I'm turning, friends, this evening to Psalm 14, verse 1. Psalm 14, verse 1. A Psalm of David. The fool had said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. My friends, my topic is taken from just this one single verse this morning, or this evening rather, and my subject is, are you sure you want to be an atheist? Are you really sure you want to go along the lines of being an atheist, an unbeliever in God? Now, when David uses these words, the fool had said in his heart, there is no God. Don't think he's being impolite, friends. David wouldn't be impolite in this way. There's no suggestion of that by his use of the word fool, as it is suggested today. The word here, fool, in the Hebrew means navel. It means to wither. It means to fade, like a flower or a leaf fades in its color over time. And here he's referring, when he refers to a fool, he's referring to a person who has withered in his reason, a person who is losing a wisdom or who has lost his wisdom. He's withered from right reasoning. And we see in what way he means when he says, there is no God. There is no God. He says in his heart, there is no God. The word God there, he uses Elohim instead of Jehovah. It's Elohim. Elohim points us to a personal God. It points us to a God who rules, an active God, a God who is very present, who is not far away, twiddling his thumbs, if I may put it like that, without being in any way irreverent. He is not far away doing nothing. He is a God who is intricately involved in his creation and in the lives of each and every one who is upon the earth. He is a very present God. He watches everything. He sees everything. He sees all the thoughts. He is cognizant of all the thoughts and intents and the motives of people's hearts. And this is referred to in this word Elohim, a very personal God. This man here, he says, there is no God. There is no such God. Now we can look at these words, and I want to think of it really in two kinds of ways. As an outright atheist who says and comes out, and he says, there is no God. And then we can also think about it in another way, because as you can see from the text in your Bible before you, the first two words of that phrase, there is no God, is in italics, which means it's not there in the original. And so what he's really saying is, no God. I don't want God. One says, I don't believe in the existence of God. And the other one says, no God in my life, please. No God to intervene in my ways. No God to interfere in my life. I just want God to leave me alone. I want to have nothing. to do with him. No God in my life. That's what he's saying. So you can see what David is saying here, can you, friends? Can you see what he's saying? Here is a person who started off well, it seems, in life. Started off with some instinct for worship, an instinct that there is a God. Growing up with that in mind. But over time, something's happened to him. Over time, he's deteriorated in wisdom. Instead of increasing in wisdom and knowledge, he's gone the other way. He's on a downward trajectory. He's not progressing in knowledge. Perhaps he thinks he's progressing in knowledge. Perhaps he thinks he's advancing now that he comes to this conclusion there is no God. But he's actually withering. That's what David is saying. He's withering in his knowledge. He's not becoming wiser. He's actually becoming foolish. because he's coming to this conclusion, no God exists, or I don't want God in my life. He's on the downward trend. Well friends, he goes on, he says, in his heart there is no God. Now at that time, most people believed in God. But here he's not brave enough to say in his heart openly, there is no God. Today people are, isn't it? Today people are coming out of the woodwork and are saying, there is no God. And they're arguing and fighting for such a stand to be taken, not only in their own lives, but in society. They want society to adopt a stand which says there is no God. They want the government to put forth policies which has nothing of God included. They want God to be absent from the school curriculum, absent from society, absent from politics and so on. He says, in his heart there is no God. He's made up his mind already. This is going to be the principle from now on of this man's life. There is no God. Well friends, that's the question I want to put to you. Are you sure you want to take this stand? Are you really sure you want to be an atheist? Well, let me try and answer, give you some opposing reasons why you shouldn't be an atheist. Now, to be an atheist, firstly you could say, well, of course you believe that there is no God, and really you think you hold a majority position. You think you're with the crowd. Actually, you're in the minority, friends. You're in the minority when it comes to belief in God. The vast majority of the world's population believes in God. The vast majority of the world's population are religious or spiritual in some way. How can that be? They were not taught it. No one instructed them in it. How come the vast majority are religious? We're not saying that they follow our God and they follow Christ. We're just talking generally about even all kinds of religions. But they have some sense that there is a supreme being that they ought to love and to worship. How come they do these things? How come they know about it? Well, because God has planted such an instinct in your hearts and mine and in their hearts so that they know without anyone teaching them there is a supreme being. Oh friends, you may look at our survey that came out in 2021. a survey that was taken in the United Kingdom, and this survey said, much to the delight of the secularists, it said that 37.2% of people in the UK say, no religion, no religion for us. It's increasing that number in this country, but then you compare it with the stats from around the world, and you find that number, which says there is no God, decreases to just Seven percent. Seven percent. That's all. Friends, you take this position, you're in the minority. You're not really in the majority at all. And to say, come to this very bold conclusion, there is no God. Friends, it's very arrogant. That's very arrogant to come to such a conclusion. How can you say with such definiteness there is no God? Do you know all things? Do you know everything there is to know? I know so little. My knowledge is so limited. How much do you and I know even put together? It's so small, friends, how much we know. Millions of things still remain unexplained about the world. We are ignorant of a thousand and one things, a million and one things. then how can I come to such a conclusion? We know how little, all of us acknowledge freely, yeah, it's true, I don't know everything. If I asked you, do you know everything? None of us here would say, I know everything. Well, if that's so, friends, how can you be so firm and persuaded in saying, there is no God? That's very arrogant. It's a very proud statement to make. I would ask you, reconsider your position. Rethink your position. Does God exist? We would say with a definite yes, because the Bible speaks about Him. Creation gives us the evidence about Him. But then I ask you as well, how did you reach this conclusion? How did you come to such a position where you can say so adamantly there is no God? Was it your own thought? Oh yes. I'm an independent speaker, you say. Nobody influences me. I think for myself. I've learned to think for myself. Well, good. But really, you're not thinking for yourself. You've been influenced, friends. All of us are influenced by something or other. I am influenced by the Word of God. But perhaps for you, you've been influenced by something else. Perhaps you've sat in your science class and you've been influenced by your teacher who spoke to you about evolution and who spoke to you about the world being billions of years old. And you thought, oh, this is it. This is all true. and that natural instinct that you were born with begins to diminish. Perhaps you've been educated out of it, influenced by another ideology out of something which was very natural. If you hadn't had that education, I would say that, naturally speaking, you would hold to the position that there is a God, that there is a Supreme Being. But being exposed to these things, you've allowed it to gradually erase that inborn instinct from your mind. Little by little, it's gone. I follow science. Now you say, I follow science. I believe in science. I don't believe in God. Really, friends? What kind of a science do you believe in? Real science? Observed science? Science, yes, we believe in that. Every Christian who believes in real science. Would you believe in unobserved science? Made-up science? Guess what? That's evolution. Nobody has observed and seen evolution. Yes, no one has seen creation, but we go by the Word of God. But it's the same with evolution. There is no proof of evolution. It's never been seen. Can you trust such a science as the so-called science? Can you trust your soul and risk everything and risk eternity on such science which is even by man's standards not necessarily true? Do you know there were a few years ago There was a letter that came out, and it was signed by over a thousand PhD students, scientists rather, PhD scientists. And these scientists were from different parts of the world. And in the letter they said, we are skeptical about evolution. Skeptical, these are scientists, these are not Christian scientists. Skeptical about it. Are you sure you want to be an atheist? when even so many who belong in the field of science are beginning to doubt it and to question it? Then I would ask you as well, friends, to be an atheist really is foolish in this way, because you are saying that this world in which we live in, in all its complexity, well, it just came about by chance, pure luck, pure chance. It just happened like that. Random physical forces, you say, can produce complexity, order, beauty, life, all these things that we see in the world around us. It just happened just like that. Oh, how fortunate we are to be here today. Oh, everything just came. Impossible, friends. If you look at the mathematics behind what's required, you'll see that such complexity is impossible without there being some intelligence behind it, without there being some great mind behind it, some great designer behind it. You know that everything that man makes or creates has intelligence. There's a silver town tunnel is being built due to open next year. And all of us are happy about it because we're going to be charged to go back and forth through the tunnel. But it's a marvelous piece of engineering. And no doubt, the roads will be better than the other tunnels. And there'll be a bus lane even for the buses. And all that's got to be planned and thought about. Mines, think of all the mines, thousands of mines maybe, that got involved in the planning. the building of this particular Silvertown Tunnel. And you would never say, if a foreigner came to this country next year after it's opened and sees it, you would never say, oh, it just happened to be there under the river all this time. It's a very natural thing. People would laugh at you, isn't it? Yeah, we laugh. Yeah, we don't laugh and we take seriously people who say this world came about with all its complexity, with all its order, with all its beauty, with all its varied and gated life. You say it's just by chance. It just happened like that. Think of the eye, your eye, the second most complex organ, they say, after the brain. Oh, it's so small. But inside the eye, there's two million moving parts, two million. How can that happen by chance? And yet, And as of yet, we cannot even do an eye transplant. It's too complicated for the surgeons. There are more than one million nerve fiber optics connecting the eye to the brain. It's just beyond us. How can these things happen with such complexity, be friends, without a great designer? Oh, friends, all these things should make us think, isn't it, about that position that we are holding if we hold to being an atheist. Are you sure then, friends, I ask again, that you want to be an atheist? Can you Do you really want, can you really look around at this world and say it's all by chance, all one, just a fortunate coming together of chemicals? And think again along these lines. If you say you want to be an atheist, you're saying, I don't want the answer to life's questions. I don't want to know about the questions that mankind has been asking since time began. I don't want to know the answers to those questions like, what's the purpose of my life? And why am I here? What's going to happen to me when I die? What's going to happen after death? Is there life after death? What's going to happen? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why are people so nasty to one another? Why are people who once loved each other then hate each other? What's happening to our world and our society? You don't have the answer and you will never know the answer. If you retain a position of atheism, oh friends, it's only the Bible alone that gives us the answer to these questions and many more. Why do we die? Why do people die? What does science say? Science has no answer. It's just a natural thing, natural phenomenon. We must die so that others can live and so on. That's not the reason. We die, friends, because of our sin. Death is a reminder that we're under God's judgment. When sin came into the world, death then came into the world. This is what the Bible says. This is how the Bible is able alone to answer questions. Are you sure you want to live in a secular society? Are you sure you want to live in a society where your children go to a school and they don't learn about God, and they don't learn about Christ? Are you sure you want such a society of friends? Are you sure you want the next generation of people to grow up without any faith in God, without salvation, without the eye of God, feeling that the eye of God is upon them at all times? What will be the result? Well, we're seeing some of the fruits of that already, aren't we? We're seeing some of that because secularism has infiltrated our school and has infiltrated so many of our young people and our young adults. And what's happened? You see the fruit of it on the streets even recently in this past week. And the violence and people demonstrating hatred one to another. That's what you get. When you don't want God, you get people violent with one another, their fellow human beings, hating people of a different nationality or culture. Oh friends, this is the result of leaving God out of our lives. We don't want the children to learn about creation. We don't want them to learn that there is a Creator God. Oh friends, this is such a disaster for us. I remember when I was in China, And China, as you know, atheist country, and many are atheists, but they haven't heard the other side. But many of them who I used to talk to, they themselves would tell me without any prompting from me, they would say, it's good to have a religion. It's good to believe in God. Why? Well, you see, friends, Corruption is rife, at least at that time. It was rife in China. Everybody, more or less, was doing it. And these friends were telling me, well, we need people who feel God's eyes upon them, and they will be scared to do such things. Because if you have a secular society, all you've got are the restraints of government rules and civility. That's the only thing that's going to stop people from exercising, giving vent to the evil. But you have somebody there who knows God's eye is upon me. I cannot do this. I cannot be corrupt. I cannot live in this immoral way. I cannot break up that family by taking that spouse for myself. I cannot do those things. I cannot harm that person in a violent way. They're made in the image of God. So such is the fruit, friends, of secularism. It leads to moral degeneracy. We see this here. In verse 1, they are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. That's what happens. Verse 3, they are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, not one, because they have left God out. Atheism is the fruit of atheism. Well, friends, another reason why we should come on the Lord's side, why we should believe in Him, is if you continue as an atheist, well, you're denying yourself a chance to attain a better character. You're saying no to a transformed life. Yes, you are. You know, Christopher Hitchens, he was a militant atheist alongside, of course, the other contemporary Richard Dawkins. And Hitchens wrote, God is not great. And as you know, and probably have seen, he is one of the greatest conversationalists of our time. But he had a cold and unceasing hatred of God and towards religion, especially Christianity. It was said of him by somebody who knew him, he could charm almost anybody, but he could also wound deeply and unnecessarily. How is his character? That's what atheism will do for you. Make you, on the one hand, seemingly charming, on the other hand, you can cut people up. You can hurt them with your words, and you don't care. It doesn't mean anything to you. Friends, when you come to Christ, if you don't come to Christ, you're denying yourself a life-transforming opportunity. Come to the Savior. He will forgive your sins, and He will change your life. He will make you a better man. He will make you a better woman. Are you a mean person now? Or you acknowledge that, yes, I am. Or He will make you a generous person. Or are you a person now you feel all your words do cut people up and you so easily hurt others and wound others and you don't care? Well, come to Christ. He will change you. He will make you a person who cares for others, who will be careful with your words. You'll hold back. You won't want to do those things. You'll be the opposite. You'll be concerned for those people. Christ will change you in this way. It's not self-transformation even. He will do it for you as you follow Him. Are you a proud person, lifting up yourself, glorying in your achievements? He'll make you a humble person, not a weak person, but a humble in the sense of an attractive humbleness. People will give glory to God. Friends, this is what the Lord can do for us. But to say, I want to remain as an atheist, you deny yourself such an opportunity. Imagine, friends, imagine you were living in a dingy, dirty, dark, damp, flat, one room flat, and it's just plain miserable, and electricity is cut off, and all the wallpaper is peeling off the walls, and things are so dirty and dusty, and it's just accumulated over years, and that's the environment in which you live day in and day out, and you can't do anything about it. Your offer comes to you out of the blue. You can move into a spacious, clean, bright house all for you, all for yourself. What a change! What an opportunity! Friends, wouldn't you take it with both hands? I would. Wouldn't you jump at the chance to leave such a dirty place and go into a place that is clean and spacious and good and happy? This is what the Lord offers to us, coming out from a life that is hurtful, harmful, sinful into a life that is transformed into something much, much better. But then also, are you sure, I ask again, you want to be an atheist? Because to deny the existence of God is to deprive yourself of salvation, is to deprive yourself of God's love, or you remain content with human love, very fragile thing, human love, comes and goes. If you haven't found out, you will, friends. But God's love, unchangeable, steadfast, eternal, never changes. And you deprive yourself of that. You deprive yourself of the blessings that Christ has wrought at the cross where God demonstrated His great love for sinners. There, He was making a way to reconcile fallen men and women to Himself at Calvary. where the Lord Jesus Christ was dying on the cross and the penalty of all His people's sins were placed upon His shoulders. And He was willing to take away their penalty, their punishment, their sin, so that they may be forgiven and they may be accepted by God. Christ was punished at the cross. But you say, I don't want to have anything to do with it. Or it's only just a fact of history perhaps for you. And that's all it is. It's an event in history. Yes, I know all about the cross and that's all it is. Oh friends, it's much more than that. This is the way, the cross is the way you come to know God. This is your beginning point. The cross is the place where you must start, where you must come and humble yourself before God and see what He has done there on that cross to take away sins and say, Lord, I believe. I believe in what you have done. I trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh friends, don't deny yourself this great privilege of believing in the Saviour. You're losing out. You're losing out for eternity, not just for this life. It's not just for a short period of time. You're losing out forever of God's blessing. Our friends, come to the Savior. Don't be like this fool. Don't continue in this same way. Don't say in your heart, there is no God. Say in your heart, there is a God. And I believe in Him with all my heart and tell it out to everyone. I believe in God. But especially tell it to him. Tell it to him. Get alone with God. Say to him, Lord, I believe in you. I believe in Jesus Christ whom you have sent into this world to be the Savior of sinners. I take Him as my Savior. I repent of my sins. I trust in Him. Oh friends, come and do this even tonight. Let's pray together. Oh Lord, we again bless and thank you for your word, and we thank you for your existence in this world. Life would be so dreadful without it, and we would most surely do ourselves great harm, Lord, and destroy one another were you not here. But you are here, and you're a God who is approachable, a God who can be found. And we pray that even tonight we, each one, Lord, if we haven't found you, may find you even in Christ today. Come and bless us and deliver us from those things that so easily may hold us in a false position and deprive us of your great blessing. We ask in our Savior's name, amen. Let's sing together our final hymn, which is number 385. 385. Out of my bondage, sorrow, and night, Jesus, I come. Jesus, I come.