I've briefly over the last couple of weeks been studying some of the most significant of the Book of Psalms. We looked at Psalm 1 some time ago, but we looked at Psalm 2 and Psalm 3 in the last couple of weeks. I'd like to look this morning at Psalm number 14, which is such a fundamental psalm in many ways. It's a psalm which, if we were to memorize it, if we were to have it always on our hearts, if we were to teach it to our children, it would go a very long way to giving us a mind which thinks about the world in the right way, a mind which sees the world in the way God would like us to see the world. We mentioned that psalms are words given to us by God to speak back to him in many ways, they are psalms given to be sung and so they are words that God has given us, they're inspired by God And yet he is, as you might say, put them into our mouths, we sing them back to him. And the reason that he's done that is to conform our minds, to make sure that our minds think along the right lines, that we think the way God thinks. There are many different thought patterns, many different world views, you might call it, many different philosophies of life, but the only right one is the one that God gives us. And if we want our minds to think properly, We need to be conformed to God's Word, transformed by God's Word. Again, we quote that verse from Romans. Be not conformed to this world. Be not shaped by this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So, what God wants us to do is not to have our thought patterns dictated by the world, but to have them dictated by the Word of God. And that will take us a long way to having a blessing in our lives. So, Psalm 14 is subtitled to the chief musician, a psalm of David. And there are 53 psalms in the book of Psalms which are titled in this way. They are psalms written by David and given to the chief musician to be sung in the congregation, to be sung by the Jews there in Jerusalem and in other places. They were designed to be sung by the congregation. And the interesting thing is that a lot of these psalms actually don't have a great deal of praise in them. That might seem strange, we think well when we sing psalms, sing hymns, we're trying to praise God and that's the point of our worship. Well yes, largely it is, but not exclusively as we see from psalms such as Psalm 14. Imagine a nation whose mind was trained by this psalm, The fool said in his heart there is no God. Imagine a nation where the children were brought up to think that way. Imagine a nation where the overriding opinion was that it's a very foolish thing to be atheistic or to have any atheistic thought in your mind. What a long way from where we are in the UK in this day and age. The atheist in the UK is very loud. They control the media, they control the entertainment channels, they control the news channels largely. and there are very few who speak of a belief in God in any proper or sensible way. We have lost this foundation which the nation once had and that is a tragedy. But if we're a parent we will want to bring up our children not to think atheistically but to have these ideas and sentiments at the forefront of their mind. It is a foolish thing to think that there is no God. Now this psalm contains several fundamental truths which we need to absorb in our minds. In fact it's so important it's almost word for word repeated in Psalm number 53. Psalm goes a very long way to forming in our minds the correct view of the world, just like Psalms 1, 2 and 3. So let's look at it briefly this morning. The full is spoken of here, and there are a number of different words in the scripture which are translated fool. This particular one means stupid and wicked and vile. It's not just an intellectual foolishness, although that is part of the word, it is more a moral foolishness. It is a foolishness in the matters of good and evil, although there is a stupidity about it as well. This foolish person says in his heart there is no God and it's stupid, it's foolish because if I wander across a busy dual carriageway in London with my eyes closed and I tell myself I do not believe in buses, I do not believe in lorries, I do not believe in cars, that will not stop me from being run down and killed. That would be stupid. That would be ridiculous. Stupid also because the Bible tells us in the Psalms and in Romans and other places that we are without excuse. There is no excuse for atheism. There are two reasons that Romans gives us why there is no excuse for atheism. There are two evidences that we have that nobody can argue with. The first one is creation. All that we see around us, the vast complexity did not come about by chance and any child can tell you that. The second one is our conscience. We have within us a moral compass. We have within us something which screams and gives us pain when we do something which is morally wrong. When we hurt somebody else we cannot do that without hurting ourselves because our conscience is within us and that conscience is evidence of God's creative hands and that is what the Bible tells us. So it is foolish both in an intellectual way but more importantly in a moral way to be somebody who doesn't believe in their heart that there is a God or who says that they don't believe there is a God. It is wicked and I'll tell you why it's wicked. There is, if you like, in the Bible a line, a continuum, which goes from one extreme to the other. And at one end of this line is the atheist, who says, perhaps even with his mouth, I do not believe there is a God. At the other end of that spectrum, completely the other end, there is the righteous man. And the righteous man is a God-fearer. And the difference between one end of that line and all of the bits in the middle, and the other, is how much you acknowledge the existence of God, how closely you live your life in the light of his existence, how close you draw yourself to him. In Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, verse 13, Solomon sums up the whole of the Christian life, or the whole of the human life, like this. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. At one end of this line that I've described, you've got someone who fears God. That means they respect them. They care about them, they listen to them, they read God's word and they try to keep His commandments because they are deeply affected by the reality of God. And that is the whole duty of man. But right at the other end of that spectrum you have the one who says, I don't even acknowledge that God exists. So, it is morally wicked to be somebody who denies the existence of God. It is a great stupidity. It is a vile thing within the human life. Your attitude to God will be somewhere upon that line. Are you someone who takes God extremely seriously? Who fears and respects and loves Him? Who strives to keep His commandments? You do well. Are you somebody who refuses to acknowledge his existence or his claim upon your life. You do not do well. But of course, atheism is very attractive. It is very attractive to people because it gets them off the hook. If you say to yourself, and if you convince yourself that there is no God and you don't want to believe in God, then you can do anything you want. Really. Because there's no day of judgements, There is no absolute moral code. There is nobody watching over your shoulder from heaven to see how your behavior is. There is no one recording your behavior. There is no penalty to pay. There is only a vast confusion. There is only chance, luck. There is only the survival of the fittest and therefore you can do whatever you want. It is a way of salving your conscience to argue that your conscience doesn't exist, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, but the attraction of atheism is the moral liberty that it brings. Where does right and wrong come from if not from God? Who defines good and evil if it is not the holy God himself? Society can make it up as they go along. They can change it as they feel fit, as we said last week. 50 years ago, homosexuality was illegal. Now, it is defended and defined in law, it is bent over to and worshipped. 50 years ago, of course it was illegal to murder the child in the womb. Now, 200,000 plus abortions a year. This is just in our country. 336 million abortions in China in the last 30 years. Abortion now, the leading cause of death throughout the entire world, killing more than cancer and heart disease. Now, that wouldn't have been allowed 50 years ago. Society would have said that that was wicked and evil 50 years ago, but not now. Now it is to be celebrated. Now it is to be defended. Because without God, there is no absolute standard of morality and right can become wrong and wrong can become right. Richard Dawkins talks of evil sometimes in his writings but he has no scientific way of measuring it. It's only his opinion or the opinion of society. But the fool hath said in his heart and that's instructive. He doesn't first of all say it in his mind and he doesn't necessarily say it with his tongue. It's the heart that really matters. His heart is where the desire comes from. He doesn't say it with his head because it's not an intellectually driven thing. He didn't sit down with a blank sheet of paper and an open mind and said to himself, now let me see, I don't mind one way or another whether there is a God or not, let me work it out scientifically. He didn't come to that conclusion through intellect. No, first of all his heart told him that he didn't want there to be a God. His heart told him that he hated God. His heart told him that God was a restriction to him. His heart told him that he would have a better life without the existence of God. And then his mind followed. In this day and age, of course, we're very used to the militant atheism who shouts his mouth off, whether it be in public or in prints or on television or on social media. They are very, very full of themselves and their words. But of course, even if a man doesn't speak of himself as being an atheist, even if he says, I'm probably an agnostic, it still may be that in his heart he is saying there is no God. We must remember that. Apologetics is a wonderful science and we're on a subject, something which is good to read and to study and to understand. But we must remember, of course, apologetics has its place. As Spurgeon says, because it's the heart where the fool has said there's no God, the preacher must always aim at the heart, not necessarily directly at the mind. It is the heart which needs to be convinced of these things, not just the head. Now sometimes, of course, we go to the heart via the head, but bear in mind if you're regularly involved in apologetic arguments, that the heart is the heart of the matter in this case. They are corrupt. That is, they are rotten. That is, they are like a piece of fruit in your fruit bowl which has gone mouldy and green and fluffy and you don't want to have anything to do with it. It cannot be used. You don't want to go there. It's dirty. It's not fit for purpose. That is what these atheists are like. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth And it's interesting to look at these second and third phrase in this sentence. First of all, they have done abominable works, that is, they actively commit evil acts. But also, there is none that doeth good, that is, they do not do the things which they ought to do. And sometimes we say that there are two kinds of sin, sins of commission, things you do which are wrong, telling a lie, stealing something, but there are also sins of omission. There are things which you should do, but you don't do them, and because you don't do them, you have sinned, such as praising God, being thankful, and repentance. These are sins of omission, and when we as Christians come to the Lord to confess our sins, we must be careful to search our hearts for both types. both the sins of commission and the sins of omission, the things we've omitted to do. Verse 2 is another wonderful verse and this is simple enough and profound enough for children really. If you could teach your children this, if we could teach every child in our Sunday school this verse alone, it would do them great good. The Lord looked down from heaven on the children of men. There is nobody in this congregation this morning, although some are very young, who can't understand that. God looks down from heaven on us. Simple and profound. It's the thing which the atheist is trying to forget. The thing which the atheist wants to put out of his mind. He wants to tell himself that there is no God in heaven, watching his every move, reading his heart. But that's not true, is it? And if a child or an adult could only remember this fact that God is watching. So easy, isn't it? For the child to do that naughty thing when there's no adult around. And you hope that you've trained them to the point where their conscience will not allow them to do that thing, even though you're not there. But every parent has gone through the stage of finding their little toddler with a bottle of pseudo-cream open and painted all over some particular unsuitable surface. That's how children behave when they're very young, but you quickly want to train them out of that. So that they don't feel that every time that they're left alone, they can do whatever they want. If we could only remember this simple truth and yet so important. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men. What did he look to see? This is fascinating. An insight into God. To see if there were any that did understand and seek God. Now he didn't look down from heaven to see if he could spot any wrongdoing. You imagine an ancient schoolmaster with his cane in his hand from decades ago, watching to see if any child dare lift his head from the paper, if any notes are being passed from desk to desk, if any child is whispering or not doing what they ought to do, searching for iniquity. But that's not God. When he looks down from heaven on earth, he sees vast swathes of iniquity, just as he did before the flood. The only imagination of men was continually to do evil. No, he's not looking for iniquity, he can see that very easily. What he's looking for is to see if there are any who understand and seek God. He's not even looking for righteousness. He's not even looking for a perfect man. He's not even looking for someone who has kept his law. He's just looking for someone who has started to understand that they are a sinner and turned back toward God. Very, very low standards and yet it seems even that he does not find. I remember when I was young, a friend of mine had a lawn in his garden and it was full of clover and I don't know if you know but clover has three leaves, generally speaking. But every now and again you find a clover leaf with four parts, four leaves on the top of the stalk and they're quite rare and some people foolishly say they bring luck. Now my friend shows how little entertainment we had when we were young, we would go out into the garden, search through the clover leaves to see if we could find the four-leaf clover. And every now and again we would find one, but it would take a long, long time. Here's one! And you imagine God like that, don't you? Looking down from heaven, where is just one sinner who has understood that he is a sinner? Where is the one sinner who has regretted his sin and turned to seek me? And yet, such sinners are rarer than four-leaf clover they are all gone aside they are all together become filthy there is none that doeth good no not one we see the word all here a number of times and we read in Romans that this is not just the atheists but this is everyone this is all of mankind there are none that understand until God moves in their hearts and in their minds. There are none that seek after him. There are none that do good. Sometimes I've been for a drive in the countryside at a certain time of year. You come across an area of the countryside which smells really bad. Perhaps there's a pig farm there or perhaps they're doing the muck spreading, spreading the slurry on the field to fertilise it for the next year and it stinks. It's disgusting. We all remember holidays as a child, driving through the areas of the countryside where that happened. What's that horrible smell? And then you see a farmhouse there and you think, how can they stand to live there in the middle of this stink? How long do they have to put up for it? How do they sleep at night? Shouldn't they just go away on holiday? It's so vile. The strong smell is so horrifying. And yet, I assume that those who live in that area get used to it. however long it is that they have to put up with it. The smell, they can still smell it, but they become used to it. It's not so bad for them anymore. They can get on with their daily life. They can eat their dinner without feeling ill, because they become used to it. And that is exactly what has happened to the human race. To God, the stench of our sin is so overpoweringly strong. And yet to us, We're so used to living with immorality and violence and hatred and atheism that it's become normal. We don't even notice it. Like the smell of your own aftershave or perfume, which you don't notice a little while after you put on because your nose becomes accustomed to it. And yet God tells us, and this we need to understand, that every single one of us has fallen short. Every single one of us is a sinner. We are all distant from God. We are universally guilty. Again, Paul says in Romans chapter 3, we read it, verse 9, what then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we have before proved both Jew and Gentiles that all are under sin. And then he goes on to quote Psalm 14. Isaiah says in chapter 64 and verse 6, but we are all as an unclean thing, and all our unrighteousnesses are as filthy rags, and that's a very strong phrase, and we all do fade as a leaf when our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away, and listen to this, and there is none that calleth upon thy name and stirreth himself to take hold of thee. I'm sure Isaiah had this psalm in mind when he wrote those words. We must understand We are all dead in our sins. There's no distinction between the atheist and that one who says he believes in God but hasn't trusted. We are all sinners. Verse four, have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread and call not upon the Lord." Here we have more identifying factors as to show us what atheists do and how they look. There is nothing new under the sun. The atheists that we have in our day and age may be more high profile, more virulent it might seem, more outspoken, but atheists like them have always existed. They are workers of iniquity. That's an extraordinary phrase, isn't it? These sinful people, the psalmist describes them as workers of iniquity. They are slaves to iniquity. How tragic for them. And this ought to fire our compassion, in a sense. It's not a question of us saying, huh, those filthy beasts, look at them, how dreadful they are. No, we are to love our enemies. We are to have compassion. They are workers of iniquity. They go about spending their energy doing bad and doing evil, but they are ultimately slaves, like those who are employed by a wicked slave master to do things which they don't really want to do and to have no good reward. But the atheists eat up God's people as they eat bread. They hate God's people. They want to see them destroyed Because the atheist's task is to convince himself that there is no God. And the godly make that hard for him. When he sees a godly person, when he sees someone who says, I believe the Bible, I believe the literal account of Genesis, I believe Noah's flood, I believe that God did these things, that makes it hard for the atheist to keep up his pretense. When he sees a Christian being merciful and loving, and generous. When he sees a church full of people from very different backgrounds loving each other and caring for each other and being sacrificial. When he sees that, he sees evidence of God. He doesn't want to see evidence of God. When he sees that, he realises that they have something which he doesn't. When the atheist sees the Christian being fulfilled and being happy and witnessing and loving the Lord God, It is an affront to him. It must be rooted out. It must be destroyed. It must be ignored. It must be punished. And that is why you see such great vitriol when the atheist confronts the believer. Why the atheist insults him and belittles him and mocks him because our testimony is a disproof to his point of view. Call not upon the Lord That's tragic, isn't it? Because the Lord is a God who will be inquired of. The Lord God will listen to prayers of repentance from his enemies. Here is tragedy in this verse, verse 44, that the atheist spends his life working evil, hating God's people, and if only he would call upon the Lord in repentance, he would be heard, but he does not. Then in verse 5 we see yet more reason for compassion, that we ought to love and have great concern and pray for our atheist enemies. There were they in great fear, for God is in the generation of the righteous. The atheist is haunted by his guilty conscience. The conscience is what drives us to God, and if we will not let it drive us to God, then we must try and destroy it and blot it out, whether we use drugs and alcohol, whether we use pleasure, or the pursuit of wealth, whether we use endless luxury, or whether we use intellectual reasons, we must stamp out that conscience, because it is driving us towards God, and we do not want to be driven towards God. But if you do that to your conscience, it will torture you. It will be a thorn in your flesh, a knife in your back, It will be something which never gives you peace, something which twists you up and ruins you and no doubt causes all sorts of health problems, both mental and physical, because we try and beat our consciences into submission. They were in great fear, these atheists. They knew deep down that they were in the wrong. They knew deep down that God was with his people. and that they had backed the wrong horse, chosen the wrong pathway but now in their pride they would not turn back. When I was young I had a pet gerbil and I don't know exactly what went wrong but it decided to gnaw off its own foot. It's very unpleasant for a young child to go and find that its pet only had three feet. It had bitten off its own foot and you read don't you of people who have these strange psychological problems, which convince them that they have some pain in a foot or a hand, and it leads them to seek surgery, amputation, to have that hand cut off. There's nothing wrong with it, but in their mind it's causing them pain, so they have it cut off. That's a horrible and a tragic thing, isn't it? But it's exactly how the atheist feels about his conscience. If only he could hear it, and burn it, and anesthetise it, or have it surgically removed. He would. And then his mind and his heart would be in tune with his intellectual philosophy. There is no God in heaven, he says. There is no moral absolute right and wrong. And the only thing which tells me there is, is my conscience. If I could get rid of my conscience, I would be happy. But I can't. Because the conscience is not physical. It is spiritual. Therefore, They are in great fear. Fear is one of the engines of hate, isn't it? I hesitate to quote popular culture, but as Yoda says in Star Wars, fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger to hate, and hate to suffering. And it is this fear in the atheist which drives them to be so vile, so aggressive. against those who don't agree with them. Why can the atheist not just say, oh, I don't believe in God, but you do. Fine, live and let live. But most often they don't. They write books called the God Delusion. They say that religion is the cause of all the trouble in the world and they go militantly against those who believe in God because they hate, because they fear. Verse 6, you've shamed the counsel of the poor. which means you have laughed at, you have mocked the conduct, the thinking, the advice of the godly. The godly say you should live like this, you should behave in this way. Specifically, the godly say that the Lord is his refuge. But the atheist mocks that and they laugh at it and they say, you fools! How can you trust in an invisible sky fairy? Why is it you worship the spaghetti monster and all these ridiculous things which they say to make us look idiotic? You are pie in the sky when you die, that's nonsense, rubbish. These things you believe, that's exactly what the psalmist says they will say, will shame and mock the belief of the poor because the Lord is his refuge, but we will not be laughed out of our refuge. We who have found Jesus Christ to be the rock of refuge will not be leaving him anytime soon because an atheist laughs at us. We who have fled to Jesus Christ for the relief of our conscience, for the forgiveness of our sins, we who have found him that he puts his arms around us, compasses us about, protects us from the storms of life, we who have found that God answers our prayers, We'll not be leaving that because an atheist laughs at us. No, we will expect them to laugh at us. We will know why it is that they laugh at us. We will understand that in his heart sin has corrupted him just as it had us. And we will long for the day that the Lord comes to work in him. Because the only difference between you and an atheist is the fact that God has come and worked in your heart and taught you to seek after Him. He has caused your conscience to push you towards Him. That He has given you eyes to see the truth in His Word. And that He has put saving faith in your hearts. And so we do not hate the atheist. We do not fear the atheist. We do not misunderstand the atheist. No, we pray. We pity. We have compassion, we long that they might turn, that God might bless them and we study to be able to help them because they are in the most dreadful dreadful place and our prayer is verse 7. Oh that the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion. And when the Lord bringeth back the captivities of his people, Jacob shall rejoice and Israel shall be glad. This is the answer to this dreadful mess. This is the answer to our society's problems and to the individual problems of all of us within it, that salvation would come out of Zion. And it did. The Lord sent his Son, who ministered in Zion, was crucified outside the city walls, salvation came into the world through the death of Christ, and the true religion of Christianity has dispersed from that city across the whole globe. But we continue to pray, although much of the work has been done for salvation. That is what the atheists need. He doesn't need a sword to come and destroy him. He doesn't need to be crushed or put into prison. He needs the salvation that has come out of Zion and that the Lord would bless him. So, study this psalm. Memorise this psalm. Sing the psalm in your own personal devotions and worship. Teach it to your children for it will give your mind the right view of God, of the unbeliever. But remember, there but for the grace of God go all of us. And it is only because of His great mercy in opening our eyes and drawing us to faith that we are not that fool in verse 1, but we are those that can pray the prayer of verse 7. Amen.