament, What is it we always see? You always see the world. He always contrasts like Egypt and the world against His people. It's always the world against His church. That's what's going on right now. We get caught up in all these political things and all this what's going on here, what's going on there. But what is really going on behind what we can't see is that there's an attack on the church. Always. The motive of Satan is always against God's people. It's not against drunks and harlots or anything else. It's against God's people. He doesn't care about people out there who are lost. I'll tell you what he cares about. One thing Satan cares about is bringing you down. That's it. If he can just get one Sheep, if he can just drag one sheep off, that would be enough for him. He would prove that God was not able to keep them. If he could got Christ, he said, just kneel down and worship me. That's all he wants. That's all he wants. to be worshipped as God. And that is what man wants by nature. That's what the fool wants. He wants to be God. That's what he wants. That's what Adam did when Adam fell. He rebelled against God. Satan said, you'll be as God, knowing good and evil. There's a real natural tendency in us to want to be the sovereign. we showed in our homes, on the job. People don't like to be told what to do. They don't like to be told what to do. They don't want to be called associates. They don't want to be called employees. Don't call me an employee. One guy told me one time, he said, I don't ever call them my employees. I said, why? He said, I call them associates. He said, it just goes over better. That's a natural tendency in us to not want to have anybody over us. By nature, we hate authority. It's in us. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? With all the evidence in creation and their own conscience, they still won't acknowledge God. They don't do it. This shows how spiritually dead the human race is. With all this evidence, they still don't believe God. But here's something I was thinking of today, especially the atheists. If they say there's no God, then why do they have such animosity toward God's people? Why do they have such animosity? I'll tell you why. Because they hate God that He is. They know God is. They know there's a God. They know. They may say that, but I think they know. Their conscience screams that God is. And then it's here in verse 5. There were they in great fear, dread, great dread, where no fear was." They had no reason to be afraid. Nobody's chasing them. Why are they so afraid? If there is no God, why are you so afraid? The Scripture says, "...the wicked flee when no man pursueth." What's he scared of? He's got a conscience in him that tells him God is. Listen here. There were they in great fear, where no fear was, for God has scattered the bones of him that encamps against them. Evidently, at this particular time, there was someone that had encamped against Israel. And David is saying here, if you just look at the history, God has scattered the bones of your enemies. and He's going to scatter them, and He's going to, listen here, He's going to put them to shame. What's interesting, over in Psalm 14, it speaks of the wicked putting the people of God to shame. Now here in this Psalm, David turned it around in this verse. He said God's putting them to shame. He's going to put them to shame. Scatter their bones, because God has despised them. There are some people that God despises. There is. There's people that God hates. The workers of iniquity. You've put them to shame because you've despised them. You know, it seems here that it's not only the fool's denial of God that provokes God, but it's the attack on his people that really angers him. You're the apple of His eye. You are the apple of His eye. You know, if someone attacked one of your children, you would defend them. I mean, you would step between them. How much more God? How much more God? And now faith speaks, and I'll wind this down. Here in verse 6. Oh, that the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion. And I think he's saying this, and I've said this myself, oh, that God will put an end to all this. You ever feel like that sometimes? Seriously, you ever feel like I would that the Lord would come and put an end to all of it? Just put an end to it. Let this be the end. Stop all this. violence and evil and hatred, that God would just put it away. Finally put it away. Oh, that the salvation of Israel, that our salvation, that the Lord Jesus Christ will come. Oh, that the Lord Jesus Christ will come right now. Right now. Oh, that the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion, the church. When God brings back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, Israel shall be glad." Here, when he says here that God will bring back the captivity of His people, he's not speaking about the Babylonian captivity, because that was years later. He's speaking here in a general sense of whatever situation his people are in, whatever situation you're in, that God would bring you out, that God would deliver you, that He would save you out of that oppression and whatever it is that's got you down. One writer said this, we take that phrase, turn the captivity into the sense in which it admittedly bears in Job 42.10 and in Ezekiel 16.53, that of deliverance from misfortune. That God would deliver us from what has befallen us. And he says here, when that happens, when God brings back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice. All the sons of Jacob shall rejoice. All the sons of Israel shall rejoice. Listen, when God delivers us out of trouble, we rejoice, don't we? And someday, someday, God's going to deliver us from all trouble. When He takes us into glory, it's all over. It's all over. The battle's done. Sin is gone. Even in a worship service, I struggle preaching, you struggle listening. We struggle in worship, but we do worship. Our imperfect worship is received by God through our perfect Savior. And He receives our worship. He receives our singing. But someday, Someday, we're going to stand there and all this sinfulness of ourselves and everything else is gone. And it says here, Jacob shall rejoice. All the Jacobs shall rejoice. And the whole church of God, Israel, shall be glad. And when God says glad, well, that's on another level than what we know. I thank God that we're not fools anymore. And we believe God. We believe God. And what's funny now, the fool calls us a fool. They call us the fools, which I tell you what, that's a good fool to be. If I'm his, I'm his. All right.