Let's open in God's word this morning to the book of Psalms, Psalm 14. Psalm 14, and we'll read the entire Psalm together, and that will also be the text for the sermon. If your Bible has a heading to the Psalm, it's 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 that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God. They are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord? There were they in great fear, for God is in the generation of the righteous. Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad." We read this far in God's holy and inspired word. The heading for the psalm is the first thing I want to call attention to this morning. It says, to the chief musician. And that means that this psalm, along with other ones that have this heading, was written for the public worship of God's people. It was written for, we might say, a choir director to teach the people of God as they came into the temple to worship And you look at the content of the psalm and you think that's quite surprising because it doesn't seem very worshipful. You see that in some of the other psalms. We've looked at the previous psalms here and they're all laments from Psalm 9 through Psalm 13. And Psalm 13 has the same heading, to the chief musician. Oh, you think of a psalm like Psalm 51 where David expresses his own sorrow and confession over his sin and prays for washing and forgiveness and sanctification. And that was written to the chief musician for the people of God to use in worship. And I say that's quite surprising, at least when you think of the way worship is conceived of today. Because worship is conceived of this way today, that it's an expression of just personal happiness. But when you come to the Psalms, though the Psalms are expressions of personal joy, you find something quite different. that the Psalms are more often a confession of truth, of what God has revealed and God has spoken. And then the Psalms are used to instruct so that when we sing, we sing something with substance that teaches us. Colossians 3 tells us that we use the Psalms that way to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And that's the substance of the psalms here. It's doctrine. Here the doctrine is the doctrine of the depravity of man and the doctrine of the foolishness of denying God, the folly of atheism. And we sing this to each other. We teach one another as we sing. And as we confess what is true about God, that's worship. Worship begins with God's revelation, what God has said. and us repeating to God and each other what he has first said to us. Now, as we come to this psalm, I want us to think about a couple of important attributes of the Bible, the scriptures. God has given us the scriptures as his inspired word, and there are certain characteristics of the Bible. And the two that I want you to think of this morning as we approach this psalm are these, that the scriptures are timely and timeless. And by that we mean that the Scriptures are always true, and they are always relevant. David wrote these words thousands of years ago, but they speak to us today. And that's because God's revelation doesn't change, and God doesn't change, and truth doesn't change, and man doesn't change, and morality doesn't change. Nothing changes. Sometimes we look at the things around us today and we read a psalm like Psalm 14 and we say, well, David is talking about our day. Or we look at what's going on around us and we look at what the Bible has to say about the end times, the increase of apostasy and the persecution, the great tribulation that will come for God's people. And we say, we're almost there. We're almost in the last days. And we project from our days forward. But as we look back, and we look back in history, and we look back in the scriptures, we see that what we live with and what we deal with as God's people in the world is really no different than what God's people have had to deal with all through history. Ecclesiastes chapter 1 says, the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun. That's the way David is thinking as he writes this psalm. He writes in a day when the godly man ceases, as he says in Psalm 12 verse 1. He says here, there's none that doeth good, no, not one. It's a time when the godly fail and David sees the imminent judgment of God, that God's judgment, God's wrath is going to be poured out. He says in verse 4, there were they in great fear. He's speaking there of the terror that comes on the ungodly. And David is thinking of his day, but he's realizing this is the way it happens in history in cycles, in an increasing intensity. And the last day will be the most intense, but this has happened in the past. Think of the days of Noah, and that there was only one righteous man in the earth, and the wrath of God came in judgment and the flood on the world of unbelief. Well, think of the days of Sodom and the wickedness of Sodom. And it vexed the righteous soul of one man lot in the city of Sodom. And David is writing from his perspective in days similar to that. And in this psalm, he explains how things get to be that way in the world and in a society. How does it get this way? We live in a day when education, science, and psychology, and philosophy, and history wants to give explanations for the behavior of men. And they have their answers for why things are the way that they are among men. And very often, they'll blame religion. But the Bible is a completely different evaluation. What we have here is God's evaluation of how wickedness comes to be in this world and how the world comes to be so corrupt and so filled with iniquity that the cup of God's wrath is ready to be poured out. It's very interesting that this psalm, Psalm 14, is the only psalm in the entire book of psalms that's repeated. That is, there are two editions of it in the same book. Psalm 53, we sang a little earlier, and it's almost word for word the same. A few variations, but hardly any. And that's because this psalm is so extremely important. And God would emphasize to us the content, the things that He's saying to us in this psalm. What's important. is the Gospel. The Gospel comes through in this psalm. This is not just a psalm which evaluates society. This is not just a psalm that tells us why people in this world are so wicked, but this is a psalm that speaks to us. And the Apostle Paul, when in Romans 3, he explains the depravity of man, he quotes extensively from this psalm. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. We recognize those words from Romans 3. And it's to point us and direct us this morning as we think about the content of this psalm to faith in Jesus Christ and to our own need, our own depravity. And so let's remember that as we look at the psalm this morning, it is a psalm for and about atheists and atheism. And we want to look at it from that perspective, but let's understand that It's important for us to think about that because in our hearts every one of us are deniers of God. We're all by nature atheists and we need to be warned against practical atheism this morning and we need to be encouraged in our faith and fear of God so that we don't say there is no God. Let's look this morning at this psalm under the theme, The Folly of Atheism. The Folly of Atheism. We want to notice first, atheism's spiritual source, where it comes from. And then in the second place, we want to see its moral consequences, what it produces. And then third, we want to see its devastating outcome. And here's the truth for what will happen to the world of ungodly men who deny the Lord. Verse 1 describes for us an atheist, someone who says, literally in the Hebrew, no God. The words there is are added in the English translation. No God, he says. God is not existent. And he means this. No God for me. No God as far as I'm concerned. This is not a universal truth, but it's a personal admission or confession. To me, there is no God. No such thing as God. I don't need a God in my life. And that person, the Bible says, is a fool. The word for fool here is nabal, and we'll say some things about nabal in a little while, but the word nabal refers to a dry and dead flower which has no life in it, which flaps in the wind. It's empty. It's drained of any sense or life. The fool is someone who ignores reality to his own ruin. That's what nabal did. Nabal wouldn't feed David. And then David became angry and David was ready to come and kill the man. And when Nabal heard about it, his heart melted and he had a heart attack and he died. But it was his own folly that brought his destruction. Something foolish is when you ignore something that's real and it ends up destroying you. If I would stand on the shoulder of I-90 and wait for a semi-truck to come roaring down the highway at 70 miles an hour and then jump out in front of it, that would be foolish. And that's what a fool does. He ignores reality. The fool ignores the ultimate reality, the reality of God. When he says, no God, that's folly, which brings destruction to himself. Now David doesn't have in mind one person only here. He says, the fool. But David has in mind many people. They are corrupt, he says. And there is none that doeth good. And then in verse 4, have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge. Don't they get it? So David is speaking of a mass of people. A large group. Now, what's an atheist? when we think of an atheist, what comes to mind is an intellectual atheist, someone who by personal admission identifies himself as one who says, there is no God. Perhaps we think of a scientist, someone who studies the physical world and believes that that's all there is. And he's dressed in his lab coat, and he says, there's no God. Or maybe we think of a college professor who teaches philosophy or psychology and he purports in all of his teaching that there is no God. There's no spiritual realm. Or maybe we think of an earthy evolutionist environmentalist who believes that if there's a God, God is in this world and God is in this creation, a pantheistic idea. But this artist doesn't have in mind those kinds of atheists. The intellectual type. Perhaps in David's day there wasn't even such a thing. David has in mind here instead when he writes, all who deny the true God, all who resist the revelation of God, all false religions, all practical atheism, all those who live in their lives as if there is no God. The application here is not only to atheism, but it's much broader. And yet, if we examine it from the point of view of atheism, we'll see the real content of the psalm and then be able to make some applications to ourselves. David doesn't have in mind here intellectual atheism, and that comes out in the first verse of the psalm which tells us not only the thesis of the psalm, that atheism is folly, but where that atheism comes from. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. We're told today that atheism is the natural conclusion, the logical and sensible conclusion of science and the observation of the physical world and psychology and philosophy and the thoughts of man. The natural conclusion, we're told, is the only logical conclusion is that there is no God. If we look at things and if we think, well if we're clear and scientific then we'll conclude that there is no God and and we're told that religion is not sensible that religion is a crutch for the weak that in the educated and civilized world there is no need for a God and that religious people are basing what they believe and say on their emotions not their thoughts they're not being sensible Karl Marx said this, that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that people use religion to dull their senses from the hard realities of life. But now the Bible presents us something that's exactly the opposite. That atheism, in fact, is an attempt to dull the senses of man to the hard reality, the undeniable reality of God. Atheism is not something that begins in the mind. It's not a matter of intellect. It's not a matter of science and observation. But atheism is a matter of the heart. And it's practical. It has to do with morality. And it's the theory that someone will have in the end to cover up the hard reality that there's a God who's just and right to whom he must answer. Atheism is the crutch, we might say, for man who lives in fear of God. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. God is always speaking to the heart and the mind and the conscience of man. That's the idea of heart here, not just mind, thinking. not just observation, but the deeper spiritual side of man in which in his conscience he lives before God. God is always speaking to the conscience of man, and man by nature hates the testimony of God, and he turns from God, and he denies God, and he wants God to be dead. It doesn't begin in the mind, but it ends. in that theory you see the progress here in the in the scriptures man is not comfortable with the testimony of God in his conscience and with the testimony of God in his word and through will say the witness of the people of God and Christianity in the earth. Man is not comfortable with that. He finds that God encroaches on his life and his morals. He wants to live a certain way and follow his lusts and desires. And God says no. And the Scripture says no. And so he figures out from practical things in his life that he needs to be an atheist. And then he comes up with a theory. Sometimes it's progressive. It works this way, that man will invent a God that will allow him to follow his lusts and desires, one that will tolerate, one that is accepting and beneficent. And then in the end, that God really has nothing to do with his life. The things that he does in his life have no consequence for God, because God will love him anyway, and God will care for him anyway. This has no effect on God. And then what's the point of having a God? And so he begins to ask the question, is God real anyway? And he comes up with a theory. To explain away his immorality in his heart, he says, there is no God. And the occasion for it is the testimony of God to man. The Bible makes that clear. John 3, Jesus says that when the light comes into the world, men reject the light, and He's speaking of Himself, because their deeds are evil. The coming of Christ and the coming of light and God's revelation into the world speaks against the evil deeds of man, and so they reject the light. Romans 1 is a passage that makes this very clear to us. There's a long passage there beginning at verse 18, really all the way through the end of the chapter, verse 32. The Bible tells us there that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. So it's plain to man that God is a God of justice and wrath against sin. that God will punish. And verse 19 tells us in Romans 1 that this is because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. The invisible things of Him are seen from the creation of the world. Clearly. And they're understood by the things that are made, even God's eternal power and Godhead, so that man is without excuse. There is a living testimony in the consciousness, conscience of every man concerning God. What does man do? He doesn't like that. And so verse 23 says he changes the glory of the corruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. He makes a God that suits him. And then chapter two, verse 15, tells us that he uses his conscience either to excuse or to accuse. And so he puts God out of the picture. And as I said, that happens in very practical ways. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at Psalm 10, and Psalm 10 really talks about the same thing. The wicked, Psalm 10, verse 4, through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts. So he pushes God from his mind. He says in his heart, verse 6, I shall not be moved. This arises out of his pride. He says, I'm strong. I don't need a God. And so verse 11, Psalm 10, he says in his heart, God has forgotten. He hides his face. He'll never see it. There is no God. God doesn't see. God doesn't know. There isn't such a thing. My life is of no consequence to God. And so atheism arises from The heart of man. It's not about science. It's not intellectual. But it's about morality. It's spiritual. And it arises from man's need, man's desire, man's natural lust and inclination to follow his own way. And so put God out of the picture. Now, many people are going to deny this. But it's very interesting that some leading atheists Admit this. They'll admit this. I want to read a couple of quotes from some leading atheists. The first is Thomas Nagel. He's a naturalist, somebody who believes only in the material world, a naturalist philosopher. And about 15 years ago, he wrote this in an essay. He says, I want atheism to be true. The essay was actually entitled The Last Word, as though he had come to the conclusion on things. And then you see from this quote, he really isn't sure. He says this, I want atheism to be true, and I am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that. He's a naturalist. He wants this world, what he can see and experience, to be it. He wants a meaningless existence, a meaningless world, he writes in another place. Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognize it and just go on as before. He wants a meaningless existence, a life without God. One of the most famous or infamous atheists of the 20th century, his name Aldous Huxley, he eventually died of drug overdose and a drug addict. wrote this, I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning and consequently I assumed that it had none and I was able without much difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. He goes on to say that the philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. In other words, he wants the world to be meaningless, he wants God out of the picture so that he can do what he wants to do without any reference to God. The fool says in his heart, there's no God. It's not intellectual, it's not scientific, it's spiritual, and it's moral. So he says, we objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation from that system of morality. He says, when the supporters of this system, Christianity, claimed that it embodied the meaning of the world, there was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had any meaning whatever. It's moral. It's spiritual. He doesn't want God to speak to his conscience. He doesn't want to answer to God the judge. That's the source, not just of atheism, but of all false religion. It comes from the heart of man. He doesn't want God's testimony to his conscience. And so he says, no God, so that he can pursue his own desires. Now, as I said, this is not just about atheism. And this is not just so that we can look out and see the folly of the world and identify it and speak about it, but this psalm is written for us and it speaks to our hearts as well. And there are two things here. First, there is instruction for us in this. The fool says in his heart there is no God. What we have to see here is the folly of our own depraved hearts. That's what this psalm is about. Verse 3, there is none that doeth good. No, not one. And Paul says that's universal. That all the world may become silent before God. That we too might see there's no righteousness by the works of the law. This is our problem. This is our nature. That we would say there is no God. There's only one way out of this and it's by the work of God's grace. In verse 2, God looks down from heaven and there's none that understand and none that seek after Him. Man is blind and man goes against and contrary to and away from God. He doesn't seek God. When he says in his heart there's no God, it's not because he's looking for a God, but it's because he's looking to deny God. And the only deliverance is grace. When we look at the word of God and look at that word, seek, it's not that we seek God, but it's that he seeks us. And it's only by work of his grace in which he comes and seeks us by the word and the gospel of the Holy Spirit that we can understand and that we do. Seek after him. So there's instruction here about depravity and the way of salvation. and the sovereign work of God's grace. But there's also warning here for us. And that comes to really two groups of people who may well be sitting in church this morning. There's first a warning to hypocrites. The Bible makes plain that the worst atheists are not those who say openly there is no God, but the worst atheists are those who with their mouths make a confession, but their hearts are far from God. The prophet Isaiah, the prophet Jeremiah, and Jesus all speak of a people that draw near with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They have understanding in their minds. They have intellectual grasp and they can express the truths, but they walk away from church and it has no relevance to their life. God is of no consequence to them. Faith is merely a matter of mind and mouth and not heart. and life. And so there's a urgent call here to repentance to all hypocrites who push God out of their lives and who live and talk just like the world. But the warning isn't just to hypocritical unbelievers. There's a warning here for all of us because Not only is it our nature to say there's no God, but we're all guilty of practical atheism. That's what the struggle in our life with sin is, to consciously live from moment to moment in the reality before the ultimate reality of God. You see, every time we sin, in practice, we deny God. We live like a fool. We say, there's no God. God won't see. God won't know. That's sin. And so this is the struggle of the Christian life, and it's not that we become perfect in this life and overcome this struggle, but at the same time we never say, and we should never say, well, I can't help sinning, or sin doesn't matter. No, we realize the dangerous situation that we're in and that the point of departure is not science and intellect and the arguments of the world that would come against us in logical ways, but the point of departure is immoral conduct and the heart saying, well, I want this in my life, so I don't want there to be a God. That's sin. And that's the point of departure to atheism. You cannot serve two masters, Jesus says. You cannot go on making a confession with your lips that there's a God and then making a conscious decision in your life to go on in sin. The push will come to shove. And so there's a warning here for all of us against a practical denial of God. So that's the source of atheism. The heart of man, the heart which knows there's a God and that we must answer to God and says, I don't want that. And so there is no God, no God for me. But now the psalmist also puts before us the consequences of this mindset which says there's no God. Atheism leads to ruin. It leads to worse. It brings ruin. Moral ruin. It does that in society at large. Think of society. It leads to secularism and humanism, to materialism, to moral bankruptcy in society, to pleasure madness, to absolute expressions of immorality, to a relativistic morality, to a cry for tolerance, to the persecution in the end of those who do believe in God. That's where Western culture is today. And it's because it says there's no God. Look at the days of Noah and the days of Lot, and you see the same thing again. Where did it come from? It came from the heart of man. But it doesn't only bring societal ruin. It brings ruin independently and personally as well. This man who I read a little while ago who says, wanted there to be no God, died a drug addict with his life in absolute ruin. The liberty that he sought from this system of morality, as he called Christianity, the liberty that he sought from it brought destruction, personal ruin. And we only have to look around in society at divorce, at disease, at depression, at alcoholism, at suicide, and all these things to see the personal ruin that a denial of God will bring." And that's really what the psalmist is talking about as he goes on in the psalm. This is not only a statement, the psalm, of the depravity of man and the folly of atheism, but the psalmist develops his thesis, so to speak, as he goes on and demonstrates from the consequences of an atheistic mentality He demonstrates the foolishness of saying there is no God. Look at some of the words that he uses as he goes on in the psalm to talk about the consequences of saying there is no God. In verse 1, they are corrupt. That word corrupt describes the depravity of man. Man is corrupt, but it describes it as a kind of ongoing active thing that corruption leads to further corruption you think if you think of this if you have a corrupted file on your computer well it can corrupt the whole system so that there's a an entire system breakdown and crash well the person who says there there is no God has this corrupting mentality so that sin produces more sin, and sin develops into greater sin. This is the judgment of God on saying there is no God. Romans 1, after man denies the testimony of God and creates a God after his own imagination, we read in Romans 1, verse 24, God gave them up to their uncleanness to pursue their atheistic lusts and desires. And sin brought greater sin. Sin develops into worse sin. That's the idea of corrupt here. If you have rust in your wheel wells on your car, that's corruption, but it's going to spread. And so sin develops into greater sin. He goes on to say in verse 1, they have done abominable works. And that's really a parallel idea. The word abominable here has the idea of something that defiles, something that makes filthy and dirty. If you put a drop of blood in a glass of water, the whole thing is defiled. And that's the idea here. The works defile what God has made beautiful and given meaning to. When you live life in this world and when you use the creation that God has given and the resources that God has given without any reference to God, you defile life and you defile this creation. Everything you touch sends up a putrid stench to God because it isn't used for His glory. That's what atheism does. It smears. And sin does this. It smears the beauty. and the meaning and the purpose of what God has given in this world. And so in verse 3, the psalmist says, they have together, all together, become filthy. And filthy, again, has this corrupting idea. Sour, like milk, is the literal idea. It's a picturesque Hebrew word. And then you think of what happens when you leave milk. Sour milk sitting in the sun. Well, it just becomes more and more and more sour, filthy. And that's what happens. When God visits sin with sin, when men give themselves over to this corrupt mindset, then their mind is darkened, their will is hardened, their emotions become depraved, and they more and more become wretched in their sinfulness. And so the psalmist says at the end of verse one and then again in verse three, there is none that doeth good. And he's describing here the behavior now. Of man by nature and man. Who, because of his nature and heart, says there is no God, there's none that doeth good. Goodness is a word that's used in this Bible to describe what a person is and what a person does. God is good. That means God is without any moral flaw. He's perfect. And He does good. He does good within His own being and He does good to others. God is a God of love and beneficence. Outside of His being, a God of grace. There's none that doeth good. Well, goodness is something that shows itself in the conduct of a person in His love. That's the requirement of the law of God. Love. Love God and love your neighbor. When it says there's none that doeth good, it means there's no love for God and there's no love for man. That a man who says there is no God is driven and motivated exclusively by selfish desires and self-love. There is no God. There's none that doeth good. That's the mindset of atheism. And that's the mindset of unbelief. Regardless of what the world and the world of unbelief will say to you and tell you, self-interest motivates the life of unbelief. You see that in the moral relativism that's accepted today. Moral relativism is this. Technically, what the majority accept is right. But really, moral relativism is this. If I can get away with it, it's right. See, it's selfish. If most people will accept it, if I can get away with it, then it's okay. It's motivated by self. There is no God. There is no morality in the denial of God. Now you can read what the atheists say, and they have all kinds of principles for morality, but each of them are relative. And in the end, it's what's accepted. What's accepted is right. And so if I can get away with it, I will. If I can get away with it, it's right. And so a society that's done away with God is driven in the end by lust and sensuality. If it feels good, you do it. There's no God who cares. There's no consequences that we should be concerned about. We can love who we want, when we want, how we want, where we want with no regard for what will happen and what consequences there will be. And that's the corruption of man that's described again in Romans 1. God gave them over to their own lusts. And the result is homosexuality, men with men and women with women, doing that which is unseemly. And that perverseness has consequences. And one of the consequences is unwanted pregnancy. And we'll say something about that in a little. And then God continues to speak, and God's Word continues to speak, and the Gospel continues to be preached, and the Christian speaks out. His life is different. And it develops into a growing animosity towards anyone who says there is a God. and who dares to bring God into the picture and to speak of the holiness and the judgment of God and the punishment for sin and hell and the accounting for sin. God impedes on their pursuit of their own desire and lust. And so in the end, the witness of God and the word of the Christian has to be silenced. And that's here in verse 4. This is the development. This is the consequence. of atheism and its mentality. Verse 4, who eat up my people as they eat bread and call not on the name of the Lord. They have no regard for life. They're callous towards human life. They think nothing of it. It's like Joseph's brothers throwing him in the pit and going to eat lunch. Let's get rid of these Christians. Let's get rid of the testimony of the Word of God. and just eat our bread. It's like eating a slice of toast. And then, even worse, and this is where it's developed in our society, is that there's not only intolerance of Christians, but the murder of anyone that would get in the way of my pleasure and my pleasure-seeking life. The murder of their own children in abortion. This is where the atheistic mentality leads. What's abortion? Well, abortion is not just killing a fetus, but abortion is a person making a choice to kill their own child. And to kill your own child, God must first be dead. God has to not be real to be able to do that. And the motive is self. The unwanted pregnancy is usually a result of selfish behavior. And the disposing of the life is because that life is going to stand in the way of my pleasure. And I bring this up in connection with this sermon and in connection with atheism because this was in the news this week. Maybe you read it. You've probably heard the name Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins is an English evolutionary biologist and writer who's become especially famous, or I'll say infamous again, for his atheism. Someone sent him a message this week on Twitter that said this, human beings with Down syndrome were deliberately killed before birth in England and Wales in 2012. And I asked Richard Dawkins this question, is that civilized? And he replied, yes, it's very civilized. These are fetuses diagnosed before they have human feelings. And then someone else chimed into the discussion and said this, I honestly don't know what I would do if I were pregnant with a kid with Down syndrome. This is a real ethical dilemma. And then this is what Dawkins wrote that was so inflammatory. Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice. Abort it. Try again. It would be immoral to give life to that child. Then he went into explaining it, and his main explanation was this, that people with Down syndrome have nothing to contribute to society. Selfish. And he said their lives would only be lives of suffering, and then he justified it this way. He said in another tweet, I'm a horrible monster for recommending what actually happens, and he has that in bold letters, what actually happens to the great majority of Down syndrome fetuses. They are aborted. A woman whom I knew and like said she'd be uncertain what to do if pregnant with Downs. I said what I would do and why. This happens to be what most do. That's where our society's at. That's where the world is at that says there is no God. What's the moral compass? Well, your choice, your happiness, and what's accepted in society, what most people do. What's the motivation? It's what makes you happy. And if something stands in the way and you can get away with it, then live for yourself. That's the corruption and the depravity of man. coming to expression. That's the consequences of saying there's no God. Now someone's going to say, but atheists are not that mean-spirited and not that selfishly motivated, are they? These are some of the outstanding people in society. These are the philanthropists. These are the people who give to causes. These are the people who care about human suffering. Their questions about the existence of God are just because they see all this human suffering, and they care about it, and they care about other people, and they don't want it to be this way. You know what that is? That's a cover up for immoral behavior. Again this week there's the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS awareness. I'm not going to say anything about it except that there's so many celebrities and sports figures and so on have to get out there and either tell what they're donating or take up the Ice Bucket Challenge so that people can think They care. They care. They contribute. They're philanthropists in society. But you see, when your own personal life is so awfully immoral and you can't live in your conscience before God, you have to put on a public face of care and compassion. And the world takes up these public causes in an attempt to gain the higher moral ground. And when you take the higher moral ground, in denial of God, then you end up defending what's immoral, a person's choice and right, freedom in sexuality, tolerance And that becomes the higher moral ground. That becomes accepted. What's evil becomes good in our society. And they begin to speak against and label anyone who dares to say anything about any of these immoral issues as those who are purporters of hatred. Hate speech, it's called. If you make me feel bad about my immoral behavior, that's hate speech. And that's the higher moral ground of denying God. Isaiah 5 talks about it, well unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, which justify the wicked for reward and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. And again, this is written not just about atheism, but to draw home and to drive home the application to ourselves. There's a warning here, again, against compartmentalizing in your life. The point of departure, I said, is immoral conduct. If you live for yourself and you live without any reference to God, then eventually God will be pushed out of the picture and there will be consequences. in your own life and moral ruin that comes in your life. That's not unique. The evils that we talk about here are not unique to our day. They've come to expression in every age and they've happened over and over. And we have to understand as we think about our own depravity that our own hearts are capable of the sin that comes to expression in our society. But there's also an encouragement here. Maybe it doesn't come out in the psalm in a positive way. The psalm is instructional. It's a warning. It tells us about our depravity. But there's also a great encouragement here. And many places in the psalms put it positively. The fool says in his heart, no God. And it brings these horrible consequences. We haven't even got to the worst one yet. In contrast, the Psalms say over and over, blessed is the one who fears the Lord. Fearing God is the opposite to saying there's no God. It's acknowledging the reality of God as He's revealed Himself and living with a great consciousness and awareness of Him daily, living to please Him, living in faith and love and trust. That's what it is to fear God. And the man who fears God is blessed. And so you have in contrast to the moral corruption of atheism, the blessedness of God-fearing. of the God-fearing. Psalm 1, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of God. Psalm 128, blessed is everyone that fears the Lord and walketh in his ways. And there are many other Psalms that speak in that same vein, to encourage us in the fear of God. And then finally you have the devastating outcome of this mentality. And you find that in the beginning of verse 5. There were they in great fear. The word there could better be translated, then were they in great fear. And the psalmist has in mind here the day of God's wrath which is revealed against the ungodliness of man. Verse 2, the Lord looked down from heaven. That's not a helpless looking down. What am I going to do about this? And God wringing His hands. But as Psalm 2 tells us, he that sits in heaven shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. He'll speak to them in His wrath and vex them in His sore displeasure. And so you think of the day of the flood and you think of the destruction that came on Sodom and Gomorrah and you think ahead to the end of the world and the judgment that's coming on the world that says there is no God. Revelation 6 says this in verse 15, the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief Then were they in great fear. This is the reality. Ultimately you can't deny God. You can deny Him all you want here in this world, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and God will be all in all. That's the folly of saying there's no God. And yet the psalmist doesn't only speak here of the dark consequences of atheism. He also speaks of the great comfort that there is in the covenant God. And you see that in verse two, the Lord. Notice the name there, Lord Jehovah, in capital letters, the faithful covenant-keeping God. The Lord looked down from heaven. God sees, and God knows what's going on. He watches over His people. Verse 5, God is in the generations of the righteous. He stands with His people. He's their strength and their refuge. He cares for them in their generations. He's in the generations of the righteous. Verse six, the Lord is his refuge. Jehovah is the shelter of his people. He protects them. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. All the world may be against us, but God is for us. And so verse seven, he saves. Oh that salvation the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion when the Lord Jehovah bringeth back the captivity of his people in Zion here is Jerusalem and we should think of the temple and all the things there that pointed ahead to the coming deliverer and savior Jesus Christ and the hope that God's people had in that. Salvation. Deliverance. That's what we have in Jesus Christ. Deliverance from the power and the guilt and the presence of sin. He rescues us from our own corruption. And that's what Paul is getting at in Romans 3 when he quotes this. There's none righteous. No, not one. None that doeth good. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. He points us to the only way of righteousness. Jesus Christ. When you say there's a God. You must also say. Christ alone is savior. Because there's no way for me to stand by the works of the law, by my own righteousness, by my own deeds before God, Christ alone. And so being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be the appreciation through faith. And Paul goes on to speak of of Christ. The only way that's the only way to stand in the day of God's wrath. This is how God stands with us. In Jesus Christ and his righteousness, and that's our comfort and our assurance as believers as well. Practically, As we sin, we say there's no God. We live with that atheist mentality, and yet we know that this is true. We have that seed of faith that can never be taken away. And that seed of faith causes us to throw ourselves on Christ and His righteousness. And so though God is just and there must be an answer We stand redeemed and justified in the blood of the Lamb, trusting Him, trusting Him not just in word, not just in mind, but with all our heart, we're blessed. Blessed is the one that fears the Lord. Amen.